The document discusses challenges facing auto-dependent urban development and opportunities for more sustainable urban planning approaches. It notes that cities are transforming to become more walkable, mixed-use, and transit-oriented in response to issues like climate change, congestion, and public health. Examples are given of cities redesigning streets and neighborhoods to better support walking, cycling, and transit use over driving. The importance of strategic vision, collaboration, and empowering cities to make sustainable paradigm shifts is emphasized.

1. Ontario Assoication of Landscape Architects AGM
Markham City Hall
March 23, 2012
City Building:
A New Convergence
Ken Greenberg
Greenberg Consultants, Inc.

2. Eric Pedersen 1960 - 2012

4. From feet and two wheels to four wheels……..
……and beyond

5. It seemed like such a great idea at the time
1939 World’s Fair in NY – General Motors makes its pitch Interstate Highways

6. …that it shaped a whole new way of living

7. But unfortunately the reality is not quite like the dream…..

8. and ultimately tests to failure….
we pollute the atmosphere
and induce climate change
and Peak Oil arrives
As the roads quickly fill up
compromise our health

9. In 2 generations the urban world is transformeda walk out of the city, pretty much any city
Just take

10. From lively active sidewalks …to forlorn arteries lined with parking lots

11. These two worlds are experiencing parallel and complementary challenges

12. Battle lines are drawn: Jacobs vs. Moses

13. and ultimately people start to vote with their feet
….as walkable urban places are seen by many to provide a more satisfying
future and shared public spaces become a key to economic vitality

14. provoking a great reversal
1970 2005
Average Individual Income, City of Toronto

15. with a corresponding gradation of auto dependence
Walking Driving
Cycling Transit

16. A pattern of living and
working emerges that is
ultimately not sustainable
with dramatic impacts on
congestion
Source: MTO, GO Transit, Globe and Mail

17. AUTOPIA DEAD MALLS
High Gas Prices Worsening the Housing Bust–But Not Where Malls are Dying in America
Downtown From the Wall Street Journal
By Marty Jerome By Kellvyn Brown , 05-22-09
April 24, 2008 |
Here’s a real-estate tip: Buy downtown. In many cities, prices
have already bottomed out and are holding steady–or nudging
up. The same can’t be said for the suburbs. In fact, commute
times to downtown areas are turning out to be a direct
predictor of how far home prices have fallen–and how far off a
recovery still is. The longer the commute, the bigger the drop.
High gas prices alone don’t explain why many people are and cracks appear in the auto
moving closer to work. But they’re giving many Americans a dependent paradigm
painful reminder that long commutes carry aggravations that
ultimately didn’t justify saving money on a house: the weeks
spent every year sitting in snarled traffic, the mortal peril of
congested freeways, the maintenance and fast depreciation of
your car, and so forth.

18. The Good (City) Life: Why New York's Life Expectancy Is the Highest in
the Nation
Nona Wilils Arononowitz
…. The latest data from the Bureau of Vital Statistics shows New York City…has the
highest life expectancy in the country. Babies born in 2009 can expect to live a record
80.6 years. That's almost three years longer than a decade ago, and more than two
years longer than the current national average of 78.2 years.
First, we don't spend our entire lives in cars. We walk everywhere. With narrow
streets, an abundance of stores, and a dearth of parking, the city is practically
designed to make us walk. Before we get on the subway, we walk there, and after we
arrive at our stop, we climb numerous flights of stairs.
Our old people also have it much better than the elderly in bucolic settings. The
essentials—food, medicine, laundromats, parks—are usually mere blocks from their
homes. The hospital is likely a shorter distance away, too. High population density
means a plethora of neighbors who can look after each other. When people live on
top of each other, the likelihood of social isolation plummets—and the age of death
rises. Life expectancy isn't the whole story—just because someone is old doesn't
mean they're able to live a pleasurable and fulfilling life. But cities like New York
tend to provide that, too. There's something to be said for mental stimulation, which
New York City delivers in droves. Studies have shown that cultural attractions getting
people out of the house and exercising their brains elongate life. So do friends. So,
apparently, do random people with crazy outfits walking down the street. The more
variety in one's daily life, the more life is, literally, worth living.
Despite the caveats, this newest data makes it clear: It's high time for the myth of
the “urban health penalty” to die out.

20. These challenges (and others) are immense but cities, the most
remarkable of human creations and the great synthesizers, have an
incredible capacity to learn, to recover, and to adapt
MAKING THE PARADIGM SHIFT - unlearning bad habits, new tools, teams and ways of working
Taking a method on the road to Saint Paul – the Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development Framework
Making mixed-use, compact, dense, walkable places

21. Learning that ‘sustainability’ is not a category but a way of synthesizing and connecting
‘Symbiocity’ Finding the essential DNA to create new places

22. Recycling obsolescent lands and resources

23. Recognizing that quality of life is a key economic asset

24. Developing the critical ability to assemble the pieces

25. Adaptive Re-use
Warehouse Districts
THE KINGS
Layering on What Exists

26. Adding to the richness and synergy

27. Making each chess piece count

28. Appreciating the great value of a shared strategic vision

29. Maintaining a strategic overview of transforming moves

30. Drilling down

31. Re-tooling our infrastructure while revising our priorities for city streets
Experiencing New York in a whole new way - Broadway from 23rd Street to Columbus Circle at 59th Street

32. …and expanding the range of ways to get around

33. Back to the future in unexpected ways
Motor Car Laws are Separate Auto Paths
badly needed may be the answer!

34. New designs appear for sharing the rights-0f-way into “complete streets”

35. Including re-allocating space in existing rights-of-way

36. Making room for and developing respect for all users
As priorities reverse again….

37. Creating a world where kids can ride their bikes to school again
understanding that active transportation contributes to public health

38. Car free Sundays in the Emperor’s Palace

39. Transformations of urban and suburban environments – 1980’s and 2011
St. Lawrence Historic District Bank Street Ottawa

40. Transit as the armature of urban growth

41. Making new neighbourhoods with transit priority, fine-grained pedestrian and cycle networks
Fine-grained pedestrian and cycle networks
Fine-grained pedestrian and cycle networks

42. Responding to shifts in how existing streets are actually used

43. In city after city streets redesigned – King Street in Kitchener , St. Catherine in Montreal,
Granville in Vancouver, Bank Street in Ottawa, Yonge Street and John Street in Toronto

44. Including temporary pedestrian takeovers of city streets – sharing in time

45. 104th Street Edmonton

46. Y0nge Street, Toronto

47. Re-learning how to make dense and diverse cities work for all ages and abilities

48. But it’s not just how dense you make it; it’s how you make it dense!

49. Finding ways to achieve higher levels of mix and overlap in new projects
Kendall Square in Cambridge and pedestrian street in Malmo

50. Universities and Colleges as city builders

51. Recovering from errors
Regent Park public housing project rebuilt as an new mixed-use mixed income neighbourhood

52. Making room for diversity and initiative: tapping the ingenuity of new arrivals -
allowing the city to evolve
The incubation of businesses for new immigrant communities now happens in the suburban strip mall

53. Dealing with the powerful imperatives of nature
Integratng flood proofing with city building - an urban estuary
where the Don River enters Toronto Harbour
Recovering from the disastrous mudslide
on the Venezuelan coast

54. Co-existence – the Intertwining of the urban and the natural

55. Seeing the big picture; forging connections to great natural features

56. Responding to the irresistible urge to get to the water’s edge

57. The city becomes its own year round resort

58. Public Space as the life blood of social communities

59. The essential common ground in a city of new arrivals

60. And yet under severe stress just when it most needed

61. New roles for civil society in the breach

62. The big design and development project of the next 50 years:
Retrofitting suburban infrastructure

63. Suburban Transformations
Mississauga - A “Vibrant Downtown” is one of 8 themes in the city’s
Strategic Plan for next millennium

64. Marrying land use, transit investment and urban form – Downtown 2021

65. Public and private convergence to make it mixed, compact and walkable
Colonizing the parking lots in Mississauga from a Farmers
Market to the creation of a new downtown nieighbourhood

69. A Regional Focus – Support from 3 interlocking Provincial Plans for the GTHA
“Greater Toronto Area Greenbelt” “Places to Grow”
“The Big Move”

70. Putting it all together - trailblazing in cities that are leading the way
Boston/Cambridge, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris

71. There is an overwhelming case for empowering cities
Cities hold the key to a more sustainable future
Need to make the paradigm shift there - we have no better options
Success goes to those cities that make the transition
We need to make the critical changes together in democratic settings
We need to create a new political space that reflects how we actually live in cities