The new Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan needs to include more trees and to integrate open green spaces not boxed in by concrete, according to the Ottawa forest and greenspace advisory committee.
At a recent meeting, committee member Milton Wani screened “What Is My Centretown?” a short draft of a video he made to show the good parts of Centretown from an eco-friendly point of view. It included areas such as parks and playgrounds that already make use of grass-covered spaces in their design and busy Centretown streets.
“I’m concerned with one of the pictures I saw,” says committee chair Nicole Parent. “It was city trees in big concrete planter boxes.”
The committee discussed sending photos of their dream vision of Centretown to the planners working on the new design plan as soon as possible. Parent suggested the planning group needs to see what Centretown could look like, including urban areas with significant green spaces incorporated into their design.
“I’m thinking of when I visited Charleston and Savannah (Georgia),” says Parent of a trip she took to the southern United States. “They have great urban parks. It’s almost like a boulevard, but it’s a whole block. It’s gorgeous urban parks. That should be what King Edward (Avenue) looks like, or things like that in Centretown.”
Wani says he really wants the new design plan to protect the trees in Centretown, not only because of all they do to clean the air and help to clear pollution, adding he doesn’t want downtown Ottawa to turn into the concrete jungle of downtown Toronto.
“There are huge areas in Toronto with just buildings,” he says, adding the plan needs to consider the next generation.
Parent says the city is not doing a good job of keeping proper green spaces downtown. However, she does approve of the park-like roof of the Rideau Centre.
Members of the public can submit their own photos and videos showing their ideas of what embodies Centretown today, how it can be improved through the new design plan and what parts of it should be kept the same, on the design plan blog at http://midcentretown.wordpress.com/.
A draft of a new transportation and mobility report by Delcan Corporation, the consultants working on the transportation aspect of the Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan, was released on the blog last month.
It discusses many types of traffic, including green transportation like pedestrian and cycling traffic.
The report recommends wider sidewalks on Elgin Street to improve pedestrian traffic on the retail-heavy road. It also says pedestrian movement is good in the area, but there aren’t enough crossings under the Queensway and over the Rideau Canal.
The Ottawa Cycling Plan, which outlines how cycling traffic should be dealt with in the city, is still reviewing a planned downtown cycling network, according to the Delcan report. The report recommends a cycling network for the the Centretown area that would link to the National Capital Commission’s cycling network and the city’s paths.
Delcan’s recommendations for public transit include introducing “queue-jumping lanes, transit signal priority, and improved shelters and amenities for transit users” in high-traffic areas such as Bank and Somerset streets.
The report says the Mid-Centretown area is following or exceeding the city’s official design plans or transportation. The new Mid-Centretown design plan should decide if there should be new transportation and traffic goals and how to achieve any new goals it sets, according to the report.
The City of Ottawa’s official map of the study area situates mid-Centretown as being north of the Queensway, bordered by Kent Street to the west, Elgin Street to the east and Gloucester Street to the north.
The plan will outline how the area will look over the next 20 years and is scheduled for completion by next March.