Downtown vision planning meeting

I spent yesterday evening at Museum London brainstorming the downtown's strengths and weaknesses and possible future projects. The meeting was one of the first steps toward creating a Downtown Master Plan, to be completed next April. 

Some of the ideas that came out of the meeting were the same things downtown residents and workers have been clamoring for for quite some time: a grocery store in the core, for example. I know one of those would make my life easier. 

I also heard a lot of calls for a pedestrian-only strip on Dundas, which I'm not so sure about. I'm all for making downtown more pedestrian-friendly, but businesses depend on lots of traffic (foot and vehicle) going by, so I'm not sure cutting down on certain kinds would be wise. I think slowing down traffic through the core while giving priority to transit might work better. People would be more inclined to take a bus downtown and stroll around if driving was still possible but a bit frustrating. 

Some exciting new ideas came out of the evening as well. Someone suggested a ferris wheel at the Forks of the Thames. A bit much like the other London perhaps, but just think of the view you would have from it. I'd also like to see one evening a week, a Thursday or Friday, when all the downtown businesses agreed to be open late. There's not much open past six at the moment. If people knew that all the shops were open a certain night, they'd be more inclined to come down to shop after work or after dinner. 

I'm both interested and nervous to see what the planners and council take out of the brainstorming session. It was a bit hard to tell what the consensus was, since all the groups read their ideas off giant chart paper, skipping ideas that had already been floated. use of some tech, a real-time sense of which ideas excited people the most would have been cool. A Wordle, perhaps.

According to the timeline city workers handed out, the process will also include laying out framework and guidelines for urban design and the hiring of a consultant to study a possible downtown heritage conservation district. I'll be following the process all the way through, attending the three more public meetings that are planned. 

I come from downtown, born and ready for you

One of the things I love most about my King Street apartment is the cozy, sheltered view it gives me of some of London's best summer festivals. I had friends over to watch Canada Day fireworks from my balcony while others on the street had to wait in the rain. And last night, the Tragically Hip serenaded us from Harris Park. I couldn't quite make out tiny Gord on the stage below, but I could hear every word.

It took a little while for London to grow on me after moving here from Toronto, but it's home now -- a home I want to celebrate, as well as pick on once in a while. In future posts I plan to examine what's going right and wrong in downtown London and see what kind of collective wisdom Londoners can generate about how to run a city like this one. There's lots of research and scholarship these days on the economies and urban development of metropolises like Toronto, but a lot more of Canada is made up of mid-sized cities like this one. Time to do a little research of our own.

Thanks for reading!