For healthy people, build a healthy city. Trevor Hancock has always been ahead of the curve. A doctor and long-time public health expert, he was also the first leader of the Green Party of Canada in 1984, when he ran federally (finishing fourth) in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. But his day job, in public health, turned out to have far more impact than his brief political career. Beginning as one of a small international cadre that promoted ideas about urban planning’s key role in human health, he is now watching his work over the past quarter-century start to explode into the mainstream. It’s a paradigm shift in the way urban planners and municipal leaders see the world: how we build and manage our cities directly affects the health of the populace. And with mounting research showing that cities where people walk more and drive less are healthier cities, the automobile is losing out to the pedestrian as the main focus of city-building.
In Vancouver, already ranked as Canada’s healthiest city, they are nonetheless acting. Dr. High Bridge, the Bronx — Name to Get Its Meaning Back. How activists and private enterprise are transforming Lagos. Last month, Nigerian leader Goodluck Jonathan joined former U.S. president Bill Clinton and local dignitaries for the official groundbreaking of a property development so ambitious he calls it “a modern city” rising from the ocean. Privately financed, Eko Atlantic City is to house 250,000 people and occupy 10 million square metres – a little bigger than Manhattan – of reclaimed land guarded by a towering sea wall that Mr. Clinton declared “an ingenious engineering feat” certain to “brand Lagos all over the world.”
President Jonathan agreed: “You cannot be hearing only ugly stories” about Nigeria and the city state that drives its economy. Yet ugly stories about Lagos keep disrupting the “good news narrative” he wants so badly. Just two days after the presidential rhetoric, 10,000 poor people were left homeless when Lagos authorities bulldozed Badia East, a vast “informal” community next to prime real estate. Agege: Vigilante justice turns the tide. Green dividend presentation. Subways smash 1940s rider record. The city’s subway system last year clocked its highest ridership since Harry Truman was president, driven mostly by an influx of young people, officials said. More than 1.654 billion subway trips were made in 2012, a 13.7 million increase over 2011 and the largest number of trips in 62 years, according to MTA statistics released yesterday. That’s an 8 percent jump that came despite a three-day shutdown during Hurricane Sandy.
Weekend ridership was particularly high. It grew by 3 percent from 2011 to 2012, shattering the all-time-high weekend record set in 1946. At the time, that record was set in large part because many New Yorkers were still working six days a week to help the country get back on its feet after World War II. Today, officials credit the boom with large numbers of young people using mass transit. “The entire subway system was built as a way to get people to work,” he said. “The city is safer, so more people go out,” Moss said.
Main streets like Calgary's inner-city Kensington enjoy a renaissance. When Annie MacInnis became executive director of Calgary’s Kensington Business Revitalization Zone, her job description was simple and succinct: “Promote and beautify the district.” Eight years later, the mandate is the same but it has become considerably more complex. Located just across the Bow River from Calgary’s downtown core, Kensington is a historic neighbourhood with two new mixed-use projects going up, and another 13 developments at the proposal stage, says Ms. MacInnis, who represents the interests of Kensington’s 280 businesses. Calgary’s inner-city intensification plans could result in a 25-per-cent increase in Kensington’s residential population over 10 years, she says. As a James Taylor song so aptly put it, “Main street isn’t main street any more.”
Dramatic condominium development in Toronto and Vancouver is leading the charge, according to The Value of Investing in Canadian Downtowns. The answer is a combination of “trial and error and blind luck,” he says. In Winning Design, City Hopes to Address a Cramped Future. New York City Mayor’s OfficeThe interior of the winning design, “My Micro NY,” in New York City’s tiny-apartment competition. The entry packs a lot into units less than 370 square feet. Updated, 5:42 p.m. | The apartment of New York City’s future, as the city imagines it, has all the amenities of modern life: wheelchair-accessible bathroom, a full kitchen, space for entertaining and access to a gym, communal lounge, front and back porches and a rooftop garden — all in 250 to 370 square feet.
The city on Tuesday unveiled the winner of a competition to design and build an apartment tower on city-owned land composed entirely of micro-units, 55 homes the size of hotel rooms that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hopes will be the first in a wave of tiny apartments aimed at addressing the city’s shortage of studio and one-bedroom apartments.
“We have a shortfall now of 800,000, and it’s only going to get worse,” Mr. Others were quicker to turn up their noses.