Seeing the Future of the Capital Region with MetroQuest
Planning for the future can be abstract, even fanciful. Making decisions about one's own life can seem difficult enough, but when turning one's gaze to the larger society a whole host of competing values and ideologies come into play that can make forecasting even more problematic. City planning is always subject to opposing visions of a "good society," and those "lenses" can make the on-the-ground reality difficult if not impossible to visualize. Paper documents setting out planning objectives and projections are essential but they have their limitations: however participatory the processes they document or emerge from, the results are set in ink for all time, insensitive to changing conditions, evolving values and the shifting dynamics of social dialogue.
For these reasons, MetroQuest's planning software is so effective -- sometimes startlingly so. It allows a group to come to consensus on planning objectives (such as housing densities) and immediately see the future that can result for an entire metro region. To actually see the landscape transformed before your eyes as a result of decisions you have just made is inspiring and sobering -- and, I daresay, potentially mobilizing!
MetroQuest offers customized mapping of client city-regions, as well as output tables demonstrating the performance in key indicator areas such as ecological footprints and commuting time, and the extent to which the region is meeting overall planning targets. Most striking of all is the program's ability to map out growth patterns for the city-region over decades, showing areas of very low, low, medium and high densities.
I have had the opportunity to participate in demonstration of the MetroQuest software in workshops in the Capital Region of Manitoba, the largest city of which is Winnipeg. The Mayors and Reeves of the Capital Region of Manitoba have licensed the software and used it in workshop settings to explore various scenarios for regional grown to 2041.
In the case of Winnipeg and the surrounding region, the MetroQuest map displays the city and the 14 surrounding municipalities, as well as the extensive exurban large-lot development stretching mostly from the city to Lake Winnipeg to the north, indicated in yellow. Our group was tasked with identifying preferred growth patterns as they related to such themes as:
- Housing density (very low, low, medium or high density?)
- Housing location (in Winnipeg or nodal across the region?)
- Job location (in Winnipeg or nodal across the region?)
- Transportation spending (favour road-building or promote mass transit and active transport?)
- Farmland (preserve or develop farmland?)
- Ecological protection (relax or strength conservation strategies?)
The most controversial was probably the debate over regional growth: should we concentrate development in Winnipeg - which has need of downtown revitalization - or build up the surrounding municipalities? It was suggested that if the European model of contained towns set in preserved farmland could be emulated, rather than low-densities throughout the region, then we would favour multi-nodal development.
The participants were also torn about densities. Several personally liked low-density housing for themselves, and so weren't keen on mandating the opposite for the region. The majority prevailed however and chose high-density housing, transit investments and strong farmland preservation policies. These selections made, we then saw the results play out over the next thirty years: the densities across the region increased nodally and development was concentrated along public transit routes. Ultra-low densities (in yellow) were markedly diminished.
Pleased with ourselves, we then asked the facilitator to do the opposite of what we'd asked: to run what we dubbed a "nightmare scenario" in which exurban growth is encouraged, all funding goes to road building and no effort whatever would be given to preserving farmland.
The results were as rapid as they were shocking: the group gasped as the region was inundated in yellow, and Winnipeg itself was riddled with "dead zones" where neighbourhoods appeared to have been drained. Commuting times soared, the landfill capacity was exhausted and the region's ecological footprint doubled.
What we saw in this brief demonstration was not just that sound planning and policy-making can result in very different futures, but that tools such as MetroQuest can be highly effective forms of education and communication. Where publics and stakeholders may have a difficult time being persuaded to choose certain planning goals that they may feel run counter to their own preferences or values, actually seeing the results can have an impressive impact that can -- hopefully -- translate into public support for smarter growth patterns.
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