Another New idea

Everything happens for a reason, right?

People keep telling me this but its often hard to believe it, particularly when you've endured a number of months of unemployment. However, last night's Beers with Jas (perhaps the title of an ongoing discussion) has given me faith once again in the marvels of our universe.

When I was 17, it was a very good year, but alas, that's a digression. Ahem, when I was 17, I had the good fortune to indicate positively in response to my Accounting Teacher's question: 'Who likes Baseball' and again to the question: 'who is looking for a part-time job this summer?' Turns out old Ken Hernimen knew Bob Eamon who would be leading the Ticket-selling efforts for the start-up Double A Eastern League Baseball Team, The London Tigers. Providence was smiling.

For the next 4 years, I would work for the London Tigers as a Ticket Seller and Parking Attendant at London's Labatt Park. Its how I met my ex-wife and while that didn't turn out so well (though there are many good memories too) it seems that fateful summer love may lead to something new and much greater.

While out with Jas, it came to mention that Jim Chapman, host of AM980's Jim Chapman News Hour, recently discussed his interest in hiring someone, or creating some entity that would provide Londoners with information about the activities at London City Hall. It's an idea I've had from time-to-time since returning to London in August.

For those of you unfamiliar with London History and currently scratching your head wondering how these two seemingly random events connect...Jim Chapman was also the bane of my existence for a number of years - but in a very jovial and positive way. Jim wrote a song that for years played on a constant loop in my brain. If you haven't already guessed, Jim wrote the famous lines..."Its the crack of the bat, the smack of the glove, the sounds of the game that everyone loves, it's London Tiger Baseball! Tear 'em up Tigers, Let's Go!"

21 years after that fateful summer, I am back in my hometown, with a head full of knowledge about City government, ideas about the causes of London's ills and ways to solve them. I've been wondering recently how to get Londoners informed about what is going on at City Hall.

For instance, my parents consistently wonder how Toronto taxpayers can complain when their City taxes are equivalent to London's and yet enjoy a multitude of services. This of course at the same time as all properties are taxed based on their Current Value Assessment. This means a house worth 300,000 in Toronto pays the same dollar in taxes as a 150,000 home in London.

The answer of course is obvious to anyone with a knowledge of Property Taxes and Urban Economics. The answer lies in the question of population density. Toronto packs 'em in. This is why Toronto residents can get an answer from their Councillor who represents a similar number of residents as a London Councillor while having a staff of 3 to assist her. The question is not "why are Toronto's taxes the same" but rather "Why are London's taxes so high relative to the services provided?" Simply put, urban sprawl costs more to service and London has urban sprawl like Horton's has donuts!

This is but one of the areas that I wish to educate Londoners about. We can choose to all live on cul-de-sacs in sprawling subdivisions but we have to understand the trade-offs of inefficient services, expensive taxes, poor air quality, poor transit, low quality jobs in car-oriented business places, un-walkable neighbourhoods, traffic gridlock, etc.. These problems only get worse as infrastructure ages without the density to pay for its replacement.

So...how do we get Londoners to care? How do we get behind the garage and into the living rooms? Civic Engagement. We can fight for a City that works or we can sit back and allow developers to continue to build highly profitable subdivisions further from the center of town, while 'brownfield' lots get skipped over. Or we can challenge our City's Mothers and Fathers to think of a post-carbon (its coming) future where driving is the last choice, not the first. We can redevelop existing lands within the City's boundaries while preserving valuable green space on the edge of town from being paved over. We can stop forcing deer to commit hari-kari off bridges in the Northwest end of town. Soon enough, the high costs of our wasteful energy use of the past 30 years will catch up, as resources are depleted and those green areas will prove valuable for small-scale farming and recreation.

There are, I'm sure, great things at work, fantastic ideas about London's future that we cannot even explore due to the costs of servicing our sprawling City. The deep thinkers, the Richard Floridas and Jane Jacobs of the world know that Cities are the future and that the successful ones are those that enable arts, culture, sport and creativity.

Its time to ask Londoners to think more deeply about how we grow. But they can only be expected to think wisely if they have the information necessary to do so. Current news media does a poor job of informing Londoners about their civic government. The London Free Press is run out of Toronto and carries little deep coverage of London City Hall. A Channel News, is run, more or less, out of Toronto and carries little deep coverage about London City Hall.

So...how do we grow City Think London. Jim? If you've got the funding, I've got the ideas.

We start with Civic Engagement 101. We cover City meetings of all kinds. We profile the existing Councillors. We profile City bureaucrats and let Londoners know who they are. We delve deeply into the issues about taxation and growth. We look at who funds election campaigns. We seriously look at the amount politicians are paid compared to what is asked of them, we ask how much they have at hand for staffing and serving constituents. And we track the votes and report them. We create transparency and accountability of politicians, developers and residents.

And we hold our own meetings. We engage the residents of this City by inviting guest lecturers to meetings that get us to think more deeply about the kinds of communities we'd like to live in. The London Urban Institute might be a name we use for that work.

So...Jim. I hope you'll remember me, 21 years after the year we met, in the Press Box above Labatt Park, that field of dreams that represented my hopes for a better future. And I hope, like me, you see Providence smiling as the sun rises on this day after Remembrance Day. Let's make London an engaged City.

London's Obsession with Tall Buildings

I've lived in Toronto for 10 years. I have no problem with Tall buildings per se. In dense areas, height is necessary to pay for the land it sits on. London however, does not have such a problem.

One of the biggest chicken-and-egg questions in Economics is whether Tall buildings cause high land values or if high land values cause tall buildings. As with all things economic, the human nature of developer greed is left out of the equation all together. So too is the ineptitude of local politicians and their aspirations of greatness.

London has seen its share of tall buildings in the downtown core. Unfortunately, London City Council seems to have failed to learn the lessons of the negative effects of too much development on any given site. Take for instance what should have been learned from the building of One London Place, a 42-storey commercial building that sucked all pressure for redevelopment out of the downtown core by adding a vast amount of Gross Floor Area.

One London Place was built in the late 1980's, just prior to the marvelous recession that hit in 1987 and lasted until about 1991. As a result, there are more surface parking lots and empty malls, run-down apartments and vacant buildings than one could possibly attempt to shake a stick at! Nothing sucks life off a street like a surface parking lot.

Turn the page to today, 15 to 20 years later, in the midst of a deep recession and we see the beginnings of another upswing. In tough times, developers buy land knowing that prices will only begin to rise back to pre-recession levels and climb steadily after that. One new condominium tower has been built at the corner of Ridout and King Street and continues to have units for sale. That building is 27-storeys and sits by itself, a sort of sore thumb saying 'look at me', refusing to be a team player in the pattern of urban development in downtown London.

Today's London Free Press has on its front page (never a sign of rational development review) a picture of a new condominium to be built on Dundas Street East, in an area known as the East Village, on the site of the old Embassy Hotel. Like so many potential heritage buildings in London, The Embassy was razed by fire a few months ago. It now sits as, you guessed it, a vacant lot. Vacant lots offer developers a fantastic revenue opportunity in themselves, requiring nothing more than a shovel to begin construction.

On the Embassy site is proposed an entirely suitable and desirable development, an 8-storey, loft-style building built up to the street line, most likely with retail opportunities on the ground floor, apartments above (since there's still a great deal of commercial space available closer to the core.) This site should be the model for redevelopment in London. By building a shorter building new housing will be offered without overwhelming the surrounding neighbourhood. This building will have 150-units.

Unfortunately, the other part of the story is not so rosey. On the south side of Dundas Street in a block bounded by King Street to the south, Lyle Street to the west and Hewitt Street to the East is proposed a podium and tower style building that could have just as well been built in Liberty Village in Toronto by its developer Medallion Development. In fact, I think that's precisely what they've done. In a City starving for downtown renewal, this building will feature two towers, one 21-storeys tall and the other 24-storeys tall. It will contain 600 units.

I have a major beef with this development. Unfortunately, due to the swooning, non-critical nature of the article in the London Free Press, one really doesn't get an understanding of where this development is in the approval process though an indication that foundations will be built as early as this fall gives me a shudder to think it's already been approved. A note says "Also working on two businesses that face Dundas Street" - in the midst of the development's site that will actually front onto King Street to the south. So two huge towers will sit on the south side of the street casting significant shadow on Dundas Street, particularly in the shoulder seasons of Spring and Fall, when sunlight is most desired. The shadow will presumably fall directly on the nice, 8-storey building facing Dundas, one of London's prime downtown streets.

It's difficult to tell too from the pictures included with the article, an artists rendering that appears to show one solid frontage onto a two-way street. Unfortunately, King Street is a one-way thoroughfare that lacks the kind of pedestrian activity shown in the sales-picture. The map and the pictures don't really make any sense and the article fails to take one glancing look at the appropriateness of the urban planning considerations. Instead of asking whether its a fitting way to add density, it seems to fawn like people in a small town would over the new mall with its first escalator!

With 750 new units of housing one has to wonder where or when the next development will occur. Will these new buildings sit amongst a still mostly two-storey neighbourhood for the next 30 years? Surely, with other buildings still having vacant units, this must start to create questions about the pattern of development in the downtown core. Another peaky building to stand alone - with its twin tower, if its built at the same time, though one suspects it will be a phased development and that a second tower may be as fictitious as the second building planned at One London Place.

There seems to be no connection between the fact that so many parts of London remain underdeveloped, vacant and/or neglected. I'm convinced that these kinds of buildings will continue to create a City of peaks and valleys, unrelated to each other with no sense of cohesion. London City Council seems to have refused to ask why these buildings need to be so tall when they are being built on vacant lands, with very low land values in a City that is suffering to identify solid economic development opportunities for the future.

Instead of allowing too much density on singular sites, the City should pursue a more even redevelopment pattern that creates a gradual increase in building heights, forcing property values in the core to rise and putting pressure on other landowners to make changes, redevelop or sell their properties. In addition, this would be good for London homeowners whose homes are generally stagnant in value, rising only as fast as the rate of inflation. Density is good but not on singular sites that create their own problems. It also creates a less than pleasing pattern of urban design, with gaps of unowned, underdeveloped properties.

Clearly some developers understand this. Terrasan, the developer of the site on the North side seems to get it. But given that the Medallion property is approved for such ridiculous heights (what's wrong with 8 and 12 or 12 and 16-storeys?) it's clear that London City Council and its Urban Planners don't get it. And it seems that some developers in London are only too happy to take advantage of this ineptitude and get away with as much filthy lucre as they can.

When will London stop trying to be Toronto? When will they force new developments to be team players and form part of a consistent, denser urban core? These are questions Londoners need to ask instead of swooning. London clearly needs a new City Plan that calls on development to be part of an urban fabric, not stand-alone eye-sores borrowed from a much denser downtown Toronto.