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Just another suburb
There's
little that's 'green' about Waverly West
Focus, Saturday, December 17, 2005, p. a15
Dallas Hansen
To placate critics of urban sprawl, Waverley West is being advertised
as a "green" or "smart" suburb whose inhabitants will saunter along
shrub-lined pedestrian paths to a mixed-use town centre, where offices,
retail stores, and apartment dwellings form a lively hub to a
neighbourhood that is "transit-oriented," "walkable," and
"environmentally sustainable."
What's planned, however, for Waverley West reminds me of where I grew
up -- in near-the-perimeter suburbia, a new home (built 1990) in St.
Vital's River Park South subdivision.
Waverley West's town centre, a sprawling pocket between one-way,
limited-access highway routes seems reminiscent of St. Vital Centre's
proximity to Bishop Grandin Boulevard -- a barrier to pedestrian
movement if there ever was one.
The winding pathways that the developer, Ladco Homes, and the planner,
ND Lea Engineers and Planners, claim will make the development
pedestrian-friendly remind me of similar directionless paths in River
Park South that were never busy and seldom useful for anything but a
contrived "leisurely walk" to nowhere.
That new house I spoke of earlier seemed an improvement from the Old
St. Vital postwar shack from which we had moved: dishwasher, full
basement, attached garage, three bathrooms. Yet, after the move, our
quality of life in many ways immediately declined.
There was nearby "green space," but it was a giant open field of
routinely trimmed grass. The nearest store, at the time, was a
45-minute walk away, the nearest regular bus a walk of 15 minutes. Once
on the bus, it was a 40-minute ride downtown, but I still went often,
for such trips were my one solace while living in, what my friends and
I derisively called "Boredom Park South."
By contrast, Old St. Vital and its gridded streets offered plenty of
stores and services within walking distance and a 20-minute bus ride to
the city's centre. Nearby, along the Seine River ecosystem, could be
found natural green space of a quality not even the best planners could
match.
Beyond the two one-way highways that will surround Waverley West's town
centre will lie what the plan describes as six residential "cells"-- a
fitting term, given that residents will be locked between such
automobile-essential zones as Richmond West, Whyte Ridge, Fairfield
Park, Waverley Heights and the Fort Garry Industrial Park, several
kilometres from Winnipeg's urban grid.
Kerra Mruss, of ND Lea, confirmed my suspicion that all the streets
within the cells, indeed even within the town centre, will be as
winding as the pedestrian pathways, and not in a grid pattern.
Competing with the town centre will be Waverley West's "primary
commercial centre," at the crossroads of Kenaston Boulevard and a
redirected Waverley Street. Expect more strip malls, big boxes and
car-dependent architecture here.
What seems glaringly obvious to me is that Waverley West will be no
more "transit-oriented" than Linden Woods or Whyte Ridge are today. And
we all know how popular Winnipeg Transit is in those "communities."
The claim that Waverley West is necessary because of a "shortage of
residential lots" is laughable. There are thousands of empty lots
within Winnipeg's pre-Unicity city limits that can be built upon. In
fact, it is in the truly walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods, the
old city -- not in the so-called southwest quadrant -- where demand
growth is strongest.
Home prices, for example, in Linden Woods, a suburb of the 1990s, have
dropped almost eight per cent in the past year; housing prices in
Wolseley, built mostly before 1920, are up nearly 80 per cent.
Waverley West will not much affect this trend. These are, after all,
different markets. While the baby boomer generation of North Americans
abandoned the city en masse for the wholesale embrace of automobile
culture, their progeny, the so-called echo generation, are now
embracing old city neighbourhoods.
Eschewing the "newer is better" mindset that drives the sprawl
industry, they've helped to restore property values not only in
traditionally middle-class neighbourhoods like Wolseley, but also in
areas such as North Point Douglas, where prices are up 34 per cent from
last year.
Given that our sister city of Lviv, Ukraine, contains a population of
800,000 in an area one-third the size of Winnipeg, it's certainly
possible for our city to reach one million without major suburban
expansion. The myth that low-density neighbourhoods are ideal for
raising families is moot at best; many of the world's most successful
people were raised in Manhattan.
There's little that's "green" about Waverley West, or for that matter
about the provincial NDP's award-winning environmental policies.
Between electric mass transit, geothermal heating, abundant
hydroelectric power and the strategic marketing of plug-in hybrid
vehicles that can drive 30 kilometres without a drop of petroleum,
Manitoba could significantly reduce its dependence upon Albertan
natural gas and Texan oil.
Instead, Winnipeg will be building dozens of kilometres of new streets
and roadways at a time when our population growth is almost stagnant
and our tax base is unable to sustain the present ratio of
persons-per-kilometre-of-roadway. A cabal of developers might be the
only ones who benefit, but the city as a whole will pay.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Real estate industry
Length: Medium, 698 words
© 2005 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
www.dallashansen.com |
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