Sudbury's historical downtown fabric, heavy infrastructure, and geographic features are underutilized energy systems ripe for succession to a higher-order urbanism. They are the frames for building the option of 21st century low-carbon neighborhoods that feature walkability, mixed uses, and creative housing enclaves integral to an urban ecology which delivers ecosystem services. Akin to acupuncture, design reorders the energy in a complex system through strategic interventions that generate widespread renewal. Rather than think in terms of individual projects, think in terms of systems like neighborhoods and civic infrastructure to shape urban compactness. As in all great cities, infrastructure should be multi-functional, creating place through combinations of utility and pleasure--the pleasures associated with walking, living, and socializing in a human-centered downtown. Think holistically but modulate system components for phased implementation as trust, funding, and political will permit. Thus, we propose three framing principles or prompts for residents to envision Sudbury's future through an appreciative inquiry of this heartland city's values and assets.
to restore the center, first vitalize the edges
1. How might a regenerative Green Ring of energy districts, edible landscapes/urban agriculture, downtown greens, a greenway, a municipal composting campus, stormwater landscapes, and "living streets" restore the business district's connection to its urban neighborhoods?
As green infrastructure, the Green Ring dissipates boundaries severing downtown from its neighborhoods, functioning as a porous and flexible membrane open to community programming. Residents co-design this new membrane repurposed from oversized automobile and rail infrastructure to reflect their neighborhood's priorities for amenities and services. This regenerative membrane encircling downtown captures carbon and provides the 16 other ecological services delivered by healthy ecosystems. The Green Ring includes a new greenway repurposed from the rail lands, offering hydric landscapes for stormwater runoff and snowmelt, which double as skating rinks and water plazas. Edible landscapes for foraging and supplemental food production can be incorporated into all new municipal greening programs (why limit landscaping to ornamentals?). New housing fabrics form energy heating districts using shared geothermal and solar infrastructure. Thus, consider how new transportation ecologies and shared energy landscapes bundle functions to offer untapped livability dividends in downtown. How might the Green Ring anchor a larger foodways network along trails and riparian corridors connecting all neighborhoods?
botanize streets to deliver non-traffic services
2. How might streets be retooled as a Public Goods Network accommodating recreation, micro-mobility, urban "living rooms", food production, public art, water management, energy production, and flexible commerce beyond simply facilitating traffic flow?
Streets constitute 30 percent of Sudbury's surface area, its largest classification of public space. Downtown Sudbury is an automobile-dominant environment with too much underperforming asphalt that dampens social, environmental, and economic prosperity. Since downtown streets traditionally delivered non-traffic services, consider retooling the levels of service in streets to reclaim robust social and environmental functions, including walkability, recreation, and the streetscapes that once supported downtown living. Let downtown streets be destinations--places that invite staying and active lifestyles. Mid-block street extensions could become covered winter plazas, while boulevards offer new public landscapes including foodways and gathering spaces with public art. Because how we move around determines the quality of our cities, consider the role of micro-mobility in shaping a human-centered downtown. Micro-mobility entails rethinking pedestrian and cyclist/scooter movement systems in a combined street-and-trail landscape system that also works for autonomous transit vehicles.
develop downtown housing enclaves to enhance urban living options
3. How might the image of downtown be consolidated by Housing Scenarios that catalyze complete neighborhoods where essential services are within a 15-minute walk?
Visually unified neighborhoods can shape the image of a downtown, small, or large--think Nelson, Oakville, Duluth, Portland, and Vancouver. Given the demand collapse in commercial real estate and the sector's preference for suburban locations, a better and higher use of downtown might be residential enclaves supported by small businesses and "third places" (cafes, coffeeshops, taverns, salons, etc. that enrich public life). What if downtown evolved into a constellation of signature mixed-use neighborhoods integrating hillsides, the business district, and former rail lands? Downtown neighborhoods would be distinguished both by their walkable access to essential services and immersion in public green space. Accordingly, the West End neighborhood scenario sponsors innovative communal micro-housing fabrics and co-living arrangements with high-amenity public spaces. This scenario taps into new sharing-economy models popularizing forgotten typologies like tiny homes, pocket neighborhoods, bungalow courts, co-housing, and hyper-porch housing, which offer affordability and elevate social capital. Multifamily housing makes investments in distributed energy systems and engineered timber fabrication--the only building construction system that captures carbon--more economically feasible than that possible with single-family housing.
The Post-COVID Foundational Economy
Nature is filling the future with risk, shock, and threats of disorder. The COVID-19 pandemic underscores structural vulnerabilities in public life and their costs. How do we design communities to be resilient, equitable, and cherished places, since we sustain only those environments we cherish? The answer begins with the foundational economy--those human support systems which sustain communities but often lack sufficient investment and adaptive management. Robust human support systems related to public health, housing, energy, transportation, food, education, and social care, institutionalize anti-fragility--the ability of complex systems like cities to grow stronger from disruption.
While the energy footprint of a large-city resident in Vancouver, Montreal, and New York is one-third that of a Sudbury resident, mid-sized cities like Sudbury boast greater resiliency capability despite lower energy efficiency. Sudbury's scale allows deeper co-evolution among infrastructural, natural and neighborhood systems. We recommend prioritizing resiliency and the antifragile as key values in designing the equitable and beautiful city. Notably, resilience begins with engaging the knowledge fund of First Nations and minority communities to construct a wiser future.
DECIDE SUDBURY: Co-designing Sudbury
Each of the three prompts offer a dialogue-based methodology. Collectively, they initiate an emergent planning approach for sustaining discovery, inquiry, and action among Sudbury residents. We welcome a co-design process that embraces listening, various dialogue formats, social/cultural asset mapping of the city's development history, workshopping design directions with the community (distanced and/or in-person), and developing a design vocabulary for implementation. We recommend a portfolio of community feedback strategies-- DECIDE SUDBURY--that persists after project implementation as adaptive management tools in municipal operations. Smartness is a function of the social, not the technological. Feedback, adaptation, and modification among diverse stakeholders in open processes create truly smart cities.
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