I deliberately called this “Envisioning London’s Downtown Future” rather than merely “Envisioning the Future of Downtown London” because I believe London’s future is downtown…
Not everyone would agree (see Dan Brown’s column challenging the notion that downtown is the heart of the city, discussed here), but I wasn’t convinced.
Even detractors have to admit it’s the least unavoidable area of the city. Sure, lots of people do manage to avoid downtown, but that takes effort: driving out of the way to go around it, coming up with excuses to decline concert or hockey tickets, etc.
So if a concentrated centre is unavoidable, we should embrace the concept; we need to nurture efforts to make it not just tolerable but positively enjoyable and productive to be in. Everything else eventually flows to and from that.
A lot of people in the city agree. That’s why we showed up (and stayed 40 minutes past the scheduled finish) at the public visioning session for the Downtown Master Plan Study.
You can piece together a bit of an overview via Adam Caplan‘s great livetweeting.
My own vision for downtown is represented by the way my day played out:
This morning I walked 8 minutes to work. After work I walked 15 minutes to the Central Library to get the book and CD I had reserved. There I cracked open my MacBook and flipped on the wifi to find an impromptu tweetup at the Covent Garden Market (less than 5 minute walk away) with Kevin, Greg, James, and Nick. Had a bite to eat then we all walked a block or two over to the museum.
After the session I had a pleasant 20 30 minute walk home (taking the long way) from Museum London, back through the market area and up Richmond to my place on Piccadilly ['central,' but not downtown] — a serene neighbourhood, which feels like it’s many miles away from the all the vibrancy and grime I came through minutes earlier but the transition both ways seemed effortless — or at least unintimidating.
That kind of experience is where I think any discussion of London’s downtown should begin (and end): It comes down to facilitating the continuous stream of home-life into work-life and on through civic-life and play-life (or ‘life’-life) and back around to home-life again — and back around the next day – seamlessly — efficiently but with room for unexpected variety and spontaneous stops and side-excursions.
So, specifically…
Dundas Street got a lot of attention — at my table at least. When we were given a giant map and a bunch of markers to play land-use planner for fifteen minutes, we ended up applying so much ink to Dundas we might have left a big orange mark on the table under the stretch running from Talbot to Wellington: lots of ideas.
My own feeling is that if we develop the focal destination-ness of a) Citi Plaza, and b) the forks of the Thames, the complementary effects of those poles (picture a dumbbell-shape) should naturally increase foot traffic between them along Dundas, commerce keeps coming in on its own to fill the gaps, and that gets a kind of “circulation” going; activity will radiate from that to the rest of downtown and back in a virtuous cycle, which has a subsequent radiating effect through the rest of the city…
Obviously that’s only one aspect of a possible plan, and ultimately I’m pretty skeptical of even my own ideas. I’m happy to defer to the professionals who have the knowledge and experience necessary to understand how these kinds of things have succeeded or failed elsewhere.
But then again, having said that, I’m pretty skeptical that anybody would be competent enough to know what’s going to work in London (beware of the designer’s ego). That’s why I’m very very pleased the city has opened this process up to the public for generating as much insight and feedback as possible.
Big props to the City of London’s planning staff for listening.
This gets to the heart of my own pet project: promoting open and deliberative democracy (a piece pertaining specifically to London is here) — which is why I attended this event without hesitation, overcoming my usual inclination to stay home and write.
Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little: I’m not a total hermit. The truth is, these kinds of events can be more fun and gratifying than a lot of so-called forms of entertainment can be.
I like the intellectual aspect, but there’s a genuine social aspect too. Along with the aforementioned, I met a few more online acquaintances – Shawn, Jodi, and Ken — after following their London-thoughts for months via Twitter. Saw Teresa again too; she’d been doing a lot of brainstorming on the topic all day…
The process isn’t just a means to an end, the process is also a perfectly good end-in-itself… The process is itself an essential element in a great city.
This is my vision for downtown London: a place in which enough people care, enough people are gratified by the challenge to make the place better, to enjoy the ongoing process of dialogue and collaboration, and to bring those ideas to fruition, constantly creating social capital that radiates through the rest of the city…
Like an evening stroll through a livable and accessible downtown, sometimes the journey is the destination.
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