stronger kamloops

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Stronger Kamloops,

A Small Vision:

Kamloops, the Small Town that happens to be

quite large; how we can keep it small and

keep it prosperous

By Mitchell Forgie

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What is this book about?

Our taxes keep rising? Why?

It is not because public servants get paid too much. It is because our well intentioned

policy mountain created over the last 60 years has incentivised a development pattern

that destroys value, bankrupts private individuals, lowers property values, restricts job

growth, suffocates air quality, cripples our environment and creates disastrous health

effects that lead to mountains of health care bills.

We did this collectively, and we voted for governments that put these policies in place,

and nearly every single policy on its own was well reasoned and well intentioned;

often in the name of safety or economic growth. However, the cumulative effect has

been to create a new problem, which is economically much worse than the problems

we were seeking to correct. This economic deficit is bankrupting us and our

governments; and this bankruptcy is structural to the system we have created:

Manipulating public wages will not change this, nor will manipulating service levels. If

we are bankrupt we have no hope of addressing the other pressing social and

environmental concerns that we have to consider in the 21st century.

This book will first show you how the system is failing and talk a little about what is

working. Then it will show you what does work, why and use Kamloops figures and

case studies to support this theory. Following is an examination of the types of

policies that are directly preventing the preferable forms of development, while

creating incentives for the unproductive ones. Finally, I suggest some of the types of

projects that follow the logic and line of reasoning contained in this books argument

and what that would look like in Kamloops.

These problems are not unique to Kamloops or even the cities in our country. Cities all

over the world face these similar problems. The more horizontally developed each

particular city is, the worse they will face these challenges.

I suspect Kamloops will surmount these challenges, and become a strong city,

perhaps even a leader in our country of what small cities could try to attain. I am an

optimist, but I see the flaws in our system as real and difficult challenges that need

level headedness to confront. I hope that this book can be a springboard for the

discussion and political will required to confront the future.

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Foreword:

Kamloops is well known to its residents as a Small Town that happens to be quite

large. We love seeing our friends and family around town, bumping into past

associates in Riverside Park, enjoying our climate and access to nature, and the

general comfort that comes from a community with the cohesion of a small town and

the amenities of a big one.

Since I have moved to Kamloops in 2009, with a previous lifetime of vacations to the

area from my birthplace in Edmonton, I have always found Kamloops to be a positively

pretty place. I live downtown, and it is not unusual for me, or many other residents to

venture up into the grasslands and rock walls of Peterson Creek Canyon, for some

solitude and reflection right in the heart of the city. A short drive away, and you are

nestled in cool coniferous forests around Paul Lake, or at any other number of

hundreds peaceful fishing lakes.

Immediately before Kamloops I spent some time living and working in London

England, and experienced the best and worst of one of the world’s largest and most

diverse cities. With many years of travelling to 40 countries, my arrival in Kamloops

was with eyes that have seen many different ways of building and organization.

Attending TRU, a local professor, Billy Collins, loaned me a book by James Howard

Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere”. I was given a vocabulary that I so sorely

needed to understand that things I found wanting and the things I saw that we’re

amazing!

After three and a half years of blogging, conversations, forays into property

development, construction, serving in Kamloops restaurants, volunteering at dozens of

events, servitude on community boards, political party participation, council meetings

and hearings, conversations with planners, realtors and councillors; and probably

most importantly, TRU graduates leaving the city, I determined that what Kamloops

needs most is a vocabulary, like the one James Howard Kunstler gave me.

This book is for that purpose. Kamloops has unique challenges, but in Canada and the

region, it has an outstanding number of opportunities. I hope to highlight projects that

have been done elsewhere to provide credence to my arguments. I hope to present

my concepts simply and understandably. I hope above all that these concepts and

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projects can be understood deeply by all of us, and that we can engage with City Hall,

neighbours, businesses, developers and stakeholders in a more meaningful way.

Much of the subject matter could be interpreted politically. I hope that I present

everything in a way that all persons, from all realms and persuasions can understand

and sympathize with the arguments here. I hope that no one will contrive me to be an

author that promotes business at all costs, or conversely, as an environmentalist that

wants to prevent you from driving your car and living your life. In fact I am neither of

these things. I am an entrepreneur and I own a car that I like very much.

Politically, I want a government that is accountable to its citizens, and one that is

fiscally balanced above all else. I do not believe that any party running for office today

truly understands the magnitude of the challenges facing us in this century and thus

find it hard to vote for any. Whether you believe in social equality or environmental

issues above all else, it does not matter if we cannot afford it. We need to be solvent

and financially productive to accomplish any green technology or social program.

I also understand Climate Change to be a reality, and something that we should do

something about. As American politician Dick Cheney said, to bring the people of the

U.S. to war with Iraq, “On the 1% chance that they (Iraq) has weapons of mass

destruction, and could consider to use them on Americans, we must protect ourselves

and go to war.” That war was expensive and filled with foibles. But the sentiment of

the 1% precautionary principle is a worthwhile one. If Climate Change is real, whether

or not humans have had anything to do with it, it is only us humans that care whether

we continue to be able to inhabit this planet. So if we can improve our comfort and

living situation on this planet, on the 1% chance that we are able to do so, shouldn’t

we?

I also believe that all of us, in Kamloops, Canada and the World are entitled to equal

opportunity. What we do with that opportunity is up to us, but no one should be

unfairly disadvantaged, and all of us as a community should have the ability to lend a

helping hand for times when some of us need one.

I have always been troubled by any conversation that associates Social, Environmental

or Economic gains to be consequential to losses in another area. The “Economy” and

“Economics” we’re not created to destroy the environment as the extreme left would

have you believe. Nor do business owners look to impoverish others in seeking their

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own success. Money is a storage of value that represents what we contribute to

society, and when society values that thing that you created or manage, you are

rewarded with money; the ultimate democracy. Also, business persons, companies

and citizens are capable and willing to provide much more support than they are able

to give to those less privileged, and to improve our natural environment. This book is

to show a built design on how we can all meet our goals.

This line of thinking was brought to me by Charles Marohn of Brainerd, MN. His

organization StrongTowns was born from the engineering profession that he says has

brought the United States of America to insolvency. The collapse of America has been

well publicized, and we can feel it on this side of the border.

Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] for any numbers and

references you would like to see.

Table of Contents:

Introduction to Format 6

The Economics of the City 7

What types of places capture and

create value

58

Aka City Planning for Economic Growth

Regulation is Strangling the City 114

Visioning the Future 150

Kamloops investment initiatives

mailto:[email protected]

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All figures in this chapter relating to Kamloops Data are gathered

from the following sources:

ICBC online crash statistics

BC Assessment Online

City of Kamloops Online Property Information System

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How Do We Value Land?

Land is valued in two ways:

Rural Land is valued primarily for its

ability to produce resources. This means

that persons purchasing this land buy it

as a commodity, or something with

interchangeable value… property a bit

further down the road is not worth any

more per acre than another. This is how

gold, coffee and petrol is traded; gas

from Petro is not generally considered

any better than gas from Esso, and so

consumers pay the same price at each

place. It is valued for what it can

produce.

Urban Land (in any form, suburban,

commercial, industrial, residential) is a

unique commodity. After all the phrase

“location, location, location” came from

somewhere. Urban land is a unique asset

like wine, some people are willing to pay

$4 per glass more for Sauvignon Blanc

over Chardonnay; or like Jaguar vs. Kia,

those who can afford a Jaguar may

choose to pay more because they find a

Jaguar better value for their dollar.

In the city, we each make a number of

decisions to decide how much we are

willing to pay, in rent or for purchase, to

live in a specific place, and it is entirely

external factors that bring us to decide

which location is the best value for us.

The Four Environments

When we think about what factors led us

in our journey to where we live now, we

had to first decide on Kamloops; many

of us may have considered a

neighbourhood and then considered a

couple of houses inside that

neighbourhood.

We may have discussed and even

argued about the location of schools,

parking, transit stops, opportunities to

meet friends, pubs, pools, commutes

coffee shops, views, boat docks,

sunshine, soil quality for a garden, size

of yard, number of bedrooms, size of

trees, character of the house and any

other number of factors.

Buying A House:

What City?

-Where do I work, how much do I get paid, how

easy is it to find a job, what activities does that city offer me, how big is the city, how do I

perceive the people there

Where in the City? -Kids schools, shopping, quality of amenities,

commuting distance, commuting mode, safety of neighbourhood, quality of streets, age of

neighbourhood, views, micro-climate

What house in the neighbourhood? -Size, bedrooms, budget, neighbours, yard,

landscaping, modernity, style, bathrooms, pool, view

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In the end, each of these variables can

be broadly categorized into “four

environments”

The Economic Environment

o What jobs are available in my

sector?

o What does a home cost?

The Social Environment

o I like bikes, do my

neighbours?

o Wine is a passion for me, do

others share this passion?

The Natural Environment

o Hills, Mountains or Plains?

o Lakes, Oceans?

o Hot/Cold, Dry/Wet?

The Fourth Environment:

The Built Environment

As citizens, planners, councillors, board

members, businesses and people we

really only have the capacity to directly

influence one of these environments;

The Built Environment.

All other environments we can nudge,

but only we can plant a new tree on our

lawn or paint our door orange. On a

larger scale, city planners determine the

width of traffic lanes and the size of

parks and the look of city hall. Only in

the built environment are humans directly

changing and creating how our city

looks, feels and interacts.

Everything in this picture has been built and designed by humans,

and placed where it is because someone made the decision that it

should be there

For this reason, this book talks a lot

about the built environment; how it can

respond and take advantage of the other

environments, which parts of the built

environment are rewarded economically,

how the city captures value, etc.

When we say that urban land is valued

by how much people want to live in one

place, people compete with their dollars

to earn the right to be there. The more

people are attracted to a place, the more

value it will contain and the more

valuable it will be. As we can

predominately influence the Built

Environment, this book is about

capturing value in the built environment.

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An Example

What sorts of factors can account for

price differentials like this?

193 Seymour West = $148/SF

299 Seymour West = $222/SF

These houses are on the same block, on

the same side of the street; Comparable

in size, same number of bedrooms.

Or other downtown addresses:

659 Dominion = $201/SF

825 Pine = $231/SF

761 Pleasant = $183/SF

Again, similar houses on similar lots, of a

similar age, within a couple blocks of

each other.

Andrew Burleson of Fourth Environment

has a theory about how to identify

factors that affect property values. This

affects the value created in an area, how

much people value in aggregate over

another area. He calls it the “Net-

Attraction Framework”. First he identifies

the four environments as I have done

here.

From there he further breaks down the

Built Environment into 3 more areas:

1. Conduits

2. Interfaces and;

3. Cores

Conduits

Conduits are easy to identify. They are

corridors, or places meant expressively

for the transportation of things, goods,

people, etc.

They come in the form of roads, bike

lanes, certain pathways, highways, train

tracks, etc.

The Coquihalla creates value through connecting distant places

efficiently

Conduits are not generally places you

want to hang out in, but they generate

value in the built environment on how

they can connect cores together.

When the Coquihalla was built, it

generated significant economic impact

by reducing shipping times from the

Lower Mainland to the Interior

measurable in hours.

Industrial property near the highway is

very valuable for trucking companies for

example.

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Cores

Cores are the private realm. This can be

the inside of an office building, or a

home, a mall, a store or factory.

These are places that the public does

not necessarily have access to; they are

generally privately owned and privately

operated. These places have the ability

to exclude people from their use, but are

also used as places of life, leisure, work.

Cores are very important as most of our

private lives and work happens inside

cores, inside the private realm. They can

be inside or outside, your backyard is

definitely the private realm.

Cores can be more or less valuable than

each other. The public as a whole has

very little ability to influence what

happens to Cores beyond the regulatory

framework of the taxation and zoning

system. It is up to a property owner how

much they can and do invest in the

upkeep and value of their property.

Interfaces

Interfaces are the public realm. These

are places where people make the

transition from travelling to arriving.

Interfaces are the connective tissue

between Conduits and Cores, Cores and

other Cores or even Conduits and other

Conduits (Train Station for example).

17th

Street in Denver, CO is a great interface, which maximizes the

connections between the conduit of the street, various

transportation modes, and various cores (offices, shops residences)

These are places where most use is on

foot. Every trip you begin and end as a

pedestrian.

Generally, anyone is welcome in an

interface. They are both publically visible

and accessible. They could be inside or

outside but are largely outside. They

could be privately or publically owned (in

the case of stripmall parking). Interfaces

are also what the public can see, so the

façade of a core influences the interface

of a street.

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Interfaces can be public squares, public

parks or sidewalks. Sometimes the

difference between an Interface and a

Conduit can be tricky, as streets are

often both.

The distinction can really be made on

whether or not it is safe to hang out in a

place on foot. A highway is clearly a

Conduit. Victoria Street is clearly an

Interface.

Victoria Street accommodates transit, but primarily its purpose is to

facilitate trade, commerce, and public life

This street in Dallas has no entrances, turning lanes and no makes

no attempt to foster trade, commerce of public life. This street is a

conduit

Manipulating the Net-Attraction

Framework to Build Value

Conduits are very necessary elements of

the Built Environment, the road ways that

connect every part of the city to the rest,

and the city to what’s beyond.

The problem is that for many years huge

investments have been made in

sprawling conduits with little concern for

the interface, and through this process a

lot of value has been lost in the city.

Millions of dollars and thousands of man

hours have been devoted to reducing

“congestion” and traffic by mere

seconds in urban areas, sacrificing all

other elements of the city to

accommodate high vehicle speeds with

the minimum of interruptions. In the

same process many people have been

disenfranchised in the way that they are

able to use the city; particularly those

who do not have access to or the ability

to drive a private vehicle, but also those

who might choose not to.

6th

Ave with extra lanes, extra signs, extra signals, to gain a few

seconds vs. a similar road like 5th

or 7th

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Furthermore, in the instance of Cores

and the private realm, national

developers, banks, financiers and city

authorities have done their absolute best

to “Commoditize” the built realm, so that

they can conveniently build the same

stripmall, with the same tenant mix, with

the same parking aprons and

construction techniques anywhere in the

country and achieve financial success.

The same house, same plan, same demographic, same income

brackets, same view, same street, should equal same lending risk

Financial entities have tried to

commoditize urban real-estate so that

mortgages can be bought and sold freely

on the market. In the 2008 Financial

Crises this was shown in “Securitized

Debt Obligations” and “Collateralized

Debt Obligations”.

Many bankers, developers and other

stakeholders believed that the age of

“location, location, location” was behind

us. By building single-use sub-divisions

and building them with one or two styles

of homes, all with the same interface

and the same demographics in mind,

they figured that mortgages we’re no

longer a case-by-case entity. Therefore

they we’re stable and predictable enough

to be reduced to statistics, then sold as

low-risk bonds, rather than the intensely

unique investments that they are.

Sheer statistics could bundle a couple

hundred mortgages of the same houses

in essentially the “same”

neighbourhoods across the country into

a single AAA rated bond, to be sold to

long-term lenders.

While these types of practises have

largely been exposed for the predatory

practices that they are, and efforts are

being made to prevent these techniques,

the attempt to commoditize urban real

estate has not stopped and continues

here in Kamloops.

Pursuing the current pattern of

development has been exposed as

negative in the financial cycle; however it

also fails to really meet the needs and

desires of Kamloops’ inhabitants.

Furthermore it fails to capture the value

already existing, and fails to add value

into the future.

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The City Budget

The City of Kamloops, like other

municipalities, receives most of its

income from Real Property Taxes

(64.26% in 2013). The only other large

income sources are Grants (11.33%) and

Fees/Rates (19.07%).

Grants are one off payments or handouts

from larger governments and so cannot

be considered operating income

(although most of transit is funded this

way).

Fees, Rates and Sales of Services are

things like your fees for the pool at TCC,

parking fees or business licenses. User

Fees are usually created just to meet

operational expense, and do not address

capital or infrastructure needs.

In 2012 City Revenue added up like this:

$90 million from Property Tax

$55 million from Fees

$17 million in Government Transfer

$186 million total

It is important to note the two large

shortfalls in the budget. The 2012 Fiscal

Budget predicted:

1. $8.7 million in DCCs

2. $25.2 million in Govt Transfers

Actual:

1. $3.0 million in DCCs

2. $17.2 million in Govt Transfers

DCCs and The Growth Ponzi Scheme

Development Cost Charges are fees

levied against property owners whenever

they improve their property. This could

mean building a new house, carriage

house, basement suite; anything that

adds value to the property.

The DCC table for Kamloops, current Jan 2011

The City calculates future DCC revenue

essentially based on assumed ‘growth’,

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as most DCCs are levied against new

developments. They are collected to pay

for the added burden that a new project

puts on public infrastructure.

On its own, loss in DCC revenue is not a

catastrophic problem. It does indicate a

much larger problem though; every

element of the cities budget is based on

future growth. Investments are made

now, sometimes with debt, and depend

on future growth (taxes and DCCs) to

pay for the long term liability cost of

repairing and maintaining the existing

infrastructure.

Lower than predicted DCC revenue is an

indication that new growth is not

happening at the rate expected. Thus

expenditures are being made now on

revenue that is projected but may not

come. Fundamentally it is simple to see

that growth simply will not grow infinitely

at an ever accelerating rate; so our

current liabilities cannot be paid for with

current revenues.

To re-phrase this argument, a new road

in the city is usually built by a developer,

and given to the city for free. Further the

developer builds the water, sewer and

other infrastructure elements required in

the new development. The city then

inherits the cost of that road and other

infrastructures and their maintenance

forever. The problem is that the DCCs

and Property Tax Revenue does not pay

for the long term maintenance liability, as

we will examine shortly. Often the DCCs

and new taxes collected go directly to

pay for maintenance on under-funded

concerns already present in the cities

portfolio. Strong Towns has coined this

phenomenon as the “illusion of

prosperity”. For many years we had

heaps of revenue arriving on bills that

had not arrived yet. Now the bills are

coming in, and we spent all that money

on other infrastructure that has bills

coming in soon.

Charles Marohn speaks about The Growth Ponzi Scheme; his

website is StongTowns.ORG

The other concern for important

municipal revenue streams are

Government Transfers; from Federal or

Provincial Governmental Agencies, like

BC Transit, or for affordable housing

schemes or other infrastructure projects.

This part of city funding has become

very important for cities over the last

decade.

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With our “aging population”, complaints

of underfunded hospitals and schools,

taxes that are too high, and more, the

leaders being elected are going to have

to do more with less. The demographic

that votes the largest numbers is

generally the demographic that values

hospitals highly, so to be elected, this

likely means less money to cities and

more money to hospitals. With limited

money, expensive liabilities and

exploding debt now riding around $1.1

billion provincially, Government Transfers

may be drying up from the Province and

Parliament.

RIH Expansion;, likely a higher priority for an aging population

Taxes are Too High, Aren’t They?

Arnica Street is a Cul-De-Sac full of

shiny new houses in Pineview. There are

24 properties, or 24 separate titles on

Arnica Street. The combined value of

these properties is $9.7 million. The

cities current tax rate of 4.37% collects

$42,389 from these homes.

Arnica Street at Street Level / The 24 titles used in model

The cities commitment to take care of

the water lines, sewer lines, pavement,

sidewalk, storm sewer and street lights in

front of these houses extends essentially

forever. The street was built with DCCs

levied to the developer. The Province of

British Columbia shows that the

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pavement on Arnica Street should last 15

years. That means the street should

need new pavement in 15 years, and

likely that will be some sort of “Hot-In-

Place” re-pavement, which costs

$54,000 per lane (12’) per km. H-I-P

repavement has an estimated life cycle

of 9-11 years.

When this street needs to be re-paved,

the current DCCs will be ready, plus

accumulated taxes to pay for the re-

surface. This we would call the end of

the First Life Cycle. What is concerning

is what happens in the Second Life

Cycle.

The resurface of Arnica Street at the end

of the second lifecycle (roughly 25-30

years after first construction) is going to

cost $45,684 at today’s rates.

The percentage of the city budget

allocated to Infrastructure (for

maintenance, improvements and new) is

6.89%. Let’s assume that nothing has

prevented the road from lasting the 10

years expected after re-surface. Let’s

also suppose that not one house on this

street is receiving a Home Owner

subsidy on this street, even though most

are.

The percentage of taxes allocated to the

road project would therefore be $2,920

per year. The resurface costs $45,684.

The 24 houses on this street then take

15 years of taxes to pay for a road

surface that is only by government

projections expected to last for 10 years.

That means on this street the city sees a

loss of $16,484 each time the road

needs re-surfacing, and supposing that

none of the other infrastructure ever

needs maintenance or replacing, and

that no house on the street is receiving a

subsidy. The math in review:

24 Titles $9,700,000

Average Price $404,167

Total Taxes /yr. $42,389

% for Infrastructure $2920

Cost of HIP $45,684

Life of Road 9-11 yr. (10)

Shortfall $16,484

This is not an isolated phenomenon in

the city. This is true on nearly every sub-

urban street. Losses per Km in three

other case studies read like this:

Arnica Street = $58,452

Gordonhorn Crescent = $44,257

Kyle Drive = $66,300

Averaged = $56,336 per Km

Graphically, cumulative cash resulting in net loss

(numbers are for illustration only)

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The City of Kamloops reportedly serves

1,520km of roadways. The loss every

year could be calculated at $8.6 million.

Why haven’t we felt the full effect of this

liability? New Housing starts we’re at

their highest in Kamloops in 1992 (980),

1993 (1067) and 1994 (1011). For

comparison, 1989 saw 381 housing

starts and 2012 saw 481 housing starts.

The “Boom Years” of 2007-2008 only

saw 641 and 510 housing starts

respectively. What this means is that

accelerating new development for many

years resulted in accumulating cash

reserves, (illusion of wealth) which

allowed the cost of maintenance to be

covered by an expanding tax base.

Growth simply cannot accelerate forever,

and the bills are starting to come in.

Looking city wide; all the cumulative tax revenue as new projects

comes online each year. A big loss of early projects seems to

absorbed by the cumulative revenue of new projects.

(numbers are for illustration only)

New growth over multiple life-cycles, despite population growth,

continues on a losing

Kamloops is now in a position where our

finances have started to feel the effect

of our maintenance commitments.

Despite population growth, new housing

starts, increasing tax rates, increasing

DCCs and taking on debt, the city is still

on a trajectory towards insolvency.

Our city is not alone in the spiral. 28

municipal organizations through the

United States have filed for Bankruptcy

at the time of writing. Every city in North

America that has actively endorsed

horizontal expansion will and is

experiencing this. The reality is that the

infrastructure costs too much, and there

are not enough tax payers to split its

cost. During the “illusion of wealth” we

spent a lot of money on more

unproductive projects, and now have no

reserves. Kamloops has a lot of natural

assets that we need to start taking

advantage of if we want to come out

ahead. Our small city has less inertia,

and has a real opportunity to do so.

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Another Cost Illustration

In Edmonton, AB, one of the world’s oil

capitals, the cities and public institutions

are feeling this same pinch. For them,

the first signs of financial paralysis are

coming from the School Districts. In

some new sub-divisions, the districts

are flatly refusing to bus kids in to school

on long bus rides that cost fuel, wages,

capital costs, depreciation and wear and

tear. They also are refusing to build new

schools, partly because perfectly good

schools sit in existing neighbourhoods

empty and closed.

In 2012 the City allowed 44 outlying

developments to become part of the city,

and thus had to expand city services like

police, ambulance and fire to these

communities, and the immediate cost

now for the city will be $1.2 billion that

they do not have, and the new taxes are

nowhere near to supporting.

Edmonton periphery housing

Neighbourhoods need some density and

housing diversity to maintain a

population in different stages of life.

Minimum density is not necessarily

efficient or productive on its own. There

needs to be enough young families near

established schools so that they are full

in the long term. This has led a system

of user fee based public transit, yellow

buses, that are expensive and used by

only a fraction of the population for a

fraction of the day. In Parkland County,

students have seen year on year bus

pass fee hikes, and now in 2012-2013

school year, the monthly bus pass fee

was raised $45 in a single month.

Parents complain that this is too

expensive, but in reality, it is their choice

of where to live that has made it so

expensive. They are not to blame

completely however, as cities have been

actively promoting suburban style

development patterns for over six

decades now. In Parkland County,

tightening Provincial budgets (as I

predict for B.C.) and rising fuel costs are

blamed for the expense and resulting

rise in fares; in a place where fuel is still

under $1.10 per litre.

The cost of horizontal infrastructure is

very high. City Infrastructure like Roads,

Sewers and Water are costly as a

function of distance. City Services like

Fire, Police, Garbage, Recycle and are

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costly as a function of transportation

efficiency and distance. Tax Revenue is

collected as a value of property.

Horizontal living patterns require cars for

every journey, and produce low value

environments.

Places where the car is the only means

of transportation (the suburbs) costs for

all services climb. The problem is

compound; Automobile oriented

interfaces are not as valued as

pedestrian interfaces and thus the

property values drop and with it tax

value. For the city, this means they have

larger expenses on infrastructure that

produces less revenue. Economic

Efficiency is incinerated in this

environment.

This huge expensive is hidden by the

illusion of wealth, but it is not that well

hidden. Most streets are well beyond

their recommended re-surfacing, and we

feel these as pot-holes all over the city.

Gordonhorn Crescent which loses $44,257 at each re-surface

Why are Suburbs only for Cars?

A large part of the design of suburban

developments in the last 50 years have

been predominately about efforts to

commoditize urban real estate, to create

safe environments for cars (and thus

people) and to regulate uses to keep

things out of peoples ‘back-yards’. To

show this difference lets compare a

downtown elementary with a suburban

elementary school:

If you and your family live within 100

meters of Lloyd George Elementary, you

could live in anyone of over 45 houses.

You can walk from many directions and

arrive for school in Grade 4, by yourself,

safely, in minutes.

Lloyd George Elementary in a traditional neighbourhood

If you and your family live within 100

meters of the front door of Pacific Way

elementary… you don’t. The school itself

is set 94 meters from the road. And

across Pacific Way lay fenced back

yards. These backyards, some of the

21

only addresses with an easy walk, are

still 123 meters from the school.

Pacific Way Elementary is isolated and cut off from homes by

fences. More of this area has been developed, and the new houses

we’re used in calculating the schools catchment area.

A number of studies suggest that most

children and adults meander at a pace

roughly 1.4m/s or about 500m in just

less than 6 minutes. How many

households are within a 6 minute walk of

each school?

Lloyd George = ~900

Pacific Way = ~200

Let’s say for example that you and your

family live at 2348 Whitburn Drive. Your

house, as the crow flies, is 321 meters

from the school. However the walking

route is 953 meters door to door.

Shortest walking route; Whitburn to School

It is also worth noting that Whitburn and

the school are only slightly different in

elevation, but the road route involves a

proportionally large elevation change.

If you live 200m as the crow flies from

Lloyd George on Pine Street, you are

200m walking distance. A well connected

grid means short commutes.

A comparison of what “across the street from school” might mean

in the suburbs and in a traditional neighbourhood

Transit Stops fail for much the same

reason. If each school represents a

transit stop, a traditional neighbourhood

stop has roughly 4.5 times as many

homes in the same walking distance. Lot

sizes and density can be similar in

Sagebrush and Aberdeen, however

highly connected street patterns make

better connections to transit.

22

Why Are Suburbs only for Cars;

Commercial Construction

Destinations and origins have bizarre

disconnected pathways in residential

suburbs, as they do in commercial strip-

malls, indoor malls, and other suburban

style commercial developments.

For example, stripmall pods around

Columbia and Summit have 300m blocks

(1000 feet) with no cross walks except at

intersections. A person on foot, wheel

chair, or bike must now trek to one

intersection or another and across a

parking apron which is often not

connected to the sidewalk, just to get to

the shop “across the street”.

“Across the Street”

Many persons, especially around the

university decide that it is not worth their

time to cross “safely” at the intersection

crosswalks, and so fjord across 4-6

lanes of fast moving traffic. International

Students, seniors, children and all non-

driving demographics now have quite a

challenge to patron a business, lowering

the value of the place.

Dozens students cross at Summit despite warning signs and danger.

The intersections where pedestrians are

intended to cross are so often devoid of

pedestrians that this is where most

pedestrian and car accidents in the city

happen; Drivers don’t see and aren’t

expecting a pedestrian as they are about

to turn left.

All this adds up to the conclusion that

suburban style development is intended

for cars; from the ample parking, to the

huge car lanes, to expensive signals,

and finally to signs which literally tell

you, walking is not welcome here.

23

Other Services

If $8.3 million in hidden budget shortfall

each year is not enough of a problem

consider some other distance related

expenses and challenges. Obvious and

directly related ones are water, sewer

and solid waste. However the city has

further obligations past simple

infrastructure.

I like to feel safe. Part of my safety is the

knowledge that I can call the fire

department if my house is on fire. Fire

response times are determined primarily

as a distance from the station. Let’s say

our two elementary schools are fire

stations. The same connectivity issue

that affects school catchments and

transit stop effectiveness also impacts

fire response times. Fences, Cul-De-

Sacs, dead ends, arterials and lack of

options make every journey longer than it

needs to be. Furthermore, one Fire

Station at Lloyd George, if it served the

land area called “City Center”, would

serve nearly 20,000 persons in a small

driving distance in addition to offices,

light industrial, main street commercial

and more.

For comparison, in the single family

developments outside the city center, the

same driving distance would only serve

about 7000 residents and some strip

style commercial areas.

Firehall No.7 opened near Pacific Way

Elementary, at a capital cost of $3.9

million dollars, and with 4 firemen, has

an operational cost of over $500,000 per

year. How many tax payers pay for that

firehall vs. how many tax payers benefit

from that firehall? The ratio does not look

good for city budgets.

Kamloops This Week picture opening the new Firehall No.7

The tax burden for Fire Protection in the

area surrounding Lloyd George is split 3-

4 times what the tax burden for Fire

Protection is in suburban Aberdeen.

The tax weight is the same for all

government services; Ambulance

Protection, Police Protection, Schooling,

Public Transit, sewer, water, electricity,

natural gas, street lighting, etc.

A recent article in The Globe and Mail by

Margaret Wente laments the era of the

“$100,000” firefighter, and highlights the

inefficiency of time spent. She further

complains about the modern infrequency

of emergencies due to building code and

regulations that have brought

unfathomable safety to our persons.

24

Unfortunately, Wente, like most critics,

fails to realize that most public expenses

have everything to do with the

geographic expansion of infrastructure,

and that these costs should be

expressed per km of infrastructure. Are

public employees paid too much?

Perhaps, but at $100,000 per year or at

$80,000 per year, the fact remains that

these firefighters are not serving a high

enough population base to pay for their

services, and the cost of the

infrastructure dwarfs the marginal

increase in pay over a private sector

worker.

In some cases, like school buses, the

cost is borne by all tax payers but is

used almost exclusively by ill-connected

subdivisions and cul-de-sacs like

Whitburn Crescent-and needlessly so.

Fire protection is the same, the cost is

spilt evenly by all tax payers, but most of

the money goes to the suburbs while

most of the revenue comes from urban

areas.

What this adds up to is recurring budget

shortfalls for all city services. Most

dollars spent are largely going into

transportation, combined with fewer

people to service within a transportation

horizon.

Density is part of the solution but simple

connectivity as shown in the walking to

school example makes a big difference.

Catchment is about connectivity as much

as about density.

No amount of debt can change the

fundamental insolvency of our pattern of

development. All fire-fighters, city

officials, police officers and politicians

could accept a 50% cut in wages, and

we could remain in a deficit scenario.

Furthermore, cutting wages reduces

spending locally, which inhibits growth of

local businesses, and further

exacerbates insolvency. The fairness of

wages is a political issue. The insolvency

of our pattern of development is a reality.

The connectivity issue does not stop

there. A house on Whitburn Crescent or

Arnica Street does not pay for its service

through its taxes. A house in a traditional

neighbourhood like Nicola or Pine

sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t.

However a house on Nicola or Pine is

part of a larger network that is used by

all sorts of users, at all times of day, and

contributes to network capacity. If there

is a traffic accident on Columbia

downtown, it is a simple and

straightforward detour to descend or

ascend a block around the collision.

Someone from out of town, having never

travelled Columbia, could achieve this

detour easily with no advice.

25

If I am ascending Pacific Way, or

Aberdeen Drive, or Summit Drive, or

Westsyde Road and an accident occurs

ahead of me, what is the detour? Do I

turn left or right into these meandering

curving roads, assuming a road exists

here to turn into? Once there, where to?

Could you explain this over the phone to

a visiting relative? Do you know the way?

In some cases, like Highland Road to

Juniper Ridge, a detour barely exists!

What type of risk does this pose our

emergency response times if a fire

occurred beyond something holding up

the road?

Furthermore, as part of a collective

network, Nicola or Pine Street tax payers

need really only pay for their portion of

the network, because the next block over

has a different group of residents paying

for their portion.

The suburbs on the other hand are

arranged in a series of local roads,

collectors and arterials. Collectors are

often sparsely populated and arterials

almost never populated. The hierarchal

road system thus concentrates all traffic

from local roads on one or two arterial

roads.

In reciprocation, arterial and collector

roads often require extra infrastructure:

median barriers, extra lighting and

signals, wider lanes, more signage. This

costs more, yet they have no adjacent

tax base to pay for any of these

elements!

Hugh Allan to Pineview, millions of doallars of infrastructure, that

has no adjoining properties to pay for its retaining walls, lighting,

bike lanes, street lights, sewer system and sidewalk

Pacific Way; another expensive road which has no tax base to pay

for it. Furthermore, it bisects the area like a river in a city,

preventing connection from one area to another.

26

The Nail in the Coffin

The ‘last nail’ is that these roads are not

safe. ICBC reports in the handful of

intersections around Lloyd George,

between 2008 and 2012, there we’re 7

traffic accidents. The same number of

intersections around Pacific Way

Elementary saw 19 traffic accidents in

the same period.

More than 80% of reported crashes in

Kamloops happen at just at intersections

where Arterials meet other Arterials. The

highest crash rate intersections with

crash counts (2008-2012):

Columbia and Summit = 220

8th Street and Fortune = 217

McGill Road and Summit = 163

It might seem that these are the highest

traffic intersections in the city, and they

are all near the top, but you would

suspect that another high frequency

intersection, like 3rd and Victoria, while

having fewer total trips, would have

correlating fewer collisions. In fact it had

28 crashes in the same period.

The largest difference though lies in this

comparison: Columbia and Summit, the

highest accident intersection in the city,

saw 86 crashes resulting in injury or

death. 3rd and Victoria saw 9. 40% of

crashes up town result in injury or death

vs. less than 30% downtown.

In fact Victoria Street from 1st to 6th, six

intersections, saw fewer accidents(62)

by half put together than did Columbia

and Summit. 30% of Victoria Street

accidents happen at 6th and Victoria;

both arterials at that point. The triangle

around Superstore saw 198 crashes

resulting in injury or death, nearly a crash

per week (39.6 per year).

Why does 3rd and Victoria see 9 casualty

crashes in 5 years while 6th and Victoria

sees 18 in the same period, despite

similar traffic counts? Furthermore, 6th

and Victoria has extra lanes for turning,

which is supposed to make streets safer.

The answer lies in traffic speeds. Fast

traffic = more collisions off of freeways.

More hazards, narrow lanes, pedestrians

present = slow traffic. Slow traffic =

fewer deaths and injuries.

Arterial streets with their “forgiving

design”, wide lanes, turning lanes,

turning signals and large ‘clear zones’ so

cars which leave the road can ‘recover’,

are supposed to be the safest roads we

can build, yet they are the opposite of

27

that. Thomas Vanderbuilts book Traffic

and Jeff Specks Walkable City both do

excellent analysis on this subject.

These roads also fail to produce value,

which makes them financially

unsustainable. They rarely, if ever,

achieve traffic capacities much higher

than smaller roads with fewer signals.

They almost always have a lower average

speed when driving through them due to

long waits at signals, and when trying to

traverse them, from one retail outlet to

another on the other side of the street,

are complete failures compared to

traditional road networks. Imagine the

route from Save-On-Foods to Winners.

How many signals is that? How slow do

you travel through those parking lots?

Save-On, not an unusual trip, both have Columbia Street addresses,

and are “across the street”. All 5 routes involve convoluted paths,

with waits at intersections. Given that most accidents happen at

intersections, it is also a dangerous path.

A walk door to door would be only 2

minutes, but the pedestrian experience is

so forbidding, undesirable, hazardous

and convoluted that a walk in reality,

should you take it, would be as long as

the car trip.

Besides the parking aprons that make “across the street” so distant,

the four lanes of traffic with no true intersection in the middle of a

1000 foot block result in places being farther away than they need

to be. You are not allowed by any means to cross straight across

Columbia here, on foot, bike or car.

What are “Arterials” good for? Statistics;

Traffic Engineers love to gather reliable

data from single-use, single destination

collectors. Traffic studies in traditional

networks are completely unpredictable

because each street can be substituted

with many others in any trip.

“Groceries to Clothing Store” The same type of journey on Victoria

28

Further Failures

While this author is primarily concerned

with the financial implications of the

current style of development, much

study and work has been done on other

impacts of 21st century sub-urban

development, many can be found in a

book called “Walkable City” by Jeff

Speck. Some of these negative effects

include:

Air Pollution

Storm Water Run-Off

Loss of useable green space

Loss of animal habitat

Segregation by income level

Obesity/Heart Disease

ADD/ADHD

Drinking and Driving

Energy Dependency

Carbon Emissions

Difficult Business Environment

It’s not just forward thinking academics that have been noticing the

cumulative health effects of Sprawl. Nearly every province now

has official documentation pertaining to the costly and challenging

health effects of sprawl and auto-oriented sub-urbs.

How could the suburbs create a difficult

business environment?

A Westsyde example: The Westsyde

Pump and the Westsyder operated as

successful pubs for many years, and yet

one closed its doors recently.

Newspaper articles suggest that new

liquor laws enforcing drinking and driving

laws kept people away, despite

population growth in the area. Two pubs

survived there with less population that

today, yet drinking and driving

regulations we’re enough to put a pub

under. A walkable environment would

have created more opportunities for

pubs in the area; as well as more

opportunities for neighbours to have

chance social encounters outside the

house. This story is simplistic but telling.

Walkability lends itself to further

opportunities for foot traffic, and foot

traffic commercially means better

business viability. This is why even in

auto-oriented environments, businesses

still choose to huddle together in

walkable indoor malls, or strip centers,

because they function more profitably by

increasing their exposure to persons with

other needs in mind. This is analysed

further soon.

29

What about the Environment?!

For some people nothing is more

important than the environment; its

preservation and associated issues like

carbon emissions, agricultural land and

energy conservation. Many of these

types of advocates often campaign

against ‘development’, of any kind, and

this is a mistake. Development at the

edge of the city, no matter how

“sustainably” designed, is still new

development at the fringe that is not well

connected to functions of the city, and

thus does cause all the traffic, driving,

associated emissions and land depletion

that is incurred in edge development,

and should in general be spurned at all

costs.

What does work, for emissions and land

conservancy is densification and

expansion of alternative transit options

for those who like them. Consider this

comparison:

As Oslo shows us, density is not a

requirement of efficient systems, but

density is a good indicator of efficiency.

I was a panelist at a screening of an

Urban Agriculture film called Urban

Roots. There a city gardener debated

that densification projects like Laneway

Homes and Mid-Rise Apartments we’re

taking green space out of the city. I

disagree with this argument for three

reasons. One; useless private green

space in the city is not a true carbon

sink, and is doing little to negate

environmental concerns of urbanisation.

Two; many people do not value those

lawns which use excessive amounts of

water and drive uses further apart,

necessitating extra driving. Three, low

density development always eats up

natural and agricultural green space at

the edge of the city; green space that is

far more environmentally productive.

30

Consider the previous image, of solar

paneled, wind turbined, electric car

driving, sustainable suburbs against the

hyper dense city surrounded by nature

and agriculture.

If this seems unlikely, you need only

experience cities everywhere else in the

world outside North America and

Australia. Let’s look at London:

London’s 1935 Greenbelt (Urban Growth

Boundary) sees dense row-housing,

urban parkland and mid-rise buildings

right to the boundary, where London

terminates in complete countryside. This

is common in most areas of the world.

Seattle and Vancouver are world

celebrated for their walk-able, dense,

liveable and sustainable downtowns;

however cities of their size in the rest of

the world do not have hour long

approaches through single family

housing sprawl. The transition of ‘city’ to

‘countryside’ facilitates access to nature,

superior air quality and environmentally

sound lifestyles for its dwellers.

The Choice to Live in the Burbs

We live in Canada and we expect the

freedom to live where we want. If where

we want to live is in the suburbs, than

that is where we should be allowed to

live!

The most basic theory of economics

would indicate that more of us prefer

urban areas however, and this is true

across the whole country. As mentioned

in the beginning, urban land (whether on

the periphery or the center) is a unique

good. Imagine that each house that goes

up for sale is a single painting on

auction. That painting goes to the

highest bidder and a group of people

that might like to own that painting

compete with their dollars to own that

painting.

A house is the same, and each and

every time, controlling for size, the

citizens of Kamloops pay more to live

downtown. Averaged the price per

square foot for a downtown single family

home is between 30%-50% more

expensive than Aberdeen, Westsyde,

Brock or Dallas. Perhaps more people

want to live downtown than is popularly

believed.

31

Green Door, 6 new 1488 Sq. Ft. downtown townhomes on St. Paul,

for sale for $252 per square foot. ($375,000)

This brand new Carradale Court home, detached, with larger yard

and 1981 Sq. Ft. asks $175 per square foot. ($346,900)

Much study, notably by Richard Florida

has shown thousands of statistics and

surveys to show that many

demographics prefer walkable living;

including retirees, young singles and

even young families seem to prefer more

traditional, walkable urban areas in the

21st Century.

If the economic equation we’re

corrected, so that each properties taxes

near the center of the city we’re greatly

reduced to reflect their tax burden on the

city while the periphery was similarly

taxed more to pay for the luxury of space

and private amenities; I suspect many at

the margin would likely leap to live

downtown.

In the current taxation system many

incentives prevent the construction of

reasonably priced downtown housing.

Because it is in demand, and there are

plenty restrictions preventing new

housing units downtown, the price

climbs. What few people really

understand though is that hundreds more

regulations prevent Victoria Street-esque

pedestrian environments from being

created outside of Victoria Street.

Creating new pedestrian oriented places

like Victoria Street is illegal.

Your choice: Pay to live downtown or live

in your car in the suburbs.

The Plaza Hotel is completely illegal to build today, on Victoria

Street or anywhere else in the city. It is buildings like this that

make downtown vibrant and exciting.

32

Downtown Performs Better

People pay more to live downtown and

the city has far fewer financial

commitments to maintain it, so thus is

performs better. Partly it is the way it was

built: It was built slowly, over decades,

with savings and investments, and with

small scale additions and small scale

failures. Rather than as a big project,

financed to the hilt, which tries to plan

for every eventuality; Downtown was built

with intelligent responses to problems as

they occurred, rather than trying to

create solutions for problems that may

not exist. Failures happened but they

we’re easy and cheap to fix. This is why

walkable mixed use areas in the whole

world look generally the same, they are

built using a formula that was refined

over thousands of years all over the

world. It is only recently that we decided

to complete change the process, codes

and manner in which we design and

build our habitat.

By the necessity of investing savings,

buildings have to work, to be flexible,

and to be many things at different times

to different people. They need to

maximize every square foot of value.

Thus commercial buildings cover close

to 100% of the lot, to capture as much

value for the landlord. Uses are mixed,

where retail and services may occupy

ground floor premises, a mixture of other

services, offices and residents may

occupy the floors above.

“The Inland Cigar Factory Building” in fact manufactured cigars

from the many tobacco plantations once occupying the valley.

Since then the simple and easily renovated structure has housed

retail, offices and residences

Downtown high density residential may

be next door to light residential without

de-valuing property or being an “eye-

sore”. The mixture of uses puts people

and activity on the street at all hours,

making safe and vibrant places and

options for living close to work, for those

who prefer it. A connected street pattern

is built upon, maximizing accessibility for

pedestrians, cyclists, deliveries, cars,

workers, etc.

33

The highest performing blocks in any

metric: city tax value, private investment,

land value and lease rates, density,

sustainability; are the places which

facilitate the maximum amount of

pedestrian comfort and accessibility.

Even malls, like Aberdeen mall, nurture

this type of pedestrian accessibility to

facilitate sales. The areas that attract the

most people attract the highest rents.

These high value locations contain

patterns that are examined next.

You can tell that a place has high value,

as it is where people will stage civic

events, or gather to raise awareness for

issues. These are places where people

come to just enjoy the company of

others, and are comfortable being in.

The designers and managers at

Aberdeen Mall have generally done better

at building public space than our city

planners have in the last few decades.

Dozens of events happen in the mall,

from choir singing to flash mobs.

The “public square” at Aberdeen Mall, filled with people during a

Flash Mob in 2011

Victoria Street Infrastructure Examples

To clearly illustrate the case for how

pedestrianized areas perform better,

consider two blocks of the same street,

400’ distant; The south sides of the 300

block and the 500 block. Both streets are

downtown and are accessed by similar

capacity streets. Neither have better

views than the other. Both have the

same sun orientation. The following

attributes are the subject of the next

chapter:

300 Block Characteristics

Street Trees

18 Hour Mixed Uses

Setback is to the street front

Paving Stones rather than concrete

Two Traffic Lanes

Mid-Block Pedestrian Crossings

Lots of doors, entries into many

places

Wide Sidewalks with seating

Small lot frontages

300 Block Victoria

34

500 Block Characteristics

Large Lot Frontages

No Street Trees

No seating areas

Few doors to the street

Four Traffic Lanes

Primarily Evening Uses

500 Block Victoria

300 Block Value

10 Titles

$341,000 to $6,796,000

Total Value of $14,111,000

Value per Square Meter; $2,818

500 Block Value

4 Titles

$636,000 to $1,177,000


Value per Square Meter; $720

The far better pedestrian orientation on

the 300 block of Victoria Street creates

an Interface that is very productive. In

commercial settings, it translates into

more persons by the window, becoming

potential customers. That drives up

revenues in businesses, which drives up

rents, which drives up property values,

which drives up tax revenue.

Here the 200 Block of Victoria creates high value, allowing many

users at different times and for different purposes. It is well

connected to the rest of the city, and produces superior business

success, as well as superior tax revenue from the city per dollar of

infrastructure invested.

As the city adds improvements to further

enhance the pedestrian experience here,

the more people are attracted here, and

the property values climb higher, and the

investment is recaptured. In addition, the

places that already have this high value

can pay for the improvements

themselves on the street through tax

revenue. High value locations, like the

University, also charge for parking,

expanding the income stream. It is these

locations that subsidize the rest of the

city’s infrastructure commitment.

35

How Does the Optimal Block Compare to Strip Mall Developments?

I wanted to compare two closely located

streets to give an indication of how

different patterns perform when most

variables are accounted for.

Not accounting for locational variables,

let us compare some of the city’s “best

performing” sub-urban style

developments to the 300 Block:

300 Block Victoria


Value per Square Meter; $2,818

Chapters/Staples 1395 Hillside Drive


Value per Square Meter; $668

Cityview 1801 Princeton-Kamloops HWY


Value per Square Meter; $499.61

Valleyview Square



Westsyde Shopping Centre



36

Sahali Centre Mall



As you can see from all these examples,

these auto-oriented places do not

perform nearly as well for the tax base,

despite actually costing on average a

larger burden on city infrastructure;

Semis needed to service the big box

stores, traffic problems, undercutting

transit effectiveness, increasing car

accidents and excessive storm water

run-off, to name a few.

Just as in the 500 block of Victoria

Street, the monotony of property values

reduces the investment market to a very

small number of investors. Few

Kamloops companies and investors are

able to participate in a market which

requires $9, $12 and $23 million to enter;

therefore the entities which own these

malls are not from Kamloops. To ‘reduce

risk’ national and international

businesses fill their premises.

The monotony of businesses further

limits the abilities of local entrepreneurs

to enter the market as business owners.

The popular Oriental Express restaurant

in Kamloops has had two locations so

far. First located in Aberdeen, they we’re

not granted a renewed lease, and then

moved to Westsyde, where they have

again not been granted a renewed lease.

Finally they have opened for a 3rd time

on 8th Ave near Halston. Perhaps Oriental

Express were difficult tenants, however

large national investment groups that

own stripmalls restrict the type and style

of tenants that occupy their spaces,

preventing those businesses from ever

owning the building that they operate in.

Large stripmall style commercial

developments deliver small fractions of

tax revenue per dollar of infrastructure

maintained as compared to downtown,

and also prevent local entrepreneurs

from opportunities to build wealth and

capture value for the city and its natural

environment. Finally, it prevents a large

barrier to entry for local aspiring retailers;

aspiring restaurateurs, jewellers,

clothiers, grocers and any other number

of retail tenants are prevented from

entering the market, because the

landlords demand non-competitive

leases, collateral and criteria based on

portfolios rather than unique assets.

37

Land Value

Stripmalls are not so much the result of

consumer’s wishes for big-box style

retail, nor the folly of bad planning. The

comparison of land values I have

presented show that as a population in

total, we value developed, urban areas

more than we value stripmalls. The Tax

Authority also clearly values dense,

urban nodes more as well. But to phrase

the information more accurately, the Tax

Authority directly subsidizes and

incentivizes strip style developments,

and much more than you think they

could.

A km of road paving or a meter of pipe,

costs the same, regardless of where it is

laid. Therefore, the cost of land, bare

simple land with no improvements should

cost the same no matter where in the

city it is laid as well, should it not? After

all, the city expense is more or less the

same to service bare land anywhere in

the city.

The Tax Authority does not seem to

agree though, as the more land used,

the less that land is assessed at per unit.

So if you have a downtown house, let’s

say on Battle Street, between 1st and 7th,

your land is valued at roughly $1.2 to

$1.6 million an acre.

If however you have a house in

Westsyde, your land is only taxed at

$500,000 per acre. Same dirt, same

services, nearly 1/3rd the taxable value

on land. That said, some far flung

suburbs (read affluent ones) do have a

more realistic land value attached to

them, with Aberdeen properties having

their land valued between $900,000 and

$1.2 million. Valleyview, predominately

middle class has a value on residential

land around $850,000 per acre. Building

on the periphery on larger lots has built

in incentives from the tax authority. A

correction to a flat value tax on

residential property throughout the city

would see about a 20% drop in

residential taxes downtown.

While residential properties in the burbs

receive a land subsidy, the same

discrepancy is made huge in commercial

properties.

Two properties downtown and their land

value per acre downtown:

371 Victoria Street; $2,714,285

301 Victoria Street; $2,721,428

And in the burbs;

1395 Hillside Drive; $698,973

Cityview; $620,801

Valleyview Square; $697,843

Averaged;

Downtown; $2,717,857

Burbs; $672,539

38

In other words suburban, large

commercial developments are taxed on

$2 million per acre less than downtown

properties to conduct the same

businesses. Or downtown land is taxed

304% more than suburban land. That

means to develop downtown you must

pay 304% more tax per acre. Perhaps

big boxes on the periphery are

subsidized by accident in our current tax

system.

Development Cost Charges, or the

‘impact charge’ that is levied against a

developer, is once again, levied

regardless of where in the city the

development is located. So despite the

cost of a downtown street having been

amortized out and paid for many

decades ago, the developer on that

street pays the same as a developer on

the periphery.

No amount of nice words in an Official

Community Plan, or development

incentives suggested in such a plan can

even remotely approach a subsidy that

this type of assessment discrepancy

gives to developers. Downtown

developers would need to have the land

they are developing on de-valued by the

tax authority by over 75% to approach

the subsidy that peripheral developers

get, not including the other requirements

that downtown development requires.

The Job Situation

While these large corporate

developments clearly obstruct local

investment in the Kamloops market

place, they also wreak havoc on job and

job growth possibilities nearby for most

members of the population.

In one acre the 300 block of Victoria

Street contains more jobs than the 9

acres of the 1395 Hillside Drive

(Chapters, Staples). The 1 acre of

Victoria Street also delivers all the same

services and thus the same job

opportunities as 1395 Hillside Drive:

Bookstore, Coffee Shop, Clothing

Store… but also includes an optometrist,

eyewear store, lawyers office,

accountants office, property

management company, bank, fast food,

lingerie, body art, live music venue… All

these businesses have different hours of

operation, different demographics and

drastically varying pay scales, compared

to the almost entirely low wage jobs

contained in the box store models of

commerce in 1395 Hillside Drive.

This one downtown building holds 8 businesses

39

Furthermore, when areas are only ‘open’

for certain hours, only certain businesses

operate there, and infrastructure in the

area is only used for small periods during

the day. Most dramatically parking is

used during part of the business day, but

most of the 24 hour day, it is left

completely vacant. Downtown, parking is

used throughout the day by different

users.

Even at mid-day this parking lot sits empty. It still costs money to

light, to pave, to maintain, to service storm water run-off, in taxes.

The cost is borne in the transactions you make, and it costs you.

Limited opening hours reduce the nearby

workforce of a commercial area due to

scheduling challenges, or the types of

jobs available. This means people in the

suburbs need to travel long distances to

arrive at employment that fits their

schedule, education and experience.

Those distances are likely only traversed

easily by personal automobile, a car that

costs the employee money, the city

money and is only used for perhaps 20

minutes during the 8 hour work day.

Harvard University conducted a study

across the United States that examines

Social Mobility; the percentage of people

born in the Socio-Economic bottom of

the population and later in life achieve

the Socio-Economic top. The study was

called the “Equality of Opportunity

Project”, and it found despite the United

States being thought of as the land of

opportunity, the U.S. worldwide actually

has nearly the lowest likelihood of

actually changing your lot in life.

Thankfully Canada is near the top, and

different government policies are

absolutely at the root of many of these

problems. What the Harvard Study did

different however was to look at this

information at a finer grained geographic

variable, census districts.

Taken from Equality-Of-Oppurtunity.org

40

The top 10 we see Dense, Walkable

cities like Seattle, Boston and NYC.

These cities see approx. 10% of their

bottom 10th of society climb to the top

10th. In the bottom three we see Atlanta

and Cleveland, all with less than 5%

social mobility.

Some primarily agricultural districts in the

mid-west actually out-perform cities;

and on second thought, this makes

sense as income distribution is very

small. The richest fifth of the population

makes relatively smaller multiples of the

lowest fifth of the population. However in

cities like NYC and Boston, which are

home to many of the world’s richest

persons, with daily incomes that are

multiples of the annual incomes of the

bottom fifth, can manage to maintain

such high levels of Social Mobility.

Urban Planner Kevin Lynch talks in his

book Image of the City about the

importance of geographical boundaries

between neighbourhoods within a city

and their social impact. What he is

talking about here is income segregation

and how it is propagated by the model of

financing and planning suburban housing

projects. “The spatial information people

use to create boundaries can be

important to perception as other more

culturally entrenched symbols. In cities

where many incomes, jobs, lifestyles are

accommodated within each identifiable

neighbourhood, these create a means of

building a [healthy] individual identity

that is shared by those who live and

work inside [neighbourhoods].” In other

words, someone growing up on the

North Shore may “other” a person in

Aberdeen, and the reverse as well,

creating barriers to social mobility. When

a person needs to cross from their “poor

neighbourhood” to a “rich one” to

receive basic needs like healthcare, this

reinforces personal identity issues of

helplessness (argues Lynch).

In dense, mixed-use areas that have a

broad spectrum of housing types create

opportunities to move vertically in the

socio-economic realm. Whether this is a

cause of social relationships between

neighbours as Jane Jacobs argues or of

neighbourhood identity as Kevin Lynch

suggests, the correlation is evident.

One block on Battle has a $840,000 house, a big house of rental

suites, small two room pre-war houses and middle class median

priced houses. These suburban houses are about the same price.

41

Spread-out suburbs restrict job

schedules and transit modes. They

favour commerce models of low pay and

low skill. National retail filled stripmalls

also limit job growth opportunities in

Kamloops. Perhaps you started working

at Chapters bookstore in Kamloops, and

you have found you quite like it. You

work there for a few years and are lucky

enough to make it to Store Manager.

While still fairly low-paid, with a hunger

to grow within the company, you find

that the only way to move up in the

company is to move to the Provincial

Office in the Lower Mainland. There is no

more room for you to grow and stay with

your friends and family in Kamloops.

This means that when you leave, you are

taking your talents and life out of

Kamloops, and you are leaving your

social network behind, for a marginal

increase in pay and responsibility.

I have no problem with businesses that

grow and evolve then eventually

franchise but development models that

only allow for national franchise,

corporate modelled companies is

unacceptable. Traditional planning

models, of variable sized lots, connected

street grids, manageable sized

investments and failures, promote

growth from within Kamloops.

The Private Investment is Poor Too!

In suburban style mall developments, the

private investment is also depreciated

unnecessarily.

As new malls open, old ones fall out of

favour, and places like the Sahali Center

mall sit largely empty, propped up only

by a couple anchor tenants. It is well

documented that over half of malls in

North America operate at below 75%

occupancy. This led the state of Vermont

to introduce a bill requiring any new mall

developments to float bonds before

construction, that the proceeds of which

would be used for demolishing of other

malls which fail as a result. And this

shouldn’t be a surprise. Colliers

International reports that Canadians

enjoy nearly 15 square feet of retail

space per capita, and this is only

surpassed by the United States at 27

square feet per capita. For comparison

the rest of the developed world operates

at around 3 square feet per capita, and

the world average is 1 square foot per

capita.

42

Canada has clearly more square feet of

retail than can be sustainably financed,

and thus all over Kamloops we have

commercial properties in every

neighbourhood falling into decrepitude.

These buildings still require infrastructure

maintenance that the tax-payer is given

the bill for, and privately it is bankrupting

landlords locally and nationally.

Further to the insolvency of the business

model at high vacancy rates, these

commoditized investments intend to

remove place and location as a variable

in each property transaction. They nearly

accomplish that; every mall in every town

looks the same. But what they really

accomplish is one mall never really

gaining any particular geographic asset

over another one, and thus no capital

gains are ever realised.

The sale of a stripmall rarely ends with a

large windfall stemming from an

appreciation in the value of the property.

It is much more likely that the sale of the

mall is simply attempting to get a losing

asset off the books of a large company.

Furthermore, by restricting the uses and

tenants of a particular mall site, only a

very narrow demographic is ever likely to

enter and utilize the stripmall, and the

businesses inside lose out on the single

most important marketing mechanism;

Word-Of-Mouth.

Further investment gains are lost simply

by paying no attention to the geographic

and social sensitivities of each site.

Questions could be asked like;

What mountain could this new

street frame?

Where will my employees live?

How could this site maximize views

for residential customers or

restaurant patios?

How could I utilize my site to

connect a common origin and

destination, thus generating traffic

past my businesses doors?

Where could I create a diversity of

investment opportunities, so that

investors from middle-class

residents, to property investors, to

institutions and charities and out of

town investors all find interesting,

attractive and favourable?

The most interesting walking journeys in

the world, whether it be through nature

like the hike to the teahouse at Lake

Louise, or down the streets of Barcelona

Rome, Nantucket, or Sun Peaks; there is

a varied and diverse rhythm to the

feeling of places as you travel through

them. Strip Malls, and even interior malls

are a cacophony of monotony, extended

and repeated across the city, creating a

series of no-place, that hardly invites

exploration.

43

Why does the City Allow, and Even Encourage so many large Subdivisions

and Other Large Projects?

Private companies, especially those

seeking public investment,

understandably prefer predictable

returns. In investments the scale of $25

million, predictable returns are

understandably important. In a system of

large investments only, failure can be

catastrophic. Therefore these

companies repeatedly create the same

thing and replicate past success.

City Regulations incentivize large scale

development and sometimes add tax

rewards and other direct incentives.

Investments from the private sector

therefore come almost exclusively from

large project investments.

The City loves large projects partly

because they provide predictable

returns; there is a comfort in a Private

Equity portfolio of hundreds of millions. It

could be supposed that the financial

security of a big company like Wal-Mart

is why cities allow Wal-Marts to open.

The city thinks that the Wal-Mart won’t

close and result in a row of boarded up

buildings like you might see on

Tranquille, despite the absolute

knowledge that Wal-Marts opening and

subsidy is the direct cause of those

small business bankruptcies.

These large projects also simplify many

aspects of City administration. One title

for property tax simplifies tax handling.

The Assessment Authority likes

neighbourhoods to be mono-use and

mono-scaled properties to simplify

assessment and tax rates. Further to

that, city planners don’t like to waste

their time dealing with local investors

that may or may not get a project off the

ground. A large equity firm will

unquestionably build.

Planners prefer large projects because

the solutions can be painted over in

large brush strokes, eliminating as much

variation and detail as possible. Simply

apply the Official Community Plan check

list, and voilà, ideal development right.

This thought process has led to such

silly investments as City View shopping

center, a major commercial project that

replaced a hotel with a strip-mall,

without greatly increasing the value of

the property. Furthermore the new strip-

mall increased the amount of available

retail in the city, de-valuing other retail in

the city that already sits on the verge of

solvency. But they planted some “native

plant species” for storm water run-off

(which barely makes a dent in the storm-

water run-off from a massively paved

and empty parking lot) and making the

environmental lobby happy. Plus they

added some bike racks to make the

44

cyclists happy! In the end the developer

installed bike racks they wouldn’t have if

the OCP didn’t require them, but the

OCP is unconcerned with whether

anyone would use the bike racks. The

model of planning and implementing with

no encouragement of site specifics

depreciates every private investment in

the city.

Native plant species, doing their best to compensate for the storm

water generated by the large paved area

The OCP required bike racks, behind one of the buildings, away

from store fronts, and clearly well utilized. It is interesting that in

“City View” shopping center, a customer dragged a patio chair to

the service entrance in order to actually see the view

The most significant reality is this: The

city has huge commitments to sustaining

public infrastructure like buses, police,

ambulance, water, sewer and roads into

perpetuity. The city depends upon new

growth and new tax payers to disguise

the realities of dramatically escalating

operational costs as everything gets

more expensive (gas, electricity,

vehicles, pavement, etc.) while the value

of properties remain essentially constant.

The same feedback loop that prevents

Strip Malls from experiencing Capital

Gains, also works more subtly in the

worth of residences. Since the average

price of a home in Kamloops is not

climbing in proportion to the cost of

maintaining the infrastructure, new

revenue is needed. That new revenue is

achieved by building new homes to tax.

Those new homes need new

infrastructure however, and so the

commitment for that infrastructure

remains on a 25 year lag behind the new

revenue, and the “illusion of wealth” is

perpetuated.

Administration seems to believe that

going after ‘big fish’ appears to be a

much simpler task that trying to garden

growth from within. The city directly

employees and contracts firms with the

only purpose of attracting large scale out

of town investment through mines,

warehouses and other capital intensive

45

businesses. This is often disguised as

seeking “jobs” but as we all know, many

of these jobs are low-paying, low-

security and provide little to no

opportunity to stay in Kamloops and

grow your career. Why does the City of

Kamloops have a whole organization

called Venture Kamloops to achieve this

“business attraction?” Simply to attract

new tax base to try desperately to

minimize annual tax hikes. It is worth

noting that a visit to the Venture

Kamloops website makes no mention of

jobs created, and their effectiveness is

measured completely in dollars of

infrastructure invested. Venture

Kamloops ‘achievements’ are listed as

‘Major Commercial Projects’.

The city is attempting to minimize this

gap by leveraging debt. The 2013-17

Financial Plan identifies 35% of Capital

Project Funding from increasing debt.

The cities total debt will rise from $96

million to $122 million from 2013 to

2014.

Despite increasing debt, major

commercial investments, and a generally

stable economy, the Kamloops Property

Tax Rate has increased more than

inflation every single year since 2003

with the only exception of 2006.

The City thus sees big fish as important

to try keeping buoyancy in the City of

Kamloops coffers. The city has actually

invested time in surveying Kamloopsians

on how they would like to deal with these

insolvencies. City conducted surveys

suggest that 53% of Kamloopsians prefer

a tax hike, against 34% of people that

prefer service cuts. The same document

suggests that 53% of people prefer user

fees rather than taxes to pay for city

services. However in 2003 68% thought

of tax increases as favourable, and that

ratio has been dropping each year since.

I suspect that few of the 400 persons

responding to these surveys are aware of

quite how challenging the future looks

for Kamloops and other local units of

government across the country and

continent.

46

Pay for What You Use Or Is there Another Way?

Perhaps it is time for User Fees on

Ambulances or Police calls that relate to

KMs driven? Or perhaps the School

District will have to abandon bus service,

and concurrently stop the construction

of any more school facilities. It is clearly

my point of view that the productive

areas of the city should no longer be

required to subsidize the sprawl.

The morality of exploring user fee

systems for so many city services is

perilous at best, and it is a highly

politicized topic which could cause much

division. For this reason I avoid

discussing user fees for roads and

services and instead it is my belief the

answers lie in simply building upon

investments we already made, capturing

value from assets we already contain. If

we live in a productive development

pattern, services could increase, with

stable or dropping taxes rather than the

converse.

If we remember back to the four

environments at the start of our book;

how can we, for little or no cost,

planning, passion and small investments

better leverage the assets that we

already have? Assets we spent the last

50 years ignoring.

What investments individually, as

neighbours, as a government or as a

region, could be made into our built

environment to capture value from the

other environments?

In our Natural Environment; how can we

leverage our fishing lakes and our

access to the outdoors? How can our

brand as a worldwide biking destination

be expanded upon? What views can we

capitalize on? One might be surprised to

know just how many creeks have been

buried under Kamloops in favour of

uninterrupted driving. What other

activities could our hot days and

sunshine support?

The Hay Bale BBQ at Harpers Trail; capitalizing on the climate,

the vineyard, the wildlife, local musicians and chefs

Canada Day at Riverside Park, an amazing view + amazing market

47

In our Social Environment; Kamloopsians

are famously friendly, and in fact our

Tourism Kamloops documents focus

unfortunately almost entirely upon that.

Our climate has brought many transient

people to live here, what assets do they

have, what services could that type of

person contribute? Kamloopsians are

socially connected in a way I have never

experienced before, how can we

leverage our networks? We have a large

international university, what knowledge

do internationals bring with them here,

what vitality could they inject? What

types of class projects could contribute

to a dynamic system of public spaces?

Architecture students in Bergen, Norway fill this square with

interactive design projects, contributing to the community

In our Economic Environment; we have

abundant natural resources that attract

huge foreign interest, what types of

investments could we encourage from

such groups? Most international students

leave, why would they want to relocate to

Kamloops permanently? What do they

want to spend their money on? What

types of opportunities are they looking

for?

Popuphood in Oakland, CA allowed Kate Ellen to test her jewellery

concept temporarily, creating a unique economic opportunity for

her creative gifts

It is important to remember that the

financially strong and viable societies

around the world for thousands of years

have one thing in common; they were

built with thousands of small, individual

investments of savings, investment,

sweat and passion. None we’re built

attracting big fish, they made big fish.

Popuphood, probably one of the largest

scale investments of its kind in the

world, knows that the barriers to entry for

local entrepreneurs prevent so much

social capital from being invested locally.

They also know that stripmalls simply do

not allow for local investments to be

realised.

48

To take advantage of these environments

a few preconditions are necessary, and

some of them have been hinted upon

already:

1. A series of well-connected

communities

2. Walkable communities that can be

experienced on foot

3. Mixed-Use areas with 18-Hour

uses to maximize capital

investments

4. Many types of public spaces in

which to host events and highlight

Kamloops assets

How to compose a community that has

these conditions is the subject of the

next part of the book.

When Popuphood started, it was simply

a series of vacant storefronts that we’re

temporarily occupied in walkable, pre-

war Old Oakland. Now Popuphood

consults other communities on how to

build vibrant local economies, and a

huge part of that is building pedestrian

plazas.

The Cost of Car Ownership

The CAA reports the cost of owning a

dependable, budget automobile (Civic

LX), driving 12,000km per year at

$7,723.72. For context, Canadian

citizens drive on average 15,300 km per

year. For a family with a gross income of

$24,000 (Full Time at $12/hr) that leaves

only $1350 per month left over for food,

accommodation, clothing and

discretionary purchases. Many of these

persons need to live in the suburbs to

find accommodation they can afford,

and transit does not serve their needs in

these low density areas. Cars can be

bought and operated for under $8,000

per year, but how dependable is that

transportation? Our city and province

cannot support government

commitments to car infrastructure; the

poorest amongst us are further inhibited

in ‘getting ahead’ by their car

commitments.

The plight of the poor in automobile

environments goes beyond employment.

Children cannot transport themselves to

extracurricular activities, especially if a

parent is working shift work. The nearest

park land could be a dangerous walk

away. Kamloops contains magnificent

parks, but many people need to drive to

use them. For those unable to own their

own pool, a public one may be

completely inaccessible.

49

The Parking Subsidy

The city absolutely subsidizes and then

further requires auto use. It

accommodates new population almost

completely in the suburbs; The OCP calls

for 81% of population growth to be

absorbed in periphery neighbourhoods.

Cars are in use for approximately 5% of

their lifetimes and the remaining 95% of

the time is spent in storage. The city

thus places strict regulation on how to

accommodate all the required cars when

they are not being used. One man has

been studying this often ignored element

of modern urbanity for four decades

now, and his name is Donald Shoup.

Parking Requirements are a large factor

preventing Downtown from adding many

of the much desired residential units that

businesses and potential citizens desire.

They also prevent sub-urban

development from creating new

connected, pedestrian oriented spaces.

Multi-Family city bylaws show these

types of parking requirements:

0.85 spaces per bachelor unit; 1.1

spaces per 1 bedroom unit; 1.6 spaces

per 2 bedroom unit; 2.15 spaces per 3

bedroom unit; plus 15% for designated

visitor parking.

Restaurants require 5 stalls per 4 seats.

Retail uses require 4.5 spaces per

100m2. An elementary school needs 1.5

stalls per room. The document on how to

build an approved parking space is 11

pages long and included paint colours,

width of line, width of stall, turning

radius, surface material, height of cubs,

required “landscape improvements” and

more.

The arrival at the number of parking stalls

the city requires and the size of the

parking stall is generally based on the

largest automobiles and usage at the

busiest time of the day on the busiest

day of the year. What we are left with is

parking lots that cover huge areas of

land, separating uses and costing

money, which are mostly empty, most of

the day, most of the year.

In the center of the city, where land is

dense and valuable, parking must be

accommodated in structures or

underground. Let us pretend that we are

in a business partnership, we own a lot

downtown on Seymour Street. Looking at

the price per square foot that downtown

apartments are selling for, we make a

simple calculation. We could build a little

8 unit apartment building with a shop on

the ground floor, make some money,

and improve our property!

50

We approach a contractor for a quote

and they high-ball us at $200 per square

foot and downtown apartments sell for

$250-$325 per square foot. Great we

say!

Now we approach an architect and ask

them to design a building for us. The

architect tells us we should meet with the

city to discuss the development, as the

city will require a “Development Permit”

process to be completed before being

given permission to apply for a building

permit. So we proceed to the City.

We meet with a number of the cities

planners; they discuss form, character

and most importantly, parking

requirements.

Now we talk to a contractor, what does a

parking stall cost to build? Well

approximately $60,000. We run the

numbers again and determine that to

absorb the cost of the required parking

stalls and still make a return on

investment; we need to build 30-50

units. That is beyond our means, scope

and the absorption rate of the Kamloops

market, and instead, our empty surface

parking lot downtown remains vacant.

The parking requirement has made what

we thought a little project into a

prohibitive venture.

People need to park! Right, many do…

but once downtown within a couple

blocks walk of over 200 businesses and

workplaces, many also don’t or could

choose not to.

How many people looking to buy a

condo downtown would leap at the

opportunity to save $60,000 or 5-8 years

off their mortgage in exchange for giving

up their car? Not all, but some. How

many might like to live downtown if

apartments we’re $60-120,000 cheaper?

If we assume the standard middle class

household, the CAA calculates owning a

Toyota Camry, driving 18,000km per year

at $10,452; or $28 per day. A downtown

resident without underground parking

and the associated car then has $61 per

day of extra income to spend how they

like, on cabs, rental cars, entertainment,

travelling, home improvements, etc.

At the end of the day, is it not the

investor, the person taking all the risk

building a development to judge how

many parking stalls he or she needs to

make a profit on their building project? If

they want to build 5 parking stalls per

unit, they are allowed to do that under

parking regulations, but if they want to

build less than 1 stall per unit; that is

completely illegal. If the units don’t sell,

the developer bears the burden, not the

taxpayer.

51

This same phenomenon exists all over

the city. If you want to have a legal

basement suite, you need to have 3 off-

street parking stalls on your site.

Stacking the parking is not allowed. This

of course is in addition to the 2-3 stalls

of on-street parking provided by city

parking in front of the property. This

adds up to a lot of parking.

The parking ratios mentioned earlier hold

true in all developments; stripmalls, row

housing, etc. This means a whole lot of

parking that is rarely used, sometimes

only a couple times each year. The

parking standard is applied blindly

throughout the city without regard for

context, or cost; at a minimum cost of

about $4000 per surface stall, someone

is paying for a lot of parking. That

someone is all of us. It is part of the

price of a movie ticket, our taxes, meals

and groceries. Donald Shoup phrases it

quite well when he writes:

“If cities required restaurants to offer a

free dessert with each dinner, the price

of every dinner would soon increase to

include the cost of the dessert. To

ensure that restaurants didn’t skimp on

the size of the required desserts, cities

would set precise ‘minimum calorie

requirements.’ Some diners would pay

for desserts they wouldn’t have ordered

had they paid for them separately. The

consequences would undoubtedly

include an epidemic of obesity, diabetes,

and heart disease. A few food-

conscious cities like New York and San

Francisco might prohibit free desserts,

but most cities would continue to require

them. Many people would get angry at

even the thought of paying for the

desserts that they had eaten for free for

so long”.

There seems to be an uncanny amount

of parallels in this short excerpt relating

to the Kamloops parking situation.

Required dessert is the same as required

parking. Required ‘minimum calories’ are

the same as 11 pages of regulation to

the size and shapes of the stalls. These

regulations distort the market in exactly

the same way. People getting angry

about having to pay for something they

‘got for free’ for so long.

Parking was never free. Now the

economic equation is changing and

parking can no longer be a burden split

and covered by society at large. Parking

needs to be the driver’s problem. Car-

less families should not subsidize a

single car family, and a single car family

should not subsidize a four car family.

For the exceedingly right leaning, it

means the government is not handling

another element of your life not to your

liking. For the left leaning it means that

environmental and social costs of driving

are being internalized.

52

Shouldn’t a shop owner be allowed to

provide parking to lure customers? Fair

enough, but it should not be required.

Shoups studies suggest that the subsidy

for ‘free-parking’ would have a similar

impact of $0.33 to $0.98 gas tax.

Right now we have a government that

designs road patterns only for cars and

requires huge amounts of parking;

distancing uses even when they are

mixed, further inducing road demand

and parking demand. The planners,

health care professionals and even

politicians say, ‘driving isn’t what people

should be doing; it’s bad for the

environment, for sociability, for those

who cannot drive (economically, young,

old, disabled) and we cannot afford it’.

They respond with a gas tax, and a

carbon tax, to try to stop us from

engaging in the very behaviour that they

subsidize us to do in the first place.

What is the result? Heaps of money

spent and no tangible results.

Tranquille

I have spent a lot of this chapter

comparing the “ideal” maximum value

creator that is the 200 and 300 blocks of

Victoria Street as the model for growth.

Tranquille Road on the North Shore was

built in the same incremental growth

pattern as Victoria Street, but has fallen

out of favour with most of the cities

investors, business persons and clients.

This has stemmed from many changes in

mobility, demographics and also bull

dozing the best parts of Tranquille in an

effort to compete with new strip

developments. Despite its mis-

maintenance, fringe businesses and

general decrepitude in comparison to

shiny and new City View shopping

center, nearly every single building

remaining on Tranquille outperforms City

View controlling for size.

For example, the hotel that contains

Kamloops’ only strip club is assessed at

$3,952,173 per acre or $978 per square

meter. That is nearly double the value of

City View at only $2,022,739 per acre or

$499 per square meter.

On Tranquille we have the unique

opportunity to compare properties that

are literally the street from each other,

and controlling for the variable of size,

are able to show that every single

building, built with the parking in front, is

53

a lower performer financially than a

neighbour that preserved the traditional

pattern of development.

For example, 517 Tranquille Road, also

known in 2013 as Rexall Drugs is worth

$488 per square meter. Directly across

the street at 518 Tranquille Road, the

Lotus Inn restaurant is worth $1,108 per

square meter. Putting the cars in front

cut the value of the property by more

than half! On average, cars in front have

a value similar to strip malls throughout

the city at $507 per square meter and

cars in the back have an average value

of $902 per square foot.

517 and 518 Tranquille Road across from each other

Tranquille needs a lot of love to bring it

back to the commercial success it

achieved many decades ago, but the

lucky part of Tranquille is just how much

of the traditional development pattern

remains in place. Adjusting the

dimensions and removing off street

parking adjacent to the sidewalk are

tantamount to achieving that success.

The type of parking in front that Tranquille needs to abandon to

bring pedestrians and shoppers back to its streets

Tranquille has far more interesting

geometry than downtowns gridded

streets, much more likely connections to

the river, flat land, and simpler

opportunities’ for diversified housing

stock. Tranquille also once operated as a

pedestrian street, and so a return to that

form of development is lower hanging

fruit than the stripmalls up town. The city

has many opportunities to see large

returns by investing in Tranquille Road.

Simple investments and relaxed

regulations could see properties on

Tranquille double or triple in value and

quickly.

Tranquille and MacKenzie, one of the many irregular intersections

that could be a joy for pedestrians and a dream for architects

54

A Note on Politics

My arguments agree with libertarians;

those amongst us who value personal

freedom highly. Of course, if one owns

their land, why should they be prevented

from doing something on it that they

like? So why can’t I build a duplex the

same size as my neighbours single

family house? Furthermore, the ‘over

reach’ of city planners and engineers

into micro managing and social

conditioning is clearly appalling.

Financial Conservatives, who value

business friendly environments, cannot

refute the numbers and figures that I

present. Furthermore, no financial

conservative would ever support

government programs that subsidize so

much with no tangible gain to society or

individuals.

Where I meet the most challenges to our

Stronger Kamloops approach is in the

realm of both the conservatives and

“progressive” liberal types. The Stronger

Kamloops approach of fiscal strength

through better development is often

responded to by many with the attitude

that any development is bad

development. Some people like things

the way they are, and don’t want that to

change; which is why I suggest that the

type of house and neighbourhood you

live in should be your choice, not that of

a government; also that the cost of that

property should reflect its burden on the

tax-payer. The whole city will not

become towering sky scrapers. There is

no market for dozens of tall buildings all

at once.

Kamloops is not about to become concrete canyons like NYC

For those who only care about climate

change and believe that development of

any kind is unsustainable, I ask you to

consider the current path of

development. It is eating up farmland on

the fringe, and necessitating

transportation options that require fossil

fuels for most trips. It is reducing

citizen’s access to nature by placing it

further away. In reality we need to adopt

processes and patterns of developments

that can meet most peoples demands for

comfortable living that provide them with

the status symbols they want to own. We

need circumstances that further the

environmentally sensitive path while

operating in a normal market.

55

One criticism of my infill approach to

urbanism is the apparent paving over of

what could be urban gardens. Infill

housing and densification obviously

reduces the sizes of yards. If we take the

40% lot coverage ratio, and assume that

houses are built to full size, and the

remaining 60% is left as yard, it is not as

effective as building built to 80% of

smaller lots, leaving untouched nature on

the periphery. The reality remains that

urban agriculture is not a desire or reality

for most others. How citizens get around

and live in the city is important, far more

than a handful of salad greens and

tomatoes. Furthermore, spread out

single family lots where everyone drives

a Prius and has solar panels does

nothing to make the city solvent. Nor

does it truly address the embodied

energy in all this material production, nor

does it allow kids or seniors to transport

themselves without a car.

Backyards like this are not valued very highly, and they are not

environmentally productive either

For many environmental types, there is a

common thread of dis-trust of any “big-

bucks” developer. We as Canadians pay

more money for things that we value

more. We work for others to get paid.

That developer is working for you to get

paid and in most cases want to make the

most money possible. For this reason

they will create the highest value

development they can, as long as it is

possible to do so. As we have seen, in

many cases our own city planning

authority artificially subsidizes and

encourages this type of development

however. Many local, small, would-be

developers might be very happy to

create meaningful and fantastic

developments, if only they were allowed

to enter the market. That could include

home-owners that want to build a

carriage house, or separate into a

duplex.

A Laneway House built for a family member in the Sagebrush

neighbourhood. The kind of inclusive and sensitive development

that middle class home owners can participate in

56

That could mean someone who wants to

expand a small apartment building that

they manage now. Currently the market

is skewed heavily in the favour of out-

of-town developers that are not even

allowed to build high value

developments.

At the end of the day it is important to

remember that if someone today wanted

to create something of such a high

quality as Victoria Street, they are simply

not allowed to do it. Yet the city’s plans,

philosophies and citizens are asking for

it, verbally in charrettes and with their

wallets.

The kind of development that North Shore Residents would like to

see based on the North Shore Community Plan. However this type

of small scale development is largely illegal throughout the city

based on various regulations, cost-prohibitive requirements and

over burdening processes to receive exceptions

Artists downtown paint the types of pedestrian environments we

dream of, but are illegal

A Note on Home-Building

During the suburban expansion of the

last 60 years, Home Building and Home

Builders have greatly changed their roles

in our society, changed their nature and

changed their organization and tactics.

Home Building in the suburbs has a huge

advantage, it allows small general

contractors and trades people to be

self-employed and find a little niche in

which to fit. This is simply achieved by a

developer simply buying land,

subdividing and selling. The

organizations that build the homes can

be of many sizes, and collectively they

have organized as the Canadian Home

Builders, which both nationally and

locally have become powerful and

important lobbies.

Construction in the last half century is

understood to be an economic indicator.

Unfortunately this indicator is not well

understood. Construction is a “trailing

indicator” meaning that when an

economy is strong, citizens and

businesses hire trades people to make

investments that they now have the

money for. However many people seem

to think that Home Building is a “leading

indicator”. Governments are encouraged

to make “loss-leaders” of construction

and infrastructure projects to “stimulate”

the market.

57

Home Builders appear to have a lot to

lose if the costs of the suburban homes

they are building needed to internalize

their long term costs. Many of these

builders are not large enough, or do not

have the knowledge and expertise to

compete in a different market. This is

often a factor of scale (apartments, row

houses, etc.) or expertise (large scale

HVAC systems, non-stick frame

construction techniques). This means

that the suggestions of this book seem

to run contrary to a powerful group of

Home Builders and to many people’s

livelihoods. This is not true.

It is important to understand that

currently Home Builders are the most

competitive and self-empowering

sectors in Kamloops, and do not deserve

to be marginalized. It is one of the few

industries that have a large amount of

social mobility and encourage

entrepreneurship. Their skills, craft and

expertise should not be legislated away.

As we touch on in the third part of this

book, regulation is preventing them from

participating in different markets that

agree with the philosophy and goals of

this book.

The Problems Summed Up

While all the financial struggles detailed

here are alarming, it is important to

realize that this is a problem that will play

itself over long periods of time. There are

many other externalities that are also

mentioned, like pollution and resource

scarcity, but fundamentally, if we do not

have our financial house in order, as a

city or country, we will not be able to

confront these other problems.

Cities are complex mechanisms;

however the 28 civic institutions in the

United States that have filed for

Bankruptcy Protection in the United

States should not be ignored as a

different country’s problem. While many

cultural differences exist between

Canadians and Americans, and our oil,

coal, gas, gold, water and other

resources assure some economic

success for many years to come, it is

important to realize that our governments

are already suffering the same budget

crunch that these American cities have;

for the same reasons, despite our

resources.

During colonial times, Spain was

undoubtedly one of the world’s largest

powers; however their infrastructure and

luxury brought a hundred years of

depression, and now near bankruptcy

upon its population.

58

All is not lost. Simply a paradigm shift is

required. Rather than attracting “growth”

in the form of population increases, or

increasing the tax base through

subsidized investment, we need to think

about how we can add value to the

systems that we already have. We need

to increase the value of the property we

have already developed without

extending new infrastructure. We need to

build better connections inside our

existing systems.

We may see new population growth as

Portland, OR did when implementing

such principles, or as did Philadelphia,

PA when they shifted their paradigms

this way. This is not just stuff for big

cities either. Asheville, North Carolina

has become an international foodie

mecca, generating millions of visits for

its sidewalk cafes, micro-breweries and

galleries, at a population of 84,458

(2011). Or Branson, Missouri with a

population of only 10,520 (2010) is

literally the live entertainment capital of

the world with 49 live theatre venues

operating. Roger Brooks identifies

Branson and Asheville’s success as

tourism destinations nearly entirely on

the pedestrian oriented framework that is

a platform for capturing value. Brooks

also cautions however that you always

have to put local communities first, and

tourism may follow.

Asheville, North Carolina. Small, well connected pedestrian streets

that contain world famous restaurants with a population smaller

than Kamloops.

Branson, Missouri: Population 10,000. A downtown that generates

8 million visitors per year (2009)

We must remember that it is us we have

to take care of first, before embarking on

grandiose tourism campaigns, or

recruiting Richard Florida’s Creative

Class. While Kamloops has great things

going for it, we may not see increases in

tourism or immigration, and we can no

longer afford to depend on these income

streams to generate a strong and stable

local economy.

59

We must get our house in order before

making any more wild investments in

new roadways or subdivisions. Our place

needs to pay for itself now, and new

growth should not be assumed under

any development pattern. It is important

that we turn once flourishing places

(Sahali Center Mall, Valleyview Square,

and Tranquille Market) into places that

can be economically healthy and

profitable again, and receive new tax

revenue that way. It is important that all

new civic investments directly increase

the values of the adjoining properties,

and all properties in the city. We should

allow under-developed properties the

opportunity to shoulder their share of the

tax burden.

In the next section of the book I will look

at what types of places have been

shown to return direct economic

investment, and which types of places

have direct economic returns. These

places have patterns, and they work all

over the world, including in our own

country.

In the third section of the book, I will

look specifically at what types of

regulatory hurdles are standing in the

way of successful development.

60

Introduction

I hope that in the first chapter of this

book I have brought some enlightenment

to consecutive annual tax increases.

Since I have been involved in society

politically, each and every party and

politician is keenly aware of the dismal

financial situation that our governments

are stuck in. Many provide all kinds of

suggestions for symptom relief, but few

if any really acknowledges, understand

or is even aware of the underlying cause

of the problem: we are consuming too

many resources and do too many things

that are completely unproductive. Our

pattern of development consumes large

amounts of resources with little or no

return on investment, and little choice to

explore any other options.

The good news is that eliminating these

unproductive things from our lives does

not mean that we cannot go on living in

a civilized, sophisticated and

exceedingly comfortable civilization full

of opportunity and the pursuit of

happiness.

This chapter is all about characteristics

of places that capture value, that enrich

our cultural opportunities and create

entrepreneurial pursuits for our citizens.

This chapter is about allowing seniors,

children and differently abled a more

independent life. It’s about opportunity!

According to Evalue BC, this downtown property utilized as

surface parking for RIH staff is worth over $2 million.

Most of the elements of these successful

places revolve around the creation of

walkability. Every trip begins and ends as

a pedestrian, walking from your house to

your vehicle, or from your vehicle to a

store or other destination.

In commercial development it is the

capture of these pedestrians that

translates from higher revenues to higher

rents, to higher property values, to higher

taxations.

In residential areas it means that services

and destinations are closer, it means

streets are safer, job opportunities more

plentiful, transportation choices more

numerous and neighbourhoods more

desirable. Convenience to amenities

translates directly into high property

values. The quality of the interface, low

traffic speeds, mature trees and well

maintained house fronts also translate

directly into property values.

61

For the city as a whole, it means more

density, as in more tax payers for fewer

infrastructure commitments. It also

means liveability; reduced pollution,

cleaner air and insulation from economic

turbulence; a wealth accruing population

and a Human Scaled city.

Will people walk? In many places where

every rule in this book is broken, there is

still holes cut through fences, paths

beside arterials and jay walkers that

seem to suggest that for many reasons

they will walk whether the city allows it or

not.

A hole cut in the fence beside the Douglas Street sub-station. Cut

by middle aged, middle class folks that just want to walk their dog.

Currently most people in the burbs which

choose to walk, bike, take transit, or get

around any way other than the

automobile do so for one of two

reasons. They are passionately

ideologically motivated; or they do not

have a choice. Students, who walk from

townhomes and apartments on Dalgleish

need to cross a dark, unlit field, cross 4-

5 lanes of fast moving traffic, in some

cases crawl over concrete barriers (using

the no-jay walking sign as a handhold)

and then navigate a narrow shoulder

beside fast moving cars entering or

exiting the “free-way” of Summit Drive.

Most of these people are students, and

do not own cars. Others also fall in to

the rational person category, a person

with no ideological motivation to walk

from home to the university, but they do

so anyways. Why? The walk meets three

requirements over the alternative of

driving:

1. Faster (the car journey is a very

disconnected one)

2. Cheaper (parking costs money)

3. More Convenient (don’t need to

look for parking)

For some, a fourth variable may also be

the expectation of drinking after class on

campus.

Something crazy has happened in the fall

of 2013 though. The university raised its

parking rates one dollar. From $4 to $5;

a 25% increase in the parking rate. Now

there is parking problems all around the

university as students and staff save

themselves the few dollars and hassle of

finding a parking stall and instead clog

streets like Laval and Dalgleish with their

cars, finishing their car trip with a 10

62

minute walking trip. Amazingly students

at TRU are given FREE transit passes

with their U-Pass, and yet find driving

and parking 10-15 minutes’ walk away a

more convenient and faster option than

taking transit! This is an indication of

appalling service for sure, but also of a

detrimental mis-understanding by the

city; the University and the area around it

is in fact a pedestrian space that

economically reacts like downtown. Not

only do the city and other stakeholders

have a huge latent demand for parking

that can be paid for with meters on local

roads like Dalhousie, Camosun Crescent,

Summit and McGill, but a fundamental

flaw in zoning that does not allow the

mixed-uses necessary to capture value

in the surrounding areas. As Donald

Shoup would remind us, if parking is

full-up, then we are not charging enough

for it. As Roger Brooks would remind us,

not having enough parking is a good

problem; the opposite suggests it’s not

worth being here.

This facebooker is clearly unhappy about the clogged parking in

the surrounding streets.

Many different authours have suggested

different requirements for a normal, non-

ideological pedestrian to choose to make

trips on foot. Jeff Speck, one of the

founding members of the Congress for

the New Urbanism suggests these

requirements; a walk must be:

1. Useful (connects your origin and

destination)

2. Safe (feels safe and is safe)

3. Comfortable (the setting is

enjoyable)

4. Connected (the path is simple and

efficient, free of artificial obstacles)

5. Interesting (full of things to

experience)

A UK report by the Department of the

Environment, Transport and Regions

has more specific built environment

prescriptions for walkability:

1. Character – a place with its own

identity

2. Continuity and Enclosure – a

place where public and private

spaces are continuous and

clearly distinguished

3. Quality of the Public Realm – a

place with attractive and

successful outdoor areas

[rooms]

4. Ease of Movement – a place that

is easy to get to and move

through

63

5. Legibility – a place that is easy

to understand

6. Adaptability – a place that can

change easily (uses and

activities)

7. Diversity – a place with variety

and choice (housing, retail, jobs,

etc.)

Steve Mouzon, authour of the blog and

book the same name, Original Green,

suggests these criteria:

View Changes

Street Enclosure

Window of View (Lineated

Perspective)

Shelter

Goals in Middle Distance

People

Magic of the ‘Place’

All of these suggestions combine to form

the basis of the narrative that I provide in

this book.

Roger Brooks, a well-respected tourism

destination marketer that has worked in

Whistler and has consulted Kamloops’

own KCBIA on how to make downtowns

better has a 20 point program for

successful downtowns. His points

include on-street parking, plentiful

sidewalk dining and quality public plazas.

Rogers suggestions completely rely on

pedestrian oriented, activated, vibrant

public space that locals and tourists alike

are attracted to like compass needles

towards north. The final word is that

places which capture value, locally and

for visitors, are places which resemble

the best downtowns in the world. This is

a pattern of development that has

survived successfully for a thousand

years and not by accident.

I would suggest that a successful and

fiscally strong Kamloops would be about

creating numerous, medium density,

mixed use centers around the city that

are well connected. In ‘A Pattern

Language’ the authours call this concept

a City of Villages. This concept generally

runs through the most successful cities

by any measurement in the world. The

whole city doesn’t need to live in dense

condos and not every corner needs a

pub, but the system does need to allow

for each member of the population to

live their ‘best life’ and the system needs

to capture that value.

Some of the suggestions to follow are

simply behaviour or characteristics that

indicate success. Other concepts are

more prescriptive, suggesting specific

changes that have shown success here

and elsewhere. They combine to create a

great city that creates and captures

value; for businesses, citizens, industries

and investors. It creates opportunities. It

is healthy and active.

64

A Sense of Place

Most of the items in this chapter refer to

elements of place, but it is important to

understand what place is.

Places have borders. Borders can be

created or natural but they must be clear

to everyone. A civic park or square is a

place; a retail street can be a place.

When a geographic area can be

identified easily as a place, it

immediately increases in value. Consider

some of the highest value places in the

world “Times Square”, “Fisherman’s

Wharf”, “Stanley Park”, “Lake Louise”,

“Trafalgar Square” or “Pike Place

Market”. Everything is expensive in those

places.

Victoria’s Fisherman’s Wharf

If you can capture a sense of place on a

single block of a single residential street,

you can create appreciation in property

values immediately.

Places need to be:

Useful (full of uses)

Connected (internally and externally)

Safe

Comfortable

Interesting

Some indicators and elements of places

like this are detailed next. Some places,

like Lake Louise are so interesting and

so iconic that they attract people despite

being fairly dis-connected from the

world. Nearby Lake O’Hara does not

attract nearly as many visitors and does

not demand nearly the dollars that Lake

Louise does. Lake O’Hara is not as

comfortable, connected or safe as Lake

Louise is.

This neighbourhood group in Portland, OR has taken it on

themselves to create their own sense of place. They are painting the

most important intersection in the neighbourhood with a large

diorama and adding benches, trees and crosswalks.

65

Jaywalking

Interestingly jaywalking is one of the best

indicators of places that have become

successful. If many people, not just risk

oriented types, are seen crossing the

road at unmarked locations frequently,

something is going right.

And interestingly, places where this

happens are places that demand much

higher office and retail rents, higher

property purchase prices and have the

safest pedestrian accident statistics.

Why?

Places where we on foot feel

comfortable crossing just about

anywhere share a number of common

characteristics:

There are destinations on each side

of the road

Traffic Lanes are narrow (under 2

or 3 seconds to cross)

Traffic is slow (eye contact can be

made with drivers)

This creates a place in which businesses

are easy to access from anywhere within

sight. This translates into more

customers walking through the doors,

increasing revenue and increasing

property values. These places are social,

it is easy to identify faces across the

street and greet friends.

Crosswalks

Crosswalks are present in environments

that are exactly the opposite of places

where people jay-walk. Kind-of…

Crosswalks are often situated at places

of common pedestrian fatalities or

places where jay-walking infractions are

deemed excessive. This means that

cross walks are often located in places

where pedestrians were not allowed.

Movement of vehicles is deemed the

priority but pedestrians appeared

anyways and because the pedestrians

could not be deterred, a cross walk was

installed.

Cross walks are expensive, and where

they are installed should be the result of

careful consideration of whether this

might actually be an important

pedestrian corridor. Often cross walks

are installed where they are not needed.

In cases like 6th Ave. downtown, cross

walks are not needed at all. The street at

6th Ave. should realize that it is already a

pedestrian street that’s primary purpose

is to carry pedestrians. For this reason it

should be the size and proportions of a

pedestrian street, and then cross walks

would not be needed. 6th Ave. is littered

with cross walks every few hundred feet;

partly because there is many accidents

here involving pedestrians, and partly

because there are so many pedestrians.

66

Pedestrians favour corridors for two

reasons; important destinations are

otherwise inaccessible easily on foot by

any other route and/or a journey by foot

is faster, cheaper and more convenient.

For example: Dalgleish and TRU or a

residential area separated from a dog

park by a freeway or arterial. These

routes are desire lines, the easiest

connection, and so the best used.

In the case of 6th Ave, much value is lost

by not creating pedestrian crossings and

facilities that capture value. Furthermore

the crossings often fail in their intention

of easy and safe pedestrian crossings.

The pedestrian crossing experience

seems to be the most dangerous due to

two seemingly separate variables, which

are actually the same variable:

1. High Traffic Speed

2. Motorists not seeing the

pedestrians

The RCMP and City has a program each

year which tries to raise awareness about

pedestrian safety. They embark on

campaigns, such as this year, “Get Your

Glow On” Road Safety Campaign. Of

course the name implies that roads are

dangerous, which they are, even though

we know that they do not have to be.

Further to that, as the name implies the

premise of the campaign is to encourage

pedestrians to wear reflective vests at all

times. As comical as the image of men

in suits and women in dresses taking

their lunch on a Victoria Street bench

draped in neon reflective sashes is

ludicrous and hilarious, the City, RCMP

and ICBC are serious about encouraging

pedestrians to be safer on our car-only

roads by wearing reflective vests. We all

know that no one is planning on actually

wearing a reflective vest yet year after

year well paid government employees

embark on these projects. This safety

campaign is directed at walkers despite

walking being safer in every possible

metric; even ignoring any added physical

or mental health benefits; walking is thus

advertised as a dangerous activity. By

placing the responsibility on the

pedestrian, it is once more reiterating

that roads are for cars and the people

driving them, and they are the priority.

The worst part is that many studies have

shown reflective clothing to have little to

no effect in pedestrians or cyclists being

spotted when traffic speeds are higher

than 50km/h. Here lies the truth of the

matter.

67

An Australian Safe Driving study makes

this comparison. A stationary person has

‘primary vision’ between 10-20 degrees

horizontally. The stationary person also

has peripheral vision near 180 degrees.

Peripheral vision means that we cannot

really make out any detail, but something

moving or changing quickly would attract

our primary vision. As we speed up, both

our peripheral and primary vision

narrows. The Australian study suggests

that nearing 100km/h our peripheral

vision may even be as focused as only

40 degrees (20 each side) and less than

5 degrees for our primary vision. Other

studies suggest even narrower fields of

vision at speed. Vehicles further

complicate this situation for drivers as

they also dull the senses of hearing and

smell, which are also very important

when navigating terrain.

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Traffic engineers have known these

numbers for quite a while. In fact they

have refined these numbers to a very

exact science, which is why every city

engineering department in the country

has 6” thick binders about the radius of

turns, the width of turning lanes, and

eliminating and ‘fixed-hazardous

objects’ near the roadway. Any of the

arterials in Sahali mentioned before are

great example of this. They minimize any

visual interruptions so that a driver can

make a decision about whether or not to

yield when making a right turn at an

upcoming intersection.

If drivers maintained the speeds they

drove on the ‘dangerous’ roads before

all the “engineering upgrades”, these

measures would in fact make streets

safer. Instead drivers drive faster (in

psychology this is called Risk

Homeostasis) and the streets end up just

as, or more dangerous for drivers and

completely inhospitable for any other

road user.

This is because all the road users are

only looking at a very narrow primary

field of vision, combined with an

environment that suggests drivers always

have the right of way; drivers driving

quickly aren’t being rude to pedestrians

waiting at a sidewalk, they simply do not

see them. They do not see them not

because they are bad drivers, simply

because they are human and subject to

the limitations of our bodies and our

judgement. Highways with few

interchanges and relatively constant

speeds allow the math of traffic

engineering to create very safe roads.

The M 25 around London is surprisingly safe, despite high traffic

volumes and speeds. The key is in limited access and constant

speeds

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However higher speeds and the resulting

narrowed vision is a recipe for disaster

on arterial roads where there are too

many cars doing different speeds,

entering, exiting, changing lanes etc.

Slowing speeds and reducing lanes,

while adding new connections is the only

way to build network capacity for

automobiles while facilitating value

capture from the adjoining private

properties and finally being safer roads.

On high design speed arterials vehicles

are travelling quickly and cause a lot

more harm; when they do hit something

or someone it’s less likely to be a

‘fender bender’. Lastly, let’s not forget

the obvious that slower speeds mean

more reaction time. High speeds off of a

highway result in an accelerating

feedback loop of danger and property

depreciation.

Finally, in most cases, like left hand

turns at controlled intersections, a

reflective vest would not have helped the

driver see a pedestrian anyways.

Ultimately big, marked, pedestrian

controlled cross walks do not really

work. They are also expensive, and

subjectively they are ugly. They impede

traffic flow. Many times on 6th you will

see a number of cars blow by a waiting

pedestrian while another car sits and

waits. Finally the coast is clear and a

single vehicle spends 30 seconds

waiting for a pedestrian to cross all 6

lanes for fear of a traffic fine. This does

not help drivers, and it does not help

pedestrians.

What does work? Narrow, well connected

roads in pedestrian areas: Jay-Walking

environments. What would happen if 6th

we’re narrow, with trees, parked cars

and only 14 feet of roadway to cross

rather than nearly 100 feet? Cars could

continue at all times; slower but

unimpeded. Cars at cross streets could

join traffic or cross 6th easily. Finally

pedestrians would cross when-ever they

chose where-ever they chose, safely.

6th

Ave on a Monday afternoon. Empty parking stalls, wide traffic

lanes, speeding cars; millions in infrastructure that is dangerous and

deprecates the properties around it. Meanwhile, most users,

pedestrians are sandwiched on a sidewalk not wide enough for two

wheelchairs to pass easily

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Terminating Vistas

The identity of a place takes a lot from

what we can see. Often, we have a

particular perspective or view in which

we see things. Traversing the city, this is

often in the direction which we are

travelling. Quite logically, we look where

we are going; to see hazards in our path.

We are only really capable of detailed

vision 100m distant. If a street rides the

curvature of the earth into the distance,

there are lost opportunities to capture

value. Architects go to lengths to attract

the eye, but we do not look at what we

do not see. Buildings that terminate the

street are framed by the buildings

enclosing the street. Immediately

terminated vistas easily generate ‘place’

and do not need gimmicks.

Terminated Vistas generate value not just in cities, but in nature. It

is the glacier at Mt. Victoria at the back of the lake which makes

Lake Louise one of the most photographed and visited sites in

Canada. It is also what makes the Chateau Lake Louise such a

special and valuable property. If the Chateau was mid-lake off to

the side it would not be nearly as culturally or financially valuable.

Photos are filled with Terminated Vistas;

mountains at the end of a valley or the

Arc de Triomphe terminating the Champs

Elysees. A Google image search of

Kamloops reveals that the yellow

footbridge over the train tracks is one of

the most photographed sites in

Kamloops.

The yellow bridge terminating the vista from Victoria on 3rd

Retailers know this, which is why anchor

tenants at malls are always given the end

of the hall. They terminate the ‘street’ in

the mall, and command the highest

rents. Terminated Vistas also create

destinations; landmarks to find your way.

Sears and The Bay define the entire Aberdeen Mall, and how you

orient yourself within the mall. They are landmarks, and are un-

miss-able as you walk the malls halls.

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Much of Kamloops urbanity is a grid

though, and how can we create

terminated vistas in our most successful

pedestrian area, downtown?

First of all, most of the Avenues do

terminate at some point, so there are

opportunities. Lansdowne village could

reengineer their parking lots (if parking

requirements we’re dropped) to

terminate 4th, 5th and 6th, pulling tourists

down from Victoria and perhaps actually

filling some of their vacancies.

Leon Krier has many notable sketches,

and the following is one of his for

retrofitting plazas and terminating vistas

into established grids:

Landmarks & Way-Finding

How do you explain to a visitor how to

get from where you are, to where they

want to be? What is easier; “Travel up

Columbia to McGill…” or “Travel up

Columbia to the Husky…”? A visitor may

have difficultly identifying McGill Road as

they travel towards it, especially at speed

in a car; but it is hard to miss a big,

identifiable building like the Husky.

There are many ways in which we find

our way across the city, whether it is an

area known to us or not. If a visitor

cannot find their way to the exciting

opportunities in our city, or are not

attracted by something to venture further

in aimless saunter, what impression will

they have of Kamloops? As

Kamloopsians, what sorts of

entertainments do we deny ourselves by

travelling specifically from origin to

destination and be denied any valuable

journey in the middle.

Seven Dials near Covent Garden in London is an easy and

convenient meeting place. There is a central, identifiable feature

and there is plenty of seating. This meeting space generates sales

for the surrounding pubs, restaurants and shops. Mall designers add

central meeting plazas to malls for the same reason.

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Landmarks are pivotal in creating

productive places. Places that have an

identity beyond “The intersection of”, but

instead foster some type of feeling and

identity, like “Times Square” or

“Commercial Drive Station” or “Picadilly

Circus”. These are where you meet, and

where you linger. In a commercial place,

it is where you spend money.

These things also build your brand as a

city. I do not need to attach a

geographic location to such landmarks

as the Eiffel Tower, CN Tower or Mt.

Rushmore for you to know what they are

and where they are. This works at

different scales for different

demographics and different interests. I

think most people who have been in

Kamloops for any length of time can

recognize the following picture, and have

probably gone there to see it, and spent

money nearby when we did:

For a neighbourhood, these are places

by which you define yourself; a park, or

a statute or activity or lifestyle, or cultural

center.

Enclosure

Enclosure is a difficult concept to get

right, as it is it is intricately entwined with

two other concepts: Permeability and

View Changes, more on these shortly…

When you are on the street, square or

park, a successful place will feel like an

‘outdoor room’. Enclosure creates this

feeling. It means ‘no missing teeth’. Mall

designers understand this. They expand

store fronts to take up the maximum

amount of store front. As a result the

space is well defined horizontally.

Unfortunately missing teeth aren’t too attractive on people either.

The 400 and 200 blocks of Victoria

Street receive the same sidewalk

treatments as each other, both have

street trees which are lit, both have

dozens of businesses, both have old and

new buildings; everyone understands

that the 200 block is more appealing.

This is a result of continuous and

consistent enclosure. Most of the

buildings are 2 stories, most of the

buildings are a consistent width but most

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importantly, the buildings are one

continuous interface on both sides of the

street, enclosing the street. This is

different from the surface parking lot that

takes up a full third of the 400 block.

Spaces also need to be designed

vertically. In the seminal book “A Pattern

Language”, it is suggested that the

height of the buildings should be high as

or higher than the width of the street in a

ratio between 1:1 and 1:4. Humans

evolved living not on grasslands or in

forests, but on the forests edge. We find

evolutionary comfort and protection in

having limited and focused views.

Rooms have 4 walls, not just two, so it is

important to not suggest that a street like

Victoria can continue forever. It needs to

end, and at its end, it needs to become

something different. End to end the

place needs to be short enough that

someone on foot continues to the new

place beyond before turning around.

London’s Covent Garden appeal as a tourist destination results in

part from its clear borders, created by the buildings surrounding it,

making it an effective outdoor room that tourists and locals use in

all seasons

While this narrative is primarily

concerned with the most urban, mixed-

use downtown areas, enclosure is

important on low density residential

streets as well, though it can be

accomplished differently. Small side

yards are still important, consistent set-

backs from the road are also important.

Alleys, with service entrances in the back

and front doors to the street are also

important; suggesting that people live on

a street rather than cars. Roof heights

should ideally be fairly similar as well.

Street Trees can also accomplish

elements of this enclosure as well,

especially when planted in a consistent

spacing along the sidewalk.

Jim Kunstler says, “Your ability to create

places that are meaningful… depends

entirely on your ability to define space

with buildings.”

Sun Peaks Village is made so successful and beautiful by the

consistent enclosure on each side of the street. On your next walk

around Sun Peaks, notice how the village is designed to have

terminating vistas every few hundred meters

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Permeability and Blank Walls

A place can be well enclosed, with no

missing teeth, but it may seem the

opposite of friendly and inviting. A dark

pedestrian tunnel under a train track may

seem a pretty forbidding place,

especially at night. A street can have

similar characteristics. Where ‘missing

teeth’ are one problem, blank walls are

another.

A blank wall, no matter how well

decorated, indicates many things. One is

that nothing interesting happens down

this way, it is a conduit to somewhere

else, not an interface. Evolutionarily it

may also suggest a lack of escape

routes. Simply that whatever happens in

the building and the street here has

nothing for you, and it sucks the life out

of that street.

Successful streets, plazas and interfaces

need to be enclosed, but they have to be

permeable. There has to be lots of doors

and windows open or closed, to make

them work. They need to be accessible

by many routes and methods and thus

permeable by conduits as well. In

Canada this usually means that places

need to be permeable to auto-traffic, as

we have not yet built a culture or an

environment capable of ‘pedestrian

conduits’.

Our own TNRD library downtown has

done an excellent job of removing any

accesses to the street, and thus the

building is not permeable. When meeting

the street, every building should make

the maximum effort to introduce the

maximum number of doorways to its

front. These could be store fronts,

residential or office lobbies or anything

really. Windows are important too. The

idea is to maximize the permeability of

the private and public realms. This is

shown to always increase commerce and

street life.

A further element of permeability,

particularly for commercial areas, is that

of merging the indoor and the outdoor.

This is what brings otherwise passive

public areas to life. Sidewalk dining is an

important element of this, and this can

be accomplished in many ways. ‘Brick &

Mortar’ restaurants can have ample

patios in the public realm, which brings

people on to the street, energizing the

public realm, and generating value for

all. Public seating can also be used by

patrons of food trucks, buskers or other

more temporary style vendors, like the

farmers market. The city can charge rent

for these spaces, and thus manage their

impact on the public realm.

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Back in Covent Garden, upstairs pub patios generate revenue from

the buskers below, while the buskers below generate revenue from

the pubs patrons. Each pay rent or tax to the city, and both are

rewarded for contributing to the public realm.

This coffee vendor near Angel, London is generating revenue by

providing a quick coffee to residents heading towards the Tube. He

pays rent to the city, contributes vibrancy and activity to the public

realm while providing a service to residents.

View Changes

View Changes are very important to

generating interesting public spaces. The

more often your perspective of a place

changes, the more interesting it is to

walk through. This can be exhibited in

changing store fronts, changes in block

direction and new terminating vistas.

Well enclosed space is nearly a pre-

condition for this level of development.

Imagine yourself walking through

Riverside Park from ISC along the path.

You first enter a large, tree enclosed

lawn, then a view looking west towards

Cinnamon Ridge, then the children’s

water park. Next views up the North River

followed by another large tree enclosed

lawn. Different things can be happening

simultaneously in all these areas, and

there is an element of discovery as you

pass into each. This is a rewarding

walking experience that is well treated in

many of our cities parks but not in many

of our cities urban areas.

Street Widths are probably the most

important factor to foster view changes.

A narrower street, by simple geometrics

has more view changes. 4 lane arterials

with huge grassy meridians are designed

for you to see Wal-Mart a couple blocks

away. Places for people are designed so

you can see a friends face across the

street.

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Victoria’s Fan Tan Alley generates completely different

perspectives of its shops every step. The narrowness of the street

completely changes your perspective of each feature with every

step.

The meandering village at Sun Peaks provides new views around

every corner, providing discovery for new travellers and reflection

for long-time residents.

Human Scale

‘Human Scale’ is the two words that best

sum up these concepts so far. Designing

the city, the size of the conduits,

interfaces and cores, is about designing

them for the size of the human, travelling

at the speed of a human. Signs should

be interesting to read as we walk by, not

dwarf us trying to reach out to the

speeding auto-commuter. Window

displays show products that we are

meant to use, and so as we walk by we

can look at all the wares we might like to

purchase. Few stripmall retailers bother

with any window display-short of giant

discount ratios. Managers know that no

one will see displays anyways. Little is

left to a stripmall tenant short of radio

ads and brand recognition.

Connections should be made for a

person on foot, at the human scale,

where a block takes a minute or two to

traverse, rather than 1000’ auto blocks

that turn any foot traffic into a relative

hike.

Paver bricks add texture and nuance to a

main street, but contribute nothing to a

motorist at 120 km/h. Giant structures

can be awe inspiring, like the House of

Parliament, but the details are still fine

grained that on closer inspection

continue to pay dividends; Dollarmania

signs don’t offer the same reward.

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Is this sign really appealing to passing downtown pedestrians ?

No strip-mall retailer would reach out to a passing motorist with a

display like this one at Castles and Cottages on Victoria Street.

However this display in a quality, human-scaled interface like

Victoria attracts dozens of customers from passers -by to in the

store each day.

The city and the developer clearly made attempts at pedestrian

infrastructure here. However, we can see tons of impermeable

surfaces, no reason to walk here, and dwarfing proportions for no

reason

17th

Street mall in Denver, CO has larger buildings but with Human

scaled proportions. The pavement is textured with bricks, and

pedestrians are shaded by trees. All the street level buildings are

permeable, and the place is magnificently enclosed.

Bethesda Row, Maryland, USA; newly built, human scaled

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Street Width

Street widths are generally a fairly

contentious topic littered with counter-

intuitive science.

To encourage Jay-Walking, bike culture,

disabled access, view changes,

community and commerce, streets

should never be wider than 2 (narrow)

traffic lanes and 2 parking lanes.

Sidewalks should be wide so that

parents with children can pass elders in

wheelchairs easily. The area of the street

devoted to pedestrians should always be

greater than that devoted to cars in

commercial areas. Always.

In residential areas which have quieter

streets that don’t need to facilitate

crowds of people should have road

widths wide enough for parking, and two

cars to pass each other; barely. In some

cities, even in North America, it is

arguable that a narrow single lane road,

where pedestrians share the road with

the handful of cars that may pass is

preferable.

Kauffman Street in Philadelphia is a quiet and dense residential

street. Single traffic and parking lane; Pedestrian friendly.

Traffic lanes should be narrow. Narrow

lanes create slow traffic, enabling

pedestrian crossing, and safe bike

environments. Slow streets are safe

streets, where children are safe to walk

about and explore on their own, learning

independence and responsibility… also

burning energy!

Urban researcher Victor Dover has

conducted much study and concluded

that narrow streets in almost every case

increase real estate values. This is the

case not just in old towns such as

Philadelphia or Halifax, but it is true in

new developments. Swift Street in the

South Main development of Buena Vista,

Colorado has been one of the city’s

most successful real estate

developments built since 2008. The

street was named after Peter Swift who

was the traffic engineer that fought

against the ‘code’ to create a narrow

street in this new mixed-use

neighbourhood. The developer has seen

nothing but financial success.

Swift Street, CO; as seen on Google Maps

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It is important to realise that for small

streets like this to be successful they

need to be part of a rich mix of streets

and connections. Like Victoria’s

pedestrianized Market Square, such a

place needs to be attached to all kinds

of uses and connections, or else it

would fail. In Kamloops, the vacant land

in our downtown, combined with our

heritage alleyways, provides an

opportunity to re-imagine some of these

spaces as small, quiet primarily

residential streets in the heart of the city.

In London, UK, mews houses or carriage

houses we’re built behind the Victorian

mansions that faced the street, and they

housed horses, cars and servants above.

Today mews houses are some of the

most valuable real estate in the entire

city, as the front of a property can face a

high density, mixed use, busy and

vibrant corridor like Regent Street, and in

the alleys behind lie quiet residential

streets only a minute or two from ‘the

action’. Narrow streets are quiet streets.

These little mews houses are tucked away behind 6 story buildings

in the bustling Camden area of London.

James Howard Kunstler has called

suburban arterials “auto-sewers”. The

initial implication is obvious in that they

are ugly. In the secondary however, he is

implying that designing and sizing

streets to the amount of sewage, or cars

that they are expected to take is

completely reverse from how you capture

value in an urban area. The sizing of the

street needs to be about how the space

will be used, and what uses will capture

value; not about how many cars can we

get through this area at speed. In his

2004 Ted Talk, “while our young men

and women are [overseas] spilling their

blood in the sand [for our way of life]… I

hope that their last thought is not about

the curb cut between chucky cheese and

the target store. That’s not good

enough!” In other words, we need to

build streets that are intimate, loveable,

and our own; places that we care about.

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Not all roads need be narrow pedestrian

corridors. In many places a road has

been built not for urban residents and

their activities, but instead to connect to

meaningful places. The Coquihalla

generates value from the ability to

quickly connect distant places.

Columbia in Sahali, with lanes that try to

encourage commerce while trying to

move many cars with great speed,

accomplishes neither well. Charles

Mahron of Strong Towns calls arterials

“The Futons of transportation options--

an uncomfortable couch and an

uncomfortable bed.” Plentiful, narrow

streets accommodate everyone the best;

high network capacity for all types of

transportation options; higher property

values; places that people love and care

for; and safe places.

This Oslo street was built in 2012, and accommodates people first,

and automobiles second

Cars or People – No Compromise?

Victoria Street is a place for people, and

I think every citizen of Kamloops can

recognize this. The Trans-Canada is a

place for cars, again quite easily

apprehended. What about Columbia

Street or McGill? McGill has large

residential densities, commercial store

fronts and a large pedestrian oriented

campus… Yet it provides 4-6 very wide

traffic lanes with no street trees and

“severe jaywalking problems”. The city

has responded by erecting signs

indicating not to jay walk… Is this a car

place or a pedestrian place? The city has

attempted to do both--providing

sidewalks, mixed uses and signalized

cross walks; the result? A dangerous

street with many accidents and general

congestion. Is there something better?

650m travelled on Victoria Street, by

Google Maps is a 2 min drive. 650m on

Columbia in Lower Sahali is a 3 minute

drive. I challenge you to actually drive

from the intersection on McGill past

Notre Dame in 3 minutes. A wait at the

signal can be over 2 minutes. On

relatively un-signalized Tranquille the

same Google map says 650m should

take 54 seconds; 2 traffic lanes are

carrying more cars at an average faster

rate… perhaps a people place can be a

car place too, it just depends on the

uses.

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Shared Space

It seems like a worthwhile time to take a

moment to talk about Shared Space.

Shared Space as a term was coined by

Hans Monderman, a famous Dutch traffic

engineer. His work was primarily

influenced by classical central districts in

France, where curbs we’re extremely

small or non-existent while signs and

signals we’re similarly absent. He

suggested that by introducing elements

of perceived risk, motorists would slow

down and would thus make space for

more vulnerable road users.

Since that time, the Shared Space

movement has caught huge

implementation throughout Europe, in

big cities, like London’s High Street

Kensington Project and regenerating

small town business centers, like

Poynton near Manchester.

Ultimately, from a Traffic perspective,

Shared Space is a concept which

maintains the average capacity of a four

lane road way with signals, on only two

lanes. This is accomplished a number of

ways but primarily by slow steady traffic

movement that does not wait at signals.

Pedestrians can cross one lane at a

time, and very quickly, so vehicles are

not waiting, and neither are pedestrians.

In the philosophy of Hans Monderman,

he believed that if each user of the road

or public realm is given the responsibility

to negotiate the road for themselves, on

equal footing, each person will end up

with the greatest success.

While Canada has few formal

experiments with Shared Space, we

actually live it in an inferior form nearly

every day. Strip mall parking lots are

shared space corridors, which see few if

any pedestrian accidents, and not much

more than paint scrapes when people do

manage to bend fenders. We also meet

nearly this phenomenon on Tranquille

Road, where nearly no intersections are

marked, but traffic is slow, and

pedestrians and vehicles alike make fairly

smooth movements through the space.

Finally the roundabout on Lorne in front

of the Coliseum was engineered with

Shared principles in mind, eliminating

curb cuts and signs, and making no

clear right of way for any road user.

These types of intersections are fantastic

at recognizing that different times of day

and different events will have different

rushes of road users, and this

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configuration can then accommodate

them when needed, but quickly return to

different uses without need for any

conscious intervention.

At the turn of the 20th century, all of Kamloops was

designed as shared space, with all road users present. At

only a few thousand people, with only a few streets, this

portion of Victoria Street is far more lively and productive

than what has replaced it today

With very restricted, painted and signed directions of how

to inhabit the intersection of First and Columbia, we have

arrived at a place where no one inhabits the intersection

In our fairly sprawled and suburban

pattern of development, Shared Space

likely has few high return locations for

such a project at this time. I will mention

a few in a moment, but Shared Space,

and the meeting of all the other concepts

that it entails, should be at the forefront

of new developments.

I see the intersections on Victoria Street

at 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and likely 3rd as

perfect locations for experiments in

Shared Space schemes. I make this

deliberation from the simple observation

when walking Victoria to work every day

that often pedestrians are waiting at a

red light, alongside 2 or 3 cars waiting,

while there is no cross traffic. Moments

later the situation is reversed for the side

street. Both vehicle and pedestrian

movements could be improved through

shared space concepts, like the

roundabout we already have at Lorne

and 3rd, or simply with four way stops.

Victoria does not have pulses and single

direction manageable traffic like an

Arterial would; thus the need to manage

traffic in this space should be very little.

At $350,000 for each intersection to

install signals, what could that

investment do to improve the quality of

the public realm in a way which improves

the value of the city in aggregate?

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Perhaps the little plaza in front of the

Library at 4th and Victoria could become

a large one if integrated with the rest of

the intersection. The fantastic patio at

the Grind and the new pool on top of

Hotel 540 would be ideal audiences for

buskers to play to. This interaction would

lead to increased movie sales at the

Paramount, and increased attendance at

the Kamloops Art gallery, rather than

dividing the public realm for a few

vehicles to bisect it.

In a different project, the city plans to

spend many millions to add turning lanes

and widen Columbia Street downtown.

Further to this, they intend to close the

east facing left turn option on to Second

Avenue. As we know, severing

connections destroys value, and network

capacity. Besides, adding a Lane to

100-600 Columbia Street will do little to

nothing to alleviate queues at signals. In

fact the extra lane will just add further

lanes to turn across, thus making the

turn more dangerous, blinder, and less

easy to make. It will speed up traffic

further, and exacerbate the ‘traffic

sewer’ problem already existing. Shared

Space on this street could reignite

Columbia as a pedestrian mecca tied

directly into a new provincial investment

in Royal Inland Hospital. The doctors,

patients, nurses, administrators, visitors,

service staff, and all others at the

hospital could have immediate access to

so many new potential businesses, and

entrepreneurs could access directly a

whole new demographic. Currently

Columbia severs the hospital from the

city, having the effect that the Hospital is

an island, separate from its neighbours.

Further it creates a supremely

monopolistic and captive market, which

is why Café Motivo in the hospital

reportedly pays the highest retail rent per

square foot in the City of Kamloops.

Would a shared space scheme on

Columbia cost drivers a few minutes in

travel times at certain parts of the day? It

could. It could also save other driver’s

time, especially those turning left. Would

there be congestion of people and cars?

Again, possibly, but congestion in urban

areas is an indicator of success, that

people want to be there, and so they

spend money there, and the public realm

is appreciated in value.

Not adding a lane would also save over

$10 million! By adding a lane real estate

values would likely depreciate further,

and so the city would see a reduction in

revenue and an increase in current

capital costs as well as long term

maintenance costs.

The alternatives; doing nothing or even

reducing the number of lanes would be

both financially more sensible, and

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require far tamer investments; starting at

nothing. Reducing the road to two lanes

could be as simple as adding on-street

parking with meters that would instantly

more than compensate the small

investment in new striping on the street.

It would also create new short-term

parking for the streets businesses that is

usually choked by persons visiting the

hospital. It could be as complicated as

an integrated Shared Space round-about

system with trees, paver stones, on-

street parking, public plazas and other

landscaping. Both of these options

would cost less than another lane and

produce a direct and measureable return

on investment, safety and network

capacity.

The opportunity that a hospital,

especially a regional hospital downtown,

has as an asset to leverage is huge, far

greater than a stadium or arts center.

Some cities suggest that a Stadium

could be a great tool to leverage for

‘investment’ and the ‘economy’. As we

know, they are talking about the ability of

the stadium to generate foot traffic, just

like our stadium generates foot traffic.

Some cities, like Pittsburgh, have an

incredible entertainment district

surrounding their stadiums, but in

general, including Interior Savings in

Kamloops, games and events rarely

translate into commercial success. I

would suggest that if ISC was generating

lots of revenue downtown during game

nights, stores would remain open in the

hours leading up to games, but they

don’t. The hospital on the other hand,

already exists, is used all day every day

by every demographic imaginable, every

income, every group, and will only grow

and continue to be used by everyone.

This is a real opportunity to generate

some serious wealth for surrounding

property owners, and the city’s coffers.

To realise this opportunity we need to

establish an interface around the hospital

that will capture that value, not destroy

it.

85

One-Way Streets

It is not my intent to analyse at length

technical details of traffic engineering. It

is a profession that is complicated and

educated. Unfortunately I need to

question the underlying logic and narrow

focus of Traffic Engineering, because it

so often fails to do what it intends to do,

and in the meantime it often ruins

successful pedestrian environments

over-night. Two-way street into a one-

way street conversions are the perfect

example of this.

One way streets, in the words of Hans

Monderman, are like the barrel of a gun.

“If you design streets like gun barrels

people will drive like bullets”. As we

know, high traffic speeds destroy

pedestrian environments and thus

property values. The poster child is

Seymour Street.

Despite the pretty sunset, this “gun barrel” designed merge onto

Victoria West sees dozens of cars screech away from this

intersection every day. No obstacles, straight line and a wide travel

lane results in persons speeding that otherwise would not

Once the proud address of the Hudson’s

Bay and the Elks Club; now the address

of a poorly attended Adult store, smoke

shop, vacant real estate, empty parking

lots and generally marginal businesses,

thrift shops and halfway houses.

These businesses are always

components of a city and have their

audience but concentration in particular

places is often indicators of low rents

and pathetic commercial success.

One-Way Streets (like a divided

highway) are great options for moving

cars quickly with limited access. They

get people into and out of places

quickly. Commerce happens best where

people stay and explore.

-

Then again, some of the world’s best

walking cities, like London, Barcelona,

and downtown Philadelphia all contain

hundreds of one ways.

These one ways are not two and three

lanes wide with timed signals that require

60km/h speeds though. These are

single, narrow lanes, with parking, that

accommodate local, slow moving traffic

in a way that provides a finer grain of

connection.

If it means 200’ or even 100’ foot blocks

connected by single lane one ways, it

generates far more value than 400’

86

blocks connected by 2 or more lane

roads. For context Kamloops blocks are

400’ by 200’.

Furthermore, if the primary route is

disabled, the more streets, the more

routes there are to take. He shows this

formula:

It is further illustrated here. If there is one

road from Origin to Destination, there is

one route and we all use it:

One more road doubles our routes:

One more and we have 6 routes:

At 4 by 3 we have 35 unique routes:

Narrow, one-lane roads open to vehicles but are also easily

accessible to bikes, and pedestrians, breeding high property value

and fascinating urban environments in the Barri Gotic, Barcelona

87

Placemaking Meets Connectivity

Many narrow streets increase

connectivity and breed commerce and

property values. Well-connected average

capacity roads create far more entire

network traffic capacity than a few high

capacity roads. More roads mean more

intersections. More intersections create

view changes and are thus more

interesting to be in. This breeds further

commerce and value.

Rome from above, looking at the Piazza Navona, is well connected

to the city, and boasts a thousand intersections per square mile

We also know that terminating vistas help

us to create place, and creating

terminating vistas could easily be

thought of as a dead end. They could be

a T intersection at the end of a street,

but they could also simply be a change

in the design of the street, a corner in

the road that restricts the view or a

sizeable interruption in the road like a

square or plaza, or an irregular

intersection.

Irregular intersections are created where

roads don’t meet at perfect 90 degree

angles. The secret of the North Shore is

how many of these intersections exist

there. Try to imagine a famous world

landmark that does not terminate a vista;

it is difficult. Not only do more

intersections provide more opportunity

for landmarks and thus more value to

capture, it also increases connections

thus improving network capacity and

reducing travel times.

A number of intersection types as shown by Jeff Speck. Any of

these only happen and are effective in smaller, tighter connected

street networks with slow, constant traffic speeds.

A proposed development at Spirit Square, terminating MacKenzie

Ave and generating interest in the Square and traffic for ground

floor retail uses

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The Grid

Most of the theories posed here are

results of decades of measurement and

studies by the Congress for the New

Urbanism, and the CNU is still to this day

conflicted internally about the merits of

the grid. The grid makes terminated

vistas more challenging, and in many

ways limits travel directions to North-

South and East-West, even though most

traffic might really want to go in some

variation of that.

Paris under Haussmann had its medieval,

congested grid bisected by great wide

boulevards running in straight lines at

obtuse angles to the existing grid, all

terminating at central monuments like the

Arc De Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower.

Many prominent critics like James

Howard Kunstler and Leon Krier often

embrace Paris as being the height of

modern urbanism. Hausmann however

achieved this ‘utopian’ vision through the

eviction of thousands of tenants, and the

raising of hundreds upon hundreds of

homes, a project that in absence of a

dictator would likely be political suicide

today. Similarly to accomplish such a

project in Canada’s property rights

system would require decades and huge

amounts of capital and it assumes that

we all agree that the formal bisected grid

of Paris is a positive way in which to

grow.

Though some oblong medieval fossils still exist in the Paris street

network, the clear connection of long straight boulevards

terminating at important landmarks is apparent in this picture

showing the Arc de Triomphe

Many critics also love London, a city as

ancient as Paris, established as a port

city by the Roman Empire over a

thousand years ago. London is the

antithesis of Paris, with meandering

streets that are never straight, address

numbers on buildings that often have no

relation to their location on the street,

narrow alleys, thousands of small

passages, dead ends and bottlenecks.

Looking east with the Old Street roundabout in the bottom right,

London is a maze of bizarre paths and trails

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Both cities, known worldwide for their

walkability and celebrated amongst all

classes for this characteristic, contain all

of the other important elements in this

chapter; Safe wide sidewalks, slow

traffic speeds, terminated vistas,

varieties of streets, lots of connectivity

on foot, mixed uses, transportation

options, public parks and density.

What they also have is a system of

growth that supports incremental

development and small scale

investments. They just add on to the

existing network when they see a need

for expansion or they make small

changes at the block level, like adding a

suite or improving a passageway, adding

value to what exists already. In Kamloops

a developer is responsible for providing

all the services to new houses, like

water, sewer, street lights and pavement.

However, in the suburban model the city

usually pre-empts this with providing

large investments of arterial access,

usually before the subdivision even starts

construction; for example Pineview.

The problem with this type of investment

should be clear at this point; huge public

investment with no guarantee of return,

no immediate tax base on the new

infrastructure. Instead we are left with

hopes of induced growth. Furthermore

suburban arterial and pod construction is

anti-connective for all citizens.

In a grid or traditional street network, like

London or Paris, when the private sector

has organized the capital to continue

horizontal growth, this can be

accommodated simply by extending the

length an existing street that is already

well connected to an existing network,

that is already paying for itself. The

arterials to Pineview are nothing but a

crippling liability right from the word go.

Pineview is connected to the city by

exactly two routes; an increase in density

in this area to attempt to cover the costs

of the infrastructure in the area will just

exacerbate traffic problems in the future.

Try to pour a box of rice crispies though

a funnel all at once… that’s why they call

it a bottle neck. If this same development

had been tacked on to the end of an

existing network of interconnected

blocks, the traffic could be

accommodated over many routes, with

many transportation options. Now

Pineview cannot grow and cannot break-

even without huge challenges.

Copperhead and Hugh Allan, Pineview’s only connections

90

Anti-Connectivity

Connectivity is shown to increase value

and it is important to understand things

that are anti-connective.

Think back to the Whitburn Crescent

example and walking to Pacific Way

Elementary. We can see how Cul-De-

Sacs are immediately anti-connective.

Any dead end is anti-connective.

Large private structures are also anti-

connective like large lot Strip Mall or

other mall construction projects. If large

structures provide good pathways

through the area, like the University, it

can be a positive contribution to the

urban fabric however.

North Hills Mall, not an easy or happy traverse from one

side to the other if the mall is closed

High-Traffic corridors, like Columbia

downtown can split otherwise connected

areas in half. The number of people who

walk from the 600 block of Nicola for

their food from Coopers is more than

four times the number of people from the

same block of Pine, only 400 feet further

away. Columbia is a huge perceived

barrier to cross.

Arterials are anti-connective beyond

simply being high-traffic and

uncomfortable places for pedestrians.

Arterials elongate distances between

points even further than they may be

otherwise (Whitburn example). Access is

limited by code so high car speeds ‘can

be safely maintained’. This means that

blocks coming close to the Arterial will

terminate so as to not enter the arterial,

which is clearly anti-connective.

The reason access is limited is to allow

cars to ‘safely’ travel at higher speeds.

The city ‘design speed’ of an Arterial

Road, like Westsyde Road, or Aberdeen

Drive is 70km/h. Assume that most will

travel about 10km/h faster than the

design speed and the RCMP wonders

why everyone likes to drive 80km/h on

50km/h roads. Of course the solution,

‘to keep our kids safe’, is to post a

speed limit of 50km/h and signs such as

‘please don’t speed in our

neighbourhood’. In the words of Hans

Monderman, “these are your roads, and

you are the ones speeding on them’.

When the road is designed to the same

standard as the freeway you just got off

(Mt. Paul Way), why should you think you

need to slow to 50km/h from 80 or 90?

You can see that as a motorist it is safe

to travel faster, but every other road user

is marginalized in the process, including

your tax dollars.

91

As discussed before, Arterials function

much worse that the traditional street

network when you are trying to cross

them, as seen in the Save-On to

Winners vs. Fratellis to Torino Menswear

example. Furthermore we have just seen

how Arterials cut neighbourhoods into

pods. Arterials also cost much more than

normal roads, and yet have no private

properties that are contributing directly

to subsidize their infrastructure, and are

thus losing financial propositions.

I want to add one final touch to the

argument against Arterials, which deals

with almost everyone’s favourite word

when discussing traffic; congestion.

Arterials are supposed to cut down

congestion. Queues at traffic lights

would suggest that they do not, but that

is not where the real congestion occurs.

The stripmalls that accompany Arterials

have literally the highest congestion of

any place in the city. The parking lots of

Walmart, Winners, Save-On, Superstore,

etc. are easily the most congested

places in the city by cars, and other

forms of transportation aren’t really

options in these places. Walking is nearly

out of the question.

Loitering

Jan Gehl says, “Judge the quality of a

city not by how many people are walking

in it, but by how many people are

standing and hanging around and

enjoying the city”.

Of course, for spontaneous

congregation to occur, walkability is a

necessity. However, loitering should not

be a marginal activity regulated by by-

laws. If spaces have fantastic

infrastructure to support the enjoyment

of humanity, people of all kinds will want

to hang out in urban environments. A trip

to Covent Garden in London or

Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco

demonstrates that even pan-handling

can be an entertainment and provide

pride to people rather than an inferior

activity to cast your eyes away from.

The amenities, and quality of the public realm in Helsinki bring

people in to the streets all year, even in the snow.

Places to loiter need to be mostly

without auto traffic, they need enclosure,

and protection from the elements.

92

Places to sit are especially important.

From the most simple philosophical point

of view, if there is nowhere to sit in the

public realm, the design of the street is

simply telling you to do your business

and leave; ‘don’t hang around here’.

Places to sit can be benches, planters,

art projects, window sills and more. After

diversity of sitting options, the most

effective seating choice is moveable

chairs. We all like to adjust our chair, just

so, to make the space and perspective

our own. These chairs do not have to be

fancy, and they can be different

depending on the space and application.

Some vigilante types decided to install these chairs on Victoria

Street to provide a place to sit, and bring awareness to how we use

the public realm

The public realm needs services;

bathrooms, a place to get coffee, a

reason to be there. The private sector

can offer these services, and the public

sector can provide an interface for

mutual benefit. It is important to

understand the profound relationship that

public and private space have with one

another, and that each has something

important to make a cohesive and

successful whole, and neither sector is

generally very good at the others job.

Great places to hang out in can

terminate a vista; they can be parks or

plazas, and the private and public realm

should be blurry.

The Inner Harbour in Victoria provides fantastic interface for

tourists to navigate the city from, great landmarks to define the

identity of the city, views and foot traffic for private business to

profit from and buskers to entertain in while increasing property

values and tourism capital for the city. In the absence of private

businesses like restaurants these places would be unpopulated and

dismal. If it we’re not for the public investment in quality

pedestrian streetscapes, the private businesses would pay less rent

and attract fewer customers. This relationship between the public

and private sector here is a positive feedback loop of financial

success for Victoria.

Some suggest that it is in the character

of Canadians to prefer the privacy of

their own outdoor spaces, and avoid

‘crowded’ public areas. Yet many

people, consciously or not, try

participating in the public realm every

day. In most Kamloops examples

93

however the public places are technically

private property, thus subject to that

property owners exclusions, like

Aberdeen Mall. Only available at certain

hours, and is created for the sole

purpose of generating value for a very

specific group of shareholders.

Operating businesses are good for

public space, but public space should

not be left to private owners alone.

Despite a lack of accessible and useable

public space, Kamloopsians still try to

occupy private space in this way.

Examples of occupying public places

which are privately owned are seniors

who use Aberdeen Mall to go walking in

the morning; another is the stoop in front

of Scoopz Ice Cream. Scoopz generates

considerable foot traffic, based on its

proximity to the park, yet is unable to

provide adequate seating for all of its

customers. The “public” realm in front

requires a lot of signage to tell patrons

that they are not welcome to loiter here.

Yet if this space we’re to be utilized for

more pedestrian purposes, with more

seating and more tree coverage, these

vacant spaces could transform into retail

services that could benefit from all the

foot traffic. Instead most of the area is

left for parking, required by the city.

Street Trees

Street Trees are very important elements

of productive environments most

anywhere in the world. Street Trees

protect pedestrians from the elements,

like subduing wind plus filtering and

shading sunlight.

Trees also reduce the heat island effect

that urban environments can create. A

consistent canopy of trees is shown to

reduce ambient temperatures on a street

3-6 degrees Celsius, which is a big

difference on those 35 degree days. The

US Department of Agriculture has

calculated that one mature tree has a

cooling effect, “equivalent to ten room-

size air conditioners operating 24 hours

a day.”

Tress protect pedestrians from moving

cars on the street, both literally and

figuratively; they create a fixed barrier

and because of perspective, a visual

barrier between a pedestrian and the

cars.

94

Trees on a residential street will often

suggest to passersby that this is

‘wealthier’ street, and in fact studies in

Portland, Miami and Vancouver have all

shown on average that a street tree

increases the value of a house by

$8,870, equivalent to a small bedroom. A

Philadelphia study shows a 9% increase

in value when all other variables are

controlled. The City of Portland

extrapolated this information and

discovered that their $1.28 million dollar

street tree planting and maintenance

budget returned $15.3 million in annual

property tax revenues, an investment

return of 12:1.

Trees have further side effects; they

absorb both carbon and pollutants right

at the source: the tailpipe. Located as

they are, studies show that an urban

street tree is ten times more effective at

pulling CO2 out of the stratosphere than

a distant tree.

Furthermore, we experience the city with

all five senses, and trees are important

bird habitats. Perhaps our auditory

experience can be improved with the

fluttering and chirping of finches.

Trees are important in absorbing storm

water run-off. A city with 25% tree cover

can reduce their run-off by 10%. This is

important when considering the impacts

of adding density and distance to our

existing sewer lines, and just how much

water they can handle.

Finally, trees enclose the street. They

provide walls and a roof for a high

quality outdoor room. In the best case,

trees extend over the road, and the

perspective down the street is

reminiscent of cathedral arches. They

create place. At one time, streets had

names that indicated something about

their use, purpose and place. Poulty in

London is where the chicken market

was. Station Road all over the UK runs in

front of that towns train station. Guess

where Cathedral Avenue might take you?

On residential streets, Cedar Ave would

usually be lined with cedars; Birch in

birch; Oak in oak. These types of

investments create place and value for

the homeowners, for the neighbourhood,

and for the city. Off Schubert drive is a

series of roads named after trees, what

type of appreciation might the city see

from a simple investment of said trees

on to those streets?

95

On Street Parking

On-Street Parking is important in

successful places as very few cities in

this century flourish completely car free,

so cars must be accommodated for

storage. In the words of Donald Shoup,

“cars spend 5% of their time in transit

and 95% of their time in storage.” While

so much of this book and others exhaust

the roles and limitations of moving cars,

what cars do when their stored is

similarly important.

On-Street Parking functions best in

commercial areas as “short-term”

parking. These stalls allow a person to

find a stall quickly for a meal or errand.

Like street trees, parked cars protect the

pedestrians from moving cars. Cars

which pull in and out of parallel stalls

create a complex environment which

motorists intuitively move slowly through,

further nurturing a pedestrian

environment.

Most parking functions of the city should

be able to be accommodated on the

street, with the limitation that they are

priced accordingly. Free or cheap

parking does not promote growth of

business nor of property values. We have

already explored the hidden costs of the

parking subsidy, and all that remains true

in On-Street parking scenarios.

Parking should be priced as such that

when arriving at a destination there is

always one or two empty parking stalls

on each block. In this way, no one

complains that there is no parking

available, and visitors to the area have

incentives to use other forms of transit,

conduct transactions quicker, or park

further away, generating foot traffic past

other businesses. San Fransico actually

has parking rates change block to block

and month to month, to accommodate

different volumes and demand at

different times of the year.

Sfpark.org shows where parking is available in San Francisco and

how much it costs, in real time.

The cost of parking can be a politically

difficult problem to address, as business

owners are often frustrated by the fact

that their downtown customers and

employees are forced to pay, and thus

dis-incentivized to shop/work there,

while sub-urban complexes have ample

parking ‘free’ for patrons.

96

To overcome this misconception

politically, many places have addressed

this through passing all on-street parking

revenue right to the businesses on that

block. Westwood Village in greater Los

Angeles was a struggling traditional

shopping district, until the city removed

the free parking subsidy and installed

parking meters on the street. All revenue

from the meters was passed right to the

blocks that the meters we’re on; used to

invest in sidewalks, cleaning, graffiti

removal, plantings, fountains and more.

That same shopping district has gone

from poor, decrepit and largely

unoccupied into one of the most active

and lively commercial areas in L.A. Now

the parking meter money affords the

street to steam clean the paving stones

twice a month, and have all litter,

garbage and graffiti removed nightly.

This is true value creation, and all thanks

to paying a few dollars for parking on a

trip.

In residential areas, the average lot front

contains 2-3 parking spots. In a parking

pass system, those spots are for the use

of the home-owner and their visitors.

They have a similar insulating effect as

on-street parking does in Commercial

Areas, encouraging pedestrian activity.

Residents are also encouraged to use

their front doors, which bring more

neighbours onto the street and into view

of each other; reinforcing safe, friendly

neighbourhood principles. If a property

owner wants to provide more parking on

site, that is completely the will of the

property owner, but the owner should not

have to provide parking on site, thus

leaving subsidized parking empty on the

street. Empty streets encourage

speeding cars, which begets unsafe

streets, which lowers property values.

Empty parking stalls all over the city cost

between $4000 for a basic surface stall,

$40,000 for a structured stall and

$60,000 for an underground stall. When

most stalls are empty most of the day,

this is not a financially efficient system

and something that the market left to

itself would never allow. A free good is

never in high enough supply, “if pizza

we’re free, there would never be enough

pizza”.

In a system where off-street parking is

left to the property owners judgement,

and on-street parking is provided for a

fee, the costs of parking start to become

internalized, and as shown across

dozens of cities and projects, even a

couple dollars will keep someone out of

their car and make different choices

about mobility. Most of all however, on-

street parking in most cases is necessary

for long term financial success and

good, comfortable, accessible

pedestrian environments.

97

Safety

Jaywalking is an indication of high

pedestrian success and also of

pedestrian safety. I talked about the

disastrous and counter-intuitive danger

of arterial roads in the first chapter. Now

I want to dive a bit further in to some

other supporting statistics.

In Canada 2,209 persons died in traffic

accidents in 2009. 11,451 persons we’re

seriously injured. Per Capita that is 9.5

persons per 100,000. In Kamloops in

2012 there we’re 594 traffic accidents

causing injury or death. Getting in our

cars is absolutely the most dangerous

thing that we do collectively as a society.

Automobiles are the number one cause

of death in North America for persons

aged between 1 and 34 years.

Many people move to the suburbs for the

“safety” that it will bring their family. Dr.

Richard Jackson asked the question, “In

what kind of community are you most

likely to die in a pool of blood?” He

points to the work of Alan During who

studied Vancouver, BC; Seattle, WA and

Portland, OR with two variables, traffic

accidents and crime. His conclusion is

that you are 19% safer in inner-city

neighbourhoods than you are in the

suburbs. William Lucy of the University of

Virginia found in the state of Virginia,

adding up all the traffic accidents and

murders in different neighbourhoods

discovered that 8 of the safest

communities we’re low income inner city

neighbourhoods, while all 10 of the least

safe places we’re all low density, single

family suburbs.

If the health benefits of walking rather

than driving as it relates to obesity,

mental health, diabetes and other health

risks are not apparent by simple logic, I

would point you to the work of Howard

Frumkin, Lawrence Frank and Richard

Jackson and their book Urban Sprawl

and Public Health.

The cost of this ‘Car’nage is

unmistakeable and almost immeasurable.

For our provincial insurance body, and

our provincial health care system, car

accidents cost hundreds of millions per

year, money that I would rather not

spend as a tax-payer; and friends and

family I would rather not loose.

Streets are complicated places, but

statistics can point to the types of places

that seem to foster road safety, and

those which don’t. For the best

statistical comparison we must look

south of the border. Denmark, the UK,

Japan and most European countries

have fatality statistics in the 5.1-5.8 per

100,000. These are all places with

excellent transit, very high traffic

congestion and walkable public realm.

98

One of the lowest in the world: New York

City at 3.1 per 100,000.

In some ways it is hard to imagine that New York Streets are some

of the safest in the world. As we know now, safety is mostly about

low speeds, and no one would ever consider driving 60km/h or

more on a street like this.

San Francisco and Portland both

compete with New York, with rates of 2.5

and 3.2 per 100,000. Meanwhile auto-

oriented Tampa and Atlanta have

whopping 16.2 and 12.7 per 100,000.

Dallas has a downtown that has been

completely gutted and arranged for the

car and statistics there are 14 traffic

deaths per 100,000; downtown Dallas is

still safer than all of its suburbs.

Even if you are skeptical of the safety of

an urban environment, the statistics do

not lie, and driving your car for every trip

should not be assumed as the only way

to live. In a year, more people in Canada

die in their cars than in the whole world

sky diving. An apple to orange statistic,

but it is worth noting that if you went

sky-diving today, you would be more

likely to be injured or die driving to get

there than actually jumping out of a

plane.

Walkers are safest in low traffic speed

environments. Traffic speed is the most

important element here. There are

dozens of approaches to slow traffic

speeds, even without reducing traffic

capacity. Roads can be safe places, for

drivers and pedestrians; as Portland and

San Francisco show us. Both of these

places have very high Walk-Scores and

have the highest rates of bicycle

commuters in North America. This is not

because people in San Francisco are

hippies. The city saw a real benefit,

financially and otherwise to investing in

low-impact commuting like walking and

biking, and had the political will to make

it happen.

Bottom line, for a place to be

successful, people need to be and feel

safe. Not just from crime, but from the

much more risky automobile. New

standards for urban roadways are

required to bring this safety to people.

Maybe cars should have warnings like cigarettes?

99

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design AKA CPTED

CPTED (pronounced Sep-Ted) is a

multi-disciplinary approach to deterring

criminal behaviour through the design of

public places. The strategies “rely upon

the ability to influence offender decisions

that precede criminal acts”. For

fascinating stories on the subject,

Malcolm Gladwell’s account of ‘Peak

Crime’ in New York City in his book

Tipping Point is extremely compelling.

The term was coined by criminologist C.

Ray Jeffery and was based off the works

of Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of Great

American Cities) among others. The City

of Kamloops planning department and

the RCMP have both whole heartedly

endorsed the concept during its 50 year

development. The national RCMP

website describes some principles of

CPTED as such:

Territoriality – fostering residents’

interaction, vigilance, and control over

their neighbourhood (aka breeding

neighbourhood identity, places that

people care about)

Surveillance – maximizing the ability to

spot suspicious activity and people, or in

the theory, the feeling of being spotted if

you we’re to engage in criminal activity.

(read; permeability and enclosure)

Activity Support – encouraging the

intended use of public space by

residents

Environment – a design or location

decision that takes into account the

surrounding environment and minimizes

the use of space by conflicting groups

Urban space, like the residential streets

of Pine or Nicola have dozens of houses

each facing the street, which people

often leave by front doors and thus know

the faces of their neighbours. These

houses and their owners, through

occupation feel ownership of the space

and take care of it. This ownership is

apparent to anyone walking this street at

any time of day, and due to the

hundreds of windows (the eyes of the

buildings) they feel observed, and crime

rates fall.

Where do crime rates flourish? In dense

areas with missing teeth and limited

uses. We can identify them easily in a

simple walk along Victoria Street: The

dark vacant properties that see little light

and little observation. Even though they

may not contain any illicit activity at a

particular moment, any aging lady can

clearly point out the areas of the city that

they find uncomfortable.

100

Crime also flourishes in less dense

places, particularly suburban places

where offenders do not feel like they are

being observed. Comedian George

Carlin, talking about school shootings in

the United States said, “we have bigger

houses and smaller families; more

conveniences, but less time; we have

more degrees, but less sense; more

knowledge, but less judgment; more

experts, yet more problems”.

In context he was not referring directly to

suburban living, but most shootings are

in suburban schools and suburban malls,

statistically completely dispelling the

myth that the inner city is a place of

violence and danger. Intentionally or not,

Carlin is referring directly to the pattern

of living in the suburbs, and the way of

life there; it is full of myths. The car

promises freedom but delivers bills,

danger, violence and death. Big houses

promise luxury but deliver prison to those

who clean and maintain them.

Most importantly, Carlin says, “more

experts, yet more problems”. Our

ancestors laid out Kamloops, as they did

every other city in this world, based on a

pattern of living that we practiced since

ancient Londonium, Rome, Greece and

Xi;an. It is our generations that have

thrown this knowledge out the window in

favour of perceived privilege and luxury

that does not only fail to deliver what it

promised, but actually is threating lives.

The RCMP knows it; the Paramedics

know it; our city planners know it. What

everyone seems to have missed is how

our modern systems of government have

so unfairly subsidized it, that we cannot

live any other way. The knowledge and

design principles of CPTED are

subscribed to in every fiber of each

planning document, yet fail to be

understood, implemented or enforced in

any Canadian community which I have

visited. Despite some of the conflicting

ideas in the specific prescriptions of

CPTED, the ultimate resounding truth is

this. Get people in public places to make

them safe. Where there are people in

troves, crime, especially violent

disappears. Where do you feel safer, in a

crowded theatre or a brightly lit, empty

street? No murder has ever been

recorded in Times Square.

Modern day Leister Square at night in London; No murder has ever

been recorded in this well-populated public space, despite

homelessness, alcohol and density.

101

The Culture

It is important to drop a line here about

culture, as so often issues such as walk-

ability and “transport-alternatives” (the

phrase itself seems to assume that

people have always driven cars for every

trip) are politicized and thrown out as

leftist or hippie. This book is about

choice. It’s about building an

environment that allows each of us to

make decisions that we already make,

with our wallets, hearts and minds, to

live how we want to live. The bottom line

is when choosing how to get from point

A to point B 99% of us choose the

method that is all three of these things:

1. The most Convenient

2. The Fastest

And

3. The Cheapest

Period.

Remember, we start and end every trip

as a pedestrian (very convenient). Plus

walking is free, so if walking is the most

enjoyable, the most comfortable and the

fastest, we will walk.

I often hear the adage in Kamloops, “It’s

too hot/cold/windy” here to walk.

However Kamloops residents flock to the

40 degree days in Disneyland to walk

around a fantastic urban environment

there. Similarly thousands flock to walk

around Quebec City in the cold winter.

Main Street USA, aka Disney; hot temps, no cars, well enclosed

and notice the terminated vista

This is from a tourist brochure recommending winter honeymoons

in pedestrian paradise, Quebec City. Notice the enclosure, the

human scaled stores, signs and snowflakes

Many more enjoy all the riches of the

“windy city” Chicago. In Copenhagen,

further north than Prince Rupert,

sidewalk cafes are open 12 months of

the year, and the city accommodates

55% of all trips by bicycle even in

January. Furthermore, the city reports

that 55% of bicycle commuters are

female. One bridge in Copenhagen sees

over 36,000 bicycle trips per day. Are the

Danes tougher than we are, or do they

102

just have a place that people prefer, or

make the choice to walk and bike

around? After all, Molson commercials

would have us believe that no other

countrymen on the planet are as tough

and immune to the discomforts of cold

as Canadians!

But really, as I suggested in the

introduction, many people in Kamloops

are already walking, but often

dangerously. As mentioned before, much

debate has surrounded the constant Jay

Walking that exists across McGill and

Summit Drive, by students and faculty

accessing the university on foot. In the

cities pedestrian plan, a $4-6 million

pedestrian bridge is suggested to cross

Summit, about 100 meters below the

existing signalized cross walk at the

intersection. Other suggestions that have

occurred in the community is to erect a

large fence in the meridian or on either

side of the road to keep pedestrians off

the road; as if the 4 foot tall concrete

wall in the meridian wasn’t an obstacle,

dangerous on its own.

Existing barriers and signage on Summit Drive

However this is not the only location that

Jaywalking occurs prominently around

the university; a confluence of

demographics and a mix of uses almost

guarantee a large number of walkers in

this area, yet the only thing on the cities

mind is to maximize the speed of

automobiles on Summit, even though

Summit is a known location of many

vehicle accidents due to excessive

speeding. There is much value lost here,

but the culture remains that many people

in this location want to walk, and many

more might walk, given an alternative

that is safer and more enjoyable than

driving.

According to these images Canadians love the cold

103

Bikes and Bike Lanes

Bicycling is a great mode of

transportation: It is extremely

economical, can be very quick, in short

and medium distance journeys can be

more convenient than a car, it has no

emissions, takes up very little space on

the road and is considerably safer and

healthier than driving a car.

Nurturing a strong bicycling community

should be a priority for every city which

is trying to negotiate the expenses of

automobile infrastructure, the health

problems of obesity (especially in

children) and making efforts to control

air pollution and carbon emissions.

Biking should absolutely not be on the

top priority list for a city trying to recover

some financial solvency. Bicycling in the

city can have two capacities, for

transportation or for recreation. For

recreation, Kamloops has extremely

good facilities, including the Rivers Trail,

as well as Mountain Bike facilities that

attract visitors and admiration worldwide.

World famous! Kamloops Bike Ranch

For transportation, bikes operate the

same way as a vehicle in a conduit, and

thus do not add value to the interface of

a building the way that the pedestrian

interface does. Streets that are well

proportioned and defined for pedestrian

activity inherently promote slower vehicle

speeds, and become happy places for

cyclists of all abilities without any added

infrastructure.

In some cases, like Valleyview Drive, bike

lanes can offer a cyclist a combination

of pride in cycling and safety, but on a

street like 5th Ave, a bike lane would not

encourage further cycling.

Therefore, in the end, by creating a city

for walkability, you are most of the way

to creating a city for bicycling, which is

this authors argument to not spend too

much time or money on infrastructure

specifically for bike lanes. A bike lane

inherently suggests that the road is for

cars and long distance, high speed

travel; thus warranting separate and safe

spaces for cyclists. This increases the

infrastructure commitment of the city

while serving users that would be using

this road anyways, rather than alleviating

the infrastructure commitment of the city

by shortening the length of trips and

minimizing the number of trips.

104

Interestingly, studies in Baltimore and

Portland have shown a 60-100%

increase in jobs per dollar spent on bike

or pedestrian infrastructure, so bike

infrastructure investment does make

more sense than driving infrastructure.

What that means is that a street

engineered for vehicle traffic is

assembled by small crews operating

large machinery whereas pedestrian and

bike infrastructure by contrast is a fine

grained, more precise enterprise, and

require more man hours per dollar spent.

Pedestrian and bike infrastructure are

generally much smaller projects than

road projects as well, which translates

into less money spent anyways. When a

city invests in a street, especially with

the ill-advised philosophy of “job-

creation”, the bike/pedestrian dollar

goes twice as far to generating

immediate jobs, and as we have shown,

goes much further to long term success.

Before one mistakes me as having

something against cyclists, you are

completely wrong. I was a bike courier in

London, UK for a few months, navigating

the dense downtown traffic of one of the

world’s largest cities. The more fine

grained, walkable and mixed-use a

space is the more appropriate bike travel

is for long distance journeys. A person

on bike needs very little services for

storing compared to any kind of motor

vehicle. They also take up much less

space on a road which has a very high

value per square foot.

My suggestion is simply that if you

create a city for people, you will also

create a city for bikes.

Why am I talking about Bike Lanes, and

biking infrastructure anyways?

As we move towards a city that is

denser, more walkable, with a finer grain

of transportation, that provides more

options, bicycling can become a way for

many to participate in this shift.

If parking requirements are lifted for

example, and someone does frequent

trips of a medium length that no-longer

provide free parking at each end, a bike

can become a valuable transportation

option for that person.

Also, simply as a function of dimension,

persons on bikes take up much less area

in conduits than single or even full

occupancy cars, and so take better

advantage of expensive road

infrastructure.

Furthermore, cycling, other than some

expenditure on education can require

almost no investment from government

at any level (ICBC, the City, etc.) and

can return a realistic quick, convenient

and cheap transport choice.

105

The Walk-Shed

One of the largest mistakes that planners

make is the assumption of the “quarter-

mile” or 400m ‘walk-shed’. A walk-shed

is the limit at which the average person

might be willing to walk for any particular

journey, and in Kamloops the

assumption is a 10 minute walk, or about

a km. That is roughly 2.5 blocks of

Victoria Street or a return trip from the

Bay to Sears in Aberdeen Mall.

Not very far at all.

Steve Mouzon of OriginalGreen.org

delivered a pointed and succinct lecture

debasing this theory at CNU20. He

looked at different street types and

determined that in fact different qualities

of streets encouraged people to walk

further or not at all. His point form

interpretation of walk appeal reads like

this:

View Changes

Street Enclosure

Window of View (Lineated

Perspective)

Shelter

Goals in Middle Distance

People

Magic of the ‘Place’

More or less like the points starting this

chapter.

He devised a hierarchy system of “walk-

ability” and the size of the walk-shed.

Some highlight characteristics of each:

1. The ‘London Standard’ is a 2 mile

walk-shed; most people are willing

to walk 2 miles, or 3km for many

trips. These streets are well

enclosed, very interesting, very

safe and well connected. Not just

for big cities either, areas of

Philadelphia, Alexandria, Sun Peaks

and Kamloops have areas which

sees trips this long every day.

2. The ‘Main Street Standard’ is a

walk shed of 3/4 mile or 1km.

3. The ‘Traditional Neighbourhood

Standard’ is the 1/4 mile walk-shed

which occurs in places like Battle,

with 33’ lots and mixed housing

types.

4. The ‘subdivision standard’ is 250

feet. That means residents will walk

about 5 houses down before

getting in their cars. This may

sound familiar for some.

5. The ‘strip mall’ standard is simply

no walkability. 99% of people on a

bell curve will walk only from their

car parking stall to the destination,

and will under no circumstances

ever walk any further than that.

“There is no reason to explore any

further… because that space has

no view changes, no enclosure, no

106

window of view, no shelter, no

middle distance goals, no people

and no magic.”

Where this hierarchy becomes interesting

is when it is mapped on the streets of

town. When you map the trip that could

be taken on Kamloops Streets from the

intersection of 3rd and Victoria, you find

that some quite far trips would be

considered by many a worthwhile walk,

while other obstacles, may end a

potential walking trip very quickly to a

destination that is less distant. For

example, this map suggests that a

person who finds a parking stall at 3rd

and Victoria might be quite comfortable

walking to ‘distant’ locations such as the

Paramount (355m) for a movie, or City

Hall (360m) for an errand without getting

back in the car, but on shorter journeys

to Pratts Pharmacy at 3rd and Nicola

(195m) or to Riverside Park (250m)

would be much more likely to drive. What

would you do?

When examining my subjective map of

the ‘walkability’ of the public realm on

many downtown streets, we find that

high walkability and high value land show

an immediate correlation. Only little

improvements might be needed to

greatly impact the walkability of the

whole network. Corridors like 6th St, or

the 500 and 600 blocks of Victoria could

be easily built to the ‘London Standard’

and multiply the number of pedestrians

walking or cycling downtown. Eliminating

elements of the stripmall standard, as

seen on Lansdowne, could greatly

increase the connectivity of Kamloops’

downtown commercial district to the

rivers (and parks) nearby.

107

Housing Diversity

Admittedly a huge element of this book

is about the interface, and a little of this

book is about conduits. Interface is

clearly important for creating public value

and attractiveness for an area, and

conduits are important for getting people

around. Cores are a little different, in that

though they are part of the built

environment, and we as humans do have

a direct ability to influence their value,

only those who own the cores are

allowed to make changes. In this way,

and due to the public nature of this

book, what goes on inside people’s

homes is left at that; what goes on

inside people’s homes. But there is one

mantra that has found its way into the

consciousness of today’s builders,

planners and citizens, and that is a very

restricted view of what housing can be.

In the last 25 years in Kamloops we have

basically seen developments of four

kinds, and zoning ordinances that

suggest these are the only housing types

a person could live in. They are:

1. Single Family House

2. Duplex

3. Townhouse Condo Pods

4. Apartment

For a long time these housing types

we’re arranged by size and type, further

refining the demographic of who could

buy in each street or neighbourhood.

This led to a situation where all your

neighbours tended to be of similar

demographics and incomes. This may

not be so bad if you do not want to

expose your children to ‘poor people’

but it is terrible for everyone else.

To remedy this situation, city planners all

over the country require a mix of housing

sizes and types in each new area. Often

this is executed at way too large of a

scale though, and the mixed housing

types are not “neighbours” but instead

easily identified as ‘others’ in the

community. With no further mixing of

uses or fostering of walkability, an

apartment building in an arterial

accessed subdivision doesn’t solve very

many social problems, and instead just

complicate traffic problems.

This City of Kamloops generated zoning map shows very clearly

how each income type is segregated into housing type pods

108

Once efforts towards connectivity,

mixed-use and walkability are

established in an area there are

opportunities for all sorts of housing

types that can accommodate at market

rates all sorts of residents:

1. Apartments Above Shops

2. Cottage Clusters

3. Row Housing

4. Fourplexs

5. Carriage Homes

6. High, Mid and Low Rise Apartments

7. Live/Work Units

8. Lofts

9. Courtyard Housing

These are just a few of the housing types

that can be built by all manners and

sizes of builders, and house people with

all sorts of aesthetics and aspirations.

Diversity of housing stock in a

neighbourhood increases the number of

people who would like to live in an area,

and increases their willingness to pay. In

each and every study, in many countries,

they all show conclusively that housing

diversity in a well-connected area adds

value to neighbourhoods and raises

property values.

City of Villages

When you add up all these important

concepts that come together to make

well-connected, walkable, bikeable,

safe, diverse, inclusive, dynamic,

valuable neighbourhoods, what you end

up with is a ‘City of Villages’. This is

what it takes to keep the small town feel

of Kamloops, to breed and nurture it,

while moving towards a financially and

socially strong position.

Neighbourhoods like Sahali become

destinations in and of themselves,

places that visitors would identify as a

place to visit; like visiting Vancouver and

wandering Gastown, Yaletown, Granville

Island, Commercial Drive or others.

London and New York are both cities

that have absorbed literally hundreds of

villages in their expansion to be the

world’s most valuable and exciting cities.

As each town was absorbed the fabric of

that community remained intact; In fact

they bred neighbourhood identity. The

cities fostered that sense of place, rather

than losing it to formless sprawl, and

now areas like SoHo, Tribeca, Harlem,

Camden, Kensington, Holland Park and

the East Village are known worldwide by

persons who have never even been to

them.

109

Cities offer humanity an amazing ability

to leverage the talents, skills, ambitions

and dreams of those around us. But we

need to have a strong foundation on

which to build, and we need to know the

people around us. We can only do this in

a city of villages. No more should ‘sub-

divisions’ be created in our city, but

nurturing of our neighbourhoods should

be the priority.

Ten years from now, if I ask you for

directions to the center of Aberdeen, that

should be a clear place for you to

describe to me.

As Leon Krier imagines in this sketch, the

city is all the elements interacting with

each other, just as the nervous system,

circulatory system and digestive systems

of our body interact with each other. We

should breed many of these.

The Transit Role

With all this talk of transportation

alternatives it is pretty incredible that

Transit (Buses, Cabs, Car-Share) has

not come up at all. That is because

successful transit needs to be profitable

transit. Profitable transit needs to

connect the villages of the city, and

those villages need centers, mixed-uses,

a large catchment of people, and

internalized costs for all other road

users.

We have a long way to go before transit

in Kamloops can compete with the

personal automobile, and as we move

towards a Stronger Kamloops, it will have

just as much struggle against walking

and cycling. Transit will never create

pedestrians. In many cities, including

ours, transit advocates suggest that to

get people out of cars, or to reduce

congestion, or any of the other great

arguments for transit, we need to make

more investments in transit. The reality

is, until you have multiple places, full of

people on the street at both ends of the

trip, transit will only serve those who

have to use it anyways.

I am arguably one of the most

passionate anti-cars-at-all-costs

advocates in the City of Kamloops, I

want more than anyone for Transit in

Kamloops to be respectable and

110

frequent. I want to go to a movie, out for

dinner and drink a bottle of wine and

simply get on the bus with a few

moments notice. The reality is that transit

needs to be in-demand, not create

demand by having a large supply.

In our small city, with low traffic and

cheap parking, if money were no object,

what would we need to do to make

transit widely used?

Urbanity; all significant stops must

be in the heart of the action,

directly in the busiest pedestrian

areas, not a block away or across a

parking lot. Riders should be able

to fall into the bus from a stool at

the coffee shop

Clarity; routes that are simple and

straightforward. A rider should be

able to map in their mind the path.

This is very important for a driver

becoming a transit rider. If the time

on the bus is spent thinking, “this

is a pointless diversion for just 2

riders”, they won’t get back on the

bus; which reminds us why

significant pedestrian areas need to

be at each end of the line.

Frequency; a rider should not need

a schedule. You should be able to

walk to a transit stop and wait less

than 10 minutes for the next bus. If

this type of frequency cannot fill a

bus, then replace them with vans.

Bus manufacturers make dozens of

sizes of bus, and we need to utilize

more of those. Popular routes must

maintain short headways well into

the evening, or transit is not useful

for those outside a very specific

commute.

A small bus called the Eolo

Pleasure; we must remember that

public transit is public space, and it

runs through public space.

Windows should be see-through

both directions to engage with the

public space. Transit riders should

not be hidden like inmates. Seats

should face each other rather than

the front as much as possible. This

encourages sociability. Young

people (students) taking the bus

like sociability; over cars it has a

huge advantage by encountering

potential partners in transit. In San

Diego summers, bus windows are

removed; perhaps better windows

might increase the charm of a

downtown bus route, when the

rider can call to someone outside.

111

The time is coming when this type of

transit could be implemented, and at

current budget, large steps could be

taken to improve the system as it is. A

design charrette or open houses is not

necessary to achieve this basic level of

sensible service.

Transit subsidy will continue to be a very

important for a huge demographic of the

population on our journey to an inclusive

community. Right now there are too

many obstacles preventing current transit

riders from being able to drive but in

fairness to those who have no choice,

we must maintain transit service.

The good news for those who like to

drink wine with dinner, is the closer we

get to that Stronger Kamloops, the

cheaper and more frequent all types of

transit will become, from Taxis, to Buses

to other forms that may come to be.

Car Share

Car sharing seems to be getting a lot of

buzz, and has been implemented already

in Kelowna, but like transit, it needs to

be in a city that is already, resolutely

car-optional; Kelowna and Kamloops are

not.

Zip Car is a company that operates car-

sharing; for-profit. They only operate in

a handful of cities despite invitations and

incentives to participate in hundreds

more. Would we meet their requirements

to even consider Zip Car in Kamloops?

Zip Cars parked in San Diego, CA

First of all they require the best

dedicated parking stalls at all the

important locations. Considering many of

the commercially important locations in

Kamloops are on private property, it is a

gigantic mess of agreements to make

this plausible. Will Save-On, Aberdeen

Mall or Superstore re-allocate a handful

of stalls right outside the door to

facilitate car sharing? Likely not.

Second they need to see that Taxi-

Services operate in a large way with low

‘call-fares’; meaning that most taxi fares

are simply achieved by putting out your

hand and getting in the cab. Even on our

most urban street, Victoria, you cannot

simply hail a cab; you have to call for

one.

112

Thirdly, cities in which zip-car operates

successfully, peak parking rates in the

areas in which people using Zip Car

often top $7 per hour on street (we just

doubled our parking rate to $1 an hour),

already maintain some level of

congestion charging and have no

parking requirements on urban

construction. A large number of the

population needs to be looking for a

more cost effective alternative before

Car Sharing can even hope to become

yet another of the losing subsidies that

our government funds.

Further to the criteria of Zip Car, let’s

consider when people might need their

cars. They would likely need them when

getting groceries from home. In that

case the cars need stalls very near to

residences so that customers can pick

them up. Where in this city is there a

high concentration of people who would

be able to easily walk to pick up that

car? Perhaps where I live in Victoria

Landing downtown? Every apartment

whether 1, 2 or 3 bedroom, with only a

couple exceptions is a 1 car house and

so has far fewer cars per inhabitant than

most anywhere in the city. That said, in

one of the most urban buildings

downtown, no one has made the move

to be car-free. And that is only 40 or so

households. So if the most urban

inhabitants in Kamloops would not be

patrons of a car sharing service, who

would? How would they get to the car

they are supposed to share a few blocks

away? If they are parked at a commercial

place (read; destination) one would have

already arrived where they wanted to go

before being able to access the car.

When we talked about anti-connective

suburbs and their poor catchment for

Transit, Schools and city services, the

exact same problems arise here, only

worse this time, because everyone in the

burbs that can afford a car already has

one, and they are not going to give them

up for car sharing.

Zip Car would never choose to operate

in Kamloops, or Kelowna, and a car-

share program is highly unlikely to

succeed. Public funds should be

prohibited from such an endeavour, and

perhaps with profitability on the mind,

the private sector will probably

reconsider any investment in such a

scheme.

113

Involvement

This chapter has posited all kinds of

ideas about the built environment and

what makes cities successful. It has also

argued against some popular ideas that

some people think will be successful but

are shown not to be.

There is one element of the truly great

city, the financially successful ones, the

ones breeding credibility and following

all have, that result in changes to the

built environment, but start at a much

more base level.

That is the involvement of the public,

particularly young people. The

millennials, the 20-30 year olds amongst

our population, with fiery passion, fierce

energy, confidence, risk oblivion and

nothing-to-loose need and want to add

their two cents to the conversation.

The same way that many baby boomers

cannot dream of playing video games,

texting on a smart phone or using

computers with the fluency of most

twelve year olds; young people do not

know how to negotiate this world of

bureaucracy, process, zoning, coding,

bylaws and restrictions. Digital natives

grew up interacting with technology as

they learned to talk; baby boomers spent

their careers adding layers and layers

onto the law books, and now young

people enter adulthood into a world full

of paper and paper pushers that they do

not understand.

The problem is that every contribution

that these people want to make is no

longer allowed, and the rules are

unfailingly, and at great expense actually

enforced. Everything needs a building

permit, sprinklers, engineer report, liquor

license, sign variance, firewalls, grease

traps, minimum lumens, railing heights,

on and on and on… and nothing

happens. The innovative and creative,

who generate the city’s cultural capital,

that the private sector capitalizes on

cannot innovate or create.

Furthermore, this same process has

destroyed small developers. When

Kamloops was smaller than a few

hundred people there was two

developers; Mara and McIntosh. Later

there we’re hundreds. Now the story is

the same all across the country, there is

only a handful of huge developers left,

because the small guys can’t sit in

months’ worth of public hearings,

variance boards, rezoning applications,

traffic engineering, public/private

partnership funding, parking variances,

doorway location meetings, cladding

material consultations, on and on and

on.

We need a system that restores the

rights to develop to the young and risky.

114

Conclusion

What does it take to make a strong and

resilient place, in the grain of the block

to the size of a neighbourhood and then

across a city and even a region? It’s

about connections, and lots of them. It’s

about facilitating interactions, face to

face, between businesses and between

cultures. It’s about building to a Human

Scale. Building a place for walking is a

great place to start, and most of the rest

follows.

Walking needs to be:

Safe

Comfortable

Useful

Connected

Interesting

This chapter has all sorts particular

design incentives to encourage walking,

but the important ones for all road use is

simply:

Mix the Uses

Connect the Uses

Seek network capacity not road

capacity or car capacity

Diversify Housing Options

Once these needs are met, we are in a

position as a city to nurture more centers

of density, to work towards that ‘city of

villages’.

Many of these design challenges are

quite easy, some are much more

challenging. Some are very fine grained,

others are very broad based.

Building a well-connected, mixed-use,

walkable city will generate value for

those that are already living here. It will

create new attractions for the thousands

of International Students at TRU. It will

facilitate multipliers of tourist dollars

coming to Kamloops through the

Tournament Capital Program. It will

reduce the per capita tax burden of our

infrastructure. It will reverse the trend of

successive tax increases.

However a huge amount of bureaucracy

stands in the way of this success. Many

developers would naturally maximize

density for example, simply because they

would make more money; most people,

in general, pay more for ‘house’ than

they do for ‘yard’. City incentives

encourage large scale developments by

corporations that are not here to ‘invest’

in Kamloops. Their dollars spent here

never have any hope of capital

appreciation, and thus never intend to

add value. This is surmountable; city

planners need to build some back-bone

against national developers, and

concurrently create positive opportunities

for local developers who see the benefit

of truly creating an investment in

Kamloops.

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The next chapter is about all the money

the city does not need to spend, all the

time its employees could save rather

than shifting paper on regulation that is

hurting local investors, citizens and the

city coffers.

Density and intensive development of

smaller sites can alone provide a much

higher return on investment for city

infrastructure, but I am sure that no one

would want to advocate for dense

concrete canyons. Instead, combined

with fantastic public spaces, great

interfaces, diversity of housing options,

connected amenities and parks, we can

add more value to buildings, properties

and the city, while increasing the options

for transportation, housing and eating,

while creating positive circumstances for

businesses, creating jobs, lowering

pollution, increasing air quality and

creating a Stronger Kamloops. Many of

the things that need to be done, we

need to be allowed to do before we can

proceed.

Calaya, Guatemala; all newly built

These three images of Seaside, Florida, incorporated in 1980 show

just how urban, dynamic and economically successful new places are

able to be if allowed to be so, imitating patterns of development that

are centuries old. Seaside was built with almost no debt, and currently

holds no debt. It is more than a resort community; it is a small city

that serves as an economic incubator for the region

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Introduction

Now that we know what makes fantastic

places, I want to talk about all the road

blocks that are in the way of creating the

very places that capture the most value.

It is often not the lack of investment

capital, nor the absence of creative

ideas, or even a customer to purchase a

product. In most cases, it is actually a

burdening bureaucracy with well-

intentioned regulation that is enforced

blindly with little heed of intent or

outcomes that gets in the way. Other

times it is great plans that are produced

in the thousands of pages, at great

expense, and then simply shelved. In

either case it is often sited that a lack of

money is to blame for the inadequacies

of city services and projects.

“If we spent more on transit, we could

relieve traffic and help the lower income

levels participate in society. We could

also lower our carbon footprint and air

pollution per capita.”

“If we simply had more subsidized

housing, then we would have fewer

homeless, or we could prevent people

from ending up homeless in the first

place.”

When transit fares in Kamloops pay less

than 33% of the cost of the ride, and the

government tax commitment in 2012 was

over $10 million, transit could be better

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served buying everyone in need an

electric scooter or taxi vouchers.

Pollution could be better abated buying

everyone in Kamloops Solar Panels.

Instead, the lowest hanging fruit, for

achieving a more financially successful

city, moving towards a time of

successive, business and resident

friendly tax decreases each and every

year, is in relaxing and in most cases

abolishing outdated and ill-considered

regulations, that themselves are not

business friendly.

Furthermore, this future of financial

success does not need to be at the

expense of the Environment, those in

need, our valued parkland, our air quality

or our quality of living. Most

recommendations and concepts in this

book are lifted from Social and

Environmental groups with goals of

enriching the culture of our city; the

vibrancy of our streets; the inclusiveness

and equal opportunity of everyone; to

lower our environmental footprint; to

attract tourism and investment; to

improve access to all the city has to

offer and to truly be the best that

Kamloops can be.

This part of the book simply shows all

the money that doesn’t have to be spent

to create this productive future that we

could have.

Parking Requirements

I would suggest that no single city

ordinance on its own hinders the

efficiency of the free market, walkable

development and transportation

alternatives more than Parking

Requirements. As detailed before, both

strip malls and downtown high-rises are

affected, as are any other type of

development in the city.

Mall parking lots only achieve 40%

capacity on any given day and sit empty

all night. Downtown apartment dwellers

pay $40,000-$60,000 added on to the

cost of their property to have “free

parking” downtown, while dozens of

stalls sit vacant 12 hours a day outside

the door.

In Kamloops we require a certain number

of parking stalls and then limit the

density so that it never fills up.

In Europe, they limit the parking stalls

(thereby limiting congestion on the

roads) and put a minimum on density.

This approach may not be palatable for

the average Kamloopsian now but the

first step is to leave parking to the free

market, which means no parking

requirements of any kind. Perhaps in the

future a limit on the maximum parking

allowed may be encouraged, but never a

minimum.

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This is true in residential areas as well,

especially in places where alleys were

not built to accommodate services

behind the homes.

On a 33 foot lot, requiring 2 or more off

street parking stalls usually destroys two

potential on-street parking stalls,

needlessly interrupting the pedestrian

route, and turning a public accessible

good into a private good that is only

used by one user.

‘Snout Houses’ like this one eat up many of the parking stalls on

the street that we’re once a public amenity

If all or most residential parking is on-

street, then how does each home-owner

ensure parking for themselves? The

answer to this is simple: Parking Permits.

Currently parking permits are free, and

are present in areas which are built in the

traditional development pattern, thus

financially solvent and provided free of

charge. Empty parking stalls are

available for overnight or 2 hour use. If

parking does become a problem in the

area, again it’s the free market, and now

parking permit prices can start to climb.

As they climb, people who may have

driven their 8 block commute now feel it

is better to walk or bike. Someone who

works out of town can buy their parking

pass and continue their commute. An

average 600’ block of downtown houses

at 33’ a house has 15 house, and 40

parking stalls outside the door. If 15

houses cannot make do with 40 stalls,

plus any extra stalls accessed by the

alley in the back, we have a very very

serious problem.

The 600’ of 700 block of Battle. Lots of empty parking according

to this 2012 aerial photography provided by the City

Many suburban dwellers will rebut me

saying, we have too many illegal

basement suites and our street are

completely clogged with vehicles now,

you cannot possibly suggest we get rid

of our on-site parking. To this I would

reply that I am endorsing no such thing.

Most suburbs are so disconnected and

fragmented that they require automobile

use, and increases in density absolutely

create disastrous parking problems.

However it still remains the landlords

problem. If they have three cars and

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three parking stalls, and want to create a

secondary suite, then they must give up

a car to the tenant, find a carless tenant

or buy a neighbours parking pass. How

really needs a car is left up to the

market, rather than required and

subsidized by the city, and thus no one

can complain of lack of parking. If you

want to have visitors, and they need

parking, they will find it because parking

passes are limited to fewer stalls than

the street has. The market can take care

of the parking problem, and it can do it

profitably, rather than the city subsidizing

a problem that is further creating

demand for the very thing it cannot

afford. Alternatively they could reduce

road widths to only 14’ and provide no

on street parking at all, and leave all

parking to land owners?

Commercially the story is not much

different. The Kamloops Central Business

Improvement Association, paid in to by

all Central Business District Businesses,

advocated in 2012 for a controversial

parking lot adjacent to Riverside Park.

The KCBIA argues that downtown

businesses are not able to compete with

stripmall businesses on the periphery

due to a lack of parking. This is partly

true; many people find strip malls near

home more convenient than downtown.

Conversely many people park at

Aberdeen Mall and walk around and do

not complain. Ultimately Downtown will

never compete on the issue of parking

when a parking stall across the train

tracks from the business downtown

costs $40,000+ per stall, and stripmalls

will never have a “lack” of parking until

they no longer are subjected to parking

requirements, and thus limit and charge

for parking as the market

bears/demands. Getting cars in and out

of downtown faster and more

conveniently is not the answer to

generating a more profitable downtown.

More residents is; More feet on the street

in front of the businesses. To attract

more people downtown, the public realm

needs be complete, connected and

welcoming, as explained in the last

section of the book. But eliminating

parking requirements will allow many

more types of investors to make more

intelligent investments in downtown

residential. More investors making more

residences downtown translates into

more residents.

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The Scale Problem

Parking Requirements are not the only

problem with creating new residential

downtown. While the fixed cost of a

parking stall adds to the cost of each

unit, reducing the number of people able

to purchase it, and decreasing the profit

margin per unit, many other building

code issues prevent successful multi-

family developments downtown. These

issues are troublesome in their quantity

rather than their specific qualities. They

are only well understood when you

actually try to build downtown, or build

elsewhere with walkable, mixed-use

downtown inspiration in mind.

Reading the zoning code on its own,

many of these regulations will seem

sensible, based on the logic in which

they we’re implemented in the first place.

For example, one of these is the issue of

fire escapes and elevators. In the 1980’s

great leaps we’re made in an attempt to

include those with mobility challenges to

join society with the rest of us. This

included wheel chair ramps and

elevators. We have misunderstood the

mobility argument, and instead have

created huge, expensive, subsidized

special transit systems, car upgrades

and improvements; while incarcerating

seniors in their own homes and turning

parents into taxi drivers.

When a small building owner looks to

renovate a vacant building into

something productive, the city replies

with, what are you going to do about that

3” step near the front door? How will a

wheelchair get in?

BC Building code also requires two

independent, continuous stairwells for

fire access; both have to be wide

enough for a possible fireman and

escapee to pass at speed. This eats

space, a minimum of 300 sq. ft. per floor

of floor space available to sell. This

further drives up the cost of each unit.

Using stairwells of existing, adjoining

buildings generally is not allowed or is

very difficult, at least near impossible to

negotiate.

Furthermore, in between uses, for

example, between an office or shop and

a residential unit, very expensive and

complex fire and noise retardant floor

systems, like reinforced concrete, MUST

be used. These are expensive, and

discourage mixed uses.

These examples and more combine to

make dense property development a

game of scale. The sheer cost of all

these mandatory, non-saleable square

footage, means that the amount of

goods that need to be sold to cover the

common fixed costs increases higher

and higher.

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This prevents small local investors from

participating in the market. It prevents

small increments of development

creating exciting and diverse spaces;

small buildings that people love and

cherish and put their heart and soul in to;

and furthermore, in an increment and

size that people are actually able to

afford to put heart and soul in to.

So it keeps small would-be developers

out of the market place. For large scale

developers, even if Kamloops could

support large sales of a hundred or more

apartment units at a time, to make these

big projects move forward, there are

actually more restrictions that put caps

on Floor Area Ratio, density, lot

coverage, building heights, etc. that

challenge even big developers to enter

the market. Furthermore in Kamloops, we

can only support so many new housing

units per year with growth (known as the

absorption rate, which is around 500

units per year in Kamloops), and thus it

even increases the risks that large

developers are taking on.

Back to that small developer looking to

do a small little reno, re-inhabit an old

building, or simply construct something

new on a small lot; have they thought

about regulations regarding ceiling

heights, sprinklers, firewalls, stairway

grades, bathroom sizes, bathroom

numbers, parking stalls, turn radius,

width of hallways, railing heights,

ventilation requirements, insulation

retrofits, window size standards, bar

heights, table heights, fire capacities,

minimum hand washing sinks, separate

mop sinks, public hearings, development

guidelines, acceptable colours and

names, deposits, liability, permitted

signage, doorway orientations,

acceptable floor sealants based on use,

moisture barriers, minimum lumen and

lighting requirements, on and on and

on…

I can imagine now, John Doe, 22 year

old entrepreneur, managed to coddle

$10,000 into their bank account to open

a 400 sq.ft. coffee shop. What is their

response when the city requires a $5000

sprinkler system and a 180 sq. ft.

handicap bathroom? Not to mention a

mop sink, three dishwashing sinks, a

bathroom sink and a separate hand-

washing sink. 5 sinks in 320 sq. ft.!

Should we abandon building inhabitants

to death if the building should be on fire?

Absolutely not. However it is quite

reasonable to look at each building

proposal with an eye toward creativity

when looking at fire escapes. Is it

reasonable to assume that 8 tenants in

an 8 unit building would abandon it

before the fire department even arrived?

Could we then consider narrowing the

stairs?

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Private Sector Pre-Disposition

While the regulated market creates

incentives for large scale developments,

and dis-incentives for small scale

development, all development has a pre-

disposition to find a niche to maximize

the most value possible.

In this way every developer, whether it a

single home builder building a spec

house, or a large scale subdivision, each

developer wants to get the most amount

of money for the least amount of

investment; aka provide the most value.

A saavy developer would know that while

some people really value a large back

yard, many different people also despise

anything that resembles yard work.

Despite this, in every part of the city

other than the Central Business District

and Tranquille Market, mostly the city

only allows maximum lot coverage of

40%. Even RM-2 the cities medium

density zone, allows maximum lot

coverage of 40%. This produces rows of

disconnected apartment buildings like

we see on Arrowstone Drive. These are

places where people are living in

comparable densities to downtown

living, in apartments similarly sized to

downtown apartments, yet still have to

rely on vehicles for most trips, and live

on streets that have no life or vibrancy.

Arrowstone Drive; buildings are downtown densities, but

maximum lot coverage and minimum setbacks create isolated pods

rather than vibrant enclosed streets

Many other prominent zoning codes also

include further sub-conditions like “12%

of lot area to a maximum of 80m2”. It is

always about preventing intensive

development of any type. This means all

properties will have 60% or more of their

land devoted to something that is not a

building. In many cases this is a yard,

which some people do not value or do

not have the resources or knowledge to

care for. As a result hundreds of yards

are paved over, unkempt or “xeri-

scaped”. Furthermore the city is spread

out, leaving huge amounts of land that

people do not value left un-utilized.

A developer, knowing this, would

immediately remove many front yards,

make far smaller and better defined back

yards, reduce side yard setbacks, and

generally create enclosure and smaller

lots that lead to higher density and better

walkability. The decision to buy this

house would be left completely to the

client. Clients who wanted large yards

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could take them from people who see

them only as a burden.

One of the many houses on only one block of St. Paul downtown;

backyards that the occupants clearly do not value or do not have the

resources to maintain

Setbacks, lot coverage and density are

something that the private sector can

easily be left to take care of on their

own. For enclosure it is important to

maintain one setback per street. The

market value of the land determines the

density a developer can build on it, and

the developer will maximize that value,

thereby raising all neighbouring property

values. In residential areas, setbacks

could be back from the road, but

developers will only set back as far as

their demographic values (and thus is

willing to pay for), often much less than

the cities regulations.

In commercial areas, while parking

requirements deliver the number one

punch, maximum lot coverage, maximum

building height and maximum density

deliver the knock-out punch.

The cities “Arterial Commercial” C-6

zone, allows maximum coverage of 50%

and a maximum building height of 6

meters or 2 stories. They also require a

minimum lot area of 450m2. Further to all

this, if adjoining a separate-use, like

residential, it is required that a fence be

built to separate the uses. As the land-

lord of Tudor Village on Summit Drive, I

would be pretty unhappy about having to

build a chain link fence to keep all of my

potential customers in the apartments on

Arrowstone out.

High-Value buildings like this one are illegal in 90% of the city

124

With an increase in the density of tax

payers, the city is better able to afford

better public parks, squares and other

outdoor infrastructure that everyone can

use a bit of, without having to have any

personal commitment to maintain it. If

commercial developers we’re allowed to

build connections to the potential clients

in the neighbouring areas, would they

not want to increase the capture rate of

clients in the immediate area? Once

again we encounter a situation, where

left to its own devices the private sector

would intuitively complete the cities

goals. Goals that are both embraced in

the Official Community Plan yet

prevented in the City Zoning Ordinances.

Sun Peaks, all built since 1990, employs the requirement of

pedestrian active places like permeability, encolsure, view changes

and human scale. No public planning needed

Official Community Plans, Design Charrette and Public Consultation

In 2013 the City of Kamloops is

embarking on a revision of Kamplan the

guiding planning document for the city,

which is expected to cost around

$250,000. This plan will take about 2

years and is overseen by the cities

planners and engineers with public input.

The last Kamplan was put together in

2004, and its goals generally echoed that

of this book. However since that time the

regulations standing in the way of its

completion have not been addressed.

The theory behind the plan I expect will

not generally change, but its continued

ineffectiveness will remain unchanged.

No matter how much public consultation

is engaged in, and no matter how many

plans and best practices are assembled,

government restrictions at every level

continue to make those goals illegal and

unattainable.

In the private sector, when EcoSign

master planned Sun Peaks, they planned

with pedestrian orientation, and mixed-

uses in mind. They knew from

experience in Whistler that this public

realm produced profits. They oriented

the village walk to have patios and

windows to see items for sale. They

changed the width of the street, and the

direction of the street to maximize street

views, and to create an interesting public

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realm. The village at Sun Peaks

continues to impress the very same

people who live in Suburban Kamloops.

It is beautiful here they say. In this case

there was no public process; the Sun

Peaks Resort Corporation built the village

in a way that has proven to be

successful for hundreds of years.

The City of Kamloops, like most modern

governments are accused constantly of

not responding the public’s wishes. In

the context of this book it is most

relevant to the public hearing process

and the public planning process.

The City invites the public in both cases

to respond to public projects and

provide feedback. There are so many

problems with this process and let’s start

at 1:

1. The City does not state what it

cannot do

If Peter Milobar is a great Mayor, he is

great for one reason. He tells people no.

In Public Hearings, considering rezoning

or development permits, he tells people

that we cannot do this or this, and he

tells the public that he weighs

alternatives subjectively and often goes

against the opinion (NIMBYism) of the

many that stand before him and relies on

the truth of his staff’s recommendations.

Unfortunately this same logic and reality

has not yet found its way into the city’s

planning process. If you we’re one of the

many hundreds of us who have attended

public input sessions about the new

parking meters, or the performing arts

center (aka Lorne Street Parkade), or

Riverside Park plan, or budget hearings,

etc. you will understand what I am talking

about henceforth.

First of all, a few hundred people is not

even a large enough number to

constitute an official poll, so how it can

be taken seriously as public input is

beyond me. Furthermore the handful of

people that turn out to these expensive

little meetings are often the same

people; once again, hardly an indication

of public opinion. Worst of all these

‘public opinion’ meetings are conducted

like a restaurant order. The moderators

constantly say things like, “money is no

object, take your most ideal imaging and

put it on this chalkboard.” After that,

they might distill everyone’s blue sky

ideas in to a set of five or ten ‘key-

concepts’ that echo the direction that

they are already taking the plan, and

then poll the attendees on their

preferences. Now the attendees feel like

they have placed an order for ‘less-

graffiti’ or more ‘off-leash areas’ or

worse yet ‘a better economy.’

126

This is the same public that is so

disappointed when they do not get their

wish. The local government, if they

could, would give everyone high paying

jobs, eliminate poverty and have graffiti

only visible to those who want to see it.

But they cannot.

What these types of meeting do is

alienate the few intelligent, well

connected and powerful people from

participating with the city, which could

actually make a difference. Instead of

‘blue-sky’ ideas, when someone

suggests something not capable of

being accomplished one year from the

meeting, tell them it is not possible.

Eliminate those from these meetings that

campaign for ideological purposes that

the political middle will never deliver.

2. Government enacts regulation to

deliver results

If there is a popular uprising in your

neighbourhood to lower traffic speeds,

the city enacts an ordinance that says

traffic speeds should be lower. They do

not say that you are the very residents

speeding. They do not say that the road

is improperly engineered and

encourages speeding. If the road is

actually shown to be dangerous, the

traffic engineers will straighten, widen

and remove on street parking, so that the

driver has increased reaction time. Thus

the ‘standard’ is blindly enforced,

making the situation worse. Instead the

city needs to look at their plans, like

encouraging density, or carriage houses,

or mixed-uses, and look at all the

regulations standing in the way! As we

have seen, the ‘incentives’, mandated by

the city to develop are so contrary to

their plans that any development

incentives are meaningless.

127

3. Simply allow the private sector to

do what you want to get done

I jump started a project a year ago with

the Rotaract Club of Kamloops to

renovate, at no cost to the city, the

Concession Stand in Riverside Park. The

suggestion was not to change the use of

the park in any way from how it is

currently being used, only to change the

exterior of the building from a grey

construction of Concrete Multiple Units

(Cinder Blocks) to a new cladding of

horizontal cedar planks, with some

shade devices like a Pergola added.

The fundraising for the project was to be

done entirely through Rotary, donations

and volunteer labour. The City of

Kamloops Parks department turned this

offer down, for the reason that they did

not have a plan to deal with such a

donation, and so they embarked on a

$200,000 plan to engage the public to

determine that in fact, many people

we’re unhappy with the look and the

service of the Concession Stand.

Now over a year delayed, and just a

couple hundred thousand dollars poorer,

further meetings and wages are directed

to determine what the design of such a

project may take, to step on as few toes

as possible.

Another story, at Brownstones

Restaurant, liquor has only been served

on half the patio for the summer of 2013.

This is because of an 8mm difference in

the height of the fence separating the

patio from the pavement from what is

considered the ‘standard’ (1.06m). For

the last four years, the fence was within

the standard (0.9m), but the liquor board

and city in 2013 changed the standard.

The motivation to change the standard is

not clear, but miscommunications

between city staff and BC Liquor Board

staff have prevented liquor service for

months, diminishing revenue for the

business, and detracting from the patio

that city documents suggest increase the

appeal and vibrancy of city streets.

The offending, illegal Brownstone patio

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Furthermore, patios are not allowed on

the street between October 31 and

March 31, 5 months of the year. Why

someone could not enjoy their coffee

outside on a sunny February day is

unknown to me. One city official told me

it was for snow removal, yet the city has

no sidewalk snow removal program in

place… Lastly on the patio issue, why is

an expensive and rigid yet removable

railing required at all. Many cities get

away with simple ropes, and others like

Miami Beach, have no separation at all.

Miami Beach patios, with the public sidewalk running right

through the center of the commercial area

Finally the private sectors ultimate goal is

to make money and produce value. They

will accomplish that in ways that people

value, and thus ready to give up money

for. In all the cities plans the recommend

percentages of this type of business or

this type of housing or this type of

industry. Why do planners seem to think

that anyone other than the private sector

searching for a profit will be able to

figure out what is actually feasible in

each location. You can zone arterial

commercial or light industrial or high

density all you want. The developers will

build what will sell, and the persons and

businesses buying will buy what will

produce value for them. The city has no

place trying to anticipate preferences or

zoning mixes.

The moral of the story is that our taxes

rise each year for further bureaucracy

that does nothing but diminish the

capacity of our urban areas to be vital,

to frustrate and confuse business

owners and employees, cost money

while diminishing returns.

There-in lay a couple of the simplest

problems within the city “system”. First

of all, anything published as an “official

plan” is meant to be “comprehensive”.

Comprehensive=complete; the dictionary

129

definition, “including all or nearly all

elements or aspects of something.” Only

a handful of committee members really

get to make these decisions, and they

are often people that have two or three

years to sit in committee meetings. Who

then does this comprehensive plan

service? Do we really believe that any

plan could ever actually address all

aspects of something as complicated as

a city?

My grandfather always told me, “Any job

worth doing is worth doing well.” A

beautiful bit of advice, but I would

suggest that in the bureaucracy of

today’s city governments, we need to

accept that “Any job worth doing is

worth doing and getting done!”

Visiting Spirit Square on a sunny weekend afternoon, and not even

the winos can be seen here. So much for comprehensive planning

This is where the private (including non-

profit) sector comes in. When the private

sector sees a problem that can be

addressed, they formulate a plan to

address it, try it and see if it works. They

try for the lowest hanging fruiting first,

the least costly option, and see if it

works. If it does, it might be built upon,

or it might be seen as adequate to

address the problem or it might be

scrapped. Importantly it was done

quickly, and with little cost. Despite

thousands of hours and thousands of

dollars spent to realise that students

want to cross Summit in a straight line to

the university, and will do so at all costs,

the best the city has done is a couple

years of planning is to develop a sketch

of what a very expensive pedestrian

overpass might look like. What could

have been done already 5 years ago was

simply painting lines for a cross walk and

adding some signage to show that the

cross walk was there. Problem solved for

a fraction of the wages that have been

spent on planning.

Scrum, or Agile Method is how software giants like Google, or tech

companies like Gore-Tex rocket ahead to lead the pack. Constantly

evolving small changes and initiatives

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A further problem is that councils change

every three years, and the only projects

that survive council changes are big

ones, like a performing arts center.

Smaller projects die, and often the new

candidates are elected based on the

ineffectiveness of the last council

members.

I have identified that we need way more

seating in important pedestrian places;

Summit Drive at the corner of McGill, or

Victoria Street, or 4th Avenue, or Spirit

Square, possibly along MacKenzie

towards MacArthur Island. What areas

would get the most bang for the buck? I

would get some low cost benches

donated from Home Depots seasonal

overstock, drop them off and see if

anyone sits on them. If they are used,

then invest more in better, more

permanent benches, and test the

temporary benches in some new

locations: Maybe 6th Ave above

Columbia, or along a major trail in

Peterson Creek or Kenna Cartwright, or

perhaps around TRU Campus, or

Dalgleish itself.

If the city needs one plan, it is simply a

liability/due diligence advisory group to

encourage and help neighbourhood

activists to invest in their community,

rather than make big plans that do not

really address the problem and cost lots

of money.

The Downtown Renovation Problem

Before zoning codes, people intuitively

built complimentary activities near to

each other. In the case of The Bank of

Commerce Building at 118 Victoria

Street, bachelors employed by the

company we’re provided housing above

the bank. Other commercial services

located beside the bank and mechanical

and storage facilities located near the

train tracks. The early, generalist and

uneducated settlers of Kamloops

intuitively arranged the city to be very

mobile, efficient and productive.

With zoning codes, uses are separated

as much as possible, and so buildings

like the BMO building at 200 Victoria are

10 stories of one use.

While the desperation of downtown

landlords to fill their offices is well

publicized, residential in downtown

condos continues to be the most

successful sale and rental market in the

city. CMHC statistics show downtown

condos in Kamloops as one of the

lowest vacancy rates in the province.

Why don’t the owners of these vacant

buildings simply renovate some or all of

their offices into apartments?

The answer lies in what it takes to

change the use of your building. In the

rest of the city, changing uses means

applying for a re-zoning. Downtown the

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CBD zoning allows anything, yet a

Development Permit is required to

change a use, and the procedure is

almost exactly the same.

First as a landlord you need to hire

architects, engineers and consultants to

create a report showing every way in

which your building does not meet the

most current building code (and parking

requirements). These consultants create

a plan for how you are going to bring all

those infractions up to today’s standard.

This costs a lot of money.

Then you need to pay many thousands

of dollars to apply to the City for a

Development Permit Application. City

officials spend a few months revising the

proposal, advise changes and then bring

the plan to a Public Hearing.

At the Public Hearing citizens provide

council with feedback on the proposal

which was summarized only a few

minutes before. Then 9 councillors will

vote on whether to allow your project.

(Hopefully the media hasn’t speculated

on your project before this point.)

Months of planning and tens of

thousands of dollars later, 9 people

decide the fate of your project in 60

minutes or less. No wonder no one is

trying to change the use of their building

and get more people downtown!

In Los Angeles, the revitalization of

downtown began with exactly this

ordinance change: Allowing the re-

purposing of old buildings for new uses

with no mandatory renovations, reports,

parking changes, applications or

hearing; Just a building permit for new

infrastructure and materials.

One of the most modern, significant

housing types was created in vacant

warehouse space in L.A. at this time;

‘loft’ apartment’s aka industrial

conversions. High Ceilings, Open

Concept and other significant design

movements that have changed urban

housing across the continent over the

last two decades began with this simple

change.

Converting industrial buildings like this into residential lofts started

when L.A. repealed restrictions on use-changes

Today Downtown L.A. boasts tens of

millions in rejuvenation efforts from the

private sector that led to a successful 5-

day farmers market, high rates of bicycle

and pedestrian activity, lowered traffic

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accidents, a for-profit streetcar and a

particularly fantastic project by a large

national investor; The Grove. While the

Grove is just like any other chain

occupied mall development, it is also

different. It is open aired, boasts dozens

of connections to local roads and

housing, has little parking, completely

pedestrianized roads, 18 hour uses and

has become the center for culture in all

of Los Angeles. It started with small

investments in existing buildings.

The Grove, a walkable commercial area in the center of newly

walkable L.A.

Traffic Studies

As was lamented earlier, the Traffic

Engineer has had one of the most

recent, perpetuating and profound

effects in preventing mixed-use walkable

environments.

The first way the traffic engineer

accomplishes this is in travel lane widths

for moving cars. The average vehicle is

about 6 feet wide. And city standards

require that lanes on almost every street

in the city be 10-14 feet, and in the case

of some arterials, they are even wider

than that. As long as city traffic

engineers set standards for urban road

construction similar to highways, we will

get nowhere in the connection or value

creation that the pedestrian realm has to

offer. So many great public projects get

bogged down with simple things like

Traffic Studies. Parks get approval for

upgrading, but car counts on

neighbouring roads are somehow

considered almost mandatory before any

project can proceed; as if managing

current failure is better than managing

future success.

As suggested in the first chapter, the

solution to solving congestion issues lies

in simply connecting places, no traffic

study needed. When someone suggests

a multi-family development somewhere,

do not say it requires a traffic study; just

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ensure that it is well connected to the

existing network. In fact, if there is few

parking stalls on site, fewer of the

residents will be able to use cars, and

fewer cars will be on the road to begin

with.

Pedestrian or cycling infrastructure

should similarly never be subject to a

‘traffic study’. If it reduces lane widths,

that is good for every purpose we can

imagine, from private sector viability, to

everyone’s safety, to higher average

speeds, to reduced need for signals.

Many city intersections are being

considered for conversion to traffic

circles, as they are safer, better for

pedestrian use, facilitate higher average

traffic flow and require no signalization.

Yet traffic counts and behaviour studies

are required before up-grading. Mike

Lydon, authour of The Smart Growth

Manual simply heads out to the

intersection in question and uses pylons

and observation to determine if an

intersection will function well as a

roundabout. Usually it does.

Finally traffic counts are done on major

roadways continuously, to determine

when it might be necessary to add

another lane. Yet from what we have

discussed, we know adding a lane never

really helps for any significant amount of

time or at all. Furthermore, if every time

there is a slight bottle neck in the system

that adds minutes, or single digit

percentage points to the length of a

person’s driving journey, a multi-million

dollar investment in a new lane hardly

seems like the appropriate approach. Not

only does it cost money, but we are

talking about huge sums of money to

reduce the length of a drivers commute

by minutes, but usually seconds. There

is no economic benefit from this. No one

has a better day because of this. The

ability of any other type of transportation

to compete with hugely subsidized

driving continues to be castrated though.

Traffic Circles like these in Portland also facilitate smooth and

quick bike traffic, while keeping car speeds low. The nature of the

roundabout prevents the need for any road users to come to a

complete stop very often

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Not all Density is Created Equal

When one plops down a new high-

density structure in an area that has no

capacity to accommodate any trips by

means other than the car, the new

development will absolutely create new

parking and traffic problems, the

concern of every civilian at a public

hearing.

Combined with the fact that commercial

uses are used primarily during the day,

and residential uses primarily during the

night, all the traffic leaving or entering an

area uses only half the road, all at once.

It is not that the road is not large enough

to handle 17,000 car trips per day… it is

just not able to handle half those trips on

one half of the road in a one hour period

and be vacant the rest of the time.

The solution is simply mixing uses, so

that each neighbourhood has a reason to

be leaving or going at many times in the

day for many different users. In addition

that same neighbourhood should provide

enough accessible amenities so that

some residents, most days, don’t need

to leave the area at all.

While alleviating traffic problems, this

could easily be seen to encourage

neighbour relations and create a

community that knows each other and

looks out for one another. (Remember

CPTED)

Mixing uses in most areas is not allowed

by the city. The city does want to see

increases in density in all areas of the

city to partly address the very budget

shortfalls mentioned here. The city also

calls for density increases in all

neighbourhoods, as density is

considered by many as something to be

avoided at all costs, and thus many shun

it in a NIMBY reaction; so the city doles

out the ‘density increase’ more or less

evenly, ‘-ish’. Importantly though,

density is only a bad thing when it lands

like a UFO in a single family, single use

neighbourhood. When it is created in a

cohesive way with mixed uses, it can

provide a center for the neighbourhood;

create pride and community, while

diversifying housing choices in all

locations in the city; all the while

increasing the convenience and services

available nearby to existing residents.

This large, high density structure is a Seniors Home in Pineview,

which likely will not generate the same traffic a normal apartment

building would; however this type of density is the only kind of

density that radically creates traffic on roads, and exacerbates the

problems of isolated, poorly connected suburban pods , especially

for immobile seniors

135

Some other types of housing are quite

good at absorbing density into existing

areas, and do not require any large influx

of people and services. One of these

options is Accessory Dwelling Units.

These could be in the form of basement

suites, laneway homes, apartments

above shops or home based businesses.

These types of units are allowed in

Kamloops, but often involve large

hurdles to achieve, just like changing

uses of land. Furthermore, a house with

a basement suite cannot have a second

basement suite, even if the square

footage would allow it. A house with a

basement suite is also not allowed to

build a laneway house. So really this

“new initiative” is really only allowing a

duplex, where a duplex would often be

easier to build and a superior product for

all occupants.

Duplexes or higher density are also not

allowed in areas of single family, which

rules out most of the city. Examine the

houses on the next page which were

built before zoning codes. Which one

has 5 units, or 6 units, and which has 1

or 2? Allowing incremental density, in the

form of Laneway Homes and basements

suites, even both at a time, diversify the

housing mix in a neighbourhood. It does

not just change the income level of a

person who can live in a certain

neighbourhood; it changes the time of

life that someone can live in a certain

neighbourhood. Downsizing baby

boomers can sell or rent the big house in

retirement, or future doctors and lawyers

attending TRU can afford to live

downtown on student loans.

The city and developers need to realise

and encourage the benefits of small

incremental adjustments to density

through-out the whole city; as opposed

to the Pineview example where a gigantic

seniors apartment structure is planted in

a neighbourhood poorly connected to

the rest of the city, because the city

demanded mixed-density in the total

Pineview development. Not every

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neighbourhood needs density, but the

ability to handle density should be at the

finest grain possible; unit by unit, not

broadly demanded on acres of new

development that is not capable of

supporting it. Furthermore incremental

development in the form of basement

suites and laneway homes is completely

in the pocket book of a private person,

not the city. The city gets new taxable

value, usually about $150,000 worth, for

absolutely no expanded infrastructure.

It should not just be a free for all, but

simple guidelines that remove the

bureaucracy, the development cost

charges and the expensive architects

from the equation should be expedited.

I say this as a person who directly makes

money from custom laneway home

building; I will lose business should

something like this happen, but it is

simply the way that the city needs to

adapt to the 21st century. With all the

rigmarole currently required to legalize

and build a laneway house or basement

suite, the venture isn’t even usually

lucrative. The very thing that could be a

good “mortgage helper”, could add

density in a sensitive and fine scale, add

value to blocks and taxable value for the

city, is burdened completely by

excessive regulation.

Let’s look at what seriously basic

laneway house for rental with NexBuild

(the company I sell Laneway Homes for)

might look like. It is 2 bedrooms with 1.5

bathrooms; about 750 Sq.Ft. By city

regulations it needs to be architect

designed to resemble the house which

property it is on. The city spends many

hours reviewing the design, and charges

$4000 for their services; we charge

$3500; getting you to public hearing:

The house, with minimal landscaping

and no furniture, costs $193,500.

If you finance the building costs from

your exiting equity:

The return is less than a GIC, and in

2013 that is saying something.

Deisgn Stage:Rezone Package 3,500.00$

City Fees 4,000.00$

Construction Drawings 5,000.00$

Total 12,500.00$

Construction:Site Work + Landscaping 20,000.00$

Building Construction 161,000.00$

Total 181,000.00$

Total Costs 193,500.00$

Costs of a 750 Sq. Ft. 2 Bed 1.5 Bath Simple Design Laneway Home

Expenses:

Financing Payment 903.68$

(3.5% Interest Rate; 25 years;

askaaron.ca)

Tax Increase 120.00$ (8.0592% of $150,000)

Maintenance Budget 50.00$

Vacancy 58.75$ 4.9% CMHC 2012

Total 1,132.43$

Revenue:

Rent 1,200.00$

Gain/Loss 67.57$

Return on Investment 0.64% per annum

Cash Flow - Scenario 1 - Build Costs Financed

137

If you have around $200,000 laying

around for a laneway house, this is what

your costs look like:

It is a reasonable return if you have a

cash investment, but that does not make

it a mortgage helper. Laneway Homes

therefore only economically make sense

in the current Kamloops economy for

people whose purpose is not rental, but

instead emotional. It could be because

they believe in the project, or they want

swanky guest accommodations in their

pre-war downtown house. Others have

built them for family members; disabled,

aging or low income. Few have built

them for rental income; Renters do need

a place to live, and all of us have rented

at one time or another, but regardless,

restrictions need to be eased.

Currently laneway homes still need to

adhere to maximum lot coverage rules,

maximum heights, maximum footprints, 3

on-site parking stalls minimum. These

regulations restrict the number of lots

that can even be built on, before strict

aesthetic review and public hearing.

Small Lots

In all zoning types there is always a

minimum lot size. This, like maximum

density and lot coverage has the obvious

effect of creating high barriers to enter

the property market.

The smallest allowable lot size for

residential is 464 square meters or 1/10th

of an acre. Keeping in mind that the

same zoning only allows one unit at 40%

lot coverage, that unit would have to be

450 sq. ft. That is a tiny house, but

manageable, and even preferable for

some at different times of life. The reality

however is someone looking for no yard

and a unit this small is really only allowed

to live in a couple large apartment

buildings in the whole city, as otherwise

it is illegal.

For all investors to be able to participate

in the market, tiny lots with no minimum

lot coverage need to be allowed, so that

the local tailor can own the building that

they operate their business in.

Conversely, old residential areas can see

new housing stock added in lanes and

other poorly utilized parts of the

neighbourhood by allowing ownership of

more diverse housing forms. In fact, to

achieve investments in value per square

foot of land, it would be far more

productive for the city to place a limit on

the maximum lot size.

Expenses:

Tax Increase 120.00$

Maintenance Budget 50.00$

Vacancy 58.75$

Total 228.75$

Revenue:

Rent 1,200.00$

Gain/Loss 971.25$

Return on Investment 6.39% per annum

Cash Flow - Scenario 2 - Cash Purchase

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Small Homes

Nomad Homes is a start-up enterprise

out of Vancouver that manufactures

factory built homes, that can easily

achieve net-zero for only $25,000. They

meet every fire-code, insulation code,

plumbing code, etc. in Kamloops except

one. They are too small. Kamloops

indirectly requires that a home be over

400 sq.ft.

If the small lots I described we’re

allowed, you are barely allowed to build

a small house on them! A 10 year

mortgage on a house like that is only

$246.92 a month! That means first year

university students on the property

ladder. Why is this illegal?

Nomad Homes marketing pictures

The Homelessness, Subsidized Housing Feedback Loop

Subsidized housing is full of problems,

and it is a forever, never ending

feedback loop of misinvestment.

An important element of the need for

subsidized housing is the in-ability of

the market to supply affordable housing.

Many elements of that inability stem from

many of the same regulations that we

have seen here among some others.

More houses having secondary and

tertiary units would increase the supply

of rental housing, and many small

investors would be interested in making

this a reality if costs and regulations

we’re not so prohibitive. Government

makes providing affordable housing

illegal, and then is burdened with the bill

of providing affordable housing. Not the

first time we have heard this.

For others home ownership could be

more affordable if additional revenue

streams were available to new home

owners to leverage the value of their

property. It is not uncommon for young

people to buy a home and rent out the

rooms, however as maturity sets in, it is

uncommon for persons to want to

continue living communally. Simple,

non-political rules which allow basement

suites and duplexes everywhere in the

city facilitate this change; as do small

lots.

139

The Unsuccessful Provincial Local Growth Plans

The Province of British Columbia knows

just how cash strapped its municipalities

are, and would love to help any way they

can. When the economy is slow, they

introduce the B.C. Jobs Plan, to inject

money into the economy to try to

‘preserve growth’ (the only thing that can

possibly help them repay their debts at

the provincial level as well.)

All too often that “investment” is in the

form of local infrastructure

improvements. These “improvements”

over time often seem to have exactly the

opposite affect though.

When an infrastructure improvement is

done, which almost always means car

mobility improvement (even when

building a pedestrian bridge); it is a one-

time investment, that often the city then

takes possession of the long-term

obligation of that project.

New water mains to far flung areas are

one example of this, or new lanes on

important arterials. This provincial

funding exponentially expands the

maintenance obligation of a city that

already cannot afford its current

obligation. Logically, it further cripples

the city’s ability to ever possibly level off

tax rates.

Furthermore, infrastructure investments,

like a new walking bridge over an inflated

roadway (.ie. TRU) only provide some

employment for a small amount of time.

As much as 40% of the capital

immediately disappears from the city and

the province in the choice of materials

and fuel consumption. Of the wages that

are paid, hoping to create a multiplier

effect in the city, assuming all wages

were invested back into the city, the tax

base would still never expand far enough

to generate new tax revenue to ever

remotely recoup the cost of the

investment. The Province is destroying

the local governments’ ability to rein in

expenditures of infrastructure

commitments and investing money that

they never have a hope of ever

recovering in the form of income or sales

tax.

To recover that money they will have to

increase tax rates, and increase them

some more, and I am not sure any

logical person could ever suggest that

higher taxes, paying for unproductive

infrastructure, has ever improved the

economy of anywhere.

If you suggested to anyone that they

should build a structure that costs $5

million, and will only result in revenue of

$500,000 (optimistically) in new tax base

(property, income, sales) for the sake of

jobs, they would suggest that you are

140

insane. How can a government structure

that is entering bankruptcy possibly

believe that it is improving the economy

by creating financial commitments for all

tax payers that cannot be supported?

The following pedestrian bridge in Dallas

is one such investment. It connects a

small community of houses along the

river, which do not generate the tax

revenue to sustain their roads or sewers,

to a small traffic island on the other side

because. Well no one knows. There is

bus stops on the road nearby, but the

buses don’t bother pulling in to this

expensively brick paved court, as there is

no one walking here to catch the bus to

justify the diversion. After a teenager in

Edmonton dropped a rock off such a

bridge killing a bus driver, it was further

invested in to enclose the bridge with

chain link. The bridge is not beautiful, in

fact at night seems dangerous. It serves

no one. It was very expensive to build. It

solved no problem. It connected no one

to nothing, and now the city is stuck

paying for expensive infrastructure that

returns nothing on the investment. There

are literally hundreds of such examples

across the city and across the province.

Thank you B.C. Jobs Plan.

See the bus stop there? With no sidewalk at all?

141

Food Trucks and Temporary Uses

Not many things in modern city life have

been shown to be as successful for

attracting people to a place as food

trucks.

Japa Dogs on the Streets of Vancouver

are famous, and here in Kamloops Cat

and Jos Pig Rig attracts customers to

bizarre, ugly and otherwise anti-

pedestrian places all over the city, and

they make a living doing it.

Imagine the power of a food trucks and

similar, trendy businesses to attract

people to completely unused, or

underutilized areas of the city; places

like Spirit Square on the North Shore.

Spirit Square is pretty much the cities

only urban plaza of any type in the whole

city. It cost lots of money, and is not

even used by homeless people. The

farmers market couldn’t make a go of it

here. Why? It doesn’t connect anything

through it. There is nothing within it to

attract anyone to it. It is not enclosed or

defined, it is not interesting, and there is

no seating, so it is not comfortable.

What could a couple of food trucks and

moveable seating instill in to these types

of places?

It is important to remember that The Bay

did not start as a huge national

department store retailer, but as a series

of ramshackle outposts though out rural

Canada, and it was well funded! The

original Wal-Mart was simply Waltons, a

small main street pharmacy and grocery

store, and still has secondary uses

above!

Just as residential needs small lots to

allow all investors to participate, and

truly progressive city needs to allow all

manners and persuasions of

entrepreneurs to enter the market at the

lowest rung possible. Only then can

budding small business owners actually

afford to make the mistakes necessary to

142

succeed in business. Unfortunately the

best cities for cultivating small, vibrant,

self-employed business communities in

North America in the last decade have

been places that have a complete

dysfunction of government, or complete

hands off approach like Detroit,

Asheville, Portland or Austin.

In these places, when someone is doing

something small scale and potentially

dangerous rather than enforcement, they

instead look the other way. As ideas and

movements gather steam, they help them

make the transition from little cart in the

market to actual tenant. Food Trucks

incubate business exactly like this, and

the only place they have a strong

possibility of success is Downtown, and

that is the very place they are not

allowed. They also have the ability to

bring new vitality and excitement

downtown, so the relationship is mutual.

Cat and Joes Pig Rig, a food truck in Kamloops, parked in a

location where they must be looked for, rather than encountered,

bringing vitality to nowhere, and undercutting their potential

revenue and success

In Kamloops, Kamloops Innovation

Center on Tranquille Road is helping

idealistic, naïve, passionate, risk-

oblivious budding business persons in

the tech sector into serious

entrepreneurs by providing small cost,

small risk steps and guidance along the

line from idea to concept to plan to

execution. This type of development

does not need to be reserved for tech

products. Pop Up Hood in Oakland has

done the same with retail and

restaurants; the city has underwrote long

term leases on whole blocks, providing

small commitments, short term leases,

as small as a month and 4 sq. ft. to

everyone who has something to

contribute. The city does not lose money

on this venture, and it breeds the self-

actualizing dream of being your own

boss into hundreds.

CookieBar, NYC. Mother and Son would rent 4 sq.ft. of other

peoples stores to sell their cookies each day, and people would

follow them around the city

143

Temporary Buildings

Not all buildings need foundations,

especially buildings that are housing

commercial uses; occupied by people

that are alert, sober and awake in the

daytime. Hudson’s Bay outposts had dirt

floors and so do our campgrounds.

A one story commercial shelter anywhere

in the city should not require any building

permit, and unless completely indecent,

should not even require a business

license. While not a permanent solution,

temporary buildings, on piles or dirt

floors, break down barriers to entry

which allows value creation in the city.

When they city truly endorses this step in

entrepreneurship, we will see the

transition from RV in a vacant parking lot

fruit stand, to legitimate businesses

which become local institutions.

Wynwood Walls, made of shipping containers in Miami, started as

a temporary graffiti installation on a property developer’s vacant

land waiting for approvals, which instead became an art institution

Temporary Buildings of the kinds I am

suggesting would not need to be heated

or air conditioned or even insulated. The

built form of the structure would be

simply to provide basic security and

shelter to the businesses inventory or

merchandise.

These shops in Seaside, Florida are

simply metal roofs and paver brick floors

sitting on pilings with no foundations or

insulation. They are simple and cheap

and achieve their goals of reducing

barriers for lower rungs on the ladder to

entrepreneurship. Getting these types of

tenants in business is a fast way to

create value in your community and

empowered citizens that care about their

streets and communities.

144

What does a Successful Place Look Like?

The path forward is not a clear one, nor

an easy one. I am fairly confident that at

least one sentence in my book has

offended every reader, their way of life,

their politics or their sensibility.

I have suggested that simply suspending

many of the needless and expensive

activities of the city, and eliminating

zoning requirements that are restricting

forward momentum will solve problems.

In many ways that de-regulation of those

specific requirements should do a lot to

help the best developments and

investments move forward. I subscribe to

a doctrine of financial conservancy, and

I believe that we need to make savings

as a city, and leverage the lowest

hanging fruit to gain the most immediate,

and lasting investments, that pay

dividends again and again.

The way forward could use some help

from certain regulations being expanded

however. These are regulations however

that would generate more revenue for the

city while furthering its own

democratically created goals. It would

also continue to leave choices in the

hands of the citizen rather than a

planner.

Land Tax

In our pattern of development which

offers little choice from driving, I have

argued that the Carbon Tax will do little

to change behavior, only cost tax payers

more money. I have further shown that

the effect of pay parking, which can be

immediately invested in improvements at

the destination, can in fact have far more

pronounced affects while internalizing

costs that need to be paid anyways.

Land Tax, or Land Value Tax could have

a far faster, and more profound effect on

the built environment even than paying

for parking, without essentially asking the

public for any more money than is

already collected for property tax. Its

effects would increase the quality of the

Interface, density of the city, and capture

more value per acre of infrastructure for

the city. This means less commitment

per taxpayer, and thus lower taxes or

increased services.

What is this Land Value Tax that I am

suggesting? On the Assessment that I

receive each year for my downtown

apartment I am given two figures. One is

the Land Value, and the other is the

value of the Improvements. Combined

make the figure I pay tax on. What I am

suggesting is that the Land Value of the

bill be taxed with more weight than the

Improvements.

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This property on Seymour is a surface parking lot, and its taxed

$5775 each year for that, as the improvements do not even meet a

threshold to be taxed

The reason is simple. A parking lot is

taxed very little, but creating productive

uses, like warehouses, retail stores,

housing, etc. is actually discouraged,

because they are taxed more.

Improvements lead to higher taxes and

thus higher expenditure with added risk

of not finding immediate income to cover

the higher expenses.

With this in mind the City has

Development Areas, such as Tranquille

Market where they offer tax-free periods

for developments that meet certain

criteria, like mixed-use and meeting a

certain density. However in most of the

city this is not the case. This is also only

a Carrot approach, one in which existing

property owners have some incentive to

develop, but really only if they we’re

considering this in the first place.

With the Land Tax approach, with

emphasis being shifted more heavily on

the Land portion, Improvements are

taxed less than not improving in relation

to each other, creating incentives to

develop. Let’s use an example. We have

two properties, and their specifics are

shown below:

In both cases the city collects the same

revenue, $10,000. However in the Land

Tax example, the $600,000 improvement

has lowered the effective tax rate on the

whole property to just 6%, whereas the

empty, unimproved lot is paying 25%

effective tax on the total value.

If the owner of the unimproved lot we’re

to build a building, their tax rate would

not change, and their effective tax rate

on the total value of the property would

drop.

This type of system would not

automatically raise the rates in poorer

areas where people could not afford

improvements however, because the

No Improvement Property Tax @ 10% Land Tax @ 25%

Land 200,000.00$ 200,000.00$

Property -$ -$

Total 200,000.00$ 200,000.00$

Tax Collected 2,000.00$ 5,000.000$

Effective Rate of Total 10% 25%

Improvement

Land 200,000.00$ 200,000.00$

Property 600,000.00$ 600,000.00$

Total 800,000.00$ 800,000.00$

Tax Collected 8,000.00$ 5,000.000$


146

land assessment in those areas would

remain low. In high demand areas, like

downtown, where people are market

proven willing to pay a significant

amount more for a square foot of

building, sitting on an empty lot

becomes exceedingly unattractive.

Consider what was knocked down to

make way for the parking lot at 310

Seymour Street:

The Empress Theatre; a strong, sturdy neo-renaissance brick

building which stood for 42 years until 1954 at 310 Seymour

Many buildings we’re knocked down

because the cost of maintaining them

combined with all the promise the

automobile brought in the 50’s and 60’s,

it seemed purely sensible to knock down

such buildings. It is important to not

discount the effect that tax policy has on

what rational choices we each make,

from living in the suburbs to historical

preservation.

Anyways, back to Land Tax; Land Tax

would encourage property owners to

develop their property in any way that

could collect new revenue, but they will

not be penalized from the city for that

investment. This would obviously

generate new investment in vacant land,

generate new density of residents and

businesses, and to meet market

demands, would do so in a small

increment and intelligent response to

what the market is looking for. The

developers and land owners would make

small scale, fine grained, context

sensitive decisions, rather than a

thousand foot above ground mandate

from the city. By its very nature this

would produce more diversity of building

types and businesses, more diversity of

investment and scale and innovation in a

local lending market. Best of all the risk

to the city at large is very small. Property

owners that are not able to or not willing

to develop their land now have an

incentive to facilitate a sale or

partnership with someone who is willing

to develop. Sitting on a property as a

retirement fund is no longer as lucrative

of an investment.

In the meantime, good buildings are not

knocked down to make way for

something only slightly more valuable, or

quite often, less valuable.

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In the ratios that I have described, going

from a 10% property tax to a 25% land

tax, properties break even at a 50%

investment, meaning that they return to

the same effective rate on the total

property of 10%. This means that

intensive development is encouraged,

but if your property is only slightly

improved, you would not see any

increase in your tax rate.

As can be seen in the tables here, in

Kamloops, with its current ~4.5% tax

rate, a change to a ~11.25% land tax

rate would see the same incentives

created, assuming that the average

Kamloops property currently has 50%

more invested in improvements over land

value. The average property sees much

more investment than this, but there are

properties all over the city that do not.

The Canadian Home Builders Central

Interior released a report on residential

lots in Kamloops with Improvements

under $50,000 in 2011. There were

almost 1000 ‘empty’ lots in Kamloops,

which already have city services, but are

paying almost no tax.

Below my ‘tax efficient improvement’

ratio of 50% over land value, there are

many thousands more. Many of them are

tear down shacks on downtown streets,

or vacant lots anywhere. For interest’s

sake, here are a number of random

properties selected from the south side

of the river:

As you can see most ‘normally improved’

proprieties where people live meets or

nearly meets the threshold of investment

needed to actually have their effective

tax rate lowered with a Land Tax system.

With pockets of under-invested and

vacant land filling in, new dense and

mixed-use nodes receive more incentive

all over the city, not just downtown.

Property trades hands to those who want

to build and contribute. The entire value

of the city, both improved, and the land

it is built on rises in value.

It is important not to consider jumping all

in to a complete renovation of the tax

system, which is why I suggest simply

weighting the land value portion of the

tax higher, year after year, heading in

Break Even - Example Property Tax Land Tax

Land 200,000.00$ 200,000.00$

Property 300,000.00$ 300,000.00$

Total 500,000.00$ 500,000.00$

Tax Collected 5,000.00$ 5,000.000$

Tax Rate 10.0% 25.00%


% investment needed to break even 50% 50%

Break Even - Kamloops Actual Property Tax Land Tax

Land 200,000.00$ 200,000.00$

Property 300,000.00$ 300,000.00$

Total 500,000.00$ 500,000.00$

Tax Collected 2,250.00$ 2,250.000$

Tax Rate 4.5% 11.25%


% investment needed to break even 50% 50%

Property Gross Land Gross Improvements Gross Assesment Investment Ratio

1395 Hillside Drive 6,130,000.00$ 18,401,000.00$ 24,531,000.00$ 200%

301 Victoria Street 762,000.00$ 6,286,000.00$ 7,048,000.00$ 725%

1947 Arnica Street 127,000.00$ 247,000.00$ 374,000.00$ 94%

721 St. Paul Stret 151,000.00$ 145,000.00$ 296,000.00$ -4%

293 Arrowstone Drive 808,000.00$ 2,850,000.00$ 3,658,000.00$ 253%

661 Battle Street 141,000.00$ 208,000.00$ 349,000.00$ 48%

669 Battle Street 165,000.00$ 417,000.00$ 582,000.00$ 153%

250 Columbia Street 157,000.00$ 133,000.00$ 290,000.00$ -15%

184 Greenstone Drive 202,000.00$ 283,000.00$ 485,000.00$ 40%

927 Munro Street 203,000.00$ 117,000.00$ 320,000.00$ -42%

148

that direction. If the tax system we’re to

change all at once, we might see too

many properties hit the market all at

once, because the carrying cost is too

high, and see a mass de-valuing of the

land value of the real estate, and thus

destabilizing tax revenue.

A standard commercial strip-mall along

an arterial with parking requirements

lifted on my development would now

take a good look at its land. Previously

they were paying little to nothing to have

huge parking aprons. Now those parking

lots are costing a fortune compared to

rent producing buildings. Eventually I

would increase the density of the

structures (increased rent revenue),

charge for parking stalls (supplementary

income) and not actually lose any

customers. This would blaze the trail on

responsible auto-mobile use, while

creating investment value for the city,

while decreasing risks for developers.

The most convincing argument against

land taxes that I have heard regards the

ability of the tax assessment authority to

determine the value of the land. B.C.

Assessment already has metrics they use

to determine land values based on the

sales prices of neighbouring properties

and isolating variables to determine Land

Value in a market based approach.

The Last Word on Land Value

As was shown on page 25, Land Value,

we see that suburban large scale

developments see huge subsidies,

especially further from the center in the

form of really cheap land; subsidies that

make periphery development

unnecessarily attractive. When valuing

land, the algorithm used to determine its

value should internalize the cost of the

infrastructure to maintain it to some

extent, and not be completely market

driven. After all, an acre of infrastructure

is an acre of infrastructure.

My apartment downtown is 650 sq. ft. or

60 square meters. Apparently my small

percentage of the lot that 619 Victoria

Street sits on is $111,000. Or in the

context of my apartment, I pay tax on my

land value equivalent to $1850 per

square meter. Consider that someone on

Arnica Street in Pineview pays only $205

per square meter of land used. I pay 9

times higher tax per square meter

despite using far less of the city’s

infrastructure and services.

1947 Arnica Street pays tax on a land

value of $127,000 for a 619 Sq. M. lot. I

pay tax on $111,000 of ‘land’ ten stories

in the air which is only 60 square meters.

We must remove this subsidy to remotely

attract any type of development

recommended in this book or our OCP.

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Case Study; Mansard Roofs

I think it is really worth making the point

how serious tax policy truly affects the

built environment and how we live.

In late 18th century Paris, buildings we’re

taxed based building height, measured

to the cornice line of the building. So

some clever developers, including

Mansard himself, pioneered what is

called the Mansard Roof. One or two

stories built with dormers in to the roof

of the building. When the tax man came,

they simply pointed out that those

windows are in fact above the roofline,

and thus tax exempt. These roofs are

now an icon of Paris and imitated

worldwide.

Pay For Parking in the Burbs?

City sewers are a fairly expensive

endeavour, and in a city as dry as

Kamloops, Storm Water Run-Off systems

are only needed a couple times a year.

Bang for the buck is very low. The city

requires that 5-15% of every

development be landscaped, and

incentives are in place for “native plant

species” to minimize the need for

capacity in the sewer system.

In commercial areas 15% of a

development or more likely 5% being

landscaped has no real effect when the

rest of the lot is non-porous concrete or

asphalt that sends all that moisture

straight into the sewer system. Surface

parking costs the city money; if Land Tax

seems unattainable politically, a simple

rider to charge all properties in the city

for each parking stall could be a

compromise. Of course this would be

extremely un-fair if parking minimums

we’re to remain in place, but with

parking minimums repealed and a tiny

cost per stall, property owners will start

to work with the city about how to

engage with other modes of transport,

because the public cost has become

their problem.

When liquid and agile private property

owners are compelled to find efficiency,

efficiency is often found very quickly.

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Urban Growth Boundaries

Much is made of Urban Growth

Boundaries and Greenbelts around the

world. Metropolitan London was one of

the first cities in the world to implement

this artificial barrier to growth. Remember

that we are already financially way past

the limits of our growth; an Urban

Growth Boundary is a line which says

this side is the country, this side is the

city. The city side can be as developed

as it likes, the country side is reserved

for parkland, wildlife, agriculture, certain

industries and other non-urban uses.

This Google Earth image of London near Uxbridge shows London

built to around 3-4 stories with mixed urban uses comes to an

immediate end, and what is beyond is active farmland

Kamloops does not have a growth

boundary, primarily because the lure of

the new property tax is too much, and

the costs of the new infrastructure

maintenance commitment too distant.

Urban Growth Boundaries require some

level of cooperation from the Regional

Authority, in our case the TNRD, to not

allow subdivisions to be built on the

edge of town. However, as the libertarian

that I am, I don’t really have a problem

with someone putting up a new sub-

division outside city limits, like

Rivershore Golf Club, or a set of

cottages on Monte Lake, as long as

there is no governmental or public

commitment to maintaining the

infrastructure. People can live where they

want if they are willing to pay for it.

The Urban Growth Boundary that I

suggest is simple. The roads that we

have built and maintain now are the

roads that we will build and maintain into

the foreseeable future, or until we have

reached a point of near non-existent tax

commitment by the city’s residents. The

same goes for fire stations, ambulance

stations, water mains, etc. If you want

city services, then you have to live in the

city. If you want to live in the country,

than you can live in the country; with a

septic tank, well, water filtration system,

paying for your own new power polls or

solar panels, and if you like the luxury of

paved roads, I am happy to let you

spend the $75,000 per lane per KM cost

of paving, and let you maintain that road

as you see fit.

The reason for a boundary such as this

is two-fold;

One, we now know what our

infrastructure commitment will generally

be as the city’s population grows or

falls. The amount of infrastructure in

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place will remain generally the same in

terms of costs, and there won’t be new

ones. This means we can predict with

some accuracy what we will owe in 10 or

20 years. In cases of adding capacity to

the systems, upgrades can be localized

and specific, rather than needing to

upgrade a whole main to add a branch at

the end. In the case of densification that

bigger main will service increased

property values already on that main. The

new main will expand the value of that

land, which with a land tax will now

induce further value addition. The new

tax value will be much more likely to

recover costs, than new speculative

improvements on new infrastructure.

Second, in every example of an enforced

growth boundary anywhere on earth,

from London, UK to Portland, OR, it has

resulted in a diversity of transport modal

shifts, skyrocketing capital gains on

private property, increased tax capture,

and surprisingly, accelerated population

growth. After the establishment of the

growth boundary in Portland, combined

with significant investment in biking,

public transport, the public realm and the

abolishment of parking requirements, the

city has seen unprecedented economic

and population growth for many

decades. In Social Mobility, Carbon

Footprint, Air Quality, free time,

entrepreneurship, investment, quality of

life and economic performance, Portland

has surpassed nearly every city in the

United States. All the competitors

leading in these same statistics have

also implemented mixes of similar

principles, like Denver, Colorado; San

Francisco, CA; New York City (it wasn’t

that long ago that NYC was an appalling

place to visit).

I hear all the time, those places are big,

and Kamloops is not. What about

Asheville, North Carolina or Seaside,

Florida?

Land Tax is both a Carrot and a Stick to

promote investment, development,

densification and financial resiliency. The

Urban Growth Boundary simply shifts

investors’ attention in on the city, rather

than to Greenfield sites on the periphery.

When I suggest that no new roads be

built, I wish to clarify that new roads

within the existing city network, could be

fantastic investments, like connecting

Pineview Valley to Aberdeen and its

Firehall and School. Another example, if

a proposal was made to join Arrowstone

Drive to Summit at 2 or 3 new locations,

connecting the residential and

apartments to the commercial area, I

would suggest that to be a great

investment, especially should it be tied

with the densification and mixing of uses

in the commercial area.

152

Form Based Codes

As I have shown in a number of different

ways here, zoning codes often seem to

present many problems to creating

successful urban form. However, as the

person that I am, I cannot point out a

problem without talking about

alternatives.

The solution that I seem to be

suggesting so far is that conventional

zoning does not work. This is true, and

even with many regulations removed,

such as parking minimums, maximum lot

coverage, minimum set-backs, there is

still the questions of use. If every area is

allowed to mix uses, especially in

identified centers, then there not much

left of zoning codes. City officials will

not swallow this pill, as in many cases it

puts them out of a job. City Councillors

likely would not accept this, because

they don’t likely always see how zoning

affects urban form and how we use the

public realm. In most cases, a councillor

views zoning as a mediation process,

where they attempt to balance the needs

of the public with the desires of a

developer. In many cases the mayor or a

councillor will very reasonably suggest to

a fearful and upset public that what the

developer wants to do by changing the

zoning is likely better than what they

could have done legally with the past

zoning.

This type of reaction and mediation was

shown at the Public Hearing for a small

multi-family development at 916 Fernie

Road.

20 Residents attended to rally against

the developer, claiming such concerns

as “people already travel 70km/h on this

road, this will just make it worse”.

Councillor Pat Wallace was quoted

saying, “it’s like Mario Andretti’s

speedway”. Unfortunately she, with

Councillor Nelly Dever suggested that the

roads on this street are too narrow. In

fact the opposite is true. The road is too

wide, and all parking is accommodated

off-street. We know that it is these very

residents driving so fast, it is the

complete absence of pedestrian

infrastructure and design speeds of

70km/h that encourage people to drive

this fast and finally, new cars on the

street would increase congestion and

slow traffic speeds.

Despite these concerns, many

councillors actually backed up their

arguments for allowing the development

to proceed based on the drawings

submitted by the developer. In the end,

the project is moving forward, largely

based on the fact the 12 unit

development was built with similar form

and character to the 6 units that would

have been allowed anyways under the

previous zoning on the site.

153

In another example, a Carriage House

was presented before council, and was

rejected based on the form. The house

was too big, or didn’t have features, like

a garage, that some councillors believed

necessary, but the same house, when

presented at appeal with neighbours

houses for massing context was allowed

to proceed.

Perhaps what council is looking for in

moderating has actually much more to

do with form than with use.

Form-Based codes are gaining huge

traction on our continent, and they are

concerned completely with the urban

form, and very little with what uses the

property is used for. An appropriately

sized small condo development with a

corner store, hair salon and coffee shop

in a neighbourhood like Sagebrush could

be a fantastic fit, as long as the scale

and size of the building is appropriate.

This change in perspective could allow

council and city administrators to sleep a

little easier, knowing that they have some

say in the moderation of public vs.

private interests, while better allowing

developers, builders and property owners

to move forward on projects that build

value for the city and its

neighbourhoods.

Conclusion

This chapter basically prescribed two

streams in which the city can achieve its

goals and become more financially

productive. They fall in two categories:

1. Removing Barriers

And

2. Correcting bad incentives

There are thousands of other ways that

the city could become more effective in

its governance, while making more

financial sense, but this is a good start.

Some numbers to consider:

If values in Sahali were brought to the

level of Tranquille, from $613 per square

meter to $902 the city would receive a

68% more tax for the same infrastructure

commitment. In dollars that means these

malls would increase in value from a

combined $147 million to $216 million,

an increase of roughly $70 million; to the

quality of Victoria Street? An increase of

359% or $380 million to $527 million.

154

This section of the book is currently waiting for concept

illustrative additions by local Artists, Architects and

Designers. For now, use your imagination!

Ways We Can Invest

Now that we can see what steps

Kamloops might take to become a more

productive city, and have a deeper

knowledge about the motivations and

goals of different stakeholders, it might

be worthwhile to explore some local

projects that I can see adding value in

Kamloops. Some of these things are

constructed, in that they have a direct

and immediate physical manifestation.

Others are initiatives that can be taken to

encourage personal investment in the

neighbourhoods where people already

live.

Most of my suggestions are downtown.

This is simply because these are areas

that already have well connected streets

and have a lot of value to be gained for

very little investment. They are low

hanging fruit that can be discovered

easily with few stakeholders.

The other areas of the city, like Sahali,

Westsyde, Heffley Creek, Valleyview and

others have plenty of potential, but the

large lots, primarily private out of town

companies and rigidly suburban

population would be a far tougher sell for

these concepts. Worthwhile, and

publically created, they could be very

successful, but the results are not so

easy to achieve, and benefit far fewer

people.

155

Tactical Urbanism

A very intelligent and motivated New

Yorker, Mike Lydon has popularised the

term ‘Tactical Urbanism’ in planning and

activism circles in the last couple years.

Tactical Urbanism can encompass

sanctioned to vigilante activities that

promote vibrancy in urban environments.

His booklet by the same name is

available free online, and his talk at (x)po

is a fantastic introduction to his work.

Mike also works as a consultant to cities

and their public investment projects.

Locally, projects such as Public Produce

– the installation of edible landscapes in

urban areas are an example of tactical

urbanism, as was the yarn-bombing on

Victoria Street.

The principle idea behind tactical

urbanism is a principle that government

everywhere could take a nod from. This

is the concept of allowing and even

encouraging low-level, low risk

experiments (aka Short Term ACTION)

that can translate into long term change.

New York City did this when considering

the pedestrianisation of Times Square in

2009. Rather than invest time and money

in public process, they simply showed

up one morning with traffic cones,

folding aluminum lawn chairs and closed

the road for a couple days. Despite

many doomsday warnings, the world did

not end, and the project was a

resounding success. After re-opening

the street to cars for a short while, the

city then painted the road red, added

some fancier traffic bollards, some

umbrellas (nothing expensive) and

gathered public opinion, at the site,

about the future of the square. Again

feedback was optimistic, positive and

encouraging. The Times Square Alliance,

the Business Improvement District

around the square registered

unprecedented gains in sales at retail

and restaurants when the site was

pedestrianized. Now the city has

reconstructed the square to be fully

pedestrianized with new facilities and

amenities to further enhance and

diversify the ways in which the square

can be used.

In this example, the city used Short Term

action to help make the step, rather than

planning everything, and accomplishing

little.

156

Citizens in Kamloops have the

opportunity to engage in all sorts of

activities that would enrich the public

realm in Kamloops, which would add

value and excitement to their

neighbourhoods. These could include

installing all the bike racks the city has

talked about installing, or painting

crosswalks where everyone seems to be

jay walking.

This man in Paris asks 0.10 Euros to put a crosswalk down

wherever you would like to cross the street

I am not suggesting that we

pedestrianize Victoria Street. In fact I

would suggest that would likely be a

disastrous step to pedestrianize any

street in Kamloops for any period of

time; Kamloops simply does not have a

walking culture, or the facilities yet to

support one.

I have dozens of other little ideas that fall

into this tactical urbanism ideal, and

many are detailed next.

Tactical Urbanism and Kamloops

In 2013, the City of Kamloops planned a

great plan. As part of the Lorne Street

improvement project, it was imagined

that the 5 way intersection of Victoria,

Victoria West, Lorne, Lansdowne and

First Avenue could be a public plaza in

front of City Hall. Further to this,

connectivity could be improved by

connecting First Ave, and Seymour to

Lorne, allowing better connectivity.

Furthermore, better pedestrian

connections would be created to link

Victoria Street with Riverside Park. Lastly,

elements of the plaza would terminate

the vista of the 100 block of Victoria

Street, creating value for the entire 100

block.

After public input, countless meetings,

lengthy surveying and planning, the

grand project went to tender. The budget

for this “little” project was $1.8 million,

but the only firm to tender for the project

expected $2.2 million: $400,000 over

budget.

For this reason, the project has been

delayed until 2014 to wait for different

competitive bids. If anyone has ever ate

on the patio at Brownstones Restaurant

on this corner you will be very familiar

with the motor bikes and muscle cars

squealing the tires as they tear away

down the seeming “freeway entrance

157

ramp” that is the start of Victoria West.

This deters business and makes this

location uncomfortable.

Further to this the elements of City Hall,

the Train viaduct, the Old Courthouse

and 118 Victoria Street, the termination

of Victoria Street, and the logical

connection of downtown to Riverside

Park, this site should be the highest

quality location of the public realm in the

whole city.

Rather than scrap or delay the project

further, the city could simply add some

bollards, some paint, some moveable

chairs that we’re overstocked by a local

business and presto, in the meantime,

plaza achieved. Not complete but

achieved. The city already has had

formal documentation supporting this

plaza for over a decade, maybe it should

get done!

The City needs to stop thinking of million

dollar solutions for thousand dollar

problems. Investments in city

infrastructure need to have a direct and

measurable result from investment.

Investments need to be small, with

allowance for failure, rather than planned

by committee, costing lots and never

producing results that are not measured

anyways.

500-700 Victoria Street

The first thing that we all know about

Victoria Street between 5th and 8th is that

it is shaped like an Arterial: Plenty of

surface parking, even in front of

buildings; 4 wide traffic lanes, signalized

intersections, and poor quality sidewalks

(though they are wide). The reality is that

despite the wider and more numerous

travel lanes, this road actually carries

fewer vehicles than narrower blocks of

Columbia or Tranquille. Furthermore,

judging by the Central Business District

Zoning, mixed 18-hour uses, dense

residential and parking meters, it would

seem that this is a place of commercial

success, best achieved on foot. These

blocks feature two Kamloops hotels that

see tens of thousands of international

guests each year; when they walk

downtown to get dinner this is the street

that they base their impression of

Kamloops on. These couple blocks also

see large development lots that are for

sale, and plenty of lots that are under-

developed or simply surface parking.

500 Block now

158

Beside Memorial Area, Peterson Creek

makes a brief foray into daylight on

publically owned land. Finally, this is the

second densest residential block in the

entire city after Battle at 4th Ave; and the

densest if you include hotel rooms.

The area that could see a great public space, well enclosed and

enriched with new pedestrian facilities and accompanying private

sector investments on vacant and under-developed lots

Clearly this is a block that could see

huge value creation by investing in the

public realm; especially considering the

amount of real estate that is simply

laying and waiting to be re-ignited to

useful and viable purposes.

The clear first step in a broad sense

would be to close two of the traffic

lanes. What we have learned though is

that interesting urban places change

their form and character over time, so

simply extending the wide-sidewalk,

paving stoned, mid-block cross walks of

lower numbered Victoria Street

addresses, there is an opportunity to

realise a new type of space in this

location.

For this reason, I would suggest that the

two middle traffic lanes be closed,

creating a pedestrian corridor in the

center of the road rather than on the

periphery of the road. This type of

boulevard has seen much success in

northern European cities like Helsinki and

Oslo, and would be a great fit in this

location.

The best part of this approach is that it

could be approached tactically. When

the city simply repaved a block of Nicola

it cost nearly $100,000. For only a few

thousand, the city with volunteers could

lay down temporary coloured paint in the

middle of the road, with planters at

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spaces near the edge, combined with

some benches, and viola, new

pedestrian park and pathway in the

center of the city. Now visitors turning

around when looking east down the 500

block of Victoria, are rather enticed to

walk further. This is expanding the

Victoria’s walk-shed, and encouraging

business.

If the project fails, it is simply a matter of

moving the planters and washing off the

paint. If it is a success, money will

become available to expand the project,

plant permanent trees, and upgrade the

pavement.

In fact, if one really wanted to encourage

small business, and vibrancy on this

street, stalls could be created in this

meridian for food trucks, and places for

said trucks to install moveable chairs.

Furthermore, rent charged to these food

trucks, or buskers that may want to use

the area, could pay for all of the

improvements!

Now a street usually devoid of people

and cars can become a vibrant new

center for the city, and perhaps

investment in vacant and under-

developed properties. These streets

actually pay enough tax that they could

fund this project on their own, if so much

of the revenue wasn’t directed to

subsidizing sub-urban streets, but that is

beside the point.

There is another asset that exists in this

area however, and that is Peterson

Creek. Currently a largely abandoned

and poorly lit pedestrian path exists

between the arena and the creek, mostly

for a fire escape. This site has the

further ability to build on the pedestrian

realm of Victoria, and to be inhabited by

farmers market style booths, non-profit

performing stages, food trucks and other

uses. A vacant lot against the train tracks

could easily terminate the vista of this

little park, creating a truly unique outdoor

space in the heart of urban Kamloops.

This newly defined and pedestrian space

could even hold sculptural art exhibits

from TRU; making urban and emotional

connections for students in the city.

Again this grand vision could be

achieved through simply renting out

multiple stalls on the site for food trucks,

adding some seating and perhaps a

porta potty.

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Victoria 2.0

Vicotria Street 2.0 is not merely a decent

and quaint pedestrian street anymore.

With fantastic hotel and residential uses

at the 7th ave end, view changes in the

middle and City Hall Plaza/Riverside Park

well connected to the other end, with

minimum public sector investment,

downtown Kamloops is an urban force to

be reckoned with.

Foot journeys from one end to the other

are vibrant, exciting and safe at all

hours. Tourists now remember Kamloops

as a city, not just a stop on a train or a

place they once had a tournament.

Signage welcoming you to downtown

Kamloops would be absurd in its

creation, because the actual image in

front of you would be clear. I have

arrived in downtown Kamloops. All this

without sacrificing any parking stalls, any

traffic capacity, but instead creating

private sector opportunities.

6th Ave

If my future boulevard vision we’re to be

realised from 5th to 8th on Victoria, 6th

Avenue would be a great opportunity to

continue such a boulevard.

When we entered the discussion in the

first chapter about ‘anti-connective’

places Columbia Street was highlighted

as just such a corridor. 6th Ave is fairly

anti-connective in its small sidewalk

configuration. It requires large,

expensive cross walk apparatus to hold a

couple cars for 30 seconds for single

pedestrians. Despite its car configuration

its place which sees a huge amount of

walking trips each day, generated by the

walkable blocks that join it, and the

density and demographics living there.

6 Empty traffic lanes on 6th

The RCMP office building on the corner

of Battle has a beautiful little pocket park

constructed in front of it: fountain,

benches, flowers and all, yet most city

dwellers are unaware of its existence,

simply because it has no connection to

the surrounding area.

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A series of boulevard features could

bring this little parklet into a series of

public spaces and accessibility.

The unused little pocket park at the RCMP building

Across from the RCMP building are a

variety of medium density walk-up

apartments, great housing for students

or low income families. Behind the RCMP

station is a large surface parking lot that

is just waiting for the value to be added

to add similar density there.

As 6th makes its way across residential

areas, it makes sense that rather than

intensive commercialization, that instead

the most be made of the crossing of

Peterson Creek near Columbia, or play

areas for kids, or social interactions like

chess boards, horseshoes, croquet or

other easily installed durable outdoor

games.

6th Ave is re-made from automotive

sewer, and a poorly utilized one at that,

to a vibrant neighbourhood center for all

those who live nearby (which is a lot,

many thousands are within a couple

blocks). The best part is, rather than

having 6th Ave devalue the real estate

that abuts it, it would make the value of

those properties much higher!

Slack Lines and Interactive fountains in Norway, the type of human

scaled installations that would bring 6th

Ave to a kid enriched

pedestrian oasis in the center of the city

Finally, in the walk-shed theory, that

different types of road provide facilities

for longer walking trips, this enjoyable

and visible walking corridor would bridge

the gap from the non-walking south side

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of Columbia, bring more people on foot

into the downtown core.

Furthermore, this expansion could pull

the downtown transit exchange into a

meaningful place within the city, rather

than an afterthought crowded in the

corner.

Vic Sixth; the new center of Kamloops

With all this imaginary new dynamic

investment that could happen on 6th and

Victoria with pedestrian boulevards, the

intersection of the two would see more

and more and more traffic. Many new

businesses would surround the

intersection, and soon vacant lots would

be built on, for residences, offices,

entertainment and more.

This intersection has to ability to be a

fantastic shared space intersection that

could hold a monument which tourists

would flock to and residents would relax

in. Like Eros at Picadilly Circus in

London, or the Spanish Steps in Rome,

this could be the meeting place, the

landmark on which travel downtown is

referenced from.

Eros in Piccadilly Circus

The incredible thing is that this doesn’t

have to cost millions. This future that is

realised is one that could happen with a

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few small scale investments in planters,

bollards, paint, chairs and bike racks. If

the vision is strong, and the idea

received well, the private sector will

scramble to participate. If a civic

investment has true value; non-profits,

rotaries, chambers, homebuilders,

corporates and citizens will be happy to

come to your aid. If they are not, then

the investment is not worth making.

4th Ave

Like 6th Ave, 4th Ave connects an

incredible amount of residential density

to commercial density. Despite being

one of the most developed and valuable

2000 feet in the entire city, including the

3 highest density residential towers

(Oaks, Pines and Acacia Towers) in the

city, high end apartments at the

Dorchester, the downtown YMCA, a new

6 story tower on St. Paul, the downtown

Coopers Foods, a couple fantastic

Heritage Buildings, restaurants, an art

gallery and the old Bay building (now

occupied less than 30% by the Daily

News) and terminates in the Courthouse,

Hospital and a park: Fourth Ave is a

devalued and poorly invested in street in

Kamloops.

In this chapter it might seem like a lot is

made of block to block variations in

form, but it must be remembered that on

foot, these block to block changes are

the difference between $20 per square

foot rent businesses that succeed and

$8 per square foot businesses that fail. It

is the difference between $150 per

square foot residential properties that

can’t sell and $300 per square foot

properties that sell the same day they are

listed. High value land can afford very

intricate and fine grained investments,

low value land is not thought about.

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Fourth Ave at the North end; quality heritage buildings with poor

vacancy due to poor public interface

4th

end to end; green mixed-use nodes, blue office nodes, orange

high residential nodes, YMCA in the middle. 2000 feet of potential

Reasonably good park space with mature trees that terminates 4TH

at the south end, but split off by 4 lanes of high speed traffic on

Columbia with no enclosure

Anyways, Fourth Ave has a lot going for

it, and is very well utilized despite being

underinvested in the pedestrian realm.

The reason is clear, there are many

reasons to be here; residences, the

YMCA and a large grocery store. Like 6th,

4th has many vacant and under

developed lots ready for investment,

shown in yellow in the last diagram. It

also has many marginal business spaces

that are ready to see improvement.

What does 4th need now? Street Trees

have got to be the number one. How to

pay for it? Extend parking meters and

on-street parking up the whole street,

end to end. 4th has many places that

parking has been eliminated for turning

lanes, which is completely needless and

unnecessary.

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Next, the sidewalks are not wide enough

for real patios next to businesses, so

open up the parking stalls to be patios

across from the businesses. Erwins

Bakery, the old Felix on Fourth, these are

businesses that could see a lot of value

added with patios, and could add a lot

of value to the public realm and the

street as a whole. It is important to

remember that for profit, the private

sector wants to add value to the public

realm. If a business is renting a couple

parking stalls for a patio, then they are

producing direct revenue for the city.

They are also increasing the value of the

properties around them, creating indirect

revenue for the city. In the end, all the

land is valued higher, businesses

flourish, and our city is worth more. It is

more valuable emotionally, and thus it is

in reality more valuable monetarily.

Fourth could also use pedestrian islands

at key intersections, or even all of them,

to create safe, efficient short pedestrian

crossings. Fourth really does not need

much to become exceptional.

Columbia Street: 1st to 6th

Columbia is likely the most difficult street

in which to convince everyone that it

needs to be smaller rather than larger.

At time of writing, over $10 million has

been allocated towards expanding

Columbia from 4 traffic lanes to 5. I

believe that what really needs to happen

on Columbia is nearly the exact

opposite. The curb lanes should be

parallel, on-street parking producing

meter revenue.

The engineering departments’ argument

for the expansion of the road to 5 lanes

is predominately due to speed changes

created by cars making left turns into

any of the avenues along Columba.

Every traffic engineer knows that

standstill traffic beside fasting moving

traffic is a recipe for accidents, and so

their over-engineered solution is more

traffic lanes.

One moments logic would suggest

however that the few cars making left

turns are not held back by excessive

traffic so that they need their own lane to

turn, but rather a two-fold problem:

1. All oncoming traffic comes in

predictable and long spurts created

by traffic signals which release all

the traffic at once.

2. Having to navigate not one, but two

lanes of oncoming traffic. Often the

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immediately visible lane will be

stalled at the next blocks light

making room for you to turn left,

but the right lane remains empty,

and your view is obscured,

preventing safe left turns.

So in fact it is not traffic volume that is

the problem on Columbia, but how that

traffic is organized. It is also important to

remember that a ‘Central Business

District’ does not mean that only one

place in the city can have a high density

of uses and business.

Columbia Street has proximate higher

residential density than Victoria in the

same blocks (thanks to The Pines, The

Oaks, The Dorchester, Nicola Towers,

Acacia Towers, Mosaic and a handful of

other medium density apartment

buildings). It also has a huge commercial

and institutional density at Ponderosa

Lodge, the Courthouse, Royal Inland

Hospital, Interior Health Offices, a

couple hotels, City Facilities buildings,

Peterson Creek Crossing, and

restaurants.

Every private sector business either

survives by shielding itself from

Columbia (Starbucks) or exists on the

brink of decrepitude (Howard Johnson

Hotel).

Why this street has been imagined as a

thoroughfare with no mixed-use

commercial value to the city planners is

a wonder to the author. Yet Columbia is

a street that already has all the variable

in place for an incredibly successful

place, yet it is falling apart through direct

devaluation from city infrastructure

projects.

In the short term, Columbia should

simply have on-street parking installed.

Next Street Trees should be installed. If

turning vehicles remain a challenge,

traffic circles should be installed, not

lanes or lights.

One of the challenges with Columbia

Street is that 90% of its traffic travels

straight along it, and only a small amount

of the traffic enters and exits from the

perimeter. The signals that stop the flow

of traffic for a couple vehicles to enter or

cross the street are unnecessarily

disruptive to traffic flow. The solution is

simply a traffic circle, that can

accommodate a couple vehicles entering

from side streets when needed, and

oncoming traffic needs only to slow

down momentarily for someone turning

left across traffic. Traffic circles are

shown in every case to lower traffic

accidents, increase safety, and create

environments that persons not in cars

can navigate easily.

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In the future Columbia could be a Shared

Space Street; with the highest value real

estate, hotels, and hospital services in

the entire city.

1st Ave

First Avenue is probably one of the more

speculative projects in this little portfolio

so far. First Avenue appears on my radar

not because there is plenty of under-

developed real estate. There is actually

very little. This street contains the Old

Courthouse, an entrance to the

downtown Farmers Market, and some of

the highest value homes in the city in the

West End.

What is interesting about 1st Avenue is

the sheer paved area that the city

maintains, yet is inherently useless.

To access the one-way First Avenue,

you must turn right off of one-way

Seymour, or go straight in the right lane

of First Avenue below Victoria. First Ave

is one-way and three lanes wide, with no

on-street parking (due to the steep

grade). This means of the three paved

traffic lanes; one is immediately

inaccessible and another one is

superfluous.

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First Ave carries no line-ups at

intersections, so three lanes are not

needed for queuing, except for perhaps

where it meets Columbia. What First Ave

does have is incredible views of the

meeting of the Thompson Rivers, only a

few minutes’ walk from Victoria Street.

Here lies an opportunity to add value to

the city by creating new park space, new

publically accessible views, and new

utility within under-utilized infrastructure.

I would argue that a sensible

improvement to be made would be to

expand the sidewalk on one side of the

road to be the width of the two travel

lanes, with new trees added, some

stairs, benches for resting and platforms

for viewing. In areas of steep grade, little

shops and studios could even be located

under the platforms.

This improvement would undoubtedly

add walkability to areas of the west-end,

and thus bring up property values

directly adjacent to 1st. More importantly,

it would reduce the city’s commitment to

sewer and car infrastructure on this

street. Instead, water features that work

with the rain could be installed, capturing

rain, directing it into ponds and into tree

beds. Further, small waterfalls and other

gravity fed water features could be

created, making walking in the rain an

activity, rather than a burden.

Steep grades and their treatments are

the subject of iconography all over the

world, from the Favelas of Brazil, to

switchbacks in urban San Francisco. It is

important not to replicate others

success, but to look as inspiration and

imagine how the principles can be put to

work for us here in Kamloops.

In the generation of Social Media,

Facebook and Instagram, each and

every picture that inspires an

international student to put Kamloops on

the web, is one more little drop in a

building wave of Kamloops as the 21st

century small city to be in.

Every opportunity that we can create

unique public spaces which citizens

grow with, build lives in and reflect back

upon attract little attentions that translate

into a sense of place, and that sense of

place is what makes places like Times

Square so valuable; not only for tourists

but also for residents.

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Seymour and Lansdowne

While dissecting all of these little

downtown streets, it is pretty hard to

ignore the elephant in the room,

Seymour and Lansdowne. Both of these

streets are one-way, have huge swaths

of surface parking and parking

structures. These streets also perform

dismally commercially. Lets look at one

example: 355 Lansdowne Street. You

may have known it since 2009 as

Charlies, Chrome City, Rivers and more.

It has been through 4 tenants and now

vacant for over a year. The City has

assessed the property at $1.3 million, yet

at $799,000 the property has been on

the market for over a year. No one in the

private sector is going to pay for a

building that is completely devalued by

the high speed one-way street, but

being beside a dark and industrial

parking structure is the kiss of death.

Many people tried to run this premises as

a night-club, yet it couldn’t make a go

of it, no matter how low the lease rate

went. As a night club, you need to have

plenty of girls to attract guys to spend

money. Girls do not want to walk down

an otherwise vacant street that is poorly

lit. Remember CPTED, this street

provides plenty of places for someone to

hide (parking lot, alleys, behind bushes,

etc.) For these same reasons no

business will be successful here, until

this street is well enclosed with

continuous doors and windows to the

street, other businesses (at ground level

in the parkade for example), better

lighting and has street trees. At that time,

this entire block could be an important

component linking downtown closer to

the river.

Until that time, the city will continue to

tax the owner of 355 Lansdowne Street

right into bankruptcy, and the city will

continue to have unproductive and

pathetic return on investment on these

streets.

I am not ignorant of the pulp trucks that

service the cities single largest tax-

payer, Weyerhaeuser which pays over $6

million per year, and the one way streets

here may be important to them. Fine, just

make the one way only one-lane wide,

and introduce other improvements, like

benches, landscaping, a terminated vista

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or two, better integration with

Lansdowne Village, among others. Give

people a reason to want to be here, and

watch the private sector grow that

investment.

If the pulp trucks take an extra minute or

two to make it to the pulp plant, will the

city lose millions in tax revenue?

Probably not, but they will gain in

downtown property value and business

gardening, profitability and attraction.

McGill Corridor and the University Village

McGill is a street like Columbia, it already

has all of the elements needed to be

extremely successful, however street

geometry, lack of on-street parking, high

traffic speeds prevent it from being an

iconic and vital public place. As always,

the city puts together fantastic plans

which sit on the shelf and never get

used. In this case, the Southgate/McGill

Corridor Plan; its 33 pages suggest that

McGill should try to integrate the

University better, but never mention that

a 4-5 lane arterial road might be in the

way. Actual recommendations involve

some trees, some nice drawings of large

car-oriented signs and lawns at the

university and transit shelters (once

again believing that transit brings

people). It also suggests an “industrial-

high-tech” district beyond. Investments

so far have included the $9.6 million

dollar Hillside Drive connector, a street

with absolutely no adjoining tax base to

pay for its sidewalk, lighting, storm

sewer and two traffic lanes.

It also included the creation of a TRU

transit exchange. The new exchange is

located, like the downtown one,

completely away from the action, and so

most bus users on Campus do not use

it, and instead use the stops near to the

buildings in front of Open Learning.

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Once again, the simple and cheap bus

stop is working better than the master

planned and extremely expensive bus

exchange.

It also encourages the preservation of

open space at the entrance to the

university, preventing the enclosure of

McGill to become the “Main-Street” that

the plan identifies. The University Master

Plan of the same era (2003) also make

such smart suggestions as building a

parkade on the North facing slopes,

defacing the best views on the campus,

while locating new “research buildings”

in a little valley to the west between

Purolator and a cliff, a large distance

from parking, transit or the rest of the

university.

In 2011 the university contracted EcoSign, the same planners as

Sun Peaks to redraw their plan, and thankfully the parkade on the

best view property was dropped

In the end, the obsession with making

maps and attaching uses to boxes in

reflection of a handful of committee

member’s points of view is absurd. Clear

connections that connect places of

importance in direct and sensible straight

lines need to be created. Then they need

to be enclosed with value adding

amenities, like shops, pubs, community

facilities and housing. The local private

sector needs to have a meaningful

presence on Campus. Currently the

universities handful of monopolistic

contracts is awarded to a handful of

highest bidders.

Local café owner Ian Harding made a bid

to open a new location of Café Motivo

on campus in the new House of Learning

building, that too at an extraordinary

lease rate, but was denied to the highest

bidder, Tim Hortons. Old Mains new third

floor “food-court” is leased entirely to

one group of fast-food conglomerates.

The universities food and beverage

services are notoriously mis-managed

by national Aramark. Meanwhile the

campus Culinary Arts program feeds a

handful of staff and students in an out-

of the way location, and struggles to

cover its costs.

Instead, identify a couple of well

enclosed outdoor spaces on Campus,

invest in them, and preserve them. Add

new fruit trees. Add activities like boche

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ball, or croquette to encourage active,

public outdoor sociality. Enclose the

paths between the new spaces with 2 or

3 story buildings that have retail uses on

the ground floor, which are rented to the

private sector with no monopolistic

practices allowed. Add benches, and put

new student housing above. Connect

these new “streets” to paths that

connect the rest of the city, like a cross

walk to Dagleish.

Economic Gardening; Perhaps create a

number of small spaces in the buildings,

for really low rent, and short leases that

allow aspiring business students to try a

retail concept before fund-raising for

more permanent long term success; or

for a culinary arts student to try a new

restaurant type. The possibilities of this

approach are endless and work to create

active campus life that will breed

opportunity and loyalty in Kamloops.

The university will grow with students,

but it can also grow just like every other

area of the city, in fact should grow the

same; with infill, enclosure, connectivity

and environmental investment.

Connecting The University to The City: 1. Bike/Pedestrian Corridors to

Downtown

Currently there is exactly three sensible

ways for a student from TRU to get

downtown on foot or by Bicycle.

All involve fairly steep slopes, and many

are difficult to navigate due to ill

connected street patterns. They are:

1. St. Paul West Multi-Use Path

2. Battle Street

3. Columbia Street

Columbia, despite a hazardous, hot,

exposed and uncomfortable pedestrian

environment sees many cyclists and

pedestrians for the sheer reality that it is

the simplest connection between the

commercial, university and residential

densities of Sahali.

Columbia

Battle Street is less well used, due to its

steep nature. Further it is not obvious

from either end that a connection exists

here. Better human scaled signage could

improve this.

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Battle

The same lack of information prevents

the St. Paul West corridor from being an

effectively used connection. It is likely

the easiest approach on the climb to the

university; it just needs more information

on making the connection. Further to

this, the Bicycle Map of Kamloops, make

no connections for a user beyond the

end of the shared path going west.

Some of this information can be very

valuable, like for example, snaking up

Strathcona Terrace will ease the angle of

the hill.

Car Free and gently sloped St. Paul West

The city needs an easily accessed map

of the city for users to quickly reference

and be able to way find. It should be

coordinated with human scaled signs at

important junctions. Colour coding bike

routes on the paint markings left on the

street could further simplify navigation.

Walk Raleigh, cheap signs that do the job. Nothing complicated.

Other fantastic corridors exist, that could

be developed into higher density

residential along a road that could make

good connections to downtown and the

university, and that road is McGill, going

east of Columbia.

The end of this street ends at Peterson

Creek Park, where a very low angle

pedestrian and cyclist connection could

be easily made. With good signage and

way finding, this connection could also

improve access to the university from

areas east of Downtown.

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2. Transit Oriented Development, The Tournament Capital and the Gondola

This is a project that I have invested a lot

of time and passion in to so far. It all

started very early on when I moved to

Kamloops. It has a long story that led me

to see some ways to better integrate the

University in to the rest of the city, while

also working on the North Shore to better

use its existing infrastructure.

Kamloops has challenging topography

for any type of transit system. It is

bisected by two rivers, and has many

steep hills. Ask any bus mechanic and

you can hear all about the stress

Kamloops buses undergo compared to a

nice flat route somewhere like Kelowna.

When I was thinking about Kamloops,

and its transit alternatives I looked at

these variables of existing investments:

1. Tournament Capital Program at

MacArthur Island

2. Tournament Capital Program at

TRU

3. Student Life, Housing and Transit

at TRU

4. Extreme concentration of Hotels

near Aberdeen Mall

5. Intensely underused land/parking

near Aberdeen Mall

6. The “biking handicap” in Kamloops

resulting from all the hills

7. Need for a center to Aberdeen

I had seen before a tram in Portland, OR

that connected the newly revitalized

Pearl District with the University up the

hill across a freeway.

In Kamloops a gondola could connect

the North Shore, an area deserving and

witnessing revitalization, with the

University on the Hill which has no easily

accessed residential or pedestrian

commercial areas. It has to cross the

river and negotiate steep terrain but that

is easy for a gondola.

In Portland, much concern and outright

protest was organized against a gondola

that cut across numerous residential

areas, giving some gondola locations

views into resident’s back yards.

In Kamloops, the gondola from

MacAruthur Island to TRU would not

cross any private property, other than the

university. It would also serve to connect

the TCC to MacArthur Island, increasing

the ability of Kamloops to hold different

types of events, and making participation

for attendees simpler.

Furthermore, Gondolas are relatively

cheap to install and operate. They

require minimal staffing per rider as

compared to a bus, far cheaper per rider

maintenance costs, use a fraction of the

fuel (riders going up are counter-

weighted by riders going down), less

noisy, infinitely more frequent, more

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permanent (easier to finance) and

functions as a tourist attraction,

generating added revenue.

For cyclists in Kamloops, this solves the

hill problem. Someone can cycle to the

bottom station from Downtown, ride up,

conduct business, and ride home.

Importantly for many it would pass the

transit test:

1. It is faster than a car: 4 minutes on

gondola (2,300m at 8 m/s) vs. 12

minutes in car (Google maps 2013)

2. It is more convenient: park once for

one fee, it leaves and departs every

few seconds

3. It is cheaper: A fare on the gondola

could be part of transit passes,

student or faculty passes, or

individual, and likely less than

parking at either end

But beyond the most basic of marginal

decisions, the gondola is fun,

interesting, safe, iconic, unique, useful

and can be leveraged for other

investment.

But why stop there?!

Aberdeen Mall, as a business is not the

highest performing center in the world.

Retailers are not exactly bashing down

the doors to open in the mall, and

rumours of financial troubles are

frequent.

Even if this we’re not true, any mall

owner would love to see more potential

customers through the door, to charge

higher rents, especially tourists!

Wouldn’t Aberdeen Mall just love a

landing of a gondola right near its

entrance then? Furthermore, the circuit

of Rogers Way contains a large

concentration of hotels. By creating

effective connection between the hotels,

conference center, mall, university and

tournament capital facility, the overall

Kamloops package in attracting

tournaments, sporting events,

conferences and more would be

unparalleled by cities even four times its

size!

In this proposed gondola extension only

5 commercial properties have their

airspace infringed, and they are not the

sort that value privacy. Negotiation could

be difficult but much less than a few

hundred homes might be.

The gondola investment could be

leveraged to springboard well planned

mixed use nodes at each station, and

the sale of parcels for development

could fund huge parts of the project in

the private sector, without asking the

tax-payer for anything. The gondola

could be so cheap to run, that it could

actually function as profit generating

transit. This is a win.

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Valleyview Bicycle Interchange

Congratulations Kamloops City Council;

This project stayed alive through multiple

elections, through set-backs, through

media bawking and budget over-runs,

only to be ultimately fairly useless.

While the infrastructure is lovely, and the

beautiful solar powered glass bridge an

improvement to no bridge, few cyclists

and pedestrians are really using the

infrastructure. Besides, many

questionable and un-safe installations

we’re installed at each end of the bridge,

and finally, there is absolutely no

integration at the west end of the bridge

into a sensible and legible continued

bicycle or pedestrian path.

All that is really needed here, to get

some investment out of the dollars

invested is to establish an uninterrupted

bicycling link to downtown.

Expensively this could be accomplished

with signed, divided bike lanes on

Victoria Street until 5th.

More simply, the existing shared bikeway

of Nicola could just turn the stop signs

and better sign the route to downtown so

that bikes do not have to stop at every

single intersection on the way.

Why make the huge investment if the

simple changes needed to make it

effective are left un-done?

The Rivers

Kamloops gets its name from the

meeting of the rivers. A visit to the Inner

Harbour of Victoria or Southbank in

London shows how water bodies can be

leveraged to create the highest value real

estate in the province, world and city.

Instead, our waterways are home to

cheap industrial buildings, poorly

maintained mobile home parks, rail lines,

endless city green spaces, surface

parking, weeds, homeless persons

sleeping quarters, a pulp mill, the airport,

a couple of seniors homes and some

private residences.

Nowhere in that list does there seem to

be space for well attended restaurant

patios, or enriched and vibrant plazas for

buskers, high value condos, adult

oriented beaches, or other commercial

uses that can generate vibrancy, identity

or value from the cities natural

surroundings. Riverside Park is one of

the most fantastic places that the city

offers a tourist, by why does music in

the park play with trains as the

background instead of the rivers and

North Valley? Why are the bathrooms and

concession open rarely, poorly

maintained and ugly? When a local

entrepreneur suggested that they run a

river floating business, taking tourists

and locals alike up river to float back to

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Riverside Park was it dismissed as

profiting off of a public amenity?

By the same argument, the City of

Victoria should tear down the legislature

and prevent pictures from being taken. It

should also close down the water taxis,

and whale watching tours, fisherman’s

wharf and its little shops, the buskers

who play along the promenade and

replace it all with bushes.

This old city knows however just how

well in can

leverage that

value to create

a dense,

sustainable and

economically

successful city

that has a low

impact on the

total area.

I get rather

defensive about friends who say

Kelowna is so much nicer than

Kamloops. You can get great meals on

the lake there, stay in hotels with lake

views and go boating on the lake. In

Kamloops, you should be able to do all

of those things, but you can’t. Besides

rivers are better, you can also float them!

Someone wants to open a floating

business in the park! Encourage it! Just

charge them

rent, or better

yet, profit

share! Let the

public profit off

of this private

enterprise, and

let the private

enterprise add

value to the

city.

Take that

revenue, like parking revenue, and invest

it in new paths, better washrooms, more

frequent cleaning, etc.

What could riverfront real estate in

Kamloops look like?

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Spirit Square

Spirit

Sqaure,

as mentioned before is one of the only

urban public places in the city. It is

supposed to be a place to have little

concerts, farmers markets or other

events.

The property beside Spirit Sqaure is for

sale, and for cheap. The other side of

Spirit Square is two houses, owned by

one person who has done large

developments in Kamloops before.

Across the street from Sprit Square,

most of the houses are owned by one

other person. All the property

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surrounding is C-1T, zoning that allows

most uses and high density, similar to

CBD zoning. There is not much co-

ordination that needs be done here to

make a fantastic development.

This is what happened when this

development was to look like, generally:

The buildings here are to enclose the

square, creating permeability between

the uses, and enriching the public realm.

Ground floor commercial uses front the

square, creating opportunities for

restaurants and shops to bring people in

to the square. Residences above instill

safety into the square, creating

ownership and a feeling of being

watched.

When this development was suggested,

the city said that absolutely retail uses

could not access the square directly.

Furthermore the city wanted to see a

shadow study, which was provided at

some expense. Finally the city said the

buildings we’re too large for what they

we’re envisioning, and we would have to

do two levels of underground parking to

meet the cities requirements.

A non-starter is what one city planner

called this project. The very project that

could have brought people in to the

cities expensive, yet useless square is

denied for the reason that it would do

just that.

Communities in Bloom and Neighbourhood Grants

If there is one initiative that the city has

super right, it is the Communities In

Bloom grants that are handed out each

year. If you have a project that is small

dollars that you want to make a

difference, you can apply to the city and

they will match your funding up to

$5000.

Simply apply on the cities website

Kamloops.ca.

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This program deserves to be expanded,

and not just for cute gardening ideas,

but outright streetscape transformations,

incubating businesses that have public

gains at their center, alley clean-ups, art

installations, etc. These little projects are

the low risk impassioned effort of

citizens, and they will generate amazing

return on investment.

A program like this is something that

thousands of cities hunger for, and it is

great to see it in place here!

Conclusion

I have a thousand ideas for this city, and

others have thousands more. It is time

that we are given the freedom to make

differences. It is time that we have a

rallying purpose to center our efforts on,

and reflect on our successes and

failures based on similar understanding

and goals.

These ideas here are big ones, there and

hundreds of smaller ones. There are

even bigger ones too!

These are the discussions that we need

to be having and all of us need to be

communicating with another. Kamloops

is a beautiful place, let’s leverage that

for ourselves and make it stronger.

As a final word, most of what I have

wrote here are not ideas that are original

to me, some have my flourish and

context added in, but for a true

understanding of all that is here, I highly

recommend the work of Roger Brooks,

Charles Mahron, Andrew Burleson,

Andres Duany, James Howard Kunstler,

Howard Blackson, Donald Shoup, Peter

Calthorpe, Jane Jacobs, Peter Barber,

Jeff Speck, Thomas Vanderbuilt, Malcolm

Gladwell, Mikael Colville-Andersen,

Steve Mouzon, Hans Monderman, Billy

Collins and more I could never

completely list.

Thanks and be well!

stronger kamloops

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