Building August September 2018

Urban Development / Architecture & Design / Innovation

PM#43096012

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Healthcare P3s Smart Cities Facial Recognition

The Urban Response to Terrorism

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Roy Gaiot

FEATURES

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Securing public space?

What planners and designers should think about when incorporating security measures into the built environment.

By John Lorinc

A Triple Threat?

To say P3s are a thorny issue in the building industry is putting it mildly, and architects are often caught right in the middle.

By Jim Sutherland

Monetizing Smart Cities Canada must develop a national policy that mandates two things: data ownership and open architecture.

By Kurtis McBride

Departments 05 06 08 10 11 27 30

Editor’s Notes Market Watch Legal Briefs From the Bullpen Powers That Be Site Visit Viewpoint

Building.CA explore Cégep Marie-Victorin The public college in north-east Montréal tackles several large-scale development projects.

read Tough Decisions Markus Moos challenges the myths about millennials and housing.

read Building a Talent Pipeline Rowan O’Grady provides tips for finding the best candidates for your job opening.

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Volume 68 No. 4

Editor in Chief Peter Sobchak Art Director Roy Gaiot Associate Editor Stefan Novakovic Legal Editor Jeffrey W. Lem Contributors Richard Joy, Megan J. Lem, John Lorinc, Kurtis McBride, Shannon Moore, Ben Myers, Kevin Powers, Jim Sutherland Customer Service / Production Laura Moffatt, 416 441 2085 x104 Press Releases pressroom@building.ca Circulation Manager circulation@building.ca Sales Manager Faria Ahmed, 416 441 2085 x106 fahmed@building.ca Vice President & Senior Publisher Steve Wilson, 416 441 2085 x105 swilson@building.ca President, iQ Business Media Inc. Alex Papanou Design Consultation BLVD Agency

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and Carry On

When the news feed on your phone explodes with headlines publicizing yet another mass killing, or the attempt of one, anxiety-laced reactions of fear that the bonds of a civil society are fractured and dissolving are not uncommon. Yet while a particular truth may seem incongruent at a moment like that, it should also be reiterated: we are living in the safest time in history.

It might not feel that way, but a cold hard look at the numbers reveal it to be true. “Terrorism is a unique hazard because it combines major dread with minor harm,” says Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in his new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. “Historical trends, like the current numbers, belie the fear that we are living in newly dangerous times, particularly in the West.”

Pinker’s exhaustive analysis of the data yields some realities that don’t match the demands that 24-hour news cycles operate on. “Mass killings are media-driven spectacles in which coverage inspires copycats, so [numbers] can yo-yo up and down as one event inspires another until the novelty wears off for a while,” he says, but in truth we actually have more of a chance of dying from lightning strikes or bee stings than actual terrorist attacks.

“Though terrorism poses a miniscule danger compared with other risks, it creates outsize panic and hysteria because that is what it is designed to do. Modern terrorism is a by-product of the vast outreach of the media,” says Pinker. “A group or an individual seeks a slice of the world’s attention by the one guaranteed means of attracting it: killing innocent people, especially in circumstances in which readers of the news can imagine themselves.” And nowhere is this more successful than violent acts perpetrated on sidewalks and outdoor cafes, places that we all feel we could be in any given moment.

Peter Sobchak Editor in Chief We welcome your feedback. Send your questions and comments to psobchak@building.ca

While it may not soothe our unease being reminded that killers tend to be loners and losers, many with untreated mental illness, who are consumed with resentment and fantasize about revenge and recognition, “the rise of terrorism in public awareness is not a sign of how dangerous the world has become but the opposite,” says Pinker.

Yet sadly these actions have consequences, as the frayed-nerves of a citizenry inevitably influence the policies of decision-makers. As states try to carry out the impossible mandate of protecting their citizens from violence everywhere and at all times, “they are tempted to respond with theater of their own,” says Pinker. “The most damaging effect of terrorism is countries’ overreaction to it.”

I am by no means suggesting that makers of the built environment should do nothing: security must of course be taken seriously when planning and designing the public realm. A reinstatement of those famous British wartime posters is probably not the answer, but neither are permanent installations of Jersey barriers around every piece of public architecture. A calm civil society deserves better solutions.

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market watch Spotlight: Investment & Cap Rate Trends

Investment activity healthy and demand strong: Altus

The latest results from Altus Group’s Investment Trends Survey (ITS) for the four benchmark asset classes show a slight decline in the average Overall Capitalization Rate (OCR) at 5.07 per cent in Q2 2018, compared to the first quarter of 2018 and second quarter last year, at 5.10 per cent and 5.15 per cent, respectively. According to RealNet Investment Transactions results, national investment activity volume is up at $13.2 billion from $12.7 billion, comparing year-over-year results in Q1 2018, indicating continued strong demand for properties.

Quarter-over-quarter, ITS participants anticipate that cap rates for the benchmark office and retail properties will likely increase marginally, while multi-unit residential and industrial benchmark properties will see modest cap rate compression.

Despite new uncertainty with regards to global trade, tariffs and housing, Canada remains a prime target for both domestic and foreign investors, amid stable growth in wages and employment, and a period of political stability. Of the 128 combinations of products and markets covered, 83 had a “positive” momentum ratio (i.e. a higher percentage of respondents said they were more likely to be a buyer than a seller in that

particular segment), 42 had a “negative” momentum ratio and three were neutral. The overall momentum ratio was up from last year. The three product/markets which showed the most positive momentum were: Ottawa Single-Tenant, a boisterous increase from last quarter, followed by Ottawa MultiTenant Industrial. Toronto Tier 1 Regional Malls, although high, have remained unchanged from Q1 2018.

Investor appetite in real estate remains strong. With a rise in employment and a healthy labour market, demand for office in major urban centres continues to witness moderate growth. Office cap rates have increased across Canada for downtown Class “AA” assets, with a slight decline in Montréal and a flattening of cap rates in Ottawa that is largely attributed to a supply shortage as investors look for higher yields in other attractive markets outside of Toronto and Vancouver.

Market highlights for the quarter include: • O verall cap rates have declined in six of the eight markets, with the exception of Edmonton, which remains relatively flat, and Calgary, which shows a marginal

OCR Trends - 4 benchmark asset classes Downtown Class AA office Tier 1 regional mall Single tenant industrial Suburban multiple unit residential 4 asset class average

10.0 % 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0

5.66 5.33 5.07 4.75 4.53

5.0 4.0

1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 1 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Source: Altus Group

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Cap rates will remain flat with a modest decline for specific markets and assets. increase in comparison to its past quarter cap rate compression; • Vancouver’s average overall cap rates for industrial and multi-unit residential moved down slightly from Q1, while Vancouver’s Tier 1 Regional Malls have gently climbed and downtown Class “AA” office remains stable; •Q uarter-to-quarter, Toronto’s cap rates for suburban multi-unit residential and industrial products are anticipated to push downwards. Tier 1 Regional Malls and downtown Class “AA” office cap rates remain steady, following a slight uplift in retail and a cap rate compression among office in the previous quarter; • Investor intentions in Montréal’s office sector continue to grow as office cap rates decreased moderately from the previous quarter. Retail and industrial cap rates remain unchanged; • Suburban multi-unit residential cap rates have fallen across all markets, except for Calgary and Québec City, where it shows an incremental lift in residential cap rates

from Q1. Moreover, RealNet Investment Transactions results indicate a decline in national portfolio sales volume and total deal count for multi-unit residential products and residential lands (YoY in Q1 2018); ffice and Tier 1 Regional Mall cap rates •O for Ottawa, Québec City and Halifax remain relatively consistent with figures from last quarter. A moderate increase in cap rates can be seen for retail and industrial in Ottawa; •W ith strong investor demand, survey respondents anticipate that cap rates will continue to compress for suburban multiunit residential product in the Edmonton market and for industrial product in the Calgary market. There has been a rise in office cap rates for Calgary and Edmonton, and Tier 1 Regional Malls remain flat for both markets.

$ Billion

National sales volume 16.0 14.0 12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0

residential land $3.4 1.6 0.5 1.3

Q2 2017

Q3 2017

Q4 2017

hotel apartment

1.9

industrial

1.9

retail

2.5

Q1 2017

ICI land

office

Q1 2018

Source: RealNet Investment Transactions

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legal Briefs We See You!

While facial recognition technology’s application is growing exponentially, so too are the concerns of privacy, accuracy and liability.

By Jeffrey W. Lem and Megan J. Lem

Jeffrey W. Lem is Editor-in-Chief of the Real Property Reports and the Director of Titles for the Province of Ontario. The opinions expressed in this article are personal to the author and not attributable or referable to the government of the Province of Ontario.

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Megan J. Lem is a corporate lawyer in the Toronto office of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. This article reflects the opinions of the author alone.

Person of Interest is a television show that ran from 2011 to 2016 which chronicles the adventures of an ex-assassin and a tech geek who collectively prevent crimes with the use of a super-sophisticated video surveillance computer. At the heart of the show is surreal facial recognition technology. While aspects of the show were clearly science fiction (the technology that used the facial recognition was called the “Machine” and seemed both omnipotent and omniscient), nary two years after the end of the show, facial recognition headlines in the news have become ubiquitous.

Facial recognition technology is all around us. Microsoft’s Surface tablet and Apple’s IPhone X, as well as many other consumer electronics, now use facial recognition technology for login. Toronto city council just approved the doubling of the number of surveillance cameras throughout the city, at the request of the police following the brutal shootings on Danforth Ave. Facial recognition technology is all around us even when we can’t see it at work. Several Canadian malls use cameras and face recognition technology to guide shoppers and enhance the retail experience. Amazon’s shareholders and employees recently pleaded with Amazon not to license its Rekognition software for clandestine law enforcement use.

And this was just a sampling of the headlines from the last month alone!

Facial recognition technology is far from new and has been around in a rudimentary form for decades. It is only within the last few years that facial recognition technology has made exponential leaps in practical application. This is, in part, because of improvements in camera technology. More importantly, the algorithms used to differentiate images have become that much more sophisticated and smarter. AIH Technology Inc., a Toronto-based company specializing in facial recognition technology originally developed by its China division, notes that, unlike your grandfather’s

facial recognition software, the modern technology is optimized to recognize faces of all ethnicities, in motion, in vehicles, in disguises, and in extreme low-light conditions, all in near-real-time with 99 per cent plus detection accuracy rates.

Of course, even non-lawyers realize that few new technologies have attracted more legal attention than this modern facial recognition technology. There is a whole tension between privacy and security and where that line should be drawn. Currently, there is very little legislation or case law directly on point, even though the technology is already widely in use. This isn’t the first time that laws have significantly lagged the development and widespread use of technology. Only recently have governments begun reacting to the almost exponential growth of this technology.

For example, while it does not appear that the shopping centre operators did anything at all wrong by installing cameras in their malls and tracking customers through those cameras, nonetheless both the federal and provincial privacy commissioners have opened an investigation into the use of facial recognition technology in large public shopping centres.

While it is still clearly the “wild west” in terms of ethics and legality, things are rapidly evolving along the legal frontier and we anticipate comprehensive rules to formulate soon, either through legislation or case law.

While a detailed legal framework will eventually emerge, we do not interpret this as meaning, in any way, that the growth of the technology will be materially curtailed. If anything, we feel that the rules that will emerge will focus on the protection and potential abuse of the resulting data (rather than the surveillance per se) and will impose liability on false identifications. Most readers are familiar with the recent experiment where Amazon’s Rekognition software falsely identified 28 members of the U.S. Congress as known criminals. We can see the law not being tolerant of any actions based on that

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Amazon’s Rekognition software falsely identified 28 members of the U.S. Congress as known criminals kind of inaccuracy, but any such laws, rather than limiting the use of facial recognition software, will simply give the competitive edge to technology providers with better, stronger and faster technologies.

But don’t take our word for it. If capital markets are any predictors of the future, then the money seems to agree with us in positing that facial recognition technology is here to stay.

The New York Times recently ran an article

discussing emerging Chinese companies leading the charge in advanced facial recognition technology (the best facial recognition technology all seems to be coming out of China). In that article, SenseTime, an artificial intelligence company based in Beijing and specializing in facial recognition, recently raised over US$1.6 billion, giving it a market capitalization in the US$4-billion range.

Similarly, Megvii, the developer of a popular

Chinese facial recognition software system called Face++, raised almost US$600 million in public funding recently. But perhaps more telling than these fundraising stories is the identities of the investors putting their hardearned capital into this nascent technology.

Investors in these Chinese facial recognition technology companies have included Chinese heavyweights like Alibaba, Bank of China, Foxconn and Ant Financial, as well as American financial institutions like Qualcomm, Silver Lake, Tiger Global Management, and Fidelity International.

One of the reasons that we do not anticipate legislation eliminating the use of facial recognition technology is because it simply is that good. We feel that the term “paradigm shift” is overused, but facial recognition technology really represents a paradigm shift in building maintenance, retail strategy, every imaginable security application, and so much more. While the “Machine” from Person of Interest is still perhaps science fiction, modern facial recognition technology is not that far behind, and it is here to stay.

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from the bullpen Finding Soft Landings in a Shifting Landscape

With condo trends fluctuating drastically, where are the next development opportunities?

By Ben Myers

Ben Myers is president of Bullpen Research & Consulting, a boutique real estate advisory firm that works with land owners, developers, and lenders to better inform them of the current and future macroeconomic and site-specific housing market conditions that can impact their active or proposed development projects.

Follow Bullpen on Twitter at @BullpenConsult or find Ben at www.BullpenConsulting.ca.

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Trends in the residential condominium market have been changing significantly in Toronto and Vancouver in recent years.

Calls for more affordable new housing in the downtown areas of these two cities are almost an impossibility due to staggering land costs, rising construction costs, the lengthy approvals process, rising government fees, and other mandatory planning and design requirements.

In downtown Toronto, public Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and large private equity firms are partnering with residential and commercial developers on mega-projects with a mix of uses. Condominium units in many of these projects will top $1,300-persquare-foot (psf), and rental apartments will likely be offered at $5 to $6-psf per month. Small developers will disappear from the downtown market, as will mom-andpop investors, first-time buyers, and mid-market product.

Richard Wittstock, principal of Vancouverbased Domus Homes Group, notes that “In our downtown core, almost no one is building mid-market condos for investors or young singles anymore. Those dominated in the ‘90s and ‘00s, but now the neighbourhood is mature and everything is higher-end, and much is extremely so.” He points the finger at municipalities for accelerating that shift by “demanding ever-increasing complexity and exterior finishes on a building (even a rental).”

These cladding requirements naturally translate to higher-end finishes on the interior as well, ultimately requiring extremely high prices and rents to make the numbers work.

Toronto’s new TOCore plan requires a certain percentage of suites in each new residential building (with 80 or more units downtown) to have large two bedroom and three bedroom suites. The intention of this plan is to attract more families downtown with these more generously-sized suites. This ‘complete communities’ concept has been pushed by Vancouver-area planners as well, and according to Wittstock, “Cities have been pushing for larger units for families, but these are really all being bought by empty nesters.

Seeing lots of 1,300-1,400-sq.-ft. units with super high end finishes in the $2 million plus price, perfect for wealthy downsizers.”

With considerable barriers of entry due to land costs, and additional risks associated with prescribed upscale exterior features and finishes, and suite mix requirements that may not match market demand, many devel­ opers will look outside core markets for their next development opportunity. Many larger developers have shied away from boutique sites in neighbourhood settings due to a lack of economies of scale and local opposition.

However, with skyrocketing pricing for single-family housing, perhaps these types of developments could prove fruitful again.

When looking at a sample of resale condo apartment transactions over $1.5 million in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), buildings with six or fewer storeys saw units trade for the lowest days on market, and the highest percentage-of-listing price, indicative of a high level of demand in relation to supply. When looking at how much more the unit sold for in comparison to their assessed value, these low-rise condo apartment buildings captured a significantly higher average premium.

The highest demand among these Toronto luxury condo resales were units between 1,400 and 1,800 square feet, and these units were generally priced in the $1,050 to $1,200-psf range. Two bedroom suites were the most popular, followed by two bedroom plus den suites.

Wittstock noticed a trend of Vancouver baby boomers trading down from large single-detached homes about 10 years ago in Yaletown, and even further back in Cole Harbour. As boomers hit 70 years old, there will be more demand for luxury move-down projects outside of the Yorkville and south Oakville neighbourhoods in the GTA, and a smart developer will capitalize on this trend.

As market movements, government regulation and financing conditions change, developers will have to think outside the box, as opportunities for cookie-cutter mid-market condos on old parking lots no longer exist.

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powers that be This Will Sting

There is no vaccine to stop project opposition

By Kevin Powers

Kevin Powers is managing principal of Project Advocacy Inc., a subsidiary of Campbell Strategies, and is focused on helping project developers facing public and government opposition.

Find him at www.projectadvocacy.ca or email him at kevin.powers@ projectadvocacy.ca

The stubborn growth of the anti-vaccination movement has stumped public health experts for years now. When the anti-vaxxer phenomenon first popped up, experts figured the only reason people wouldn’t vaccinate their children was simple ignorance of the personal and societal benefits of vaccination. After all, who in their right mind would want polio?

The solution, they thought, was straightforward: provide the facts and people will change their minds and their behaviour.

There were two simple ideas behind this solution. The first is the idea that public scepticism is caused primarily by a lack of sufficient knowledge. The second is the idea that by providing adequate information to overcome this lack of knowledge, also known as a “knowledge deficit,” behaviour will change. Problem solved.

Except that the problem was not solved.

And the “knowledge deficit” model has since been widely discredited. Giving more information to people does not change their views: in fact, it can further entrench them. This is a small but important piece of social science developers need to keep in mind when trying to build support to get a project approved.

I say this because this widely discredited approach remains the bedrock of most devel­ opers’ efforts to quell opposition. It is an approach that assumes that if people only knew the benefits of a project, they would support it; and that the only reason they oppose it is they don’t understand it well enough. So developers hire PR teams to deploy an arsenal of direct mail, advertising, press releases and outreach efforts to inform the misinformed, and to change their minds and win their hearts with killer facts.

This approach seems workable in theory, but too often fails in practice. It assumes, wrongly, that people who oppose a project can somehow be educated, dazzled or herded into supporting it, or at least prevented from opposing it. Yes, it is important to inform the public about the specifics of a project and its benefits to the community, but this approach only has a few of the elements

needed to win project approval. Much like education efforts around vaccines, it assumes that the project is inherently beneficial and that people who are reasonable and logical will be unable to oppose it when presented with the facts.

It assumes that opposition is the result of ignorance in one way, shape or form, and that given enough information and community outreach the project will win support and approval. It assumes that repetition of key messages will eventually help the opposition see the light. It assumes that opponents will put aside their private concerns for the greater good of the community. It assumes wrong.

More often than not, more information provides more ammunition and stiffens the resolve of project opponents. Where developers promote more economic activity, opponents just see more traffic. As a result, much of the effort spent trying to turn them into supporters is wasted. No matter how many fact sheets and microsites, the end result remains the same: petitions to stop the project; negative press; hostile public hearings and council meetings packed with vocal opponents with nary a supporter in sight.

As with vaccine efforts, the knowledge deficit model of communication when applied to permitting doesn’t work the way you think it should. Simply providing information in the hope of changing hearts and minds isn’t going to get the votes needed to win project approved. And that’s where your efforts should be focused: on securing the votes needed to get a project approved.

At a local level, the elected officials and the voters who elect them are very close, and their numbers small. Local government can be influenced by a relatively small number of voters. A small crowd of angry voters can be effective in swaying politicians. By the same token, a small number of supporters can provide balance and the assurances a politician needs to vote in favour of a project.

There may be no vaccine to inoculate devel­ opers from public opposition, but vaccines can provide us with valuable lessons on how — and how not — to manage it.

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Roy Gaiot

Securing public space?

What planners and designers should think about when incorporating security measures into the built environment.

By John Lorinc Building.ca

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As Peel Region landscape architect Wayne Nishihama tuned in to the news about the devastating van attack in North York last spring, when a troubled 25-year-old man killed 10 and injured 16 pedestrians with a rented cube truck, he quickly zeroed in on a puzzling urban design detail about the setting for the tragedy.

The suspect, Alek Minassian, allegedly drove the vehicle along an extended stretch of wide sidewalk. “[It] was like another lane,” observes Nishihama, who worked for years as head of urban design for the City of Mississauga and is an expert in crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED).

“How could the driver mount the curb and drive for such a long time?”

Based on his municipal experience, he surmised that the sidewalk’s breadth was to allow access for snowplows and other maintenance vehicles. What’s more, in a dense area lined by high rises, shops, restaurants and offices, that kind of public space is both well-used and well-loved: the stretch of Yonge Street where the attack occurred attracts thousands of pedestrians, whose presence has created a lively, cosmopolitan ambience.

Yet that invitingly open ribbon of concrete provided, unwittingly and tragically, the physical conditions necessary for the kind of weaponized vehicle attack that has become an increasingly common tool of terrorists and others bent on inflicting mass violence in urban settings. The attacker, as Nishihama points out, “was able to use [the sidewalk] as a road.”

In the immediate aftermath, City of Toronto officials hustled to surround some crowded public spaces, like Union Station’s plaza, with

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Jersey barriers. A few weeks later, during the city’s giant LGBTQ Pride parade, the city also parked large garbage trucks at strategic intersections leading to the route, effectively using them as temporary roadblocks to deter copycat perpetrators who might want to wreak havoc at a mass event taking place in a public space.

The Right Method(s) In a fretful era characterized by a drumbeat of terrorist attacks and horrific mass crimes perpetrated in public or quasi-public areas, the question of how civic officials, law enforcement agencies and property owners create secure space is certainly a top-of-mind concern. Some cities, in recent years, have responded aggressively, setting up formidable cordons featuring security booths, concrete barriers and military grade obstacles around highly sensitive areas, such as Wall Street in New York City. Many others have deployed a somewhat less robust mish-mash of bollards around buildings or ringing public areas considered vulnerable.

But Tom McKay, a retired Peel Region police officer who teaches CPTED certification programs, stresses that a motivated criminal or terrorist can almost always find a way to carry out an attack, despite substantial investments in security (the World Trade Center spent US$50 million on security in the wake of the first 1993 attack). And, as he adds, “hardened” security perimeters around buildings, infrastructure, or public spaces, are not only expensive; they create a sense of risk that serves to alienate members of the public. In some obvious cases (e.g., power plants), these

cordons are essential. But decisions about how much security is enough, and what form it can take, remain elusive.

Throughout the post-war period, the subject of public space security has evolved dramatically in ways that reflect both geo-political or sectarian conflict as well as evolving trends in urban living. In many cities, especially in the U.S., factors like white flight, racial tension and the outward pull of suburban sprawl left a legacy of semi-abandoned streets and zones, especially around large-scale public housing projects, marked by both extreme poverty and high levels of crime. Academics, planners and politicians espoused all sorts of remedies, from proposals to create gated streets in low-income areas (as in St. Louis) to the “broken windows” school of crime prevention. In cities that embraced this philosophy, first advanced by sociologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, public authorities sought to eliminate the visible traces of abandonment (e.g., graffiti or the eponymous broken windows) on the assumption that evidence of neglect gives rise to criminality while repelling pedestrian life.

Meanwhile, in parts of Europe during the waves of political terrorism that occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, University of Toronto landscape architect Robert Wrights points out that public agencies adopted a range of defensive measures, from the removal of municipal garbage bins (often used by groups like the IRA or the Red Brigade to plant dirty bombs) to the installation of retractable spikes embedded in roadways at key locations and the wide-spread use of security cameras in public spaces.

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Roy Gaiot

the subject of public space security has evolved dramatically in ways that reflect both geo-political or sectarian conflict as well as evolving trends in urban living.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and subsequent assaults in cities like London, government agencies were prompted to step up hard security cordons around critical infrastructure, government buildings as well as some public spaces. Today, it’s not unusual to encounter examples of this kind of highly visible security, for example the border of concrete bollards and closed streets that surround the American Embassy in Ottawa, which opened in 1999. But as University of Colorado planning professor Jeremy Nemeth pointed out in a 2010 study on public space

and security in big cities like New York and San Francisco, “physical security has shifted from an overt militarized landscape of decades past to a more camouflaged landscape currently prevalent in cities.”

Blending in Barriers With respect to weaponized vehicles in particular, Wright points out that public space designers have deployed a wide range of objects and landscaping techniques that can serve as impediments to a fast moving or heavy vehicle. These include fountains, heavy

Concrete Jersey barriers appeared outside many of Toronto’s high-profile public spaces, such as Union Station, on April 25, 2018 immediately following the van attack in North York. In most cases they have not been removed since.

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Roy Gaiot

planters, works of public art, retaining walls, reinforced structures like bus shelters, and more playful versions of the familiar bollard.

McKay says that such fixtures, if arrayed at the edge of a sidewalk or a plaza, won’t necessarily stop a vehicle from mounting the curb, but they may force the driver to come at it from an oblique angle, thus reducing the force of impact. He adds that elements like large planters will play a double roll, not just forcing vehicles to slow down but providing “safe havens” that allow pedestrians to take cover if necessary.

Wright also points to the importance of using softscaping to break up hard, paved surfaces.

Grass or gardens will serve to slow vehicles, as will undulating topography. As he observes, much defensive street furniture extends up and out of the pavement, but it’s also important to “go down,” adding changes in elevation or steps in public spaces as a means of impeding the progress of weaponized vehicles.

“The design of the barriers is incredibly important,” observes Cara Che, a public space researcher who publishes a blog called Defensive Toronto, noting that large and imposing objects increase the perception of risk. “Obstacles should be blended into the design and not look like a deterrent,” adds Nishihama.

Beyond the assortment of such discrete elements, the broader urban planning of public space also plays a crucial role in such security calculations. “The trend is, don’t just look at the site,” says Nishihama. “Look at the surrounding areas.” A 2017 Australian planning study, entitled Hostile Vehicle Guidelines for Crowded Places, points out that the measures adopted should be proportionate to the risk and context-specific, but urges municipal officials to always ensure that hostile vehicles can’t have unimpeded access to “hot spots,” such as open markets, parades or festivals.

Increasingly, observe both Wright and Che, debates about public space planning and hostile vehicles has come to include the risks facing pedestrians and cyclists posed by careless or distracted drivers, not just terrorists or troubled individuals determined to foment mayhem. “We’re much more fearful of the use of cars for terrorism than the random killing of people on sidewalks.”

The Australian guidelines, for example, point out that the “best protection” is to create clearly delineated pedestrian and cyclist zones

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using barriers, raised pathways, metal bollards, gutters, cobble stones or median strips, such as Montréal’s physically segregated bike lanes.

In many European cities, biking infrastructure now includes purpose-built under-passes or even elevated bike-only roundabouts for traversing busy roads and intersections.

Many of these security and safety ideas have been gathered up and advanced by practitioners of CPTED, an approach first promoted in the 1970s by architect Oscar Newman and criminologist Tim Crowe. Those who advise cities on applying CPTED principles in their urban design plans say the best approach is to incorporate these techniques during the initial design and construction of public spaces. Quoting Crowe, McKay says, “90 per cent of what you should do to prevent terrorism you should be doing anyway.”

Retrofitting public spaces after an attack, or in a period when more attacks are highly anticipated, is a far more fraught process, and one that requires planners and local decision-makers to balance assessments of potential risk against the downside of creating an over-securitized and therefore alienating public environment that discourages the serendipity and natural flows of city living.

Some observers worry that in the present environment, anxious politicians and local governments will yield to public fear and tip the balance in favour of excessive security.

Indeed, in his 2010 study, the University of Colorado’s Jeremy Nemeth found that as more agencies and stakeholders become involved in making decisions about boosting security in public spaces, the more hardened those perimeters become.

Others point to examples of so-called “pretext securitization,” and a worrisome tendency by some large commercial or institutional property owners to deploy highly visible defense perimeters as a way of signaling a building’s “prestige.” “In my Boston field research,” observed Susan Silberberg, a lecturer in urban design and planning at MIT, in a 2014 essay. “Public officials and building owners boasted of being a ‘top-10 target,’ a kind of security machismo that promotes bigger and better security upgrades wherever possible.”

Asked how he would advise local planners and politicians in a Canadian context, Tom McKay says he counsels governments to adopt the easiest and most straightforward measures first before installing costly and visually

assertive approaches. He likens the decision-making to pollution reduction strategies: go after the low-hanging fruit, but remember that it’s almost impossible to achieve a 100 per cent clean-up. It’s the same with ensuring safety in public spaces.

Governments should pursue common sense measures that mitigate risk, but be realistic about the limits of what they can achieve.

“There’s no magic bullet with CPTED [techniques],” McKay says. “If someone really wants to get in, they’ll get in.”

Many high-traffic zones in downtown Toronto, such as the Fairmont Royal York hotel, have already installed measures to deter vehicle attacks. In mid-2017, concrete planters constructed by Doty & Sons were installed in front of Winter Garden and Broadway Theatres in New York City, after a driver knowingly drove his vehicle into pedestrians in this area earlier that year.

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A Triple Threat?

To say P3s are a thorny issue in the building industry is putting it mildly, and architects are often caught right in the middle. By Jim Sutherland In 2011, Andrew King was working with Chicago-based CannonDesign as the lead architect within a consortium bidding to design, build and operate the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). The project was worth some $3 billion, making it the largest healthcare project on the continent and the largest in Canada ever. 14 months into the pursuit phase and just three months before the competition was to close, the team recognized there was a better design solution than specified in the performance criteria. Instead of a single massive building, the complex could be split into three connected structures: a standard office building, a more expensive but still cost-effective clinic building, and a typically pricey—but more compact and functional— hospital portion. Not only did the reconfiguration improve functionality and create the opportunity for a more appealing and site-appropriate form, it helped solve construction and phasing issues. “It made the project much more viable,” says King.

The client recognized the value of the suggestion, and not only changed the performance criteria but extended the competition to give bidders time to respond. Ultimately the project was awarded to Collectif Sante Montréal, which included King’s firm with partners NEUF architect(e)s. The first phase, which opened in 2017, has already been featured in numerous national and international magazines while winning a spate of awards.

CHUM was a public private partnership (P3, or PPP in Québec), and at first glance it would seem a glowing example of the kind of attributes associated with the entity and a refutation

of some of the criticisms, especially as they relate to architects and design excellence. After all, there CHUM sits, gracefully occupying a difficult but prominent site, while providing patients and those who work inside with high-functioning spaces filled with both light and considerable delight. Moreover, the process that led to it proved sufficiently flexible that a building that might have proved to be sub-optimal was tidily avoided.

Andrew King is now a partner at Montréalbased LemayLab, the 2018 Gerald Sheffer visiting professor at McGill University’s architecture school, and a frequent speaker on the subject of P3s. Perhaps unexpectedly, though, it’s to generally lambaste them, and especially their proclivity to produce mediocre architecture. “Except for two or three,” he says, “most diminish the environment.”

King is not a lone voice either. Chances are, when he refers to those two or three architecturally successful P3 projects, he’s including one or more of Bridgepoint Active Healthcare in Toronto or, outside of the healthcare field, the new Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver or Maison Symphonique in Montréal. All of those were led by Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects, and, as it happens, partner Don Schmitt also offers a criticism of public private partnerships, even if more tempered.

Too often, he says, “neither the quality of the design nor functionality become the focus.”

There are also architects who support P3s.

David Thom is the Vancouver-based president of IBI Group, which with global operations employing some 850 architects ranks as the

world’s sixth largest firm and likely the one with the most worldwide healthcare P3s under its belt, including the recently completed Women’s College Hospital redevelopment in Toronto.

He notes that hospitals are inherently difficult and, with P3s, “design excellence can be retained if it is embedded in the process.” Moreover, with their emphasis on future performance, P3s can foster innovation and risk-taking as handily as more traditional arrangements, in part because an architect’s client becomes, not the government, but “the patients and people who work in the building.”

Meantime, Kirsten Reite, founder of 20-person Vancouver-based KRA, is the living rebuttal to another criticism, that because of their complexity and elevated front-end requirements, P3s are strictly the domain of the largest firms. When in 2013 she launched her own firm with the intention of focussing on the healthcare field, she saw P3s as inevitable and embraced them accordingly. Yes, she agrees, there may be more of a focus on functionality than some prefer, but architects may find that they enjoy more scope, not less, provided they are careful when aligning with construction and financing partners. “A bad team is like a bad client,” she says.

Still, there are sufficient causes for concern that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recently addressed P3s with a paper entitled Public-Private Partnerships: What Architects Need to Know. It identifies several issues and proposes potential solutions and work-arounds. Some of these advocate changes in public policy; others involve adaptations to standard architectural practice.

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Meanwhile, there remains the worry that P3s have not delivered on intended policy goals such as saving money, reducing risks to the public and ensuring long-term performance. Several European countries have shifted away from P3s in the wake of disputes and cost overruns, and there appears to be a similar mood developing in some Canadian provinces, especially Québec.

There, on the McGill University Health Centre project, the government reached a settlement to pay the P3 supplier an additional $108 million related to cost overruns and design changes. That was on top of post-opening electrical and sewage problems, and an initial contract that led to bribery charges against two former executives of the lead partner in the consortium, SNC-Lavalin. On another hospital project, the provincial government paid out an additional $125 million for similar reasons, bringing an end to a lawsuit. That second project was none other than CHUM.

How They Got Here The beginning of public private partnerships as we know them is generally attributed to the John Major government at the turn of the 1990s, a period when the U.K . and several other countries were facing large budget deficits. Along with the U.K., some Australian states and some American states, Canadian provinces including Québec, Ontario, Alberta and B.C. have been among the most enthusiastic adopters, initiating several dozen P3s, especially for transportation and healthcare projects.

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As they’ve evolved, P3s represent an extended and more complex version of the familiar design-build, adding financing, maintenance and sometimes operation to the responsibilities of the consortium involved, and leaving ownership of the asset in the hands of the consortium, rather than the government, for up to 30 years. “The original push was to get government capital spending off book,“ says Vancouver-based Marv Shaffer, an economist who has been critical of P3s. “Once auditors took that away (recognizing fixed P3 contract obligations were debt in a different form), proponents had to create other justifications.”

In fact, numerous benefits to the public have been cited: P3s have a single point of responsibility for the design, building, financing, maintenance and sometimes operation of the asset, creating the potential for cost savings and reduced bureaucracy; the public pays only when the entity is delivered, and does this only if it is properly maintained and performing according to specifications, a combination that can reduce risk; there is a higher degree of cost certainty, with expenditures far into the future identified upfront, and delays, cost overruns and performance shortcomings insulated against; and governments do not have to raise money, through bond issues or other means, because the private entity provides the funding.

Whether or not these benefits accrue is a controversial topic. Shaffer points out that governments can raise money at lower interest rates than private concerns, and auditors-general and equivalent bodies have

generally not been persuaded by P3s, instead finding that traditional modes of public investment are cheaper and more efficient.

From an architect’s point of view, the arguments for and against are no less complex and heated. However, since architects are not policy makers and thus have little control over whether P3s continue on, they have little choice but to adapt. Recognizing that, the AIA outlines numerous concerns related to public policy and architectural practice while noting that “several of these need to be addressed promptly.” Any architect contemplating involvement in a P3 would be well-advised to read the AIA document in full, but here in a nutshell are the issues it identifies.

Challenges and Implications Perhaps foremost, P3s involve a shift in architect procurement and role. When public infrastructure is delivered through private processes, qualification-based selection is replaced by market forces and profit considerations.

The architectural firm that wins a contract is less likely to be the best qualified and more likely to be the one that allies most successfully with builders, financiers and operators.

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Beyond this, the architect’s role shifts from being the owner’s agent-advocate to a private entity’s sub-contractor. This is a fundamental shift (shared to some degree with design-builds) that raises ethical issues, as illustrated by a situation recently encountered by an architect who has requested anonymity. In his case the builder substituted a less expensive and potentially inferior lighting option than was specified. Traditionally his role would have been to alert the client, a government agency, but as part of a consortium he felt his only recourse was to object—unsuccessfully—that the substitution should not have been made. As the AIA notes, “best practices should govern but without a baseline safety net…there is potential for communication problems.” In most P3 situations, the agent-advocate role is taken over by a compliance entity, typically an architectural firm hired for the job, but the argument can be made that these lack hands-on involvement and, in any case, add additional complexity.

A third major issue relates to high pursuit costs and uncompensated design work. King notes that a strength of the CHUM project

was a competition fee that encouraged his team to put in front-end work that contributed to its recognition of a superior design solution, but such fees are not always offered or are inadequate. In many cases, small and medium-sized firms are precluded by cost from competing, and even the largest firms will be stricken financially by an unsuccessful bid.

Finally, the AIA notes legal and jurisprudence issues that, in some cases, fail to guarantee the kind of performance-based work that is supposed to be one of P 3’s strongest selling points, and in others, can lead to disputes. Not all of these concerns are relevant to the Canadian situation, but as recent cases in Québec and other jurisdictions demonstrate, P3s are no less likely than other kinds of commissions to pad the incomes of lawyers instead of architects.

That’s not quite it for the downsides either.

The AIA’s list of problem areas is extensive and worrisome, but it does not even touch on the issue identified by many of the most vocal opponents of P3s as most crucial to them.

Their biggest concern, bluntly stated, is that P3s produce bad architecture.

Opposite page and above: Occupying two full city blocks, CHUM is the largest healthcare construction project in North America. The verticality gives occupants views of the city and rooftops gardens that recall medicinal herbs dating from New France’s founding.

Below: The Saint-Denis stair is one of many in public spaces that mark intersection points.

Too Many Parts?

From Kings’s perspective, the CHUM project had one major advantage contributing to its positive design outcome. Perhaps because the Québec government had begun to sour on P3s, his team enjoyed more flexibility and freedom than would have been the case else-

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Prior to the new CHUM, the site housed the Saint-Sauveur Church (top), built in 1865 and abandoned for more than a decade, and Maison Garth (above), built in 1871 for the church’s custodian. Both were disassembled, preserved, and then integrated to the CHUM’s public spaces.

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where. “In Ontario there’s no way we would have been able to do this,” he says.

Among Canadian provinces, architects generally agree that Ontario has the most restrictive P3 process and Québec the least, with other provinces somewhere in the middle, but the more important point is that in all cases P3s involve too many actors, with too many overlapping roles. “The fundamental relationship is between a design team and the client,” King says. “With P3s, there’s a significant filter between those two entities: the compliance team.”

Beyond the compliance team, there’s typically also a government body charged with monitoring and administering P3s. In Ontario it’s Infrastructure Ontario; in British Columbia, Partnership BC. That means there are two entities standing between the ultimate client —a health ministry or hospital authority, say—and the architects. “There’s an enormous and complex bureaucracy between the specification teams and the build teams,” says Schmidt. “You’re struggling to get face time.”

Sometimes this can be transcended, Schmitt allows. “There is a way to do it in the P3 model and that means devoting a lot of effort at the front end.”

In the case of the widely admired Bridgepoint, he extends a good deal of the credit to the close working relationship his firm enjoyed with the compliance team—a collaboration

of Stantec and KPMB A rchitects—and the quality of work the first team was able to provide in terms of specifications. “The functional requirements were more developed from a design point of view than was normally the case,” he says. “More thoroughly conceptualized, more thoroughly understood.” As a result his team could dig more deeply, and pay more attention to details. “Normally the second team has to move very fast because time is money.”

This leads into a second critique offered

by King and Schmitt. Time is always money, of course, but Schmitt suggests that architects’ traditional emphasis on design quality and building performance can by whittled away at when participating in a consortium. “The build team’s motivations are to move quickly,” he says. “To manage costs.” King is more forceful, suggesting that the splitting of practitioners’ allegiances contributes to a situation that is “kneecapping architecture.”

That’s a strong opinion, and far from a unanimous one. Thom thinks good and bad buildings are being built by both P3 consortiums and through traditional client-architect relationships. “I wouldn’t pin it on the process.” Reite suggests that, rather than the diminishment observed by King, architects may even see their professional roles expanded in a P3, finding themselves taking on a greater degree of project management, for example, due to their experience in managing dispa rate groups of people.

Moreover, once the admittedly constrained pursuit phase is over, working within a P 3 needn’t create communication obstacles with the client, and the process may actually enhance the flow of a job. “Instead of wondering how a contractor might phase some complicated thing, well, the contractor’s right there, you can ask him.” In her view, P 3s are “just different.”

That P3s are different is an indisputable fact, and there are perhaps two questions that should be asked of them. One is for the public, and it has to do with whether good value is being received. If the answer is affirmative and P3s are to continue, then architects need to question how they can be rea r ranged or adapted so that more a re comfortable with the process and results.

Currently, too many practitioners believe the system is clunky, and the results mediocre, and that’s not good enough.

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Experience.

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Exit Hatches Add Vital Safety Component on Major Rail Project

Photo: Dan Arnold

Underground construction is especially dangerous, particularly in large urban areas with pipes, wires and infrastructure that keep a city connected. When Walsh/Shea Corridor Constructors started to build a long rail line in Los Angeles, Calif. that included underground stations, one of its first objectives was to plan for emergency egress for underground workers.

The 8.5-mile Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project rail line includes six emergency exit hatches and four large doors to access underground control systems. The hatches and doors, manufactured by The BILCO Company in New Haven, Conn., provide code-compliant egress for underground workers, and eventually, subway riders.

“Even before there were any designs, the engineering team knew that they needed doors that would provide safe and reliable emergency egress’’ said Dave Pebley of Specialty Building Components, the sales representative for The BILCO Company in Pico Rivera, Calif. “The doors had to meet code requirements, but also stand up to the demands of the job.”

Installed at stops along the entire length of the line, the doors are equipped with many custom features that make them ideal for use in this application. Each is equipped with engineered lift assistance and a two-point panic locking mechanism that allow the doors to open with less than 30-pounds of force, a critical requirement for safe egress in an emergency. Additional features will also be added at the ground level where the doors will be installed in sidewalks to ensure reliability and enhanced safety.

To prevent structural damage, the doors are reinforced for vehicular loading to withstand the weight of an occasional car or truck that may drive onto the sidewalk. They also feature a slip resistant coating on the walking surface to ensure safety in these high pedestrian traffic areas.

There are two emergency doors at the Expo/Crenshaw, Martin Luther King, and Leimert Park underground stations. The stations at Hyde Park, Fairview Heights, Downtown Inglewood and Westchester/ Veterans are at-grade and the Aviation/Century stop is elevated, so emergency evacuation doors are not required.

“These doors are located on the sidewalk and had to be tested by the fire department.” Pebley said. “They meet H-20 wheel loading

BILCO’s specially designed access doors provide code-compliant egress for underground construction workers and eventually subway riders.

Photo: Dan Arnold

specifications, but are also light enough to be opened easily by one person. which is an engineering challenge.”

Planning for this $2.058 billion project started in 1992 and the extension is designed to better serve transit-dependent residents in the corridor and provide economic stimulus in the region. The project will be the first rail line to serve Crenshaw Boulevard and the city of Inglewood since streetcars of the Los Angeles Rail Line stopped running in 1955. The new light rail line will use the alignment of the streetcars in some instances.

It is expected to be operational in 2019.

Los Angeles is amid a major infrastructure update in advance of the 2028 Summer Olympics. Besides the new Crenshaw line, Los Angeles is also building a nine-mile extension to a Westside subway line and an automated people mover that will serve people on the Crenshaw Line and help them connect to the broader Metro rail network.

For over 90 years, The BILCO Company has been a building industry pioneer in the design and development of specialty access products. Over these years, the company has built a reputation among architects, and engineers for products that are unequaled in design and workmanship. BILCO – an ISO 9001 certified company – offers commercial and residential specialty access products.

BILCO is a wholly owned subsidiary of AmesburyTruth, a division of Tyman Plc. For more information, visit www.bilco.com.

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Monetizing Smart Cities Canada must develop a national policy that mandates two things: data ownership and open architecture. By Kurtis McBride A debate is developing in Canada

about who will control and profit from the massive volume of data generated by smart cities in the future. The stakes are high for two reasons: this data holds large financial value and it will have a huge impact on citizen life in cities.

To prepare for this debate, there is an urgency to develop a national policy and strategy on how we treat public data, for three reasons: •T he exponential growth of connected infrastructure: Every day more public infrastructure gets connected. Each piece of infrastructure is producing data. This asset class is growing exponentially.

•T he data set is expanding beyond infrastructure: At one point, the scope of this public data was largely limited to the data infrastructure produced (for example, water levels and air pollution readings).

That is no longer the case, as it now encompasses a huge new component: how citizens are interacting with infrastructure.

The sensitivity and value of this information is undoubtedly higher.

Kurtis McBride is co-founder and CEO of Miovision, a Canadian technology company that provides the foundation for tomorrow’s smart cities by transforming the way traffic networks are managed today.

This article originally appeared as part of the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s essay series.

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•T he tech giants are making their move: The big tech companies understand the value of this data and are making moves to acquire it. This has played out on the internet over the past 10 years, with Google and Facebook battling for our online data. That war is now extending to the civic forum, with big companies pursuing city data.

Despite the healthy debate taking place, this issue is, disturbingly, out of the spotlight.

Sidewalk, which was named by the City of Toronto in the fall of 2017 as an “innovation partner,” is encountering a debate about foreign private interests controlling civic data.

On March 5, 2018, the Toronto Star reported: “Waterfront Toronto’s eagerness to sign a deal with a Google sister company has alarmed experts who warn cities are easy prey for Big Tech and its unquenchable thirst for data.”

Canadian news outlets are covering this debate, but if it was focused on the acquisition of a Crown corporation or a prized national park, it would have erupted.

Ownership of public data will impact our lives in known ways, and in many more unknown ways. The boundaries of what Canada is going to say yes to need to be set. If we lose control of this debate, we lose control of a valuable natural resource embedded in our city infrastructure. Policy should start with two simple conditions to protect us: first, city data must be owned by cities. Period. Second, city architecture must be open to ensure cities control their destiny. Period.

Why City Data Is So Valuable Data has been called the new oil. Why? Because it creates class warfare. Those with it (“the haves”) benefit from its enormous value and, ultimately, control the agenda.

Those without it (“the have-nots”) operate at the mercy of those setting the agenda. Data is an asset that creates wealth and power.

This is why we need to shine a bright light of public debate on who will own it in Canada.

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Historically, data has given those that hold it an operating advantage. It has empowered stronger decisions and created the opportunity for information arbitrage against those who lacked access to data. For example, think of how Netflix used data to create an operational advantage in marketing content to users compared to traditional movie retailers.

This remains true today, but two new forces are emerging that increase the value of data.

The first is the view of data as a creator of intellectual property (IP). The emergence of artificial intelligence fundamentally changed the role of data. Instead of data being an output of IP, data is now creating IP. That IP will result in businesses and patents being created. Undoubtedly, many of those innovations will emerge from the private sector.

But if cities do not own and control their data, they will not capture any of the benefit.

Consider the data set that emerges from looking at the library check-out habits of citizens at the public library. This data likely holds enormous value, particularly when cross-referenced against past check-outs and demographic information. It is difficult to list all of the possible IP that could be generated from this and other public data sets. But the thought of cities being left out of the value creation process from that data should leave us all feeling uneasy.

The second major force increasing the value of data is its use as a policy tool. As cities become more data driven, data plays an increasing role in determining city policy. Data drives decisions around what roads need repair, where transit routes should go, where school zones are delineated. These are the decisions that affect us every day. We need to question to what degree we are comfortable with those decisions being impacted by data that is owned and controlled by private interests.

The Keys to This Debate Debating what happens to city data is really about two things. Legal ownership and technical architecture are the two ways that private companies have sought to take control of city data. Data ownership is largely defined by the terms and services of agreements that cities are making with technology vendors.

In some cases, such as Sidewalk Toronto, those terms have not been made available for public review, which has caused significant concern for many city councillors and citizens.

The technical aspect of this strategy relates to the access and portability of the data. Technical access is less about legal terms, and more about technology architecture. For decades, private companies attempted to lock cities in to closed architectures and proprietary systems.

This was largely done to create vendor “lockin” and ensure that the company won subsequent procurements since their platform was a closed ecosystem. Closed architecture was key to their business model. However, a side benefit has emerged for these vendors: closed architecture is a powerful mechanism to restrict the ability of cities to access the valuable asset (data) that is trapped inside of the infrastructure they have purchased.

What Cities Need to Do Every consumer generates hundreds of dollars each year in consumer data, which is given away for free. Companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon monetize that data and create hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization, value that is not shared for the public benefit. If a private sector company builds smart city infrastructure in a city or country that lacks a data strategy with defined standards and governance, the company has the upper hand in monetizing it.

To prevent this from happening, heightened scrutiny and public debate — such as the one sparked by Toronto’s Quayside — about how smart city data will be used and monetized is critical. It will ensure Canada profits from the massive value that will be created in smart cities across the country.

Ultimately, city data is produced by two things: infrastructure, paid for by our tax dollars and by us; and our interaction with that infrastructure. Essentially, the creation of this data is being completely funded by Canadian tax dollars, and now that its enormous value is recognized, we should ensure we own it and can capture the value it is creating.

This is a call to action. Canada must develop a national policy that mandates two things: data ownership and open architecture. The first would work to ensure that the value of data in our cities profits citizens and not private interests, while the latter would establish that all smart cities should be built on an open innovation ecosystem where the public good is paramount. Turning a blind eye to the issues of data ownership is akin to economic colonization, with a transfer of wealth from Canadian cities to private, and more often than not, foreign interests.

Data has been called the new oil. Why? Because it creates class warfare.

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site visit To Your Health A new public facility in North Bay promotes and advances the health of the municipalities it serves.

By Shannon Moore

THIS PAGE Movement is expressed by curved lines connecting the interior to landscape, dynamic lighting and articulated by rhythmic elements such as the Douglas Fir curtain wall along the street façade, which curves within to embrace the waiting area.

Photography by Lisa Logan

Under the guiding principle that “movement is life,” Mitchell Jensen Architects Inc. and Carlyle Design Associates recently completed the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit. The 150-person, 58,000-sq.-ft. facility works to promote health and prepare for emergency situations in 31 municipalities across northern Ontario, leading to a carefully designed building that promotes ease of accessibility and circulation for employees and the public alike.

Visitors enter the rectangular building through a two-storey lobby where a clinic, classroom, teaching kitchen, water testing station, family room and meeting room reside. Nearby, private work quarters blend lounges for social interaction with quiet meeting spaces, offices and light-filled work­-

stations. Milestone markers, visual cues and expansive windows help people move from the lobby towards these areas along different spines. “It’s very easy to find your way around the building,” says Paul Mitchell, principal at Mitchell Jensen Architects. “We downplayed signage and focused on creating a coherent space where users can easily understand where they are inside the building and in relation to the world outside.”

On the exterior, the building sits on a brown­field site that is centrally located in downtown North Bay in order to best serve clients from different parts of town.

Nearby bike routes and pedestrian paths contribute to active transportation to and from the Health Unit, whereas easy access to Lake Nipissing and outdoor recreation

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THIS SPREAD Expansive glazing and landscape views help calm stress and aid in wayfinding, and is further reinforced by materials including wood and natural stone, particularly in the transparent two-storey lobby.

Over 30 works of art by local artists were installed as part of an anonymous donation and loans from a local public gallery. Wood “work walls� create landmarks in open offices, reinforce program zones, introduce informal seating and work space alternatives, and storage of program resources.

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areas keep within the facility’s objective to promote healthy lifestyles.

Along the street façade, a Douglas fir curtain wall signals a creative venture for the architects. “It’s a new product for us,” says Mitchell. “It’s a proprietary system that uses glue-laminated timber instead of aluminum to support the glazing of the curtain wall system.” A rough-cut Adair limestone wall in the lobby complements this natural exterior, and is paired with porcelain tile floors, granite and concrete stairs, teakwood benches and white oak accents throughout.

Finally, at the heart of the facility, the design seeks to inspire ownership and pride.

“I’m a firm believer that quality public buildings are a great reflection of a healthy community, and I hope community members embrace this one as their own,” says Mitchell.

From its movement to its materials, the facility is committed to promoting and advancing the health of the community it serves.

The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit is a winner of a 2018 Canadian Interiors Best of Canada Award.

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view point Walk With Joy

ULI Toronto’s Executive Director sees Toronto as a unique city region with not-so-unique challenges.

By Richard Joy

Richard Joy is Executive Director of ULI Toronto. Previously, he served as Vicepresident, Policy and Government Relations at the Toronto Board of Trade, and was the Director of Municipal Affairs and Ontario (Provincial Affairs) at Global Public Affairs.

Follow him on Twitter @RichardJoyTO or email at Richard.Joy@uli.org

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At first blush Toronto is any-city North America. Our commercial buildings, our leafy neighbourhoods, our housing projects and suburban cul de sacs, our vibrant marketplaces, our congested highways and car-dominated streets, our parks and streetscapes, our architecture and urban design: all read very familiar to an outsider looking in.

Yet closer inspection reveals a much different city: a city that has been shaped and molded by a different history and sensibility than its U.S. counterparts; a city with its eye on a very different future.

Some of Toronto’s story is more obvious and well known. Like most Canadian cities, Toronto never experienced the hollowing out associated with white-flight and the spaghetti of expressways to the suburbs. Instead, its proliferation of walkable urban neighbourhoods has attracted the widest range of old and new residents of all incomes. Toronto has its sprawling suburbs, but even these are much different than American suburbia, the result of decades of policies that ensured that outward growth was contiguous and urban intensification encouraged.

Its overall population density rivals many European metros.

Toronto is an extraordinarily tall city with more residential high-rises than New York City and more active construction cranes and development applications than any other city in North America. Visibly, many of these towers are in the core, which continues to witness a near Asianic explosion of 60 to 90-plus story residential and commercial buildings. Also unique to North America are the inner and outer suburban residential towers, old and new, forming massive vertical villages across the region.

Toronto has the highest percentage of foreign born residents of any city in the world, which it has accommodated with deep urban pride, reflecting Canada’s commitment to multiculturalism, in contrast to the melting pot. Institutions like the public school and library system serve as a global model for diversity and inclusion. Failing institutions, like

its half-century old social housing projects are being reimagined and redeveloped on a scale beyond any other in the continent.

Toronto has a legacy of bold urbanism: the purposeful pursuit of city building designed to tackle challenges of building an economically competitive, liveable, environmentally sustainable and socially just urban society. From the institution of the world’s largest urban containment boundary (a.k.a. the Greenbelt) to the myriad of smaller triumphs of mixed-use genius, like the PATH system connecting the entire central business district with a maze of underground retail tunnels that serve a quarter million commuters daily.

Toronto has a deep track record of climate resiliency, with over a half century of policies to protect the city from severe weather events, to its deep-water cooling (of almost its entire commercial core) and suburban district energy infrastructure. The largest regional transit infrastructure expansion in North America is a decade underway.

The city has quietly leaped into the forefront in its adoption of green and healthy building construction, and overall as a region it boasts the lowest dependency on carbon energy in North America, actually lowering its greenhouse gas emissions.

The list goes on, and we have much to celebrate about what is unique about Toronto urbanism. But in doing so, we must harness our urban swagger toward tackling the ever-mounting challenges that face all successful cities, including housing and living affordability, poverty and gridlock.

All of these measures reveal a city in peril of decline. Through all its success, Toronto has become a poster child of Richard Florida’s The New Urban Crisis.

This fall, ULI Toronto will put a spotlight on Toronto urbanism, both celebrating our city region and challenging city builders to more effectively confront our urban challenges. It’s an opportunity to further prove that we are not just any city, but rather a beacon city for the world to see how urbanism can work for all. We’ve done well, but we must do better.

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Schöck Isokorb® Structural Thermal Breaks.

Cut heat loss up to 90% and prevent condensation and mould. ▶ Reduce heat loss by up to 90% ▶ Prevent condensation and mould ▶ Reduce heat energy usage of the building by up to 14% ▶ Reduce heating system capacity requirements by up to 14% ▶ Increase warmth of interior floors by up to 27°F/15°C ▶ Comply with code requirements for continuous insulation

Uninsulated balconies, canopies, slab edges and parapets penetrating insulated building envelopes create thermal bridging between the cold exterior and the warm interior structure that supports it, causing heat loss, condensation and mould.

Schöck Isokorb® Structural Thermal Breaks prevent thermal bridging by insulating the building envelope at the penetration, while supporting loads equivalent to conventional concrete and/ or steel structures, offering multiple benefits. _____________________________________________________ Isokorb® structural thermal breaks for concrete construction (above) contain engineered stainless steel rebar for casting into interior and exterior sides of the penetration.

Isokorb® structural thermal breaks for steel construction (left) bolt interior steel structures to cantilevered balcony supports, canopies or rooftop connections.

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THE PINK PANTHER™ & © 1964–2018 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. The colour PINK is a registered trademark of Owens Corning. Personality rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are used with permission of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Corbis. © 2018 Owens Corning. All Rights Reserved.

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