Category / Planning
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Student Streets Strategy and Safety Review
An important challenge today is designing our cities and streets to facilitate heathier, more active lifestyles. This has a number of impacts for all age groups, including children. At the neighbourhood level, the quality and safety of streets influences a child’s ability to experience their community. Nowhere is this more keenly observed than with the…
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Student Streets Create Healthier Neighbourhoods
The Daily School Route (DSR) is an enhanced approach to active school travel that creates active transportation systems for kids. The DSR sees kids as “transportation users” within their own system and creates a network of routes, called Student Streets, to help facilitate safe, effective active school travel. The goal is to see 100 per…
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Building a community hub: From concept plan to implementation
YWCA Hamilton recently opened the doors of the Putman Family YWCA, a renewal of their location at 51 Ottawa Street North in Hamilton. The new facility is a dynamic community hub combining affordable housing, economic development infrastructure, and state-of the-art green building technology. As is the case with many successful projects, planning was key right…
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Using technology to boost participatory planning
The use of technology to help with public engagement in the planning process has seen a big boost during the COVID pandemic. While physical distancing requirements have limited traditional models of engagement, such as PICs or open houses, it has also exposed how, in many ways, these methods are no longer the best and only…
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COVID-19 is inspiring healthier street design in Canadian cities
As communities adjust to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, a vibrant global discussion is taking place about how cities should provide more street space to facilitate safer physical distancing. Even with staged re-openings, the expectation of a second wave has planners thinking about how to design streets to anticipate a new normal over the…
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Civicplan Wins Two Urban Design and Architecture Awards
Civicplan won two Urban Design and Architecture Awards for work in Participatory Planning, Public Engagement & Neighbourhood Design. PlanLocal: Beautiful Streets & Spaces won the Award of Excellence for Visions and Plans and The Durand Neighbourhood Character Project won the Award of Merit for Civic Achievements. PlanLocal: Beautiful Streets & Spaces Project description How do…
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A Woonerf Solution
Good, proactive urban planning reimagines city spaces that may be overlooked but hold great potential. This is the case in the area just south of downtown Hamilton. The James-John Street South district (SouthTown) is a diverse commercial area in Hamilton, south of the downtown Central Business District. The area contains a variety of land uses,…
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Engaging Neighbourhoods Using Technology for Participatory Planning
Participatory Planning is a way of doing planning that puts residents at the centre of decision making in their community. Paul Shaker, RPP, is a principal and co-founder of Civicplan, a Hamilton-based company that has developed a participatory planning platform called PlanLocal to help residents engage more directly in planning their neighbourhods. It combines elements…
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Hamilton’s SoBi Delivers on Key Bike Share Promises: User Engagement Highlights
Why Bike Share? Cities across North America from Atlanta to Vancouver have established bike share programs to address a variety of urban issues and policy objectives. Promoting cycling as a means of everyday transportation supports public health officials, city planners, environmental advocates and sustainably minded transportation planners. In general, bike share programs promise to encourage…
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Small is Beautiful – Ontario Town Planning Done Right
Some of the Civicplan team had the recent opportunity to visit beautiful downtown Goderich, Ontario. Situated on Lake Huron, Goderich is a town of around 8,000 people. Of particular interest is Goderich’s downtown civic square, an octagonal traffic circle known as ‘The Square’. The Square was formally listed in the Register of Historic Place…
