Reimagining Carling

In this feature with The Ottawa Lookout, Toon Dreessen shares his perspective on the future of Carling Avenue and the opportunities shaping one of Ottawa’s fastest-evolving corridors. Dreessen discusses intensification, mixed-use development, transit, and the importance of thoughtful urban planning as the city continues to grow. See Toon’s take on Carling’s future in the excerpt below:

“For Toon Dreessen, an Ottawa architect and president of Architects DCA, what the future holds for Carling has always been among his passion projects. he thinks the road has multiple different personalities from Kanata to the Glebe.

The city is treating Carling as a future urban corridor, but Dreessen said its plans often lack ambition or willpower.

‘Right now, the leadership for intensification is falling on the shoulders of the private sector’, Dreessen told the Lookout. ‘The private sector is building out apartments buildings and high-rises and density, and they’re building this infrastructure that they need for their tenants because nobody else is’.

His [Toon’s] is for the city to take a much stronger role in putting Carling on a “road diet” and using some of the space for other purposes like bike lanes and the Carling BRT  – a project that’s long overdue after facing multiple setbacks…

Dreessen said the city already controls much of the space it needs and doesn’t think it should overcomplicate a project like the BRT. He thinks the transition could take only a few months and cost little.

‘We already have the land. We already have the paving. We don’t need to add more. We just need to make better use of the spaces we have,’ he [Toon] said. ‘Yes, it needs to be repaved. Yes, we need bus lanes. Yes, we need bus stops, but these are all really, really small, almost insignificantly small amounts of money in comparison to the amount of money that the city spends on major road projects elsewhere in the city.’

Dreessen said the BRT could be a near-term fix, but in the long term, he believes Carling should be considered for light rail.

‘In an ideal world, it would link Lincoln Fields down Carling, through the Glebe to Landsdowne and Billings Bridge, and then up to Hurdman’, he said. ‘That would create this huge cross-city connection, serve loads of housing, and really lift all of these communities.

The city has never floated this idea.”

Read the full article on The Ottawa Lookout.

Photo credits: Carlingwood Shopping Centre by TD Securities.