Christopher Hume
It's a long way from California to Markham, but not for Peter Calthorpe, who has made the trip to design what could be the most vital project of his career.
The influential San Francisco architect, author, planner and co-founder of the Congress of New Urbanism calls this job "the highest manifestation of transit-oriented development I have been involved in."
He's referring to Langstaff, a new-style urban community proposed for a 57-hectare site south of Highway 7 between Yonge St. and Bayview Ave.
The scheme, approved by Markham council last week, will be highrise, mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly. Organized around transit – new subway lines and expanded bus service – Langstaff represents the new face of suburbia, which is no suburbia at all.
In other words, it is urban.
"We've had a 50-year experiment with sprawl," Calthorpe argues. "Now it's over. Everything's changing. There's a huge demographic shift happening. If you include externalities and eliminate subsidies, sprawl is not affordable. The key to unlocking the potential is transit."
But as Calthorpe also points out, successful transit is regional transit. That's surely true at Langstaff. Cut off by hydro easements, highways, railway tracks and cemeteries, the missing connections to the external world can only be created through transit. Extending the Yonge subway to Hwy. 7 is critical to the project, as are the locations of the new stations.
"If you want to get people out of cars," says Calthorpe, "you've got to get them close to transit. And transit must be there to support walkability, not the other way around. Destinations have to be nearby."
The Langstaff master plan shows a community laid out in small blocks on an east-west axis. A strip of parkland runs down the centre, divided into sections by a grid of short, narrow streets. Buildings range from mid-rise to highrise, townhouses to towers, much like City Place in downtown Toronto.
A density of 360 units per hectare will be typical; residents will presumably hold many of the 23,000 jobs based in Langstaff. Two retail clusters will be centred around transit hubs, and the CN track to the south will be covered.
"This will have the kind of urbanism you get in a city," Calthorpe says. He projects that "65 per cent of trips will be transit/walking and only 35 per cent by car."
"The consumer is a smart consumer now," notes Sam Balsamo, whose firm, Condor Properties, owns a portion of the Langstaff land. "We embrace the Ontario Growth Plan. We want to build a community that isn't your typical suburban community, a community that's walkable and transit oriented."
Speaking of Premier Dalton McGuinty's Growth Plan, Calthorpe calls it "the best in North America right now ... the standard these days."
Adopted several years ago, the legislation sets out where development may and may not occur. Though some have complained it doesn't go far enough, the Growth Plan represents the province's first attempt to stop sprawl.
Because of the size of the grand plan, Langstaff will be developed in phases, each contingent upon the one before. Densities can be adjusted according to demand, and to fit with transit capacity, which lies at the heart of things.
It remains to be seen how the bureaucracy, let alone the market, will respond to Markham's new urban face. Not everyone will be pleased to see the shift from cars to transit; but better get used to it: This is what the future looks like.
Not to say cars won't continue to be an essential part of North American life; it means they will be one element of a more balanced transportation system comprised of many parts.
But Langstaffians will also enjoy one of urbanity's greatest gifts, proximity.
