Tag Archives: walking

20-Minute Neighbourhoods

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From this brainstorm about Community Re-Development came a fantastic idea about 20 Minute Neighbourhoods.

So, I just finished my UBC Continuing Studies class in Sustainability and Transformational Leadership. Last week, teammates Heidi, Roger and I created a consulting firm – 20:15 (we present the concept of “20-Minute Neighbourhoods” in 15 minutes) – and delivered a presentation that outlined a pretty cool strategy for re-developing communities in vibrant, local and stranger-less ways. Here’s a synopsis of our pitch.

20-Minute Neighbourhoods Are…

A 20-minute neighbourhood is a place with convenient, safe, and pedestrian-oriented access to the places people need to go to and the services people use nearly every day: transit, shopping, quality food, school, parks, and social activities. A 20-minute neighbourhood is a walkable environment where people can go and get their basic needs met in about twenty minutes from their home. Many researchers believe that the key to making great strides with climate change rests within cities. Cities are the most densely populated areas; therefore it is also where between 50 to 75 per cent of greenhouse gases are produced.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is not a new concept. In the 1920’s when the car was not yet the main way of getting around, most people lived in 20-minute neighbourhoods by necessity. Even with a growing popularity of the car, there was a strong desire to preserve 20-minute access to all needed day-to-day human needs. In 1949, the famous writer E. B. White described the same small-city concept in an essay called ‘Here Is New York’:

“Each area is a city within a city within a city, thus no matter where you live in New York, you will find within a block or two a grocery store, a barbershop, a newsstand and shoeshine shack, an ice-coal-and-wood cellar, a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen, a flower shop, an undertaker’s parlor, a movie house, a radio-repair shop, a stationer, a haberdasher, a tailor, a drug store, a garage, a tearoom, a saloon, a hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop.”

Twenty-minute neighbourhoods have the following three basic characteristics:

  1. A walkable environment
  2. Destinations that support a range of daily needs (i.e., shops, jobs, parks, etc.)
  3. Residential density

Create a 20-Minute Neighbourhood by…

Going to Portland! The City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability have written a great report and we adapted it for our project and summarized some of their “next steps” ideas below. Broadly speaking, 20-Minute Neighbourhoods succeed when there is social (people in the community/neighbourhood) and organizational (leaders in the community as well as municipal representatives) buy into the project. The 20-Minute Neighbourhood campaign must always start with a “living laboratory” or a “living show-room” – many communities from Halifax to Victoria are already in possession of some (or all) of the “20 minute essentials” and these neighbourhoods must be found, approached and given the additional elements required to become champions of this concept.

Set Priorities for These Three Things

  1. Walkability. We propose that your cities understand what it feels like to walk places. To get started, we recommend that the City Council – your Municipal Leaders – forfeit your cars for a month, which will give you a true sense of what 20-minutes of walking feels like and where – from your home – you can reach in this amount of time. As leaders in the community, people will take notice of this, which leads us to our second recommendation surrounding walkability: the City should provide incentives for people who voluntarily surrender their car(s) in favour of walking, cycling, public transit, or a car-share/co-op program.
  2. Residential Density. Creating partnerships with developers who are interested – and excited – about urban densification is another key part of our 20-minute Neighbourhood strategy. These developers will know where it will be possible to create neighbourhoods with 18-20 households-per-acre (as well as where such neighbourhoods already exist).
  3. Living Showroom. One of the key outcomes of 20-minute Neighbourhoods is tourism. By finding a champion – an existing 20-minute neighbourhood, such as the West End of Vancouver – the city can create a “living showroom” that perfectly captures the cultural landscape of a 20-minute Neighbourhood. By entering these “living laboratories” guests – and community members – will be able to explore the concepts of a 20-minute neighbourhood for themselves in real time.

By implementing these three things – and addressing the questions (follow this link) outlined within each priority (thanks, Sam Adams!) – a city will be able to document its current capacity to champion existing 20-minute neighbourhoods as well as assess gaps between their current urban landscape and the one they want to create. Because the future should only be 20-minutes away.

Jane’s Walking through Vancouver’s Historical Communities

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

— Jane Jacobs, ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’

It’s a simple equation, really: walking + history + people + urban literacy = strong, vibrant communities. This Saturday and Sunday (May 1 & 2, 2010) you can be part of the equation by participating in Vancouver’s Jane’s Walk 2010.

Fun Fact: Jane’s Walk is a Canadian creation that has been exported around the world – today, there are over 400 Jane’s Walks taking place on Earth. And you can be a part of it.

The Vancouver initiative is developed and driven by Think City, which, according to their website, “helps citizens understand the issues facing their communities while developing collective solutions to protect the environment, strengthen local economies, advance democratic rights and ensure access to quality public services.” After all, walking, as our Resident Architect, Stewartworks, will tell you, is perhaps the best method of transportation for properly engaging a community.

Jane’s Walk is all about the ideas of Jane Jacobs – writer, activist, Uncle Sam Impersonator – who stood up for the interests of local residents and pedestrians in opposition to a car-centered approach to planning. The event strives to take Jacobs’ ideas to communities unfamiliar with her ideas, like Phoenix, in order to advance raise awareness for people-first planning and design.  The walks bring people together based on shared interest; some of the best communities have been formed by strangers going for walks.

Recently, I sat down with Jane’s Walks Vancouver coordinator, Kim Fleming, who let me know about the impact this event makes on communities. “Jane’s Walk builds community in a number of ways. Firstly, it gets people out of their cars walking around their neighbourhoods talking to their neighbours! The idea behind Jane’s Walk is that it is a dialogue that happens while you are are on the walk. The tour host is more like a fascilitator who has knowledge around a theme and the idea is to engage interested people and have them share their knowledge, ideas and experiences as well. Walkers get a broader picture of their community and the people who live in it.”

And, in true Gumboot style, I asked Kim to identify her three favourite things about Jane’s Walks:

1. It builds community!(see above)

2. It allows us to discover and re-discover our city through pedestrian focused activities and the use of public space…all public space which includes our sidewalks, laneways, parks, school yards, boulevards etc…

The great surprise in the Olympics for me was the use of public space and the great sense of community that using those spaces built, pride in our community, our city and connection with our fellow citizens. We don’t, in Vancouver, use our public spaces in this way very often and our planning does not factor in the importance of it. But we saw with the Olympics that it is important and what we see with Jane’s Walk, which is all about this, is that Vancouverites have a hunger for it! It is our city after all.

3. Walkability. It’s fun, its healthy, its free! Exploring is fun. Stories are fun! People are interesting. Jane’s Walk is just a starting point. Walkability is a concept that can carry through every time you put foot to pavement, not just on a Jane’s Walk, when you go to the cornerstore think about how it got there, (is there a cornerstore? where would one be if there was….)how is the sidewalk used that you are walking on, who uses it?…

Needless to say, I will be attending a Jane’s Walk on Sunday. And I’m lucky. Because my guide is pretty much the Indiana Jones of Jane’s Walks. His name is Phil Skipper and he will be facilitating a community-minded jaunt around Douglas Park and the South Cambie ‘hood. From Phil, I expect to experience humour, random (seemingly impossible) facts, excellent questions, and possibly coordinated dance off against another tour-group and/or some unsuspecting neighbours. You can register for Phil’s walk by following this link.

Finally, before, during and after the walk take lots of pictures. Later from home, upload your best photos to Flickr and add thinkcity and janeswalk10 as tags. If you have a Twitter account, please update your status with anything of interest you see or learn along the walk. Use #janeswalk10 and #janeswalk before your message. Be collaborative and social – after all, it’s all about community!

Walking with your Life

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As of today, there have been 14 pedestrian fatalities so far this month in the GTA.  Eight of those have been in Toronto.  To put this in context, in 2009 there were 56 pedestrian deaths in the GTA and 31 in Toronto.  In both cases we’re already at about 25% of last year’s total.

And that has a lot of us in the GTA, particularly those of us who walk more than we drive, are looking for explanations.  As I’ve read through newspapers over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found the list of factors that have been suggested is long and varied.

Clifford Photo

Clifford Photo

Inattentiveness – One that has been brought up repeatedly with both pedestrians and drivers being distracted by technology (cellphones, iPods, etc.) and hectic lifestyles that are causing us to rush (driving too fast, jaywalking, etc.)

Suburban Design – last year the majority of pedestrian fatalities happened in the outer boroughs (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough) of Toronto, not the downtown core.  The range of explanations include speeding, wide streets, poor pedestrian infrastructure (i.e. sidewalks, crosswalks)

Traffic and Walk Lights – the newer countdown lights were suggested as a contributing cause since pedestrians and motorists will try to rush through the intersection.  And apparently the assumption is the pedestrians will cross at a speed of 3.6 km/h

Seniors – it turns out that the number of seniors killed in traffic accidents is on the rise. About 60 per cent of pedestrian fatalities last year were among those over 65, compared with 44 per cent the previous year. (Globe and Mail:

Visibility – This has been mentioned by many and includes everything from less daylight, to the mild weather, to impaired vision from salt-covered windshields, to dark clothing worn by pedestrians, to pedestrians limiting their visibility with hood and hats.  Apparently in previous years the majority of pedestrian fatalities have occurred between October and January 

The question is, with all this speculation about causes why hasn’t there been more discussion about solutions?  Of all the coverage, most of it argues that everyone just needs to be more careful.  I’ve seen only a few that try to take it from a search for explanation to seeking real solutions.  There are a few exceptions, including Dylan Reid of Spacing Magazine who throws out a few solutions and Christopher Hume of the Toronto Star who pushes for solutions and rethinking our cities.  Hopefully more will come in the weeks and months when the tragedies of the last couple of weeks percolates through our think tanks and policy makers.

In the meantime, I’m going to share a couple of great websites that I’ve come across that are linking how cities are planned, walkability (a real word at least in municipal planning departments) and our quality of life.

8-80 Cities

This organization has a simple philosophy for making our communities safer for pedestrians and cyclists:

  • Step 1: Think of a child that you love and care for who is approximately 8 years of age. This could be a child, grandchild, sister, brother, cousin etc.
  • Step 2: Think of an adult, approximately 80 years of age who you love and care for. This could be a parent, grandparent, friend etc.
  • Step 3: Ask yourself: Would you send that 8 year old along with the 80 year old on a walk, or a bike ride on that infrastructure? If you would, then it is safe enough, if you would not, then it is not safe enough.

Too often, when street designs are prepared, the car is at the centre of the plan and this organization is doing some amazing work to help us rethink this approach.

Walk 21

This organization does are great job linking why walkability is so integral to a socially sustainable community – including inclusivity, reduced crime, safety and spaces for people.  And they are working with Canada Walks, an organization already doing work on walkability in Ontario including Active and Safe Routes to School.

Walk Score

This is a resource that a colleague of mine contributed to when he was working as a consultant.  It provides a score to neighbourhoods in the States (and it has been embraced by some in real estate as a way to market homes).