ReThink London
 

I've been away from London for almost a year now but try to keep up to date as much as possible through this forum, some Londoners blogs and yes the LFPress.. Recently I've been following the Planning Departments "Rethink London" (The official Plan review)I found it to seem very interesting from what I read as well as what is up on the website .

I was wondering if anyone on here was one of the 1300 people there? any thoughts on how it went, what you think the next year will bring? I was actually pretty surprised to see that no one on the SSP was commenting on this event happening.. or anything about.

Below is one of the many articles, I believe this one summed it all up the best:
They’re ready to ReTHINK the city. Are you?

By IAN GILLESPIE, THE LONDON FREE PRESS


Maybe we need an inspiring pep talk, like the "fight for every inch" speech delivered by actor Al Pacino in the football film Any Given Sunday.

Maybe, as authors James Collins and Jerry Porras described in their book Built To Last, we need a "big hairy audacious goal" - an objective that's questionable, but not impossible.

Maybe we need a big tasty carrot, or a scary-looking stick.

But Londoners, I think, desperately need something to shake us out of the municipal malaise that's covering this city like a wet wool blanket.

And maybe we'll get that with ReThink London.

The year-long conversation with residents, launched Thursday at the London Convention Centre, is designed to set the goals and targets for a new city master plan.

Although it's essentially a land-use planning exercise, the brains behind ReThink London are clearly aiming at something bigger, as evidenced by the program's five themes: How we live, how we green, how we grow, how we move and how we prosper.

Of course, those themes will likely generate some familiar topics of discussion.

Among them: the plight of downtown, the role of heritage, the future of transit and transportation (particularly bicycling), the city's relationship with Fanshawe College and Western University, the limits (or not) of suburban growth and the contribution of arts and culture (including the perennial question of a performing arts centre).

But will those subjects and suggestions - most of which have been examined by The Free Press in our What's London series exploring the city's identity - be enough?

For the past 25 years, London has settled comfortably into a vision of itself as somewhere safe, comfortable and convenient, a nice place to live, but someplace you wouldn't need to visit.

Battered by job losses (particularly the galling situation at Electro-Motive Diesel), embarrassed by scandals (like the banana-throwing incident at the John Labatt Centre), disgusted by social unrest (the drunken debacle on Fleming Dr.) and emotionally pummelled by testimony at the Tori Stafford trial, Londoners have no dearth of recent reasons for being down in the dumps.

For many observers, there's been no sparkling sense of civic purpose since the lead-up to the 2001 Canada Summer Games, when thousands of flag-waving Londoners braved rain and cold to show their support.

For all too many, the Forest City has become a sort of velvet coffin, a second-rate city ruled by consistency and complacency. But if it works, maybe ReThink London can prod more Londoners to replace "settle" with "superlative."

There is, however, a danger.

As former city councillor Sandy Levin recalls, we went through a similar exercise 16 years ago with Vision 96.

"In 1997, I got elected with a bunch of other first-time city councillors, many of whom had no connection to the Vision 96 process," says Levin. "So it went out the window."

If that happens again, says Levin, this city could alienate a whole new group of emerging activists.

"If current council doesn't get behind this and if they just pay lip service to the ideas, then the process is going to be a waste," says Levin. "If you really want to turn people off, don't implement anything they want."

So, the challenge is twofold: Deliver some sparkling ideas, then commit to following them up.

Only then can we shake the moniker of mediocrity that still hangs above our door.

methinks rethink is just an empty slogan, similar to that wretched London jingle/song "London is the city of opportunity!"

Imagine a city where a river runs through it! (big whoop; don't most cities not by the ocean/large lake have a river that runs through it?).

I loathe empty slogans and meaningless jargon. Like the way that MBA students run around saying "synergy" and "mission-critical" and "actionable" and "disintermediate" and "incentivize" all day. Sloganeering and bullshit have a correlation coefficient very close to +1.

Corporate bullshit generator: http://bullshitgenerator.blogspot.ca/2010/01/mba-jargon-exhaustive-list.html

I think municipal planning sloganeering is far more dangerous than Corporate MBA bullshit. People throw around feel-good sunshine terms and yap about the "diversity and walkability of intricately linked communities" without looking at the economic consequences of creating little communistical urban fiefdoms. The destructive forces have the potential to wreck an entire city, not just one company held by apathetic investors.

London is the poster child of the unplanned community and according to your logic should be economically thriving. Yet, it finds itself economically depressed and sinking further. You would probably see cities with strong neighbourhoods and great transit as communist, yet the cities that invest in transit and neighbourhoods thrive. The thought that if a city has good planning, the development community loses is utterly wrong. Developers adapt to whatever makes them money.

Clearly you've never been to Quebec. Literally every single city extends outwards in a mess of haphazard sprawl that makes London look downright organized.

London's economic problems can be almost completely attributed to uncompetitive manufacturing and poor transportation planning, which indirectly leads to sprawl. Overall you seem to have misunderstood my statement, because I have no problem with good urban planning and I never have. I take issue with populist planners who use buzz words like "interconnected" and "vibrant" to make bad plans sound more appealing... like the Sheppard LRT. It's far more prevalent in the Imperial Capital than it is in London, but we get that sometimes as well. Remember the bullshit tornado from our MPPs over the Wonderland-401 Interchange? Good little project. Not a bad idea in this case, but holy hell, the way they were playing it up made it sound like we were digging the Panama Canal.

Well, I've always subscribed to the idea that 'money talks, and bullshit walks'. And I tend to think the sloganeering you describe happens because it's easier to trot out important-sounding (but ultimately empty) slogans than have to put real money on the table.

Rethink London seems to be more like Rebrand London.

UWO-->"Western U" :yuck:
JLC-->"Budweiser gardens" :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck:
Galleria-->Citiplaza :yuck:
London-->Farhitown

Same can, different (and much worse) label.

To be fair to Western University, they did look at their history when re-branding. They were originally called "The Western University of London Ontario." "The University of Western Ontario" was a re-brand itself. "Western University" is the third name of the facility.

How is this fair to faculty, alumni, and the city? You can white wash it anyway you like to, but the fact is that the change was rammed down our throats without due process. I suspect (I heard this from several people in the know) that Chakma did not like our brand and wanted to put his own stamp on things (gotta justify that hefty salary). change for the sake of change, not for the sake of good. Any Marketing 101 text will tell you that most rebranding efforts fail miserably. Of coruse there are some notable exceptions. Budweiser gardens most certainly will not rank amongst them.

what was that horrid London song?
"Imagine an arena named after american horsepiss! Imagine a city without any sense of history! London is the city of flop-ertunity!"

Now that they've renamed UWO as 'Western University', the new name is really going to confuse the hell out of people who have always known UWO as UWO or 'Western', or, more properly as The University of Western Ontario.

To my eyes, 'Western University' seems horribly generic, the kind of name that would fit a lower-tier college in an underpopulated state in the US.

But then again, when I look at the ugly American-style sign Brescia put at its front gates, I can see that 'going American' seems to be the way to go. I hate that sign - it looks like something that belongs outside of a high school, or a private business college like Westervelt, not an institution of higher learning.

Governments are famous for inducing change for the sake of change and confusing everyone in the process. Now the private sector and the educational sector seem to have become infected by the same change-it-itis.

Finally, does anyone at the top still understand the value and virtues of 'dignitas, gravitas et decorum' (dignity, gravitas and decorum) anymore? Is there anything wrong with maintaining useful traditions that have withstood the test of time?

The UWO debacle deserves at least 4 more "yuck" faces. To me, that was a far greater travesty than this arena rebranding.

I like that - 'city of flopertunity'. It has a nice ring to it and fits London perfectly, because it's the city that aspires to be a first-tier city but can't ever get past the third tier.

One thing is for sure. I get to retire in 10 years, and I don't think I'll be retiring here. Simply because 10 years from now, we'll still be waiting for the things that the city promised us five years ago. If recent history is anything to go by.

http://www.lfpress.com/2012/09/14/free-p...o-the-heart-of-how-to-make-london-better

An excellent article about the City I still love, appreciate, and will always call home. Would love an opportunity in the future to move back there and set my roots down in London, Ontario.

Simply put its all about roads and transit, by far the most important one! If London has the proper infrastructure, to move people and good, in, out and through London efficiently, business, investment and importantly jobs will follow. The the rest of that can be accomplished, higher density with higher population, river revitalization etc.

Right now London failing miserably n that respect and isn't that attractive to new business & investment.

I thought I had it bad in London with public transit; I now live in Kingston and it's even worse there. I don't think there's a single route with service more than once every half hour, and weekend and evening service is almost non-existent. However I also am finding it to be a much more pedestrian-friendly community, with a pretty good downtown - complete with a grocery store. So it's not so bad for me, especially as I live in the older part of town.

The biggest thing London needs is a huge beefing up of public transit. Controlling urban sprawl and ensuring pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods is a close second.

You know I was going to respond to the ignorance of this post with a technical response, but on second thought I just don't care. Most posts here are without merit, because those posting have little or none municipal experience.

As someone with some municipal experience. His post definitely has certain merits. Transit..er rapid transit is something that helps change a community from a rinky-dinky town stuck in the 1980s and 1990s to a modern day community.

How is Kitchener, a city very comparable in size of London, PLUS it has a freeway running through it, is still pursuing LRT through the City and Region?

London seems happy if it gets a limited bus stop route cross town running in mixed traffic by 2031. How is that successful?

London should be pursuing rapid transit in so many ways right now. London traffic is horrible, and the City is built in a way to support a 100,000 population city, not one almost 4X that amount. With rapid transit comes density, with rapid transit comes modal shift, all things that London could work with.

The fact the Mayor and Council seem perfectly fine with working within the inefficiencies of London Transit (all local service bus routes) for the time being shows that London isn't being as innovative as it should be. Planning for either BRT or LRT by ensuring dedication along major corridors should be essential for any future development.

So please, as someone who's worked within the civil service, how is his post without merit? Secondly, the vote for transit or transportation in the London Free Press poll is #1 right now. Not obviously running away with it, but 66 out of over 225 voted for that. That's not insignificant is it?

Transit is one component of the make-up a larger city, not the magic bullet you claim it to be.

How does a community of several hundred thousand without a transit system that meets your seal of approval rate as "rinky-dinky", and then once that same community of several hundred thousand gets a shiny new transit system it suddenly is "modern"?

Oh and BTW, I lived through the 80's and 90's as an adult. They weren't the dreadful prehistoric times that you imply.

Kitchener is not comparable in size to London in either physical size or population.

Kitchener does not have a freeway, the Province of Ontario has a freeway - some of which is in Kitchener. The province built it 50 years ago outside of the existing city because it could not widen the existing roads in the city that made up the provincial route up to that time. Is this freeway a benefit to that city now? Absolutely it is and a godsend to that city because the remainder of its road network is a geometric mess, but don't hail it as a example of some brilliant modern-day forward thinking. It was done out of necessity as much as anything.

As for the LRT project in that area, Kitchener is not perusing that project. The Region of Waterloo is. Before you respond that it's the "same difference", it isn't. The fact that you don't know or understand the difference illustrates that your understanding of municipal affairs is limited.

As well, there is not unanimous support for the LRT project in K-W area, at either a public or political level. Far from it. The Regional government there is pressing ahead with the project, and it certainly does have its supporters, but to imply that "Kitchener" is packed with progressive thinkers and London packed with Luddites is absolutely incorrect and superficial.

If whatever solution that is implemented to a perceived problem works and is cost effective, then it is successful.

That's your opinion and of course you are entitled to it, however if you ask all of the taxpayers of the city if they would like their taxes and utility rates to go up to pay for a billion dollar LRT system, you might not like their collective opinion.

Winnipeg has a population of over 600,000 and is only now beginning to pursue BRT.
Quebec City has a population of over 500,000 and has 4 BRT runs.
I'm not aware of any stand-alone municipality with a population under 500,000 in Canada that has an LRT. It generally isn't seen as fiscally sustainable for a municipality under this population.

Even if wildly successful, an LRT system might increase the rider share from perhaps 5%-8% being public transit to at best 15% - 20%. The car is and will remain king in this part of the world. The modal shift would not be that revolutionary.

You see "innovation", the mayor and council see "cost", because in the end, money is the fuel that makes everything go forward. Capital costs aside, the "Kitchener" LRT that you refer to will have a projected operating defect once up and running of $20M a year. An awful lot of people find that unacceptable for a city of London's/Waterloo Region's size. The one argument being made is that a modern LRT system is the remedy to draw new employment to a city. Others would argue however that is low taxes. One is not likely to get the first and second solutions at the same time in a municipality the size of London, so it's one or the other and low taxes is the far dominant preferred solution right now.

Any major new transit system in any town that is of a scope that requires dedicated land is almost entirely going to operate in existing right-of-ways. There will be no dedication to be had, only expensive and time-consuming expropriation.

The post is without merit because there isn't an understanding the complexities of the issue. It is one thing to state that one support's enhanced public transit, quite another to imply that any municipality that does not share one's particular vision is run by fools. Those fools have a much greater understanding of all of these issues, and the responsibility that comes with it. It isn't as simple as deciding that more public transit (or any other expensive initiative) is good, so let's just do it. When you start taking professional responsibility for 10's or 100's of millions of taxpayer dollars, perhaps you will understand. It's a lot more complicated than Sim City.

66 votes out of how many total votes (whether that be 66 or 6666) in total on a web poll indicates that this isn't an issue for the vast majority of people. If you were to do a proper poll and have a plebiscite during a municipal election and ask the voting public if they would support the implementation of a new transit system that would cost a billion dollars or so to construct, $10 - $20 million a year to subsidize it's operations, and the benefit would be to raise the transit share of total daily ridership from a current 5% to say 15% or 20%, that would be a more germane result.

The harsh new reality that ivory tower politicians in London do not want to deal with is that London's woefully inadequate transit system is the single biggest thing driving young people away from London. I have talked to endless Western grads who told me that the poor public transit system in London was the primary reason they didn't consider staying in London after graduation. (My main reason was a lack of employment opportunity, but public transit ranks as a close second for me. Unlike many of my colleagues at Western, I actually looked for work in London.)

Like it or not City Hall, today's young people value public transit in a way that earlier generations cannot comprehend. Public transit is a big deciding factor for young people when deciding on a city to live in. Places like Waterloo Region, Toronto, and Ottawa that embrace public transit are the places that young people want to move to. Places like London that treat public transit like a service for the poor and handicapped don't cut it anymore. Maybe this strategy worked in 1995, but it doesn't in 2012.

London is just going to keep bleeding talent until it does something to make the city attractive to young people. With talent will come the jobs. And today, an effective, modern public transit system is a huge factor. I can't speak as a politician, but I can speak as a young person who spent five years being surrounded by people complaining about London Transit and talking about moving to a city with a good public transit system after graduation.

London could do wonders if it went out and asked current Western and Fanshawe students about their attitudes about this city. A bunch of "emerging leaders" is far from representative of the younger demographics of the city. They could even take it a step further and survey Western and Fanshawe grads who no longer live in London, and find out why they moved. Both surveys would yield results that I don't think the City of London is ready to hear.