Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm

[J.OT13]

I have nothing with the Experimental Farm. Except for the land across from the Civic that I think would have been a better location for the institution, and the corner currently proposed for the new Civic (basically, the Carling frontage of the Farm) I would protect the area 100%.

We need to have a conversation about the Greenbelt, however. Though I'm sure there are pockets that should be protected, a lot of it should be redeveloped to slow down sprawl and bet maximize our rapid transit investment.

[acottawa]

I'm pretty agnostic on the research fields. On one hand it seems very little of the research is actually location-specific (the article above seems to indicate convenience for employees is the main benefit). On the other hand, the divested sections of the farm (Central Park) are pretty awful, so I have little confidence something better would go there.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Buggys

People love travelling/commuting through the farm, for it's peacefulness, clean air, and little bit of escape from urbanity. Large swaths of Canada's landscape is actually farms, agriculture is one of the key industries that started this country, and it's great to have a reminder of that within the urban area for those minds which are narrowly focused on just having features that are typically urban. In addition, patients from the Civic Hospital enjoy the serenity & homeliness that the farm offers, especially those who travel from rural areas & Western Canada to receive treatment not readily available elsewhere.

What medical services are offered by the Civic that western Canadians can't avail of in Western Canadia?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We need to have a conversation about the Greenbelt, however. Though I'm sure there are pockets that should be protected, a lot of it should be redeveloped to slow down sprawl and bet maximize our rapid transit investment.

Another way to maximize our urban transit investment would be, instead of building higher-order transit through brownfields, greenfields, and alongside freeways, then trying, and inevitably failing, to stitch new urban development to that poorly-located transit line of convenience, to build urban transit in, you know, the urban stuff.

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

What medical services are offered by the Civic that western Canadians can't avail of in Western Canadia?

Not sure of the details on that.

[RTWAP]

I'd like to see the CEF slated for conversion to more interactive and varied uses, but I don't want it turned into suburban housing. I would like the feds to designate a portion of the existing NCC farmland in the Greenbelt as the future home of the CEF, and slowly move there by requiring all new projects to be start there. Over the course of 20 or 30 years most scientific work would move, and staff would gradually move with the work.

That frees up a large space that I would like to see converted to a large variety of uses.

MY brainstorm list of ideas would include

• a few sports fields
• a few unstructured play fields
• the Ag Museum
• maybe a zoo or aquarium (or both)
• a wild and unmaintained urban forest with varying densities and tree and bush types
• and somewhere near the toboggan hill I'd put a play area (splash pad, outdoor pool, climbing structures, climbing trees (gasp!), swings, skate park, hockey rink for ball/ice hockey, tennis courts that convert to skating park in winter).

And have food and other useful goods available

I'd also set aside some of the land, especially in the western portion, for garden plots. Intensification is good, but many people still like to be able to garden and grow some of their own food. Providing space for that enriches the fabric of the city. It also brings people together.

[rocketphish]

Why the air you breathe near the Experimental Farm is cleaner than elsewhere in Ottawa

Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: September 25, 2019



The Central Experimental Farm is a giant air purifier that sucks up unhealthy particles of pollution, even cleaning the air outside the Farm’s boundaries.

While green space is known to be generally healthy for a city, a team from Carleton University has analyzed air samples from in and around the Farm to come up with hard numbers on its benefits.

“It’s complicated to capture all of the many benefits that greenness can have. But the key thing about this study is that it shows it can impact pollution levels, impact heat,” and spread good effects far outside the Farm boundaries, said Paul Villeneuve, who teaches health sciences at Carleton.

The study began several years ago, as the Ottawa Hospital was planning a new campus on the Farm’s northwest corner. Villeneuve wanted to study the air quality before construction began, and then assess later whether the hospital construction changed that.

He sent a group of students travelling all around to measure temperature and a variety of air pollutants in the summer, fall and winter. They had adventures — some instruments were stolen, and the Ottawa police even took one that looked suspicious (but gave it back.)

The results gave the first measurements of how much benefit we get from the four-square kilometres of urban farmland.

“The vegetation itself had an impact (reducing) different types of pollutants. The strongest one was on black carbon which is usually linked to diesel-type traffic emissions,” Villeneuve said.

The vegetation also reduces airborne particles in the range of 2.5 microns, or about one tenth of the thickness of a hair. These can lodge deep in the lungs, and are considered one of the major health threats from air pollution.

“It’s one of the pollutants that is most studied in health impacts,” he said. The tiny particles can cause cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases and likely lung cancer.

The team sampled air up to three kilometres away from the Farm’s borders.

As a person travels away from the edge of the Farm, the level of these pollutants climbs by 12 per cent for each kilometre in fall, and by seven per cent for each kilometre in winter.

The Farm also cleans up airborne carbon: In summer the amount of black carbon rose by 74 per cent for each kilometre moving away from the Farm.

The team concludes: “These results suggest that this unique urban green space has important beneficial impacts on ambient air pollution concentrations, and for mitigating extreme heat events for which a large part of Ottawa’s population is exposed.”

“One of the reasons the Farm is so important is that a large proportion of the residents of Ottawa live within five kilometres,” Villebeuve said.

“For people who live around (it) there would be an important health benefit from being able to reduce the levels of PM 2.5 (small particles) and black carbon.”

Villeneuve is worried that the new Ottawa Hospital campus at the Farm’s east end will result in lost greenery. “If they build the hospital and then put all these parking lots beside it, which would completely change the benefits that the vegetation would have.”

The study was done by four people who were Villeneuve’s students at the time, Keith Van Ryswyk, Natasha Prince, Mona Ahmed and Erika Brisson, as well as Villeneuve and chemistry professor David Miller. It is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...here-in-ottawa

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Tesladom

But the cost of bringing in sewers and water and roads will benefit Taggart (who owns Tamarack), its really a win win for them.

Again the city and the NCC should get together and allow some development in non-sensitive areas of the Greenbelt, and use proceeds to buy up other ecologically sensitive lands elsewhere.
The Corn fields along Fallowfield are a prime example
Feds should also look at Central Experimental Farm development as well, we have 20-30 years of development lands available within existing servicing areas

Absolutely not! This is special feature of this city, which we should not give up.

[Williamoforange]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Absolutely not! This is special feature of this city, which we should not give up.

id rather not see housing, and if the central experimental farm is changing to anything my view is actual usable activity land that for inside the Greenbelt. Activity land as in sports fields, festival grounds, etc

Anyway if were talking about farmland to build over how about the Greenbelt farmland that might eventually have LRT running right through it. Hell do a land swap at cost values for the land AOO owns. As the Tewin land should be in the Greenbelt anyways.

[Burbs_boy]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Absolutely not! This is special feature of this city, which we should not give up.

Long time reader, never posted before, this line of thinking drives me absolutely crazy.

The reason it is "special" is because there is no other major city stupid enough to continue building outward yet for some reason preserve 427 acres of farmland in the centre of their city. This "green space" that is actually brown and barren for a majority of the year and almost totally unusable by the public has no business existing when we are in the midst of an ever worsening housing shortage. I'm all for preserving the buildings and even some of the fields near the museum.

Some here have called Tewin a blank slate for a new type of community building. There is no reason a redeveloped experimental farm could not be this. It can have huge tracts of actual greenspace inside the new communities, mixed real estate, affordable housing, bike lanes galore and all the other city building ideas we all get off to.

Not a single new home should be built in the current burbs or Tewin until we have developed most of the experimental farm, LeBreton flats, and every single farm in the greenbelt.

[Nowhere]

I don't know why so many people here want to destroy greenspace when the city is overflowing with strip malls, parking lots and brown fields waiting to be redeveloped.

Urban green spaces have been shown to considerably increase life quality.

[silvergate]

Originally Posted by Burbs_boy

Long time reader, never posted before, this line of thinking drives me absolutely crazy.

The reason it is "special" is because there is no other major city stupid enough to continue building outward yet for some reason preserve 427 acres of farmland in the centre of their city. This "green space" that is actually brown and barren for a majority of the year and almost totally unusable by the public has no business existing when we are in the midst of an ever worsening housing shortage. I'm all for preserving the buildings and even some of the fields near the museum.

Some here have called Tewin a blank slate for a new type of community building. There is no reason a redeveloped experimental farm could not be this. It can have huge tracts of actual greenspace inside the new communities, mixed real estate, affordable housing, bike lanes galore and all the other city building ideas we all get off to.

Not a single new home should be built in the current burbs or Tewin until we have developed most of the experimental farm, LeBreton flats, and every single farm in the greenbelt.

This sounds... Really short sighted when you say it like that. Farmland close to the city is going to be more and more important for future sustainability

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Nowhere

I don't know why so many people here want to destroy greenspace when the city is overflowing with strip malls, parking lots and brown fields waiting to be redeveloped.

I think the point is that the Exp. Farm right now isn't publicly-accessible greenspace - It's just mostly....land, sitting there. If it were all morphed into a largescale, urban park then I would agree with the viewpoint of 'destroying greenspace', but at this point it's mostly just fields of nothing. It's not a natural environment for wildlife and it's not public greenspace.

As soon as somebody says 'Develop Exp. Farm' the first thing that comes to mind is something like Trainyards popping up which wouldn't be too great, but that's about what I would expect of Ottawa developers.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by Burbs_boy

Long time reader, never posted before, this line of thinking drives me absolutely crazy.

The reason it is "special" is because there is no other major city stupid enough to continue building outward yet for some reason preserve 427 acres of farmland in the centre of their city. This "green space" that is actually brown and barren for a majority of the year and almost totally unusable by the public has no business existing when we are in the midst of an ever worsening housing shortage. I'm all for preserving the buildings and even some of the fields near the museum.

Some here have called Tewin a blank slate for a new type of community building. There is no reason a redeveloped experimental farm could not be this. It can have huge tracts of actual greenspace inside the new communities, mixed real estate, affordable housing, bike lanes galore and all the other city building ideas we all get off to.

Not a single new home should be built in the current burbs or Tewin until we have developed most of the experimental farm, LeBreton flats, and every single farm in the greenbelt.

Welcome to the forum!

[lrt's friend]

The National Agricultural Station in Beltsville, Maryland is in the same situation, surrounded by suburban development. It makes no sense moving these research facilities that often depend on long-term research. Or do we just quit doing research? And for what? More second rate residential development, just like what we got in neighbouring Central Park, that was surplus Experimental Farm property originally.

We can't get Lebreton Flats developed properly, so how can we trust developers with this key property. We can't even get a proper botanical gardens built, which locations close to Carleton University has been begging for decades. We can't make proper use of this land to improve this city, so how does privatizing it make Ottawa better? It doesn't.

[Tesladom]

Originally Posted by Burbs_boy

Long time reader, never posted before, this line of thinking drives me absolutely crazy.

Great first post!

You'll see how some people don't make sense... they want "intensification" and yet they don't want useless brownfields redeveloped, they claim affordability yet seek to constrain real estate development. People need affordable housing, the is NOTHING inside the greenbelt that is remotely close to this, and really neither in much of the existing suburbs either. This is a huge issue for the next generation, how are they supposed to ever buy a house when a suburban townhouse is now north of $600k?

[J.OT13]

Why are so many of you dead-set in redeveloping the Experimental Farm? There's plenty of space available for redevelopment in the central city as is. As some have said, we have countless parking lots, but also LeBreton, Tunney's, Hurdman, Confederation Heights, the National Research Council... At least the Farm is being used as... farm land. The rest is just parking and empty space.

We must also be aware that whatever we would want to see at the Central Experimental Farm if it ever was considered for redevelopment, is not the same as what we'll see around most of the expansion lands (Tewin may be different). Most will be single family houses and townhomes. Is that what we want for the CEF?

Many were up in arms when a hospital was proposed for part of the Farm. If we can't get a hospital, does anyone think we can convince enough pf the population that housing is a better use?

As silvergate pointed out, the importance of urban farming will only increase as time goes on. Instead of building over our farms, we should look at ways to make them more productive as farm land, maybe the addition of more greenhouses to grow things that may be atypical in Canada. We can't continue to depend on other countries.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by j.ot13

why are so many of you dead-set in redeveloping the experimental farm? There's plenty of space available for redevelopment in the central city as is. As some have said, we have countless parking lots, but also lebreton, tunney's, hurdman, confederation heights, the national research council... At least the farm is being used as... Farm land. The rest is just parking and empty space.

100%

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Why are so many of you dead-set in redeveloping the Experimental Farm? There's plenty of space available for redevelopment in the central city as is. As some have said, we have countless parking lots, but also LeBreton, Tunney's, Hurdman, Confederation Heights, the National Research Council... At least the Farm is being used as... farm land. The rest is just parking and empty space.

We must also be aware that whatever we would want to see at the Central Experimental Farm if it ever was considered for redevelopment, is not the same as what we'll see around most of the expansion lands (Tewin may be different). Most will be single family houses and townhomes. Is that what we want for the CEF?

Many were up in arms when a hospital was proposed for part of the Farm. If we can't get a hospital, does anyone think we can convince enough pf the population that housing is a better use?

As silvergate pointed out, the importance of urban farming will only increase as time goes on. Instead of building over our farms, we should look at ways to make them more productive as farm land, maybe the addition of more greenhouses to grow things that may be atypical in Canada. We can't continue to depend on other countries.

Well said! We have so many sites that could be built on or intensified but we don't.

The CEF is a city asset, whereas so many of these other sites including Tunney's and Confederation Heights are not so much. They are begging for intensification. Certainly the CEF should not be used as a big pocket of affordable housing. We now know affordable housing needs to be integrated in every neighbourhood to avoid creating 'ghettos'. I think that we have to realize that urban housing is going to be more expensive than suburban or exurban. It is a fact of life in a healthy city.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Well said! We have so many sites that could be built on or intensified but we don't.

The CEF is a city asset, whereas so many of these other sites including Tunney's and Confederation Heights are not so much. They are begging for intensification. Certainly the CEF should not be used as a big pocket of affordable housing. We now know affordable housing needs to be integrated in every neighbourhood to avoid creating 'ghettos'. I think that we have to realize that urban housing is going to be more expensive than suburban or exurban. It is a fact of life in a healthy city.

I agree with this. It would be interesting to see if there is a way to increase the public use of the farm without affecting the research that goes on there. For instance, there is lots of land to the north east side of the farm (i.e. around the tennis club) that doesn't seem to be part of the agricultural function. (There are also some cool buildings that most people never get to see.) I could just be uniformed, but if that land is largely unused, it would be a plus for the city, and for the protection of the farm in the long run, if the public benefit could be maximized.

If I'm completely off base, and that property is needed, then they should at least work on Fletcher's Garden across POW to make that a more accessible spot. Maybe fast track the botanical garden or something like that.