Designing the future

A Quebec-based urban design consultant gave high praise for the work the city has done but says there’s still a lot of untapped potential.

Avi Friedman, the president of Avi Friedman Consultants, presented what he believed the city needed to do to improve the community’s urban design at Monday night’s council meeting.

He praised Prince Arthur’s Landing, Algoma Street and the initiative to allow transit riders to place their bikes on a bus.
But to take the city even further he said there needs to be more emphasis on the environment being active and sustainable.

“I believe good cities are nature reserves,” he said.

“What you did with the marina was A plus. I know it was hard to make it happen but I believe these kinds of decisions are going to shove the city into becoming a future city. Question is what is the next move? We need to start living in the future because it is moving very rapidly.”

Friedman argued that cities needed to be accessible for people to walk and bicycle. This in turn will help decrease the level of obesity and make people healthier. Instead of building new gyms, he said the city itself should provide the exercise people need.

Although some councillors pointed out that city experiences long winters.

Friedman said cities much colder than Thunder Bay are able to stay active even in the dead of winter.
“Denmark and Sweden developed a bike culture,” he said. “I’m not suggesting people need to be forced but they created systems that allowed people who wanted to ride in the winter. There were dedicated lanes and they were cleaned and people used them very often.”

He also pointed out that the city’s downtown was struggling and suggested creating ways to improve the area. One of those suggestions was no taxes for two years.

At-Large Coun. Aldo Ruberto said Friedman came at the right time and called his ideas inspirational.

“We look at the waterfront, we look at Algoma Street and they were done as a result of visionaries coming to our city and working with our departments,” he said. “I think every so often you need to have someone come in and say ‘hey, you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results’. Standards here are 30 or 40 years old and haven’t really changed that much.”