The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Proving the Power of Infill Housing Development
Rosaline Hill is a registered professional planner and awards-winning architect from Ottawa, Canada. She’s consulted on zoning for the city of Ottawa and is the founder and principle architect of BuildingIn, a planning program that helps municipalities reach their housing goals through infill development.
Today, Rosaline joins Tiffany to discuss the complexities of housing reform. She explains how she created a 3D modeling program that helps municipalities visualize and argue persuasively for development.
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Tiffany Owens Reed 0:06
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the bottom up Revolution podcast. I'm your host. Tiffany Owens, read I'm a writer for strong towns, and on this podcast, I get to have conversations with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things to improve their communities, making them safer, more beautiful and more resilient. If you're familiar with the strong towns movement, you know that we believe that providing suitable, abundant and affordable housing is critical for any city that wants to become a strong town. But housing is a complex conversation. It's not just about increasing supply. You also have to talk about financing. You have to talk about the cost of labor, and we have to talk about the need to re examine our codes and regulations. This is where things can get really sticky, because when you're talking about this kind of reform, you're really touching on so many different aspects of of a city. You're talking to so many different kinds to so many different kinds of people. And in some ways, at that point, it's not just a conversation about housing. It can become a conversation about a city's very identity. So I feel like anyone who's involved in the conversation around zoning reform or housing reform must understand that a big part of their work is understanding that they have to master the art of persuasion, learning to persuade municipalities to be open to re examining their rules around building and helping them shape regulations and codes that actually fit their needs and the vision they have for their towns. So the guests I have with me today has created a tool to help this conversation move forward in an innovative way, by literally helping cities see the power they have to transform their cities through co reform. And I am so excited to bring her on to share about her work. Rosalyn Hill is a registered professional planner and multi award winning architect as both architect and development consultant. She has a wide experience of infill development in Ottawa, rosalind's thorough experience of Ottawa's Official Plan and other regulations, which we're going to tell you the story behind how she became this expert allows for designs that win approvals and make the city a better place to live. She has consulted for the City of Ottawa on our four zoning and volunteers with the greater Ottawa Home Builders Association providing input on upcoming infill bylaws in 2020 she founded walkable Ottawa, and now works collaboratively to advance walkability in urban neighborhoods. She also founded Ottawa co housing to bring the tools and expertise for people to build new homes and CO housed communities together. She's also the founder of building in a planning program to help municipalities reach their housing goals. Roslyn, welcome to the bottom up Revolution podcast.
Rosaline Hill 2:52
Thanks, Tiffany. I'm really pleased to be here, and I'm a big fan of strong towns. Well,
Tiffany Owens Reed 2:58
I'm really looking forward to sharing your story with our guests and hearing more about your work in Ottawa to start things off. Can you share a little bit about your professional background and how you came to recognize the problem of missing middle housing in Ottawa?
Rosaline Hill 3:15
Sure, I've been working as an infield architect in Ottawa for a couple of decades, and we've had moderate amounts of infill housing being built in our older neighborhoods, and people are always really angry about it, and a lot of their anger comes out in the most unusual expressions of frustration. And so I started to to listen more carefully and understand the subtext behind all that anger and the frustration with neighborhoods that basically weren't evolving in a way that anyone particularly liked and didn't even fulfill our official plan vision for how our neighborhoods should be evolving. And so it sort of woke me up to realizing that we really should be doing infill in a way that just makes neighborhoods better. There's no There's no reason to be compromising here. When we change neighborhoods, they should get better. So that was kind of a starting point to a lot of the work I do today.
Tiffany Owens Reed 4:14
Can you tell us a little bit about Ottawa, just in general, and maybe just because we're starting we're starting off talking about infill automatically, which I think it can be pretty unique for some cities that are still developing on the app, they're still spreading out, right? So for those of our those of our listeners who are not Canadian, I'm not Canadian, haven't spent a lot of time there, can you just tell us a little bit about Ottawa, and then maybe a little bit about the housing context there? Sure.
Rosaline Hill 4:39
So Ottawa is a mid sized I would describe it as a mid sized city. We're a million people with neighborhoods of all different ages, right? So over time, the city has grown out, and we've got kind of an inner ring of older neighborhoods, which is really very typical of any city in North America. Ka and then an outer ring of newer neighborhoods. We've got some higher density developments, you know, towers downtown or around transit nodes continue to develop with higher density developments, but an awful lot of low rise neighborhoods, so streets with houses, and that's really typical across Canada, across the United States, and of course, that makes us a city that is very car dependent, and we continue to grow in a way that's very car dependent.
Tiffany Owens Reed 5:32
So how long have you been working in as an architect and as a as a builder, or, sorry, if I use the wrong not the precisely correct terms. But how long have you been working in this capacity before you realize, like some you need it to kind of take a step back and think like, as you were saying, thinking about, like, what can actually make the neighborhood better?
Rosaline Hill 5:53
Well, I moved to Ottawa in 2001 and I've been working on infill housing ever since as an architect and then transitioning into becoming a planner as well. But really, the wake up moment for me, really was when I was a mom spending endless hours pushing a stroller around neighborhoods with a little bit more time to reflect on what I was seeing around me and just how, how far it fell from the Official Plan vision for our city, and just a growing sense of disappointment about what I was seeing. Can
Tiffany Owens Reed 6:29
you tell us more about that? What was that like for you? Because you have been investing, I feel like you've been investing so many years at this point into your career and and then you've been doing this work. Now you're realizing, like, people are getting angry, and then you're realizing, like, maybe I need to rethink kind of how I'm doing this. I don't know, what was that like for you to have that moment, like, on a personal level?
Rosaline Hill 6:51
Well, I don't know. It's just it was just a bit frustrating, because I hadn't really particularly aspired to design just one kind of infill housing niche for my career, and yet that's where I was sort of stuck, and that's because the regulations only allowed for that niche and and then as my career advanced, and I was exposed to more planning and exposed to our official plan and saw all this lovely visionary language about neighborhoods becoming better, I just felt really caught in a frustrating moment in our city's history where there was this vision and it was going nowhere. And then the more that I learned about urban planning movements across North America and the desire to transition neighborhoods to become more walkable and complete communities, all of these great thinkers over many decades pushing for these kinds of changes and just not really succeeding. So I started to see that I wasn't alone in my frustration, that there were a lot of people across North America planning community, people in municipalities across the continent, with the same frustration.
Tiffany Owens Reed 8:15
Okay, so you've hinted a little bit at this already, so it sounds like in the course of doing that research and learning more about urbanism and realizing, like, wow, there's something really here, as it pertains to the conversation around housing, you came across the reality of the constraints presented to you through zoning and regulation. Can you share that story a little bit, kind of how you came across that? And what did that? What did that? What did that change for you? Yeah,
Rosaline Hill 8:40
so it will. It led me to start researching and understanding and analyzing why we were where we were. So my first question was, well, if we keep just doing the same thing over and over again, it's a pattern, right? It's not as though my design solution here just happened to be the same as the, you know, the luxury infill down the street, that there were forces generating these patterns that weren't healthy for the neighborhoods. And so I started researching those patterns, and obviously a lot of it lies in our zoning regulations. But zoning doesn't work alone. So I started to analyze and understand the ways that zoning interacts with construction economies and real estate demands in order to produce certain patterns of outcomes. And those patterns have changed over time. Sometimes the zoning has changed, but sometimes the zoning has stayed the same. And it's it's the economic context or the real estate context that's changed in order to to elicit a different result. And so, for example, in Ottawa's older neighborhoods, over time, those zoning didn't significantly change, the outcomes shifted to be much more high end outcomes, bigger homes that that maxed out the zoning envelopes, filled up the lots as much as possible and had a real emphasis. On cars and garage doors with less and less social dynamic on the facade, even though those things weren't triggered by a zoning change that was a change in the environment around the zoning so as I was researching that, I started to see the levers that could be used by a municipal government to elicit a different outcome, a better outcome. And that was, I think, the moment that it kind of got exciting for me, and where I sort of started to lean into this research more seriously, because as I looked at those levers for regulatory change or changes in the way municipalities structured investments in neighborhoods, I could see that the changes that you could make to make a neighborhood say more walkable were the exact same things and had to move really in concert with improved social dynamic emissions reductions, more diverse and equitable housing, and changes that would produce more affordable housing for for purchases or tenants, but also more fiscally sustainable growth for committee for communities and municipalities. And so all of these things work together in one solution for how to move neighborhoods to a better place. So, yeah, to me, that was the really exciting moment when all those pieces came together in the one solution.
Tiffany Owens Reed 11:27
How long did this research phase last for you? Oh, a couple of
Rosaline Hill 11:31
years. Yeah, a lot of reading, a lot of analysis, running business models to understand, Okay, well, if the rules were like this, then what? What would people do? Yeah. So a couple of years, and at which point I started to become really curious about how these changes could impact a municipality, not just sort of lot by lot or throughout a neighborhood, but across the entire municipal fabric. And so then I started working with GIS or geospatial students from the the geomatics department at the University of Ottawa, who helped me shift my research to a much larger scale, where we could map outcomes across the entire neighborhoods. Identify neighborhoods in which infill was likely to happen, start to analyze and estimate the frequency at which infill would be likely to happen under different circumstances. And that really took things to a new level in understanding how an entire city could change and grow differently if there were different kinds of approaches to low rise infill housing, mainly through regulatory reform.
Tiffany Owens Reed 12:51
I think it's really interesting how you've how you have been able to articulate how zoning is situated within many interdependencies on like the way you said, you know zoning, it's almost like zoning is here. But then there's the atmosphere around zoning, and because I think sometimes in the housing conversation, there can be a tendency to oversimplify the story around, like the housing crisis, where it's it's just zoning, or it's just building more, or it's just and it sounds like what you've been able to do is kind of articulate or, or it sounds like what you are doing is helping cities see the true complex nature of like what it takes to get the outcome you want for Your neighborhood, and at the same time create. We're going to talk more about this a tool and a resource that helps them. Because I feel like the other outcome can be like feeling so overwhelmed and powerless when you realize how complex it is, but it sounds like what you're trying to do is help cities understand how complex it is, but also give them a tool to realize. But you still have a lot of agency here. You're not completely powerless. There's still so much you can
Rosaline Hill 14:03
do. Yeah, well, and I think many of us will have had the experience where you're asked to provide input on something zoning or development related, and it's so complex, you just sort of baffled. The City of Ottawa will often ask residents for input on zoning, but it's so complex, really mind boggling, and so we're working to shift that, that narrative. We shouldn't be asking or collaborating, providing input on the mechanisms like zoning language, but on the outcomes. So if we can structure things such that we can have, you know, real conversations, honest conversations about the outcomes you know, well, in where we're headed right now, where my neighborhood's headed right now isn't great, because I see, you know, a demographic shift. There's there's less diversity, and maybe there's. Loss of trees, or increase of pavement or or whatever it is that people are seeing, those things are really tangible, and it can make a conversation really grounded, as opposed to conversation about an abstract bylaw. That's it's really hard
Tiffany Owens Reed 15:17
to happen with that, you know, yeah, because nobody, except for us and people who listen to the show goes to sleep at night thinking, man, if we could just change that regulation, things would be so much better, you know,
Rosaline Hill 15:28
if only it was an and and not an or,
Tiffany Owens Reed 15:31
yeah, I've been thinking about this as as it pertains to the conversation about which I'd love to hear your thoughts on this around walkability, versus the phrase designing for people versus designing for cars, I've been like, subconsciously wrestling with this phrase, because I'm like, I get it. I don't disagree, but I also feel like something is a little bit off, and one reason is because driving is an activity that people do, right? So in a way, like you are designing for people, because people are not, they're not just gonna, you know that we're in motion all the time. We're human beings. We're being, we're doing, we're moving, we're acting, right? And so I've been wrestling with this idea of, like, what would happen if we change the conversation from saying, let's just talk about these two modes of acting in the world, and let's, like, make it bigger than that, and let's talk about what kind of activities do we want to see in our city, like, what kind of action in general do we want to see, rather than asking people's opinion about these two specific types of activities. So sometimes I just wonder, like, how the conversation would change if it was less about like, Would you like to be walking more? Some people might be like, no versus tell me more about like, what you the types of activities you would like to see in your neighborhood, or the types of activities you would like to see in your city, and kind of help them work backwards from this vision of activity and active communities to helping them see like, okay. Now designing for walkability is a way to achieve that. Rather than it being like, kind of the thing to talk about the most,
Rosaline Hill 17:01
I'm just thinking, people don't find it really all palatable to just dive in on walkability. I say that with regret, because, you know, I'm the founder of walkable Ottawa, but it's where we're at because we, all, many of us, are just painfully aware of our car dependence, you know, like I can't really do all my my weekly activities myself in Ottawa, as much as I love to buy, like to bike everywhere, and yet, I can't live without a car. I can't get my kids to their things without a car. I can't buy all the things that I need without a car. And so sometimes just diving right into that walkability conversation can be a little bit off putting, because it seems a little bit separated from reality. So like, where you're headed with asking people to kind of have a vision for what their life could be. But I do like to focus on options. You know, like that, we should all have the right to choose. I would like to be in, living in a city where I could choose to live without a car if I wanted to, and right now I feel like I don't really genuinely have that choice. I would have to be an extremely fit and determined person to make that noise, and I'm just not quite there. Yeah, so talking about our vision for neighborhoods. But I think also really important is for any municipalities that are growing. And in Canada, we really have a growth challenge right now. For any municipalities that are growing, growth is an opportunity to envision something that you haven't quite been able to to grab yet. It's your opportunity to get there, if you're strategic about it. But transition is really key. You know, you got to think about it as a transition. If you're starting from a car dependent place and you'd like to move to a place where there are options, where households could choose to live without a car if they wanted. What does that transition look like?
Tiffany Owens Reed 18:58
I'm curbing myself from going down even more tangents, because you're making me think of other things that I want to riff up on, but I want to ask you about what it was like for you when you kind of started to see like, did you feel like there was a gap? Or do you feel like a lot of cities struggle with this gap between the vision they have for themselves and their awareness of, sort of the regulatory kind of ecosystem around what, what's actually achievable, because, like, when you were saying you were looking at that city's vision, but then you're realizing, like, the outputs we're getting based on these other realities has nothing. It's like, so disconnected from that vision. Do you? Do you feel like that's something that cities in general struggle with, with, like, kind of having a vision, putting this out there, but then really struggling to bridge the gap between regulations, codes, economics, and how that actually determines what's feasible? Yeah,
Rosaline Hill 19:54
absolutely. To the point where I've even heard some city planners in. Public meetings sort of shrug their shoulders and say, Well, you just never know what developers are going to do. And so that's why I think simulation and forecasting is so important, and municipalities across North America have been actually pretty good at anticipating and planning for growth through intensification in the form of like towers and directing tower and mid and high rise growth, and also fairly good at anticipating expansion growth, because they're used to it. They've they've been doing that for decades. But when it comes to growth in older low rise neighborhoods, growth through intensification. They just just, it's a it's a puzzlement. They don't really know what to expect or where and when they put together regulations or reform regulations. It's a little bit of a shot in the dark, you know? Well, let's do this and see what we get. And so I would I would really say to any municipal growth planner, don't risk it, don't guess and try stuff. You really need to simulate outcomes. You don't want to be surprised. You want to make changes deliberately and know the outcome that you're going to get. And that means using some kind of simulation methodology like we've developed with the building in program at my office, in order to understand and anticipate what developers will do if and then to to understand that over time and across geography, so that people can be really clear it's an opportunity, then we can look at the outcome and say, Okay, does that fit our vision? Is that really what we imagine? Do we do we want that? Does that create the options that we're looking for? The option to walk and oftentimes, when we do some of our simulations, what we discover is immense capacity for housing people in ways that that keep the character of older neighborhoods exactly as they are. So same low rise character, but more people means more cars. And, you know, an older low rise neighborhood like the one my office is in, it could double or triple in density and keep its character. It would be great. It would be much more socially vibrant, but oh my goodness, imagine double or triple the cars. That's not a good news story, right there, not if they're all driving around at rush hour. And so it brings us back around to the conversation about walkability. So it's an opportunity, but it's also an imperative that this is an opportunity for a really healthy kind of growth, but if you don't pair it with a transition to become more walkable and complete so that people just want to walk, actually going to have a problem, like it's not actually going to work.
Tiffany Owens Reed 22:59
Okay, well, this is the fun part of the show, sort of we're having lots of fun so far, but we get to talk more about the simulation resource tool that you have created. Can you tell us the story behind how you created this tool, and a little bit more about, yeah, how does it work? How does it help cities?
Rosaline Hill 23:18
So it's a methodology that we have developed to anticipate outcomes, but specifically in low rise in fill housing. So in fill into existing low rise neighborhoods. And we know that in fill doesn't really happen in new neighborhoods, right? It happens in older neighborhoods. So it's a methodology, first to map out those areas that are most likely to receive infill, and then we analyze business models and whatever regulations come to bear in order to forecast and then map out across time and geography the outcome as a result of whatever regulations are in play today, and it it can be really interesting, particularly for a municipality who's made some really significant advancements in their zoning recently. It can be really great to see what what that's going to get them in terms of industry response, but then also to be able to see and test what's next. So we haven't yet run our analysis in a municipality that was on track to meet their housing targets in Canada and and so the what's next is really important. And so then we can test different scenarios. Well, what if we change these rules? And our go to for testing outcomes is, you know, and we, we may have made it our go to because we've tested on a number of municipalities, and it really is a great place to start a kind of form based. Zoning that eliminates typologies, sets the size of buildings to be compatible in their two or three story context, and then allows whatever number and mix of units inside that building envelope. But then additionally, our zoning, a recommended zoning, requires a certain amount of social and architectural animation on street facing facades, so that buildings really fit in. And finally, key part of this scenario test is a different approach to parking. We know intensification brings cars, and we know that cars are necessary. They're part of the transition, and yet, if you park them all on private property. There's not enough space for the infill. It stops working on these small lots. The business model unravels very quickly. So the scenario includes a neighborhood parking strategy, like street permit parking or neighborhood parking lots. So we run that scenario as a starting point in our client municipalities, and the outcomes are really shockingly or excitingly different from the business as usual scenarios. We see the potential for lots of infill. Often the potential for infill exceeds the need for low rise housing. And then from there, we can tinker with the scenarios and try different things to find something that is a really good fit,
Tiffany Owens Reed 26:26
that's really neat. So just to help our listeners visualize this, is this like a software, like a modeling software that you're running this through and kind of showing them? Can you? Can you tell us, what does it look like? Visually like, if we were sitting in and looking at this with you, what would we see? Yeah,
Rosaline Hill 26:41
well, the output is maps using GIS software, 3d modeling, you sketch up for street views so that you can see streets in transition. But the analysis work is much less low tech, so it's analyzing typical business models on different lot sizes, understanding what's possible, understanding where the thresholds of change are between one business model and another, based on lot size regulatory shifts, so that then we can feed all that data into our geospatial analysis and map it out over time and space.
Tiffany Owens Reed 27:21
Okay, so would it be accurate to say that what you're giving cities who work with you is sort of like a regulatory roadmap, like, well, you're giving them multiple things. You're giving them insight and into the, I guess, like the decision analysis side of how developers think, or how they're going to react to certain things, so that, like you said, it's less of a guessing game. And then you're helping them see where they have agency, and then you're giving them, like, specific is it? Would you say it's like a specific code or a specific list of like zoning changes, or zone like, specific actions they should take to facilitate the outcome they want. Yeah,
Rosaline Hill 28:05
once we've settled on a scenario that is meeting their needs, yeah, then we go through all of their planning documents and recommend revisions to their official plan, maybe their site plan control bylaws or other bylaws and zoning overlay to add to their zoning by law. So we're not proposing to edit their entire bylaw. Instead, we propose a kind of a patch or an overlay that would apply only in the neighborhoods that are ideally positioned for infill. It keeps it really simple, kind of a light touch approach for municipalities, because they don't have to rewrite a by law, and then developers working in those areas can choose between the underlying by law or the patch by law that would allow them the multi unit buildings. It's also a good opportunity for municipalities to kind of try on something new in terms of zoning, without it throwing off all of their existing zoning.
Tiffany Owens Reed 29:05
Okay, so I want to ask you about the people side of this. I want to ask you, what are you hearing when municipalities come to you for your for help, for for your insight, for your assistance. So I want to know kind of what you're hearing on the front end, and then I want to, I would love to know what you're hearing on the back end. Like, once you're handing them the data, the overlay the model, like, Yeah, can you, can you walk us through that? Like, maybe we'll start with the first one. What? What's the context for cities coming to you? And what are those conversations like,
Rosaline Hill 29:38
yeah. So there's two major things, the the the need for housing and fiscal despair. So municipalities are in a really poor fiscal position right now. They've been growing in ways that they can't sustain for so many decades with with no sense of how to grow differently. Yeah, and so so many municipalities are just on the brink of fiscal ruin, and so that's sort of from the perspective of the municipality, but as representatives of their residents, they all report that residents are angry and frustrated about changing. Neighborhoods are fearful and behaving insecure when it comes to any idea of change, and that is sort of represents all the municipalities that we engage with. It's amazing how consistent that is and and that's just really unfortunate, but it does mean that we can share solutions, because so many municipalities are in the same place. But it also means that there's I like I like, the term that you use in the opening the art of persuasion, a key part of our simulation process is providing municipalities with a tool of persuasion so that they can show people what's possible and ask people genuinely like, do you like this? Or what would you like for your neighborhoods? Ah, this is how we can get that for you, you know, so you don't want your neighborhood to identify you want there to be homes for everyone. You want your children to grow up and find a home in your neighborhood? Aha, we can do that if we go down this path instead of the path we're on right now and then. There's also this need to persuade politicians who need some really clear information, you know, some data driven evidence to make their decisions. And the politicians we're finding are very attuned to the numbers. They certainly they listen to the residents, and they share their concern about the character of neighborhoods, but they're in such a fiscal crunch that the numbers are really compelling for them. So we've been not just simulating the housing outcomes, you know, number of units, types of units, but also the fiscal impact on municipalities. And telling that story, it's just very compelling because it's quite a dramatic difference of outcomes where a neighborhood or neighborhoods that have been long time fiscal drains on the municipality can turn around and be a fiscal benefit to the municipality. So, yeah. So we find that in community consultation, people are really receptive and very much appreciate when we honor what they've asked for. You know, they ask for their neighborhood to become more socially dynamic, but please don't ruin the character of the streets when we honor that and show them 3d models, just demonstrating that the potential outcomes they appreciate that we have listened, and that's really affirming. And when it comes to our municipal clients, it's exciting to work with them to refine scenarios that really meet their criteria and to hand over to them that the tools so they can make changes that are going to get them where they need to go, and not just sort of lost in guesswork. Yeah, it's really good. Um,
Tiffany Owens Reed 33:23
that's so exciting. I am curious, what have you learned about navigating anger through all of this pertaining to like the community conversations or the housing conversation? Because I feel like I'm just picking up from watching you talk and listening to your story that you've kind of figured out. I feel like anger can really trigger anger, or it can trigger, like, frustration or despair or disgust, right? And it's a rare person that's able to actually properly interpret anger when they see it and understand, like, okay, there's something else going on under the surface here. And not to, not to, like, treat it like this huge threat. I'm just I'm just curious, how have you learned to sort of navigate these conversations about housing and all the emotions and the anger that comes up and see it as as like an opportunity. See it more as like, there's so much opportunity here, like, I can't wait to jump in, even though there's still all this anger and fear around change.
Rosaline Hill 34:24
I think my greatest education around the anger piece came before so in my work in infill, just following the rules and building the kinds of projects that don't necessarily make the neighborhood better, but follow the rules. I have faced an awful lot of angry people and people behaving really badly. I've been I've been called some names. It's not been pretty and having to to to. Work past that and try and understand what's behind that anger at first wasn't a very satisfying kind of thing to be working on, because people have the hate both so badly and then the anger in the context of my city, goes beyond just community consultation or engagement between development and resident, but also extends to the divide between planning staff, particularly city planning staff, and industry and residents and environmental or walkable advocates. Everybody's been in their own camp, even though, on the most part, we all kind of want the same things. We've been pitted against each other and pointing fingers and at a certain point that just gets really tiring and pointless, especially when, when at the at the bottom of it, we're all going for the same thing in the end, we all want neighborhoods to be better. We all want there to be more housing. We all want there to be more trees and more sidewalks. We you know, we all want our city to be better. So why on earth are we pointing fingers and angry at each other? So in founding walkable Ottawa, which I did right at the beginning of COVID. I worked hard to bring together people from all of those different camps in conversation, and that was a learning experience in having civilized conversations and sharing what we have in common it was really good moving into the building in program work. You know, we're in a much more comfortable place, being able to lead consultations and just start by asking a room of people to tell us what they love about their neighborhoods and what they would like to enhance. That's really lovely. It's a nice it's a nice way to start, and then to be able to come back to those people and say, This is what we think is possible and and here's how it satisfies your criteria, certainly a low conflict, kind of
Tiffany Owens Reed 37:15
much more uplifting and aspirational, but also empowering, so not non aspirational and the like. Here's our 39th comprehensive plan for the city that we don't know what's going to happen with or if it's ever going to actually come to life. But but aspirational and empowering in the sense of, hey, we can actually give you insight into a little bit. It's almost like you're helping them look into the future and say, like, Hey, you don't have to guess anymore. We can take, you know, your vision. We can take the regulatory environment. We can, we can put all of that, you know, shake it all up, and here we can give you a road map. And that's got to feel really good for cities that are probably feeling really overwhelmed by the pressure to respond to change. I want to ask you a little bit about the other projects you have, walkable Ottawa. And then that I don't remember the name of the other one, the CO housing one Ottawa co housing. I'm really interested in the CO housing project, but you mentioned walkable Ottawa a little bit, and you've also mentioned how your work at building, and you kind of have to talk about transportation alongside the housing. So what are you noticing in terms of, or, I guess, what are you learning about how to navigate that conversation around helping cities see like it's not just about planning for housing, it's also planning for parking and mobility in a way. And then how does that? How are you finding ways to tie in or help them see the value of walkability in the middle of all that?
Rosaline Hill 38:51
Yeah, that is the most high conflict piece of our building in work is the transportation piece. It's really, really important to affirm what people already know about their municipalities, which is that we are car centric. Really important to honor that and be respectful of that, and to talk about transition and not ignore that reality. That'd be the number one thing, but many of the transitional mechanisms to get to places of higher density, that support transit, that allow for transition to more walkable, complete communities, where people might have cars but use them less, all of the mechanisms For transition can be a little bit itchy, scratchy to people, particularly parking the transitional parking solutions, because we want to allow for more parking but not pave over a whole lot more of the neighborhood, which means that the ideal parking solution really. Is street permit parking. Streets already there. The streets are usually over wide. It's a great way to to park a lot of cars at no additional cost. And people hate it. There's a sense of ownership of the street in front of their house. And you know, we so we encourage people to look at the scenarios and compare. You know, well, if you don't have a transitional parking solution, this is what you get. You get gentrification. You don't meet your housing targets, your kids will never be able to purchase a home in your neighborhood, all these kinds of things. And if you do allow it together with the other aspects of a winning scenario, you get a neighborhood that is, you know, world class, walkable, complete community 20 years down the road. And so maybe that street permit parking is worth it after all, but people still find that really, really hard.
Tiffany Owens Reed 40:59
I think it's so valuable, the way that you talk about these plans as transitional. I've heard you use this word a couple times, I guess, something else that makes a conversation around housing, or anything, any any type of like reform in the city space that makes it can make it tricky, or, I think, like, a weakness of, like, people like me who are like, Oh, if we just did this, if we just redeveloped all the parking lots downtown, we'd have amazing outcome, right? And I think it can be hard to remember that, like, this is a transitional process. It might take some time to really achieve the end, goal, and because it's not just a matter of, okay, let's change the zoning code, okay, let's go develop that land, that parking lots just sitting vacant. You also have to change minds, and you have to change culture, and you have to change habits, right? You have to put things in place that allow for new habits and frameworks and attitudes to kind of change with it, and people don't change overnight, right? So with something like parking or transportation, I think you almost have to think of it generationally, of like we're putting things in place for the next generation to be able to have the option to not have a car. But the way we frame that conversation in the present, I don't know. I just think it's really helpful the way you keep explaining it in this transitional language, because I think that actually aligns with the nature of this type of change, and allows for people like me to remember like, oh, right, you know, we have it is really viable to remember that this is a long term change, and it, you know, there's, it's not quick, it's not quick and overnight. And that can help add some, I think, some nuance, or just some more thoughtfulness to like how we talk about certain things or certain outcomes that we want in our city, if we can slow down and remember like, are we talking about the end outcome that could possibly happen in 30 years? Or that's fine, but we also should probably make space to talk about what is it going to look like in that middle space, going from here to there, and what are all the things that we need to be mindful and sensitive of, and how, how can we Yeah, how can we navigate that transitional period well and just realize like, Yeah, this is not, this is not a Just Add Water kind of formula, no matter which topic you're thinking about, housing, transportation, whatever.
Rosaline Hill 43:39
Yeah. Well, there's a real opportunity if we focus on easy wins. Because some neighborhoods, you know, might take 30 years, even if a transition is really mapped out and planners are really deliberate in setting it in place, the right levers for change, some neighborhoods are really well positioned and could transition much more quickly. And so I think our cities really need to see some of those easy wins. And so by mapping and understanding where infill Is is possible in those neighborhoods that are really well positioned for change, we can capitalize on those easier wins first. And once people see what's possible it and you can experience it, you know, like experience goes a long way, then I think it would start to build more momentum. Yeah,
Tiffany Owens Reed 44:30
that makes so much sense, and that's really helpful way of putting it, of even that mindset to be like, Hey, we have this outcome we'd like to see, but we need to be thoughtful about which parts of our city can actually handle that right now and not you know, it's not one size fits all necessarily quickly. Can you tell us about the CO housing project? I'm just very curious about this, because I I think this is very interesting. Just it sounds like, yeah. Just think a lot about the way housing is structured and in the relationship between housing and community and social ties and all that. So we won't go into all of it, but I would just love to give you a chance to share a little bit about that work as well.
Rosaline Hill 45:10
Yeah. Well, okay, I'm going to assume your listeners have some idea of what co housing is, but essentially, condominium housing developments in which residents know each other, or have gotten to know each other, enjoy each other's company, and choose to share their common space and probably share a meal once a week, but they all have their own unit, like they're still completely independent living, not to be confused with hippie compound. It's a regular condo, and legally, it's a condo, and it's just attractive to people who are frustrated because they feel isolated, socially isolated, and frustrated that they don't know their neighbors better, and wish that they could be in a community where children kind of have a little village to grow up in and that kind of stuff. And as an architect and planner, I, over the years, have had many groups of people come to me because they'd like to be living in a co housing development, and it's kind of sad because they're not going to make it. It's development industry is complicated. So a couple years back, I expanded my my business and offer now Ottawa co housing services, which is kind of a coaching service for people who would like to become co housing groups and to develop their own co housing projects. So filling in that, that missing piece, so that groups can actually succeed, we've got a group in Ottawa right now who are looking for a property and a developer to partner with, and they want to build a 16 to 20 unit co housing development. So that's very exciting. That's
Tiffany Owens Reed 46:52
so exciting I feel like we could have a whole nother episode about that site, that approach to housing, and why there's a demand for it, and just the the reality that there is, I actually think there's a lot of interest in kind of rethinking the or maybe not rethinking, but just creating, creating new housing models that correspond to different needs that people have, particularly the need for community and those loose ties, just that social fabric. This has been a great conversation. I always ask this question at the end of every show, but I would love it if you could tell us a little bit about the city, or maybe even just the neighborhood where you're situated. What do you enjoy about it? And if someone was coming through for a couple hours or a day, what are a couple places you like to recommend people visit to get a slice of local life. Well,
Rosaline Hill 47:43
if you're coming to Ottawa, because we're the national capital, we've got great galleries and museums, so you wouldn't want to miss out on that. Our downtown market is really fun. There's great fusion cuisine, or you could get a beaver's tail in my neighborhood. If you like biking, our bike path along the river is fantastic. I bike along their everyday work, and I love it.
Tiffany Owens Reed 48:08
Do you have a favorite, like coffee shop or favorite restaurant you like to recommend? Well,
Rosaline Hill 48:13
my office is right above the equator, coffee which is, yeah, quite a quite a people magnet. There's always tons of people down there, and it's sometimes a bit of a torture, because we were right up above it with our all of the coffee and bagels and bacon smells wafting up to us
Tiffany Owens Reed 48:31
wonderful. Well. Roslyn, thank you so much for coming, coming on the show with me and sharing about your work and your insights. I really enjoyed it, and I'm sure our listeners have as well, if you're listening to this, thank you for joining us for another conversation. If there's someone in your town who you think would make a great fit for the show, please let us know using the suggested guest form that we always include in our show notes. That's how we learned about Rosalind. It's how we've learned about many great people we've had on and we will put links in the show notes too so you can learn more about rosalind's work. I will be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Local Recommendations:
Learn more about Rosaline’s work:
BuildingIn (site)
Walkable Ottawa (site)
Ottawa Cohousing (site)
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Tiffany Owens is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.