The big rage in urban policy these days is the 15-minute city – that is, living in an urban area where everything is 15 minutes away. One could argue that Thunder Bay has been a 15-minute city for decades – no part of town is more than 15 minutes away by car. However, the modern incarnation of the 15-minute city is one where most things one needs in the process of daily life – medical services, schools, retail, services, etc…- are within a 15-minute walk from where you live. This used to be a feature of early cities that persisted well into the 19th century but with urban growth and the advent of the automobile and suburbanization, we have moved away from that.
Nonetheless, Thunder Bay is also trying to move into the new age and part of that process involved its new Zoning By-law that passed in April of 2022. While not ostensibly part of an official plan to build the 15-minute city, it is designed to encourage urban density. Among other things, the plan levels “residential zoning across the city, opening the door for homeowners to subdivide any detached house, build new homes on smaller lots, and even allow for residential housing in backyards”. In part this is expected to expand the rental housing market by allowing for more basement apartments – many of which already exist – to come out into the housing stock fully and legally and expand affordable housing. Even the Chamber of Commerce has got into the act by supporting this policy as a return to mixed use neighborhoods and the creation of “walkable neighborhoods” where you can walk down the street and get groceries or a cup of coffee.
Of course, the problem is that in Thunder Bay, as is often the case, the left municipal hand does not always move in accord with what the right municipal hand is doing. There is a degree of policy inconsistency. On the one hand, April 2022 saw a new zoning bylaw designed to encourage urban density through a process of infill while September of 2022 sees the same municipal entity initiating planning to expand the Parkdale suburban subdivision that also requires a substantial extension to the city’s sewer infrastructure. On the one hand we want more density in existing residential neighborhoods, but we also want new suburban residential developments.
However, such inconsistency is minor given it is traditional not only in Thunder Bay but across municipalities in Ontario. It is rare to find a municipality – especially in today’s era of “housing shortages” that would not jump at the prospect of new development and associated tax revenues and development charges. The more serious issue for Thunder Bay is that despite being a city with a CMA population of 130,000, it really feels like a much smaller and spread-out place because of its historic development as two cities. What is actually required is more density buildings in the four to eight storey range just off of existing commercial and retail areas – including the old downtown cores. Simply allowing for more basement apartments in existing suburban neighborhoods does nothing for “walkable communities” as they all need cars to get anywhere anyway. If anything, this makes a car-centric city worse. Pretending that more basement apartments in areas remote from shops and services will create walkability is simply aspirational urban planning.
What is starting to happen especially in some of the older “modern suburbs” built circa 1960 and going forward is basement apartments being allowed without consideration for the spillover effects of more residents and especially more vehicles. The new zoning bylaw allows 1.5 vehicles per home but some of these rental homes now have 3 and 4 vehicles most of which end up being parked on the street. The amount of traffic on some residential streets is noticeably higher – and one should note faster. And if the new units happen to be close to the university or college, there are invariably a lot of overnight guests adding to the urban street scene.
Even all this could be worked around if the City of Thunder Bay actually followed up its plans with some type of concerted implementation. Case in point. Snow removal. The city has calendar parking in residential neighborhoods to facilitate snow clearing. That is on even calendar days you park on the even address side of the streets and on odd calendar days you park on the odd side. This allows for easier and efficient snow clearing as one side of the street is always clear after a storm.
The problem is there are now too many cars on some streets for the parking available at the homes, so they invariably need to be parked on the road and in the winter rotated from side to side. That has become too bothersome for the average Thunder Bay resident who prefers to park willy-nilly wherever they feel like and so there are always cars on both sides no matter what day it is. And if snow is in the forecast, no one cares because facilitating snow removal is a community benefit and the constant turnover of new rental residents with weaker ties to the neighborhood means they do not care as much. Moreover, the city rarely, if ever, tries to go down streets and ticket violators as part of a program of regular enforcement – no doubt because they are “short-staffed”. On days when it does snow, the snow plough operator has difficulty getting through the street resulting in an uneven job. And to make it worse, more often than not even the city plough operator does not follow the rules ploughing the even side on an even day when parking there is allowed and vice versa.
Thunder Bay has in many respects again become the wild west. Rules? They appear to have become voluntary unless someone decides they are not. Try following the speed limit in a school zone with two large F-150s behind you and see what its like. If you want rules, you follow them if you like, it is your choice, seems to be the mantra. Yet, with increased density and more people living in closer proximity, following the rules should be more and not less important. Thunder Bay has always been a place full of independently minded people doing whatever they want when they want and that appears to extend to the city government itself which makes plans and rules and does not enforce them or even try to implement them properly. To be fair, some of this behaviour is continued fallout from the pandemic and a reaction to the rules and restrictions that were imposed. There is a process of social and behavioural adjustment under way in cities across Canada, and it is not over yet. Still, it remains that the long-term outcome here is not going to be some type of urbanite planning fantasy of happy renters and homeowners co-existing in walkable suburban communities strolling hand in hand to save the environment while the city wins urban planning awards. Rather, it is going to result in a deterioration of urban quality and community life for many residents of Thunder Bay as a result of aspirational planning with no follow through.
