Kensington Project 201 | 50m | 14s | Quantum Place

MichaelS said:
The land use is going to CPC on Thursday.

Report, Background, Applicant Submission, CA Letter, UDRP Comments,
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Mostly, opposition from the CA, which is to be expected. In their letter the bring up the ARP over and over and most of their complaints hang on the plan differing from the ARP. Does anyone get the sense that these ARPs are just a waste of time? I'm not agreeing with the CA, as personally I think the density is a good fit for the location, but why have an ARP? It doesn't make the developer or the residents happy.
 
Beltline_B said:
Mostly, opposition from the CA, which is to be expected. In their letter the bring up the ARP over and over and most of their complaints hang on the plan differing from the ARP. Does anyone get the sense that these ARPs are just a waste of time? I'm not agreeing with the CA, as personally I think the density is a good fit for the location, but why have an ARP? It doesn't make the developer or the residents happy.
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City administration is trying to kill off the ARPs as fast as they can, replacing them with Local Area Plans that are wider scale, less detailed, and more permissive of change and densification.
 
zagox said:
City administration is trying to kill off the ARPs as fast as they can, replacing them with Local Area Plans that are wider scale, less detailed, and more permissive of change and densification.
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I always wonder if we've got the whole system backward to create a great, sustainable and resilient city. To me, our system historically seems to remove local control (or even Council control) over local mobility choices, while granting at-least some level of indirect influence to random hyper-local politics and neighbours over land use. It should be the other way around - locals should have far greater control on their community's mobility (apart from the major network decisions), but far less local influence on land use.

The old ARPs were part of this problem - hyper detailed on land uses, often to the point of impractically and unsustainability. Plans easily became outdated and there was never much land use future-proofing in place to accommodate vast changes in growth and market conditions over time. They were too small and duplicative, making keeping them updated impractical from the day they were written.

Meanwhile all the mobility and traffic issues were hived off to black-box processes outside local influence such as the traffic signal warrant system, that prevents any real mobility improvements that would actually address concerns that inner city communities identified for decades - cut-through traffic, pedestrian safety, traffic noise, student safety around schools, crosswalks.

The result is communities where change in land uses have been slower, more political, more complicated and ultimately more expensive to the net loss of affordability and population capacity in the community. While the actual day-to-day issues of living in these communities were often ignored or removed from the debate of what communities can influence all together - it essentially started a long process in which communities are incentivized to pull all the land use levers they can, because they have so little control over the mobility side.

What would be ideal is a land market that can efficiently respond to changing demands and build density where and when it is needed, but a mobility system that actually responds to local needs first on all non-major corridors. So many of the perceived ills of density are really just "there's going to be too many cars here" issues that can better be addressed from restricting the cars, not restricting the density.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
I'm genuinely asking, how? Permitted Street Parking? Creating super blocks to direct flow of traffic?
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It's everything and anything really. Different areas need different approaches. The general idea is that when you are not on a collector or major road, there should be very little expectation to go fast. Ever.

It's not revolutionary and won't have nearly the impact as some would fear - 95% of traveling is done on the major corridors. Plus we already do almost all these things - but only in an ad-hoc, uncoordinated way. For everything that isn't a commuter route try any of the following:
  • filtering - prevent vehicles, but keep ped and bicycle access. Don't traffic calm the rich neighbourhoods (Rosedale and Upper Mount Royal for example) traffic calm all of them.
  • Tighten up every curb and turn radii that isn't a main street. Why do we allow wide, swooping corners on side streets by default? Speed kills
  • Paint and concrete - every sidewalk should be wider, every crosswalk should be painted.
  • If you're in front of school streets can and should be closed during rush hours to prevent collisions with children accessing their schools.
  • Stop signs in all direction far more often. Train everyone to expect to stop at all times.
  • Street Parking - great for slowing down traffic. Narrow roads and allow for a single travel lane, but 2 parking lanes. Give that space to all the other stuff (trees, sidewalks, curb bump-outs at intersections). If you run out of space for more street parking, charge market prices for it to ensure it's used efficiently.

It's not just Barcelona's super blocks - it's every major city on the planet that's wrestled with this. If you want a livable place of an increasingly large city, you need to tame the cars. Doesn't mean you don't have them, just means you clearly delineate where cars can go fast and where they are not the priority so the city isn't literally and figuratively over-run. Take Upper Mount Royal for example, you can still drive anywhere in the neighbourhood, it's just hard to do so thanks to filtering and targeted traffic calming. The result is a quiet, safe community with very limited cut through traffic. Now just do that again, but to all neighbourhoods, not just the ultra-wealthy ones.

Put another way - pretend children live in a major city and they have more rights to use their local, minor street they live on than a commuter does. Design their street so they don't/can't get killed all the time.
 
When I think traffic calming, I think Scarboro and Parkhill. (I am less familiar with the north)

To me, Upper Mount Royal is an example of a rich community WITH lots of cut-through traffic. I cut through it all the time. It has a ton of connections to 14 St and to 8 St. I actually had a friend who moved out of there (to Parkhill, actually) because he was expecting more what you're describing.
 
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zagox said:
I listened to the debate - the planner from the city sounded like she was being held hostage, comments like "this was not easy," concerns about impacts on the neighboring residential. But approved 9-0. On to council, and presumably a certain amount of public hearing circus theatre.
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Probably because the applicant knows where she lives!
 
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