Chinatown life

Chinatown arch takes shape

The Ottawa Chinatown Royal Arch has taken a huge step towards its final form with the addition of ceramic roof tiles imported from China.

Suddenly, instead of a scaffolding-hidden pile of concrete and forms, the beauty of the future arch is emerging.

While crews work on the roofs, other crew members are preparing to lay curbs and new paving for the sidewalk and road under the arch. The arch is significantly ahead of schedule. No 2 bus users may get their Somerset route back before the end of July!

There are more details at http://www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/.

Interprovincial transit opportunity to choose your mode

Prince of Wales rail bridge from Ottawa to Gatineau

Tuesday from 5.30 to 8.30 at City Hall (main floor) there will be a public display of the options for interprovincial transit between Ottawa and Gatineau.

Options include which mode of transit to use: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or LRT. Route options include connections via the Alexandra Bridge (or under it, in a tunnel under the river, and remember the tunnel under downtown Ottawa is already very deep down so this doesn't require a steep slope, and the Rideau station has been designed with this connection in mind); a west connection on the Prince of Wales Bridge or Chaudiere Bridge; and maybe connecting these two crossings to make a loop.

Mode: Ottawa is growing out of its BRT system and converting it to an LRT system including a downtown tunnel. Gatineau, smaller than Ottawa, is just building its Rapibus BRT which will last it 30 years until it too is converted to a LRT.

It just doesn't seem logical to me to opt for a BRT linking the two cities. The idea behind the tunnel is get the buses off the downtown streets (so the streets can be redeveloped and landscaped for pedestrians and cyclists), and this means getting the STO buses off the streets too.

And we don't want large BRT stations at LeBreton Flats or near the National Gallery to transfer passengers to the LRT. So, my choice for the mode is LRT for the loop. In Gatineau's small downtown, it is probably premature to run the LRT in a tunnel; I suggest it would be fine to run it on the surface for the next several decades where it would serve to animate the street life.

Route: in the west, either the Chaudiere crossing or the Prince of Wales Bridge will work. But since the LRT route will help intensify development, it makes the most sense to me to run it on the POW bridge so it services all of  LeBreton-Bayview redevelopment areas, and connects with the future North/South line along the O-Train corridor (which might extend right over to Gatineau on the POW). While a bit further than the Chaudiere, the POW bridge would be car-free so service would be faster. The already-planned Bayview Station has been designed to handle east-west and north-south traffic and all its transfers, permeatations and combinations.

I also don't think they would need to double track the Prince of Wales bridge at the beginning, five or seven minute scheduling should be possible even with a single track bridge. Indeed, it might be possible to initially run the whole loop only in one direction on one track, and later expand it to two ways on two tracks.

On the east side, it intrigues me that the LRT could run on the old Alexandra Bridge rather than in a tunnel under it. Of course, car traffic would be booted off, and the bridge would revert to its original rail function. It is sort of poetic justice that rail structures were converted to roads in the 50's and 60's and now they could be converted to LRT service*. And the views from the LRT would be fantastic from both bridges, which can be a great feature attracting ridership.

City hall is air conditioned, so its a great time to come down and tell the City and NCC what you want to see for the interprovincial transit connection.

If you can't get there, you can go to this web site and make your comments. If you are really lazy, you can just copy and paste the shortcut to this blog posting: www.http://interprovincial-transit-strategy.ca/

*expanding on this idea of converting rails to roads and back to rails, the parkway along the canal would be a great conversion back to surface LRT (streetcar service) which would include Lansdowne Park, the Glebe, Main Street, Ottawa South, to Billings.

Arty mainstreets

precast block awaiting its hole

Shown above is a precast foundation block for urban sculpture. When planted into a hole, only the top portion shows. Upon this plinth will be mounted civic art work. On Preston, these will be Italian-style columns. On West Wellie will be sculptural renditions of fire hydrants. The Preston art pieces will arrive mid-August, according to city officials supervising the final touches on the street.

precast block inserted in hole, surface pavers relaid 

I really look foreward to seeing these art pieces, as they will be the first of their type for an Ottawa main street, as far as I am aware. They are very different from the Bank Street bike racks, which are an artful rendition of a utility device. Clever. The west side sculptures coming this year will be sculptural art for its own sake. Two very different approaches, both valid, both enhancing the streetscape (we hope) and leading to more lively streets ... streets that are about more than just parking cars.

Unknown offence

There's a big hubabaloo in the Centre of the Universe (tm) about arrests without cause (just being in Toronto should have been enough cause for criminal prosecution).

Here in Ottawa, we have our own cryptic crimes (tm)  -- see sign above along the "virtual LRT line" (as bus rapid transit is now being rebranded in some cities).  What is the offence? The fine is known, and it indicates the city has its revenue enhancement priorities straight. Safety considerations seem to have been let fade away, however.

A hole grows in Westboro

The foundation/parking garage hole for the 101 Richmond condo.

City discovers flat sidewalks !

One of my major complaints about Ottawa city sidewalks is that they grovel and contort themselves for the convenience of motorists. They dip low at driveways, so motorists don't have to rise up to cross the sidwalk, but the pedestrian must go down slope then up slope. Some sidewalks end up looking like roller coasters. These are difficult to keep clear in winter, and every driveway dip turns into a salt and slush puddle or slippery ice surface all winter.

Honestly, the city couldn't have designed a worse sidewalk for pedestrians if their goal is to thwart any pedestrian movement at all.

A few years ago, they installed a bunch of sidewalks in the "toronto style", in which the curbside part of the sidewalk slopes at every driveway but the lawnside of the sidewalk doesn't. This design is equally awful: it puddles at driveways, and the slope is so steep (eg along Gladstone west of Preston) it is scarey to walk on winter or summer. Gotta serve those motorists!

I was pleasantly surprised to see the design shown above being installed on Athlone north of Scott. It is a style I associate with Nepean and suburban areas: the whole curb is sloped, so motorists have to really slow down to cross it and climb the six inch height in a six inch run. But the real treasure is on the sidewalk surface: its flat. No roller coaster. No dipsey doodle. No 10 degree sidewalk tilt. Seldom any puddles or maim-the-elderly-so-we-don't-have-to-pay-them-pension ice puddles.

I had thought the city boffins didn't like this design, not for its sidewalk charactertistics, or its motorists characteristics, but because of its legal implications: because the curb is sloped, there is no physical indication of where the legal curb cut or dip is, so driveways can be widened without planning permission.

For whatever reason, I am delighted to see it on Athlone and look foreward to seeing it elsewhere.

Just for the record, here is an example of the idiotic extremes the city now goes to to avoid motorists crossing the curb having to climb any slope: along Preston, the sidewalks dips even when it is 15' in from curb ...

Ed.Note: David Reevely over at the Citizen picks up this story and takes it on:

http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/greaterottawa/archive/2010/07/02/sidewalks-matter.aspx

Gardening in Centretown

This new garden was installed last week in front of a row house on Lisgar. The corrugated metal (sewer) pipe porch pillar catches the eye, follwed by the bright painted corrugated fence panel on the right. The similar panels on the left of the walk are painted black. The sidewalk is actually at right angles to the public sidewalk, but the boardwalk cover is angled slightly, which adds interest (and possibly, like the NCC stairs along the canal which are also at a diagonal, disorienting...).

The garden plantings are in the usual modern style of few plant types repeated in patterns. The architect who lives here has done a great job of making an interesting garden to watch whilst walking by.   It may take several minutes of observing the garden before noticing the door step has been raised, which contributes to the "different" look and feel.

I like this garden because much of the result comes from good design rather than buckets of money.

383 Albert, transit oriented parking requirements

The pictures above show the Claridge proposal for three residential (condo) towers in downtown Ottawa. As noted in a post a few days ago, they are to be built on the lot between the Crowne Plaza Hotel and 151 Bay condos. The current parking lot location abuts Barabarella's dancing establishment, which will remain after this project is built.

The two 28 storey and one 22 storey towers will have approx 481 apartments. They are located directly above the proposed west downtown LRT station which is under Albert Street. Perhaps those delighted looking ladies in the photomontage just exited the LRT and are headed towards Minto Place ...

The city rationalizes a big part of its LRT expenditure on intensified infill development around the stations. As part of this intense Transit-Oriented-Development (TOD) the plans call for high density and reduced parking.

Claridge is proposing to provide 365 residential parking spaces (365spaces/481units=75% parking). This is less than what developers usually provide for condos, for eg along Richmond Road, West Wellie, or Champagne Avenue they provide 113% (1.13spaces per unit). Better developers provide reserved prime spots for VirtuCar since each VirtuCar satisfies approximately 17 households, ie eliminates 17 parking stalls which cost developers approx $30k each to build (several developers I talked to said the 30k cost/price is cost recovery).  Claridge is also providing 241 bike parking spaces (50%) which I suspect is way too low.

So what does the City of Ottawa require as the MAXIMUM number of spaces the developer can provide for this Transit Oriented Development, so as to encourage people to walk and use transit?? Why ... the maximum number of spaces within 600m of a transit station is ... wait for it ... 722 spaces, or 150% parking. Think about that: the city's maximum number of spaces to encourage transit usage is HIGHER than developers want to provide or normally provide either in the downtown core or inner suburbs. Is our TOD policy as farcical as it looks? Makes me wonder what other marvellous things are in that policy.

Hintonburg wall mural

This new mural is facing the parking lot entrance to the Hintonburg Community Centre on West Wellie.

It has all the characteristics of a good location: blank block wall, facing a parking lot entrance and parking spaces, visible with great sight lines from the street.

In the foreground is the volunteer planted perennial garden recently installed by ... hintonburgers.

Fence me in...

This Albert / Bay Street building used to have a deocrative iron fence around its side garden. It was removed about 20 years ago, but this segment was left behind, because the trees have incorporated the fence into their trunks.

Cliff becomes hole

The view from Primrose of the lot beside the staircase up to Upper Lorne Place and the upper section of Primrose.

The former cliff becomes a squared-off hole, ready for footings.

Neighbours tell me there will be a 3 storey house, with entrance and parking garage off Upper Lorne and the house having secondary entrances off the staircase. That is similar to what was there a number of years ago, when the existing red house at the foot of the stairs had its main entrance on its second floor off a landing on the stairs.

Dubious new building

Double click on the picture to enlarge, and look for the horizontal "cracks" on the panels above the right-most garage door.

This view is from Laurier Avenue of the back of the new Export Canada building that faces Slater and O'Connor. These concrete panels are in various shades of dark gray. I don't know if they are supposed to show this much colour variation, or if they will age to a similar colour. But right now they are ... of dubious delight. And a bunch of the panels show horizontal "cracks" and scratches that are visible now and will probably be more visible with time. Not awe-inspiring.



Does anyone like these panels, and if so, why?

Downtown delights

A view down a downtown driveway to a patio and spiral staircase to an upstairs balcony.

Outside a fairly plain small office tower, a neat row of shrubs, fence, and bright colourful display of impatiens. Simply delightful.

Maclaren Tower - bye bye red brick

The two photos above are of the senior's residence on Maclaren street. The photos were taken from the small part of the apartment lot that opens onto Somerset, beside Hartman's grocery store.

New balcony railings were installed earlier. Now framing is being attached to the red brick tower to put a new skin on the building (and hopefully upgrade the insulation at the same time). Soon, the only brick visible will be on the inset balconies, and the traditional red brick residential look will become some sort of panel exterior.

This makes an interesting project for sidewalk superintendents.

Condo Development linked to LRT ? Will Claridge "play ball"?

The lot shown in the pictures below is bounded by Queen street on the right (north); Lyon in the foreground (east side); and Albert Street to the left (south). Claridge, a prominent Ottawa condo developer, owns it.  Your photog is standing at the foot of the downramp from the Crowne Plaza hotel:

This view is from the corner of Albert and Lyon, at the foot of the ramp up to the Crowne Plaza's awful driveway ramp entrance. The red brick building at the far side of the lot is 151 Bay, a fourteen storey condo built by Teron in the 70's as part of the Delta Hotel and office tower complex off to the right:

Here is a view from the west corner of the lot, near the Bay/Albert intersection. The CS CO-OP building is immediately to the right, not shown in this photo, which is the site of the proposed new main Library and the entrance to the LRT station a hundred or so feet down:

Here's a view of the lot from the fourteenth floor of 151 Bay Street. Barbarella's strip club is the low rise building on the left side of the lot, the Crowne Plaza and Constitution Square office buildings are beyond:

The Downtown Ottawa transit tunnel (DOTT) project for our underground LRT system will run under Albert Street (the right side of the above picture)  beside the largely vacant lot. To the right, just off the edge of the picture, is the Cs Co-Op lot, which is proposed to become the site of a large new Library building. The western portion of the downtown will be served by a underground LRT station. The station would have two entrances:

• one to the east end of the station platforms, coming up beside the fountain in front of Place de Ville, serving the  downtown office buildings; and
• one entrance from the west end of the platform, coming up through the Library building, and serving the concentration of residential high rises there. 

The two figures below are lifted from an earlier DOTT planning report showing the two entrances in a bird's eye view and a cut-away drawing showing the entrance under the Library block and an optional one in the east under the Constitution Square complex.

                            double click to enlarge

Claridge is proposing three towers for the lot: a 28 storey condo (twice as tall as the Teron red brick condo already on the Bay street end of the block); a second 28 storey condo tower (taller than the Crowne Plaza, shorter than Place de Ville tower C); and a 22 storey condo tower. The height will be 81m (the current zoning permits 60m); all on a one storey commercial podium.

There is evidence in the literature that builders will pay a premium of up to 25% for sites close to a transit station. In this case, Claridge bought the site some years ago. So it has increased in value a lot. In turn, he can charge a premium for the condos there (about 4%), due to their proximity to the LRT station. Link:  http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_15290467 The story in the link -- from Denver, another snowy city like ours -- shows the proximity to transit is the second most important factor for residents there in selecting their high rise location.

And it would be very attractive to live in a complex directly connected to a transit station: all indoor connections via LRT to two universities and one college; to the Rideau Centre, convention centre, St Laurent, to the train station and eventually to the airport. And to many employment centres. The location will appeal to students, professors, young professionals, and seniors.  So will Claridge build the link to the LRT station?

I think if this was an office structure, Claridge would not hesitate to build the link. In this case and given the hot condo market, I think he would sell out easily whether the link to the station is across the street or within his building concourse. If I were Claridge, I'd build an elevator down to the station that was from a separate transit lobby connected to the condo concourse so residents could stay indoors, and public sidewalk users could access the elevator down- lobby from the sidewalk (but not enter the condo lobbies).

But, my sources indicate Claridge is not excited about a direct connection. Apparently, part of the problem is the unknown cost of maintaining the elevator, escalators,  and lobby, which would become the eventual responsibility of the condo owners. In this case, I think it logical to structure the access structures as a condominium itself, with the the three Claridge towers owning a part, and the city owning a part. Count the users every three years or so, and split the maintenance costs between the parties according to how many people use the elevator from the sidewalk vs the condo. The uncertainty risk is then split amongst several parties.

Another complication is that in the current DOTT plans, the city-constructed station entrance comes up through the new Library site. If the Library is not under construction by 2017, then a temporary building to house the top of the elevator shafts and escalators would be required on the Library site, to be later incorporated into the Library building. But what if the city gives up on the Library entrance for the opening of the LRT and instead builds the entrance on the north side of Albert, on the Claridge lot, as part of their condo development, and leaves the the Library access for construction later, when the library complex is actually built?? (this also gives more flexibility in where the station access would come up in the Library building -- on Albert street side or the Slater street side...)

I trust the city has senior staff -- backed up by some imaginative staff capable of thinking outside the box (and they do exist) --  negotiating with Claridge right now to come to some workable solution for a direct connection to the LRT station. If agreement is possible, it creates a valuable precedent and market vote of confidence in the value of connecting with the LRT underground.

Residents of Hintonburg

 Now we know what they are called:

Rememberance of people & things past ...

In Cambridge MA this neighbourhood commemorates people with signs. Virtually every corner was named after someone. A veteran. A resident.

Nothing special was done the corner to designate it a "square" as far as I could see, it was still the small inner city intersection of two residential streets.

But it certainly gave an amazing sense of history, of continuity, of neighbourhood, of topophilia, to the area. There were individuals here before you, who made a difference. Who were they?

If I was doing this in my west side neighborhood, I think signs honouring residents would be the start, but they could also commemorate events, geography, history ...

History is written by the victors, so the saying goes, and history tends to commemorate the upper classes who have the means to memorialize it.

For every cute wooden house in Upper Canada Village there were dozens of families huddled in tents, which are conspicuously absent from the village.

In citiies like Ottawa, neighbourhoods with clusters of academics and senior civil servants (or neighbourhoods that interest these classes) will get historic commenorations, like Sandy Hill, The Glebe, and Lowertown. Dundonald Park, surrounded by large victorian/queen anne homes, gets a historic name board; Plouffe Park gets a standard sign board. There is less history for the poor.

Beneath our feet

This inlaid paver pattern on Kent Street in front of the Hudson condo towers shows how a simple design can be effective for pedestrians and viewers from upper floors of the condos.

Most refreshingly, it broke out of the normal square patterns usually used, where some different coloured or textured blocks are substituted for others to make a pattern that keeps the overall rectilinear rigidity inherent in the blocks. In this pattern, the base blocks were laid over the whole area and then a saw cut was made in curvilinear pattern for the constrasting dark blocks to be inserted.

Iregular shaped blocks are not widely used in public spaces. Below are 'flagstone' type pavers with a cobble border and wider paver border.

a leaf falls ...

Property owners take a variety of measures to discourage skateboarders from using walls as boarding surfaces. Usually, there are little clamps on the leading edge of the wall preventing a smooth run along the wall. A typical plain clamp is shown below. The other pictures are of a much more decorative and friendly-looking maple leaf that landed on the edge of the wall. Seen at World Exchange Plaza in downtown Ottawa.

Centretown Cat House

As seen on the second floor roof over a bay window, with special feline access via the second floor window, disco ball, toys, and the passing parade of humans stuck on the sidewalk down below.

Carling Ave open house

OPEN HOUSE


Tuesday, 22 June 2010

5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Dow’s Lake Pavillion (Vista Room) ground floor

1001 Queen Elizabeth Drive

Street closures unfriendly to cyclists

This is a typical street closure in Ottawa. Closed to cars ... open to pedestrians ... and closed to cyclists? 

Cyclists approaching this particular barrier on Spruce Street can choose to ride on the sidewalk (naughty naughty) or squeeze through the centre bollard or side spaces (provided no one is parked close).

Why not remove the centre bollards and let cyclists carry on through? Yes, I know some motorbikes would go through too (they already do, on the sidewalk, I watch them daily do this on the Elm closure on the next block).

Bushwacking for cyclists

Last week a group of concerned citizens participated with the City and its consultants on the routing exercise for the O-Train corridor cycling path (cyclopiste de Preston). Participants represented the NCC, Dalhousie and Hintonburg Community Associations, CfSC and Cycle Vision Ottawa members, a landscape architect, engineer, planner, and others.

The cycling arterial will connect the Ottawa River cycling paths to the Otrain at Bayview, run along the tracks behind the City Centre complex, under Somerset via a new underpass, behind the PWGSC complex at 1010 Somerset, and come out at ground level again at Gladstone. Then a short overground stretch would take it beside the city signals yard annex, under the existing Qway overpasses, to Young Street, where it would join a rebuilt existing path along the east side of the Otrain cut all the way to Carling. The NCC person was present on the bushwacking expedition to consider, amongst other things, where it goes at Carling and how it connects to the Farm paths.

The areas behind the City Centre and 1010 Somerset proved to be very dense bush, with constant surprises hidden in the tall grass, weeds, and shrubbery: the odd half truckload of asphalt or cement, bits of rail, sleeping bags, laptop computers, etc. It is difficult to imagine a safe-feeling path there given the area's current appearance, but with tree thinning, opening up vistas, improved fencing, path lighting, and some suggested alignment and elevation mods, it will work well with current and future developments proposed along the corridor.

The cycling underpass under Somerset is also planned to handle the possibility of a LRT station at that location. If all goes to plan, the underpass would be constructed in 2011 with the path completed in 2012.

If you click on the word cloud to the right of this blog posting, select Cyclopiste de Preston to read earlier posts on each segment or use the search button.

Bronson deja vu all over again

Last night was the second PAC (Public Advisory Committee) meeting on Bronson. After the hard time the city planners and consultants got at the first meeting in April, the May meeting disappeared in favour of a mid-June date.

The city and consultants got ideas from the public (me: the Bronson 2 lane plus two way left turn lane model) and the community associations (2 lanes plus turn lanes at intersections, a livable streets model that has worked so well for fixing roads with similar volumes in Toronto) and a lot of pressure from the Councillor to do better.

So they came out in full force last night. The city or the consultants hired more consultants to review their work (guess what: given the same marching orders and look-up tables, they came up with the same results -- well, duh!). They dragged out a planning junior who offered to stand at intersections with PAC members to consider how to improve ped movements -- if feasible and not interferring with car traffic flow. They brought in a landscape architect with large maps with huge coloured blobs on them identifying areas for pedestrian improvement and landscaping -- many of the blobs were on the paved road surface which is not exactly ped amentity space.

To cut to the nub:  the city inisists Bronson must stay as four lanes all the way through, no alternative configurations can be examined.

They did claim to abandon their prior suggestion to widen Bronson by at least 2'. Well, sort of. In an effort to promote consistent lane width, they would still widen Bronson in the area south of Gladstone; and in the north portion of the street where there was more land available, they proposed chewing away at adjacent green space to make the road lanes 35% wider than elsewhere. Mere details. 

Our planning politburo continuously chanted that their priorities were peds and cyclists first, transit, then private cars. Even the most naive participant would have a hard time swallowing that. For example, their ped first plans didn't quite allow for consistent minimum width (2m) sidewalks:  near Gladstone that meant sidewalks combined with bus stops combined with traffic signals and wooden utility poles would be a princely 1.5m wide.  On a busy corner. With the commercial storefront door also opening onto the sidewalk. Better hope those pedestrian hordes are real friendly. And turning cars don't cut too close.

The city planners rushed through the traffic and lane width stuff at breakneck speed, anxious to get to the brightly coloured dots (three colours! -- but alas no daisy shaped flower dots like I wanted) and magic markers (many colours!)

with which the remaining PAC members were to mark up big road maps with "suggestions" for consideration and implementation "where feasible" after "review by the TAC" (Technical Advisory Committee, ie the traffic engineers).

The landscaping proposals were somewhat attractive but severely constrained. Nice architectural drawings (planning porn) of benches and planters were shown, but won't actually be built along Bronson -- all the space has already been taken up by the pedestrian priority car lanes. Instead, they will be located on private property set back from the sidewalk where private property owners are willing to sign legal contracts permitting the city to do so. No word on how many of these planters and benches we might actually see, and many PAC members expressed scepticism that absentee landlords would ever consider these. Would even quasi-public landowners be intersted? --  the community minded Bronson centre itself has been busy removing trees each year and expanding the car parking zone in front of its building.

Double click to enlarge. The top two views illustrate a typical section of Bronson. Don't forget the car is speeding along at +60. The ped light is on the curb line, which is good. The proposed tree is on private property, if permission can be attained. The lower drawings show proposed treatment where parking lots abut the sidewalk. The planter and tree are on land cheerfully ceeded by the property owner who didn't mind the loss of revenue space.

The plans also showed lots of trees along the sidewalks -- of the side streets. These were shown based on the assumption that the Bronson reconstruction project would allow them to be planted there, as they were outside the current bounds of the project mandate. Oh dear.

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But on Bronson itself, there wasn't room for any trees. So the architects proposed mechanical trees, artificial trees, that would be "planted" along the curb line with mechanical shading devices for peds. In the pix, they look sort of like those big plastic banana leaves you can get at IKEA to decorate your kids room. The tree trunks will help separate peds from cars.

Double click to enlarge. The top illustrations of are of benches, planters, brick pavers and other "landscape integration opportunities" all of which are on private property provided by willing and eager property owners. The bottom illustrations are of the bus shelter (also likely located on private lands) and the "architectural feature" are the artificial trees that substitute for the real thing since the pedestrian priority plans lack space for much of anyting except roadway.

It wasn't all bad at the meeting though. Staff and consultants were eager to be nicer than they were at the first meeting. They agreed to ped lighting along Bronson, with the posts located on the curb line (this is important as it restricts the apparent lane width, promotes subjective ped safety, and goes against the engineering view that the street and sidwalk should be one large open space for the safety of motorists and convenience of winter snow removal).

They proposed coloured concrete paving in the major intersections (easy to do! economical! they do it all the time!) even though that idea went down in cost and maintenance flames when studied for four years on Preston. Sidewalks will be made of concrete, perhaps stamped with a pattern, because interlock pavers like used on West Wellie, Richmond, Preston and other west side sidewalks "just won't stand up to our climate and heavy sidewalk plows and will look awful in ten years" (on this I share some sympathy: the city frequently demonstrates it is unable to maintain interlock pavers, whereas poured concrete is pretty simple stuff).

Summary: Car commuters to Pointe Gatineau win big. Peds get some lighting and fake trees. Adjacent land owers might get their front properties relandscaped provided they are willing to give up the space. Cyclists get nothing. PAC gets to hear more "mights" and "where feasibles" than normally treated to. Sidewalks get rebuilt, sometimes narrower, a few times a bit wider provided the room can be appropriated from green space. Decorative overhead wiring will stay on this "scenic entry route" to Ottawa.

C'est la vie in Ottawa.

Borrow, adapt, learn

The top two pix are of a small apartment building kitty korner the downtown Ottawa bus terminal. Its fun to look at as you walk by, the tilted windows add a nice sense of whimsy as do the flying roofs.

Below is Strata Centre on the MIT campus in Boston. It is full of fun angles, and the interior spaces -- a sort of atrium-cum-courtyard piazza -- are fun to walk in. It has a number of architectural jokes, including heavy brick walls that start in mid air two or three floors above your head (they are suspended walls), and I hear, a leaky roof.

Innovation in architecture and urban planning is carried out by more confident cities than Ottawa, and more timid places copy and paste, or borrow with adaptations, to retry those solutions in another context. Sometimes that makes a solution in search of a question. In others, it gives inspiration that shows lesser cities what can be done without the adapter risking their funds on innovation.

I posted the Rowe's Wharf pictures a few days ago and compared it to the Ashcroft Our Lady of the Condos site proposal.

Someday, maybe we will move beyond imitation and return to innovating. We used to do that well: the BRT transitway; NCC bike paths; the skateway on the canal, Sparks Street mall. Many innovations come about by force of a strong personality in the command office or a planning dept. They are virtually guaranteed not to be the product of a complicated committee consisting of various stakeholders working a cross purposes (viz Lansdowne).

Nanny Goat Hill infill

An infill house is being constructed at the north end of Upper Lorne Place, where the staircase goes down to Primrose Street. This picture is taken from the bottom of the stairs. The back of the Dominican College library is in the background, which holds some Dead Sea scrolls. 

View from the top of the stairs. The house will be three floors, with a garage on the Upper Lorne Place side.This house will have high visibility from all four sides -- thus far we have no idea about what quality the exterior will be or what its design is.

Primros

Chinese arch progress

Six sections of roof will be installed on the Chinese Arch on Thursday. Today, in preparation for that lifting, the pieces were moved out onto Somerset street below the arch.

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