Heritage Essay
Reflecting on Old Ottawa South’s Built Environment, Past and Present
My family and I moved from abroad in the summer of 2006 and settled in Old Ottawa South. When corresponding with friends and colleagues about our move and about our new home, I would point out that our neighborhood is a great example of what city living should be about. I would add that the neighborhood, with its strong sense of community, short walking distances, easily accessible public transportation, as well as proximity to a vibrant main street with various commercial establishments and community facilities, should make the legendary late urban writer and activist Jane Jacobs proud.[1]
Old Ottawa South is a mature district. About three quarters of its residences were constructed before 1946.[2] It has full-grown trees and a diversity of house designs. Its buildings nonetheless present a unified scale. Most of them range from one to three stories in height, with the occasional four-story structure found here and there. The area has avoided the fate of neighboring districts where a few modern multi-story residential and office buildings have destroyed existing continuities in scale. The urban fabric of Old Ottawa South also shows very acceptable levels of density that provide for a healthy balance between built-up and open spaces. Its houses are rather closely spaced to each other, but it still has an adequate supply of open areas, whether in the houses’ front and back yards or in the five parks located within its boundaries. Of great importance is that the area is blessed with a river and a canal partly defining its borders and creating open vistas. Both are lined with paths for the use of pedestrians and cyclists.Old Ottawa South is pedestrian-friendly throughout. So much is within walking distance, most importantly, the approximately one-kilometer stretch of Bank Street located between the Rideau Canal and Rideau River, which functions as a “Main Street” for the area featuring a wide variety of stores, a supermarket, restaurants, cafés, as well as public buildings including a public school, public library, and two churches. Most recently, a subdued but elegant four-story building with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments above has been added to the street. The area’s community center, a converted fire station from the 1920s, is located just off Bank Street. Throughout the year, during the warm summer months as well as during Ottawa’s notoriously arctic winters, Old Ottawa South is a place where one walks rather than drives. Whether it is to take one’s children to school, visit the public library or community center, go to the bank, buy groceries, or rent a video, it remains easier and more pleasant to walk than take the car. All in all, Old Ottawa South is a positive model of what urban living should be about, and its residents seem to be fully aware and appreciative of its qualities.
Much of Old Ottawa South may be viewed as a traditional pre-World War II suburban development. Such developments in many ways combine qualities found in both urban and suburban areas, and have come to be viewed as part of their cities’ urban core. These neighborhoods primarily consist of single and semi-attached residences, rather than high-rise apartment buildings, and therefore are described as low-density developments. Still, they express a more compact arrangement of houses and a generally higher footprint of building area to open space than that found in post-World War II suburbs. Old Ottawa South may not be part of Ottawa’s central business district, and is not even adjacent to it (it was not annexed by the City of Ottawa until 1907). Still, it is situated relatively close to the central business district and is easily accessible to and from it via public transportation. Unlike central business districts, it is primarily a residential area rather than a commercial retail or office area. Nonetheless, its healthy pedestrian life, which to a large extent is a result of the proximity of its residences to a commercial main street and public facilities, provides it with an important advantage found in various vibrant downtown areas where residential units, offices, and retail spaces are closely situated to each other.[3]
There are numerous urban districts throughout North America that share many of Old Ottawa South’s qualities, but this does not minimize in any way the significance of any of them. Each of these districts has a story to tell about the physical as well as socio-economic evolution of its community, stories that go back in time to include a number of generations. Also, there simply aren’t enough such areas. They provide highly sustainable, viable alternatives to the sprawling, automobile-dominated suburban developments that have become ubiquitous not only in North American cities, but in cities throughout the world, catering for what often seems like never-ending economic and population growth. In these new developments, where the majority of Canadian city dwellers live today, the domination of the automobile has rendered pedestrian life nonexistent. Very little is within walking distance, and instead of a “Main Street” along which people promenade and interact, these new developments are dominated by strip malls defined by seemingly never-ending expansive parking lots. Architecturally, cookie-cutter low-rise residences or characterless high-rise apartment buildings are the norm. The automobile and the parking lots that necessarily come with it admittedly cannot be completely banished from our lives, but if developers and zoning officials would look more closely at areas such as Old Ottawa South for guidance in creating new developments, they can come up with more appealing pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods with higher levels of social interaction and a more pronounced sense of community.[4]
[1] I later found out that others also have made the link between Old Ottawa South and Jane Jacobs’ ideas. These include Old Ottawa South resident and member of the Old Ottawa South History Project, Leo Doyle, who organized in early May 2008 a highly engaging and informative walking tour of Old Ottawa South as part of the Jane’s Walk series. These walks cover various neighborhoods in eight Canadian cities and present aspects of those neighborhoods that in many ways are living expressions of Jacobs’ ideas about urbanism. See the Jane’s Walk section of the City Repair Ottawa web site; and Leo Doyle, “A Walk on the Sunnyside: Free Tour Celebrates Renowned Urbanist Jane Jacobs,” The Oscar, May 2008, p. 21. For a brief overview of Jane Jacob’s life, thoughts, and writings, see the web site of the Project for Public Spaces.
[2] Statistics regarding dates of construction for dwellings in Old Ottawa South are available in the City of Ottawa web site.
[3] The characteristics that define differences between urban and suburban areas are not clear-cut and vary from one location to the other according to factors such as the size and population of a given metropolitan area, its local municipal history, and its administrative boundaries. For a discussion of the differences between urban and suburban areas within the Canadian context, see Martin Turcotte, “The City / Suburb Contrast: How can we measure it?” Statistics Canada, 2008.
[4] Although not without criticism, the New Urbanism movement does look at pre-existing pedestrian-oriented communities in devising planning solutions for new developments. See the New Urbanism web site and “Wikipedia, “New Urbanism.”