Trending towards Windsor?

If we see these national trends making their way down the 401 towards Windsor, do you think that we will be ready to capitalize on them?

Green and dense
Changing demographics, economics will make cities the crowded choice for the 21st century

When it comes to where Canadians choose to live, 65 per cent prefer to house themselves in suburbia and the balance in medium and large-size cities.

This ratio is about to change.

The past two decades show a steady decline in the population of small towns in many provinces and growth in cities.

Pricey single-family detached dwellings and job opportunities are the two key factors drawing the young to cities.

Lower-cost urban condos are fast becoming homes to many first-time buyers. On this front, we are fast closing ranks with our European counterparts who have lived in high-density settings for centuries and where apartment living is common.

With the mounting popularity of Canadian urban centres, the built product is bound to change. We are likely to see more tall towers in the heart of cities and their periphery.

These are the issues we are preparing our city council to address. These are the trends that successful urban areas are embracing as they contend with their eroding traditional economic base's and moving forward in a progressive manner. They are also the issues that our mayor and councillor pay lip-service to but don't really seem to understand the implications of their procrastination.

We are also seeing an emphasis on the public realm and the resulting rise of our quality of life when we design and build a quality product. The current debate about our downtown's revitalization is elevated when we learn from the experiences of other communities;

"Streetscapes are for me the rivers of life in a city, revealing in the passing flow the character and culture of the residents and what makes them and their surroundings so special."

"For the last several years, the city's Planning Department and the Community Redevelopment Agency and its prime landscape consultant, Pat Smith, have published and promoted an ambitious set of urban design standards and guidelines laying out a streetscaping strategy. Critical to the effort has been the tacit support of the Department of Transportation, which until recently had considered its prime objective to move cars and trucks fast and efficiently through Downtown. Making streets attractive for pedestrians at best has been an afterthought."

So, we can see where we want to go when it comes to pedestrianizing our landscape. We can see the importance of human-scaled development both to our quality of life and to developing our local economy. Other municipalities have acknowledged the relationship between their departments of transportation and land use planning. So what priorities does Windsor seem focused on currently. Our recent decisions to accomodate suburban sprawl and big-box development are major hints. From the Washington Post:

"And all of this is a shame, given that Kiev has historically been considered the most pleasant of the former Soviet Union's capitals -- a walkable alternative to Moscow. In his book "Imperium," about his travels through the declining Soviet Union, the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski described Kiev as "the only large city of the former USSR whose streets serve not merely for hurrying home but for walking, for strolling." Kiev's main boulevard, Khreschatyk, he wrote, is something like a local Champs-Elys¿es, and he was impressed by Kiev's downtown "crowds of people" out "to get some fresh air."

A decade and a half later, the city that Kapuscinski liked no longer exists. Walking here can be dangerous because the sidewalks are covered with cars, both parked and moving. That ritual of city life -- the promenade -- has become an adventure in the sort of defensive, serpentine ambulation with which the pedestrian makes his way through a strip mall parking lot."

So the carrot-and-stick approach to an urbane lifestyle that community activists are attempting to employ here in Windsor is backed by the experience of numerous other cities. Curb sprawl while enriching the urban experience. The recipe for success.