Former hayfield heads for heyday: MCC
Of course NO ONE from UT would post a Toronto Star article flattering about the future of Mississauga City Centre.
Former hayfield heads for heyday
Nov. 23, 2006. 07:00 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
Mississauga is starting to act its age. Born in 1974, the suburb to the west of Toronto has now grown up and turned into a city.
Well, almost.
The transformation won't be complete for two or three decades, but the process has begun. So far, the changes have been subtle, but pay close attention and there they are — high-density developments, smaller blocks, parking spots on Burnhamthorpe Rd. ...
It's only a matter of time before meters are added to those parking spots. It's doubtful Mississaugans will like it, but get used to it; they're going to happen.
"We started in a hayfield not that long ago," says Hazel McCallion, 85, recently elected mayor for the 11th time. "There were mistakes made, which we're now filling in. We're no longer a bedroom community, but we ended up with subdivisions with cul-de-sacs and crescents. Transit was never a part of Mississauga's first Official Plan, but in the last 15 years we have gone out of our way to incorporate public transit."
McCallion admits that it won't be easy getting Mississaugans out of their cars. "The only thing that will work," she says, "is congestion."
On the other hand, she points out, "the big issue in Mississauga is congestion."
That's why her No. 1 priority is public transit, specifically bus rapid transit, BRT, a $260 million scheme that would include separate bus lanes, a network of stations and enhanced connections to the TTC and Pearson Airport.
"We'd all really love to see light rail transit," admits Mississauga urban designer Andrew McNeill. "But it's a question of money. However, next year we are starting a feasibility study for higher order transit on Hurontario St., the main north-south artery through Mississauga. That could mean BRT or light rail."
The study is expected to take a year, but transit will be only one of many changes planned for Hurontario, now a designated development zone.
"We see buildings right out to the sidewalk," McNeill says. "There will be buses. There will be cyclists. There will be congestion. It will be urban."
"Thirty years from now," says McNeill, standing at the corner of Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe, "this will be our Queen and Yonge. But now our blocks are too big. We want to break them down to a finer grain. We need to focus on the pedestrian realm. We need to get more mixed use. We want active streets and iconic architecture. We're actively trying to encourage mid-rise infill development around these towers; there's a lot of land."
Indeed, it could well turn out that the key to Mississauga's urban transformation lies in the very nature of the suburban planning regime that has prevailed for the past three decades. The enormous leftover spaces between buildings and streets contain enough room for a whole new layer of development.
In addition to that, there are the streets themselves, often eight to 10 lanes wide. Already, one lane of Burnhamthorpe has been closed to traffic to make way for parking, and Mississaugans can expect the same scenario will be played out on many of the city's main arteries.
Then, of course, there are the parking lots, those vast asphalt oceans that make life in Mississauga possible. Square One, for instance, is slowly but surely being built up.
"Mississauga has reached the point where surface parking lots no longer make sense," McNeill explains.
With a population of 700,000, Mississauga hopes to hit one million. But to do so, it must build taller and more densely.
"We will have minimum height limits — three storeys — along the Hurontario corridor," says John Calvert, Mississauga's director of policy and planning.
The already famous Marilyn Munroe condo on the northeast corner of Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe in the city core will be 56 storeys tall. There are no height regulations in this area; the sky is quite literally the limit.
But as Mississauga transit commissioner Martin Powell points out, "if you're going to sell density, you've got to have transit."
Currently, only 12 per cent of Mississaugans use transit. Powell hopes to increase that to 20 per cent.
"It will be a huge challenge," he admits, which is hardly surprising given that four-car families are not at all unusual in Mississauga.
"Success has its drawbacks," notes McCallion. "Nothing has been done about gridlock in the GTA for 30 years. For 30 years there have been no major government infrastructure initiatives."
Like other mayors in Ontario, McCallion makes it very clear she holds Ottawa and Queen's Park responsible for the situation.
"The federal government has all the money," she charges. "The province has all the power. And the cities have all the problems. We need a complete overhaul of Canadian governance. It's so mixed up. All we do is argue. We're overgoverned. We're overtaxed, and we're badly run.
"The cities need sustainable sources of revenue. The gas tax is good but it needs to be permanent. And I don't see the province offsetting downloading for years. Only the people can change it and they're not well informed."
City or suburb, for all their differences in Canada, the problems are the same.
Louroz
