Reverse Zone

The Delicate Balancing Act of Downtowns and the Death of Griffintown

Lots of major cities are trying to find the correct balance of uses for their downtown areas. A recent story in the Toronto Globe & Mail compares the failures of Calgary with what the author seems to believe to be successes elsewhere.

There is a lot to be said for high-rise office buildings downtown (just try to stop them and see how far you get). As I have said before, high-rise office buildings are good for public transit but in order for that formula to work, you need to have families with children and incomes - the ones most likely to create sprawl problems - living either in walking/cycling distance or on transit lines. Other types of population simply don't move the transit use needle since their automobile use is less influenced by where they live, and large concentrations of them have the unfortunate effect of driving families away, again fueling sprawl.

But the unfortunate effect of high-rise offices is the unfortunate themselves. Who wants to live there if they have a choice? There remain the people with few choices and a few adults who don't mind the noise, often for their own nefarious reasons. Concentration of poverty and misery is great for land consolidation. It is easy to buy out the unfortunate who have not yet been dispossessed, or more likely their slum landlord - who may very well be a government.

The unfortunate effect of downtown planning is a ring of poverty circling the economic engine of the city, with the occasional wealthy enclave. Planners to this day choose to demolish the homes of the poor, no matter how historic, and leave the rich areas alone. If you look at the path of destruction where urban highways and soulless bunkers were put 40-50 years ago, they detoured around rich areas and tore a path through the poor areas. The voice of those residents is simply not as loud at city council.

So what is the proper balance to put some life and vitality into downtown and its surrounding areas? Tear down the heritage buildings and build multi-storey condos? Preserve the buildings and put in trendy bars and nightspots so the streets won't be deserted at night? Although the second is better than the first, it is because it has the benefit of being reversible. It's simple, if you want to avoid having your entire urban strategy collapse upon itself, what you need right downtown is a tricky transition between the daytime commercial bustle and the quiet family-oriented neighbourhoods immediately around it in walking distance. Don't put anything there, particularly toward the edge, that you wouldn't put a block from your own house.

Condos? Apartment buildings? Condos are a form of housing that should be spread throughout the city, not concentrated near downtown. They are a great way to achieve transit-supporting density and social variety in those areas that would have difficulty otherwise. But if you consciously populate the area surrounding your downtown with mostly childless households, you are killing the social fabric of your prime sprawl and GHG reducing opportunity. Families won't want to live near there and that will bring a spiral of school closures and social disadvantage - even if the condo dwellers are rich.

In that context, I was saddened and angered to hear that Montreal City Council voted yesterday to approve the plans of a developer for a massive project to devitalize Griffintown, to demolish large parts of the existing historic neighbourhood of Griffintown, near Montreal's downtown, and to replace it with huge blocks of condos and big stores. The city is also handing over expropriated land to the developer. This is over the objections of l'Ordre des urbanistes du Qu�bec, the professional association of urban planners, among others. Let me be clear about my opinion of this - the plan, the process, and the very idea are completely wrong, not just for the interests of the neighbourhood or for the historic importance of the existing buildings, but for the entire city plan and for the reputation of the city as a whole. I was quite a fan of the City of Montreal until this point.

It's not just the smell of using municipal powers to hand over land to a private developer, and it's not just barreling through over the objections of reasonable, moderate groups like architects and urban planners and even the relatively mild and constructive community groups. Montreal has done even worse in the past, believe me. It's the fact that despite all that it had lost, the heart and soul of Griffintown was still there, and rather than taking that as a base to build upon, it is being destroyed and replaced with something foreign. This is particularly a tragedy because the good parts of Griffintown that could be built upon are precisely what Montreal needs - a community of families with heritage and pride, deeply rooted in Montreal and what makes it great, and willing to live in walking distance from work when they could be moving away instead to some place where life is easier and driving in. As the poster for the mock funeral of Griffintown said - families, dogs, and horses were welcome. That is the real tragedy.

It is particularly tragic because this is Montreal, a city that achieved miracles of urban planning, sometimes through sheer neglect, and that can be an example to the rest of the continent. The success of the subway and transformation of urban transportation was probably a downright accident that came from seeking status. But it was mostly sheer inattention that gave Montreal the Plateau Mont-Royal, the country's highest sustained population density area, virtually without high-rises, and a great example of integration of young and old, rich and poor, and with bustling local commercial streets that make a virtue out of the lack of transportation planning. I will give the city credit - the retrofit of Mont-Royal for parking and reinforcement of smaller businesses was a brilliant bit of minimalist planning. They mostly left well enough alone and didn't think big, or at least when they did think big they were shot down and lost their nerve.

Disclaimer: I have relatives who have been living in Plateau Mont-Royal long before it became trendy, and some in Pointe Saint-Charles, right across from Griffintown, hoping it never becomes trendy.

Tags: Urban Planning Urban Design Walkable Montreal Griffintown Downtown Revitalization

Internet Identity Keystone Kops

This is a rant about e-government. Twice this week I have resorted to completely unsecure paper processes to overcome the clumsy attempts by government agencies to identify the person trying to pay for a government service.

I think that governments, in a kneejerk reaction to fears of terrorism-related identity theft, but without actually understanding what they are trying to prevent, have just adopted some visible measures that try to look preventive, hoping that they can check off that box.

The first one I thought would be easy. I had designed and installed the most secure part of that web-based e-government application myself a few years back. This is to order a copy of a death certificate. Well there is now a new front end added recently to confirm your identity. It asks me to enter 3 numbers issued by different government agencies in order to identify myself. This is new. I don't have all three. I can't get in. I do have those numbers for the deceased. That works, but I can't bring myself to complete the process because I know that would be dishonest. It would be easy and consistent with the purpose of the identity check, but still lying. I used the paper process instead. It doesn't even ask me who I am, much less make "prove" it.

Just today, I was trying to file some corporate tax documents electronically. Again, it asks me who I am. The deceased used to do this and I have all his access codes, but lying to the tax man is not a good idea. All the other corporate filings and changes are up to date (annual report, directors registry, officers, and so forth) and I am fully legally certified as the person who can act on behalf of the corporation, but only the deceased individual seems to be able to file electronically. Do I use the access code with his name on it? Tempting. Many many phone calls and voice menus later (got to love that trick of pressing the zero) it turns out that the process for issuing me a web access code is convoluted and time-consuming (oh, and completely wrong - the documents they want prove nothing). No, they won't check the official registry of corporations, online and free, which publicly certifies the same information. And they won't take an e-mail of a scan of a documetn, only a photocopy by snail mail. Or by fax. Do they even make fax machines and analog phone lines any more?

Luckily I can file all these papers by hand - handwritten even. Again, the paper process has no identity check at all. It's troublesome, but compared to my paying one government agency to mail a paper copy of a document that I can mail to a second agency that will mail me a document that I can mail to a third agency, all so I can "prove" that I am allowed to file corporate documents electronically, it's not so bad.

Tags: internet e-government government identity theft

LA Transit Plan Aims to Save 725 Metric Tons of GHG Annually by 2030

This laugh-out-loud statistic comes from Los Angeles 2008 Long Range Transportation Plan, on page 18. To put it in perspective, that is the total GHG emissions of 30 average Americans. Looking at the plan in more detail the figures refer to 725 tonnes a day, a little better but still hardly worth the trouble in the greater scheme of things. That target is less than a tenth of a percent improvement. Its other target: a 15% average speed increase on freeways.

But it looks like events may overtake transportation planners. Last year, and particularly in the fourth quarter, Californians significantly cut their driving and gasoline use. Californians were already among the lowest gasoline users in the US.

With the relatively high transit ridership in LA and East LA, and its continuing although slow growth, there is a good opportunity for a good transit system to do much better than this. LA Metro's rail ridership doubled in 2000-2001 when it expanded its system.

Tags: Transportation Vehicles USA Los Angeles

New York City's Congestion Pricing Plan Dies Yet Again

This has been reported on this blog a few times in the past, but New York State has once again killed New York City's plan to charge a peak time toll to enter part of the island of Manhattan. The State's agreement was required to allow the city to accept several hundred millions of dollars offered by the Federal government for the project. The federal money and the proceeds of the tax would have been used to invest an extra billion dollars into transportation in the city. It is part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to cut carbon emissions 30% by 2030.

There was no vote as such at the state legislature, just a closed door meeting that decided not to hold a vote and that let the deadline pass.

Is it the end of congestion pricing in New York? Given the number of times it rose again and the vote of New York City Council supporting it, the support of the Mayor and of the old and new Governor, and of the Federal Transportation Secretary, and of business leaders, it's probably just a matter of time. Interestingly, those holding up this environmental action and the transit subsidies are Democrats.

Tags: Transportation Transportation Planning New York Congestion Pricing

New York Discovers Existing Direct Democracy Zoning Rule

Much to their surprise, New York City local activists discovered that New York City had direct democracy provisions in its Charter, and that these had been there since the end of the 19th century.

Accroding to the Charter,

3. In case a protest against such a resolution [a change in the text of the zoning resolution] approved by the city planning commission shall have been presented to the city clerk within thirty days from the date of the filing of such resolution with the council, duly signed and acknowledged by the owners of twenty per cent or more of the area of:
(1) the land included in changes proposed in such proposed resolution, or
(2) the land immediately adjacent extending one hundred feet therefrom, or
(3) the land, if any, directly opposite thereto extending one hundred feet from the street frontage of such opposite land, such resolution shall not be effective after the filing of such protest unless approved by the council by a three-fourths vote within one hundred eighty days after the filing of said resolution with the city clerk.

Essentially if you get the signatures of the owners of 20% of the property on the same street within 100 feet, zoning changes must be approved by 75% of city council, not the usual 50%.

City officials and lawyers were apparently surprised by discovering this rule. Tony Avella, the chairman of the zoning subcommittee, apparently said the rediscovered clause could force city planners to change the way they go about rezoning neighborhoods. It's strange they're surprised, because the entire section of the City Charter dealing with zoning changes essentially fits on a single typewritten page.

It's a shame that the rule is for property owners and not residents. That means that renters have a lot fewer rights than property owners. What else is new? But publicity about this provision also means that developers would be well advised to engage the community when they want changes, and not just shmooze a few decision makers.

Tags: Zoning New York Direct Democracy

Driving is Going Down in the US

As opposed to Canada, where total driving is still going up, driving has gone down in the U.S. in 2007, in what looks like the start of a new downward trend.

The 25-year upward trend suddenly stopped at the end of 2005 when gas prices spiked to $3 a gallon, but what really sealed the downward trend was December 2007, when gasoline went up over $3 a gallon and never came back down.

Data & Graph from OHPI December 2007 spreadsheet. If I may repeat my usual complaint: getting data from US government agencies is simple, getting it from the Canadian governement is not.

Tags: Transportation Vehicles USA

The Commuting Turnaround in Canada

Statistics Canada in a recently released analysis of the 2006 Census, reports that fewer people commute to work than in 2001. The proportion has gone from 73.8% in 2001 to 72.3% in 2006, a drop of 1.5%.

Break out the champagne, things are turning around! Not so fast. A smaller percentage are driving, but they are driving 5.6% further.

In the past 5 years, the number of people commuting 25km or more has gone up by 18%, according to a different recent study. And population is growing most quickly in the cities with the longest commutes. Sprawl is alive and well.

People may use the car less to commute to work, but the vast majority of kilometres driven are not for work but for other tasks like shopping and leisure. Home-to-work and work-to-home trips account for 23% of kilometres driven by light vehicles.

A reversal in the upward trend of kilometres travelled was predicted a few years ago, at least in the US. The aging population is a factor, and the average number of passengers per car can't keep on going down now that it has almost reached 1.0. But actual reductions in total kilometres driven as a result of conscious action are slow in coming.

So, bottom line, a smaller percentage in commuting does not necessarily mean less total kilometres travelled because of all the other factors. Not necessarily, but was there a reduction? According to the quarterly Canadian Vehicle Survey statistics, the answer is "maybe yes". Look at the boring graph, total vehicle kilometres driven, in billions, per quarter. The latest quarter 2007 Q3 seems a little lower than the preious quarter and than the same quarter a year before. Q3 is typically higher than Q2, and last year it wasn't. But looking at the graph, it's a little early to declare a trend.

Tags: Transportation Vehicles Sprawl Canada