Urban Design

...or the lack thereof.

Due to a bit of an incident with our car, we will be without it for a yet to be determined length of time. Thankfully, both Crystal and I were already rather used to not using it on a daily basis, so it won't be a complete shock to our system. Still, we used it enough on evenings and weekends, that it is certainly an inconvenience. And it serves to highlight how our cities are designed to serve the automobile, and pedestrians are hardly accommodated for at all.
Point in case, I needed to run several errands this afternoon, and the one bus that does run only comes every 30 minutes, and runs a limited route. Having missed that bus, and being a nice day I thought I'd walk instead.
After and hour of walking, the last half of which was outside of residential so there was nary a sidewalk to be found, I was already growing frustrated with how many ditches, parking lots, side streets and lawns I had to walk through. The intersections had cross lights, but no walks leading to them. My return trip required several stops at different stores, and took two hours of dodging traffic and getting covered with road spray.

Finally, I gave up, and found the nearest bus shelter to wait for the next public transport. It was on Quance Street, which is more like Quance Raceway. The shelter was literally a foot away from the curb, and I had to wait for traffic simply to get inside it, all the while carrying grocery bags and a laden backpack. It seems fitting that the "I Love Regina" pin I received as a gift from a bus driver a while back, and had pinned to my backpack, fell off during this fiasco.














Honestly, I don't have some unrealistic expectation that we can live in an urban pedestrian paradise, but a few more considerations really are necessary. We study some urban design at school, and one of the requirements that new city suburbs are to ideally have is ease of access for pedestrians to all the major infrastructures...like grocery stores, public transit and the like.

East Regina has none of this. It is, as my wifey termed it, a "big-box paradise" which is only easily navigated in a car. Pedestrians beware. This is a problem that I know will not be addressed any time soon because this province is too caught up in growth, and rapid growth with out little thought put into a more managed, holistic, and managed growth scenario that allows the infrastructure to keep pace.

My next blog entry, entitled "Fort Mac versus Denmark" will explore this matter further. In the mean time, if you can find a copy of the mock-umentary "Radiant City," I highly recommend it.