TriTAG's map of the LRT (red) and planned express bus routes. The line is more interurban than it is CBD-to-suburb.

My last Record column this year evaluates the idea of the central business district in the context of Waterloo Region, and (of course) again discusses light rail. Hopefully it isn’t too unfocused:

The Future is Multi-Nodal

Commentary on the light rail transit project reveals a common but outdated assumption that a city should have a central business district (CBD) — an area of downtown that no one lives in, but many commute to from the suburbs. A frequent argument against the project is that downtown Kitchener isn’t a large enough CBD and that there aren’t enough people commuting in. But the whole concept of a central business district is a thing of the past, and light rail does not need a large CBD to make sense. The future lies in urban areas composed of multiple dense nodes connected by high-quality transportation — which happens to be exactly what Waterloo Region is planning for.

Cities once contained housing in addition to commerce and industry. When streetcar lines were started, they moved people within the city, but they also opened up the suburbs for residential development that promised tranquility and fresh air. Later, the availability of cars and cheap fuel together with massive post-war highway and road development led to suburban flight on a larger scale. Commerce also followed the highways and set up shop in suburban malls. Only jobs remained, producing the classic CBD — where commuters stay from 9 to 5, leaving an empty city every evening. But those long commutes aren’t healthy for our cities, and an office monoculture is not conducive to urban living.

Most of Waterloo Region’s growth has occurred after the post-war years, and many jobs are located in suburban office parks. So we have no reason to cling to the notion of a CBD — it just doesn’t apply. But that’s not a bad thing. Instead of jobs clustering in any single downtown, many destinations and much employment have fortunately clustered along a reasonably dense linear corridor.

It’s not just jobs, either — many people now want to live in urban places. It turns out that the suburbs with their traffic, limited access, and manufactured sameness aren’t always so great. People don’t want to have to drive everywhere. They want to be able to walk or take the train to work, and walk to a diversity of stores and restaurants. They want lively streets and public spaces. In order to get there, we need complete neighbourhoods — areas that have different land uses in walking distance of each other.

The model is for dense, complete communities along a high-capacity transportation spine, and for buses along cross-corridors to connect lower-density areas with the spine. This is good for the environment, for taxpayers, and for quality of life. People can walk for many of their trips, using less infrastructure and contributing to better health. With people travelling in a multitude of patterns, trains don’t run empty in any direction — especially when downtowns or malls anchor the ends of the line. They have enough demand to run frequently throughout the day and evening, allowing commuters to feel confident leaving their cars at home.

Instead of new growth taking place as further sprawl or as haphazard development throughout the region, planning policy guides it to occur along major transit corridors. The growth takes place where it produces mostly transit riders on a high-capacity train instead of producing more traffic on congested roads, and where it uses existing utilities. Instead of draining the city’s resources on sprawling infrastructure, such growth benefits the city through increased liveliness and economic productivity.

I am proud that Waterloo Region is looking to the future and planning a more sustainable urban form. The Region’s new official plan, new transportation master plan, and the proposed light rail system are the key steps by which we will escape the cul-de-sac of the hollowed-out suburban ideal.

Addendum: This isn’t my last column after all. Turns out I get another column in December!

Fast forward to now. Many people still participate in discussion of, and decisions about transit in North America without understanding that transit is not just about moving people effectively. From such a point of view, it can make sense to advocate for high-frequency buses and not much else in many cases. (Of course, there are also factors such as comfort and simplicity to consider.)

The other side of transit is infrastructure. Transit infrastructure, generally rail-based, changes the fabric of its surroundings. It transforms the geography, and attracts disproportionate development to its stations or corridors. Once built, it is taken as a permanent and reliable connection and short-cut between disparate places. It is visibly in place, a financial and social investment that is both useful and that cannot be easily picked up and moved. In other words, it is infrastructure. And such infrastructure is central to reclaiming an urban landscape.

We should stop talking about just transit, and start talking about transit infrastructure. The way discussions are framed makes a difference, and currently discussion about transit allows the ignorance of all the implications of transit beyond the movement of people. The only way to build liveable cities in North America that are not car-dependent is by building strong transit infrastructure. Transit can only follow, while transit infrastructure leads.

The public input sessions regarding this proposal were only conducted in the immediate surrounding suburban area, so there was poor awareness of this project. Several of the presentations at the meeting were by the developers and associated people. One lady argued against the proposal because of its proximity to the landfill — her concern is that the development will be unusable and unsafe as a result, and that this will have unfortunate consequences for the landfill’s operation. Another argued that it will contribute to serious water contamination issues. My speech, reproduced below, was the only one against the very idea of the development. A number of people later came up to shake my hand for giving the speech.

Unfortunately, City Council disregarded their own misgivings as well as the concerns raised, and voted unanimously in favour of the development. In writeups about the ruling, the Record and the Waterloo Chronicle mentioned my comments with varying degrees of accuracy.

Mayor Halloran, Members of Council,

I am here to say that the emperor has no clothes. The development you are presently considering is utterly ridiculous. It is an enormous blow to ongoing efforts to make the City of Waterloo and the Region sustainable areas with strong urban cores and decreased car dependence.

There’s a lot of places I could start, but it may as well be size. I’m sure you all know that this is a large development. Take a look at the Preferred Development Concept; it doesn’t look that big, does it?

Let me put it into perspective: it is exactly the same size as the University of Waterloo’s main campus inside Ring Road. Just the parking lots cover a space the size of Wilfrid Laurier University. And what do you get for that space? A whole slew of minimum wage jobs in retail and 4000 parking spaces.

First and foremost, the development is big box retail. All of its buildings face inwards towards a sea of parking. The claimed pedestrian- and transit-friendliness is a farce.

Consider the pedestrian aspect. First of all, how does a sprawling suburban area produce pedestrians in any significant quantity? But let’s say that it does, and they wish to deposit their time and money into the development. To get there they will have to traverse roundabouts that will have enormous numbers of cars going at high speeds in and out of the mall. And then there’s the issue of the size of the development itself – which is over a kilometre across!

The plans describe the “internal capture” that keeps customers in the development for multiple purposes. But they won’t be pedestrians while doing it. Technically, people could drive to this mall, park, and then visit multiple parts of the complex on foot. But we all know this won’t happen. The distances in the development are far too large for this, and the dullness of crossing the endless parking would discourage anyone attempting to traverse it on foot. It is abundantly clear that for all of this “capture” of customers, people will get in their cars and drive to get from one part of the complex to another, and another. It’s even clear from the diagrams of the development — the tiny dots are cars parked as close as they can to their respective big boxes. The developer knows this place is so big that it really does matter how close you parked to your destination.

On to transit. The plans talk so little about parking, and so much about transit. Is having a bus stop there supposed to make it all okay? Anyone who gets off the bus — at the one stop planned within the site — becomes a pedestrian. And I already mentioned why this development is not pedestrian-friendly. A very small proportion of visitors would walk or use the bus to get there, much smaller than the kinds of developments we should be focusing on.

I believe it is clear that this is a very car-centric development. And it is a huge one at that. I don’t know how we are expected to believe that Ira Needles Boulevard or other arterial roads in the area will not be affected by the development. The reports claim that the road will have to be widened by 2013 anyway, and that subsequently the development won’t contribute much more traffic than the alternative. From what I can glean, this supposed alternative is not the lack of a development, but just a slightly smaller one. Common sense and Kitchener planning staff agree: the proposed development will be a huge contributor to traffic and will necessitate serious road expansion. The fact that sizeable traffic would also be caused by a reduced development is cold comfort. Consider that the development aims to be a success; knowing its car dependence and size, it is not difficult to picture the effect of that success on traffic and roads in that area.

The new Regional Official Plan almost certainly would not allow this project, for pretty much the same reasons that I am opposed to it. It is precisely the kind of car-oriented suburban sprawl-promoting development that we must avoid at all costs. Section 2.G.6 of the plan says that new Retail Commercial Centres will only be permitted within Urban Growth Centres, Major Transit Station Areas, or Major Local Nodes. Further, they must not adversely affect the planned function of any Urban Growth Centre or Major Transit Station Area.

While perhaps forcing bus service to outlying suburbs can make this development appear to be at a “Major Local Node” it is very clear that the development would have adverse impacts on the downtowns and the Central Transit Corridor. It will create a very large supply of jobs and retail away from the core, certainly funneling development and consumers away from the areas in which the province and the region mandate intensification.

Now, I don’t know whether the new Regional Official Plan applies to this development, but hopefully the plan will prevent future sprawling development. However, if you are about to go on a much-needed diet, gorging yourself in preparation defeats the purpose.

Perhaps it is too much to hope for that this development does not get built. If indeed that is the case, it is prudent to at least make a serious attempt to minimize the development’s impact on traffic and to maximize its transit friendliness. To that end, I suggest that this developer be required to contribute a sizable portion of the planning and construction cost of a streetcar line along University Avenue. Such a line would connect this end of Kitchener-Waterloo with the light rail line at the core, and provide a real — not token — way of getting to this development without a car. This is not a rhetorical example, and I hope you fully consider this possibility.

It is ironic how this project touts itself as being modern, sustainable, green, pedestrian-friendly, and transit-friendly when at its heart, it is nothing other than a power centre and a few strip malls put together. All the talk of “urban design” of this inherently suburban development is no more convincing than lipstick on a pig.

This development is clearly buzzword-friendly. However, it is not pedestrian-friendly, it is not transit-friendly, and it is not even traffic-friendly. Above all, it is not future-friendly. I ask you to take a firm stand against suburban sprawl and this development in particular.

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