andrasthehun

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.

Sistine Chapel Exhibit Review: A Mixed Experience

Janury 27, 2023

Three Views of the Sistine Chapel

I was underwhelmed viewing the Sistine Chapel touring exhibit, produced by Entertainment Events Inc. (EEI) of Hollywood (showing only the ceiling frescoes painted by Michelangelo). The first showing of this exhibition was in Montreal in 2015, after which it toured the world and arrived in Ottawa in December 2022.

In Ottawa, EEI presented the exhibition at the EY Convention Center, in a large, industrial type of space, like an airplane hangar. It just did not have the aura for showing biblical scenes painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Chapel. What frosted me was the advertising for yoga classes at high prices, taught in front of the paintings. I found the combination of appreciating renaissance paintings with concurrent yoga exercises jarring. But the receptionist told us the yoga classes were fully subscribed; I could not see myself putting my body in yoga poses with great effort and appreciating the artwork simultaneously.

There were no brochures or handouts to describe and explain the paintings, this was Covid times. Instead, you had to bring your cell phone, to which you could download, via a QR code, the explanatory comments. Once we figured out the technical challenges, we found the commentary useful.

Before looking at the pictures, we listened to an introduction to how Michelangelo accepted a commission from Pope Julius II and built a scaffold to paint the ceiling at a height of sixty feet in the Chapel. Michelangelo used vivid and colorful paints on wet gypsum and completed the work between 1508 and 1514. EEI used high-definition photographs to reproduce the paintings in full size.

The full-size biblical scenes were twenty feet above the floor at the EY center, enabling viewers to see the pictures, including brush strokes, in granular detail; that was a major benefit of this show according to EES, compared to seeing the same pictures sixty feet above the ground in the Sistine Chapel.

This exhibition was attractive to art buffs and religious historians, especially those familiar with the Bible; but to me, it does not compete with seeing the real Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, which we visited in 2015. The comparison is like watching a football game on TV versus attending in person. It is hard to describe the excitement of walking through the Sistine Chapel with hundreds of people, all sighing with wonder at the pictures, even though they are sixty feet above you, and seeing not only the ceiling but also the walls, painted by other renaissance artists. But at the touring exhibition, one could take time to study the Michelangelo painted frescoes at a close distance without a crowd.

Although the excitement was tangible within the Sistine Chapel, there were detractions: some people took photos despite being warned not to do so. And the guards kept hushing people to be quiet. As well, when we went, the crowd filled the Chapel wall to wall, and the guards nudged us to move on to let the other visitors come in.

I found the best way to see the Sistine Chapel (if you have internet access and a computer), is to log in to https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/tour-virtuale.html This site provides a virtual tour. You can look at all sides, plus the floor and the ceiling of the Chapel. If you want to see more details, you can enlarge the pictures. You may miss the excitement of being in the Chapel, but you do not have to travel to Italy, line up with hundreds of tourists at the entrance and have a limited amount of time to look at the paintings.

Walking through the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and looking at stories told by the colorful frescoes, made an everlasting impression on me. I found this quote that reflects my sentiments: “Without having seen the Sistine Chapel, one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving” (Johann Goethe, August 23, 1787).

Having seen the original work, the touring exhibition was disappointing for me but would be attractive to people where the touring exhibition goes. If your city is not on the touring exhibition schedule and you do not have the time and money to visit the Vatican, the website above provides an excellent way to see the inside of the Sistine Chapel.

Experience with “Public Engagement” in the City of Ottawa

January 21, 2023

My local City Councilor invited me to a “public engagement” meeting on a rezoning application for a development proposal in my neighborhood. The meeting, held by zoom, was scheduled for 7:00-8:30 pm. The purpose of the meeting, we had been told, was to present and provide feedback on changes that had been made to the original proposal by the developer presented at our first meeting a few months earlier and gain public input. The original proposal was for two 25 and one 28-story towers sitting on a six-story podium at the intersection of two arterial roads. Single-family, mostly bungalows, surround the site on three sides.

But, right at the beginning of the meeting, the moderator reduced the meeting to an exchange of information, informing us that the only questions from the audience (whom he estimated to be around 80) would be by writing them in a Question and Answer Chat room for a response after all the presentations. In the meantime, the moderator limited us to listening only, a lesser event than discussing the merits of the proposal.

Then he insulted the audience by asking them to behave civilly and respectfully, conjuring up the image of the rough Liverpool waterfront pub in the 19^th century. Mr. Moderator, we are polite Canadians; we are courteous and mostly low-keyed. We do not need a lecture from you on how to behave. At any rate, the audience was muted for the entire evening – so what opportunity would there have even been to be loud and rowdy? I found these actions – the lecture and the muting – to be disrespectful to the audience, who are all ratepayers and have a right to be heard.

The session began with my Councilor, who gave his views on the development and on the City of Ottawa’s planning goal for densification to provide for future population growth. It continued with presentations by the planner, architect, engineer, Ottawa City Planner, and the developer. These presentations took up over an hour of the allotted meeting time, leaving precious little time for the hundred-plus comments that accumulated on the “chat line” and some in the Q&A column during the zoom call. So, with limited time available for the audience to engage in the discussion, and with the audience all muted, the moderator summarized what he believed to be related questions from the ‘chat line” and Q&A column, and referred them to the panelists for a response. The members of the audience had no opportunity to express their views in their own words and address the proponents directly.

Following the earlier “public engagement” session, the new proposal reflected some of the public’s comments from that earlier meeting; reduced the podium from six to four levels to blend better with the surroundings, but increased the height of the buildings to two 28-story and one 32-story building, adding over one hundred units, with the total project to accommodate 998 units. The new height proposed is over 5 times what is currently permitted in the zoning code.

With no proper opportunity to engage with the proponents, this process was not engaging the public by any stretch of the imagination. Listening for over an hour to an information dump and being required to submit questions in writing over zoom, not knowing if the question will be answered or allowing any opportunity for follows-clarifications is certainly not public engagement. People want to express their thoughts in their own words, address their comments to specific individuals and not have their comments lumped together with other comments and interpreted by a moderator.

I am both an architect and a city planner by training and so understood most of the “professional” presentations – but I wonder how many did without an opportunity to seek clarification?

As a city planner, I both participated in and conducted “public engagement” in both Canada and the United States, at various levels, including municipal. The essence of these meetings was to present the proposal in a few minutes to allow maximum time for audience questioning and participation. At least three-quarters of the time was devoted to public input. This meeting was the opposite: three-quarters of the time was spent on describing the proposal and the rest by the moderator interpreting the public comments.

I give credit to the Councilor and the city to organize this “public engagement” zoom meeting. It is desirable and useful to inform the neighborhood people and canvas the residents for their comments; they will have to live with the development. But I question the usefulness of this session: was there anything in that meeting that would help people come to an amicable resolution? To me, this exercise was more like checking the box for “public engagement”.

This was a weird zoom meeting in that only the panelists – the Councilors, consultants, developer, and the City of Ottawa official – were shown on the screen while people like me were back in our homes staring at our computer screens and listening. We did not see who else was listening. I always see all zoom participants in other such meetings I have joined. It was one-way communication; we never had a live word. The moderator combined and interpreted the questions that we put on the “chat” line. I found it very dissatisfying.

My impression is that the city will probably process this rezoning application with some minor tinkering with the height of the towers, landscaping, and other issues but will not materially change it, such as, for example, bringing it into conformance with the current zoning envelope. Having checked off the “public engagement” box, the city has not really shown an interest in finding out what the public thinks about how this proposal could be made into a quality project consistent with the character of the neighborhood and the larger surroundings. (For example, how about a medical office complex in proximity to the proposed huge hospital development just north on Fisher Avenue)? The developers appear to have their way in this city; they propose, and the city massages the proposal for approval. Just my opinion.

The Challenge of Tipping at the Taj Mahal and Other UNESCO World Heritage Sites

January 16, 2023

We caught an early Indian Railways train in Delhi to get to the Taj Mahal in Agra. There was a substantial breakfast served by a dapper, uniformed porter on the two-hour train ride. We joined a long line of people waiting for the opening when we arrived at the Taj at 7:00 am. Inside, several official guides competed for our attention.

One guide, a small man with a starched white shirt and tie and formal manner, offered to show me where to take the best photo shots, including where the shots in the James Bond movie Octopussy were taken. Believing he was a government employee on the Taj grounds, I thought his services were free.

He took me on an extensive tour that lasted more than half an hour. He knew the story of the Taj. And he showed me a glorious spot to take a picture of the Taj, from an arcade looking at the front of the Taj, framed by an arch above. It is a novel snapshot that shows the Taj with the minarets at the four corners. It was early in the morning, and the white marble building showed unforgettable translucency in the rising sun.

I thought that even though he was a government employee, I should at least offer him a tip for his tour and offered as much as the entrance fee. He asked me what it was for. I said I wanted to show my appreciation for his time with a tip.

He stared at me in astonishment, then laughed and explained that I did not realize what an expert story he shared with me and that at least ten times what I offered would be a minimum to pay for his expertise. His gall and arrogance astonished me. I was going to negotiate but got my back up at hearing what I thought was an outrageous demand. I told him he had never said that he expected remuneration and that if I had been aware that he would expect so much money, I would have refused his offer for the tour. And I started walking away.

He called after me and negotiated to double my original offer. I chalked up this encounter as an experience in traveling at world-famous tourist sites.

This incident reminded me of an episode we had in Jaresh, Egypt, where we paid for a guided tour. The guide was excellent, and I offered what I thought was a generous tip, which he pooh-poohed and told me to give it to the paperboy and explained in a loud voice that he was worth ten times as much. I finally just started walking away from him, leaving an amount equal to the entrance fee that the guide then threw to the boy selling trinkets at the gate.

From these two experiences, I gathered that, as an initial gambit, the guides ask ten times what you offer, but are happy to accept less than half the suggested tip. I found tipping an unpleasant task with educated and experienced guides.

Traveling in Morocco (Fez) and Egypt (Karnak), the distinguished-looking guides, those with a suit and a tie, had a much more sophisticated approach to earning money. These guides took us on tours that ended up in a gift store, where they expected us to buy artifacts in the store made by local artisans. I noticed that when we left; the guides had a few words with the owners of the stores, and my strong suspicion was that the guides received a kickback, a percentage of the amount we spent in the store.

Some of these guides are professional historians and provide excellent guided tours. But they are also aggressive in securing huge tips by shaming the Westerners, who are often seduced by suave guides with a suit and a tie on, university professors moonlighting as tour leaders.

I found group tours are better, in that they include tips in the price, although the guides always expect additional money.

Regardless of such annoyances, the Taj is a great place to visit. It is a unique building that has an eerie, light feeling in the sun and is surrounded by a well-maintained garden. When leaving, the guards at the gate told us that there are always lots of tourists there.

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