![]() I think this shift is due mainly to recent suburban growth patterns. While Canadian cities offer up so many great ideas about embracing winter, last week’s Maclean’s headlined, “ We’ve become a nation of winter wusses.” This extensive piece has many inescapable points about how Canadians avoid the outdoors in winter, where in the past we used to pride ourselves on being the land of ice and snow. Here are a set of blogs about places that are making them legal again with form-based codes and a webinar that includes some of the economic benefits of walkable winter cities. These urban forms are available only by negotiation and not by right for most of North America. Legalizing the useful walk, outdoor rooms, short blocks, and play sheds are the first steps toward a walkable winter city, as well as allowing us to live in season year round. ![]() Image credit: DPZ, modified by PlaceMakers. This regular activity quickly becomes habit-forming, if it’s easily accessible with these neighbourhood-scale civic amenities. When the parks are so close, it’s like skipping stones through the neighbourhood to make places where we have access to nature within the city, which has been shown to reduce our blood pressure, obesity, attention disorders, and depression, as well as increase our mental acuity. And makes it easier to create a playborhood for free range kids instead of leaving the last child in the woods. The 5-minute walk is the “pedestrian shed” and the 2.5-minute walk is the “play shed.” Having these neutral gathering places where people of all ages can go to play in parks, playgrounds, and plazas in the winter makes us more likely to enjoy frequent sledding, skating, skiing or just walking. Just as it should be a 5-minute walk to most daily needs, it should be a 2.5-minute walk to the nearest place to play. If we can control how the building meets the street and nothing more, we’re far along the placemakers way. The way that the buildings address the street, or the “private frontage,” makes for convivial places to gather and meet. This sense of enclosure is even more important in the winter, which coupled with short blocks helps create shelter from the wind. Shallow setbacks and skinny streets help us get to 1:2 or 1:3 ratios on main streets, and street trees help deliver enclosure for less urban conditions. Standard suburban enclosure is a 1:6 ratio of building height to street width. Outdoor rooms are created by a sense of enclosure, perhaps the most critical element of placemaking. When I do walk downtown in the winter, I’m always happy for the plentiful coffee shops for warm-ups. While I’ll jump on my bike during temperate seasons to attend a meeting downtown – three neighborhoods away – I’m somewhat risk-averse to cycling in winter and the 25-minute walk at -20 C usually will prompt me into a bus or cab. The 5-minute walk is the radius that defines the neighbourhood circle. Homes near schools, offices, shops, restaurants, parks, and places of worship make active transportation something more than a new year’s resolution. Having our daily needs available within a 5-minute walk makes it faster just to walk there instead of finding a place to park on the snowy streets. The useful walk is the first thing that makes us willing to step outside. ![]() If we really want to follow the Surgeon General’s warning to step it up, walkability is achieved at the scale of the neighborhood, not the scale of the region.Ĭharlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Those walkable neighborhoods that draw people out to just walk a block or two, and then once you’re geared up, you’re more likely to brave the elements. However, the greatest parts of each of these walkable winter cities aren’t the headliners, but rather the openers. These festivities are generally set in the city center and are regional draws. These major amenities are essential to get us outdoors and moving in the northern winters, and are spectacular and fun, including Ottawa’s Rideau Canal skating trails, Winnipeg’s Assiniboine and Red River trails and warming huts, Carnaval de Québec, Fête des Neiges de Montréal, Winnipeg’s Festival du Voyageur, Lumière de Montréal, and Ottawa’s Winterlude, to name a few. Northern cities tend to go after big winter ideas to compete with the Sun Belt. CreativeCommons ShareAlike License with Attribution: flickr user Jamie McCaffrey.
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