Urban Planners Created the 'Blight' of East Village
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C ALGARY H ERALD FOUNDED 1883 THE EDITORIAL PAGE L ORNE M OTLEY T RENT A NDERSON D OUG F IRBY M ONICA Z UROWSKI D EPUTY E DITOR A CTING P UBLISHER E DITORIAL P AGE E DITOR D EPUTY E DITOR A12 WWW . CALGARYHERALD. COM S UNDAY, J UNE 25, 2006 EDITORIAL Creative ideas to cut emissions Sweeping report shows ways to have more and spew less magine a Canada where point for further discussions. only 30 per cent of people One shouldn’t be deterred by I LIve in single-family homes the fact the national round and everyone else LIves in a table was appointed by the high-density neighbourhood, Kyoto-friendly former federal within walking distance to Liberal government. Estab- work.Cars are mainly used for lished in 1994, the 14-member pleasure. Homes run on solar panel includes representatives heat and power. from business, labour, environ- These are just some of the mental groups, municipalities changes envisioned in a na- and aboriginal communities. tional round table report on the “We are very much on the environment that describes a same page” as the new Conser- major shakeup in every aspect vative government, said the of life as we know it — from group’s chairman, Glen Murray. where we live and work to the Ambrose “understands this appliances we use, our trans- fully, and I think has been cer- portation system, and how we tainly very supportive.” SUNDAY ESSAY generate energy and produce Some recommendations are oil. ambitious, such as converting While it may seem LIKe the 26,000 electrically heated federal task force is bracing us homes per year to high-effi- for a dramatic culture shock, ciency gas or propane furnaces. Urban planners created the report is worth And some parts examining because of the report it outlines how are pie-in-the- Canada’s green- sky. But others, the ‘blight’ of East Village house gas emis- such as cogen- sions can be cut eration and dramatically with- carbon seques- BEV SANDALACK tributed to the need for trans- desire of every person to drive 14th Street S.W. , eliminating out serious impact tration, are AND JIM DEWALD portation systems to link the and store his/her automobile what had become a gathering on the economy. already F OR THE C ALGARY H ERALD various functions of the city. in the downtown must be ac- place for the homeless and This report, re- planned or IN The 1958 City Zoning Bylaw commodated. In emphasized other marginalized people. leased last week, the works. ecent discussions put into play the processes that high capacity roads and inter- Redevelopment schemes claims we can Still, the ideas about the down- would result in the destructive changes. eliminated older housing, con- bring emissions are detailed town have included practices of urban renewal of The 1966 plan reduced the verted two-way streets to one- down by 60 per enough to at the surprising real- the 1960s and 1970s. downtown to simple two-di- way mini-freeways, and re- cent between now least use as a ization that there is Much early housing still ex- mensional diagrams. Trans- duced the vibrant mix of uses and 2050. springboard for Rurban blight lurking in the East isted in the downtown core, portation was the emphasis, to one or two uses that func- The answer de- Environment Minister much-needed Village, and the sudden call to now accommodating multi- and the plan’s No. 1 objective tion only during the work day pends upon two Guy Boutilier says Alberta further dia- “do something” about it. faMILy LIving. The downtowN was to double the number of hours. key points: the em- regulations will be logue, espe- In a city as dynamic and was commonly described at cars that could enter the Redevelopment of the East ployment of all the toughest in Canada. cially here IN wealthy as Calgary, it is a this time as a modern core iso- downtown. Village is still stalled almost 50 available tech- Alberta, which shock to see this relatively lated in a sea of substandard Two concentric ring roads years after urban renewal deci- nologies on all multiple fronts, depends on energy markets for small area of our downtown is housing, or a “zone of deterio- were intended to double the mated the area. The area is a and the magic of time. prosperity. the drug-riddled backwater ration.” These higher-density downtown’s vehicle-handling disappointing underutilization If we started now, the prize Albertans have been told usually associated with the mixed-use areas were com- capacity, and a network of one- of surface parking lots. New over 45 years could be cuts that they must wait until September LIKes of Detroit. pared unfavourably with the way couplets would feed sev- social service facilities, includ- are 10 times deeper than the at the earliest to find out what But more surprising might lower-density post-war sub- eral parking structures. The ing the Drop-in Centre and the hotly contested targets of the Alberta Environment Minister be the fact that the demise of urbs. outer ring would include a ma- Salvation Army Centre of Kyoto accord, which calls for Guy Boutilier plans to do to the East Village is directly Urban renewal managed to jor east-west freeway, realign- Hope, serve an important emissions to be reduced six per deal with the serious challenge caused by some radical plan- destroy huge pieces of down- ment and widening of 10th function. cent below 1990 levels by 2012. of the escalating rate of green- ning and development moves town. It was an approach taken Street N.W. , and upgrading of But, in the absence of balanc- Environment Minister Rona house gas emissions. in the 1960s. It was a product by many cities to get rid of per- Memorial Drive with major ing residential and commercial Ambrose, and other critics of Boutilier has said his regula- of its moment in time. ceived blight and encourage grade-separated intersections at developments, this area is Kyoto, have said those targets tions to green up the oilpatch Many North American cities revitalization. The existing 14th and 10th Streets N.W. , Cen- broadly considered a backwa- are impossible to meet within will be the “toughest” IN are barely a century old and network of grid streets and tre Street N. and 4th Street N.E. ter for criminal and marginal the given time frame. Canada. developed rapidly from rela- sometimes of civic squares The East Village was de- activities. This report takes the short- We’ll see. Meanwhile, he tively primitive circumstances and small parks, were replaced scribed as “skid row,” and the Calgary has abandoned term time pressure off, and pro- should peruse this report for to modernity. The first phase by massive commercial blocks plan paved the way for its many visionary proposals, in- vides an intriguing starting other emissions-reducing ideas. of urban development, which or traffic interchanges. clearance. Ironically, it cluding the 1914 Mawson plan would last until approximately City planning doc- became even and a similar 1978 downtowN 1940, was characterized by the uments reflected more derelict plan. In place of more humanly establishment of the patterns the prevailing after the in- scaled urban structure with Military priorities take flight of land survey and subdivision, paradigm. In terven- strong connections between and then by incremental 1965, the city, tions be- the river and the system of city changes to older forms with the province, gan. streets, Calgary has settled for enior military officials and dian Forces. That’s how the the introduction of new build- and the City a vehicle-centred circulation politicians have had their Forces ended up with the Iltis, ing and transportation tech- Canada plans iden- system, segregated uses, and S squabbles over which type a Volkswagen-based runabout nologies and planning con- Mortgage tified six the destructive consequences of airplane Canada should buy built by Bombardier, during a cepts. Street patterns were and Hous- areas, with of urban renewal. It will take first. But, at least they’re argu- previous Liberal administra- grafted onto existing frame- ing Corpo- varying de- great effort to reinstate the ing on the basis of merit, rather tion. works. ration grees of pedestrian and public realm as than which contract will prop Tendering is always a good In Calgary, the intersection agreed to “substan- a focus of city planning and de- up Montreal’s aerospace indus- protection for taxpayers, and of the rivers, the Canada Land prepare an dardness.” velopment strategy. try. there’s certainly a case for Survey grid, the raILway line urban re- Much of The “blight” in the east end The debate between Chief of keeping a domestic armaments and the raILway company grid newaL the historic isn’t new, and it shouldn’t have Defence Staff General Ric industry viable. determined early town form. scheme urban fab- come as a surprise. Hillier and Defence Minister But there’s a place for sole- The Canadian Pacific Railway for the 31 ric of com- Homeless and other margin- Gordon O’Connor is over sourcing, in which a contractor Company effectively acted as blocks of mercial alized people need somewhere whether to buy the Boeing C-17, with a unique product is INvited the first town planner, estab- Churchill and resi- to go, and a look at the patterns which can move troops and to bid alone. lishing a grid of streets aligned Park dential of where street prostitution, equipment long distances, or to Hence the appeal of the C-17, parallel and perpendicular to (which build- drug dealing and vagrancy oc- first replace the smaller, tacti- a proven design that first flew the rail line.