Yesterday (Feb 24) council voted not to revisit their earlier compromise decision to accommodate a 222 hectare change in the urban boundary rather than by the 842 hectares originally recommended by city staff. The vote was quite decisive 17 for and 3 against. Dissenting votes were registered by Mayor O’Brien and Councillors Hunter and Thompson.
Unfortunately I confused local residents in my community last evening when passing on details of the decision. During the CBC NEWS: OTTAWA 6:00 pm TV news broadcast Hannah Thibedeau reporting live from City Hall, identified councillor Peter Hume as one of the three dissenting votes. This was very disturbing as Hume had previously indicated to residents that he and other councillors were working not to revisit the decision. Also it was Councillor Hume’s motion to defend council’s orignal decision. There was considerable relief when the situation was clarified.
The Hold the Line rally outside city hall at noon was well attended, especially considering the weather. There were some excellent speakers. Special thanks to members of Our Ottawa and Ecology Ottawa for organizing this event. I noted a couple of councillors in the audience. It is disappointing that more members of city council did not take the time to hear the opinions of citizens of Ottawa on this issue. It will be a subject of much further discussion once OMB becomes involved.
During the morning session of council various motions to audit or review OC Transpo’s operations, organization and projects were debated. They eventually supported a motion by Councillor Eli El-Chantiry that the American Public Transit Association (APTA) conduct a peer review of OC Transpo's bus programs and strategies, including areas such as bus operations, customer service, staffing, training and recruitment. Auditor general Alain Lalonde will examine the review panel's work and assess its recommendations.
I was disappointed by Coucillor Alex Cullen’s comments on the OC Transpo issue. He went to some lengths detailing various individual audits of particular projects, services and operations that have taken place over the past few years. However, it is many years since a full audit of this operation has taken place and we are right to expect excellence in service and operations from them. I do not understand why as chair of Transit Committee he finds it necessary to defend OC Transpo.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Lansdowne Park – recent updates
I received some interesting information from Tim Lash today. Tim recently responded to the City’s on-line survey on the Lansdowne Park design. His constructive and enlightening notes are included below. Also, here is some commentary from Tim on recent articles. He provides links to recent blog posts on the project:
“The strain of the process shows in recent articles in Ottawa’s main newspaper, The Citizen:
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/names+Lansdowne+panel/2443671/story.html
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Design+teams+already+lining/2529547/story.html
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Ottawa+firms+give+Lansdowne+miss/2552667/story.html
“It seems the closer people are to the process, the less comfortable they are with it. Not one of the 21 design firms expressing interest in bidding is from the Ottawa region. Architecture firms here may be refraining out of professional integrity. The Regional Society’s October 2009 position paper on Lansdowne is available at http://www.orsa.ca/ The seven architects of the City's urban design review panel resigned together in December 2009.
“A community leader close to it recounts the step by step story up to November 2009 in two blog entries:
“http://lookintolansdowne.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-up.html
“http://lookintolansdowne.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-uppart-2.html”
Here is Tim’s input to the on-line survey:
Subject: Input to City's online survey on design for Lansdowne Park
1. What would you, your family and friends like to do in a new urban park at Lansdowne?
a. Do and watch amateur and semi-organized sports and activities (predominantly city-wide community and civic).
b. Green space - real natural surfaces, open and vegetated.
c. Farmer's market
d. Enjoy the canal and related activities or extensions
e. Enjoy and learn about heritage of Lansdowne architecture and community activities.
f. Large special civic events and ceremonies.
g. Trade shows, if the site is viable for them.
h. Enjoy Lansdowne as an inviting feature of Bank Street - as Central Park is a loved amenity in New York for those along its bordering avenues.
i. Experience the whole and its components as carriers of the best in new environmental and activity design.
j. No new residential in the bounds of the whole park, unless it is for public purposes, e.g. some forms of public residential. No new independent retail or commercial hotel.
2. What elements or features do you think the new park should include?
Special natural pavilion along Bank Street. Large mature trees (e.g. maple spp., oak, pine), two rows deep, along the Bank street side of the park - making a leafy pavilion of green for all to enjoy, whether moving along Bank, or using this street-front apron of Lansdowne Park as an approach to the larger public space of the park - whether or not a plan for retail goes ahead (In preference, it should not become retail; good-sized public space in the heart of the city is too valuable as such. The whole site should remain public, for publicly-determined public use.). This leafy wall will provide a welcome block-long contrast to the steady line of "main-street" fronts north and south of it. It will valorize and enhance the beautiful bridge over the canal and the walkways to and from it. It will give growing space for stately trees taller than the City can allow in most streets that conflict with overhead lines, providing welcome arboreal biodiversity.
Good lighting. Emphasize environmental and social sustainability in design. This includes well-targeted activity lighting, without light pollution within or beyond the park boundaries, or further loss of night sky due to spilled light or illuminated high-intensity signage and advertising.
Good sunlight. Don't lose afternoon sunshine to blockage and artificial shadow from looming structures. This is a likely downside to the retail, residential and hotel as drawn by project proponents. (Note how the US embassy cut off afternoon from the west of Byward Market.)
3. Do you have other comments that could help the designers come up with a plan that would make this urban park a unique and special place within the City?
a. Value the urban interface. Bank St side of the Park as above, from Holmwood to the canal.
b. Integrated whole design. A key principle for making any large public facility a success and a design to celebrate is BOTH that its parts be fully integrated within its bounds, AND that it be integrated with its surroundings, fitting into overall plans so it supports (A) local neighborhood and borough aspirations, as well as (B) city-wide functions and enabling facilities such as transportation systems.
c. Private is subsidiary to public. Start with a clear unified public purpose or set of purposes for the Park as a whole; the design must be for the whole at once, based on a coherent and publicly accepted purpose, to avoid piecemeal fragmentation, and to achieve harmony of elements that nestle together or complement each other at different scales and with functions that flow together well. Simply having consistent visual motifs or signage on separately designed components, for example, will not provide a worthy unique and special place within Canada's capital. The current broken-up process, unclear purposes and phasing is unlikely to encourage a coherent whole for this public space. It may not even allow it, if the Lansdowne Live developers are already starting on architectural design for the commercial parts first. The design of any private components must be secondary and complementary to the overall public design.
d. Manage risk of bad design sequence. Do not privilege any private design that jumps the gun. Tell the developers to wait until the purpose and master plan are set, and ensure they know that any advance expenses at this time are at their own risk, not at the risk of Ottawa citizens, and will not prejudice open public decision on the whole.
e. This advice is wholly offered with good will and is sincerely intended for the betterment of Lansdowne Park for the whole city. However, with regret, I offer it under protest. The yanking of the original international design competition, and the imposition of a single-source privatization bid to which all due considerations became secondary, was a bad thing.
The best step now would be to set that Lansdowne Live initiative aside for the moment, and restore an uncompromised design competition. The "urgent" deadlines for decision are illusory and artificial, and mean little compared to the length and significance of what will now be done to make Lansdowne Park a wonderful part of Ottawa or a miserable one. What is built at Lansdowne will become a monument to the city's decision processes - for good with principled fair and community-building processes, or for ill with city-dividing politics and influence.
I applaud Delcan's voluntary withdrawal from the city-led transportation study, which was intended to provide an independent assessment of the study Delcan itself did for the developers. What were city staff thinking, in this deservedly controversial issue, by asking the same people to vet the study they themselves did for the developers? The processes of decision, contract awarding and consultation were already tainted. This lack of judgment by city staff about how to arrive at responsibly independent information and advice is remarkable. I mean bad.
While I appreciate Councillor Hume's effort to find a way through a bad situation by designing for just part of the site, it doesn't answer the fundamental issue of the pre-emptive sole sourcing of a public space for private benefit, to Ottawa citizens' loss of control and Ottawa taxpayers taking on costs and risk. Further, from a professional urban design standpoint, the terms of reference for this design exercise are still not clear about the relation of the part of Lansdowne Park to the whole, nor about the relation of Lansdowne Park as a whole to its surrounding urban living spaces.
It has been encouraging to see people with the professional qualifications of George Dark and Barry Hobin turning their attention to this situation. However, like Delcan, they are also probably in a position where their ability to exercise their full professional design skills and advise on a major iconic public urban site are compromised - by the city's limited terms of reference for the design study, and possibly by the developer pushing ahead out of turn with designing the most controversial and determining parts of the site.
Tim Lash
Ottawa
“The strain of the process shows in recent articles in Ottawa’s main newspaper, The Citizen:
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/names+Lansdowne+panel/2443671/story.html
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Design+teams+already+lining/2529547/story.html
“http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Ottawa+firms+give+Lansdowne+miss/2552667/story.html
“It seems the closer people are to the process, the less comfortable they are with it. Not one of the 21 design firms expressing interest in bidding is from the Ottawa region. Architecture firms here may be refraining out of professional integrity. The Regional Society’s October 2009 position paper on Lansdowne is available at http://www.orsa.ca/ The seven architects of the City's urban design review panel resigned together in December 2009.
“A community leader close to it recounts the step by step story up to November 2009 in two blog entries:
“http://lookintolansdowne.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-up.html
“http://lookintolansdowne.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching-uppart-2.html”
Here is Tim’s input to the on-line survey:
Subject: Input to City's online survey on design for Lansdowne Park
1. What would you, your family and friends like to do in a new urban park at Lansdowne?
a. Do and watch amateur and semi-organized sports and activities (predominantly city-wide community and civic).
b. Green space - real natural surfaces, open and vegetated.
c. Farmer's market
d. Enjoy the canal and related activities or extensions
e. Enjoy and learn about heritage of Lansdowne architecture and community activities.
f. Large special civic events and ceremonies.
g. Trade shows, if the site is viable for them.
h. Enjoy Lansdowne as an inviting feature of Bank Street - as Central Park is a loved amenity in New York for those along its bordering avenues.
i. Experience the whole and its components as carriers of the best in new environmental and activity design.
j. No new residential in the bounds of the whole park, unless it is for public purposes, e.g. some forms of public residential. No new independent retail or commercial hotel.
2. What elements or features do you think the new park should include?
Special natural pavilion along Bank Street. Large mature trees (e.g. maple spp., oak, pine), two rows deep, along the Bank street side of the park - making a leafy pavilion of green for all to enjoy, whether moving along Bank, or using this street-front apron of Lansdowne Park as an approach to the larger public space of the park - whether or not a plan for retail goes ahead (In preference, it should not become retail; good-sized public space in the heart of the city is too valuable as such. The whole site should remain public, for publicly-determined public use.). This leafy wall will provide a welcome block-long contrast to the steady line of "main-street" fronts north and south of it. It will valorize and enhance the beautiful bridge over the canal and the walkways to and from it. It will give growing space for stately trees taller than the City can allow in most streets that conflict with overhead lines, providing welcome arboreal biodiversity.
Good lighting. Emphasize environmental and social sustainability in design. This includes well-targeted activity lighting, without light pollution within or beyond the park boundaries, or further loss of night sky due to spilled light or illuminated high-intensity signage and advertising.
Good sunlight. Don't lose afternoon sunshine to blockage and artificial shadow from looming structures. This is a likely downside to the retail, residential and hotel as drawn by project proponents. (Note how the US embassy cut off afternoon from the west of Byward Market.)
3. Do you have other comments that could help the designers come up with a plan that would make this urban park a unique and special place within the City?
a. Value the urban interface. Bank St side of the Park as above, from Holmwood to the canal.
b. Integrated whole design. A key principle for making any large public facility a success and a design to celebrate is BOTH that its parts be fully integrated within its bounds, AND that it be integrated with its surroundings, fitting into overall plans so it supports (A) local neighborhood and borough aspirations, as well as (B) city-wide functions and enabling facilities such as transportation systems.
c. Private is subsidiary to public. Start with a clear unified public purpose or set of purposes for the Park as a whole; the design must be for the whole at once, based on a coherent and publicly accepted purpose, to avoid piecemeal fragmentation, and to achieve harmony of elements that nestle together or complement each other at different scales and with functions that flow together well. Simply having consistent visual motifs or signage on separately designed components, for example, will not provide a worthy unique and special place within Canada's capital. The current broken-up process, unclear purposes and phasing is unlikely to encourage a coherent whole for this public space. It may not even allow it, if the Lansdowne Live developers are already starting on architectural design for the commercial parts first. The design of any private components must be secondary and complementary to the overall public design.
d. Manage risk of bad design sequence. Do not privilege any private design that jumps the gun. Tell the developers to wait until the purpose and master plan are set, and ensure they know that any advance expenses at this time are at their own risk, not at the risk of Ottawa citizens, and will not prejudice open public decision on the whole.
e. This advice is wholly offered with good will and is sincerely intended for the betterment of Lansdowne Park for the whole city. However, with regret, I offer it under protest. The yanking of the original international design competition, and the imposition of a single-source privatization bid to which all due considerations became secondary, was a bad thing.
The best step now would be to set that Lansdowne Live initiative aside for the moment, and restore an uncompromised design competition. The "urgent" deadlines for decision are illusory and artificial, and mean little compared to the length and significance of what will now be done to make Lansdowne Park a wonderful part of Ottawa or a miserable one. What is built at Lansdowne will become a monument to the city's decision processes - for good with principled fair and community-building processes, or for ill with city-dividing politics and influence.
I applaud Delcan's voluntary withdrawal from the city-led transportation study, which was intended to provide an independent assessment of the study Delcan itself did for the developers. What were city staff thinking, in this deservedly controversial issue, by asking the same people to vet the study they themselves did for the developers? The processes of decision, contract awarding and consultation were already tainted. This lack of judgment by city staff about how to arrive at responsibly independent information and advice is remarkable. I mean bad.
While I appreciate Councillor Hume's effort to find a way through a bad situation by designing for just part of the site, it doesn't answer the fundamental issue of the pre-emptive sole sourcing of a public space for private benefit, to Ottawa citizens' loss of control and Ottawa taxpayers taking on costs and risk. Further, from a professional urban design standpoint, the terms of reference for this design exercise are still not clear about the relation of the part of Lansdowne Park to the whole, nor about the relation of Lansdowne Park as a whole to its surrounding urban living spaces.
It has been encouraging to see people with the professional qualifications of George Dark and Barry Hobin turning their attention to this situation. However, like Delcan, they are also probably in a position where their ability to exercise their full professional design skills and advise on a major iconic public urban site are compromised - by the city's limited terms of reference for the design study, and possibly by the developer pushing ahead out of turn with designing the most controversial and determining parts of the site.
Tim Lash
Ottawa
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
A very interesting committee meeting
Yesterday (Feb 8, 2010) at City Hall there was a joint meeting of the Transportation and Transit committees to to consider the Lansdowne Transportation Impact and Assessment Study and Transportation Demand Management Plan. Committee debate focussed on two main issues: the terms of reference for the work and the sole sourcing of a major part of the work to Delcan. One hopes that lessons learned from this debate will be applied to other city projects in the community where I live and elsewhere across the city.
Several public delegations commented on the terms of reference and on the contracting arrangement and there was considerable discussion between presenters, councillors and city staff. Debate over possible conflict of interest if Delcan was selected to perform the study, revealed that the contractor would be required to review its own work; work undertaken in previous studies for which Delcan was contracted by Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG).
Several motions, including one that would require the city to choose a consultant without prior connection with the project, were debated. Voting on this was preempted when Delcan Vice President, Ron Jack, was allowed to address the committee and elected to withdraw Delcan’s participation in the project. It was also agreed that work undertaken by the selected contractor would be subject to critical overview by an independent contractor.
Much of the debate focused on the terms of reference for the study and planning activity. Several of the presenters expressed concern about the public consultation process in earlier phases of this work. It was agreed that proactive public involvement was needed and specific steps will now be incorporated to:
- Ensure that the public is notified well in advance of public meetings;
- Relevant documentation will be made available for public review well ahead of meetings;
- Minutes of meetings with the public will be provided; and
- Adequate time will be provided to enable public delegations to submit comments and suggestions to the city.
Interestingly lack of timely public involvement is major concern surrounding the OC Transpo Bus Garage currently under construction an Industrial Avenue. If effective communications and timely public involvement had been facilitated by the city, many of the community and city-wide concerns that are only now being raised could have been resolved before construction began. I am sure that there a many other project across the city that would also benefit from this kind of foresight. The process needs to be much more open and transparent.
Also, one wonders if Delcan should have been allowed to participate in detailed design of the hospital link section of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC) given their role for many years in the environmental assessment for this roadway. Granted Delcan was contracted directly by the city for all of this work, but there was no independent review of work undertaken during the EA process before design work commenced.
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