Architect to Leadman: where is the vision?
Parkdale Market reconstruction: a lost opportunity?
Architect and local resident Ralph Wiesbrock has penned the following open letter to Councilor Christine Leadman about what he saw and heard at a public meeting yesterday over the future look of Parkdale Park.
Dear Councilor Leadman,
I just came back from a brief visit to the public consultation session for the Parkdale Market ‘renewal’ project.
I am shocked and appalled by the failure of vision at the heart of our community.
After months of community engagement to establish a community design plan and visions of a vibrant, diverse, culturally and socially engaged, arts oriented neighbourhood focused around a park and farmer’s market at its core, we are now reduced to setting some of the best design talent in the city loose to manage door knobs and paint colours.
City council and its bureaucrats have once again managed to reduce the energy and aspirations of a community down to discussions about numbers of toilets and refrigerator outlets. Is this what a city is made of?
Who set the program, the budget, and the vision for this project?
Maybe it’s just me but I am continually surprised by the lack of imagination and leadership emanating from city hall when things move beyond the grandiose words of the official plan and other generic planning documents. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Must be the Parliament Hill effect.
Instead of engaging a design team to establish a vision and a master plan for the heart of our community based on community consultation, we ask them to put in new toilets and re-seed the grass. It’s a waste of talent and resources. I could understand this if it were understood and presented as an interim refresh but we all know that what we do now will last us for at least a generation.
Take a look, if you please, at how Quebec City, similar in size to Ottawa, has leveraged urban renewal to increase tourism and attract knowledge workers and how they’ve increased their economic activity and tax base as result. By investing in an exciting new park at the centre of the formerly down at the heals Quartier-Saint-Roch they were able to attract new institutions and businesses to the area, a short distance from the old town. http://www.quebecregion.com/e/quartier-saint-roch.asp. Today it is an exciting new destination with a healthy mix of students, tourists, and locals alike.
In our own backyard we seem to prefer the status quo and its counterpart, institutionalized mediocrity. We task our best design talent with shining an old pair of shoes because we won’t consider that it might be time for a new pair.
This park should be about so much more. Like support for public art. Like support for community events. Like support for families and seniors and the disabled. Like support for sustainable landscapes. Like integrated market infrastructure. Like support for broader future development. Like an architecture and landscape of ideas.
This project should have started from a consultation process to establish community needs, moved to an ideation and master planning process, and onto a phased implementation strategy (as budget restrictions might necessitate), with detailed design, tendering, and construction taking place at the appropriate stages.
Instead we’ve started with a statement of requirements that will guarantee boredom and stagnation for generations to come.
Frankly, I’m embarassed by our city’s aspirations.
Thanks Oracle for getting this out there. I showed up at the consultation just as Ralph was summing up his objections before he left in frustration. And as someone who has worked with Ralph on the CDP committee, I really appreciate his pasion and vision.
And I must say I agree with his assessment – to an extent. Parkdale market park represents a huge opportunity for an innovative public space in the heart of the Wellington St. West corridor. And the current plan only gets us 51% of the way there.
The building design for the Parkdale fieldhouse and surrounding canopies is – to put it kindly – architecturally uninspired. And yes, our city does need a far more visionary approach to designing public spaces and using the talents of civic-minded professionals like Ralph.
But as I told the city staff in the room, I also have to focus on the fact that the park and market are going to be BETTER than they are today. The city is investing in the project, and have managed to secure “magic money” from the feds, which has an expiry date. So for me I’d rather grit my teeth and go for the incremental improvements at hand, than to dig in my heels and fight for a vision that just isn’t there at the moment…
But we can wish for better.
The so-called vision of architects and urban planners has hoisted disaster after disaster on Ottawa/Gatineau over the past half century, from the complete destruction of the LeBreton Flats neighbourhood and eviction of its residents, to the removal of rail from downtown (which we need to pay $6B to bring back now!), to the unfathomable pedestrian and traffic chaos of Confederation Square, to the rebuilding of downtown Hull in the image of a concrete Soviet-era office complex.
So I, for one, welcome the lack of “vision” for the Parkdale Market. Yes, let’s plant grass, choose paint colours, buy doorknobs, and focus on small, incremental changes to what’s still good about our city. We don’t have to let Ottawa/Gatineau be the canvas for any more egotistical planners and architects to sign their names on.
Just to make it clear, nothing in the above comment is meant to refer to Mr. Wiesbrock — the term “egotistical planners and architects” referred specifically to the people who brought about the urban disasters I listed in my comment, not to all architects and planners.
Can we organize and do something!?
1 – I think that the City needs to be pressed to complete the Community Design Plan that has been in the works for far too long, and get it back to the community for comment, modification, and affirmation as appropriate. Many volunteers offered their time and insights only to have them languish on the shelves of city hall. It is no useful guide to future development in our neighbourhood in its present non-existent form.
2 – I think that the City should be pressed to hold honest information sessions about what they are planning before it is a fait acompli (i.e. before hiring consultants with defined and limited mandates) and to hold real consultation sessions about what options, funding, and phasing strategies might exist for future of this significant asset in the heart of the community.
3 – I think it’s already too late, but perhaps the community, through it’s community associations and councilor could hold a town hall to discuss the challenges and potentialities for the park and market. The CDP focused on defining the appropriate form and uses of what goes around it. And the City seems to have decided what the foreseeable future of the Market and park will be. But adding the voice of the community can never be a bad thing.
I totally agree with what Ralph says on this…Here is a potential jewel right in the heart of the new village arts district. There are so many wonderful possibilities – esp for community event space etc. that are already started in this park…I admit that as the owner of the gallery (Cube) right next door — i have a vested interest — But I live in this area as well and I think this is a missed opportunity for a wonderful plan. — PS David’s trashing of all architects for a few bad examples is a bit ridiculous and high handed. Ralph even links us to a good Quebec city example – so come on.
This is the Heart of Hintonburg… We need a very creative design.