February 2023

My Musings at Ottawa’s Ski Hills

February 25, 2023

We sat outside on Adirondack chairs nursing a coffee in the sunshine. The temperature was around freezing. Next to us, young people drank beer, taking a break from snowboarding or downhill skiing. The flat valley at the bottom of the mountain buzzed with the young crowd, some people getting ready with rented skis while others picked up their skis leaning against the ski stands. It was a noisy atmosphere with laughter, and rock music blasting out of loudspeakers at the lodge.

I thought back to Covid times just a couple of years ago when we had to “distance ourselves” from each other and preferably avoid people altogether. This was the total opposite, with the crowd milling around with no masks nearby. What a pleasurable and positive change I thought!

John, a grizzled ski instructor, took our grandchildren for a ski lesson, their first time on skis; they live in Durham, NC with hardly an opportunity to ski. John introduced himself to the children and asked softly about their names, where they are from, and what other sports they play and enjoy. Then they went off to the “magic carpet” for their lesson (the magic carpet is a conveyor belt that takes beginner skiers up the hill while standing on it). We heard later the lesson started with skiing in a circle on one foot, pushing with the other foot. The upshot of the lesson was that the children came back and jumped on the ski lift accompanied by their father and aunt and came down on the steep hills with gusto, with maybe a fall of two.

The next day we tried to interest the grandchildren in other winter activities such as cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, which they found boring. And they lasted a short time tobogganing because they had to walk up the relatively short hill. So we changed plans and went back to downhill skiing the following day.

Emily, a high school senior, took the children for another downhill ski lesson the next day. The children bonded instantly with Emily when she explained she had two siblings the same age as they were. Emily took them up the ski lift and taught them to keep their skis parallel, and showed them how to turn. In two amazing lessons, the grandchildren, aged 13 and 9, were flying down the steep hills.

During the ski lesson, we took a walk along the hills and noticed the real estate development taking place around the slopes. There is a modern hotel and condos built that, we heard, were owner-occupied or rented, according to a woman walking a dog with whom we engaged in a conversation.

She had a strong accent, and I inquired where she was from. She proudly explained she came from Bosnia 17 years ago when she married her Canadian husband and started working in a café making sandwiches that she had never made before. That was surprising to me. I thought everybody knew how to make a sandwich, but she said she was a “professional woman” and perhaps she worked in an office back home. But she advanced her career and is a financial person at Carleton University today.

During the last seventeen years, she has become a true “Canadian”, she said. As an example of what she meant, she related that when she goes home, she tells people not to smoke in her presence. It took me a few minutes to digest this aspect of being a Canadian; I was not aware of it. To emphasize her point, she said that back in Bosnia, people tell her she is more Canadian now than Bosnian. She confided in us she has no intention of going back home. Considering that she has a Canadian husband with a good government job in Ottawa and a high school-age daughter here, it would make sense for her to carry on with her life here in Canada.

Although she had a place close by, she was not a skier. She was an immigrant and although some come from Europe, most immigrants to Canada are from China and India today, where skiing may not be popular and available to the extent it is available in Canada. I noticed perhaps a dozen Asians among the hundreds of skiers on the hills. This, of course, may change in the future as more immigrants become used to the local climate and culture.

We moved from Washington, DC to Ottawa in 1971 and had become keen skiers in no time; both downhill and cross-country. And our children took up all the winter sports. Having graduated from high school here, the children moved on and left the area. Their children have not had the opportunity to ski; except when they come to visit us. And this is how our grandchildren from Durham, NC came up and discovered downhill skiing this year. I am sure they are dreaming of coming back for more skiing.

An Open Letter to Ottawa City Planning

February 15, 2023

I linked up to a “public engagement” zoom meeting on a proposal to build a one-story medical imaging facility at 1485A Merivale Road, replacing the current facility a short distance away.

The proponents presented a most unsatisfactory site plan, resulting from the shape of the site, which is accessible only via a two-lane driveway. It is a back lot, facing a major arterial, Merivale Road. And a vacant and decaying one-story building is on one side of the driveway and a gas station is on the other. If this project goes ahead, I could just conjure up a garish sign advertising the imaging facility, because it will be invisible from Merivale Road.

And access to the site is only possible by driving north on Merivale. Considering the over seventy parking stalls proposed for the development, I can envision a few hundred cars making a right turn entering and leaving this facility each day.

Complicating access to the proposed facility is the gas station next door, which also has hundreds of cars turning in and out, and a traffic light a hundred meters away that causes the stacking of lanes on Merivale every time the light turns red. I have always experienced long waiting times trying to get onto Merivale from the gas station because of the traffic congestion. The proposed facility will only make this situation worse.

Since I would drive south on Merivale to visit this proposed facility from my house, I would have to make a U-turn to drive north on Merivale to enter it. I would think twice about using this facility the second time and choose another imaging center, more accessible to me.

One could ease the traffic problem by opening a driveway on the east side of the property and working with the owner of the adjacent shopping center (behind the Barley Mow) to continue with the driveway behind the shopping center, exiting onto Capilano Drive. Turning left onto Capilano would bring you to the traffic light on Merivale, from where both south and northbound turns are possible. I strongly recommend opening a driveway on the east side of the property, exiting onto Capilano, and providing a second access and exit point to the site.

Besides access problems, the siting of the proposed building is unattractive. Why should a modern medical building be accessed via a long driveway surrounded by a gas station and a vacant building and then a parking lot before entering it? The scheme reminds me of shopping centers with acres of asphalted surface parking up front along the road, with strip malls behind. Surely, we can do better than that!

I understand the owners of this property also own the land occupied by the vacant building (1485 Merivale Road); why not combine this lot with the subject one accessible only via a driveway and locate the medical facility closer to Merivale Road? A sign on the building would provide identification and relegate parking to the back of the site. Part of the additional lot could be used as a park fronting Merivale Road, providing an attractive green entrance to the medical facility.

Much discussion at the zoom meeting focused on the proposed use that is not the “highest and best” use of the land; that a much taller building is allowed on this site. But the owners, two doctors, demurred; they said they are not developers and not interested in building more than the medical facility. Is it possible that zoning in Ottawa allows more development than there is demand for it? That all arterial roads zoned for highrise development is overkill?

Merivale Road will not benefit from this proposal from an urban design point of view, and it will make traffic much worse. But, what is confusing or missing is, what is the role of our city planning department in all of this – are they not empowered to look at the project in a more holistic way, rather than each individual project at a time without regard to what else may be being proposed in the nearby area which impacts not only on the traffic but the “neighborhood look’?

The lesson I learned from this experience is that, unfortunately, each proposal is looked at without reference to the surrounding community. So, each site has to have its unique entrance. That kind of thinking leads to many driveways, one to each property, and an awful lot of unnecessary paving. For example, look at the Salus development on Capilano Drive, close to this proposal. That project has its driveway paralleling the long driveway to the Curling Club. Would not a combined driveway save pavement?

In conclusion, the traffic issue could be alleviated by making a driveway on the east side of the property and continuing it to exit onto Capilano Drive, providing another access to the site. Further, adding the vacant property would enhance the view of the building from Merivale, used either as a park or by locating the proposed building closer to Merivale.

In the current proposal, the Emerald Plaza Shopping Center has a service drive right adjacent to this property. Would there be a way to use and combine the service drive with the entrance to this site? Yes, I know, different property owners, etc. But we should be thinking more in terms of “planned unit developments”, contiguous areas, and not in terms of individual lots. Just my opinion.

The Death of the Single-Family Home on a Quarter-Acre Lot

February 3. 2023

The house on a quarter-acre lot, which has been the Canadian dream, is under vicious attack. The quarter-acre lot in planning terms is the R1 zone, which occupies over half of the land of Canadian cities. In Ottawa, the R1 zone occupies over 50% of the land; in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, it is over 60%, while in Montreal it is 45%.

But the R1 zone is “exclusionary” cry social advocates, citing the shortage and unaffordability of housing, to absorb people arriving in Canada’s cities from the hinterland, and from abroad. R1 is the culprit and therefore, it must be eliminated to permit higher densities, putting two and three dwellings on the quarter-acre lot.

But how can the R1 zone be “exclusionary” when more than half of the land used in cities is zoned R1? To me, the word exclusionary conjures up images of elite golf clubs; high-end tennis clubs, and similar facilities with entrance requirements that a minority of people possess. And by a minority, we usually talk about the “top” five percent or even the top one percent of people.

In 2016, fifty-three percent of dwellings were single-family detached homes in the R1 zone in Canada, and I would not call this metric exclusionary. The rest of the Canadians live in apartments and condominiums.

I realize municipalities could use zoning for excluding certain groups of people by specifying minimum lot and house sizes, which could make purchasing a house unaffordable for some people. It happened to blacks in parts of the United States (until it became illegal to do so), but I have seen nothing in Canada to illustrate that zoning has been used to exclude a specific group of people from a community.

I studied city planning at the University of North Carolina where Professor Chapin wrote and taught the classic and long-used textbook “Urban Land Use Planning”. According to him, zoning has been a tool to regulate development, generated by employment growth, creating a need for housing, schools, and commercial development.

We have been fortunate in Canada to date, being able to expand the urban boundaries of our metropolitan areas, to provide for growth and reasonably priced housing. Now, suddenly, we find that environmental concerns, greenbelts, and natural boundaries like water and mountains constrict some of our cities concurrent with our radically exploding immigration intake, creating an unprecedented demand for housing.

The government solution to the housing crisis is to densify our communities, and one approach is to permit the doubling or tripling of dwellings that occupy half the land of our cities. And that is the R1 zone. Conclusion: it has to be done away with. Ontario recently introduced legislation to triple the population of the R1 zone by allowing three dwellings on the quarter-acre lot instead of one, starting in the summer of 2023.

I think that by doing so, we’ll destroy some of our attractive and historical districts. Allowing three dwellings where there is one now will lead to a haphazard and unsightly streetscape. Instead of the usual one car per dwelling, we’ll have four of five cars on the same piece of land and lacking parking space on the quarter-acre lot, on the streets. Traffic will increase on roads designed for low-density residential districts. Schools will have to be renovated to serve more children on limited sites.

So, you ask, what is the solution for the burgeoning demand for additional housing? I think that we’ll have to develop some new towns and/or attract our future development into peripheral small towns around our metropolitan areas.

Failing that approach, I suggest that densification in our single-family communities should be allowed gradually in places where the installed infrastructure permits additional development, or until after governments build the required infrastructure.

But the demise of the single-family dwelling on a quarter-acre lot has already started. In my community, doubles have replaced single-family units. In one situation, someone purchased two lots, demolished the homes on the land, and constructed three units. These small-scale redevelopments, to date, have bordered our community, but I foresee some enterprising homeowners in the middle of our community replacing their dwellings with a duplex or triplex, creating increased traffic and destroying the family-oriented nature of the community.

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