CBBarnett
Senior Member
I think the master plan just calls for a primary pathway, not a roadway access. There's no roads planned to cut through campus.
I agree about U of C's campus design - the the walkable, vehicle-free traffic oasis is a key positive feature. It's truly one of the only locations in the city that makes such an attempt prioritizes pedestrian access within it's lands (at the centre of them at least).
With that said, the bigger issue is that campus is inward-looking and largely cut off on all sides by wide arterial roads - so the walkable part is immediately dropped as soon as you hit the edge of campus. The university exacerbates this condition with enormous, large surface parking lots on all major entrances and exits, ringing the good walkable part in the centre.
To resolve these issues, firstly we would need to extend the high-quality walkable area over these barriers into new development/redevelopment. University District is the most obvious adjacent candidate neighbourhood with plans to largely make this happen by filling in the gaps and adding normal streets to connect too. But even once UD it's complete, we still haven't solved the real problem: wide arterial roads on all sides separating the university from the rest of the city.
The second, related problem is even harder - land uses. University isn't just designed as an island - it's an island on a far larger, car-oriented continent. Adding a few sidewalks isn't enough, there's kilometres of nothing nearby which is all scaled for driving. Apart from University District, all redevelopment is separated from university by giant distances, and/or giant barriers. Some of these barriers are getting thicker too (see Crowchild long-term plans for an example).
A rough map below to illustrate how split up and separated all the major hubs in the area are. They are so close - but so far apart at the same time!
- Solid red - brutal, anti-pedestrian corridors
- Dotted red - less brutal, but pedestrian unfriendly overly wide arterials
- Yellow - zero population and no immediate plans to add anything
- Green - only intensification we have seen with reasonable densities
Despite having two hospitals, several malls, lots of redevelopment pockets and the ever-growing giant university at the centre the area is still remarkably empty. We could easily add tens of thousands of units and way more uses in here if we were a bit more efficient in our land uses and institution planning.
In summary what I would do:
- Make it easier for more people to access stuff from farther away - Create strong, highest quality pedestrian and cycle routes across the solid red lines. Like real, direct, fast and wide pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure; not narrow, circuitous and disconnected stuff. Add a few of those high-quality pedestrian/cycling connections through University Heights to make transportation through the area efficient.
- Add more people - Aggressively promote redevelopment all neighbourhoods at +3x the current density (University Heights and Banff Trail being the key candidates
- Add more stuff - Have better institutional planning to redevelop all areas in yellow (most/all of the yellow areas are essentially land banks or under-utilized parks/facilities).
