News, Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A leading urban think tank has set out a blueprint to revive investment in the city.
The projects it says will reshape Hamilton are modelled on successes in other industrial cities that turned around their flagging fortunes. It proposes 28 projects in five key districts (historic core, James Street North, waterfront, west harbour rail yards, McMaster Innovation Park), that would generate$165 million in new assessment and $6 million in yearly tax revenue.
Do it right, and transform Hamilton
The CUI further urges a focus on “quick wins” that will kickstart momentum and confidence.
Examples cited include festivals, design competitions, bike-sharing programs, public art, fast-tracking approvals for sidewalk cafes and initiatives aimed at making use of vacant upper floors in commercial areas.
The CUI studied revitalization projects in other industrial cities and based on geographic, demographic and financial characteristics, found the most appropriate model for each district identified in Hamilton.
The researchers calculated the potential direct uplift in assessment and tax revenue for Hamilton’s projects based on those cities’ experiences.
For the city’s historic core, CUI cited the Warehouse District of Cleveland. James Street North was compared to the cultural district of Pittsburgh. The waterfront stacked up against Buffalo, while the railyards were compared to the Southside Works of Pittsburgh. The MIP was compared to the Science and Technology Park at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
London:Arts hub takes centre stage DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION
London is working with Fanshawe College on a downtown campus housed in heritage buildings, a plan that’s potentially the final major piece of city hall’s effort to revitalize the core.
The proposed plan, which would be rolled out during the next decade with $10 million in city subsidies, is the backbone of a hoped-for education and arts district city officials want to turn into a tourism hub.
Green jobs? Great. Gray jobs? Maybe an even better bet for the new jobs bill. If there is a single graphic that everyone concerned with the nation’s future should have tattooed on their eyeballs, my vote goes to the one on your left. Here is its central message:Forty years from now, one out of four Americans will be 65 or older.Twenty million will be over 85.One million will be over 100.
Time for Toronto to privatize assets?
Mastermind behind landmark Chicago deals says city infrastructure is ripe for investors
Saving Money By Converting Asphalt to Gravel
In an effort to cut transportation maintenance costs, some cities are ditching their asphalt roads and going back to gravel.
London: Student housing ruling ‘profound’ CITY BYLAWS
Oshawa’s success limiting student housing may override a new London rental licensing bylaw that comes into effect March 1, says a city landlord.
But city officials reject that notion and say what happens in Oshawa stays in Oshawa.
A case that pitted a developer and the City of Oshawa against about 30 landlords in that city attracted the attention of Londoners on both sides of the student housing debate.
Oshawa, like London and other university and college cities, was the scene of complaints about large numbers of students living in areas planners intended for single families.
“It’s a profound decision,” Londoner Alan Smuck said Monday, insisting it will affect London. The city “can’t override” the court decision, said Smuck, who owns properties along Western Road housing 15 to 20 students.
In Oshawa, developer the Neighbourhoods of Windfields joined the city in a bid for an injunction to stop property owners from operating lodging houses in a new subdivision adjacent to Durham College and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
Fighting Obesity With Traffic Calming
The latest news in the impact of the built environment on health: A new study says that children who live within 150 meters of congested roads have higher body mass indexes than kids that do not.
Cities Look Abroad to Prosper at Home
The hands-down American regional leader on learning from abroad has been Seattle with its array of highly export-oriented firms. For 17 years Seattle has sent sizable delegations (70 or more) of business, political and civic leaders to see first-hand how a major foreign city and region really “clicks.” I’ve personally accompanied three of those visits — to Sydney, Hong Kong and Berlin — and discovered they’re significant eye-openers. Recently Seattle delegations have visited such cities as Fukuoka and Abu Dhabi — hardly our grandparents’ world city list.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Box?
Take a drive into suburbia these days and you are bound to quickly encounter the awful effects of a non-plussed economy in the built form of wilting or abandoned shopping centers with weather stained facades, faded highway signs including store names that no longer exist, and crumbling parking lots designed to handle the best Black Friday in a nearly-bursted bubble boom year. Ignoring the sad result of decades of cheap, short-term development is not the solution to our sprawling woes.
Journey to Detroit Video
Sometime in the not too distant future, John wakes up in suburban Chicago on a Saturday morning and heads to a White Sox game…in Detroit. Join him on a 300 mile journey to Detroit’s Comerica Park as he experiences the transportation options of the future: a neighborhood electric car share program, smart phone ticketing, high-speed rail, and connecting light rail. This clip is brought to you by America 2050 as part of its “A Better Tomorrow” project to visualize America’s future communities and transportation systems.
Bikes on Board: The Latest Research on Bicycle/Transit Integration
Kevin Krizek and Eric Stonebraker’s paper Bicycling and Transit: A Marriage Unrealized summarizes the latest trends on the issue, and reports that several studies suggest that recent growth in transit and bicycling modes may be in small part a result of synergy between the two modes. That marriage, still very much in its infancy, can work via at least five broad possibilities:
- transporting a transit customer’s bicycle aboard (inside or outside) a transit vehicle (see photo above!);
- using and parking a transit customer’s bicycle at a transit access (or origin) location;
- sharing a bicycle (publicly or privately provided), primarily based at the transit access point;
- using a transit customer’s bicycle at the egress (or destination) location;
- sharing a bicycle (again), but primarily based, this time, at the transit egress point.
In the last few years, they began to plan for smaller stores that fit in urban markets. That strategy is gaining urgency now as retailers look for new growth and seek to meet the demands of a shopper looking to buy and spend less.
Target and Wal-Mart have both told analysts they are creating smaller stores that could fit in the heart of densely packed cities where they have no presence. But analysts warn that creating a small store doesn’t just mean shrinking a big one
New Product for Essex County?
Hemcrete: Smoking Hot Walls 7 Times Tougher Than Concrete
The construction trade accounts for a large portion of the world’s CO2 emissions. Even after they’re constructed, buildings continue to emit environment-impacting CO2. The call for greener buildings has been getting louder, and in the face of these demands, UK company LHoist has developed a wall material that’s not only carbon neutral – it’s carbon negative. Long-time greenies won’t be surprised to learn that the miracle material is actually hemp.
Hume: Anatomy of a Toronto street corner
In retrospect, perhaps Toronto police should have chosen some place other than the corner of Bay and Front to hand out jaywalking tickets. It might have seemed a good location for last week’s “safety blitz” at first glance, but the offences here were committed by city planners and traffic engineers, not pedestrians.
Is There Enough Food Out There For Nine Billion People?
Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet—two billion more than there are today. It’s a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that’s… an incredibly daunting prospect. Right now, an estimated one billion people go hungry each day. So add two billion more people, a limited supply of arable land, plus the fact that rising incomes will boost demand for meat and dairy products, plus the fact that many key natural resources (fisheries, say) are already being overexploited… and it’s hard to see the situation getting better. And that’s before we get into the fact that the planet’s heating up, which is expected to wreak havoc on agricultural yields.
The Myth of Business Friendly Legislation
But so-called business friendly legislation is not really business friendly. If the financial industry, for example, is allowed to offer consumers credit at usurious rates, the interest paid to banks reduces the purchasing power of consumers, so other businesses lose sales. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar not spent on the purchase of a product. Worse, if a business accepts consumer credit, the issuing bank not only charges consumers interest, it charges the participating businesses transaction fees which reduce profits. So legislation “friendly” to one industry is decidedly unfriendly to the others.
Just the Headlines!
Fire Departments Charge for Service, Asking Accident Victims to Pay Up
Green Jeans: Forget Washing. Just Freeze Them.
Hume: Making the best growth out of bad situations
Hamilton City looks to Europe for light rail plans
Naturally Temperature-Conditioned Traditional Courtyard Homes: Ready for a Renaissance?
How We Eat May Be Biggest Impact of Urbanization on Nature
Another Nail in the Coffin of the Big Public Sell-Off
Cities aren’t wasting money, they’re wasting space.
LA’s partial parking privatization
Should we charge for workplace parking?
How They Keep Bike Lanes Clear in Copenhagen Bike lanes
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