“Do you like what you see?”

Using a Visual Preference Surveyto engage the public

Ontario Professional Planners’ Institute Symposium October 1, 2014Tim J. Moerman

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• Outer suburban areas have houses on narrow lots - as little as 5.5m (18’) for townhouses!

• Single-car garages, but two-car households predominate

• But residents can’t widen their driveways because zoning prohibits extending the driveway in front of the house.

• Also, driveways are limited to 50% of the front yard.

• Townhouse residents were especially vocal. A ward councillor got involved.

• This issue wasn’t going to go away.

A long-festering issue

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Review the zoning standards around suburban residential parking (esp. width

and location) to see if they can be changed to allow double-wide driveways

in more cases.

As always, it starts with public consultation…

The Task:

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1. Zoning text is hard to understand in the best of cases.

2. A poorly-framed question may get a misinformed or biased answer. (e.g. “Do you want the government to loosen the rules so you can have more parking?”)

3. Lack of broad interest in a minor amendment... hardly the kind of thing that draws crowds to public meetings. And yet...

4. ...for those who do care about it, it is a big deal. Without broad input, a few squeaky wheels may drown out the wider views.

Risks and Challenges

The

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• Several drawings showing what’s currently allowed, and what would be allowed under various proposed changes to the zoning.

• Draw an immediate understanding and reaction from the viewer.

• Online survey comprising:

1. Introduction;2. three (3) visual questions; and3. an optional write-in comment box.

• Mounted on Ottawa.ca for six weeks (June1 – August 16, 2013.)

Visual Preference Survey

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Introduction• Isometric drawings

showing the current rules

• Explanatory text in an accessible, conversational style.

• “Here’s what you can and can’t do under today’s zoning, and here’s why some people have a problem with it.”

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Question #1• What if we let the

driveway extend in front of the house, but kept the 50% width limit?

• Three possible answers:

1. “I’d be OK if everyone did this”

2. “I’d be OK if a few neighbours did this, but not if everyone did”

3. “I’d be upset if anyone did this.”

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Question #2• What if we not only

let the driveway extend in front of the house, but also let it occupy 2/3 of the front yard?

• (Same answer options.)

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Question #3 (Specific to townhouses)Here’s what the current rules (i.e. 50% limit on driveways) look like now when applied to townhouses...

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Question #3 (Specific to townhouses)What if we exempted townhouses from driveway width requirements, letting the owners pave up to 6m wide?

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• They saw the survey, saw the pictures, and immediately got it.

• First Radio-Canada, then CBC…

• And then the Ottawa Sun.

Within days, the media picked up the story…

Res

ults

Survey Results

Option 1Relax restrictions on location but maintain 50%-of-front-yard limit

Option 2Relax restrictions on location and allow 2/3 of the front yard

Townhouse ExceptionRemove limits on driveway width and location for townhouses only

60% - “OK even if everybody does it”16% - “OK if some”23% - “Never OK!”

37% “OK even if everybody does it”14% “OK if some”49% “Never OK!”

46% “OK even if everybody does it”9% “OK if some”41% “Never OK!”

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ts• Over 1,100 people went online to complete the

survey.

• Of these, about half (548 respondents) also filled in the write-in comment box.

• We sorted these according to the general attitude expressed about allowing wider driveways (generally for, generally against, and ambiguous/no clear stance)

• Summarized the most frequently expressed points

Over 1,100 responses to the survey

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ts548 Written Comments…

Rank Top Five arguments AGAINST allowing widening # %1 Want to protect greenspace/amenity space/trees; want less

pavement 70 33%

2 People should clear out their garages and park there 45 21%3 People should have known what they were buying

into/should buy an appropriate house and lot/this is not what I bought into

41 19%

4 Concerned about snow storage/removal 34 16%5 Don't want my neighbourhood to become a parking lot/used

car lot/wreck yard/concrete jungle. 31 14%

Rank Top five arguments FOR allowing widening # %1 Want parked cars off the street/residents are taking up all

street parking, leaving none for visitors 99 46%

2 Winter parking/driving/snow clearance/accumulation 43 20%3 Safety 40 19%4 Streets are too narrow/hard to get through 35 16%5 The loss of green space is okay/pavement is better than

weeds (pesticide ban, watering restrictions) 18 8%

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• Take these two isolated comments:

1. “People use their garages to store all their junk, they should clean it out and park there—end of problem.” (10% of respondents)

2. “Garages are too small to park a car in.” (1% of respondents)

• Turns out these are related… if the garage is too small, the first car gets parked on the driveway and there’s no room for the second car in the driveway. And then the garage becomes storage.

• So maybe the minimum parking space size should be bigger when it’s in a garage.

• If we hadn’t gotten 548 responses, maybe we would have missed the 4 or 5 people who pointed out the garages are too small!

Surprising connections!

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• Resulted in minor amendment to zoning. Very little substantive change; mostly a matter of clarifying wording.

• Technical considerations (esp. snow storage) dampened Council’s enthusiasm for widening driveways. (Plus a winter of record snowfalls and blown snow clearance budgets!)

• However, the survey and process:

• Satisfied everybody that the issue has been seriously reviewed (including suburbanites who feel that they are being neglected in favour of more “sexy” downtown stuff;)

• Ensured that a small number of highly motivated respondents do not carry undue influence;

• Gave us an opportunity to fix structural problems in the zoning at the same time;

• Produced useful information to guide more comprehensive reviews of suburban design standards.

In the end…

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• Keep it short. Use a small number of images that clearly show the main options.

• Include an open-ended comment box. This is where the real data gold is. When it comes after a series of visual questions, people are primed to tell you more.

• Get geographic info. In retrospect, we should have asked for people’s postal codes so we could correlate attitudes with location. (We think we got some “ballot box stuffing” from a townhouse neighbourhood with parking issues...)

• Be ready for media. If they are interested, you’ll have lots of opportunities to publicize the survey and get more responses.

Lessons Learned

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