Transportation » Ren Thomas

Transportation governance in Toronto

I wrote recently about the fight to save Transit City, a proposal to extend LRT lines throughout Toronto’s inner suburban neighbourhoods. A while back, I had written about transportation governance in Metro Vancouver and its effects on public transit provision, and noted that Toronto was heading the same way. Well, it has: since 2009, the Metrolinx board has been completely divorced from public process.

Members of the Metrolinx board are appointed by the Minster of Transportation; they are not public officials elected by their municipalities. The current board, like the TransLink board in Metro Vancouver, is made up of mostly private sector business people who may or may not have conflicts of interest in transportation matters (ie. businesses that are located on a street with a proposed LRT line). Knowledge of transportation planning or experience taking public transit are not prerequisites; but to be fair, they never were, even when the board was made up of public officials. The Board can decide whether to hold meetings in public and how often to meet. There is no opportunity for the public to speak at meetings, even if they are allowed to attend, so there’s really no accountability for Metrolinx’ actions. The only recourse the public has is to complain to their MPP. But even if an MPP belongs to the party in power, they likely have no influence over who the Premier appoints as Minister of Transportation and who the Minister appoints to the Metrolinx Board.

It is bizarre that in Canada’s two largest cities, very small appointed boards decide the future of public transportation (11 sit on the TransLink board, and 15 on the Metrolinx board). It’s also a bit of an anachronism; we live in the area of downloaded responsibilities. The federal government offloads responsibility for housing and health care to the provinces; provinces download housing to the municipalities. Why would the province want such a tight grip on public transit provision? What is to be gained? Granted, these two boards are very short-lived so it’s hard to tell what their influence will be (Vancouver’s Canada Line notwithstanding). But like most transit advocates, I remain cynical about the whole issue of private-sector appointed boards making decisions about public spending, even if by some miracle they were actually public transit specialists. We need better governance in place for cities, especially on crucial issues like transportation and housing. Otherwise transportation board decisions will continue to be made as one-offs and there will be a lack of continuity in infrastructure projects and funding.

The end of suburbia?

As many of you know, there have been some very interesting developments in American cities over the past couple of years. Some cities have experienced decreased car ownership, there was a decrease in Vehicle Miles Travelled in 2008, and even the American Dream of homeownership has taken a left turn. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that the proportion of homes being built in central cities has doubled since 2006.

The EPA report Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions summarizes a study that examined residential permit data over 19 years (1990-2008) in 50 metropolitan regions. In roughly half of the regions, there has been a dramatic increase in the share of new residential permits built in inner cities and older suburbs.

Among the cities that saw a substantial increase are New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Fort Worth. But even smaller centres like Birmingham, Milwaukee, and Kansas City saw substantial increases in the share of residential permits in their inner cities. Cities with low increases include St. Louis, Detroit, and Salt Lake City, while Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford, Providence, and Buffalo all had slight decreases. Particularly interesting are the graphs which show detailed trends for specific metropolitan regions, contrasting urban fringe, 1st tier suburb, and city permits. In many cases, we can see the beginning the mortgage crisis on these graphs: between 2004 and 2006, urban fringe areas began their decline and cities began their ascent.

A lot of this has to do with housing type: national data confirms that the proportion of single detached housing permits decreased from 71% in 2000 to 59% in 2008. Townhouses remained relatively stable, while condos increased from 4% to 7%, rented condos from 16% to 24% and large multifamily buildings from 11% to 23%. I find these numbers surprising: little by little, the American Dream seems to be crumbling before our eyes. We have to remember that not all of this change can be pinned on the dismal housing market, since the trends persist over 19 years.

The EPA cautions that, while the data reveals a substantial shift in residential patterns, a large percentage of construction still takes place on previously undeveloped land. While the share of residential permits increased in many regions, in some these still account for less than half the overall share at the regional level. They would like to do further research on what is driving the shift: real estate market fundamentals or public sector policies? What type of residential units are being built on previously-developed land, and what percentage of these are transit-accessible? However, they did feel safe in saying that, ”This acceleration of residential construction in urban neighborhoods reflects a fundamental shift in the real estate market,” citing lower crime rates in urban areas and increased demand for homes in walkable neighbourhoods close to jobs.

Save Transit City

I’m getting pretty tired of writing about great policies and projects that we’ve proposed in Canada, only to have to write later that the government has decided not to fund them. Toronto’s Transit City project, an ambitious attempt to link the suburban parts of the region to reliable rapid transit through the construction of eight LRT lines, is under threat. Despite being approved by the federal and provincial governments, the province is threatening to cut Transit City funding by half, decreasing the viability of the project considerably.

A map showing the proposed LRTs

I’ve written before about how complex governance is when it comes to public transit in our municipalities. Vancouver’s struggles to build the UBC rapid transit line and many Canadian municipalities’ policies to better link transit and housing are detailed in several other posts. Even when projects are approved, it’s no guarantee they will be built because we have no stable source of funding for public transit and no consistent governance structure that enables the transfer of federal or provincial funds to municipalities. Transit City originally proposed eight lines: Sheppard (14 km), Finch West (17 km), Eglington Crosstown (33km), Scarborough, Don Mills, Jane, Scarborough Malvern, and Waterfront West. The province agreed to fund the first four back in 2007: of these, three are new lines (Sheppard, Finch West, and Eglinton) and the fourth is a retrofit of the existing Scarborough RT with four new stations. The province’s proposal to cut funding in half will put the Eglinton LRT, Scarborough RT, and Finch LRT at risk: the Sheppard line is already under construction while Eglington and Finch were to break ground this year and Scarborough in 2012.

As U of T Social Work professor David Hulchanski illustrated a couple of years ago, increased incomes in the areas around the existing two subway lines make it all but impossible for lower- and middle-income people to live close to rapid transit.

Hulchanski's map showing the need for rapid transit

Hulchanski’s most recent map shows the areas which have decreased in income in the past forty years against the proposed lines: the new LRT lines would be making transit much more accessible to the rapidly-growing areas of the region (read his plea for action on ttcriders.ca). My own work with immigrants in Toronto shows that they are willing to travel long distances on infrequent public transit buses only for a short time; eventually they succumb to buying one, two, and three cars. They live further and further out because that’s where affordable housing is…little realizing their transportation costs will eat away considerably at their savings.

Last week mayor David Miller recorded a public service announcement on the subway PA system telling people to call the Premier’s office and their MPPs to oppose the Transit City cuts. Many of the local mayors are also urging their citizens to do the same. All sorts of organizations, from Toronto Environmental Alliance to the Public Transit Coalition have links to the appropriate politicians, and there is a Save Transit City site. I urge you all to call, email, write the MPPs and Premier McGuinty and if you’re in the Toronto area, pack the Council chambers this Wednesday April 21st.

A ‘sea-change’ in transportation planning

In the past ten days, US policymakers seem to have achieved the impossible. On March 11, 2010, US Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood pronounced the end of favouring motorized transportation over non-motorized transportation. And on March 21, 2010, the US finally passed its health care legislation. Aren’t these the first signs of the apocalypse?

Lahood, at this year’s National Bike Summit, announced his new Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations and Recommendations. Key recommendations for state DOTs and communities include treating walking and cycling as equal transportation modes, ensuring convenient accessibility for all ages and abilities, going beyond minimum design standards, collecting data on walking and cycling trips, setting a mode share target for walking and cycling, protecting sidewalks and paths in the same way roads are protected, and improving non-motorized facilities during maintenance projects. At this point of course, it’s a Policy Statement; it’s not law. But it marks the profound shift that is occurring in North America away from car-dominated discourse and policy.

On the health care front, the health care bill passed in the House December 24, 2009 served as the basis for HR 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010. HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, as I reported in an earlier post. Its main measures, taking effect six months after its passage, prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, prevents increased rates for children with pre-existing conditions, forces insurance policies to cover preventative care without co-pays, allows children to remain on parents’ plans until the age of 26, and bans lifetime monetary caps on insurance policies. In the future (by 2014), it will prevent insurers from charging higher rates for those with pre-existing conditions, expand Medicaid eligibility, offer tax credits to small businesses (fewer than 25 employees) who offer insurance, impose tax penalties on businesses with over 50 employees who do not offer insurance, impose a fine on individuals who do not have insurance, give tax credits to individuals who have heath insurance, and offer a state-controlled insurance option. However, it differed significantly from the bill passed in the House, HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, particularly in terms of financing and subsidies. Because they were so different, President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the reconciliation bill. HR4872 was passed in the House of Representatives March 21, 2010, in a close 219-212 vote (216 votes were need to pass the bill). Not a single Republican supported its passage, but it doesn’t matter: the bill will be signed into law by the president as early as tomorrow.

Canada has also had a few firsts lately, although they are small potatoes compared to these major American policy shifts. One was the announcement that woonerfs are coming to Toronto. A West Donlands neighbourhood, currently under development, would include these Dutch streets, narrow, mixed-use affairs without curbs, which are thought to encourage pedestrian and cyclists while discouraging cars. Dutch woonerfs include traffic-calming measures like speed bumps and planter “bump-outs,” and the streets are more like outdoor urban social spaces than thoroughfares. The other was the announcement that Canada had opened the first school to ever require students to use non-motorized transportation to get to school. The Halton Public School Board just opened a new school, P.L. Robertson Elementary in Milton, where the students who live within 1.6 km (1 mile) of the school are required to get there on their own two feet, and parents are forbidden from driving their kids. 98% of the 700 students walk, bike, skateboard or ride scooters to school, while the remainder, who live more than 1.6km away, are bused. The school board is running the pilot project for one year, and hope to expand it to other schools soon. If it is a success, project manager Jennifer Jenkins knows that other schools will rapidly jump on board; the wealth of research on this topic shows how much is at stake with increases in childhood obesity and diabetes.

All I can say is where is our national policy on transportation? Where is our Ray Lahood? And more importantly, where is our Obama?

Metropolis 2010

Je viens de retourner de Montréal, où j’avais l’opportunité de practiquer mon français. A brief two and a half days of bilingual workshops and roundtables on immigration issues, mostly in the Canadian context, was enlightening and quite enjoyable. The best part: it was a relatively small conference, with 1200 participants and only four concurrent sessions. This meant it was well organized, there were very few changes to the programme itself, and it was very easy to find your way around the two floors dedicated to our conference: qualities usually missing at the American Association of Geographers annual congress, where I’ve presented a couple of times.

The small size of the conference meant that I was asked to be in a roundtable with some of the top researchers in the field: Bob Murdie who is retired from York University, Carlos Teixeira at UBC Okanagan, Sutama Ghosh at Ryerson, and Damaris Rose of INRS. I have cited all of these authors in my own work, and they proved to be just as thorough, but unassuming, as their writing would suggest. Also included were some housing agency representatives like my old friend Jim Zamprelli from Canada Mortgage and Housing Coporation, and two of us PhD students. The roundtable audience was a good size and included David Ley from UBC Geography and Sandeep Agrawal from Ryerson: David of course is legendary in geography (last year he was named a Distinguished Scholar by the American Association of Geographers); Sandeep is the Director of Ryerson’s Master of Planning program.

David Firang, who is currently doing his PhD in Social Work at U of T, presented his research on the housing choices of Ghanaian immigrants in the next session, where I also presented my preliminary findings. Carlos presented his latest research on immigrants in the Central Okanagan Valley, cementing the idea that immigrants have very few choices due to housing policy that does not support market rental or affordable housing construction. Tom Carter from the University of Winnipeg discussed some of the issues immigrants have in the smaller Manitoba centers, where there is still fairly significant housing market discrimination. Tom also noted, after my presentation, that immigrants to the smaller centers often complain about the lack of public transit, even if they live in towns of 500 residents. Damaris, who was the discussant in our session, gave us all some important insights and comments, and very kindly welcomed David and I into the research arena.

Now, usually I find the plenary sessions less than exciting. But in this case the speakers included Krishna Pendakur, the hilarious and brilliant economics professor from Simon Fraser University, Valerie Preston from York University, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and UBC’s own Dan Hiebert. Krishna had the audience laughing right from his introduction, even though his research was depressing: Canadian-born visible minorities are just not doing as well as Canadian-born whites, at least in terms of income. His comments about entrenched racism in the workplace (“The good thing is that these people that make the decisions, they’re old, they’re racist, and they’re going to die eventually.”) and the differences in outcomes across cities (“Do you see these lines? Do you get what I’m sayin’? I’m sayin’ I’m glad I live in Vancouver!”) really brought home the importance of how the information is delivered. The participants at our table looked at Krishna with the rapt eyes of devotees: one said, “I love this guy!” and another, “He actually makes stats interesting!” Valerie, who spoke right after Krishna, started by saying, “How do I follow that?” Jason Kenney’s speech wasn’t interesting in the least, but the fact that his presence was delayed by two separate protesters, who disagree with “Canada’s white supremacist immigration policies” definitely livened up the audience. I suppose it is a testament to political will that he still appeared and did his prepared speech, which showed the mark of the current adminstration’s insensitivity towards Canada’s temporary foreign workers, and seemed to reinforce the idea that while the country needs immigrants, it does very little to help newcomers find work, find housing, and settle into their lives in Canada.

Outside of the sessions, there were so many interesting people to talk to: I met Masters and PhD students, housing providers, non-profit agency professionals, and government officials at the federal, regional, and municipal levels. One night I was pleased to sit with Alan Simmons, a professor of sociology at York University, and his wife Jean, who teaches in family counselling at Guelph University; the rest of our table included people in social work, social justice and anthropology. This was a real interdisciplinary mix, and many of the people I spoke to said this was their first time at Metropolis.

Je suis heureuse de vous dire que le prochaine congrès sera à Vancouver! (Je vais améliorer mon français avant que ça, je vous le promets.) À la prochaine tout le monde!

Lessons from Vancouver 2010

Robson Square, redesigned and reopened for the Olympics

Spectators arriving at Aberdeen station, preparing for a 20-minute walk to the Richmond Olympic Oval

After all the media hype and local anti-Olympic sentiment, Vancouver is enjoying a rare opportunity during the 2010 Games. Not only does the city get to experience a real urban vibe as tens of thousands of tourists have flooded the streets, but it’s also experiencing another rare phenomenon: very little car traffic and extra service on transit routes. These changes have created a very different feeling as the city celebrates Canadian and international achievements in sport.

TransLink staff, as well as City of Vancouver staff and the folks at Metro Vancouver have been busy planning transportation alternatives for tourists, spectators, media and athletes for many years, all in preparation for the 16-day Olympic and 10-day Paralympic Games. Some of the big-ticket items are well-known: the Canada Line from downtown to the airport and the Bombardier demonstration streetcar linking Granville Island and the Olympic Village.

Olympic line streetcar at Granville Island

The Canada Line, which was saw ridership of 100,000 per day before the Games, saw 200,000 riders last Sunday. TransLink’s overall ridership has already reached 1.5 million per day: not bad for a region that normally has 1.8 million residents.

But there are also lots of lesser-known initiatives that have gone a long way towards making this a very sustainable Games: increased transit service on routes serving the venues, no parking at most venues, and bike sharing at some venues like the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Free bikes provided by Heineken Holland House at Aberdeen Station

Streets adjacent to most venues were closed to all vehicular traffic, including Wesbrook Mall on the UBC campus, which is hosting women’s hockey at Thunderbird Arena.

Spectators leaving Thunderbird Arena walking two blocks to the bus loop. No parking was provided at the venue.

There are special “Olympic lanes” on city streets dedicated to transit and vehicles transporting athletes, media, and officials. Robson Street was initially closed between Howe and Granville, but this was extended to Bute and Beatty Streets; Granville Street is closed between Smithe and Cordova Streets. The energy of the crowds in these main downtown streets is amazing, and there is a lot of added pedestrian interest, including a lantern display on Granville Street. The number of cars entering the downtown peninsula has dropped 30% since the beginning of the Games on February 12th, while over 4,000 cyclists per day cross the Cambie, Burrard and Granville Bridges into downtown.

In addition to this, Cultural Olympiad concerts and events have been happening all over the region, from Our Lady Peace playing a free concert at Richmond’s O-Zone to a 24-hour outdoor art gallery at the Surrey 2010 Celebration Site. These events were planned to begin in January until the end of the Paralympic Games on March 21, 2010. Because there’s so much going on in each municipality, local residents can actually get involved in the Olympics and its related events without making the trek downtown.

Richmond City Hall, with exhibits and big-screen coverage of the events, at the entrance to the O-Zone

Richmond City Hall at the entrance to the O-Zone, with exhibits and big-screen coverage of the events

Many Vancouverites, anticipating intense crowds and traffic, actually left the city during the Games. This likely means that there are more non-residents than residents in the City of Vancouver at the moment. In addition to this, some workplaces are closed, and UBC and SFU both have a two-week Reading Week to cover the Games period. The absence of this regular commuting traffic has likely contributed to higher transit ridership and much faster travel times. I took the #44 express bus from UBC to downtown on Friday at rush hour, and was at Robson Square in 15 minutes, a trip that normally takes half an hour.

The question is, why can’t we do this year-round? Keep the Olympic lanes as transit-only lanes; decrease parking in the downtown core, along our main streets and at key destinations; and increase transit service. Most locals would love to see pedestrianized zones on Robson and Granville in the core area of downtown. Of course, the vast number of tourists in the city and the energy that comes along with such a major sporting event will not persist past February 28th (Olympics) and March 21, 2010 (Paralympics). It’s been a fantastic 16-day party, truly a defining moment for Vancouver and for Canada.

Robson Street nightlife during the Olympics

More on decreased car ownership

Decreased car ownership rates among youth and increased transit use in several US cities are certainly not widespread, but each offers us unique insights into urban growth and development: the US cities with increased transit use often had recently made major investments in public transit, while decreased car ownership may be related to demographic shifts or increased environmental awareness. There has been a lot buzz lately about more radical initiatives adopted by some cities, such as car-free streets, car-free zones, and even car-free cities. Again, while these trends may not yet be widespread, their popularity is growing.

Transportation planner Jarrett Walker suggests that the cities with the largest percentages of car-free people are older cities with dominant universities and higher than average poverty. Walker examined the fifty highest percentages of car-free people living in incorporated cities over 100,000, using the Carfree Census Database. His method is hardly scientific: he reasoned that most of the “top 50″ cities on the list are older cities with an urban form created for walking and transit. Newer cities like Portland, despite all its transit-oriented development and progressive land use planning, still has only a fairly low car-free population at 14%. This pales in comparison to New York City (#1 at 55.7%) and cities we wouldn’t expect to have a high car-free population: Buffalo (31.4%), Atlanta (23.6%) Detroit (21.9%) and Los Angeles (16.5%), which are all in the top 50. While Walker’s suggestion about age of city makes sense, it is indeed puzzling that Portland could have fewer car-free households than these other cities, which we usually associate with car-dominant sprawling cities. The fact that poverty might be a factor explains Buffalo and Detroit, and many others on the list.

Treehugger.com recently made a list of the six cities that could easily go car-free: Geneva, Switzerland; Davis, California; Paris; Guadalajara, Mexico; Malmö, Sweden; and Guangzhou, China. Many of these cities have already made concerted efforts to increase transit use, decrease car driving or commuting, and increase or redesign pedestrian and bike infrastructure. However, Guadalajara and Ghangzhou are just starting to realize the value of sustainable transportation: Guadalajara and Guangzhou are about to introduce BRT systems. Guadalajara closes 15 km of its streets to traffic for six hours every Sunday and is considering a proposal to pedestrianize its historic centre. In Ghangzhou, pedestrian alleyways still predominate over car-dominated streets, but as in many parts of China, it may be a hard sell to keep them that way as the cities grow rapidly and become more Westernized.

Car-free lifestyles may not be for everyone, but there are definitely areas of our cities that could stand to be car-free for a few hours or days of the year. We see this every month or so with festivals that close down roads for a couple of days. Many European cities have car-free city centres or zones that remain permanently closed to cars. New car-free developments have also been built, and decreased car parking requirements give people the option of paying less for a condo while giving them the option of car-sharing. While these are small steps, they may add up to lasting change in the way people think about car ownership, transit ridership and active transportation. I mean who would have thought that Buffalo and Detroit had such high car-free populations? This is definitely something to explore further, particularly whether poverty is indeed strongly linked to car-free lifestyles.

Subway Psych 101

Apparently, all those hours you spend on the subway have provided psychologists with a wealth of insight. Those of us who have lived in cities with rapid transit have read the Craigslist postings about hilarious transit experiences and transit etiquette; we’ve seen the “missed connections” section in the Georgia Straight and other newspapers. A casual ride downtown on a Saturday night can provide endless comedic fodder for your next dinner party. So it’s not surprising that subways have long been places for sociologists and psychologists to study human behaviour.

As Tom Vanderbilt recently reported for Slate, researchers have long considered subways ideal places to observe social interaction, as places where people of all classes, ethnicities, and religions must confront each other. In the early 1900s, mass transit offered a new and unique sensation, as people were suddenly forced to look at others for minutes or even hours at a time without speaking to them. “Subway psychology” seeks to understand what keeps the subtle social rules of the subway in place: rules such as giving up a seat for an elderly person or breaking eye contact after a few seconds. To explore these rules and their boundaries, several experiments have taken place over the years.

One experiment, the “Good Samaritanism: An Underground Phenomenon?” from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1969), had a Columbia University student stagger and collapse on a subway train, “looking supine at the ceiling.” In some trials, the subject acted drunk; in others, ill. People were more likely to help in the latter situation, and surprisingly the more bystanders that were present the more likely it was that someone would offer help. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted several experiments on subways. One had students ask passengers for their seat on a crowded subway, and found that 68% of passengers gave up their seats without a problem while the rest offered reasons why they couldn’t (they were reading a book, etc.) Other experiments had a researcher ask a passenger to mail a letter (sometimes stamped, sometimes not) for them, and the number of letters mailed provided the success rate.

Several researchers have tried to determine the effects of eye contact: one 1974 study had a researcher stare at a passenger for several seconds, then ask for help. They found the passenger more likely to help if the person hadn’t been staring at them. A 1978 study found that people were more likely to avoid eye contact in the city than the suburbs, which doesn’t seem that surprising.

I’ve certainly noticed a few differences in transit psychology among the cities I’ve lived in. Avoiding eye contact is a must in Toronto, but not Vancouver, where people seem more friendly and will even smile at strangers who glance their way. Vancouver bus riders often yell out, “Thank you,” to the driver as they get off the bus. Toronto subway riders are a savvy lot, knowing exactly where to stand on the subway platform for the opening doors and which side the door opens at each station. Vancouverites don’t have that option: the Skytrain is not always the same length; cars are added or taken away, so it’s impossible to know exactly where the doors will open. There are some obvious demographic observations: during the day you will see a range of young and old, white and non-white, women and men; at night you’ll find yourself mainly travelling with high school and university students and on some routes, more visible minorities. This in itself creates a different social atmosphere during the day (family-oriented, polite, businesslike) compared to night (more casual, more complaining about transit service, and occasionally more of a party atmosphere).

Perhaps one of the most understudied areas in transportation is how it facilitates and constrains social relationships, including romantic ones. Many of my friends have met boyfriends, girlfriends and even spouses on public transit: a few years ago a Calgary couple were married on the Calgary Transit bus where they had first met. The shared ride to work each morning or home each evening, in our world of hurried meetings and endless work stress, contributes valuable social time to our busy schedules. In a study of “missed connections” on the Paris Metro, officials stated that the Metro “is without doubt the foremost producer of urban tales about falling in love.” Public transit is also an often-used reason to start or break off a relationship: TV characters on Friends and Seinfeld routinely vetoed or ended relationships because of a complicated or lengthy subway commute. Elaine once said when breaking up with a boyfriend, “I’m gonna be brutally honest with you now… it’s a bitch to get here. It’s two subways. I have to transfer at Forty-second Street to take the double-R.”

The next time you hop on a local bus, streetcar, or subway, take a look and listen…you’ll be surprised what you learn about human behaviour and relationships.

Boomburb to boombust

The US mortgage crisis is having all sorts of spin-off effects on cities and regions, including differential growth patterns, a federal initiative to create low- to middle-income rental housing, and surging public transit rates. Currently, the long-standing tradition of booming suburbs has been turned on its head: almost half of the most rapidly-growing suburbs in the US are now losing population. Typically, this occurs in regions where the population is aging and where real estate has been the main economic generator.

Robert Lang, professor of sociology at the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) coined the term “boomburb” to describe these bedroom communities that grew rapidly as their adjacent major cities grew. But he says that the latest post-mortgage crisis trends may indicate that bedroom communities may have to become more village-like, with higher densities and clustered development, if they want to keep growing. In other words, they need to go beyond single-use residential zoning, and offer some of the mixed-use development and services that cities offer.

While the mortgage crisis is definitely the main cause of this shift, latent demand for more mixed-use, transit-oriented development, increasing concerns about climate change, and generational change are also influencing housing location and types. People’s housing preferences seem to be changing, and the mortgage crisis has increased the trend towards smaller homes, more central locations, and shorter commutes. Smaller cities (between 20,000 and 50,000) have trouble retaining college graduates during poor economic times as people move to cities for better access to job opportunities.

There is some evidence of this shift in the Vancouver region: although the outer municipalities like Port Coquitlam and Abbotsford still show growth rates higher than Vancouver, inner municipalities such as Richmond and Burnaby have seen a stabilization in rates. Richmond’s Housing Strategy notes that it has seen residents’ demands shift from larger to smaller homes, while Vancouver has approved laneway housing and secondary suites, both inherently smaller housing types, in the last few years.

Nate Berg reported on Planetizen that in the US, the largest increases in public transit commuting from 2006-2008 have been in the metropolitan statistical areas of Charlotte, NC; Detroit; Riverside, CA; Phoenix, Minneapolis, Sacramento, St. Louis, Denver, San Antonio, and Seattle. High oil prices and targeted public transit improvements are credited for the major increases in these areas. In particular, Charlotte and Minneapolis recently opened brand new commuter rail lines. In many cases, more middle-income people began commuting by transit, likely as they got rid of the second car or stopped driving it as much. It remains to be seen whether higher transit commuting levels in these areas will persist over 2009, as many American transportation authorities have had to slash budgets to cope with the recession. Still, as Berg writes, the increases “suggest the possibility of a more transit-tolerant future.”

There is a lot of variation among regions and municipalities but there seems to be a general trend towards smaller, more centrally located homes and transit access, trends that also appeared during the oil crisis of 1973-74. The late 1970s was the beginning of urban gentrification of inner city and inner-suburban neighbourhoods in many Canadian cities, as households decreased their car dependence and opted for smaller homes and properties. Suburban living ain’t cheap, especially during tough economic times. If the American trends persist, they could lead to a regrowth in small to mid-sized towns near major cities, much as one finds in England. These towns, while they have a variety of shops and services, housing types and clustered development along a main street, still retain a small-town feeling which we really haven’t managed to do well in North America. Small towns tend to stagnate as they avoid anything that might seem too urban, while cities have grown rapidly, struggling with soaring housing and service provision costs. There is a real need for this kind of in-between small to mid-sized town with a bit more of an urban feeling and zoning flexibility to achieve a more compact urban form and some economic stability.

TransportCamp

No, TransportCamp isn’t a bunch of transit geeks getting together at a fantasy camp in the woods. In fact, it’s a transportation “unconference” that brings together people from variety of fields with an interest in sustainable transportation. The participants are actively involved, from brainstorming ideas to generating sessions for the day. There are no formal presentations, no PowerPoint, no real organizational structure other than brief opening and closing remarks. Toronto held a TransportCamp last year, and Vancouver decided to follow suit today, with the event held at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) building downtown.

I was skeptical about this event, even more so when I received an update about a week ago from organizer Bernadette Amiscaray. She works for the Car Co-op, a major sponsor of this event, and from her email it seemed to me like we’d be doing more Facebooking and Tweeting than face-to-face networking, which I wasn’t that excited about. But having forced myself out of bed on a typically dark grey Vancouver morning, I was pleasantly surprised by TransportCamp.

First of all, while I did see some familiar faces from the School of Community and Regional Planning (past and present) I also met people from architecture firms, engineering companies, municipalities, and the provincial government. There were transit advocates and bike share/car share representatives, and students from SFU, BCIT, and UBC. Some had a wealth of experience implementing programs or policies, while others had only ideas of where they wanted to see transportation innovations happen. In this way, the experience was a lot like SCARP’s recent Housing Symposium for Affordable Housing. Old connections were deepened and new ones made. This was enhanced by ample time for chatting between sessions and at the lunch break. But the organizers also placed brown bags out, encouraging participants to write an issue on the front: anyone else interested in the issue could drop in their business cards and the organizers would make sure the group got in touch with each other through a listserv. They asked if we wanted our emails to be included on a general listserv around sustainable transportation issues.

Second of all, like Gordon Price, who offered the closing remarks, I had never been to a conference where the participants created the agenda and sessions themselves. It was done in quite a simple way: the organizers asked people to volunteer ideas for sessions. As people raised ideas, another organizer typed them directly into a chart on his computer, which was hooked up to a digital projector so everyone could see it. They quickly filled in the chart, which had available rooms on one side and available time slots along the top. Then they kept going, writing down other ideas as they came. Once all the ideas for sessions were up, they asked if they could merge some sessions together so they all fit in the alloted spaces/times. We then wrote down the times/locations of the sessions we wanted to attend. It seems so simple, but somehow it worked.

The sessions were very simple and low-tech. The group (from 10-20 people usually) would select a note-taker and a facilitator, then begin discussing the idea. Session ideas ranged from civic engagement to transit-oriented development to social media; one participant suggested “congestion: friend or foe”. Each session was an hour in length, generated a ton of both old and new ideas, and bridged the divide between activists and policymakers, students and professionals, pessimists and optimists. It was inspiring to be surrounded by people who genuinely believe in sustainable transportation and are committed to it in their own way. I’m used to that at school (students are at most times fairly optimistic) but it was great to be among a whole range of people of various ages who, although they might disagree on timing and methods of persuasion and priorities, at least agree that we need better transportation options for everyone in this region.

Some interesting ideas shared in the three sessions I attended included examples of car-free housing developments in Sweden and Toronto, the TTC using Twitter to interact with transit users and send out service updates, using social media sites to allow participants to create an organization’s vision/mission, and giving municipalities in the region “credits” for their adherence to the regional plan (such as preserving their Agricultural Land Reserve properties or issuing development permits within transit-accessible areas). Best of all, the whole day was short and sweet: an opening brainstorming session at 8:30am followed by a half hour generating the sessions, then three one-hour sessions, ending at 3:30pm.

I’m particularly impressed with the low-tech, low-organizational needs for this type of event, which has lots of interesting implications for working with communities, disengaged populations, etc. All you need is a few organizers, a few rooms, a small registration fee ($25 in this case) to cover snacks and lunch, and people willing to share their ideas. There was supposed to be wireless service set up, and we were encouraged to bring our computers, but unfortunately BCIT’s wireless service was down today. I actually think this might have been a strength of today’s TransportCamp because this forced people to chat and share ideas more than Tweet them. I am doing my part by blogging about it though, despite having the reputation of a Luddite. Long live simple solutions!

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. Candidate (Planning, UBC)