By Helen LuiWe constantly hear about the problems with density: tiny shoeboxes in the sky, looming towers and their shadows, traffic congestion, and overcrowding. But despite popular discourse, denser living can actually be good for us and our communities.Density as healthDensity brings public services, transit, parks, and amenities closer together. When we can walk our
She’s right.
Density isn’t the enemy. Bad arrangement of dense population is.
I live in a very densely-populated city (1200/km² or 3200/sq.mi.) but it’s arranged semi-sanely. Within comfortable walking distance of my home are two parks, a Daoist temple, several schools at levels ranging from primary to 2nd-tier university, two (large!) farmer’s markets, three shopping centres (two of which have sizable supermarkets), uncountable numbers of restaurants ranging from holes in the wall to fancy banquet halls… You get the idea. Within 3 stops of the nearest subway station or 5 stops of the nearest bus stop all that expands dramatically. I’m not sure I could even realistically count them all except to say that it doubles the number of Daoist temples and adds a sizable Buddhist one. (The nearest church is about 5 subway stops away, maybe 6.) Outside of work (which is an hour’s commute by subway and bus away) I could live my entire life without being more than 20 minutes away from my home … and never be bored or finding myself in a rut.
I can’t say the same for Ottawa when I lived there. Hell, within fifteen minutes of DRIVING I couldn’t find much in most of the places I lived.
At first you had me thinking, there is no way 1,200/km² is very densely-populated. That’s like small town where everyone has a big lawn in the front and a pool in the back kind of numbers. But then I read 3,200/sq mi and realized you flipped the units.
That said, even 1,200/km² is perfectly dense enough to allow walkability to everything if done right. But the appeal of being a farmer is too great for the average person. They want to have to get into a vehicle every time they go to do something.
Flipped the units? I’ve never seen density measures as km²/person! Where are you seeing density measured as area per person?
We’re getting to the point where that’s neither here nor there because however much they want that, people can’t afford it.
That is true, but they are not going to down without a fight. Which is why we are seeing more and more “But please sir, if I can’t have car, at least how about a new train? I can’t be seen walking like pleb.”
Ottawa is a big mixed bag, and covers a huge area. I lived there some decades ago, so it might be different now:
Regions north of the 417 are generally pretty walkable; and the transit way (looks like it was replaced with the OTrain) was quite effective at moving me, so long as it was along that spine. The transitway was so good that a bus from Bayview to the south (Greenboro/south keys?) was faster than the train.
When I lived in Kanata, there was sweet jack shit to walk, or even bike, to and the transit was pretty horrendous. The one plus, was that the express busses were pretty spot on for getting me to work, but probably only because I happened to be working on the transit way at the time (Ottawa U area).
In the times I’ve visited since, Ottawa seems to be doing the right things in individual neighborhoods, but is struggling a bit with making each of these good things connect to each other.
I lived in Orleans, Kanata, and Nepean. Nepean was almost worth it. (Almost because although there was a massive shopping centre a road-crossing away from me, it was a road you couldn’t conveniently cross and it took 20 minutes+ to get to it if you didn’t want to take your life in your own hands.) Orleans and Kanata were suburban wastelands.
The Transitway was great if you lived in the suburbs and worked downtown. Feeder route to Transitway to downtown in the morning. Transitway to feeder route to home in the evening. If you had any other movement pattern OC Transpo was a nightmare of missed connections and half-hour buses that came once every hour. Basically if you weren’t a civil servant working downtown or someone servicing the same, a car was obligatory if you were in Orleans or Kanata. (May God have mercy on your mortal soul if you needed to take THREE buses!)
When my friends (who live in Bells Corners) visited me here they were amazed at buses that came every five minutes except very late in the day (where that became ever 15), even on the weird distant routes. They were amazed at a subway system that got you 80% of the way there most of the time. And they were amazed at how little they had to use it when they weren’t visiting specific places (like a museum or other such touristy tat).
That all, more or less, aligns with my experience two decades ago. Maybe Ottawa isn’t progressing as quickly as I thought…
Well, two decades ago is when I lived there, so…
But I did go back for a visit in 2016 and … the buses were more comfortable at least? But the process of taking them was still frustrating AAF.
Kanata, Nepean, Bayshore.
We tried a bus commute. But Nepean to Hazeldean was just not happening.
Now they’ve got the train built by the guy who was fired from the vancouver job because his warm-weather trains couldn’t even hack a vancouver winter, we’re not surprised about the issues. He’s doing waterloo next, so, yeah.
Just as a side note, public transit here goes to other cities. Not every five minutes, obviously, and at a slightly higher price. (Normal bus rides are 1-2RMB depending on the type of bus, where the buses that go intercity are 4-5RMB.) But you can actually catch a city bus at a city bus stop in Wuhan and take a bus trip to Ezhou/Huanggang about 80km away. Those buses go every 30m or so in the day and every 60m in the evenings.