Development plans under fire

Iqalummiut – at least, Iqalummiut of a certain type – showed this week that they care passionately about the way their city is developing.

They also made it clear, at a neighbourhood discussion, that there are a lot of things in the city they don't like.

About 30 people showed up for the first of four neighbourhood discussions the city organized this week to gather input for the five-year revision of Iqaluit's general plan and for creation of plans for both economic development and long-term sustainability.

The neighbourhood meeting quickly developed into an energetic gripe fest, with participants vying to list their, sometimes contradictory, beefs about the city, including:

• too much density in the downtown area;
• too much suburban sprawl;
• creating large blocks of social housing (e.g., across from the museum), with no attempts to mix populations;
• ugly social housing designs (people will treat them as ugly), not designed for how people live;
• not enough playgrounds and green-space in social-housing areas, and playgrounds not maintained;
• destruction of tundra, and no restoration after construction;
• little attempt to beautify the city, to make it a place people care about;
• too many cars and no public transit (bring back the bus);
• cycling is more dangerous than in any other city;
• not giving businesses anywhere to expand (i.e., area by Northwestel should have been a mini-mall);
• waterfront area a low-income ghetto, when it should be a café district;
• no plan for landscaping, or not enforced;
• strong vilification and faint praise for the posts and boulders used to demarcate pedestrian areas from vehicle traffic;
• no building inspector; and
• bad road maintenance, terrible drainage, problems with the utilidor (which should be above ground to save installation and repair costs).

Most participants at the meeting were Qallunaat over 40 – professionals and small-business owners who have lived in the city for a number of years. There was also a sprinkling of younger professionals in attendance, and only a couple of Inuit.

Michelle Armstrong of 410 Consultants, who facilitated the meeting, said the general plan is the 20-year physical development plan for the city. It was adopted in 2003, and this is the first round of revisions.

She noted that Iqaluit's projected population for 2030 is just over 12,000 people, a near 75 per cent expected increase from the current 7,000.
That growth will require about 70 new housing units a year over the next 20 years, she said.

She showed a map with four proposed development areas, each delineated topographically by the engineering requirement for a separate sewage lift station, at a cost of about $2 million per station:

• Area A, on both sides of the road just before the long descent into Apex, is projected to accommodate 480-560 units;
• Area B, straddling the Road to Nowhere beyond the lake subdivision and swinging around to an area almost across from the Arctic Winter Games arena, will accept 390-455 units;
• Area C, the hillside extending towards Apex from the present end of Tundra Ridge, is projected to eventually hold 180-210 units; and
• Area D, the smallest parcel at about 2.5 hectares, extending back towards town from Area A on the far side of the road, is expected to take 80-100 units.

That triggered the first challenge of the evening – whether the housing needs projection included accommodating the 500 to 700 people already homeless in Iqaluit.

Armstrong said if people are homeless, it means they are not being counted in the population census, and made a note to factor them into planning considerations.

If there was a consensus on anything, besides general disgust at the state of the city, it was that future development should be mixed, in all senses of the word.

Home owners, professional-class renters and social housing should all be mixed together instead of being developed in discrete blocks.

And commercial, office and institutional development should be integrated with housing, so that people can live near work, shopping and recreation.

Inuksugait Plaza was praised for including stores and offices in the same buildings with apartments.

Others praised the city's walking trails and the new sculpture parks and tundra parkettes downtown, but wanted more throughout the rest of the city.

Mat Nuqingnaq earned an enthusiastic round of applause when he said that if Inuit and Qallunaat hope to live together successfully in this city, they will have to share housing areas as well.

He noted that lower Iqaluit, also "affectionately known as The Bronx," is almost exclusively Inuit.

This neighbourhood meeting was for people living in the core area, lower Iqaluit and Happy Valley.

Other meetings this week were held for residents of 1) the plateau subdivision, 2) Apex, and 3) Tundra Valley, Tundra Ridge, and the Road to Nowhere and Lake subdivisions.

A "community café" meeting was also scheduled for June 9, to discuss Iqaluit-wide issues.

City staff and consultants will use input gathered at these meetings to create proposed revisions to the general plan, Armstrong said.

The revised plan will be presented for public discussion in a September round of consultations, followed by further revision and a third round of consultations in November.