Town Plan - “How to Make a Town”

This week’s reading “How to Make a Town Plan” explores the key principles urban designers and planners follow to create communities that blend the natural and built environment, enhance vitality and increase the pleasure and comfort of its residents.

The following are principals that should be followed to achieve the above goals:

Regional Considerations:  Ideally growth should be located within a regional plan that seeks to limit car usage and preserve open space. Any growth should also be adjacent to existing development and close to transit stops.

Mixed Use Development: Ideally every neighbourhood should be designed with an even balance of residents and jobs. There also needs to be adequate mixture of land uses e.g. commercial, residential. However fully integrated mixed communities take time and is a continual process.

Connectivity: Neighbourhoods must connect wherever practically possible, especially between residential areas. Highways approaching neighbourhoods should not intersect as this breaks up the connectivity between areas and therefore should skirt around.

Making the Most of a Site: Natural features such as waterfronts, hillsides, wetlands and trees should be preserved on a site as they add to property value and character.

Discipline of the Neighbourhood: Most new traditional towns are designed around a 5 min measure. High density surrounds the centre and as you move further out density should decrease.

Making Transit Work: Transit must be frequent and predictable, must follow a route that is direct and stops must be safe, dry and dignified.

Streets: Travel lanes should be no wider than 10 ft. to reduce speed and create a safe environment.

Buildings: Private buildings must also have a manner which contributes to pedestrian life. Setbacks are 10ft in the neighbourhood centre, 30ft neighbourhood edge and there are no setbacks for retail outlets allowing them to engage the public.

Parking: An essential rule of thumb with parking is to provide no more off-street parking than can be concealed behind buildings, and no more buildings than that amount of parking can support.

These principals all contribute to making a town that meets the needs of all members of society.