Sprawl: May not be exactly what you think

Reading The London Free Press the other day I came across a story with "Sprawling out" as the headline above the story. It was an article looking at the recent release of the first discussion papers by ReThink London.

I had read the discussion papers and was not impressed. Considering the time spent assembling the information, it was rather poorly presented. So poorly presented, in fact, that report Randy Richmond got some of his figures wrong by a bit more than ten percent. When a professional cannot even decipher the information easily, quickly and accurately, there is a problem.

I found myself thinking about the term "sprawl." I've been to Los Angeles and there is a place that certainly seems to sprawl. Yet, that community is rated the densest urban area in the entire United States.

I don't have time to write a post on this today. My time is spoken for. But here is a link to a University of California article: What Density Doesn't Tell Us About Sprawl, by Eric Eidlin.

Cheers,
Have a good weekend.

ReThink London: smoke and mirrors

[I've posted this but I don't have a copy editor. I believe my figures are all correct but if you notice an error please leave a comment. I will not be insulted if you correct me. Thank you.]

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ReThink London is falling flat. If you are looking for new thinking, move on. You won't find anything new at ReThink London.

After months spent investigating what Londoners want from their city, city planning director John Fleming can do no better than spout truisms. Londoners want quality infill he says. Did he think they wanted poorly done infill? Londoners want compact growth. This is a surprise? Did he expect a lot of folk would tell him they wanted sprawl? Londoner want great public spaces. Of course, they do. Who dreams of poor public spaces?

I read the ReThink London discussion paper, Building a Mixed-Use, Compact City, very carefully. It left me puzzled. I had lots of questions.

Soon this will be housing. Suburbia is but a short walk away.

The report tells us in 1961 the city annexed large tracts of land in order to sustain growth. Byron and Oakridge were just two of the areas taken over by the city at that time. A decade later, the 1971 official plan determined London could accommodate a population "in excess of 500,000" thanks to those annexed lands.

Yet, by 1992 the city was in annexation mode once again. Almost the entire Township of Westminster found itself obliterated by the expanding city. According to the ReThink discussion paper, today we’ve developed all of the '61 land—all of it! We're expanding into the '92 territory and yet the population of London is only at 366,151 (2011 census). We didn't even come close to housing 500,000 before we ran out of land.

• What kind of plan misses the mark by such a wide margin. A damn poor one I'd say. 
• If the plan wasn't poor, it certainly wasn't followed, not even remotely. We need to know more. 
• Who was responsible for the screw up? If it was the city planners, did they make some basic math error? It is important for us to know. We don't want this happening again.

Moving on, let's look at some of the facts, figures and forecasts contained in the recently released discussion paper. The planning department presented Londoners with three scenarios illustrating three different approaches to London's future growth in the next 50 years.

The planners see London with an additional 190,000 residents. An increase in London's population of 54.6 percent. My math tells me that this works out to a population of 556,151. Now, let's look at the scenarios.

The compact city

• 30% single detached houses
• 35% townhouse and mid-rise
• 35% high-rise
• city covers 420.57 square kilometres (Today's figure.)
• population is 556,151

Hybrid pattern of growth

• 50% single detached houses
• 23% townhouse and mid-rise
• 27% high-rise
• city covers 420.57 square kilometres plus additional 10.98 sq. km for total of 431.55 sq. km.
• population is 556,151

The sprawling city

• 70% single detached houses
• 15% townhouse and mid-rise 
• 15% high-rise
• city covers 420.57 square kilometres plus additional 64 sq. km for total of 484.57 sq. km.
• population is 556,151

The report didn't calculate the population densities for the various scenarios but allow me.

 

Persons per sq. km.

• Compact: 1322.4
• Hybrid: 1288.7
• Sprawling: 1147.7.31

So what does this tell us? If you are like me, you have nothing to compare these numbers to. Let's do a little research. Let's look into the densities being achieved in the popular communities in the GreaterToronto area.

 

Persons per sq. km.

• Toronto: 4149.5
• Mississauga: 2,439.9
• Brampton: 1967.1
• Richmond Hill: 1838
• Kitchener: 1602.1
• Waterloo: 1542.9 
• Markham: 1419.3
• Oakville: 1314.2

Tower in Mississauga.

If our city planning department was willing to emulate Oakville, London would not require more farmland. Oakville is said by many to be one of the finest places to live in Canada. The compact city density doesn't sound out of line at all.

If our planners took an approach more like Mississauga's, London could handle better than a million residents. This is more than twice the population our city planners have set as their goal.

What is going on here? What am I missing? When planning director John Fleming chatted with The London Free Press he talked of compact growth. So where's the compact growth in these figures?

ReThink assures us that our future will be "exciting, exceptional and connected." Did you actually expect to be told that the city planners were guiding London into a dull as dish water, unexceptional and disconnected future? Check out the apartment tower on the left. That apartment building is Mississauga's exciting, exceptional future in the flesh. It is one of The Absolute World Towers, known 'round the world as The Marilyn Monroe Towers because of their sensuous curves.

London's wild dreams bring back memories of another time and another place where civic puffery took centre stage and facts be damned. Where? Detroit! In the mid '60s Mayor Jerome Cavanagh made a short film promoting his withering city, once the fourth largest in the United States, Detroit was already about 15 years into its decline. The film was called: Detroit, City on the Move.


London: exciting, exceptional and connected. Only in ReThink London's dreams. It may come to pass, but it may not. At the moment, ReThink London talks a good line but that's it. Until the planning department and the city council get on the same page, this long trip, as John Fleming calls it, may end badly. If you doubt me, think of Wonderland Road South—the new gateway to the city.

Nothing threatens good dreams for tomorrow like bad moves today.

In some cities, apartments are found above stores like the above. Not in London.

If you think I am being too hard on the ReThink London process, I find myself thinking along the same lines. I want to pullback, go a little lighter. And then I look at the picture below showing one of the new developments in London the planning department finds praise worthy. I look at this picture and I know I am hitting the mark. 

What an awful structure. Nothing exciting or exceptional here. Now, move down the street a few metres and all that changes. Or look across the street at the restored pottery guild building. The structure shown above is a stain on London's urban fabric.

In keeping with the conversational aspect of ReThink London I contacted them and e-mailed them the following message:

My recent blog post has been getting more than the usual hits. It is a criticism of ReThink London. I'd love to hear your defence. Hey, this whole thing is about conversation, right?

http://rockinontheblog.blogspot.ca/2013/05/rethink-london-smoke-and-mirrors.html

Cheers.
p.s. I'm posting this message at the bottom of my post.

Maybe ReThink London should Remember Detroit

Recently I read a very positive take on a new building in town — a four story condo. According to the author, the new units are selling very well — so well that the developer has applied to the city council’s planning committee for permission to begin construction of the second phase. This is ahead of schedule.

The Nuvo Condos promise luxury living.

 
I drove by the building to have a closer look. It is actually quite nice. I think it looks much better in the flesh than in pictures. Yet, I still didn't like it. It is not the building itself that turns me off but the company it keeps. The new structure is sitting on the edge of an absolutely massive highrise housing development, possibly the largest, densest grouping of tall apartment buildings in all of the London area. When seen from some angles I call it a taste of Hong Kong.

This is the neighbourhood Nuvo in which Nuvo finds itself.

Please don't misunderstand, I am not against highrises. I loved the highrise in which I lived forty years ago in Toronto. That building was sitting in a neighbourhood of private homes, near parks, near the Danforth, near the subway. Almost all parking was underground.

For the most part, these tall London buildings sit apart, divorced from the surrounding city. Walk out the front door of one of these monoliths and walk into a parking lot — acres of asphalt cover the neighbourhood. Cars are parked around the buildings, in low-level parking garages nearby and probably underneath as well.

It is all very practical. Truth is folk prefer to park above ground that brave an underground parking garage. But that fact doesn't make all the acres of parking visually pleasing. But, I must begrudgingly admit, these buildings do seem to work. The do a yeomanlike job of providing a roof over people's heads.

I can't fault critics for saying these look like "the projects."

Some folks see these and see what are known as "the projects" in the States. These are not the disgraced projects. Furthermore, the projects did not fail because of architecture despite the prevailing mythology.

I do not like these buildings, successful or not. One must be careful not to equate success with good. People for the most part are good and good people need affordable housing. Clump a lot of these good people together in decent, clean, practical housing and you may well have a successful development. But, and it is a big but, this does not mean it could not be done better.

To learn how this is done, one need look no further than Detroit and its Palmer Park Heritage Apartment District. This was an area I knew well as a young man back when I was going to art school in Motown back in the mid '60s. This was one cool place to live. It was a stigma free high density neighbourhood

Palmer Park Apartment District: Photo by Andrew Jameson

I used to visit friends living in Palmer Park. The neighbourhood was very walkable with ice cream stores, hamburger joints and beer and wine stores nearby. Every thing a student could want.

Actually, the walk could be a little long, depending upon where in the area one lived, but the area was just so interesting: Moorish arches, art deco buildings, lots of stained glass. As an art student I was in heaven.

And when one tired of strolling the apartment lined streets, there was Palmer Park itself, with its fountain, tennis courts, miles of biking trails and Palmer Pond for ice skating in the winter. And Woodward Avenue was right there. It was a quick trip to some of the best shopping in the world.

 Read what the United States National Park Service says:

From 1925 to 1965, 40 buildings were constructed, with the majority built in the 1920s and 1930s, to accommodate middle-class and upper middle-class tenants. The Palmer Park Apartment Buildings reflect the latest concepts and technology in multiple-family housing unit design from the time and are excellent examples of various exotic architectural styles such as the Egyptian, Spanish, Mediterranean, Venetian, Tudor, and Moorish Revival styles. 

Today, sadly, the district has fallen on tough times. This is no surprise as this is Detroit. Detroit has lost tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and hundreds of thousands of residents. Detroit's neighbourhoods are deserted and decaying not because they were bad but because there were no people left to live in them. The exodus of jobs and of people left no one to buy the homes offered for sale, even when the asking price was but a fraction of their former value.

Keeping the above in mind, let's take a Google Street Views tour of the Palmer Park Historic Apartment District.

The entrance to the district off Woodward Avenue at Merton Road.

Proceeding down Merton Road but still close to Woodward Avenue. 

As interesting inside as out: Cool doors, hallways, lots of wood, stained glass.

Porches on this Manderson Road apartment were popular gathering places.

Not all the apartments were massive. Note the two on the right.

Covington Drive apartment faces Palmer Park itself. Note good condition.

Parkview Apartment on Covington Drive is simple but still stylish.

The district had more than apartments: Churches, stores, parkland, schools . . .

The Woodward streetcar line may be long gone but there are plans to bring it back, bigger and better. The U.S. Department of Transport has announced a planned $137 million dollar M-1 Rail project to revitalize the Woodward Avenue Corridor.

The J.L. Hudson flagship store is gone and closer to Palmer Park the rows of business which once lined Woodward are also just memories. On the plus side, the Fox Theatre and the new home of the Detroit Tigers are both on Woodward Avenue. Even Palmer Park has had a revival of sorts. I've seen pictures of the fountain in the park, forgotten and sprouting trees in its empty pool. Today the fountain has been cleaned up and looks rather welcoming.

Palmer Park, not as grand as it once was, but still a very nice urban space.

 If you found this interesting, you might like to mark this date on your calendar: Friday, October 4, 2013. This is when the Third Annual People for Palmer Park Historic Architecture Tour will be held. You can visit Detroit and view the work of some of Detroit’s finest architects. For tickets and more information, click on the following link: Tour.

I just wish I could interest the London planning department and the London city council to visit the Palmer Park Historical Apartment District. We don't have to build Moorish style or art deco looking apartments but surely we don't have to build so many filing cabinets for people either.

Maybe ReThink London should remember Detroit.

An apartment complex even Le Corbusier might hate.

Prophets, by definition, are ahead of their time

Recently I had reason to think about Phil McLeod. He was one of the editor-in-chiefs at The London Free Press while I worked there. McLeod is famous, or infamous depending upon whom you talk to, for the cluster system that was put in place in the newsroom about two decades ago.

On a personal level, I liked Phil and so did my wife. She met Phil at a Free Press event and found him to be a pleasant fellow, very congenial. A man who knew how to put one at ease in a social setting. He seemed to be a "nice guy" with a "nice smile," my wife said. She found him warm.

Her observations fly in the face of some of the stuff that one can find on the Net. The quotes on the Net are from staff who worked with Phil during the redesign period and these remarks are often harsh.

It is interesting to look back on the cluster experiment and the extreme reaction it elicited in the newsroom. As I recall, I could check as I still have a lot of my cluster instructions in a box in my basement, Phil wanted us all to tackle more stuff. To expand our interests and break out of the traditional mold that we each found ourselves in. He wanted us to get creative.

The following is from a journalism article in a 1994 Ryerson publication:

The bold experiment that the article described was the cluster system, a radically different approach to the way stories are developed, reported, and presented. In the conventional newsroom one assignment editor directs 40 or so reporters. By contrast, under the cluster system, editorial employees belong to one of a half-dozen or so small groups, each of which generates stories under broad themes: "work/wealth," for example, or "applause." The theory is that working collaboratively leads to better story ideas and better stories. In the case of the Free Press, there were other goals too: according to Mcleod, these were a happier, more flexible staff and a "more responsive, attractive, and useful paper."

It should have been a huge break with the traditional newsroom of the past. It wasn't. Almost everyone dug in their heels: reporters, editors and photographers. The cluster system limped along at first, then slowly ground to a halt — stymied by the resistance of the newsroom staff and others. In the end, the cluster system only existed on paper. The truth is the cluster system was never given a fair trial.

At least, it failed to get a fair trial then. Now, it may be different. You see, after two decades of cutbacks, layoffs and buyouts, the newspaper newsroom is running awfully thin. I have heard from reporters who tell me that they come into work and are asked to write an editorial as the editorial department of old is gone. Then they are asked to cover a story and file both written copy for tomorrow's paper and a short stand-up report for an online video. The reporter may also be asked to supply the photo that accompanies their story in the paper and online. Oh for the days of the cluster and not today's almost one-man-band.

The Ryerson article mentioned earlier also quoted Phil McLeod as saying that the new system was providing "flashes of what tomorrow might look like." You know, he was right. And in retrospect the cluster system looks awfully good.

Keep your nose out of my snout nose neighbourhood

Phil McLeod, the former editor-in-chief of The London Free Press and one of those behind The Londoner, is a rather influential fellow in town. When he writes something, a lot of folk listen.

Therefore, it was with some dismay that I read his recent post on turning London, Ontario, into a smart city. It's going to "require visionary leadership," he tells us. I say, "Maybe. But go heavy on the leadership and light on the visionary."

It seems Phil McLeod lives in the Greater Oakridge area of London, an area of mostly traditional suburban housing according to McLeod. He insultingly refers to his area's homes as being snout nose homes.

My narrower definition of snout nose housing excludes many of the Oakridge homes. In Toronto, I've come across whole streets where the line of garages obliterated the lawns and hid the front doors. In some cases, the wide garages built on narrow lots pushed the front doors to the sides of the homes. Those are snout nose homes.

McLeod says about his neighbourhood, "there is also a depressing sameness about the homes." Which causes me to wonder why he even lives in the area. If he isn't a senior, he soon will be. He has enough money to live in an area that he doesn't find depressing. Why does he live in Greater Oakridge?

But, I am wandering away from the point I'd like to make and that is for many years in many places we had what is now known as smart housing. It was common and in many cases it is now gone. Until folk like Phil McLeod understand why, to a great extent, smart housing disappeared, they will not understand how to bring it back.

In a future post, I'll look at why many older smart housing neighbourhoods disappeared. There are a number of clear causes. For now, I'd like to leave you with a picture of some smart housing that is still in use in Detroit, Michigan.

Still a fine looking residential building. Good materials last a long time.

Stores below, apartment above. My aunt in Brantford, ON, lived above a store.

Is it good design that has kept some areas of Detroit vibrant?

These examples, all from the Detroit of today, look good in these frame grabs from Google Street Views. What cities in the recent past, like Detroit, Windsor, Toronto, Montreal, etc., had back in the mid part of the last century is what we should be striving for today in our all too rapidly expanding cities.

London leaders, like Phil McLeod, should forget the futurist jargon. The answers to many of our urban density problems are as near as the not so distant past.

Science and Technology Knowlege Quiz online

There is an interesting Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz posted online by the Pew Research Center. If you are going to take it, read no farther. If not, read on.

I thought the questions were incredibly easy. Are electrons smaller than atoms? (Of course they are, electrons are building blocks of atoms.) Which natural resource is extracted in a process known as “fracking”? (Surprisingly, only half the senior taking the test got this right and answered natural gas. I'd have thought anyone who was retired would be following the growth of fracking and the subsequent drop in price of natural gas. Some of my nicest dividend paying stocks wilted thanks to fracking.)

The test is fun to take, especially if you do well, I did. But reading the results is an eye opener. My age group, those over 65, did just about the worst of all age groups on most questions.

College grads led with the number of right answers; there was only one question I noted where the college grads didn't lead the pack.

If you are wondering how men did compared to women, I'm not answering that sexist question; You'll have to look up the answer for yourself.

The results of those who only had a high school education or less were so close to the numbers attained by the seniors that I have to believe there was a lot of overlap between the two groups.

Take the test; See how you do.

Sun News: 100% Canadian? Not really, and not always news

Sun News claims to be 100% Canadian.

Blogger Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen made an  interesting observation: The video that Sun News showed the CRTC to argue the news network uses all Canadian content contained a segment using American actors portraying "older Canadians."

The footage in question can be found on the iStockphoto site, licensed from Morgan Lane Studios of Oregon.

Sun News CRTC Video Presentation with U.S. actors portraying Canadians.

 

The footage originated with iStockphoto, an online stock photo agency.

"Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian . . . Canadian content matters . . . " according to the Sun News video. The cable network claims to be your 100% Canadian source for news.

Sleazy stock photo and news story.

Using stock photography to illustrate news stories is cheap, and all too common, but it's the Sun Media/Quebecor approach to covering the news. The London Free Press, where I once worked, now part of the Sun Media/Quebecor chain, often uses stock photos to illustrate news stories. Sad. (In the paper's defence, the stories using the cheesy art often originate with QMI.)

What is wrong with using off-the-shelf art to illustrate news stories? Well, it reinforces clichéd, stereotypical thinking and, worse, it may not depict the truth. Sadly, it is the next logical step in the Sun Media/Quebecor approach to news.

Do you recall the uproar when a Canadian court ruled women in Canada could legally go bare-breasted in public? Sun Media went wild. When the Ottawa Sun couldn't find a woman baring her breasts on the local beach, a couple of models were hired. Sun Media wasn't going to let reality get in the way of a good story.

The models had limits for news shoot.

The really sad part of the Sun stunt was that the paper moved the phony images on the wire. CP carried the picture and their partner in the States, AP, picked it up. The New York Times ran one of the pictures to illustrate a story on topless beaches. The picture was used to support the claim that bare breasted women were common on beaches near the Canadian capital. Common if they are paid models, modest Canadian models.

Presenting the news in an objective, accurate manner has always been hard — good journalism is tough — but under the rule of Sun Media/Quebecor journalism in Canada has suffered.

This is not to say the CBC is not without its flaws. It has 'em, too. One need look no farther than CBC morning anchor Heather Hiscox and her frequent discussions with Kevin O'Leary. When he's finished ranting, Hiscox graciously thanks O'Leary for his great insights, saying they are always appreciated.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with being polite, with being gracious. But, we all know that O'Leary is not always right nor insightful. Surely Hiscox could unsheathe her once formidable journalistic skills to engage the braggart and buffoon when the need arises. Journalism is about getting at the truth; The Hiscox-O'Leary discussions are about show business.

I know Hiscox from her UWO days when she was earning a masters degree in journalism and I wonder if treating O'Leary like a respected business journalist doesn't grate on her journalistic sensibilities. The CBC itself says online about O'Leary:

"O’Leary’s presence is unique in CBC news and information programming. . . . He is employed not to be a journalist . . . he is not positioned as a journalist. Nor does he present news content as a journalist would."

Yes, it is not just Sun Media/Quebecor that are guilty of shoddy journalism, but the Quebecor group plays the tune and the CBC is all too ready to dance to it.