Plazas and passageways captured by graphic recorder Tanya Gadsby

To celebrate Jane’s Walk on May 4, The Places Project hosted a walk that explored a variety of plaza spaces in downtown Victoria (BC, Canada) and the curious walkways that connect them. Our route was intentionally a mid-block route. Like many cities, Victoria features some blocks that are relatively long. As none other than Jane Jacobs herself noted, short blocks are better – better for pedestrians because they allow more options for movement and better for retail because they provide more of those high-profile corner locations.

But in any city, you work with the infrastructure that’s there. So we took a walk cutting through Victoria’s long blocks that run between the main streets of Douglas and Blanchard. 

First, our group of about 20 (downtown residents, families, planning professionals, architects and community activists) gathered at the open-air atrium in front of the Central branch of the Greater Victoria Public Library. It’s one of those spaces that is immediately and obviously good and bad. Its glass roof protects one from the elements. But it’s a 1970s era design – dark brick and concrete on all sides, with little colour or humanity.

The atrium is graced by a great central sculpture by the late Victoria artist George Norris. Unfortunately, there is no plaque or other information about the sculpture (that we could find) so the community appreciation for the work hits a dead end. 

A courtyard that doesn’t invite people to linger.

Buskers sometimes perform on the raised steps around the sculpture and for them the acoustics are reasonably good. The problem is that, aside from the buskers, the square is not inviting. Sometimes that’s due to the breezes that whisk through the space but on this sunny spring day, the temperatures under the glass were comfortable. Still, everyone in the atrium except us was on the move – using it as a shortcut or coming and going from the library. The issue, as we could see from some of the other spaces that we visited, was the lack of variety in activities that the space supports. No food carts, no vendors, no adjacent shops, no cafe = no one sticking around.

There also appears to be a usage policy issue – one member of our group told about sitting in the courtyard, working on a university paper, and being told by a security staffer that the space was “closed” after library hours. This despite the fact there are no gates or doors to be closed or locked on the courtyard’s connecting entry points. 

Curious connectors and lively spaces

So we set off northward and – to the surprise of some participants – were able to walk 5 blocks without having to go out to the main streets on the ends of the blocks (Douglas and Blanchard). This is due to the City of Victoria’s very good mid-block pedestrian crossings – they all have curb bulbs and are clearly marked – and to a lesser extend the semi-secret passageways through the middle of each block. Those passages range from outdoor walkways (in most cases, ones that don’t align to allow a clear line of sight) and an odd series of indoor retail spaces (most of which provide nothing to indicate you can actually walk through them). Here’s some observations from our graphic recorder: 

What makes great space? Our participants shared these observations.

The series of walkways through office towers and even parkade structures are a real missed opportunity. When looked at in combination with the mid-block street crossings and some very good open spaces on adjacent sidewalks, the route could be a really cool urban experience. The potential remains untapped. More on what’s happening (and what could be happening) along those passages in future blog posts.

To bookend the walk, we ended at The Atrium building, designed by Franc D’Ambrosio, and lo and behold we saw what good placemaking does.

Comfortable and inviting privately owned space in The Atrium.

People stood and chatted and it felt like a community space. Some of the not so secret design features of the space included lots of natural light, many adjacent uses (coffee shop, fast food restaurant, fine dining restaurant, hair boutique, cookware store that offers classes). Plus the abundant use of clear glass so that everyone in all those spaces could see others coming and going, whether those people were on the street or in The Atrium common space. 

Here’s a short video on the placemaking decisions that went into The Atrium.

Watch for future posts on other aspects of this walk. We will also have a feature post on the improved plaza design that is included in The Era, a condo development that is under construction on this ‘mid-block’ route.

In an earlier blog post, we talked about the issues of arterials and our observations from The Places Project community walk through Burnside Gorge, a neighbourhood north-west of downtown Victoria, BC, Canada. Burnside Gorge includes everything from light industrial to residential to commercial uses. In recent years the very well designed Selkirk Village development (see pink area on map below) has brought a blend of housing, retail and services to the Gorge Waterway (an inlet from Victoria harbour). It’s a great space but the community remains disjointed – to get or from the community centres (see “C” on the map below) to Selkirk Village and the water means crossing a rather intimidating intersection.

This is not a new observation. The recently adopted Official Community Plan for The City of Victoria specifically references a goal to “Better integrate Selkirk Village with adjacent lands.”

Burnside Gorge map, Official Community Plan. (c) City of Victoria

Map from Victoria’s official plan notes the lack of connectivity in this location

In our view it’s not so much about linking “adjacent lands” as it is in facilitating people movement. Those lands are the places where people live, go to school, visit friends, and walk their dogs. The issue is about not cutting off community circulation with a roadway that doesn’t support the multiple ways people move around. In Victoria, a city with a moderate coastal climate, people are outdoors year round. Cycling is a common mode of transportation, as is walking. 

Two elements equal one problem

Here at the corner of Gorge Road and Jutland Road (which in turn connects to a city-wide arterial Finlayson) the intersection and street design favour vehicular traffic moving through the area at the expense of locals on foot, bike and in wheelchairs. Two seemingly small elements of this area create this imbalance – and provide opportunities to improve the situation.

First, vehicles traveling north-west on Gorge Road are given a dedicated “ramp” right hand turn onto Jutland Road. That means that they don’t have to stop and while in theory they do yield to pedestrians, the dedicated lane allows drivers to maintain their speed and sweep through the intersection.

Secondly, Jutland Road north of the intersection features an unusually wide northbound driving lane. On our walk, I paced it off at approximately 5 metres (16 feet) versus the standard 3-3.5 metres (10-12 feet). 

Note dedicated non-stop right turn lane in this Google view of the Gorge – Jutland intersection. (c) Google

In combination, those two factors create an ideal environment for heavy trucks to take fast turns. And it is a busy intersection with heavy truck traffic. In the minds of those truck drivers on their mission to get across town, the neighbourhood for all intents and purposes doesn’t exist. They are focused on connecting to the next arterial on their journey and doing so as quickly as possible.

It’s the job of the intersection to help all those vehicles to move – but it’s also the job of the intersection to tell them they are entering a different zone. For just two blocks along Jutland Road, inter-city traffic needs to ‘get the message’ that this is a place of children going to school, people out walking their dogs and folks ambling to or from Selkirk Village and the lovely waterfront.

Two fixes

There are (at least) two fixes for a problem intersection like Gorge and Jutland. One is simply to square off the intersection, removing the dedicated curved turn lane. That would require all vehicles to come up the intersection, stop (if the light is red) and turn. More awkward for a heavy truck, no doubt, but manageable. A less effective solution from a pedestrian’s point of view would be to narrow the driving lane on Jutland – that wide swath of asphalt that allows for sloppy, fast cornering – and install heavy planters that direct vehicles over to a narrower lane against in the middle of the roadway.

I actually tested the latter solution on our walk by standing in the road (do not try this at home), effectively narrowing their lane and directing them to squeeze left. Replace me with a couple attractive planters and you have a safer environment for everyone. A bonus would be the ability to somewhat “separate” the bike lane on the street, streaming vehicles to the left of the planter / barricade.

Impromptu traffic calming – directing vehicles to squeeze left in an unusually wide traffic lane.

As Jane Jacobs always pointed out, citizens in a neighbourhood can see these issues easily. In the debrief session after our community walk, people marked up our maps with comments like “modify turning lane for trucks – slow down!”, “plant flower beds”, “width of roadway” and “reduce corner radius and add textured / coloured pavement.”

Participants in our urban walk marked up this intersection on the map.

People know what it feels like to be a pedestrian on a corner where a multi-ton cement truck comes wheeling around without pause. This is not the kind of place where it’s wise to step out into traffic and assert your pedestrian rights. It’s also not the kind of connecting point that links areas together, that invites people to walk to and from the nearby Gorge waterfront, or otherwise do stuff on foot.

What a multi-use intersection can look like: communicating “you are in a community here.”

As an urban transportation element, arterial roads are important. They move us between neighbourhoods – usually in cars, trucks and buses but also on bikes and foot. Good arterial design needs to recognize, however, that every neighbourhood deserves to have its own “flow” within the spaces that people will walk – usually a 15 to 20 minute radius. It’s reasonable to “neck down,” squeeze or slow an arterial for a few blocks within a neighbourhood, in the zones where neighbourhood flow is most important.

Studies show that traffic can still flow steadily and effectively at slower speeds – a roadway doesn’t need to move vehicles at 50 or 60 km/h continuously in order to move large volumes of traffic.

Taking steps

In Burnside Gorge neighbourhood of Victoria, some steps have been taken to start adding pedestrians to the streetscape. A block up from the problem intersection, curb bulbing has been added to the Jutland Road – Cecilia Road intersection, and new sidewalks lead from there past a school to the Burnside Gorge Community Centre. 

Nearby, curb bulbs have been added but Jutland Road is still a wide expanse from a pedestrian viewpoint.

An improved crossing of Jutland Road at Cecilia Road.

With the addition of similar pedestrian features on nearby intersections, the community can achieve a comfortable pedestrian flow while also continuing to “serve” the Greater Victoria municipal region by providing arterial road access.

Ben’s place

Place Matters

Place matters.  Want to address conflict in ways that are adaptive, inclusive, context-sensitive, flexible, multi-disciplinary, culturally respectful, creative, inspiring, collaborative, social…? This is what place offers.

I look around my place.  What do I see?  I see people from many cultures, and their influences.  I see people, First Nations, whose restorative traditions have served them over millenia.  I see nature; landforms, plants and animals, found nowhere else on earth.  Lessons for us, from everywhere (even whales, thanks @Kariboyle). I see abundance.  I see many ways of community, local variants on living together, shaped by place.

Local, living economies are place-based.  Great public places work because they are place-based (look no farther than Project for Public  Spaces org,  and this @rethinkurban site!).  Resilient neighbourhoods are place-based.  Great traditions start in a place.

Place and Conflict Management

What about conflict management?  What’s place-based about your approaches to conflict management?  Or, are they all imports from somewhere else?  Maybe you’ve adapted those imports, in big or small ways, to meet local conditions?   Have they taken root?   How adaptive and resilient are they to budget cuts, economy changes, the latest marketing… ?

Next time somebody markets you from afar… remember that the Internet has no seasons.  We aren’t all in the same boat.   Nature loves diversity.   Innovation loves diversity.  Your conflict management approaches should reflect a love of diversity.

Is the Internet a “place”?

I’m a fan of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR).  I believe in using technology for public good, to make the world a better place.  That\s my cup half full view on technology.  Even better, for me, though,  would be place-based ODR.  ODR adapted to local needs.  My local government  (BC Ministry of Justice) is doing good work on this front.

Place + Technology

Myself, I am focused on hybrid models of managing conflict and dispute resolution.  Technology is here to serve us, not master us.  Not yet, anyways!  Personal, local interactions, with conversations extended and enhanced via technology.  That’s my vision.  Place + technology.  That’s the intersection I seem to be spending lots of time on these days, towards a new service/product.

How about you?  Does the place where you live shape your views on conflict management?   

A collaborative walking consultation on green spaces in Oaklands neighbourhood, Victoria BC

While walking shoulder to shoulder we are able to slow down and notice different nooks and green spaces, hear different perspectives, and learn about how shared green spaces impact the community.

Green spaces can come in many shapes and sizes from a small chip trail, to a secretive tucked away pocket park, to a large baseball diamond field. How do these spaces impact individual experiences and the community at large? For this walk, we conceptualized the role of green space into four categories:

1- Health & Well-Being: green spaces can be for exercise or alternative transport/trails, as well as aesthetic enjoyment.

2- Community Engagement: green spaces act as a ‘green hub,’ a place for social inclusion as well as a meeting place for communal life in the neighbourhood. (For more information on the active role green spaces can play in community engagement see Hilary Burrage’s article .)

3- Recreation: green spaces as public playgrounds, parks, and sports fields.

4- Ecology: the role green spaces play in water management, habitat conservation, and biodiversity. This can include agriculture and/or gardening.

As we explored Oakland’s diverse green spaces together, we paused and reflected on the nature of public versus private space and how the lines can be blurred. Our ideas, reflections, and favourite nooks where captured by the talented graphic recorder Tanya Gadsby.

Graphic recording of the Oaklands walk by Tanya Gadsby of Drawing Out Ideas.

Stay tuned for more posts about our discoveries on this walk…

A big Thank You to our Stone Soup volunteers who cooked a beautiful meal using our vegetable donations for us to share in after the walk.

Good conversation over good food prepared by Stone Soup volunteers.

Check-out our MeetUp for our next urban space discovery walk which will run as part of Jane’s Walk.

Downtown Places and Passages – a Jane’s Walk
Saturday May 4
1 – 2 pm
Meet in the atrium courtyard of the Greater Victoria Public Library Central branch
735 Broughton Street.

Explore downtown Victoria plazas and walkways with us.

We will explore a number of downtown plazas and walkways, observing how space is used, how spaces are connected, and the potential for innovative and positive changes in our shared spaces downtown. The walk will amble through a variety of contrasting places downtown and conclude at a coffee shop where the conversation can continue for those who are interested. We will be joined by local graphic recorder Tanya Gadsby who will capture ideas and places along the way.

This walk will be part of the international Jane’s Walk movement. Jane’s Walks are free walking tours led by interested citizens around the world on the first weekend in May to commemorate the ideas and legacy of the Canadian urbanist Jane Jacobs. It is all about getting people out exploring their neighbourhoods and meeting their neighbours. “Since its inception in Toronto in 2007, Jane’s Walk has expanded rapidly. In May of 2011, 511 walks were held in 75 cities in 15 countries worldwide.” Check out http://www.janeswalk.net/index.php/about/ for more information on the Jane’s Walks.

Feel free to get in touch with any questions or more information, email placesproject [at] rethinkurban.com

Looking forward to exploring with you,
Sarah Rose & Lorne

Those were some of the questions raised when The Places Project  visited Burnside Gorge neighbourhood in Victoria, BC, Canada for a walkability exploration this spring.

By definition, arterials are blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart. Of course, in an urban planning and transportation context, arterials are roads that typically carry a large capacity of vehicles, collecting traffic from smaller neighbourhood streets and providing a route between neighbourhoods or to and from highways.

When the Burnside Gorge Community Association invited The Places Project to host a walkability exploration, the role of arterials was a primary issue. The community’s response to the draft City of Victoria Official Community Plan makes a number of references to the disruption and challenges of Greater Victoria arterials that slice through the neighbourhood. For more on Victoria’s Official Community Plan as it applies to Burnside Gorge, check Map 19 on the plan’s website. 

The best starting point for questions like those posed in Burnside Gorge is in simple observation and experience. Do we really understand what is happening at the street level? Because if we are going to find solutions, we must start from a clear understanding of what is going on now.

A great way to enhance our understanding is to walk the routes that neighbourhood people walk regularly, or that they would like to walk were it not for barriers and real dangers.

So we set off on a recent Saturday with a group that included community residents, interested urbanists from Greater Victoria, a Victoria City Councillor and a couple architects. Along the way, we noted how helpful marked crossings, especially with a middle island and corner bulbs, are in crossing an arterial. An island mid-way across a street allows a person to do a two-stage crossing, which is particularly useful in traffic rush hour situations. (These islands are sometimes called a “refuge island” – a telling term.)

A basic crossing island on Burnside Road. Vegetation planting would help communicate neighbourhood values.

A person doesn’t have to wait for a gap in both directions of traffic. Islands are great for all of us but especially for anyone who is unsure about making the whole crossing in one dash – think of people with perception problems, with slow movement, or a bunch of little ones to shepherd across. Studies show that vehicles are also more likely to yield for pedestrians standing at a crossing with bulb-outs and/or islands than unimproved crossings.

A number of the residential streets have speed bumps to discourage short-cutting and have the ambience of comfortable community spaces.

Victoria City Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe tries out hopscotch on Carroll St.

Emerging from a residential street onto Gorge Road (arterial), we quickly noticed that there are simply not enough crossings, in the places where people want to cross in order to access community amenities. When a person is on foot, it is not reasonable to expect them to go two blocks out of their way to find a crossing point. And while pedestrians can legally cross at any traffic intersection, our walking group faced the realities of arterials when we walked along a few blocks of Gorge Road.

Here, the street is configured in four driving lanes with very narrow bike lanes on each curb. The bike lanes are so narrow as to be largely ineffective – perhaps a metre, maybe less. Standing alongside the lane as large trucks, buses and speeding cars whipped by, none of us were very enticed by the prospect of biking Gorge Road.

Gorge Road – a wide swatch for vehicles, narrow strips for bikes and pedestrians.

The stretch that we walked also has no parking. There is no grass or treed boulevard. Visually, everything is pushed back from the four traffic lanes – it is a wide open expanse. While traffic engineers working from mid-twentieth century design guidelines no doubt thought such designs were “safer” because they cleared all the sightlines for drivers, we now understand that clear sight lines communicate one thing to drivers: you can speed up. So the real effect is less safety.

While we had no radar gun with us, our sense was that most of the vehicles on the 4 lane thoroughfare were speeding – especially when they swept through the dip in Gorge Road where it crosses the Galloping Goose trail (a ravine that features a bike trail where once a rail line ran). There is evidence that reducing average speed does not significantly reduce the ‘carrying capacity’ or volume of vehicle traffic.

Cars on this kind of open expanse take full ownership of the road – no pedestrian is going to dare to cross.

In fact, a few members of our group stepped out into the bicycle lane to check its width and a car coming up in the closest lane came to a full stop, honking and gesturing at our intrusion into its space. Standing in the bike lane, we waved the car forward to indicate that we weren’t attempting to cross the street but the driver persisted in honking and gesturing. Clearly, pedestrians are a frightening exception to the rule for motorists on this kind of artery.

Drivers speed up on – and dominate – wide roadways where pedestrians are pushed to the fringes.

This is why many cities are now putting arterials on a “road diet” when they pass through residential neighbourhoods. Any attempt to create a walkable community is disrupted by the danger and intimidation of vehicles on the arterial. Having a few safe crossings at major signal-light controlled intersections is not the answer. The answer is a revised treatment for whole sections of artery, so that drivers are aware they are commuting through a neighbourhood where people are walking to school, to work, to the coffee shop, or to pick up groceries.

Here’s an example of the “rightsizing” of a similar arterial in Charlotte, NC. East Boulevard in Charlotte, which carries significantly higher vehicle volumes that Victoria’s Gorge Road, was converted from 4 and 5 lane configurations to 3 lanes with bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Note that the changes include not only allowance of greater space for sidewalks and bike lanes but the addition of the important visual cues that tell motorists that this is in fact a residential neighbourhood. Those include islands with planted vegetation and boulevard plantings that subtly let drivers know that this isn’t a race track or freeway. 

Those are exactly some of the messages that can communicated by a street’s “treatment” – what happens in the spaces that are not concrete and asphalt. 

In our next post, we will apply some of these concepts to another Burnside Gorge arterial – Jutland Road (which operates as an extension of the larger arterial Finlayson Road) and some new ways of looking at its short but very impactful route through the neighbourhood. 

A week before the event, we did a preview walk, scouting the area. It’s an intriguing neighbourhood. Here’s a few glimpses of what we saw and things that we will no doubt talk about on April 14.

Fishy fence: creativity is evident in Oaklands.

Green spaces along streets in Oaklands are often share spaces, like this Haultain Common.

A “community living room” invites you to stop and sit on this Oaklands corner.

Please do join us if you are in Greater Victoria on April 14 and have an interest in green spaces, neighbourhood development, and urban issues. You can sign in on Meetup or simply send us an email at placesproject [at] rethinkurban.com to RSVP.

Bonus: the event will include a Stone Soup after the walk – bring a vegetable along and community volunteers will turn it into a wonderful soup for us to share upon our return from our explorations.

Discussing design details for a traffic circle in Selkirk Village.

It was inspiring to see a mix of participants from the Greater Victoria community, Burnside-Gorge residents, planning professionals, and advocacy groups all coming out to share their perspectives. The walk dove into the theme of walkability.

Discussing bike lane and car lane widths on Gorge Road.

 We explored 4 key themes that make up a walkable neighbourhood along our hour-long urban space discovery walk:

1.  Proximity: are there places in walking distances (typically 15-20 minutes walk) to work, play, live and learn?
2.  Infrastructure: Where are the sidewalks, crossings and furniture? How accessible are they? How does the road infrastructure, texture and size affect drivers, bikers and walkers?
3.  Vitality: What are the stimulating sights, sounds and smells that add texture and beauty to the neighbourhood? Does it feel safe and comfortable to be out and about?
4. Diversity: Is there a diversity of people, shops and options in walking distance?

One of the highlights of using a walk as a tool to explore the neighbourhood is that it provides an opportunity to really slow down and notice what is around us. Walking as equals with others provides the chances to share stories and perspectives and learn something new.

Round table conversations following the walk.

Stay tuned to hear more insights about what we learned along the way…

It is with excitement that we announce The Places Project’s next event: Re-Imagine Oaklands. Join us as we explore the role of green spaces in the neighbourhood.

Re-imagine Oaklands Neighbourhood

Sunday April 14th 12-2pm

1-2827 Belmont Ave

Bring a veggie! This event will be in conjunction with Victoria’s Stone Soup project, please bring a veggie with you at the start of the walk so we can share in creating and eating a delicious meal together after the walk during our debrief.

-Individually we bring enough but collectively, we create so much more-

RSVP to placesproject [a] rethinkurban.com or join the MeetUp group online.

Looking forward to exploring with you…

Sarah Rose & Lorne

On the stroll

Here’s what a neighbourhood stroll does for me:

Discover neighbourhood delights

• Its physical.  Goodness knows, like most of us, I can use more physicality in my life.
• It’s a mind/body happening.  Ask any good speaker, mediator, facilitator, parent…  about the connection between mind and body.
• It’s something different.  We all know that insight often arrives, after we’ve rested on our “great idea”… the ‘spacing effect’.
• Sometimes I use it as a time to meditate. That’s right, meditate.  Most of us are wrestling with distributive attention, I’ve found doing nothing other than walking and listening (and hey, what’s more important than listening?), to all the sounds around me, even if only for ten Zen seconds, helps calm my monkey brain.
• It’s’ connective. With so much of our life spent online, its easy to lose touch with those other worlds – a midday stroll reinforces my bigger connection; between my inner and outer worlds; to neighbours, to nature…

Make the most of your neighbourhood stroll habit

Similar to any habit you are nurturing:

1. Do it regularly.

2. Do it with intention; e.g., as a natural transition between activities, as meditative exercise, …

3. Then let go, and be present, to yourself and all that’s around you.

Anywhere, anyhow

Of course, you can do the stroll anywhere.  You don’t have to be in a postcard-like neighbourhood setting.  Downtown can work.  A stroll works anywhere, where you’re feeling safe enough to relax your mind.  At other times, a companion stroller is great. I enjoy ‘walking meetings’.

How about you? Do you routinely take a midday, or morning or evening…, stroll?  What additional practice/benefit does it provide you?

Bonus

If you are in the Victoria area, Lorne Daniel of Rethink Urban (@RethinkUrban) is leading a series of walks, starting this Saturday,  exploring walkability in the Greater Victoria region.  I’ll be at the one this Saturday, expressing my neighbourhood stroll habit, collaboratively learning, and in good company.

(this post was originally published on Collaborative Journeys)

Old Faithful, painting (c) Nancy Ruhl

That’s the theme of my art show, currently running at the Madrona Gallery in downtown Victoria (BC, Canada). The gallery owner, Michael Warren, describes my work this way: “Nancy Ruhl paints the aspects of neighbourhoods that are often overlooked, elevating the everyday to the extraordinary and bringing a greater awareness to the unique elements of our community.” 

I paint heritage homes, iconic sites, and everything else you might see on a stroll through the city.

Gallery co-owner Theresa Warren says, “Ruhl’s playful and vibrant paintings of heritage sites around the city are definitely worth checking out.”

Guest Author Bio

Nancy Ruhl

I am a full time artist with studios on Pender Island and in Victoria, BC. I paint primarily in acrylics in bold colours and a simple, undetailed style. When I am in Victoria during the winter, I take a lot of photos of heritage homes and familiar street scenes. Downtown, Fairfield and Ross Bay are my haunts. I use the photos for reference when I adjourn to my studio on Pender.

Visit Nancy’s Blog / Website: http://nancyruhl.ca