I went on a trip to Ottawa in the fall, and noticed good, interesting, and bad public space initiatives.
The Good
Ottawa has made many pedestrian-oriented improvements since I lived there a couple of decades ago. Ottawa’s residential streets, even in the central area, tend to be very wide, but they have been mitigated by extensive use of bulb-outs at intersections, which slow traffic, make for shorter crossing distances, and can provide a pleasing little public space (depending on how well they’re designed and maintained). Ottawa has also put a lot of effort into creating new pedestrian paths and stairs to create direct routes to destinations where pedestrians want to walk. Finally, in some heavily pedestrian areas such as the university (pictured here) it has created very visible and attractive brick crosswalks.
The Interesting
Ottawa has also taken the idea of postering collars on utility poles seriously (unlike the sad and minimal Toronto proposals). There are large, durable metal postering collars at eye level on all four corners of every major intersection in central Ottawa. Certainly, if you are going to have poster collars, this is the way to do it properly.
The Bad
Ottawa has the advertising bug bad. Along Bank Street — a major shopping street billed as a “promenade” — there are huge advertising boards that do not even pretend to have a purpose other than ads. They take up the majority of the already narrow sidewalk, ruining the view and forcing pedestrians to squeeze by. Did they forget that “promenade” is supposed to mean a pleasant walk?
The ads extend even to the bike racks, each of which carries a little mini-billboard. As always, the necessity of making room for the ad undermines the effective design of the public facility – the racks are nowhere near as efficient as Toronto’s ring-and-posts, taking up more space while being harder to use.
7 comments
neat mini-profile on the city. the ottawa bike racks are definitely among the worst i’ve encountered. there are also far too few of them and they’re also taken out during the winter months.
Get over your advertising obsession! Many of the great cities of the world feature public furniture devoted entirely to advertising. Ever been to Paris? What about the inarguably iconic Times Square? There’s nothing inherently wrong with advertising!
If you look at the photos in my post, you will see that advertising has a direct detrimental effect on public amenities – it makes a “promenade” difficult to walk, by taking up the sidewalk for no public benefit, and it forces an inconvenient and inefficient design on the bikeracks (compared, for example, to the efficient and effective ad-less Toronto ring-and-post design). That is why I describe these examples of advertising as a problem.
Pollara did a poll recently that showed 67% of Canadians believe their city would be more beautiful without billboards. And nearly 90% of TV viewers will skip commericals if they have the choice. People don’t won’t the current level of advertising in their lives. Even if you don’t agree with that statement, it is hard to argue when street furniture is designed for the advertising first, and the functionality come second, then the public is getting ripped off. If your TV showed commcercials muct better than your DVDs, you might get angry.
I used to live in Ottawa and can attest to the fact that those three-sided billboards on Bank Street are a major pain in the butt for everybody. It really slows down pedestrian traffic on one of the busiest streets in town. Many of them end up getting pasted with posters for gigs and garage sales as such, which consequently get torn down, giving the whole structure a ragged appearance. At least one has been set on fire (but still stands).
I’m skeptical that the revenue the City of Ottawa generates from these outweighs the social cost, i.e. the inconvenience caused to people walking down the street.
paul, you’ll note that they’re taken out for the same reason that Ottawa fire hydrants have 5 foot plus yellow posts with flags on top of them: Ottawa gets a hell of a lot of snow. Trying to keep the sidewalks clear with all sorts of bike racks lurking as possibly unseen and definitely difficult to navigate obstacles would be horrendous.
Not everything is a conspiracy against bicyclists, and sometimes there are good reasons for doing things.
Sorry, Hey. You’re right and I didn’t mean to disregard that important point. I am actually proud that Ottawa is one of the most bike-friendly cities in Canada. Aside from last year’s poor city participation in Car Free Day, there is no anti-bike conspiracy to speak of. Upon a closer Bank Street inspection, there are actually a few permament ring-post bike racks around but not necessarily around common stops for year-round cyclists. So while I agree there’s no conspiracy, I also agree with Dylan that the city’s most common bike rack design and location could be improved.