[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Top right of image shows the 28 acres of forest to be paved over"][/caption] The following letter was sent to us by Spacing Ottawa reader Jason Garlough, who is a member of City of Ottawa’s Forests and Greenspace Advisory Committee: "On Wednesday, September 1st 2010 the City’s Committee of Adjustment will be considering an application for a “Minor Variance” that would allow more than 28 acres of existing forest in the Greenbelt to be destroyed and replaced with a 2,000 car parking lot and Exhibition Hall. 

Editor's note: Many commentators have noted that the decision by Mayor O'Brien to run again in this fall's municipal elections means that he can campaign by claiming two significant achievements: spearheading the decision to build an East-West LRT that includes a downtown tunnel, and backing the proposal to redevelop Lansdowne Park. So far, the two major projects have been presented as "stand alone"; here Spacing Ottawa contributor Dwight Williams suggests a way to link them. In the months since the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) brought forth their proposal for redeveloping Lansdowne Park, ...

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="598" caption="Crane looming over Byron: are there more to come?"][/caption] Editor's note: the following article is cross-posted from Spacing Ottawa contributor Chris Henschel's personal blog, Bestboro, Best Wellington My wife Allegra and I wrote a series of posts for SpacingOttawa.ca that chronicled our involvment in a condo development on Richmond Road, behind our house. The project ended up falling through, but the experience of working with the developer was largely positive. Though I believe that the City's height restrictions are too liberal (especially for the north side of a 'traditional mainstreet'), the developer was more or less happy to stay within City bylaws, with minor variances. He was also a nice guy and was listening to what people were saying: we didn't like parking at the back, so he put it all underground; we didn't want an access off a dead-end sidestreet, so he proposed moving it to Wellington. Economic concerns doomed the project. Residents were relieved. But our ongoing experience with the redevelopment of the Soeurs de la Visitation Convent currently being proposed by Ashcroft Homes inspires a more sober perspective: what might happen behind us if this style of developer comes knocking. Ashcroft's proposal for the Convent site doubles the permitted density and height prescribed in the City's Official Plan and Secondary Plan. It crowds and overbears the historic convent building. It cuts a private access road through the Byron Linear Park. It has no useful public space and it threatens to gridlock traffic on Richmond Road (the City's figures show that the proposal would push the neighbourhood to within a breath of its 2031 density targets). The residents on surrounding streets that were invited to pre-consultations on the proposal see no trace of their input. The developer has filed with the Ontario Superior Court to quash a recommendation for heritage designation of the whole property that could strengthen the City's hand when reviewing the plan.

View Larger Map Listening to the repetitive clanging of machines boring through bedrock it can seem that the condo developments along Richmond and Wellington Roads are never-ending. But along with the noise and dust, urban infill can also mean exciting possibilities, and can be used as a creative opportunity for changes within a community. Most recently, development options are being proposed for the Soeurs de la Visitation convent at 114 Richmond Road. This large, cloistered, very green looking area stretches from Richmond Road to Byron Avenue and is a mystery to local residents who have only air photos and glances at buildings and hundred year old trees to identify the heritage and natural value of the site. Immediately adjacent to the site is Hilson Public School with its treeless schoolyard separated from busy Richmond Road by a chain link fence. These two properties, side by side, green space and concrete. According to the current proposal the green space will be developed and the concrete will continue to be a children’s playground. Imagine if this could be different.

As condo after condo is planned in the Wellington West neighbourhood, intensification is seen as an inevitable by many local citizens. City of Ottawa planners and councilors promote intensification all the while musing on the increased tax base a new seven storey condo will provide. Citizens begrudgingly accept that the new condo development, whether in their backyard, on their street, or in their neighbourhood will increase traffic but they also hope that the new developments may encourage new businesses and increase public transit and community services. But what really is driving this move to intensify our cities? The promotion of urban intensification, or densification or infill as it is otherwise known, can be attributed in part to the popularization of the urban planning theory of Smart Growth. Smart Growth theory promotes the construction and reconstruction of compact communities in the center of the city, as a more sustainable approach than continuing urban sprawl. Smart growth communities are transit oriented, bicycle and pedestrian friendly and promote local jobs and services.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="The Rideau river near the Herzberg Building, Carleton University"][/caption] Every five years or so, Carleton University revisits its master plan. The most recent draft edition was released in September 2009. Though the campus has long failed to take advantage of its spectacular setting, its administrators have always understood the power of the site, as most brochure shots of the institution are traditionally taken from the air. From this perspective you get a sense of the way Carleton relates to both the Rideau River and the Rideau Canal. On the ground the visual effect is much different. The site is  heavily insulated with ring roads and parkways which separate the campus from its natural setting. There have been sporadic attempts to connect portions of the campus to the surrounding waterways, but in the end, the powers-that-be have always judged that the ring road was of more importance than, for example, allowing the Loeb Building to reach out to the banks of the Rideau River.

Editor's note: an earlier version of this post appeared in Spacing Ottawa contributor Dave McClelland's Ottawa Project blog Ottawa’s Union Station: it’s a majestic building, a half-scale replica of New York City’s old Penn Station, and painfully underused. Since 1966, when the National Capital Commission removed rail from downtown, the building has served as a government conference centre, rather than a hub for rail travelers. However, if mayor Larry O'Brien isn't just floating the idea for the fun it, it seems that trains might just return to Union Station, in the form of a downtown stop on the new light rail system—taking the place of the Rideau/Sussex station in the LRT proposal. As its stands right now, the interior of Union Station is unknown to most Ottawans. An occasional conference centre for First Minister's meetings and other high-level discussions, its grand hall and spacious passageways are usually roped off to the citizens who walk past it each day. But as the main hall of a transit station, commuters would have cause to use the public space on a daily basis.