New Urbanism

So what is it?

It is basically a return to many of the designs and theories behind the car-less communities of the Victorian era.

New urbanism is a planning movement that promotes "walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl."  

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism

New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning.

New Urbanism is strongly influenced by urban design standards prominent before the rise of the automobile and encompasses principles such as traditional neighborhood design (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD).It is also closely related to Regionalism, Environmentalism and the broader concept of smart growth.

New urbanists support regional planning for open space, context-appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe their strategies can reduce traffic congestion, increase the supply of affordable housing, and rein in urban sprawl. The Charter of the New Urbanism also covers issues such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the redevelopment of brownfield lands.

New Urbanism for Ottawa.

New Urbanism techniques allow us to modify existing built environments such as Shopping Centres and Big Box Malls into town centres.

Walk-able main streets are one the main features of New Urbanism, as well as the emphasis on public transit. In order to create viable main street environments in suburban areas there needs to be spaces to create a mix of employment, shopping, services, transportation and housing in close proximity to each other.  Essentially this is the creation of new town centres.  But unlike many of the so-called newly built town centres that we see today, the New Urbanist Town centre looks very much like a traditional main street environment that we find in the older parts of the central city such as in the Glebe and Ottawa South. New Urbanism takes a positive approach to suburban sprawl such that they consider it to be simply stage one of a multi-stage process to create viable walk-able communities in “the suburbs”.  In Ottawa’s case I am referring to the often-referred suburbs of “Kanata”, “Barrhaven” (South Nepean) and “Orleans”, which were originally designed, to be satellite cites, and not just suburbs beyond the Greenbelt.  With the exception of Kanata, Ottawa’s Satellite cities are not functioning as places where people both live and work. They lack a walk-able “town centre” in the traditional sense, and far too many of their residents commute across the Greenbelt to work in the cities of Ottawa or Gatineau.

If you refer to the table on the opposite page you will see how the employment rate is much lower in Orleans and South Nepean than it is to the Ottawa average. To create a more balanced employment rate throughout the region MORE employment needs to be directed to Orleans and South Nepean. Using new Urbanist techniques we can take small portions of the parking areas that are allocated to their suburban Shopping Centres and Big Box Malls that are located along the main road ways, and use that space for the construction of office towers.  At the base of these office towers, stores and services are located. Wide sidewalks are built in the front of these office towers and the main streets upon which they are situated can either have on-street parking and/or dedicated lanes for public transit. Greenery and street furniture are placed on the sidewalks to create a pleasant walking environment.  The end result is a main street that has employment, shopping and services in a very condensed area. Housing such as apartments can also be incorporated into the main street environments, and these can link to lower density houses further away from the main street. The Shopping Centres themselves will benefit from this development since there is a larger pool of potential shoppers in the area. Since employment is now located near where people live, use of cars will drop, and people will more able to use public transit, or to even to walk, or bike to work. The result will be less travel time and more personal and family time. This creates a more sustainable community, and reduces the need to provide transit services across the Greenbelt. It is cheaper to do this than to build expensive Rapid Transit Systems since it can be done by the private sector.

The following images are of Liberty Square at the corner of Town Centre Road and Highway 7 in Markham Ontario. This is a cluster of office towers and apartments/condominiums with stores and services on the ground level. The buildings are also offset from the roads which give pedestrians a pleasant walking experience away from the nearby traffic. It is not a perfect (or textbook) example of New Urbanism, but it has many of the features that are described above.

Michael Kostiuk