We need more modest, mixed housing options
City's Official Plan needs big shift, socially integrated designs, says Daniel Buckles.
The other day, I was in my backyard when a Downy Woodpecker, the smallest woodpecker species in North America, landed right beside me to drink from a small bird bath. It drank for a while, looking me in the eye, then bolted away when heavy machinery in the neighbour's yard started up. A 1945 “wartime house” built in the style called a “strawberry box” had come down the day before, and serious digging had begun. A new single home will take its place. What will it be like?
Ottawa's draft Official Plan calls for a new urban form — dubbed 613 Flats — to house the city's growing human population, while also increasing affordability and sustainability. It is a collection of seven housing designs, each with a total of six rooms including the bathroom, that could be built in mature neighbourhood while respecting the required amenity space, trees, soft landscaping and neighbourhood context.
It seems unlikely, however, that the house going up behind me takes this work into account. Modest homes and small, multi-family units have no visibility in the public discussion on the Official Plan and few policy supports in the draft. So far, Ottawa's builders, architects, landscapers and the wealthy for whom they build have shown remarkably little imagination in regards to questions of housing diversity and greening outside of the building envelope, whether it be in new subdivisions or urban infill.
Neighbourhood housing to accommodate and integrate an aging population (rather than sending them off on their own), to welcome students and young people without children, and to shelter families in smaller homes, is simply not being built.
That's too bad. While an Official Plan needs to get the big picture right — how much urban expansion and where, and transportation and infrastructure designed for a low-carbon future — the details of housing and the design of urban space make a big difference in the day-to-day human experience of life in the city. Leadership is needed here too, and the city is trying to provide it with ideas such as the 613 Flats and 15-minute neighbourhoods.
The plan also pays attention to density around transit stations, but runs the risk of reinforcing the tale of two cities: urban skyscrapers (mainly high-end condos) and neighbourhoods of over-large singles and semis. Neither is particularly affordable and both isolate people from each other, from local businesses and from nature in the city.
A third, crushing reality, experienced by marginalized and racialized communities, remains unresolved. Among the recent comments on the draft Official Plan from the province of Ontario's ministry of Municipal Affairs is a call on the city to establish an affordable housing target aligned with the city's Housing and Homelessness Plan. Currently it has none. No targets means no path to follow.
The wartime house torn down behind me, which raised a family of five, will be replaced by something much, much bigger. Outdoor space will be reduced and denaturalized to such an extent that the Downy will have little reason to return. The front yard will have a wide garage and hardscaping for two cars to sit idle side-by-side. Any new trees and shrubs will likely be non-native cultivars selected by landscapers more interested in selling an exotic (and expensive) look than making use of native plants that support the native insects the Downy and other birds recognize as food. Maybe there will be a rooftop patio, with a view that entertains for a while but so often seems to be abandoned for the convenience inside.
This loss of neighbourhood habitat and native biodiversity is multiplied as each home is taken down and replaced with designs that maximize interior space for high-consuming single families and minimize yard work (frankly, raking is cheaper exercise than the gym). Key goals of the Official Plan — affordability by increasing housing options while respecting livability — are not served by the unrelenting and unimaginative supply of overlarge singles and semis.
While 613 Flats, the 15-minute neighbourhood and transit hubs are good ideas, the city's zoning and Official Plan must support a dramatic shift toward mixed urban forms and socially integrated housing everywhere inside the urban boundary, including the suburbs, or the goals will not be achieved.