Raise the Hammer

This population density issue keeps coming up over and over on RTH and is often used as just another irrelevant 'exceptionalism' excuse not to adopt a proven urban design principle here (Hamilton is too cold/hot, has an escarpment/lake, is close to Toronto, is not European, is too poor, too old/new, too diverse/homogeneous for something that works somewhere else to work here).

The Spec was guilty of this "but we're different" excuse recently when they argued that the city should not extend sidewalk clearing to all parts of the city because "we are not London, Ottawa or Winnipeg." I'm not sure why the fact that these other Canadian cities, of similar size, provide snow clearing of sidewalks is not relevant. Is it because they have more snow, and so snow clearing would be cheaper here? http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/430...

It is true that population density is sometimes a relevant factor. However, it is not reasonable to argue against 30km/h conversion in Durand or Kirkendall (or widened sidewalks or two-way conversion) by invoking density based on the entire area of the city which, due to amalgamation, has huge tracts of agricultural and rural land. The fair thing to do is consider either the density of the urban areas (about 2200 residents /km^2) or, even better, the densities of the actual areas being discussed.

Ward 2 has a very high population density of 6800 /km^2, and Durand is even higher at about 12000 /km^2. These densities are extremely high by any standards. For comparison, the English district with the highest density in the entire country is the North London borough of Islington, with a density of 14000/km^2 and area of 14.86 km^2 (Ward 2 has an area of 4.7km^2), and only 9 districts have population densities higher than 10000 /km^2! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eng...

Even by "European" standards the urban core of Hamilton has high population densities, certainly high enough to warrant "people first" planning principles!

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2014-01-11 12:44:46