Principles to secure our future

BLOG #528: The downtown vision unveiled this week will probably not unfold exactly as shown, but it embodies four principles that would ensure the city’s evolution is dynamic and attractive. Question is, will city council buy it?

Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 – London

It is exceedingly unlikely the future skyline of London will replicate the nifty full colour dreamscape presented to a city council committee earlier this week. The fact is, it wasn’t intended to.

By showcasing some stunning possibilities for the development of city-owned lands in and near the downtown, the planning department is trying to convince city council to buy into some important guiding principles for whatever happens.

If council is diligent, the argument runs, our downtown should evolve over the next several decades in something that at least captures the spirit and energy invoked by those fancy pictures.

     -- Embrace the river: The London we know began at the forks of Askunessippi (the antlered river) on March 2, 1793 when John Simcoe and company walked over from their campsite near The Coves. In short order he’d renamed it the Thames River and declared The Forks a grand spot for the future capital of Canada West. Not long thereafter, we pretty much forgot we lived on the water.

“For too long London has ignored the river,” says John Fleming, the city’s new planning director. “We need to turn our front rather than our back to the river.” So the vision includes boardwalks and promenades, even a seawall, in front of apartment towers, low rise condos and commercial clusters that all face the Thames.

Where this could happen stretches from the old Victoria Hospital campus on the south branch of the Thames in SoHo through the London Hydro lands farther west and right into the middle of the city.

“The opportunity here is we are in control of these lands,” Mr. Fleming says. He doesn’t mean the city should be the developer but that it can direct how development occurs.

     -- More feet on the street: Mr. Fleming’s thinking has been strongly influenced by Larry Beasley, the much decorated former planning director of Vancouver, now rated one of the world’s most liveable cities. Mr. Beasley spent several days wandering around London three years ago and ultimately pronounced it an opportunity waiting to happen.

“What Larry said to me was this, a huge part of downtown renovation is bumping up the residential population, and that requires residential amenities,” Mr. Fleming recalls.

With some generous subsidy programs for developers, London has been doing that for the past decade, in the process more than doubling the downtown population to nearly 10,000. With that has come more food and fun but we haven’t yet reached the critical mass required to sustain all the goods and services Londoners expect to find near where they live.

The vision certainly includes lots and lots of residential choices, up high or down low or even with garden space. But at the same time council is considering ending the downtown residential development subsidy which has proven so effective to date.

     -- Pedestrian friendly: In Calgary, where once the pickup truck was supreme, some downtown streets are closed to traffic at 5 p.m. during the summer. Restaurants spill outdoors onto the pavement and people roam freely from here to there.

Now that’s not an idea new to London. Gord Hume’s downtown task force suggested pedestrian friendliness to the London Downtown Business Association more than five years ago. Nothing much happened.

City planners were listening though and their vision includes closing Dundas St. from Waterloo to the Forks for at least part of each day or each week. “The concept here is one of a shared street – Dundas should become somewhat more of a park or a plaza as opposed to a street,” says Mr. Fleming. “There should be flexibility to create different uses at different times.”

And not just Dundas. The vision also proposes turning the east-bound Thames bridge into a pedestrian crossing from the ball park on one side to an artificial lake and beach that might sit in front of a new city hall where the health unit is today. And Talbot St. between the John Labatt Centre and Covent Garden Market could blend into a smart new piazza.

     -- Design, design, design: Perhaps the strongest influence the planners propose is to raise the bar on downtown London’s architecture. No more Soviet-style boxes for us. The vision includes new shapes and interesting textures – in other words, some creative imagination – for the new buildings which will push into our skyline in the years to come.

“This is imagination but it isn’t fantasy,” Mr. Fleming says. “We show many options that could happen.”

Council’s strong will is needed on this point. But this is precisely the area where it has begun to waver, often showing a willingness to sacrifice principle for short-term gain.

Certainly jobs are important. However, there are jobs and there are good jobs. There is much research which shows the hip and savvy creative-class jobs for which cities today so lust are most likely to land in cities which show some principled hip and savvy themselves.

Now comes the critical question: Is city council listening?