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September 21 and 22
2 days, 2 disciplines, 2 ways to participate – defining our professional roles and uniting to build more equitable, accessible and inspired communities.
#2GETHER2022
Creating “Complete Streets” is a simple and evocative idea. Often the goal is to create quiet tree-lined streets that are traffic-calmed and environmentally responsive with room for social spaces, accessible sidewalks, and safe places to ride a bike. But the true challenge isn’t the big ideas, it’s the often-hidden details and the reticent and powerful stakeholders that can hinder us from reaching our ideals and goals. This presentation will introduce Ottawa’s recent “Designing Neighbourhood Collector Streets” document, and other guidelines and standards that apply to new collector and local streets. The presentation will not only illustrate the street design and components above grade, but also the need to address relationships among utilities competing for space below grade. It will reflect on the process that engaged diverse stakeholders in the reallocation of space within the right-of-way, and beyond, to create the streets we envision in policy and plans. These technical guidelines and designs illustrate the reallocation of space to contribute to Ottawa’s neighbourhood livability and improve safety and comfort for the most vulnerable street users – pedestrians and cyclists of all ages and abilities. These street designs integrate traffic-calming measures, provide space for trees to flourish, accommodate bioswales to mitigate increasingly common major storm events, and address often impeding challenges, including below-grade utilities, road maintenance, transit, and emergency response requirements. Learn how City of Ottawa planners and landscape architects engaged the many primary service providers and builders of new communities to understand how their systems work and their concerns, including land developers, transportation engineers, utility providers, emergency services, and even snow-plough operators. The presentation will summarize how other municipalities can follow a similar process and develop their own guidance and details to create “complete” neighbourhood streets.