A royal commission on urban design

Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes Editor RALPH HEINTZMAN Redacteur Associate Editors DAVID CAMERON Redacteurs adjoints JOHN WADLAND Editorial Assistants ARLENE DAVIS Assistantes MARGARET PEAR.CE Editorial Board JEAN-PIERRE LAPOINTE Comite de redaction MARGARET LAURENCE HARVEY McCUE JACQUES MONET, S. J. W. L. MORTON W. F. W. NEVILLE GORDON ROPER DONALD V. SMILEY DENIS SMITH PHIUP STRATFORD T. H. B. SYMONS W. E. TAYLOR CLARA THOMAS MELVILLE H. WATKINS ALAN WltSON A royal commission on urban design Now that Prime Minister Trudeau has rediscovered the virtues of the royal commission , he ought to consider the other fields, besides the concentration of corporate power, in which the activity of a royal commission would be of service to the nation. No doubt there are several such areas, but one stands out above all others. The country needs few things as urgently as a royal commission on what Edmund Bacon has called the design of cities. There are at least three reasons why a royal commission on urban design is needed at this time, and the first is the sobering fact that Canada faces a quite unprecedented urban explosion in the coming decades. As the Canadian organizer of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements has predicted , Canadians will probably build as much urban space in the next twenty-five years as we have in our entire previous history . D. J. Reynolds of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation has estimated that Canada's nine major cities will double in size by 1986 and that their shape may be determined for all future time by the end of the century. "This means," he says, "that the future planning of virtually all urban matters must be urgently concentrated into the next twelve years or so." Projections like these, together with even the most casual glance at the already fragile condition of our cities, should convince us that we are about to make some momentous decisions and that if Journal of Canadian Studies 1 we are not assisted to identify a few basic principles of urban design, the possibility of a humane urban civilization may soon be lost. Unfortunately (and this is the second reason that such a commission is now essential ), we seem to have arrived at this turning point at the very moment when the urban reform movements of the late sixties give clear signs of a loss of momentum, and perhaps even the first signs of retreat. Divisions within the various movements themselves have combined with an inevitable lassitude of public opinion to rob the reformers of that swell of public support which enabled them to force a pause in the destruction of the urban environment. While they are facing setbacks in the arena of public opinion, the reformers are also encountering obstacles to some of their most basic legislative objectives. In Toronto, for example, after several years of debate following the apparent reform breakthrough in the election of 1972, the city council has recently adopted a new city development plan which will permit a mixed residential-commercial density in the central city core of eleven times site area. Since the ceiling in the old plan which permitted the construction of the Bank of Montreal's 72-storey monstrosity - was only slightly higher (twelve times site area), it is easy to see that the new plan will do little to halt the hideous, senseless development which now threatens all Canadian cities. Despite all the effort of the last few years, it seems that the development industry will again be left to its own lucrative devices. "If the slogan of 1972 was to make haste slowly," Colin Vaughan has commented perceptively, "the slogan for the years between 1975 and 1985 cou Id be to make haste with more haste." If one seeks the reasons for the setback experienced by the urban reform movement, one cannot resist the feeling that much of the difficulty arises from its negative appearance . I do not mean that the goals of the movement are in fact negative, but they cannot help appearing so to the urban public, for 2 reasons that have more to do with the state of the public mind than with the...