CIP/ACUPP Case
Study Series
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Case Summary
As Canada becomes one of the most predominantly urbanized nations in
the world, questions arise as to how to make cities and towns more livable
while minimizing the effects of growth on the environment. The City of
Calgary commissioned the Sustainable Suburbs Study to address these
concerns over ten and twenty year periods. The process considered a number
of elements of urban design including transportation, housing, community
facilities, and environmental issues and provides sustainable alternatives
to the present methods of planning and development.
Development Context
This study began in the Spring of 1994 by the City of Calgary to
establish a future planning framework for Calgary's residential suburbs.
The Planning Department identified four major reasons for its
undertaking:
- to help to implement some of the policies emanating from the recently
approved Calgary Transportation Plan,
- to determine how the costs of growth could be controlled through
sustainable design principles,
- to better meet the needs of suburban residents,
- to encourage more sustainable lifestyles.
Calgary Transportation Plan
In 1992, the City embarked upon the GoPlan process. This major review
of the City's transportation system was concerned with determining
transportation and land use policies for a 30 year period when, com-pared
to today, Calgary may have 540,000 more people, 260,000 more houses, and
about 470,000 more cars. The GoPlan process has resulted in the Calgary
Transportation Plan, approved by Council in May, 1995. During the
preparation of the Plan, the public made it clear that it valued the
mobility afforded by the City's present road system. However, a great
many people expressed concern about the impact that certain road
improvements and river crossings would have on natural areas and
established communities if the predicted traffic volumes are to be
accommodated.
The strategy of the Calgary Transportation Plan was to try and avoid
these controversial road improvements, but success largely depended on
achieving a significant reduction in the vehicle trips that new suburbs
would normally generate. Reducing the need for vehicle trips was one of
the major goals of the Sustainable Suburbs Study.
Control costs of growth: One of the major costs faced
by the City is providing infrastructure and services to new growth areas.
A financial report, The City of Calgary's 10-Year Capital Spending
Framework - 1991, highlighted a significant difference between
expectations of the public for more and better services, as expressed in
documents such as Calgary into the 21st Century and Vision 2020, and the
City's ability to pay for them. The Province of Alberta has cut back
sharply on transportation grants as well as funding for health care,
education, and family support services. These events have provided a
stimulus for a fundamental rethinking of how the City manages growth and
controls related costs.
Better Meet the Needs of People: There is growing
recognition that many communities are not in sync with the needs of many
residents. Shops, services, and a range of housing types are inadequate,
inconveniently located, or missing entirely from many communities.
Residents are required to drive outside of their communities for basic
needs and many people are excluded from certain communities because there
are not sufficient housing choices.
Encouragement of More Sustainable Lifestyles: While public knowledge
and concern for environmental issues has evolved over the past 30 years
and is now firmly established in social and educational systems, there is
a need to create the realization of the importance of environmental and
socio-economic sustainability principles in suburban design.
Defining a Sustainable Suburb
While there is no generally accepted definition of sustainability when
related to a suburban community, many consider sustainability to be a
useful adjective to describe a community that has been organized in such a
way that the fiscal, social, and environmental activities that take place
within it are capable of being sustained far into the future. In this
study, the words capable of being sustained mean that:
- fiscally, the costs of building, operating, and maintaining new
communities and their supportive infrastructure and services are
affordable, having regard to other spending priorities, and will not
become a burden on future generations.
- socially, communities are designed to be socially diverse, adaptable
to changing lifestyles and to further the objective of providing all
Calgarians with access to affordable housing, education, health care,
essential goods, public amenities and services, such that their basic
needs are met; and
- environmentally, communities are designed to minimize air, water, and
soil pollution, reduce resource consumption and waste, and protect natural
systems that support life.
Central Problem or Opportunity
The following major issues are discussed:
- The City's objectives for new communities had to be clearly identified.
- The City had to develop mechanisms to work more closely with
developers, landowners, and others involved in planning new communities in
order to offer flexibility where possible.
Planning and Design Issues
The Study focused on the following major issues:
- The need to minimize the City's costs of accom-modating growth:
Over the next ten years, Calgary must spend at least one billion dollars
on bridges, road widenings, interchanges, water and sewer treatment
facilities, parks and recreational facilities, etc. needed to support the
growth and accommodate the traffic originating from new suburbs.
- The desire to minimize housing cost increases:
Developers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on roads and
utilities servicing new communities and these costs are reflected in the
price of the serviced lot purchased by new home buyers. These
infrastructure costs are based on municipal regulations and developers
argue that City regulations must become more flexible if costs are to be
reduced and innovative designs encouraged.
- The recognition of the need to use land more efficiently:
Calgary's sprawling city form means that greater lengths of roads, pipes,
wires, etc. must be built and maintained. This sprawl results in higher
per capita operating costs incurred for distance-sensitive services such
as transit, police, fire, ambulance, garbage collection, and snow removal.
- Communities must be designed to facilitate modern lifestyles:
Many communities are still being designed for the postwar nuclear family
lifestyle which no longer predominates. Household types are changing and
many communities have largely ignored the needs of non-traditional
households which are the fastest growing household type of the 1990s.
- The need to provide more housing choices:
In a community which maintains housing choices, people are able to obtain
housing that meets their needs at different stages of the life cycle.
- The need to encourage people to commute by transit:
There are many reasons why people commute to work by car rather than
transit including status, speed, and usefulness of the transit system to
the present needs of the people. Citywide travel is illustrated in Figure
3. Changing suburban design can encourage people to use transit for
commuting.
- Encouraging residents to also walk and cycle instead of only driving
within a community:
Providing activities, services, and other destinations on convenient
pedestrian and cycling routes will encourage these modes of
transportation. The need exists to design the local streetscape for people
first and the movement of cars second.
- Protect natural systems of high public value:
Surveys have shown that Calgarians place a high value on the City's parks
and natural areas. The study identifies that it is important to find ways
of incorporating such spaces into public systems, protecting them from
development, and ensuring broad public
access.
- Encourage home builders and
home buyers to re-duce waste and pollution:
Waste begins with the construction process as illustrated in Figure 4. As
much as 1,016 kg. (1 ton) of lumber per house is currently wasted with
little being recycled. Canadians produce approximately 2 kg. (4.4 lbs.)
of solid waste per day and use more water and energy than other countries.
- Improve the planning process:
The present process for planning suburban communities is apt to be slow,
expensive, and confrontational. There is a limited common vision or sense
of partnership and public input is minimal.
Actors and Stakeholders
A Sustainable Suburbs Round Table on Sustainable Community Development
was formed in October, 1994 to explore the issues discussed in this
report. The Round Table Working Group had nineteen members with
representation from the Urban Development Institute, the Calgary Home
Builders' Association, the Public and Separate School Boards, the
Federation of Calgary Communities, the Alberta Association of Architects,
and The University of Calgary. As well, the Directors of Calgary Parks &
Recreation, Engineering and Environmental Services, Transportation, and
Planning & Building Departments were included. The Round Table was
chaired by the Director of the Planning & Building Department. In
addition, numerous land-owners, consultants, marketing experts, and staff
from City departments attended the Round Table meetings.
Organizational Framework
In this study, the major components of a more sustainable community
were assessed under the following headings:
- Policy: A general statement of what was required.
- Public Benefit Intended: The public purpose behind the policy.
- Acceptable Performance: A set of performance standards essential to
ensuring that the policy is acted upon.
- Design Guidelines: Suggested ideas for use by developers,
consultants, builders, City staff, and decision-makers involved in
planning, developing, and building communities.
- Discussion: Comments to help in understanding the rationale for what
was being proposed.
These components were then applied in the analysis of the following
issue areas: mixed-use activity centres, open space, housing,
transportation, and environmental issues.
Options for Action
The result of this process was a methodology for pre-paring Community
plans intended to bring together expertise from the development industry,
the City, school boards, and other public agencies in a collaborative
approach to designing better communities:
- When new suburbs are being developed, the City should appoint a team
to work with developer(s) and consultant(s) in the preparation of the
plan. Staff should be appointed to the team from Engineering and
Environmental Services, Transportation (including a transit specialist),
and Calgary Parks & Recreation Departments, with the Planning & Building
Department acting in a leadership role.
- The Public and Separate School Boards, other public agencies, ward
alderman, and representatives of adjoining communities affected by the
plan should be invited to participate in the community planning process at
appropriate stages.
- The community planning process should commence with design charettes
during which the team would consider opportunities and constraints and
develop a collective vision. The public should be invited to provide
input, perhaps through a design charette.
- Oral presentations to the Calgary Planning Commission and Council
should be made by the developer and City staff jointly.
Implementation Strategies
Developers and the City administration believe that the policies for
sustainable suburbs should be demonstrated in a few new prototype
communities. These criteria form the basis for evaluating plans submitted
over the next three to five years, during which developments would be
monitored and acceptable performance criteria revised as required. It was
determined that the following work be undertaken:
- Develop new street design standards:
- The development of a new set of street design standards is an
essential element to create communities that work successfully for
pedestrians, cyclists, and transit. This review will be undertaken
through technical workshops and a Round Table at which all parties with an
interest in the application of the standards be invited to participate.
It should be carried out in parallel with the planning of new communities
in order to assist all parties in understanding how the new standards
would be applied on the ground. This study is now underway.
- Develop an affordable housing policy:
- It is recommended that a study be undertaken involving the Planning &
Building Department, the Corporate Properties Group, Social Services
Department, the development and building industry, and other agencies and
interests concerned with the provision of housing. A Round Table format,
as used in the Sustainable Suburbs study, was suggested.
- Develop Indicators of Sustainability:
- If communities designed in conformity with the recommendations in this
report are any more sustainable than other communities, it is necessary to
develop some measurable indicators of sustainability. For example, there
is the need to know if people really are using transit more and their
cars less, shopping locally, recycling more waste, etc.
- Review other requirements, standards, and practices:
- Rules about separation of land uses, density, building setbacks, open
space, school sites, storm water treatment, and vehicle parking combine to
produce physical constraints on achieving sustainability. Some of the
standards that need to be reviewed and revised are: commercial land use,
to ensure that local community shopping can survive as a critical spatial
component of the sustainable suburb; housing, where the Land Use By-Law is
reviewed to allow additional dwelling units such as basement suites and
garage lofts; schools and open space, where an exploration of other
opportunities in joint-use site planning is performed; transportation,
where policies are developed to allow transit stopovers for shopping and
other multi-purpose trips at community centres; and reducing waste and
pollution, where the assessment of the anticipated capital and water
savings related to mandatory water metering in new communities and
universal metering is examined.
Lessons Learned
The recommendations of this study will be applied to all new suburban
communities, however, it must be recognized that:
- The study recommendations are a considerable departure from the status
quo and as such would require that all parties involved adopt new
approaches to the planning and development of suburban communities.
- With the exception of McKenzie Towne (a new Duany/Plater-Zyberk
designed suburb in south-east Calgary), most of the proposed criteria have
not been used previously as a package in planning new communities in
Calgary.
- The successful implementation of these policies would require the
City, being responsible for the provision and long-term operation and
maintenance of infrastructure, to take some risks and be pre-pared to
find alternative ways of doing things.
- The development industry would also have to look at doing things
differently in achieving creative and innovative solutions.
- Many of the criteria are fairly specific (due to the fact that vague
generalities are too open to interpretation) but they have to be
monitored and adjustments made as required.
Conclusion
It is unreasonable to assume that the implementation of this study
will resolve all of the issues discussed in this case study, nor will it
likely produce suburbs that sat-isfy everyone's vision of what sustainable
communities should look like and how they should function. Calgary will,
however, have taken a major step in the direction of more sustainable
community planning, which can be built upon through experience.
It has just been announced that the first suburb planned using the
City's sustainable suburbs guidelines could have as many as 30,000
residents living with some elements that are now seen in southeast
McKenzie Towne. Two community cores and nine neighborhood nodes have been
indicated in a suggested concept for Midnapore III.
Also key in the planning process is housing density. Midnapore III's
population could be living in seven residential units per square acre
which is well above the current average of five, but definitely part of
the sustainable suburbs goal of gobbling up less land.
Further Reading
Calthorpe, Peter. The Next American Metropolis. New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1993.
CMHC. Healthy Housing: A Guide to a Sustainable Future. Ottawa: CMHC,
1993.
City of Calgary. 1994-1998 Business Plan. Calgary: Calgary Parks &
Recreation, 1994.
City of Calgary. Natural Area Management Plan. Calgary: Calgary Parks
& Recreation, 1994.
City of Calgary. The Allocation of Open Space in Developing
Communities. Calgary: JUCC Project Team, 1993.
Duany, Andres and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Towns and Town-Making
Principles. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of
Design, 1991.
Perks, W.T., Edgemont Study, 1995.
Perks, W.T. and D. Van Vliet. Assessment of Built Projects for
Sustainable Communities. Calgary: Faculty of Environmental Design, The
University of Calgary, 1993.
Perks, W.T., Van Vliet, D., and B. Naylor. Innovative Site Development
Standards Review (Draft Report). Calgary: Faculty of Environmental
Design, The University of Calgary, 1991.
Roseland, Mark. Toward Sustainable Communities. Ottawa: National
Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, 1992.
Contact
Further information on the Calgary Sustainable Suburbs Study may be
obtained by contacting:
The City of Calgary
Planning and Building Department
P.O. Box 2100, Station 'M'
Calgary, Alberta T2P 2M5
Tel. (403) 268-5465 Fax (403) 268-1528
Attention: Tim Creelman, M.E.Des., ACP, MCIP
This planning case study series has been financed by the Canadian
Institute of Planners (CIP) and the Association of Canadian University
Planning Programs (ACUPP) to provide national exposure to innovative planning practice.
The Centre for Environmental Design Research and Outreach (CEDRO) at The
University of Calgary has prepared this case study for distribution and
participated in the realization of this initiative. Further information
may be obtained by contacting CEDRO at:
Faculty of Environmental Design
The University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4
Telephone: 403-220-8669
Fax: 403-284-4608
Email: WJTourism@aol.com
This series is also available on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.cedro.ab.ca/cedro/cip_acupp_css/index.html
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