Pie Palace

Blake Batson has said on his blog that he wants to “float ideas on how to improve our system that others will be free to vet or claim them as their own.” In that spirit, I’d like to present my first suggestion for our pals in the City of Ottawa: intensification.

Our city was supposed to be squeezed into the Greenbelt. But since this 60s, development has occurred outside the Greenbelt and our city has been surrounded by a fluffy pink tutu of sprawl. Looking at a Statistics Canada map of population density around Ottawa, we see that the population per square kilometre is mostly in the 500-2999 person range. Only in the core does the population rise beyond 5000 ppl/km². Worryingly, looking at the population change map between 2001 and 2006, we see that the population outside the Greenbelt is growing quickly, while the population in the no man’s land between exurbia and downtown is shrinking.

Given the received wisdom that city services (water delivery, sewage disposal, transit) work best in dense urban areas, Ottawa should be looking to the orange areas on that map to lower their cost per taxpayer.

Happily, I’m not the only person suggesting this. The transit experts hired by the city to evaluate our transit plan said the same thing: our suburbs need higher densities to make rail transit a viable option. In a surprising moment of lucidity, the city’s own transportation committee endorsed the idea of improving density along the new light rail route.

Our current transportation plan isn’t very different from what we have today. Hopefully, if City council can keep focused on building a more urban city, we can look at a much better transit scenario in 2031.

Thanks to Blake Batson for the idea of this series.