13 prescriptions for our cities

[tomh009]

The G&M has 13 proposals on how to improve our cities. Some are more easily achieved than others, some are more concrete than others, some would have greater impact than others, some would cause more pushback than others. But I personally believe most of them are good ideas. But the challenge will be to get cities (and, in particular, our cities) to adopt some of these and make them happen.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business...criptions/

Which of the proposals is your favourite? Which one are you opposed to?

[danbrotherston]

The G&M has 13 proposals on how to improve our cities. Some are more easily achieved than others, some are more concrete than others, some would have greater impact than others, some would cause more pushback than others. But I personally believe most of them are good ideas. But the challenge will be to get cities (and, in particular, our cities) to adopt some of these and make them happen.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business...criptions/

Which of the proposals is your favourite? Which one are you opposed to?

Great thought, but I'm going to make an exception to my usual rule, and point out that it is behind a paywall.

[tomh009]

Fair enough. I won't post the full article here, but I'll include the 13 points, each from a different person. Details and rationale are in the article.

1. More autonomy for the cities from the provinces
   
2. More free, municipally-maintained public toilets
   
3. Every city should have a carbon budget
   
4. Create an environment where people can live, work, learn and play within their own communities
   
5. Gather more community input
   
6. More open space in the downtown area [this is fairly specifically aimed at Toronto]
   
7. More health care options through mobile outreach or virtual
   
8. Remove barriers for active living and healthy eating
   
9. Retrofit suburbs with more density, and to enable living without a car
   
10. Loosen change-of-use bylaws [particularly for retail]
    
11. Create community land trusts to reduce tenants' insecurity
    
12. Gather more broad input to better understand the marginalized communities' needs
    
13. Reprioritize the space currently given to cars
    

[plam]

* More free, municipally-maintained public toilets

NZ is extremely good with providing public toilets and this is really useful even as a person with no special needs. I can be confident that when I go somewhere in public there will be a city-maintained toilet accessible not too far away. Downtown Wellington is a bit less good (there are some but not as many) and during lockdown they closed many of them, but overall, far better than Canada.

From what I saw of Beijing, also very good with public toilets.

Montreal had city-built public toilets during the Depression but they went away unfortunately.

[tomh009]

* More free, municipally-maintained public toilets

NZ is extremely good with providing public toilets and this is really useful even as a person with no special needs. I can be confident that when I go somewhere in public there will be a city-maintained toilet accessible not too far away. Downtown Wellington is a bit less good (there are some but not as many) and during lockdown they closed many of them, but overall, far better than Canada.

From what I saw of Beijing, also very good with public toilets.

Montreal had city-built public toilets during the Depression but they went away unfortunately.

Some European cities are very good for that as well -- and Tokyo has many in their numerous parks (but not much in super-dense urban areas like Ginza).

[dtkmelissa]

NZ is extremely good with providing public toilets and this is really useful even as a person with no special needs. I can be confident that when I go somewhere in public there will be a city-maintained toilet accessible not too far away. Downtown Wellington is a bit less good (there are some but not as many) and during lockdown they closed many of them, but overall, far better than Canada.

From what I saw of Beijing, also very good with public toilets.

Montreal had city-built public toilets during the Depression but they went away unfortunately.

Some European cities are very good for that as well -- and Tokyo has many in their numerous parks (but not much in super-dense urban areas like Ginza).

When I was last in Goderich, they not only had public accessible washrooms (right off the square), they had signage elsewhere telling people about the existence of them. Lezlie Lowe has a great book on this issue called 'No Place To Go'.

[tomh009]

When I was last in Goderich, they not only had public accessible washrooms (right off the square), they had signage elsewhere telling people about the existence of them. Lezlie Lowe has a great book on this issue called 'No Place To Go'.

She is, in fact, the one who proposed the public bathroom point in the G&M article!

[dtkmelissa]

When I was last in Goderich, they not only had public accessible washrooms (right off the square), they had signage elsewhere telling people about the existence of them. Lezlie Lowe has a great book on this issue called 'No Place To Go'.

She is, in fact, the one who proposed the public bathroom point in the G&M article!

Ha, that makes sense! She's quite the advocate for it.

[plam]

NZ has many of the same problems as any other Western country... see here about Wellington. The Climate Commission just called for way more pedestrian and bicycle modeshare to hit climate targets though.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/we...e-not-cars

In particular biking in downtown Wellington is kind of like biking in DTK (except that downtown Wellington is much bigger). Off there now...

[westwardloo]

Fair enough. I won't post the full article here, but I'll include the 13 points, each from a different person. Details and rationale are in the article.

1. More autonomy for the cities from the provinces
   
2. More free, municipally-maintained public toilets
   
3. Every city should have a carbon budget
   
4. Create an environment where people can live, work, learn and play within their own communities
   
5. Gather more community input
   
6. More open space in the downtown area [this is fairly specifically aimed at Toronto]
   
7. More health care options through mobile outreach or virtual
   
8. Remove barriers for active living and healthy eating
   
9. Retrofit suburbs with more density, and to enable living without a car
   
10. Loosen change-of-use bylaws [particularly for retail]
    
11. Create community land trusts to reduce tenants' insecurity
    
12. Gather more broad input to better understand the marginalized communities' needs
    
13. Reprioritize the space currently given to cars
    

I think they are all great points and city staff should be looking at all of these recommendations to help the region continue to be competitive/ a desirable place to live with in southwestern Ontario. Personally I would like to see us focus on retrofitting the suburbs to become more dense and walkable. This is obviously a challenge in the suburbs we built for the past 60 years as most of the are winding collectors with cul de sacs all over the place, but I think we could start by rezoning retail plaza's and strip malls into mixed-use community nods and reduce the ridiculously large parking minimums region wide.