Finally – Why I’m Obsessed with My Community: Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 5* part series of posts about my thoughts on the urban design of our community.

• Part 1. An Introduction
• Part 2. Oops, All Cars
• *A Tangent About Cars
• Part 3. Isolation and the Status Quo
• Part 4. Finally, Why I’m Obsessed With My Community
• Part 5. What’s Next?

Through all of this, I haven’t *really* talked yet about why I actually love this community and want to see it thrive. Hopefully it has been coming through in the subtext, but in case it hasn’t, I’ll try to lay it out clearly here. A good community is like a game of 20 Questions, you’re going to need people, places, and things.

People

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the people who live in Convent Glen and Orleans Wood are some of the best around. The people who move here love it, and the people who grow up here tend to stick around, or at the very least they return if they do leave for work or school at some point. Even our relatively small community geographically itself has a lot of different pockets where different kinds of people thrive.

Something I’d personally love to see especially in the parts of Convent Glen that are zoned exclusively for single family homes would be some loosening of restrictions to see more types of mixed housing or mixed-use development. At the moment the only people who can live in these parts of the community are those who can afford a large house with a huge mortgage or rent payment. Gentle densification over time with looser zoning restrictions is a great way to welcome people or families who otherwise would never get to experience our lovely neighbourhood. It would also help to better distribute density in our community, which would help raise more taxes for the city to improve services and government functions.

Places

As I mentioned earlier, one thing our community isn’t short on at all is green space. Between the large collection of parks and the beautiful river pathway, you can never be too far from a great view and a nice place to spend time in nature. The community also has a decent number of small- and medium-sized businesses both run and owned locally that are a pleasure to shop at.

One thing I would love to see, however, is businesses like these, and other types of public spaces like community and rec centres, or the Shenkman Arts Centre, distributed more equally in the community. In Convent Glen North, space for businesses like these is extremely limited, and diversifying the types of buildings and socioeconomic functions in our community would reduce the dependence on cars to run simple, everyday errands. Having one or more public, accessible community spaces, along with amenities like restaurants, cafes, gyms, bakeries, grocery and corner stores, bike shops, etc. all within walking distance would be an incredible boost to our communities.

Some places in the geographic boundary of the community association have these places in large numbers, but in others you can walk for 15 minutes and get to perhaps one small business complex. Public community spaces are a major driver of social cohesion and fighting feelings of isolation, and more of these in our communities can only improve the lives of residents.

Things

This section is the hardest to define, because things are technically happening all the time. Our community always has lots of people on walks or bike rides, chatting with friends and neighbours, skating with family and friends, going to swimming lessons, and so on and so on. This is a bustling community with something happening constantly if you know where to look.

We talked a little bit in the Places section about spreading public spaces throughout the community, and how that could be a huge benefit to resident. Here, I want to address the huge number of things that can take place here if we had more of these public places. In a local community space, you could host a book club, a repair cafe, a kids play group, knitting or crochet club, or even panel discussions on environmental, social, or public health topics. Other places like gyms could host spin or yoga classes. Cafes could host poetry slams or open mic nights. More comprehensive and considered active transportation infrastructure can host walking groups or bike buses or even charity walkathons. The possibilities are truly endless given the right motivation and locations for these things to take place.