NCC’s plan is modest — and that’s fine
Latest plan aims to improve without saying region’s fabric needs reweaving
The National Capital Commission’s new plan for the next 50 years is modest, and that’s OK.
Modesty has not been among the commission’s virtues for a long time. In this case, it means keeping the commission’s plans fairly small but also specific enough that it can actually be held to them.
The 1950 scheme for the capital by French planner Jacques Gréber was big. Gréber had William Lyon Mackenzie King’s personal backing to transform the city from a hick lumber town into the capital of a middle power with aspirations. Thanks to Gréber, we tore up railways and streetcar tracks and laid down highways and parkways, levelled LeBreton Flats, protected the Greenbelt, expanded Gatineau Park, built bridges and eventually the National Arts Centre, encouraged suburbs over dirty downtown density.
There was a lot to like and a lot to dislike in the Gréber Plan but there’s no question the guy thought big and concretely. There’s a reason why his plan is the one we still talk about and nobody much remembers the ones that followed.
By 1999, when the NCC produced the last iteration of its long-term plan, the commission’s talk was even bigger, in many ways, but so vague it could hardly be held to anything.
A totally typical bullet point: “The pedestrian experience of Confederation Boulevard needs to be planned and designed with the highest of standards to integrate permanent outdoor interpretative nodes in high-interest locations along the route.” OK, but what does this mean you’ll actually do?
The plan meant whatever then-chairman Marcel Beaudry wanted it to mean.
The NCC’s latest vision aims for a sweet spot: improving Ottawa-Gatineau without saying the fabric of the capital needs reweaving. How people get around is a key question in any urban plan but the commission admits “it is difficult to predict the course of urban mobility over the next 50 years” and tries to work around that uncertainty rather than taking its best guess and charging ahead.
Yes, there’s some guff: “The NCC will promote quality of design to ensure the creation of responsive, enduring and responsible places, buildings, structures and landscapes over time,” for instance.
But then there are precise commitments like creating a riverfront promenade from the canal locks at the Ottawa River to the Rideau Falls. The same with turning the riverbank between LeBreton Flats and Mud Lake into a “world-class riverfront park.”
It’ll build six “commemorative nodes” around Confederation Boulevard, with the National War Memorial as a seventh. They’ll fix up 24 Sussex Dr., help turn the Prince of Wales Bridge into a proper river crossing, help establish a national portrait gallery and a botanical garden.
At a pettier level, the plan calls for things like integrating transit access to federal buildings and separating commuters and recreational toodlers on NCC paths, acknowledging that having federal things work as part of the city they’re in is really important.
It’ll take special funding from the government and co-operation to do the things that aren’t in the commission’s control. The danger in a 50-year planning horizon is that the big things can always get pushed off until later and somehow never get done, which is what happened at LeBreton Flats.
But we can look in on these specific ideas in 15 or 20 years to see how they’re going. Have we built a riverfront promenade? Does 24 Sussex still have window air conditioners?
The plan does have a few sour notes, echoes of the aloof NCC that for decades maddened people who actually live in the capital.
The plan refers repeatedly to an NCC-driven effort to integrate transit in Ottawa and Gatineau that sank without a trace as soon as a study was released in 2013 because both cities hated it.
The plan talks about turning the venerable National Research Council building at 100 Sussex Dr. into a “science and innovation hub” to “coalesce local, federal, provincial, national and international science and technology organizations” without ever mentioning the local, provincial and federal effort to build an “innovation centre” at Bayview Yards, which is very well underway.
The two of them should have heard of each other.
Dumbly, in talking about spiffing up Laurier Avenue and helping create a “Prime Ministers’ Walk” around former prime ministerial residences in Sandy Hill, the plan talks about “Laurier Street.” A foundational 50-year plan is no place for sloppiness.
But taken in total, the NCC’s new vision is the best thing to come out of the commission in years.