How should we improve Ottawa?
Councillor seeks to encourage new ideas
Do you have a $50,000 idea to improve life in Ottawa?
Councillor Mathieu Fleury and city planner Alain Miguelez are leading an effort to create an ideas competition with a $50,000 prize. To provoke discussion, they wish to bring journalist and entrepreneur Tyler Brulé to Ottawa to share his observations and experience.
“How can we make Ottawa a more urban, friendlier place, and is it through design, entrepreneurship or other elements?” asks Fleury. “What’s missing?”
Brulé, who lived in Ottawa from 1982 to 1984, is the Winnipeg native who started Wallpaper magazine and now publishes Monocle. The magazine promotes contemporary design, creative businesses and vital urban lifestyles around the globe. Based in London, England, he also runs Winkreative, a branding and advertising firm whose clients include Porter Airlines.
Touching down in the capital in 2011 to have Easter dinner with his family, Brulé was discouraged by the vacant parking lots, closed businesses, cracked and littered sidewalks and potholes of the downtown core. His mother had warned him that “Ottawa was looking pretty grim and isn’t at its best in early spring.”
Brulé went on to write an article in the Financial Times in April of that year called The Oddly Mean Streets of Ottawa. “I wondered how I’d feel if I were an Australian diplomat posted from Rome to Ottawa on a three-year assignment,” he wrote. “Or how a Brazilian defence attaché might sell Ottawa to his family before signing on to represent his nation. I concluded bad and badly.”
Fleury and Miguelez called Brulé after the article appeared.
“If you’ve got things to say, why don’t you come back to Ottawa and tell us how the city can play at a higher level?” Miguelez recalls saying.
Though Brulé says nothing is confirmed, a public event is tentatively scheduled for April 18.
The organizers are seeking $50,000 in corporate sponsorship, which includes Brule’s speaking fee and travel expenses. They are also trying to raise an additional $50,000 for the ideas award. “We want to promote Ottawa as a place where there’s opportunity for ideas to come to fruition,” says Fleury.
The planning group consists of about 10 people and includes representatives from Ottawa’s arts, culture and digital media sectors, as well as from Hub Ottawa, a workspace for startups and socially-conscious businesses.
“It’s really residing outside the walls of officialdom,” says Miguelez, who is involved as a volunteer. “It’s for the city at large to find those good ideas that are going to put us on the map.”
Anyone interested in joining can contact Fleury (at mathieu.fleury@ottawa.ca). They’re looking for a broad cross-section of experience, including with competitions and selection juries.
Organizers envision an event with questions for Brulé and a focus on things that can be done.
“We want him to give a fair analysis of what’s out there in other cities that we don’t have here and that we could easily implement,” says Fleury. “Does he find nightlife is missing? Is it something specific, in terms of a commerce, missing here?”
Questions could include: What are the top five things Ottawa needs before LRT? What are the top five things Ottawa is doing well?
“The idea is not for us to be defensive, or respond, but mainly to say, ‘OK you’re giving us a broad view of what’s out there, how do you see that integrated into Ottawa?’”
The event would launch the competition. “There’s lots of pat-on-theback awards for people who have accomplished things, but there is nothing to give a good idea the shot in the arm it needs to get it going,” says Miguelez.
“If you’re sitting there burning with an idea, saying, ‘ Man it would be cool if we could do this, put the idea forward and if it’s viable, then there would be a kitty of money given to that.”
They hope to make it an annual or biannual award. The winner could be a person or organization. Ideas would be judged by a panel, and the $50,000 would go toward implementation.
Though Brulé’s visit would again fall during Ottawa’s notoriously gritty April, Miguelez and Fleury plan a different itinerary for him, including Dow’s Lake, Little Italy and West Wellington. “Let’s give him a ride from the Governor General’s residence into Vanier going along our bike paths,” says Fleury. “I’d like him to see the cool things happening at the University of Ottawa and Algonquin, and local businesses that are thriving like Bridgehead.”
‘The raw ingredients are there: a decent little airport, ample green space, a pretty setting and the making of a proper urban core.’
TYLER BRULE Journalist describing Ottawa in an article in the Financial Times
Ottawa has changed, Fleury says. “There’s really hip and cool neighbourhoods, local restaurants. The arts scene has changed. There are a lot more local bands, a lot more artists that are prominent, that can do their own thing and survive.
“We’d like to be more internationally recognized for the quality of life we offer here,” says Fleury. “We’re not just a government town. We’re way more than that.”
In his column, Brulé offered some suggestions. “While not a purely federal affair, the capital of one of the world’s biggest economies can surely put on a better show and set an example for the rest of the country,” he wrote. “The raw ingredients are there: a decent little airport, ample green space, a pretty setting and the making of a proper urban core. What’s missing is some inspired leadership, a strategy on density and scale and a strict planning code to encourage better housing, commercial buildings and public spaces.”