The expression goes that Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Reshaping Canada’s capital for the nation’s bicentennial in 2067 will take more than half a century and 34 million Canadians.
The National Capital Commission’s Horizon 2067 project calls for a new blueprint to replace the original city plan that gave birth to a modern Ottawa in the 1950s.
But critics point out that it’s another “bureaucratic, naval-gazing plan” with nothing to deliver.
“The NCC announces this plan and everyone goes ‘yawn.’ I find it so abstract. It’s ridiculously abstract,” snaps Eric Darwin, president of the Dalhousie Community Association.
“I’m not enthused anymore by grand, philosophical statements. There are practical things I would like to see them doing but they seem to be frozen in time.”
Horizon 2067 aims to chart the most comprehensive plan for the capital since French architect Jacques Gréber’s master plan that transformed Ottawa into a modern city in the wake of the Second World War.
It gave rise to the city’s urban existence, more than 200 kilometres of the Greenbelt and called for the demolition of LeBreton Flats.
Two NCC-drafted capital region plans followed what some consider Canada’s most significant planning blueprint, one in the late 1980s and the other in 1999.
Darwin says the NCC needs to define specific infrastructure proposals, such as redeveloping Colonel By Drive and turning it into a streetcar line that starts in Hull, cuts through the Byward Market and the Glebe, and ends at Carleton University.
The 1950 Gréber plan was a great start for a modern Ottawa but future plans must have a strong urban design, says Derek Crain, head of the Somerset Village BIA.
“They need an international-calibre study to look forward in the future rather than bouncing around the purview of the National Capital Region, where little or no expertise exists,” the architect and planner by trade says.
Crain cautions that the city needs to stop leaning on the NCC for infrastructure renewal.
“If this was a City of Ottawa initiative, it might have some interest. It is only related to federal lands, so it isn’t likely going to have a big impact on the general public. It is more of a PR exercise so that Canadians feel as if they have a say in their capital city.”
The NCC’s Lucie Caron defends the plan as the NCC wrapped up its seven-city cross-country consultation process in late November, travelling from Montreal to Victoria to speak to Canucks about a more “vibrant, diverse capital by Canadians for Canadians.”
“We are not talking specifics about street corners just yet. The cross-country tour is the first building block to get us at a 50-year vision. The idea is to come up with a vision for the capital and this is the highest-level plan. We are only at the engagement phase.”
The motivation behind jumpstarting a longterm vision, despite the difficulties in defining “challenges that may seem fuzzy and intangible,” is to create a concrete action plan that can be reviewed and reprioritized over the next decade, says chief Horizon 2067 planner Pierre Dubé.
Caron says the report, which consolidates voices in cities as diverse as Halifax and Edmonton, will be released early next year. It will demonstrate a coast-to-coast vision for the capital.
“Macro visionary” planning isn’t what the urban doctor prescribed Ottawa, says Lori Mellor, executive director of Preston Street BIA, but she gives the NCC the benefit of the doubt.
“They’re on the right track. We need to revisit the Gréber plan – it’s been overbuilt. I mourn the loss of it.”
She blames the feds for Ottawa’s lack of esthetic urban design.
“The fact is the NCC has no money. And I don’t think this current government will be quick to give them any more. There seems to be a very anti-Ottawa bias in our current government.”
Shedding Parliament Hill of its bias is what gives this cross-Canada tour credence and a strong incentive, Mellor emphasized.
“(NCC chairperson) Lemay can take that report back to the feds and say, ‘Look, that is your own bias. The rest of the country is saying we need to invest in our capital.’ ”
Darwin criticizes what he calls the NCC’s cripplingly distant vision. “We have a sesquicentennial coming up in 2017. Why can’t we change something by then?”
Caron says 2017 is a significant, symbolic benchmark for Canada and she hopes aspects of the Horizon 2067 action plan will be applicable for the 150th anniversary.
As far as the city is concerned, Bay Ward Coun. Katherine Hobbs says city council is determined to improve the cityscape for 2017.
“The city’s main infrastructure and main arterial roads will be fixed, updated and repaved for 2017. With ‘Ottawa on the Move,’ there is a great push to fix anything in the city that is crumbling, provide more cycling and walking infrastructure, and start LRT construction by 2013,” says Hobbs.
“Bank Street (construction) is all done, Rideau is getting done, Somerset is getting done – many of our neighbourhoods are going be spit, polished and ready to show off to the world . . . by 2017, except maybe Lansdowne,” says Mellor.