Planning is a game of patience

I don’t think of myself as a very patient person, so it is rather ironic that I picked a career that requires enormous patience.? This article is a counterpoint to my earlier article, Can we just “plan” faster? ?It is a reminder that some aspects of planning projects take time to come to fruition.

Planning fundamentally is thinking ahead to how the urban environment will look like and function, five, ten or twenty-five years from now.? Perhaps there are a few visionaries that think in longer terms, but our society seems to be thinking in shorter and shorter increments, to the detriment of believing big projects can happen.

The oft-quoted Daniel Burnham said, “Make no little plans.? They have no magic to stir men’s blood.? Make big plans:? aim high in hope and work.”? I’m sure I had to look that up for a term paper in university.? But the reality is that most of us have been conditioned to look only for the easily implementable low-hanging fruit projects.? Projects that can be pulled off within a political term, with tangible “announceables” are the ones that get traction.? With every form of “crisis” we declare these days, the response has to be “rapid” or “quick start”.? Many of us are now skeptical that big, city building projects will ever garner the support to proceed.

There are good reasons why great ideas do not get traction right away.? Most elected officials will be frank with you that they are confronted with many great ideas, but they have no choice but to put things in order of priority, often only having the budget flexibility to deal with the most urgent issues.? It’s hard to prioritize a long-term big capital project when there are urgent social issues or infrastructure maintenance problems that take priority.? In other cases, projects which need inter-governmental cooperation for funding do not have political alignment amongst the governments.? It is rare that each government’s priorities sync up with the others.

This article was provoked by a LinkedIn comment from one of my long-standing professional colleagues.? I was excited to see the flooding of the new Don River valley in Toronto in the Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection Project , having played a teeny part in such a massive undertaking.? My colleague remarked about an early pivotal conversation we had on the project and reminded me it was just over twenty years ago.

My first reaction was $%&@, I’m getting old.? But my second reaction was that this is an affirmation of something I have told many people.? I firmly believe that good ideas survive over time.? They eventually find their day.

It isn’t just big public works projects like moving rivers to do flood protection, or big transit projects that take time.?

The first subdivision I was ever involved in designing and getting approved is in a small community north of Toronto.? I worked on the project very early after I graduated almost thirty years ago, and I was flattered by the compliment from municipal staff that it was a very efficient design.? Life moved on, and I didn’t think much more about it until many years later, playing with Google Maps, I realized that it had been built.?

In another instance, I worked on a master plan for a redevelopment of a surplus public property.? That plan was adopted almost nineteen years ago.? It is now about half built.? In both those cases, market demand and the provision of infrastructure dictated the timing of implementation.

I have learned that timing is everything.? When I was with my former role with the City of Ottawa, our Official Plan team proposed making significant changes in the R1 single-family-zoned neighbourhoods in the vicinity of higher quality transit service at stations and on corridors.? With intense public pushback from certain areas, we had to scale it back.? But the idea was sound, and in 2023, the Province of Ontario completed the job for us through legislation to allow multiple units on all residential lots.? I like to think that we were ahead of our time and didn’t quite have the social license to push our changes through.? But not much later, the housing crisis created the conditions for the Province to intervene in all cities.

Another big city building project that I like to remind people of is ādisōke , the new joint facility of Library and Archives Canada and the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library.? Forward thinking Councillors and the Library Board started thinking about a new main branch in the early 2000s.? It took over twenty years for shovels to break ground.? But thanks to many community leaders and champions, after several setbacks, the project found its momentum.? It was finally approved in 2018 and construction is proceeding well.? I am looking forward to walking in there one day, grabbing a book and enjoying a grand new community space.

Timing can be real challenge, but it can add discipline to projects.? ?One of my favourite projects of my career, the new Boys and Girls Club Taggart-Parkes Family Clubhouse on Hetherington Road is an example of a good idea that could leverage significant private support plus federal stimulus funding, and a willingness of Ottawa City Council to push through one of the fastest rezonings I have ever been involved with.? To secure the funding, approvals had to be granted and work had to be completed in a fixed timeframe.? I have no doubt the B and G team spent years dreaming up this new facility, but it is a beautiful example of the stars aligning and everyone working together to get it to happen.

The Don Mouth project is an abject lesson in the point I made above.? Good ideas survive over time.? It is a good reminder for everyone in the profession who gets the chance to work on that one remarkable project.? Don’t lose hope.? If it is a good idea, it will find its day.