Now that Toronto is getting serious about actually implementing its cycling strategy, it is a good time, as Now writer Paul Terfenko suggests to begin implementing separated bike. While those painted lines in existing lanes are quite handy, they are constantly being invaded by trucks, parked cars, and most annoyingly cop cars stopping for coffee. Moreover, they do little to make me feel safer...
NOW Magazine // News // Amicable separation
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vendredi 29 mai 2009
mardi 26 mai 2009
Revisiting Victory Homes
The suburban project took on anew form and historical significance following WWII. The influx of workers, veterans and farmers immediately following the war exacerbated the wartime housing shortage. The housing shortage during and after WWII led to the first direct federal involvement in house-building. A number of institutions are created to house returning veterans who demanded housing. In 1941, Wartime Housing Limited (WHL) and Wartime Housing Corporation (WHC) were created under auspices of the War Measures Act. The 1942 Veterans’ Land Act, designed to enable agricultural settlement for returning veterans, became more popular as a way of acquiring suburban homes.
The wartime housing constructed by were of a simple minimalist design. These modest one and a half story bungalows with pitched roofs with steeply pitched roofs, though also included advanced technology and kitchens, bath etc. These first rented at very modest prices can still be seen in many cities, such as the Ottawa's postwar suburb of Clarington..
In 1944, the Advisory Committee on Reconstruction (Curtis Committee) called for government to be involved in the housing for low-income families. However, fairly strong hostility to public housing from local governments and provincial governments prevented the more ambitious proposals for non-market housing. Moreover, rival bureaucracies such as the National Housing Administration (NHA) were suspicious that the WHL would overstep its mandate and compete with it and private industry. They were equally fearful that the units would reduce property values and become slums if not torn down after the war. (Wade, 1994: 125)
As a result of cabinet level and bureaucratic resistance to non-profit housing, market-oriented approaches to housing needs would soon became the norm (Bacher, 1993). Housing policy would come to favour home ownership by every family. For example, CMHC officials devoted much of their time to promote the house-building industry. Efforts include ensuring access to mortgage capitals, low interest rates, and increasing the allowed term of mortgages form 15-20-25-35-and until recently up to 40 percent.
During this period, Canadians were transformed from a nation of tenants to a nation of homeowners. From 1951-1961 home ownership from 30 to 54% in metropolitan census areas. While the postwar suburbs were constructed at great speed, they were deliberately planned to maximize consumption of mass produced goods and minimize the responsibility of developers to create public space and public services.
vendredi 15 mai 2009
Ottawa’s Urban Growth Machine
In 1961, just around the time Jane Jacobs was writing her influential book on the death and life of the great American city, Yale Professor Robert Dahl was writing a book on urban governance. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. A case study of political power and representation in New Haven, Connecticut, Dahl book looked systematically at political power, economic influence to evaluate who governs the city of New Haven, and how urban governance can be understood.
The simple question of who governs remains pertinent today as we evaluate the tools and policies of urban planning. How for example are land use decisions made? How does the process of comprehensive planning integrate different goals and motivations? How are stakeholders given a stake in decision-making? What are the limits to this decision-making process?
The Urban Growth Machine (UGM) thesis, which developed from these early interventions, maintains that coalitions of land-based elites drive urban politics to expand the local economy and the accumulation of wealth. According to this analysis the rentier-class ensures support for the project of continued growth by creating community solidarity on the collective benefit of growth and expansion. Land-based interest and the day-to-day actions of urban elites figures prominently in UGM provides an agency-centered understanding of the power relations and resources underpinning the formation and development of urban places and systems.
Recent debates over the expansion of Ottawa’s urban boundary is symptomatic of the formation of coalitions around urban growth. As the City of Ottawa renews and updates its official plan, local developers and lawyers are lobbying to have the boundary expanded so that their lands can be developed for residential use. In their lobbying efforts they have attempted to include in their analysis the cost of housing, arguing that is the urban boundary is not expanded, then home ownership would become unaffordable to many residents. Of course, as the UGM thesis suggests, this is all about creating coalitions, but the real goal of the development industry is to ensure adequate lands for continued greenfield development.
Why is this so important? Planning decisions around sewage, roads, transit, parks, creation of commercial districts, former industrial spaces can dramatically increase the value of land. Most of the profit for land developers is captured in the rezoning, subdividing and servicing of raw land. The extension of water and sewer into smaller lots multiplies the value of the original parcel. Almost all of the developers profit comes in the planning phase and municipal politicians create wealth through land use planning, servicing and subdivision: either on green field sites, or by rezoning current sites to allow for higher building height or density. In fact, profits earned in the planning approval processes are much higher than in the actual construction of homes and high-rise units
However local community and environmental groups have argued that such an approach will only perpetuate unsound planning decisions of the past and continue to worsen the problems of sprawl, pollution, and traffic. Not only have they promoted a more dense and environmentally sound (day we say “smart”) planning approach, but, Ecology Ottawa, a local group battling sprawl and promoting sustainability, has demonstrated to what extent the UGM is at play by highlighting the relationship between developers and zoning decisions. In discussing a revealing report looking at the contributions of developers to local councilors, Ecology Ottawa spokesperson argues the following:
“It seems large developers and their interests are being put first—ahead of the broader public interest—in key decisions about how our city will grow. What is most revealing about this report, however, is how widespread the acceptance of political contributions from these influential vested interests is.”
All of this debate shows how the UGR theory, as an agency centered theory, takes into the struggles over local hegemony and counter-coalitions organized around environmental and redistributive concerns. At times, these interests will contend and sometimes over-power the urban growth machine. In short, UGR explains a politics of locality based the rearrangement of local interests into coalitions where various interests compete and co-operate depending on the development and economic initiative.
The simple question of who governs remains pertinent today as we evaluate the tools and policies of urban planning. How for example are land use decisions made? How does the process of comprehensive planning integrate different goals and motivations? How are stakeholders given a stake in decision-making? What are the limits to this decision-making process?
The Urban Growth Machine (UGM) thesis, which developed from these early interventions, maintains that coalitions of land-based elites drive urban politics to expand the local economy and the accumulation of wealth. According to this analysis the rentier-class ensures support for the project of continued growth by creating community solidarity on the collective benefit of growth and expansion. Land-based interest and the day-to-day actions of urban elites figures prominently in UGM provides an agency-centered understanding of the power relations and resources underpinning the formation and development of urban places and systems.
Recent debates over the expansion of Ottawa’s urban boundary is symptomatic of the formation of coalitions around urban growth. As the City of Ottawa renews and updates its official plan, local developers and lawyers are lobbying to have the boundary expanded so that their lands can be developed for residential use. In their lobbying efforts they have attempted to include in their analysis the cost of housing, arguing that is the urban boundary is not expanded, then home ownership would become unaffordable to many residents. Of course, as the UGM thesis suggests, this is all about creating coalitions, but the real goal of the development industry is to ensure adequate lands for continued greenfield development.
Why is this so important? Planning decisions around sewage, roads, transit, parks, creation of commercial districts, former industrial spaces can dramatically increase the value of land. Most of the profit for land developers is captured in the rezoning, subdividing and servicing of raw land. The extension of water and sewer into smaller lots multiplies the value of the original parcel. Almost all of the developers profit comes in the planning phase and municipal politicians create wealth through land use planning, servicing and subdivision: either on green field sites, or by rezoning current sites to allow for higher building height or density. In fact, profits earned in the planning approval processes are much higher than in the actual construction of homes and high-rise units
However local community and environmental groups have argued that such an approach will only perpetuate unsound planning decisions of the past and continue to worsen the problems of sprawl, pollution, and traffic. Not only have they promoted a more dense and environmentally sound (day we say “smart”) planning approach, but, Ecology Ottawa, a local group battling sprawl and promoting sustainability, has demonstrated to what extent the UGM is at play by highlighting the relationship between developers and zoning decisions. In discussing a revealing report looking at the contributions of developers to local councilors, Ecology Ottawa spokesperson argues the following:
“It seems large developers and their interests are being put first—ahead of the broader public interest—in key decisions about how our city will grow. What is most revealing about this report, however, is how widespread the acceptance of political contributions from these influential vested interests is.”
All of this debate shows how the UGR theory, as an agency centered theory, takes into the struggles over local hegemony and counter-coalitions organized around environmental and redistributive concerns. At times, these interests will contend and sometimes over-power the urban growth machine. In short, UGR explains a politics of locality based the rearrangement of local interests into coalitions where various interests compete and co-operate depending on the development and economic initiative.
lundi 11 mai 2009
P3’s @ Landsdowne Live
As Larry 0’s trial was nearing, a number of pretenders to began to position themselves for the crown, in case zero-means-zero fell on his sword. Among the pretenders Rick Chiarelli advanced a plan for the redevelopment of Landsdowne Park that would highlight his consensus making ability. Chiarelli’s motion gave the promoters of “Landsdowne Live” a 60 day exclusive window to negotiate with the City. Most of the central city councilors voted against the motion, citing amongst other things the questionable ethics of accepting a non-solicited bid, and giving preferential treatment to once group.
Now anyone familiar with Landsdowne will not argue that something has to happen with the acres or Parking lot that surround the stadium and ruin this choice site along the Rideau Canal.
Most also agree that the historic features such as Aberdeen Pavillion should be preserved in any development and that some sort of sports facility should be retained.
However, most disagree with the scale and style of the redevelopment, especially in reference to the now condemned and partially destroyed stadium. The “Landsdowne Live” plan proposes a new stadium to host a new CFL franchise (Rough Riders III), a hotel complex, an aquarium, and some large-scale retail space. The promoters are among the heavy hitters in the development game and have surely done their homework on the profitability of their venture. However, what makes this idea dubious is the redevelopment depends on the P3 model.
As others have noted, urban renewal projects, although they adhere neoliberal principles of market-driven development have come to rely and in fact depend on public investment to orchestrate development. The problem is not that the public sector is involved in such projects but that they willingly seed control to the private partner and in effect download the risk or failure to the public sector while keeping the benefits of any development to themselves. At the same time they lessen the possibility for public contestation of the urban renewal project. In short P3 are premised on opaque governance practices, and shaky finances. So when City Councillor Clive Doucet yells loudly (and ineffectively) in the wilderness about the sham process he is right. We should question the process under which the redevelopment is being proposed, as well as the motives of the developers.
Plus, how many games are in a CFL season anyways: 9? Why not build something that might actually get used many more days a year, like an amateur soccer complex...
Update on Murk II: The Trial of Larry 0
vendredi 9 janvier 2009
Ottawa's Transit Strike: Part II
“The thing that’s so ironic, is we are stuck with what I call national Alzheimer’s disease. The general American public, through no fault of its own, but through the media—which is laughingly called, absurdly called, obscenely called—liberal media, which is a joke, of course. But the point is that because of that, day after day after day, putting down of labor organizations, or not mentioning them led to the children not knowing a thing about it.
How did the eight-hour day come into being? It began in Chicago and four guys got hanged for it—the Haymarket affair in 1886. What were they fighting for? The eight-hour day.
There’s no knowledge what the labor movement did for the lives of people. Social Security came out of the New Deal, and the minimum wage idea, and the idea of national health, these all came out of [labor]. And that’s all being dismantled by what we have now. And so part of it is not knowing the past. No past, therefore there is no present and no future.” Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel, the famous American DJ, writer and social historian, who chronicled first-hand experiences of workers in America, might have something to say to Ottawa commuters. First, I want to say that I sympathize with my friends who have to commute to work during the current transit strike. However, in the spirit of the late Studs, I ask them to hold back on their vitriolic reaction to the current labour impasse and to think about Studs question: How did the eight-hour day come into being? As they commute every so slowly to their eight-hour work day they religiously adhere to, they might ask why the transit drivers are so rigid in their demands for control of their work schedules and to curtail the power of transit managers to make them work split shifts which can stretch their work day for 12-16 hours for 8 hours pay. Would they accept the same work conditions? I doubt it and ask them to think about the larger social context and beyond easy reactionary hate for unions which brought them their 8 hour work-day.
How did the eight-hour day come into being? It began in Chicago and four guys got hanged for it—the Haymarket affair in 1886. What were they fighting for? The eight-hour day.
There’s no knowledge what the labor movement did for the lives of people. Social Security came out of the New Deal, and the minimum wage idea, and the idea of national health, these all came out of [labor]. And that’s all being dismantled by what we have now. And so part of it is not knowing the past. No past, therefore there is no present and no future.” Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel, the famous American DJ, writer and social historian, who chronicled first-hand experiences of workers in America, might have something to say to Ottawa commuters. First, I want to say that I sympathize with my friends who have to commute to work during the current transit strike. However, in the spirit of the late Studs, I ask them to hold back on their vitriolic reaction to the current labour impasse and to think about Studs question: How did the eight-hour day come into being? As they commute every so slowly to their eight-hour work day they religiously adhere to, they might ask why the transit drivers are so rigid in their demands for control of their work schedules and to curtail the power of transit managers to make them work split shifts which can stretch their work day for 12-16 hours for 8 hours pay. Would they accept the same work conditions? I doubt it and ask them to think about the larger social context and beyond easy reactionary hate for unions which brought them their 8 hour work-day.
mercredi 29 octobre 2008
Le Crisis
"We're surrounded by their credit lines,
and their payment plans,
with interest piled high.
Why do you think they fucking advertise,
it's because we'll make them rich,
while they ruin our lives"
Shout Out Out Out Out (2006)
Was Shout Out Out Out Out, not just saying this but much more? Sounds appropriate to the predatory lending practices now leading us into a recession...
jeudi 14 août 2008
Troubling the Keynesian-Neoliberal Periodization on the Flats
Recent interventions in the literature on neoliberalism have called on critical scholars to “appreciate both diversity and consistency across particular neoliberalizations” (Prudham, 2005: 15). This call to search for the “similarities among differences” of neoliberalism (Castree, 2005) can be used to trouble the complicated ways in which the lines between the Keynesian and neoliberal urbanism are blurred both forward and backward. To recall Ross (1996), the event-process of modernization has significant afterlives that looks backward and forward. Simultaneously, Keynesian impulses are reformulated into the neoliberal urban development projects and neoliberal characteristics back onto the Keynesian project.
The modernist urban planning practices of the postwar state dispossessed the residents of inner-city neighbourhoods, including those of LeBreton Flats, for the good of the nation. In a similar fashion neoliberal practices recolonized the Flats to celebrate the nations history of participation in just war. Meso-level state-led intervention shows evidence of ongoing discursive and material dispossession on the Flats. The NCCs violent expropriation in the 1960s was partially premised on increasing land-rent of a depressed neighbourhood. In the contemporary context, the NCCs ongoing interest in rent-extraction parallels its earlier intervention. Although no longer couched in the universalized modernist spirit, and the clean, proper, nuclear, family subject, the discursive construction of the national makes new allusions to proper subjectivity. The capital’s new wish image is oriented towards an internalization of nature as an image-commodity. History has been forgotten in the abstract container of the nation, yet a selective use of discursive (national) nature has been used to sell an urban revitalization. Nature is being brought into the process of capital accumulation according to the regulatory and governing features of the neoliberalization.
In both these periods, the acquisition and maintenance of proper property use is a guiding principle, perhaps not-surprisingly since private property guaranteed by the state is a foundation of (neo)liberalism, often targeted at dispossession of the least fortunate (McCarthy and Prudhan 2004). “The prevailing regime of property,” as Blomley (2004: 38) is a “dense and pungent set of social symbols, stories, and meanings” affects urban dwellers differentially; property owners have control, and can increase their wealth; renters cannot; women and racial minorities are often more likely to be disadvantaged (Blomley, 2004: 38). Most critically to this case, national identity maintains meanings and narratives of property ownership, and tells the story of how the land should be ordered.
Considering the case of LeBreton Flats this is an especially perceptive analysis. Through a diverse set of practices, set within common features and processes, urban planning in the national capital has centralized control within national agencies to exclude displace certain bodies from the national landscape. In the 1960s the concentrated power of the NCC, the NCPS and the NCPS was used to wash away the “slums” of LeBreon Flats, and to replace the “derelict home” with modernist office towers and fast moving traffic. This control over property regimes continues breaking the neoliberal line, although governance structures and practices have changed. National capital planning is now outsourced. “Governance-beyond-the-state,” and P3s now dominate the national management of “empty” properties, though the landscape is far from empty as it continues to evoke powerful meanings. The spaces of LeBreton Flats have been remodeled into a mutable space where subjects can interact intimately with the landscape rather than only gaze upon its modern wonders. The national subject creates their own experience through direct interaction with the national soil and narratives of nationhood on the grounds of the War Museum. In contrast, the discursive rhetoric of the Keynesian period prompted national subjectivity through central dispensation of film and urban planning ideas. The idea of the ideal subject was told to the audiences and members of the nation. A back and forth between each of these periods shows how the contemporary redevelopment of LeBreton Flats builds on and consolidates the massive intervention in 1962.
In the postwar period as huge city swaths lay ready for reconstruction, and critics wondered if “modernist planning was merely an aesthetic preference masquerading as social reform” (Klemek, 2004: 10). The same question might be asked today but in the aftermath of the attack on egalitarianism, asking instead if neoliberal planning is simply a green aesthetic, imbued with culture embourgeoisement masquerading as a “mixed-community.”
The modernist urban planning practices of the postwar state dispossessed the residents of inner-city neighbourhoods, including those of LeBreton Flats, for the good of the nation. In a similar fashion neoliberal practices recolonized the Flats to celebrate the nations history of participation in just war. Meso-level state-led intervention shows evidence of ongoing discursive and material dispossession on the Flats. The NCCs violent expropriation in the 1960s was partially premised on increasing land-rent of a depressed neighbourhood. In the contemporary context, the NCCs ongoing interest in rent-extraction parallels its earlier intervention. Although no longer couched in the universalized modernist spirit, and the clean, proper, nuclear, family subject, the discursive construction of the national makes new allusions to proper subjectivity. The capital’s new wish image is oriented towards an internalization of nature as an image-commodity. History has been forgotten in the abstract container of the nation, yet a selective use of discursive (national) nature has been used to sell an urban revitalization. Nature is being brought into the process of capital accumulation according to the regulatory and governing features of the neoliberalization.
In both these periods, the acquisition and maintenance of proper property use is a guiding principle, perhaps not-surprisingly since private property guaranteed by the state is a foundation of (neo)liberalism, often targeted at dispossession of the least fortunate (McCarthy and Prudhan 2004). “The prevailing regime of property,” as Blomley (2004: 38) is a “dense and pungent set of social symbols, stories, and meanings” affects urban dwellers differentially; property owners have control, and can increase their wealth; renters cannot; women and racial minorities are often more likely to be disadvantaged (Blomley, 2004: 38). Most critically to this case, national identity maintains meanings and narratives of property ownership, and tells the story of how the land should be ordered.
Considering the case of LeBreton Flats this is an especially perceptive analysis. Through a diverse set of practices, set within common features and processes, urban planning in the national capital has centralized control within national agencies to exclude displace certain bodies from the national landscape. In the 1960s the concentrated power of the NCC, the NCPS and the NCPS was used to wash away the “slums” of LeBreon Flats, and to replace the “derelict home” with modernist office towers and fast moving traffic. This control over property regimes continues breaking the neoliberal line, although governance structures and practices have changed. National capital planning is now outsourced. “Governance-beyond-the-state,” and P3s now dominate the national management of “empty” properties, though the landscape is far from empty as it continues to evoke powerful meanings. The spaces of LeBreton Flats have been remodeled into a mutable space where subjects can interact intimately with the landscape rather than only gaze upon its modern wonders. The national subject creates their own experience through direct interaction with the national soil and narratives of nationhood on the grounds of the War Museum. In contrast, the discursive rhetoric of the Keynesian period prompted national subjectivity through central dispensation of film and urban planning ideas. The idea of the ideal subject was told to the audiences and members of the nation. A back and forth between each of these periods shows how the contemporary redevelopment of LeBreton Flats builds on and consolidates the massive intervention in 1962.
In the postwar period as huge city swaths lay ready for reconstruction, and critics wondered if “modernist planning was merely an aesthetic preference masquerading as social reform” (Klemek, 2004: 10). The same question might be asked today but in the aftermath of the attack on egalitarianism, asking instead if neoliberal planning is simply a green aesthetic, imbued with culture embourgeoisement masquerading as a “mixed-community.”
jeudi 7 août 2008
Expropriation
"The LeBreton Flats expropriation and demolition created a considerable climate of uncertainty for the Dalhousie area. While the expropriation order included only the lands as far south as Primrose Street, there was little indication to property owners that land acquisition would stop there. Indeed, even to-day the “rumour mill” produces stories of imminent expropriation in the area adjacent to Primrose, perhaps as far south as Spruce Street. As a result, a small number of units are put on the market either to sell them or simply to test the prevailing real estate market."
Impact of LeBreton Flats on the Dalhousie Neighbourhood, DPA Consulting/NCC/CMHC, 1979, p. 27, COA.
vendredi 18 juillet 2008
Our Revanchist Mayor at it Again: Target Cyclists
Our ever so progressive OPS has renewed its fight on the segmentation of function on our city streets. Our Revanchist Mayor, his rural-right-wing-fringe henchmen, and our man in blue Vern White, and his 9% budget increase, are at it again. Just a short time after launching an attack on city pedestrians, the OPS has launched a month long program targeting city cyclists. The cops will be warning and ticketing cyclists riding on sidewalks. While I agree with the dangers of riding on the sidewalk, and the inconvenience to pedestrians, I fail to see how this is a priority for making cycling safer. In fact, zero deaths have ever been reported in cyclist pedestrian accidents in the city (if anywhere?). Should this really be the focus on city policing efforts to make our streets safer for non-automobile users? Hey Larry, how about creating an east-west bike lane, or fixing the damn curb in the middle the bike lane at the Percy and Chamberlain intersection, or frigin’ targeting those drivers always honkin’ and swearin’ at me for actually using the streets according to the rule of the Highway Traffic Act. It always drives me crazy when they target cyclist noting that we are regulated to have the same obligations under this act when in reality the rights as users are never enforced by the men in blue. Now there is a possible bike-friendly strategy.
This story really got me when I was also reading in today’s Toronto Star a story about the cops finally nabbing the notorious Igor of Queen Street West for bike theft in a quite and easy sting operation. Now for those unfamiliar with T.O., city bloggers and cyclist have long identified Igor as a crook and violent maniac bike shop owner (he actually physical assaulted a friend who tried to reclaim their stolen bike from his basement). For some reason he has always escaped scrutiny. So a big hoorah to T.O.’s cops for busting him. Mabye the cops will follow suit in Ottawa?
Photo: Women munitions workers of the Dominion Arsenals Ltd. plant in Québec city, bicycle in their home town of Sainte-Foy (1942, NALC, 1971-271 NPC)
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