Did he really say that?
Chris’s post yesterday pointed to a real problem, not just for us here in Windsor, but for pretty much everyone. Plans more often than not, don’t work. Perhaps, more correctly they don’t usually work the way we thought they would.
Like this plan that has cost us a vibrant and eclectic part of our downtown (not to mention millions of tax dollars) that didn’t quite turn out the way anyone planned it. Another grand “plan ” with assurances that it will pay for itself. Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings (talented and iconic - no arguments) and “Lord of the Dance” - this is what we are getting from a management company selected without public tender? Really?
Before Mark Bosco. gets all excited and tells me all I am doing is criticizing without offering any alternatives - here is one. Let downtown die.
Yeah I said it. Our central business district, our cultural centre has been on life-support for too many years. I say “pull the plug”. “It has passed on, it is demised”. I spent a good chunk of my formative years roaming the downtown and though I have waxed nostalgic here many times I think it’s time. Walking up Ouellette last week I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the displays in the vacant store windows. Old pictures of a vibrant downtown from a long gone era. Let it go.
There are two areas of the city that should be looked at with a long view of becoming our “new downtown”. The first is pretty obvious - to me anyway- the Lear lands around the new arena. Why? That area is adjacent to established neighbourhoods of the Riverside area and the new developments east of Little River. There is a city owned facility (our precious new arena) that can be “leveraged” (yuck! I hate that term.) nay must be “leveraged” since we’re on the hook for it already, as a draw for tourism and community use. Soon, on the east side of Little River, there will be a retirement/long term care development and everyone seems to think that that industry and demographic can save our region. Speaking of Little River, as opposed to the water feature downtown, Little River exists and with some improvements could be made navigable all the way to Tecumseh Road - like a real canal. Also, that area is close to the Town of Tecumseh (a town that has been growing while the population in Windsor’s core has dropped 10% +), the VIA line runs right there and could become the new terminus (imagine, what we always wanted a train station downtown) and if we’re going to sink a bunch of money into our airport it’s a ten minute, six lane trip south on Lauzon Parkway.
The other site is the soon to be shuttered GM transmission plant and the surrounding formally industrial area. This area is adjacent to the established Walkerville neighbourhoods and close to what’s left of the auto industry’s presence in the city, it is serviced by rail and not a too far drive to the airport. More importantly it could become the centre of a number of walkable neighbourhoods if we spend our efforts trying to revive Ottawa Street, Droulliard Road (’course that’s another dog that don’t hunt), Wyandotte and Tecumseh rather than just focusing on the existing downtown. This area has as much potential as anything talked about downtown.
Leave the downtown to the tourists and the kiddie bars (I noticed tonight that since the Box Office is gone there is a new after hours club on Pellisser). Expand the casino and build more obscene civic buildings. The people have voted with their feet (and cars) to get away from downtown. Isn’t that the free-market way to deal with things? If the people and developers don’t want to build downtown they won’t. Maybe we should plan new, walkable, mixed-use centres closer to where the people have decided they want to be instead of force feeding them what they obviously don’t want. Besides, where the people are now is where they will be stuck when their houses are worth less than the mortgage and they can’t sell them. Those people, a vast majority I suspect, will not be downsizing to a western-anchor condo since their house’s value has downsized first. Smart business people will figure out what areas will support them and they will go there. (Town homes backing onto Wal-Mart parkings lots would not surprise me. Maybe even town homes in Wal-Mart parking lots, owned, managed and rented out by Wal-Mart. Yeah at least the snow will get plowed and the trash collected.)
Of course, none of this means shit! Because we are in the middle of an economic macro-event. A reset to a new normal that will not resemble the excessive highs we’ve just come off of, maybe not even the aftermath of the early 80’s recession. And none of that was in the plan. The “stimulus” money for “shovel ready” projects is just the old plan on fast-forward. What we have seen from governments and businesses is a massive power grab. There has been a consolidation of the biggest, most powerful and most influential and the rest of us can plan, scheme, lobby, demand and hold our collective breath ’til we’re blue because our leaders have missed the opportunity to actually lead. To lead us to something better. Why? Because the only plans that really matter are (re)election plans.
And, Mark Bradley, your new library is welcome in either of my new downtowns. 
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James, letting downtown die is yet another piecemeal plan that has been proven not to work time and time again. The plan to let downtown die is as bad as the canderall
Detroit, Philadelphia both let their downtowns die and found that it was unsustainable. Philadelphia is the better example because they actually tried to move their downtown precisely in the way you suggest. When I was there talking to Leutenant John Walker from their Police, they spoke like you about how they planned to simply build a new downtown seperate from their current one but then had to go back and fix the old one. He told me the cost to resurrect a dead downtown far exceeded the costs to save it. That the crime rate in the abandoned section affected the entire core.
You see, lettting downtown die does not mean the status quo. Letting downtown die means a far worse fate, soaring crime rates intertwined with the effects of skyrocketing substance abuse. That is the fatal flaw in your argument and logic
When you let downtown die, you will have higher crime, except that criminals rob and sell drugs to people with money, people who live in adjacent areas and the suburbs.
I’ve said many times that although my focus has been downtown, Its about far more than downtown, its about the core (which downtown happens to be the center of.) Its about Ottawa, Wyandotte town center, Walkerville, Erie Street which all connect to downtown. How do you propose to get people to live in the core when the center of the core is dead? This is about the neighborhood between Downtown and the University.
Sure, develop lauzon. But you already have a big box problem, and you already have lauzon as pedestrian unfriendly. You have greyfield sites, parking lagoons. Do they have a large retirement community blossoming? sure but so does downtown.
When you let downtown die, you give a death sentence to the Art Gallery, the Symphony, Windsor Light Opera, the Capital Theater. You are also condemning an already fallen tourism, the casino jobs (which by the way is the city’s largest provider of good paying jobs that are needed to transition to the next economy)
Oddly the saying comes to mind: Did you think you could kill time without injuring eternity? Do you really think you could kill downtown and not mortally wound Windsor? Show me a successful city that has let their downtown die and I’ll show you one that’s devoting significant resources to try to resuscitate it
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/29/opinion/editorial-observer-how-philadelphia-came-back-from-collapse.html
Philadelphia’s Center City Area Celebrates Decade of Downtown Revitalization.
2001 The Philadelphia Inquirer
Byline: Linda K. Harris
Mar. 20–It was only a decade ago that Center City wore the image of a loser — a dirty, dangerous, has-been metropolis with an inferiority complex deeper than the Delaware.
Even the city’s most ardent boosters, such people as Ronald I. Rubin, who in 1991 had just finished building the 54-story Mellon Bank Center, wince at the memory.
“The city,” Rubin recalled with deliberate understatement, “was not fabulous.”
Added Michael Dean, a lawyer who helped usher in the Center City District: “There was a general feeling that no one was in charge of Center City.”
But Philadelphians had no intention of letting their city wallow on a steam grate. They set out to transform Center City by tackling the basics of urban self-esteem. Placing boundaries roughly from Sixth to 23d Streets and from Locust to Race, they kept the goals deceptively simple: Make Center City — the core of Philadelphia where more than 300,000 people currently work and 78,000 people live — clean and safe.
Now, as the Center City District celebrates its 10th anniversary, parts of Center City’s population have grown 14 percent. With a 97 percent occupancy rate, apartments are almost impossible to find. Median housing prices have increased 20 percent in the Rittenhouse Square area and as much as 40 percent in other parts of the district. Restaurant Row, showcasing some of the city’s 75 new restaurants, offers a swanky assortment of cuisine. A dozen new hotels have almost doubled the number of rooms available downtown.
To be sure, the national…
I agree with you Mark… downtown is a vital organ in the city, you cannot completely neglect it. I think that the thing that draws people to downtown areas in any city is the history and the culture. In ‘happening’ cities, there is usually some major point of history or tourist draw, and usually there is an area of strong and vibrant food/shopping/art culture. Its time to make sprawl more difficult, so that there is an excuse to move back: (1) immediate ban on new big-box retail until existing developments are 100% occupied. (as London did) (2) For every new housing unit a developer puts up in a ‘burb’, they must do the same in the core (3) immediate ban on more housing developments in farm lands (4) long-term planning for streets, pedestrian-streets, and mass-transit routes (5) aggressive advertising and recruitment campaign for retail, diversified-business, and housing in the core. (Imagine, if all the shops that exist at Windsor Crossing were downtown instead, how much of a shopping draw that would be! Besides, with the pending construction to occur on Huron (Hwy3), they may benefit to relocate to downtown anyways!
So James you want to build a Brazilia (http://tiny.cc/VcN9r ) in the east end and leave the old to rot and become the skid row for the city? Interesting, coming from somebody that keeps Peak Oil in front us!
Yes, citizens have voted with their feet and have left “Old Windsor” for the car dependent east end and beyond and as long as they are well enough to drive or have somebody in the family healthy enough to drive..life is good! Even as they build retirement centres (with attached medical clinics and cheap shopping) life will be good. But looking at the east side now, there is nothing walkable about it and to say that these neighbourhoods can become walkable and sustainable without the millions needed, is putting silk on a pig! And I don’t see how your idea, of enhancing Little River into a canal, a transportation hub (would you live in an area where huge cargo jets are arriving and departing every hour of the day, not to mention all the truck traffic that is needed to support them) would make a new downtown.
No lower class (re: poor, under-educated, under skilled etc.) people live or can afford to live in Brazilia but they do all the low paying grunt service jobs in Brazilia and are bused in everyday, is this what you want for the east end? A middle and upper middle class enclave for retiring boomers, where the poor and the immigrant aren’t wanted but needed to empty the bed pans!
The underlying problem with the east end and with all the burbs and out lying towns and their history, is that it they were built on the assumption that the high paying wages of the automotive industry would just keep on flowing forever. All our burbs and the towns around Windsor are a closed “class” society. And now with the worry about the automotive pensions being there or not being there, those middle class automotive retirees will be spending even less in their retirement than they do now, so they won’t be able to support a new downtown to the dreams of retail and the developers, its a diminishing return! And the young won’t be able to afford to live there!
I’m a boomer and I live in the core, close to almost everything I need, including two hospitals, will they build a new hospital in east Windsor or Tecumseh any time soon..I don’t think so. Your right James it seems that most of Windsor and the surrounds are stuck in their homes, there is no mass migration of artists to Windsor as there is in Hamilton from Toronto, there is no migration of workers or retirees from anywhere in Canada to Windsor. Our young graduates are still leaving for anywhere but Windsor/Essex because they can’t find good work at a decent pay to pay off their student loans, can’t afford to buy into the middle class dream that is Windsor and don’t want to empty bed pans!
Yes, Windsor is rotten at the core but that rot is spreading through out the whole area and don’t let the dukes of the other towns tell you differently, we’re all starting to rot. Our collective dream is over!
Wal-Mart townhomes with walk in-clinics - a new ghetto for the privilege class? A..a gated community!
The funny thing about Brazilia and it still goes on today even after what forty years, most of the bureaucrats leave on the weekend for the “kiddie bars” of San Paulo or Rio De Janeiro, where they maintain their real homes!
As for your idea of Old Walkerville as the new downtown, it has the potential to become an alternative downtown but as with the east end as soon as it becomes the “hip” place to be, the kiddie bars will come also and that will put the final nail in the coffin of the old original downtown, which I hope it does! But I don’t think that most of the residents of Walkerville now would want all that attention of their area becoming the new downtown, maybe some intensification, some gentrification, some new retail but to be the actual downtown of Windsor and all the other stuff that comes with a downtown, just might put off those living there now and it just might change Walkerville beyond what it is now. Better or worse over time, time will tell. The zoning laws will have to be fierce towards any kind of development and knowing this city’s penchant for ceding to developers and their wants, how long will Walkerville be “Old” before it becomes “New” and unrecognizable!
The best bet still lies with the Old downtown sprawling towards to the University of Windsor if we are going to build a new economy for a new city. We have almost a clean slate, with decent infrastructure already in place for a walkable and sustainable neighbourhood. Let’s not build for the boomers, lets build for those that are not yet born. As far as I am concerned you could annex the east end of Windsor to Tecumseh and let them deal with the coming problems of an aging population stuck in their homes.
Oh, and James, I will concede a new branch library filled with large text books or books on CD for the east end, with a few more extension services librarians to help with the aging population in the east end. But the new main library stays downtown in the historical and new heart of the city!
Hey, Obama says knock ‘em all down.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html
SHRINKING THE RUST BELT http://tiny.cc/2E8PN
“..In this world, size can prove a liability. One of the biggest problems in turning around Detroit is the sheer size of the region. The metro area has a population of 4.5 million – not including nearby Ann Arbor or Windsor, Canada. Is there really any need in the modern day for a city the size of Detroit in Southeastern Michigan? It seems doubtful. As I’ve argued before, transforming that city’s economy would be much easier if the region were smaller….”
What is funny about me posting just now and you above me James, is that, ten years ago Peter Carlissimo and I were standing and watching them put the finishing touches on the Canderel building and we both agreed that it was just another Plywood Palace just with aluminum cladding. We thought then that most of old Windsor should be bulldozed and built anew, with its very old housing stock that comes nowhere near to today’s standards and on and on and on….
Interesting..replying to my post: Further from the article I sited above, Newgeography in their blog adds these points:
What would a federally assisted managed shrinkage program look like? No one can say for sure since this is a new field in America. Clearly, study of what has happened in Europe, particularly in Germany, where managed shrinkage has long been on the agenda, is warranted. But these ideas can’t just be transplanted via lift and drop. We need to create a distinctly American [Windsor] program informed by the best practices of elsewhere. That program should include the following elements:
1. Education. Raising educational attainment not only makes people more employable in the new economy, it makes them more mobile.
2. Relocation Assistance. Many people in the Rust Belt might want to move but be unable to do so because they are upside down on a mortgage or can’t sell their house. As more people leave, that will put downward pressure on the housing market. Hence, some government relocation assistance to help buy out people who want to move might be helpful.
3. Shrinking the Urban Footprint. The quantity of urbanized land needs to be reduced so that the excess housing and infrastructure can be retired and the cost of servicing it eliminated. This means painfully identifying areas which will not receive reinvestment, and encouraging and assisting the people and businesses that remain to relocate. This will be difficult as these neighborhoods are still the locales for people’s homes and they have a strong emotional sense of ownership. Sensitivity is clearly called for. We need to increase localized density in areas targeted for redevelopment and convert other areas to non-urbanized uses such as nature preserves or agriculture. This will be a long process.
4. Financial Restructuring. Older cities are often hobbled by mountains of debt, underfunded pensions, overstaffed payrolls, and too many municipal fixed assets. The government needs to be right-sized. Federal assistance may be needed to take over pensions and to give cities some tools to restructure unsustainable debt loads outside of bankruptcy.
5. Development Restrictions. In return for federal assistance, there ought to be a real insistence that these cities sign up to the shrinkage programs. This might include enforceable restrictions on their ability to adopt policies that are oriented towards servicing growth such as restrictions on the ability to use federal funding for net new infrastructure. For example, if Detroit wants to build a federally funded rail system, it should retire an equivalent amount of other infrastructure elsewhere to offset it.
Participation would be voluntary, but the federal government should make it clear that it will not finance futile attempts by these cities to try to recapture the glory of their pasts….” Sadly that is exactly what Harper and McGuinty are doing!!!
I don’t feel stimulated in the current situation, more like being on Prozac and asking for more pills. Now, anybody got any of those fancy mushrooms or peyote!
From the article you cited.
One challenge is that a decline in population, which is already occurring naturally, doesn’t shrink the area of urbanization or the accompanying infrastructure that needs to be maintained. Indeed, although it is losing population and can’t support the infrastructure it has, Detroit still wants to build more, such a new regional rail transit system. And legacy debts such as pension liabilities don’t get smaller just because people leave. As with leverage, scale economics works in declining places as well as on the growing ones. The people who operate new transit systems or police who secure expanded areas must be paid. Roads, sewers, and water lines need to be maintained. In many places that are losing people, jobs, and tax base, such fixed costs could prove ruinous over the long run.
Yeah you said it. From what I can tell, that has been the unofficial Windsor master plan (and many other cities). Classic ponzi scheme dynamics. Use short-term development fees to continue to grow outward while creating long-term unsustainability. One problem with your plan is that “the gig is up.” The ponzi scheme has been revealed. And while sadly no one is going to jail for 150 years for this crime (there would be a lot of us guilty in this crime too), it is impossible for this to continue anymore.
Despite being ignored, despite being starved of funds, despite sucking resources from the core to subsidize shiny new construction somewhere else- the core is still the densest area in the region. It still has more jobs per resident than any other area. It still has the natural advantages and 250 years of built advantages. A few decades old ponzi scheme is not going to change that. I’m sure there have been other similar ponzi schemes in the past that have come and gone too.
Sure, “the gig (or is it jig?) is up”. We’ve pulled back the curtain, pointed at the wizard and said “Bad, bad man”.
But, where is the cry for change? Where is the outrage? We’re so worried about our personal stuff and what other people have that the real problem, the systemic problem, is lost.
Edwin, my neighbours, relatives and co-workers don’t want to scale down. They want what they’re “entitled” to. There will be no colour revolution in North America because collectively we have been so pacified and now so traumatized that we can’t see the wizard. We’re too focused on the image of the smoke and the lights because that is the reality that has been programmed and conditioned.
Read about “devolution” here.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune09/devolution-predictions06-09.html
Thanks for the correction James.
You don’t turn something this big around on a dime. It is a slow process. It is like being on a forced diet after gorging for years and years.
I always read the monthly outlook from PIMCO. They have unbelievable resources and I find Bill Gross is always at least honest although in a criptive way. Here below is this month’s letter.
“Bon” or “Non” Appétit?
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/Investment+Outlook+July+2009+Gross+Appetit.htm
“But, where is the cry for change? Where is the outrage? We’re so worried about our personal stuff and what other people have that the real problem, the systemic problem, is lost.
Edwin, my neighbours, relatives and co-workers don’t want to scale down They want what they’re “entitled” to. ……”
James, I’ve aways said you were right about many things but only ahead of your time. The more frustrating part is that you are ahead of your time in a city who’s population is predominately behind the time.
One of the best trends I’ve ever read was accelerated awareness by the general population to the very same principles scaledown espouses. Unfortunately like the last economic boom, this has mostly missed Windsor.
In a city marked by the distinction of the highest amount of pickup trucks per capita in Canada, your idea of abandoning downtown is humourous only in that you are so far ahead of the majority of Windsorites that you have basically “lapped” the populace and are in the same position as they, but only several “Laps” further ahead around the track. You want to give up on downtown in favor of a better new urbanism fresh start in a new location, where many would give up on downtown so that we could work on the sprucewood big box center, widened ec rowe and move out to Tecumseh or Lasalle.
I’m afraid that there are many who would support your idea of abandoning downtown but most of those same people would abandon it for reasons diametrically opposed to yours
If you want to make God laugh, make plans!
Revive Drouillard Rd. which as been on life support for over 50 years but turn our back on downtown? There is more to downtown than just bars. Whether you like it or not, it is the heart of any city and if it doesn’t beat then the city itself dies.
I disagree with your assessment that people are voting with their feet. They are not. They are going to places that offer them something (a quick hop in their cars); shopping close by, the perception that ‘burbs are better (check the crime stats of South Windsor to some core neighbourhoods, it is rather shocking), better parks and schools.
What downtown or uban living gives is something most suburbanites don’t want anyway. This type of living will NEVER attract those who want suburban lifestyles. What this city needs to do is attract those who want urban living not attract those who want suburban lifestyles.
At this time there is no alternative. We need to bring that alternative forward not ginore it.
The plans this city has are great plans but there is no willpower from council. The question that needs to be asked is why aren’t these plans being implemented? I will argue that plans do work if they are sound and implemented properly. The problem in this city is we don’t implement them or do it half-assed. Look at the crappy streetscaping we have downtown. Anyone who says the new streetscaping is good needs to go back to a simple infrastructure course to realize it is garbage on a good day. We residents, BIA and taxpayers were hosed on this project.
Implement the plan properly and things fall into place. Dither and jump queues and the plan rapidly falls apart.
Dave,
Downtown failed its physical in the 1970’s. It had a crippling stroke during the 80’s recession. That’s nearly 40 years of poor planning and worse decision making. If fifty years makes Droulliard a write-off how much longer does “downtown” have?
I wrote about the missed opportunity of the East Riverside Planning Area when I was still a guest here.
https://scaledown.ca/2008/01/09/james-lunch-date/
This is the folly of plans and planning when politicians get involved. Politics should be about serving the public good. It isn’t. It’s about power and celebrity. Instead of serving the community it’s become favours for “friends”.
My biggest fear for this city, this region in fact is that we have passed the tipping point. So many poor decisions have been made in the name of progress (actually in the name of political expediency) that the damage at both the macro and micro level is so great that it cannot be repaired.
The greatest powers in the world, political, economic, corporate and financial are not doing anything to actually fix the damage. They are using everything at their disposal to keep us from seeing the “man behind the curtain”.
“I guess it was naive on my part to imagine that city government is any different from higher levels of government where special interests and lobbyists “grease the wheels”, but really. Our elected officials live in our neighbourhoods. They drive the same roads as us and worry about the values of their properties and business interests - just like us. So how can they make decisions that do nothing to improve the quality of life for their constituents, their neighbours? City politicians are closest to the electorate, why should a developer or an out-of-town land owner’s interests be more important than ours?”
James, that is the reason why I still have hope. I believe local politicians were duped like many of us. They saw the so-called success of the sprawlers and wanted to emulate it not understanding the full long-term costs of sprawl.
I also don’t think it is that difficult to fix downtown and other core neighbourhoods if there is the will. Pillete Village in the east-end is a good example. We go to church in the area and while waiting for the bus we often walk around. While I don’t know the history, I can see signs of a lot of improvement on the Main Street and older residential neighbourhoods. I would guess that the intensification (newer condos on Riverside Drive) has a lot to do with the improvements on the Main Street and residential neighbourhoods. It is the same strategy we need to follow elsewhere in the city. Re-direct growth from the new greenfield to already existing hoods to revive them, to improve them, to create the appropriate scale and appropriate standard of desirability.
Right now we have the words that we are looking in this direction. The follow-up actions is next.
Everyone needs to understand that Windsor looks worse than most because we’ve already been through the painful de-leveraging process that governments and central banks fear. This self-reinforcing process of falling asset prices, reduced economic activity, reduced consumption, and on and on - has been a reality here for years. We already have the real unemployment rate near a quarter. We already have asset prices at rock bottom levels. We already have consumption based economic activity at minimum levels. The greatest wave of consumer and business bankruptcies are probably behind us. So if de-leveraging, reduced consumption, increased savings and a return to basics economy is where North America is heading - well we are already there.
“This is the folly of plans and planning when politicians get involved.”
It depends on how much the politicians get involved. It seems to work in Vancouver where the politicians decide the policy and the Urban Planners implement it.
“Politics should be about serving the public good”
Sounds great but what is the ‘public good’? Is it what the people want? Or is other people telling them what they want? Or is a vocal minority telling the rest of us how things will be? Is it the residents of Riverside Drive East deciding how that road should be used?
The people in Sandwich supposedly don’t want a new bridge (even though said bridge will reduce noise and air pollution). Is that the ‘public good’?
The only thing politicians can do to save downtown is the residential intensification.
Politicians don’t save neighborhoods, the people who live there do. Just like they did in walkerville and Pillette. thats why there is nothing higher priority than getting more people living downtown. Its my primary reason for supporting a canal, my primary reason for supporting a campus. (my primary reason for NOT vocally supporting the arena is that it would yield very few if any new residents and piss off the ones that we had)
How about this for an alternative to how to spend the 50 million dollars
$10,000 in a trust fund awarded to the first 5,000 who buy a residence downtown and makes it their primary residence for 5 years. That would increase downtowns population by 50% and bring an army of volunteers, neighborhood watchers, customers for downtown businesses.
Even if we retain and capture only 20% of those residents beyond the 5 years we will have saved downtown
I just have to say this; I hate how we have so many big pick up trucks here, the exhaust I breath every day as I actually try to enjoy walking our cities streets is unbearable. My girlfriend laughed when she saw how many we have here and asked if my city is really this full of farmers and construction workers - apparently in Japan only people who NEED them drive them, otherwise its embarrassing to be seen in one.. but maybe if you look at the pics below you’ll understand
Check out what the pick ups look like in Japan.. I don’t think they would ever be popular here, not “he man” enough for the meat heads of our society -.-
http://www.amren.com/ar/2007/08/05a-LightTruck.jpg
http://www.best-used-tractors.com/Diesel_Toyota_Townace_Front.JPG
It has to do with ego, image, penis and breast envy! Often wondered the same thing Tim. It seems, like you said, wanna be farmers, cowboy/cowgirls, freeway warriors, ghetto cruisers and wanna be Mike Holmeies!
James, here is an interview with Jeff Ruben about his new book for ya!
Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller
http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2009-0627-2.asx
It just came to me that something was missing is all the above and in most cases and if can remember without spending to much time looking for in our archives.(the fact that we have talked about these sprawling schools).is that we should try and stop the sprawl of the two school boards here in Windsor and Essexs, while they close schools in this city.
The city wants St. Clair College and the University of Windsor to build etc. downtown but what of the two school boards building a “new” high schools downtown, that have everything their hearts desire as they do in the spurbs, were no kid can walk to! Primary and secondary schools in the downtown can act as an anchor just as well and if not better than any other idea that been proposed in this city for the last thirty years including my idea of a new main library. Schools means families, which and in turn spur retail and on and on.
The subject has come up before. Some think you need to attract young people then when you have a base of young people then you start to provide housing for families and schools and other infrastructure will follow.
Personally I think new schools should be built in the core and suburban kids bused in to fill them until the density increases and busing is no longer required.
The way they said to do it in the states is long term like James said, if you capture young couples 25-35, when they have kids a portion of them will want to remain downtown and they will demand the schools.
It must be demand driven. Thats why the shelved CIP’s are so important, the three that would affect downtown (Glengarry/Marenttette, City Center West, Sustainable Downtown) call for a housing market study to see what type and price housing would be needed and what amenities or changes need to occur to create demand
Hey, didn’t get feedback on my $50million dollar idea to revitalize downtown
$10,000 cash to first 5,000 people who buy residences and live there for 5 years.
Again a market housing study would first have to be undertaken to see if this was the right amount and what people would want developers to build (ok so subtract it from the 50 million and put it to 4,990 people) Expand its boundaries to Glengarry Marentette, Downtown including City center west, and you’ve brought closure and success to 3 community improvement plans.
Great idea, but the political will is probably lacking to bring such a plan to frutition. If you get so much NIMBY-ism from riverside residents over bike lanes, I can only imagine the reaction of all the fringe-dwelling taxpayers asking why their tax money should subsidize downtown dwellers. However personally I like the idea and if it were funding by federal/provencial stimulus funding I think it could work well!
Instinctively, I would say it wouldn’t work by itself. It is rebalancing alone which creates a hole somewhere else. Besides we already have a huge affordability incentive in place. And I have a problem with only looking at residential intensification.
I think the canal business case did a good job of identifying the issues and solutions. It is not so much about rebalancing alone but about accelerating growth and correcting the distorted incentives that encourage the growth to occur at the edges. Economic incentives for residential intensification in the core are only a small part not the whole shebang.
Below is the whole shebang.
Smart Growth Reforms
Changing Planning, Regulatory and Fiscal Practices to Support More Efficient Land Use
http://www.vtpi.org/smart_growth_reforms.pdf
Don’t get me wrong, I support anything that gets residents downtown. There still needs to be a housing market study as to what people want.
I pretty much only look at residential intensificaiton, politicians don’t save cities, people do. Thats why I rarely take to mayor or councillor bashing. I feel it somehow absolves people of their responsibility when they point to politicians to blame.
Farmers market will succeed only because it is resident driven. Residents will drive clean and safe programs, neighborhood watch and consumer demand for retail businesses.
As far as I’m concerned, its all about the residents.
But you did trigger an idea, double down or even make the bonus exclusive if the new resident is coming from outside of Windsor’s boundaries.
Then it acts as a retirement community incentive, and doesn’t cause problems elsewhere in Windsor