I think my main response is we now have evidence that there are people who want an urban lifestyle.... And as a result, they don't stay in Prince George. https://akurjata.substack.com/p/in-25-years-downtown-prince-george It's self-selecting. At a certain point, if the city wants to be sustainable it probably needs to deal with this
The densification topic as well as dropping crime rates and affordability are all seem to be driven by emotions instead of evidence based decision making. The recent dropping crime rates article in the PG Citizen for example, had the majority of its “usual suspect” commentators offering reasons why these stats were lying and why you shouldn’t trust them. The same thing happened when Ben Kenobi mentored Luke Skywalker to blindfold himself and trust his feelings against his enemies. That ended well…eventually. So maybe my bad feeling about this human dynamic is misplaced.
The struggle I always have with arm chain urban planners like Darren Rigo is they always if ignore concepts of supply and demand. They always act so fuddled. "Why don't people in Prince George agree with my clearly well thought out ideas?". It's because there is not a critical demand in this city urbanist centric ideas. Prince George, wether you like it or not, for good or bad is a suburban community! That's the what the critical mass wants.
the thing is: the people want a suburban community but also don't want to pay for the ever increasing costs of servicing and replacing the critical infrastructure needed to keep a suburban community with its basic needs (water, sewer, roads, etc). With a smaller population, it makes sense to do in-fill and densify in the core areas of the city to try to keep those costs down. Densification appeal requires downtown (and targeted Bowl areas) revitalization to make it attractive, and that requires vision, and thoughtful and clever planning for a city like Prince George. We can keep sprawling, but sprawl is what drives costs up for each and every one of us.
I think the answer for PG is somewhere in the middle between Big City Urban and Northern City Suburban - we can do a hybrid. And Darrin's substack, and Andrew the Amateur Skateboard's substack, gives us a couple of platforms to discuss, think big, bring the big thinks down to PG-level, and act locally as Darrin writes.
You are not wrong about costs, affordability etc., (these are the well thought out ideas I'm talking about...it literally makes so much sense!) but that really doesn't matter to the committed suburbanist. They will happily pay.
The demand for infill, dense living is still far on the margins of the normal curve. The demand needs to be SIGNIFICANT for the needle to move. Think big doesn't matter if there is no demand.
Urbanists often come off as extremely paternalistic to people that have little interest in that sort of living as well.
I say this as a former urban planner 40+ years in the field before I retired. You can't FORCE people into a lifestyle they don't want, no matter how well thought out, logical and rationale your ideas may be.
Improvements literally take decades, and it's usually not because of an OCP or some sort of 'planning' vision laid about by a council or a team of bureaucrats. It's demand driven, largely by the sort of population that chooses certain locations and starts building momentum on their own...infrastructure and services respond to that signal, not the other way around. The best urban environments in the world are populated by self-selecting individuals that create a huge demand for urban centric facilities and services. They create a reinforcing feedback. You can't create that sort of feedback without momentum based on demand...and PG just doesn't have it.
you mean "if you build it, they will come" isn't reality? LOL
I hear you, Brian. I just wish we could find space between the fully urban and fully suburban, to create a downtown that is more thriving. Maybe it will come some day and we just need to figure out our own "made in PG" iteration of businesses, entertainment and housing. I appreciate your hands-on experience and perspectives!
Less "agree" and more "want". The PG lifestyle is suburban. It's not urban. That's why urbanist don't do well during elections. They are selling something the majority of the voting public don't really care about
I think my main response is we now have evidence that there are people who want an urban lifestyle.... And as a result, they don't stay in Prince George. https://akurjata.substack.com/p/in-25-years-downtown-prince-george It's self-selecting. At a certain point, if the city wants to be sustainable it probably needs to deal with this
The densification topic as well as dropping crime rates and affordability are all seem to be driven by emotions instead of evidence based decision making. The recent dropping crime rates article in the PG Citizen for example, had the majority of its “usual suspect” commentators offering reasons why these stats were lying and why you shouldn’t trust them. The same thing happened when Ben Kenobi mentored Luke Skywalker to blindfold himself and trust his feelings against his enemies. That ended well…eventually. So maybe my bad feeling about this human dynamic is misplaced.
The struggle I always have with arm chain urban planners like Darren Rigo is they always if ignore concepts of supply and demand. They always act so fuddled. "Why don't people in Prince George agree with my clearly well thought out ideas?". It's because there is not a critical demand in this city urbanist centric ideas. Prince George, wether you like it or not, for good or bad is a suburban community! That's the what the critical mass wants.
the thing is: the people want a suburban community but also don't want to pay for the ever increasing costs of servicing and replacing the critical infrastructure needed to keep a suburban community with its basic needs (water, sewer, roads, etc). With a smaller population, it makes sense to do in-fill and densify in the core areas of the city to try to keep those costs down. Densification appeal requires downtown (and targeted Bowl areas) revitalization to make it attractive, and that requires vision, and thoughtful and clever planning for a city like Prince George. We can keep sprawling, but sprawl is what drives costs up for each and every one of us.
I think the answer for PG is somewhere in the middle between Big City Urban and Northern City Suburban - we can do a hybrid. And Darrin's substack, and Andrew the Amateur Skateboard's substack, gives us a couple of platforms to discuss, think big, bring the big thinks down to PG-level, and act locally as Darrin writes.
You are not wrong about costs, affordability etc., (these are the well thought out ideas I'm talking about...it literally makes so much sense!) but that really doesn't matter to the committed suburbanist. They will happily pay.
The demand for infill, dense living is still far on the margins of the normal curve. The demand needs to be SIGNIFICANT for the needle to move. Think big doesn't matter if there is no demand.
Urbanists often come off as extremely paternalistic to people that have little interest in that sort of living as well.
I say this as a former urban planner 40+ years in the field before I retired. You can't FORCE people into a lifestyle they don't want, no matter how well thought out, logical and rationale your ideas may be.
Improvements literally take decades, and it's usually not because of an OCP or some sort of 'planning' vision laid about by a council or a team of bureaucrats. It's demand driven, largely by the sort of population that chooses certain locations and starts building momentum on their own...infrastructure and services respond to that signal, not the other way around. The best urban environments in the world are populated by self-selecting individuals that create a huge demand for urban centric facilities and services. They create a reinforcing feedback. You can't create that sort of feedback without momentum based on demand...and PG just doesn't have it.
you mean "if you build it, they will come" isn't reality? LOL
I hear you, Brian. I just wish we could find space between the fully urban and fully suburban, to create a downtown that is more thriving. Maybe it will come some day and we just need to figure out our own "made in PG" iteration of businesses, entertainment and housing. I appreciate your hands-on experience and perspectives!
Less "agree" and more "want". The PG lifestyle is suburban. It's not urban. That's why urbanist don't do well during elections. They are selling something the majority of the voting public don't really care about