IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

As Canadian cities are mandated to build more, planners continued to be dogged by (intensifying) environmental, societal, and economic challenges. As a key profession that influences the physical, physiological, and psychological human experience of the built environment, it is useful to consider if planning-as-practiced has the creative capacity to address rising inequality, social isolation, food insecurity, sedentary lifestyles, increased traffic, and limited affordable housing options, for example. I propose that a renewed centering of design in planning practice is a necessary reorientation of the planning profession that links two scales of city-making in Canada: broad, normative policy; and the grounded, material everyday human scale. I suggest that there is a persistent friction in the translation of planning policy into sensed, and lived, urban spaces that are generous, inclusive, and increase community and individual well-being. In the face of the numerous urban challenges, we cannot afford to plan and build spaces that neglect the human experience at a material micro-scale. As an entry into understanding the historical relationship between planning and design in Canada, I examine a non-binding, but influential planning tool: the urban design guidelines. I investigate guidelines’ origins and use it as a proxy to better situate the human experience in planned Canadian urban life. Through a collation of urban design guideline image locations, I map the radii of precedents: how near or far do Canadian cities look for innovation in urban design? And what implications does this have for creative problem-solving in the urban Canadian planning context?