Common Planning Fallacies #1
Tony Cooke was a member of Summerland's OCP stakeholders group, and he's been vocal in the community about his concerns with the direction of the 2nd draft of the OCP, especially in how it differs from the public input that has been collected so far. Tony has offered to contribute to this site, including a series of "common planning fallacies" with his comments. I think these ideas will be great for starting discussions on some key areas of future development -- your own comments are always welcome.
Fallacy #1: "Commercial development on the highway will bring people into the downtown. If we don't develop the highway the downtown will die"
Tony's Comment: "If that is the case, why is Kelowna's downtown in such a sad state? There has been a huge amount of highway development in Kelowna over the past 25 years, yet today Kelowna's downtown is nothing like as vibrant or as important to the city as it was in 1980. Professional offices and many other businesses have relocated to developments on the Highway 97 strip.
This downtown deterioration has occurred despite the uplifting benefit of the major lakeshore redevelopment immediately to the North."
posted by Jeremy |
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6 Comments:
I guess my main question is whether the latest draft of the OCP is actually proposing increased commercial development along the highway. It was before Christmas when I read the second draft (my memory isn't great), and I didn't get the impression that highway development was being encouraged. It would be nice to have a digital copy of the draft so we could quote from it and get everyone reading and understanding it.
The belief seems to be that more commercial development on the highway would "put Summerland on the map" a bit more, because right now people drive through without knowing there's a great little town just off the highway. More services for highway travellers might stop more of them on the highway, but I don't believe that very many (if any) of them would think "hey, now that we got gas, why don't we see what the rest of this community looks like!"
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Jeremy, at 2:23 p.m.
Since Kelowna's development was also mentioned here, I thought I'd include a link to an article on the Smart Growth BC site: Kelowna Strives for a Smarter Future. It puts some of Kelowna's terrible sprawling development into perspective.
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Jeremy, at 2:31 p.m.
You are right, Draft 2 of the OCP does not show substantial highway development - thanks perhaps to the influence of the Stakeholders Group. However, there is still considerable pressure from sections of the business community to develop the highway all the way from Sumac Ridge to Sunoka Beach.
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tony cooke, at 2:30 p.m.
Interesting -- thanks for this insight, Tony. I'm trying to take a positive approach, so in a way, it's good news to hear that commercial highway development didn't make it into Draft 2.
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Jeremy, at 4:06 p.m.
Firstly, I want to say "thanks" to Jeremy for putting this site together. I believe it is well put together with a lot of information.
Regarding development on the highway, I hope this never happens in Summerland. If people want to come to a community, it will be because of "word of mouth", and because we have a great community here.
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Anonymous, at 3:52 p.m.
Thanks Jean -- I'll have to spread the credit around to a few others. Tannis and Bill hatched the plan with me, and we can expect more posts from them. We were also spurred to action by letters in the Review and contact with other concerned folks, some of whom have sent us excellent stuff.
And I totally agree with your comment about highway development. It's the opposite of what most people are saying about what they want for the future of the town, at least what I'm hearing.
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Jeremy, at 7:43 p.m.
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