Can the Suburbs Transform?
In recent years much of my practice has been shifting from the city centre to the vast territory that surrounds it, tackling what is arguably the most significant planning and urban design challenge of the next fifty years. In the decades following WWII we reshaped the urban world around the car and the contemporary suburb emerged. We dispersed the basic functions of our lives separating where we lived from where we worked and shopped, driving from one parking space or lot to another. In the process we sacrificed many of the advantages of compact urban living, places of culture and business that we can walk to, viable public transit and a wealth of amenities that can’t be easily supported without a city's density. Our streets ceased to be shared social spaces and became single purpose roads. The realization of that loss made us look back to the pre-war parts of cities with fresh eyes and we are now in the midst of a second equally powerful paradigm shift on the rebound from that post-war car-centric vision.
The suburban ‘North American Dream’ of a single family house, a yard and a car for every adult has lost much of its lustre, and a competing ‘dream’ has emerged as many people (especially the young) are voting with their feet choosing to live in neighbourhoods where they can walk to buy groceries and bike or take transit to work. Lately, in a case of simultaneous discovery, this aspiration has crystalized in the concept of the 15-20 minute Neighbourhood as popularized in this diagram by Anne Hidalgo the Mayor Paris.
This proximity is not so hard to imagine in areas of the city centre laid out before the automobile which have ‘pre-existing conditions’ of urban streets and blocks, transit, local shopping, schools and parks all within walking distance. But in the post-war suburbs where roughly 2/3 of North Americans now live it is another story.
There we have a full blown version of sprawling automobile-generated city form with low density homogeneous residential neighbourhoods generally organized by income and building type and accessed by a hierarchy of highways, arterials, collectors and cul-de-sacs; and a pattern of isolated business parks, industrial parks, strip malls, malls, and power centres, each circumscribed and protected by a rigid planning regime. It looks like this.
This form of low density sprawling suburban development has failed us in many ways: congestion from induced traffic as highways fill up, environmental impacts of eating up farmland and contributing to CO2 emissions and climate change, public health impacts in terms of chronic disease relating to sedentary life styles, social isolation and inherent lack of affordability for municipalities.
It has also taken a direct toll on people’s lives. It is estimated that the average commuter spends the equivalent of 32 days per year on the road in traffic in the Toronto Region. Civic Action conducted a survey asking people “what would you do with the lost 32?” and it produced the following unsurprising word cloud.
In her last book Dark Age Ahead Jane Jacobs turned her attention among other things to the seemingly intractable suburbs and the potential to change their hard-wired car dependence, enshrined a web of deeds, rules and regulations and an established way of life. She predicted that even there change would ultimately occur through the pent-up pressures of an economic and social force majeure, precipitated by their inherent unsustainability.
There is a dawning realization that we have now reached that that tipping point as the transformation of the suburbs begins to happen in the Toronto region at multiple scales from the single family neighbourhoods themselves, to intensification at stops and stations along new transit lines, to the reworking of obsolescent malls and power centres and their vast areas of surface parking, and in the revitalization of historic pre-war towns and villages.
Leveraging that shift to creating authentic, compact, walkable, environmentally sustainable and socially equitable urban places in the suburbs is a complex multi-generational process as we navigate the side by side co-existence of the two paradigms, one in ascendance and the other in decline as we wean ourselves of auto-dependence and provide viable alternatives.
The Greater Golden Horseshoe surrounding Toronto at the eastern end of Lake Ontario is the fastest growing city region in North America. Its population is expected to double to over 13 million by 2041 and it is clear that that growth cannot be sustained by reliance on the post-war car-oriented paradigm. The Ontario provincial government has embarked on a massive and long overdue investment in improved regional commuter rail service with all day 15 minute headways, light rail lines and bus rapid transit in reserved rights-of-ways.
This new transit armature is woven throughout the region touching every suburban municipality and virtually everyone has identified strategic areas for new mixed-use ‘urban centres’.
Within these intensified urban centres identified as TOC’s (Transit-Oriented Communities) the government has identified the need to combine all of the basic services and amenities of daily life in its version of the 15-20 minute neighbourhood.
One of the claims for suburban living has been the idea that it offered a better environment for young families to raise their kids in a setting that was safe and secure with greater access to nature and away from the pressures of life in the city. I briefly appeared Radiant City a 2006 feature length film which tests that claim by Gary Burns, Canada's king of surreal comedy and journalist Jim Brown chronicling life in a newly forming Calgary suburb seen through the eyes of a young family. The reality did not quite live up to their dreams.
But the truth is while some older inner city neighbourhoods have offered great environments for families who could afford to live there, they were becoming unaffordable for much of the population and could not possibly accommodate the growth we are experiencing. We have been much less successful at creating viable examples of living in new denser, walkable neighbourhoods in the suburbs. We need appealing choices that can change perceptions about the trade-offs that people need to make and the benefits that come with the amenities and convenience of life in a 15-20 minute neighbourhood.
For starters the benefits of money saved by not having to own a second or possibly even the first car averaging $10,500 annually?
For another what does a family friendly vertical neighbourhood look like from the design of the dwelling, to the building, and the fit out of the neighbourhood? How can it be designed to offer a superior quality of life, with greater social support and more time for neighbourhood interactions and family life?
Some have predicted that Covid may interrupt this transition, sending people back into their cars and to seek greater social distance by spreading out in low density environments. And while there is undoubtedly some movement in that direction we are learning that it is not density that is the enemy but overcrowding in housing and workplaces which can occur at low densities.
Covid is functioning as a ‘particle accelerator’ shining a harsh light on problems and weaknesses that were there already and pushing us to make the changes that were in the works with greater speed and urgency as we shift to more healthy and resilient place-making as evidenced in the side by side view of the two paradigms below.
Public health considerations have historically played a prominent role in decisions about city building. The reactions to 19th century pandemics shaped many significant initiatives as noted in this chart from Peel Region’s Health by Designstudy. What is interesting is that ‘Community Design’ as a means to address major public health issues is also effective in dealing with a 21st century epidemic of chronic diseases through “healthy, compact, complete communities, supporting increased walking, cycling and public transit use” and at the same time plays a significant role in addressing the fundamental challenges of climate change.
One of the great lessons from Covid has been the extraordinary importance of shared public space providing the opportunity for social interaction outdoors and the ability to be in each other’s company safely. This is vital for community resilience, physical and mental health. ‘Community hubs’ combining services and amenities like schools, community centres, daycare, indoor and outdoor recreation such as Canoe Landing in City Place pictured below perform an invaluable service as invaluable shared ‘common ground’ for citizens of the most heterogeneous city region in the world. And in the time of Covid the need for this shared common ground for relief and social cohesion within in the heart of walkable neighbourhoods has come into even sharper relief.
The Brampton Experience
For the past year and a half I have served as a strategic advisor to Brampton, Canada’s ninth largest city, and one of its youngest, most ethnically diverse and fastest growing. In 2018 Brampton adopted a bold 2040 Vision through a city-wide exercise led by my colleague Larry Beasley, former Co-Chief Planner of Vancouver. That Vision committed the city to an urban future through the next phases of its growth as it adds approximately 20,000 residents per year to its current 900,000 population and anchoring that growth to transit oriented communities focused on a robust transit network including all day commuter rail (GO), light rail (LRT) and bus rapid transit) BRT.
The City Council set out Term of Council priorities based on the Vision and Brampton is now in an implementation phase as transit investment proceeds and the private sector responds in a number of key locations. I will try to describe how this transformation is actually happening through the combined actions of many actors concentrating on one area in particular which had been identified in the Vision called Uptown.
This is an area undergoing massive change. At its heart is Shoppers World, a mid-20th century mall surrounded by a sea of surface parking lots. Nearby are apartment towers and slabs, additional plazas and strip malls and a number of single family neighbourhoods all primarily accessible by car.
It is in the early stages of transforming to a walkable 20 minute Neighbourhood with a mix of housing , employment and shopping supported by LRT and anchored by a community hub (in blue). In many respects it represents the fulfillment of Brampton’s 2040 Vision. One of the major challenges lies in the timing and coordination of funding sources to get the components of the community hub which will be there eventually – school, community centre, library, day care, arts and culture, entrepreneur centre etc. – to be there together early in the development process in a shared facility. This in turn allows developers to create family-friendly units and market to young families.
Making this shift is a ‘wickedly’ complex problem but a unique convergence of circumstances enhances the potential for success. A policy framework for transit-oriented development is in place at all government levels – city, region and the province. There is a provincially funded 18 km light rail line (in red) which will arrive at the main intersection of Steeles and Hurontario/Main Street in 2024 and perhaps most significantly a group of 7 developers led by Riocan, the owners of the 60 acre mall site, has seen the market opportunity to leverage the this transit investment with a series of contiguous projects.
Underlining the fact that cities at their best are collective creations Jane Jacobs reminded us that: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, & only when, they are created by everybody.” With that in mind many months of effort have gone into intensively working with the array of stakeholders whose contributions to the larger whole are critical. This is a work-in-progress but this groundwork is producing unprecedented alignment among concentric circles of participants including staff and politicians at 4 levels of government – city, region, provincial and federal - landowners and developers, community representatives, schools boards, public health and social services.
On October 2nd and 8th the City of Brampton teamed up with the Toronto Chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the School of Cities at the University of Toronto to host a remarkable set of gatherings, an invited Workshop and a Town Hall bringing all these parties and many others together. This is a report back on those events.
Both sessions were opened by a pair of short videos including a tour of the existing neighbourhood through the eyes of the Urban Vision Youth Council and an illustration of what a Day in the Life in the 20 minute neighbourhood might be like for a diverse group of users. The full video of the Town Hall can be seen here. The results were highly promising.
Brampton is attempting to be a “City by Design” using strategic urban design based thinking to deal with the complex issues of transformation to a more sustainable urban future. For the last year and half I have been working closely with Yvonne Yeung, the city’s highly talented and energetic Manager of Urban Design and her team along with staff in a number of city departments as a strategic advisor to pass on my experience working in similar situations in cities in Canada and around the world and it has been a highly productive relationship.
One of the particular challenges in Brampton has been orchestrating change by working with multiple landowners all coming forward with development proposals concurrently (the properties outlined in black) around Shoppers World. Unlike situations where there is a single large landowner, government or private sector seeking to development a new neighbourhood, this puts a special burden on the city to play a highly proactive role as the convener and choreographer, setting the stage, creating a cohesive neighbourhood vision, delineating the connective public realm to tie the parts together and working with the parties to public and private to provide the essential community infrastructure.
This is an evolving situation with many moving parts. We are developing a dynamic design-based Tool Kit to supplement and inform the statutory regulatory tools, the Official Plan and Zoning By-law to capture and guide that process of evolution in the Uptown area. This Tool Kit provides a 2D and 3D shared digital platform can be used by a number of city departments, agencies and developers to visualize their inputs to the evolution of the 2040 Vision and provide a real time synthetic overview of the interaction of land use, built form, public realm, mobility plus economic and social factors. It offers a concrete depiction of future possibilities to guide corporate activities in achieving the city’s vision, Identify priority actions and visualize and simulate outcomes. It is a living tool to monitor progress and continually re-set the bar.
It operates at multiple scales in time and space with the ability to zoom from a District-wide Framework, to Precinct Plans for 20-minute walkable neighbourhoods, to parks and community hubs at the hearts of those neighbourhoods and the ability to get right down to street level at critical junctures.
The District Framework provides a high level overview of the roughly 9 square kilometers comprising Uptown and identifies within that larger area three emerging 20-minute walkable neighbourhoods, including Shopper’s World, Sheridan College and the CAA Lands where more detailed planning work is underway and two others on deck further east on Steeles Avenue and south on Hurontario. At this scale the big relationships to the Etobicoke and Fletcher’s Creeks forming a network of urban greenways and the larger mobility networks are highlighted along with major shifts in land use. At this scale the change is generational with a 30 year time horizon.
Zooming in to the 20 minute Neighbourhood Hurontario-Steeles Precinct surrounding Shoppers World the natural systems, mobility networks and land use are developed at a finer grain. Key linkages and three dimensional built-form become more evident and the public realm is more clearly articulated with the community hub as a pavilion in an expanded central Park. It is possible to identify critical place-making strategies to enhance the walking/cycling experience. The operative time horizon is the decade.
Zooming in once more to the heart of the neighbourhood we see the Community Hub for which a prototype has been developed combining school, community and recreation centre, library, daycare, arts and culture space, an entrepreneur centre as a shared pavilion building. The critical 300 meter link to the LRT stop and Gateway transit terminal is highlighted. The three dimensional qualities of buildings framing the park and community hub become more visible. The time horizon is now several years when the first phases of the development will be complete and the LRT will be in operation.
One more Zoom and we arrive at the 100% corner of Steeles and Hurontario/Main Street where redevelopment will occur on all four corners and the critical challenge of taming these major suburban arterials, making safe and workable crossings for pedestrians comes into relief. This plan is drawn as a notional ‘X-ray’ view anticipating buildings yet to be designed and suggesting the kind of ground floor relationships and community uses they can provide. The quality of the critical linkages for day and night, summer and winter use can be assessed.
This Framework tool kit can be used to depict and monitor the cumulative evolution of the Uptown District and its neighbourhood precincts. It becomes possible to identify critical relationships among discrete public and private initiatives and to identify gaps in the ‘in between spaces’ between identified projects. Layers of GPS based information can be applied to test outcomes against the city’s adopted Goals and Objectives. The Framework tool kit will demonstrate its value through ongoing use as a living instrument enabling the city to depict, monitor, and track its progress. While this Uptown study area has served as the initial test, the Framework tool kit can eventually be extended more broadly to other areas experiencing significant change.
Through the lens of the scalable Framework we can see how we are unwinding and rewinding many of the fundamental assumptions about urban form and how the city works. Unlike the re-war city the ‘pre-existing conditions’ in this suburban context grew up almost entirely around the car. We are putting things back together that had been fragmented as a new ecosystem replaces the old.
Everything is connected to everything else in mutually supportive virtuous circles. Walking, cycling and transit substitute for auto trips. The need for car ownership and parking diminish as more things are available closer to home. The street becomes a focus of social interaction as pedestrian use increases.
Sidewalks are more generous and crossings are safer. Protected bike lanes make cycling a viable alternative means of getting around for all ages. Easy access to the creeks and valleys via green fingers weaving through the neighbourhoods becomes part of daily life routines. Parks and green streets form interconnected networks.
Social equity and inclusion are reinforced by a greater range of housing with diverse built form and tenure options allowing for a mix of ages, incomes and household types at a fine grain within the neighbourhood. Convenient amenities for young families and seniors make it possible to age in place. Work from home and within work spaces in the neighbourhood provide a daytime population that enhances the viability of local retail and the animation of public spaces. Living and working in close proximity requires and supports the Community Hub.
Buildings of a range of scales including the “missing middle” of mid-rise become more extroverted and sociable in the way they meet ground level and frame public spaces as contiguous developments form integrated patterns of streets, blocks, parks, squares and courtyards.
Cumulatively these changes represent a profound rethink of the components that make up the city. Individual projects are ice breakers, charting new directions. As the threads come together they redefine our experience of place from the intimate scale of our dwellings to the block, the neighbourhood, the city, and ultimately the entire city region. They inspire imitators and set off chain reactions. They encourage the spaces in between to fill in with connecting “spokes,” redrawing our mental maps and our grasp of the whole, connected urban place we inhabit.
This paradigm shift is challenging to say the least. It engages developers, planners, urban designers, engineers, architects, landscape architects, ecologists, social service and housing providers, school boards and the full gamut of city builders. There is a need to do all of these things together with intentionality; they form indissoluble wholes and the design moves need to be internally consistent. For example, a painted line on the edge of high-volume artery next to six lanes of speeding traffic on does not make a safe or inviting environment for cyclists. Siting a gated enclave on the edge of a public space does not contribute to neighbourhood cohesion. Creating porches and front stoops where access is primarily by car and coming directly from underground garages is self -defeating.
This will not be an easy one time shift. There is tremendous inertia behind the status quo and the array of practices, standards, rules and regulations that have grown up around it. Will this Framework tool kit solve all the problems? No, but what it does do is create a shared platform for holistically visualizing how the elements come together and assessing their impacts and consequences in light of the city’s adopted goals and values.
In the Uptown area there will be steps on the way with decades of overlapping paradigms, one ascendant and the other in decline, keeping things whole and operating, necessitating creative ‘meanwhile strategies’ as phases of development occur and in the case of Shoppers World, the LRT arrives, the Mall and its surface parking are sequentially replaced and new components of the neighbourhood emerge along with the expanded park and community hub. All that acknowledged it appears that the timing is right and the conditions are in place. Uptown Brampton is on the threshold of a sustained period of profound and positive change.
On Nov. 16, 2020 Brampton’s Planning and Development Committee approved a report on the Application to Amend the Zoning By-law to permit the redevelopment of the Shoppers World mall for a mixed-use development. The report states: “The policy framework is aligned in that the Hurontario-Steeles area should redevelop as sustainable, transit-oriented community. The proposal will help achieve that vision. The proposed development incorporates the elements to achieve a sustainable, transit oriented community. It is a high-density development. It includes a mix of employment and residential uses. It incorporates community infrastructure within a proposed community hub that will serve not just this development but the existing residents in the surrounding area and future residents within other developments in the area. There is a series of open spaces running through the development that contribute to integrating it with the surrounding community. It is designed with a focus on walking and biking rather than the travelling by automobile.” Change is underway.