Comparisons to residential schools are out of line...

...this is more like a maximum security prison.


If architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right when he said "God is in the details," then the conceptual drawing for Youth For Christ's recreation centre renders a Godless box.

This is architecture formless and void, employing all the brutal inhumanity of Modernism and none of its dedication to simplicity; setting the bar for horrendousness on Main Street (no easy feat). The winding coils that make up the "feature" entrance comes off like a pathetic whimper. For cheapness, ugliness, and architectural depravity, it is superlative. To build this on the industrial backroads of North Transcona would be a manifestation of society's declining values. To build this on a prominent intersection at the centre of Winnipeg would be tragic.

If there is any sense at the City (Council, Property, Planning & Development), any attempt to build according to this will be promptly sent back to whatever drawing board it crawled off of.

A district losing its edge

Now that we all know what "proselytize" means (as "we've been protelyzed into believing a thesaurus is bad"), and on Saturday enjoyed a rather paranoid climax to a surge of militant post-Enlightenment secularism, there is a question of more earthly matters with regards to Youth For Christ's move to Higgins and Main.

What will happen to YFC's existing Edge Skatepark at the corner of Pacific and Lily Street? One rumor is that the building is set to be demolished. Centre Venture, who are helping YFC with the move to Higgins and Main, has put a great deal of effort into finding sites to develop a parkade. The district around The Edge skatepark--borderlands between what is considered the Exchange District and South Point Douglas--has long been eyed as the site of a giant parkade to be built with public dollars, and operated by the swelling and increasingly Stasiesque Winnipeg Parking Authority. That, plus the fact that it sits right in the centre of a district where anything micro-scaled and unable to store cars is not part of the equation. Last year, a warehouse similar in size to The Edge was unceremoniously demolished at Pacific and Martha Street.

Across Lily Street, Sport Manitoba wishes to demolish what is possibly the second oldest warehouse downtown. An though the building is perfectly sound, and has yet to go through the minor bit of red tape known as the de-listing a municipal heritage building, they have already been given permission by the City to demolish the building for a parkade whenever they get the money to do so. Sport Manitoba's plans also include closing Martha Street between Pacific Avenue. (To find out why this amounts to urban suicide, read Part Two of Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. )

Youth For Christ might be happy to leave behind the old building at 125 Pacific Avenue, but I suspect that once they do, the place won't be standing for long.

Downtown housing report won't be worth the wait

Free Press reporter Bartley Kives compares the forthcoming downtown housing report to the Olympics: it is only arriving after four years of anticipation.

Unlike the Olympics, this report is likely not going to reward excellence, set new standards, or instill pride in citizens.

Studies and reports are exceedingly important, but looking at the key recommendations reported from the 2008 draft of this report, this one might not be worth the wait:
1) Establish a single office to promote downtown development and deal with enquiries from developers. [To complement the other single office established by the City in 1999 to do exactly the same thing.]
2) Create a list of downtown buildings and empty lots to redevelop as housing sites. [But it's going to take some funding: planning bureaucrats can't just walk around with a clipboard for free, you know.]
3) Modify existing incentives for developers and work with the federal and provincial governments to secure more sources of cash. [Which has never been done before.]

Judging by this, the downtown housing report promises to simply prop up the status quo: Portage Avenue sliding into Main Street-circa-1980 oblivion, and the ratio of buildings demolished in the Exchange Distric matching buildings redeveloped for housing there. The means by which downtown was destroyed, and was inhibited from renewing itself. And that won't change until, for one very cheap and easy example, the City acts on reports that recommend rush hour parking restrictions on downtown streets be elminated.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates misanthropic planning than destroyed downtown's humanity: this oft-overlooked blunder that is the hidden park/plaza, and not so hidden parking garage, located behind the Millennium Library on Donald Street. What was there before included Lee Court at 217-219 Donald Street, a Tudor-inspired apartment block designed by John D. Atchison in 1906. It was demolished in 1977 to make way for the parking garage.

Credit: Buflyer200

Credit: Mr. Christian

These and many other incompatible planning mistakes still survive, and the thinking that created them is increasingly common, as both Centre Venture and the Downtown BIZ share a growing fixation on storing automobiles in parking garages. Against this, another lazy report will be ineffective, and it could take another four years for the City to release it, and downtown as a enjoyable place to live would be no further ahead.

All you need to know

This is a talk given in San Antonio, TX, back in 1991 by new urbanist planner and architect Andres Duany.

Duany talks about the elusively simple way to create a sense of place, the confused psychology of suburbia, separtion of building and neighborhood uses, building set-backs, the importance of on-street parking, height/width ratios, affordable housing, lack of choice on proximity to commerce/services. Duany points out that big box development is not a result of lax, laissez-faire approach to planning (a common thought among critics of sprawl), but by very rigid labrynth of codes dreamed up by several generations of planning groupthink. Urban spaces are simple and affordable to build, but illegal under codes (even in traditionally urban areas.

Although this talk was given 19 years ago, and dealt mostly with planning issues in suburban areas of the U.S. Sun Belt, it is totally (and unfortunately) relevent to Winnipeg of 2010.

Part One


Part Two


Part Three


Part Four


Part Five

Granny Flats and affordable housing, sense of place

Part Six


Part Seven


Part Eight


Part Nine