Sidewalks not always found on the most walkable streets

Many equate sidewalks with walkability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sidewalks are nice, no argument, but putting new sidewalks where there are no destinations -- like stores, schools or parks -- does not transform the street into a wallker's paradise thanks to the addition of the pedestrian pavement.

Note the residential street above in Leeuarden, Netherlands. This street rates a Walk Score of 92 despite lacking sidewalks and dedicating a huge amount of roadway to parked cars. Space for walking is tight.

Why does a street, clearly unfit for walking, rate such a lofty score? Location, location, location. Almost everything a person needs is within a 20 minute walk -- even sidewalks.

Maybe the urban planners in London, Ontario, could learn from the Leeuarden experience.

Almere New City, Netherlands: ReThink in action

This street in The Hague, Netherlands, lacks sidewalks.

It was called ReThink London. It was a bust. All that was new was the moniker. So far it seems the new London, Ontario, will simply be more of the old London, Ontario. The changes to the city, and there will be some, will be the ones to be expected. ReThink contained no surprises.

If one wants to view a city with a true ReThink approach, check out Almere New City in the Netherlands. It has been reported that Dutch planners and architects consider the Almere New City plan and its urban form to be unique. There is little unique in London now or on the drawing board for the future.

If interested in knowing a little more about Almere New City, please click the link. The author of the piece, Mirela Newman, contends that Almere could be used as an example to follow by both new town planners throughout the world, and for the development and redevelopment of old and new subdivisions and districts already in existence.

Be warned, a tour of Almere New City using Google Street Views did not convince me that the designers of Almere had it totally right. Oddly enough, I personally still see the South Walkerville neighbourhoods developed in Windsor, Ontario, in the early part of the last century as just about perfect for the time. The area was very walkable with some streets bordered by sidewalks and others left totally without. Some streets originally lacked curbs but over the years curbs have appeared almost everywhere in the area.

If the neighbourhood in which I now live, Byron in London, had sidewalks through the wooded areas to link commercial shopping areas with residential areas, Byron would be a very fine example of good urban design. Sadly, Byron is being developed more in the style of a '50s suburban neighbourhood but with the addition of some box stores and some highrises on a major thoroughfare.

Woonerf fine downtown but not outside the core

Art showing imaginary curbless street in downtown London.

Three years ago The London Free Press interviewed Bob Usher, president of the Downtown London Business Association and Joel Adams, a Downtown London board member. Both were in favour of making Dundas Street a "woonerf" or a shared street.

A shared street integrates pedestrian activities and vehicular traffic. No segregating sidewalks and no curbs are allowed. The shared street approach has proven to be very adaptable and examples can now be found around the globe.

Fast forward to today and the paper is reporting that a quiet street, where kids play road hockey, where car traffic in an hour can be counted on one hand, a street that has existed for decades without sidewalks and without complaints, must now lose some trees, some front yard space and some driveway length to make room for a sidewalk. This is happening over the protests of the residents.

A suburban street with neither curbs nor sidewalks in action.

The neighbourhood ward councillor, Stephen Turner, is pushing for sidewalks. According to the paper, he believes the city’s newest urban planning approach, ReThink London, demands walkable streets, and to Turner walkable mean sidewalks.

If ReThink London was about anything, it was about thinking outside the Southwest Ontario urban planning box. True ReThinking leads to thinking about woonerfs, home zones, naked streets. Mr. Turner is missing the core ReThink message.

Studies show a drop in the number of traffic accidents when a naked street replaces a street with curbs and sidewalks. Installed in suitable locations, naked streets are both walkable and safe.

What will the sidewalk on Auburn Ave. cost? What would a naked street tailored to the needs of Auburn Avenue residents cost? Let's put on those ReThink London thinking caps and come up with an original solution.

One final caveat: a successful naked street demands consultation. Naked streets are not created over the objections of residents.

Roads without sidewalks can encourage a rich mix of uses.

Comment left on Shift London Website: Moving London Forward – Time to ReThink Mobility

The Twilight Zone: PD Day style

This illustration is wrong. Can you see why?

 
It seems Barbie should not have been ridiculed for admitting she found math class tough. The Barbie doll making the confession was yanked from the shelves and the offending words banished from her vocabulary. Now, it is clear that the Ontario Ministry of Education along with quite a number of teachers in London, Ontario, are also befuddled by math.

Professional development days, or PD Days as they are commonly called, are held by the Ministry of Education to teach teachers. A recent PD Day in London focused on improving the teaching of math in city schools. The lesson contained a glaring error. This is bad enough in itself, but how this obvious blooper slipped by numerous teachers is concerning.

The teachers were told two growing puppies both gained three kg. The first dog went from a weight of five kg to eight kg while the second went from three kg to six kg. The teachers were asked: Which puppy grew the most? For added clarity, an illustration was provided comparing the growth of the two dogs.

Unfortunately, the illustration is wrong. Rather than correcting errors in proportional thinking, the illustration promotes one of the very myths the PD Day should have been addressing. The doubling of the external dimensions of something, say a figurine, does not double its weight nor double it area. Some 26 years ago, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics noted the surprising acceptance of this myth among math teachers.

Doubled weight? Wrong!

The second dog doubled its weight. It did NOT necessarily double in height, width and depth as well. As a former art student I know this problem well. Sculptors make small scale models, maquettes, before starting the full-sized piece.

If a small sculpture of a dog takes 1 kg of clay, the same sculpture doubled in size requires 8 kg of clay. Doubling the length, width and depth does NOT double the amount of clay required but increases it by a factor of eight.

How the little dog in the illustration only doubled its weight while expanding eight times in volume is not a riddle; It is an impossibility.

In a ministry of education publication, Paying Attention to Spatial Reasoning, the ministry reports that the National Research Council calls errors in the teaching of spacial reasoning a “major blind spot . . . locked in a curious educational twilight zone . . . "

Well, welcome to the Twilight Zone, London PD Day style.

A vegetarian cook celebrates fruits and vegetables

My wife and I just returned from Montreal after a brief visit with some Quebec-based friends . They are both vegetarians and their meals were an eye-opener.

I thought being a vegetarian was, to a great extent, simply taking standard meals and removing the meat while pumping up the vegetable and fruit component. I learned I was wrong.

My friends celebrate vegetable and fruits. Meat may be missing but it is not missed. A curried dish that I would have served with chunks of chicken hidden in the sauce was simply delicious on its own. No chicken; no loss.

I'm on a low cholesterol diet. I'm half way to understanding the approach practised so successfully by my Montreal friends. Now, back in London I'm going to try to change my attitude and maybe, just maybe, I'll see less meat but more variety in my menus.

I'm going to start tomorrow with a cauliflower dish cooked in a tagine. This meal should say North Africa and not vegetarian. It should delight the eye and satisfy the pallet without raising red flags drawing attention to the lack of meat.

If this works, I'll post the recipe and a picture soon.

I have CHF but life is good

I have CHF, congestive heart failure. I had planned on doing a lot of traveling upon retiring. Thanks to CHF, I won't be leaving the country. Oh well, life still can be fine even if one stays right here in London.

CHF isn't my only health problem but it is battling for first place. I have developed a dry cough, my fingers are a little fat some mornings and my feet are a little puffy some nights. It is all a bit concerning but I'm try not to let these things bother me. I don't really have time to waste on depression.

I have three wonderful grandkids who bring joy into my life and a wife who loves me. She makes sure we find stuff to do together that won't challenge me too much while delivering a good wallop of fun. Cooking is one of those activities.

My wife made the stuffed peppers and I was responsible for the green beans and the artichoke-covered grilled baguette slices. It doesn't look it but this is a low fat, low calorie, Weight Watchers friendly, dinner. It would make my heart doctors smile as it contains no meat. The only cholesterol is in the light use of cheese, a dairy product.

As I am not healthy, I must continue to monitor the cholesterol in my diet. The recent good news about dietary cholesterol didn't change a thing in my diet. I must keep my consumption of red meat to a minimum and eggs, at least egg yolks, are simply out.

Broccoli served with pasta in a hot pepper pesto: A heart healthy dinner.

I like to approach cooking like creating art. I found the above pasta a little too dark. I was following a suggestion that encouraged cooking the pasta in chicken broth in a fry pan. The pasta absorbed the chicken broth, taking on a light flavour and a darker tint.

Tonight I tried something similar but I cooked the pasta in a pasta pot filled with boiling water. When the pasta was done, I tossed it with a mix of  hot pepper pesto, 20gm of hot pepperoni (yes, I cheated a little on my diet) half a yellow and half an orange sweet pepper diced and a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. I also diced a large tomato, minus the seeds, and added that to the mix.

My wife declared the two pasta dinners a draw but I preferred the second by far. I thought it had focus -- the hot, spicy flavour supplied by the pesto and the pepperoni. Visually, I liked the brighter colour of the second dish compared to to the first.

London borrows a page from Charleroi, Belgium

Image from The London Plan: Dundas St. future look.

The London Free Press reported the main street of the Southwestern Ontario city may become a flexible street. Flex-streets lack curbs to define pedestrian space and keep traffic separated from walkways.

According to the paper, making part of Dundas St. a flex-street should create a healthy, vibrant core thoroughfare.

Has this been done elsewhere? As a matter of fact, yes: Charleroi in Belgium. Has it worked? That's open to debate. When was the idea hatched? Surprise: almost 20 years ago!

Charleroi has been called the Dark Heart of Europe and the Ugliest City on the Continent (of Europe). An industrial town, like Detroit in Michigan, it lost its industrial base and today is but a shadow of its former self. It has struggled for decades to find new footings. Has the flex-street been a great success? I could find nothing to indicate its been a win-win move. Two decades later, the city is still struggling. And a map of the area posted in French indicates the street today, at least at times, supports two-way traffic. I did find indications that the process is still ongoing. The final chapter for the transformation of Place Buisset has not been written.

Google Street Views: Charleroi street in core transformed into a flex-street.

It was hoped the changes to Place Emile Buisset, changes that respect the area's past, would make the street one of the great pedestrian entrances to a city anywhere. The making of Place Buisset into a flex-street was an early part of the move to make Rive Gauche (the name of the area) a mixture of commercial and residential in a neighbourhood composed of both new-buildings and restored historic ones. The river, once ignored, was to be integrated into the old but reinvigorated city core. (An another link: Link.)

I'm not saying the flex-street as detailed in the London Plan will not work. Flex-streets, river front renewal projects, re-purposed heritage properties and more have worked to varying extents in numerous places. If a city is attempting to restore a faded urban core, these are the approaches frequently taken by today's urban planners.

I'm just saying the London Plan is not a groundbreaking blueprint. The London Plan is business as usual when it come to urban planning in the twenty-first century. And the resistance the plan is meeting from both politicians and developers is also par for the course. No surprises here, either.

A Charleroi city plan of  Place Buisset.
The last hours of the Colonnades
Urban renewal may not be forever
A mall is planned for another area of Rive Gauche