Imagine a different Hespeler Road, one where instead of billboards, fast food and big box stores is a community with thousands of residents walking about with the expanded ION light rail transit.
It’s speculative but it’s the subject of a project by University of Waterloo architecture students who are designing buildings and communities around Cambridge’s potential Major Transit Station Areas (MTSA), which may come in the future as part of the ION and GO Transit's potential expansion into the city.
MTSAs are lands generally within a 500 to 800 metre radius of a transit station or stop, in the case of this project mainly the proposed stations of the ION light rail into Cambridge, currently being developed as a business case at the region before seeking federal and provincial funding.
A Cambridge city council information package report from September said most MTSAs in the Region of Waterloo are required to achieve a minimum density of 160 residents and jobs per hectare.
These identified MTSAs are:
- King Street and Eagle Street
- Eagle Street and Hespeler Road
- Cambridge Centre Mall
- Hespeler Road and Can-Amera Parkway
- The Delta
- Main Street
- Downtown Galt
Professor David Fortin explained students were also assigned for an even more theoretical expansion of the GO Transit line between Guelph and Cambridge which may have a stop in Hespeler.
“Thinking about how you populate each station area in a way that is mindful of community building, so neighbourhoods that are thoughtfully designed to be inclusive for people of all different income levels, all different accessibility levels,” Fortin said.
The 80 or so architecture students are focused on equitable transit oriented development, which Fortin explained is a strategy to avoid turning every transit station area into a “podium with a tower of condos that are going to get overpriced and market driven.”
He said this kind of planning is important for students to learn because if you don’t plan ahead for or even question who transit is going to serve, it can lead to speculative land development by investors looking to maximize profit which could end up gentrifying areas and pushing out locals.
“One of the things the students are looking for is, for instance, Preston has a kind of historic neighbourhood character to it, like Downtown Galt,” he said. “How do you preserve the character of neighbourhoods, still reach your density targets and do it in a way that doesn’t turn into a purely market-driven gentrification process?”
The students’ projects are still works in progress, but Fortin noted there’s a recurring theme of intergenerational living reflected in their proposals.
“The creative power of 80 young minds thinking about the kinds of cities they want to live in and the kinds of cities that they can afford to live in,” he said.
“Working with senior people in this community and also doubling up on what kind of cities do those seniors want to live in and be a part of? How do families get factored in?”
Fortin said they plan to organize an exhibit in the spring where community members can come and check out what the students have in their minds for the city's housing future.