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Urban designer George Dark calls the NCC’s plans for the Ottawa River lands “the most fantastic project I can ever imagine.” But he has a concern.

“To me, it’s not being jumped on significantly enough. Ask the question, what’s the most you could possibly accomplish using that piece of land – not just tinkering, but the most? Really go bold on it, because it’s magnificent.”

ALSO: 6 ways the city of Ottawa is reconnecting with its river

Other big ideas, such as a national botanical garden and a major remake of Confederation Square to coincide with the centennial of the National War Memorial in 2039, are longer term and more aspirational, Kristmanson says.

One idea that has received relatively little attention is the development of a plan to creatively illuminate key buildings and features in the downtown area. The first lights will go on in 2017, but it will take about a decade to complete all elements of the plan.

“There’s something about the signature of a great city that it tends to be a nighttime look,” Kristmanson says. New York City is a prime example. But when people think of Ottawa, they generally don’t imagine it after dark, says Kristmanson. “And yet we have these beautiful assets — built ones, but also geographical features and the water.”

The illumination plan, he hopes, will rewire the way visitors and residents think about the capital, transforming it in their imaginations into a place ablaze with dazzling nighttime light.

Kristmanson calls the decade-long renovationof the Centre Block of Parliament, set to begin in 2018, a seminal project. “Many choices will have to be made in terms of design. Canadians want an expression that will carry us for another century.

“I’m hoping the official residence for the prime minister could be such a building, when we get to that,” he says.

As well, the federal government is keen to find a new use for the former American embassy, across from Parliament Hill, which has been vacant since 1998. The government is expected to make a decision in 2017, and many hope the former embassy will become the home of a national portrait gallery.

We can also look forward to the completion in 2017 of a major makeover of the 50-year-old National Arts Centre and the reopening next fall of a renovated and expanded Canada Museum of Science and Technology.

Where we’ll work

Is Ottawa forever destined to be a city dominated by its largest employer, the federal government? Not necessarily, experts say. If we play our cards right, technology companies could easily rise to the forefront.

Driven by a surging technology industry, private-sector employment outstripped public-sector employment in Ottawa in 1999, but fell back when high tech hit the skids. The collapse of Nortel, which employed 60,000 people worldwide at its peak — more than Google today — was a particularly devastating blow.

Now, tech is back in this area in a big way, but more diversified and sustainable than before. A growing number of startups are joining established big players such as Mitel, Ciena, Nokia and Ericsson, and large new players — including Apple, Amazon, Syntronic and Qlik — are entering the region for the first time.

Photo by Darren Brown / Postmedia Network

The next five years will bring another technical revolution in networking — 5G — and massively larger broadband networks, which will spawn another wave of innovation and growth.

Ottawa is well-positioned to capitalize. There are already 1,700 technology companies in the region, employing nearly 68,000 people. Ottawa tech companies have raised more money on the public markets in the past five years than those in all other Canadian cities combined, and account for more than $7 billion in GDP, primarily through exports.

READ: Ottawa’s Shopify tops best places to work in Canada employee survey

Ottawa also boasts the most educated workforce in Canada. It is home to the second-largest concentration of scientists and engineers in North America, behind only Silicon Valley in California. The region’s post-secondary schools have a combined student population of 138,000, one-in-five of whom are focused on science, technology, engineering or math.

“We have a legacy of a strong tech sector that’s re-awakening,” says the NCC’s Mark Kristmanson. “But there are also a lot of people in the federal government who have advanced skills and knowledge in these areas. So there is a de facto cluster.”

Though it goes beyond the NCC’s pure land-use mandate, the agency is prepared to do its part, Kristmanson says. Its new 50-year Plan for Canada’s Capital will contain a section on the region’s economic and social vitality.

“How do we all come together — the NCC, the private sector, the municipalities, other major elements of government — to make this region competitive globally?” Kristmanson asks. “One way is to just create a fantastic quality of life, so people want to come and live here. We can play a role in that.”

Photo by Darren Brown / Postmedia

Abacus CEO David Coletto cites the city’s relatively affordable housing and attractive lifestyle as key advantages. “There’s no reason why a national corporation couldn’t open its new campus here.”

Ottawa reminds Coletto of another place that has reinvented itself — Pittsburgh, a rust-belt city that realized it could be a home for innovators and revitalized its downtown by building a much-lauded food scene. “Ottawa has that opportunity.”

Municipal authorities are eager to help nurture more successful companies, says Mayor Jim Watson. One reason the city created its new Innovation Centre is to provide “a hub and a magnet to attract entrepreneurs, inventors and dreamers who are going to create the next Shopify.”

To reach its full potential, however, the city’s major economic players need to be more strategic and co-ordinate their efforts, says Jonathan Calof, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. “Ottawa’s got the base of what could be an extraordinary technology future if they choose to integrate it in a proactive way.”

At this point, the development of the city’s tech sector is characterized by randomness, says Calof. “We’ve ebbed and flowed because of the people who’ve chosen to call this home. Unfortunately, it’s a hodge-podge of activity as opposed to a co-ordinated, integrated effort of all key players, getting together to chart that future.”

The new model of open innovation, whereby a company draws ideas from outside the organization through discussion groups and joint development, offers Ottawa a unique opportunity, Calof says. In that model, “We become the central hub for the development of really cool stuff, which is commercialized with major organizations around the world.”

If government grows at all in the future, it will be in different ways, says Carleton University’s Katherine Graham. “Technology will make a difference in the size of the public workforce, but also in the way work is done.”

We’ve already seen the first wave of that, Graham says. “There are no longer platoons of clerks toiling at downtown offices. I think there will be further changes that are driven by technology.”

READ: Built to fail: Politics sabotaged Shared Services before the department got off the ground

How we’ll play

Alain Miguelez has little patience for those who perpetuate the old stereotype of Ottawa as a sluggish, sleepy place.

“It keeps getting repeated like a chant around a fire, some tribal incantation that we reinforce to ourselves,” the City of Ottawa planner sputters. “It’s really completely unfair and passé. It’s time to put an end to that.

“We’re one of the major cities in Canada. We’ve got a lot of good cultural offerings here. People come here to have fun. It’s something we should embrace.”

Whew. Good rant. But Miguelez is right: Ottawa’s dining, arts and entertainment scenes today are lively, varied and expanding rapidly.

“Those who don’t live in Ottawa think of it as a sleepy government town. But the reality is that there’s lots going on here now,” says Abacus Data CEO David Coletto. He’s lived here, off and on, since 2000, and says it “a completely different place” now.

“Now we’ve got amazing restaurants and diversity, not just centred in one area, but different neighbourhoods. If I didn’t live in Ottawa, I might come here just to try all the cool restaurants and all the brew pubs and all the things that are making Ottawa a really interesting place.”

Growing up in Wellington West, Meredith Brown remembers being told explicitly told to steer clear of Hintonburg. The 1980s and 90s were unkind to the area, as it became wrought with prostitution, drug use and general uncleanliness.

“It was a pretty rough neighborhood,” Brown says, who now manages the Hintonburg Public House, a restaurant and bar that features the work of local artists and craft beers.

Hintonburg has become the place Brown “wants to continue to live,” and she gives full credit to the community association for tackling the crime and literal filth that plagued the streets in her childhood.

“It’s becoming a destination,” says Brown, who attributes the area’s popularity to the newest “support local” trend sweeping through Ottawa.

Wellington West, the neighborhood down the road from Hintonburg has been blooming with independently run boutiques and locally sourced cafes, which Brown says people care more about supporting these days than shops in the Byward Market.

“I can’t even remember the last time I went downtown,” says Brown who stresses the humility of her community as the reason why Hintonburg and Wellington West have remained under the radar as they continue to grow and develop.

Across town, the redevelopment of crumbling Lansdowne Park hasn’t pleased everyone, with some saying stores such as Winners make a mockery of the developers’ grandiose promise of a unique urban village.

But Colleto says the park’s remake has sparked a remarkable transformation of Bank Street in the Glebe. “That area has now moved upscale. The Glebe always had some character and interesting shops, but now I think it’s gone up to the next level.”

And while he says Lansdowne’s programming needs work, urbanist George Dark calls the redeveloped park transformative. “It’s the only thing you have that’s like that,” he says. “I’ve been there for Redblacks games. They’re extraordinary.”

There are vibrant cultural offerings on a lot of main streets, Miguelez says. “Wellington West is one of those places where you can go on a Monday or Tuesday night and the bars are full and the venues are full. That’s Ottawa today.”

And indications are that it’s only going to get better. For years, the Downtown Rideau BIA has tried to market the area as Ottawa’s arts, fashion and theatre district. It always seemed a bit of a stretch.

That’s about to change. The new Ottawa Art Gallery, built to the standards of a first-class museum, is set to open next October and renovated performance spaces in adjacent Arts Court will be up and running by the middle of 2018.

“It’s a full city block of culture, which we’ve never seen in the downtown core at the local level,” says Peter Honeywell, executive director of the Ottawa Arts Council. “It’s a really significant move.”

Add to that the $340-million makeover of the Rideau Centre and major renovations at the venerable Ottawa Little Theatre and La Nouvelle Scène, the city’s leading French theatre. Suddenly, Downtown Rideau’s boast appears quite credible. “You’ve got all kinds of really interesting arts entities happening within one or two blocks of Rideau,” Honeywell says.

The proximity to the 75 restaurants and bars in the ByWard Market only enlarges the arts and theatre district, and light rail transit will deliver the customers and audiences. “It’s right there. It’s on our doorstep,” Honeywell says.

Photo by Caroline Phillips / -

Ottawa is in fact becoming an optimal development ground for young artists, says Pat Durr, one of the city’s preeminent visual artists.

“The new history is being farmed in these rooms,” Durr says, gesturing to the current exhibitions featured at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

According to Durr, who made her debut in the arts scene in the 1960s, representation of the arts in Ottawa has come a long way in the past half-century.

Durr says that in time for Expo 67 in Montreal, all major cities in Canada had a public gallery, except Ottawa. This prompted the Ottawa Art Association to hold annual exhibits to “stimulate public interest,” with an overarching message of “we need a public gallery.”

Today the National Gallery of Canada, SAW Gallery, Ottawa Art Gallery, Gallery 101, as well as smaller galleries at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, offer plenty of wall-space for artists from across the country with varying degrees of experience to showcase their work.

“It’s important to have a place where you come face to face with things that challenge you,” Durr says, stressing the important role the arts play in the community as well.

“We need to have a place where people are exposed to creativity. They don’t all become artists, but they become thinkers.”

Outside of the galleries, Durr hopes Ottawa will do a better job of integrating art into the cityscape. With the expansion of the light rail transit system, the public commission program may be calling for more artists to spruce up bus stops and LRT stations, Durr says.

“Everybody needs some way to express their creativity,” Durr says, including that the prominence of art throughout the city gives people “another way to look at the world, making them a happier, whole person.”

Then, there are the festivals.

Photo by Ashley Fraser / Postmedia

Ottawa already has the highest per capita audience attendance in the country, partly due to the sheer number of festivals in the city. While some traditional arts forms, such as opera and classical music, are struggling to find audiences, Honeywell sees a lot of young music and theatre groups that are thriving.

“We are, I think, on top of something interesting. We’re starting to see it moving forward in the music area. We’re starting to see smaller, interesting music festivals.”

Ottawa has the potential to become a music city, a Canadian equivalent to Austin in the U.S.. Honeywell says. “With the right investment and the right sort of circumstances, Ottawa could really move into that Canadian niche.”

It all adds to the city’s outstanding qualify of life, judged to be the best in Canada – and 17th best in the world – in two separate rankings in 2016.

Honeywell sees change in the way city hall views the arts, as well. “I don’t think the arts need to bash our heads against the table at every budget and justify ourselves, ” he says. “I’m finding more and more, the city gets it. They know there’s an economic benefit to the arts, there’s a social benefit, there’s a community benefit.”

(Not everyone shares that rosy view, it should be said:festival organizers have criticized the city for not ramping up 2017 funding for their events sufficiently.)

To really unleash Ottawa’s talented artists, the city needs to collaborate more with arts organizations when choosing how to dispense its grant money, Honeywell says.

“They’ve been very paternal. I think there’s an opportunity in the next two or three years to shift the way we do things in this city and actually respect the creative strength of boards of directors. That’s the one big change that would make the city just absolutely go off the map.”

Aging gracefully

Here are a few facts that might startle you. Seniors will account for almost half of Ottawa’s population growth over the next two decades. During that period, the city will add almost as many residents over 80 (54,500) as those under 30 (56,000). By 2031, one in five Ottawa residents — 254,000 people — will be 65 or older.

“We’ve seen this coming for many years,” says city planner Royce Fu. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody but when you see the numbers, it’s dramatic.”

The city has begun to prepare. It’s buying more Para Transpo vehicles and adding benches near large concentrations of seniors. It has developed an Older Adult Plan to improve access to city buildings, make it easy and safer to use outdoor spaces, and encourage the use of “age-friendly principles” in the community.

“I think every level is playing catch-up,” says Mayor Jim Watson, “but we’ve tried to get ahead of the curve by getting some investments in place now so that when the bulk of the baby boom generation move into senior citizen status, we’re going to be better prepared.”

City officials are getting more applications for things such as retirement residences and medical facilities, and are amending zoning bylaws to allow them in more areas.

A key objective is to make it easier for seniors to stay in their communities as they age. “When you get to a certain age, it’s all about your appointments,” says Lee Ann Snedden, the city’s chief of development review services. “By developing these walkable communities and higher-order transit, we’re really setting the stage for that older population to get the services they need within their own communities.”

Aging in place is a good choice for seniors who are healthy and fit. “If you’re autonomous and you can drive yourself everywhere, there’s no problem,” says city planner Alain Miguelez. “But it’s not given to everybody.”

That’s one reason city council decided to allow homeowners to build coach houses on their properties. “Creating opportunities for proximity is key,” says Miguelez. “Coach houses allow that proximity if you need to keep an eye on each other. It’s a way of retrofitting the city and adapting for that aging.”

Some seniors, dissatisfied with the current options, are embracing new models. Lynn Markell heads up Convivium Co-housing for Seniors, a non-profit group created by about 50 older adults who plan to create a new “intentional community” at Greystone Village in Old Ottawa East.

“We are taking back ownership of the way we want to age,” Markell says. “We’re not talking about just warehousing seniors. We’re talking about people who are going to interact with each other and help each other.”

Markell’s group is working with Greystone’s developer, Regional Realty, to design a purpose-built residence for people between the ages of 55 and 85. The living spaces will be private, but there will be community spaces for potluck suppers, exercise and learning programs, outside service providers, perhaps even a workshop. Markell calls it “aging in community.”

This sort of quasi-communal living appeals to the group’s aging boomers, Markell says. It’s also an antidote to what economist and Ottawa resident Judith Maxwell calls urban loneliness, a malaise that will be reinforced as more elderly residents live alone.

“Loneliness or isolation is bad for human health, and it’s bad for community development,” says Maxwell, a former head of the Economic Council of Canada. “The question is, can we as a society be really imaginative in supporting our elderly?”

While boomers, on average, will be the richest generation of retirees ever, many of those born toward the end of the demographic wave lack the wealth and paid-off mortgages of Maxwell and her peers. “They’re just terrified because they’re still on the debt side of the ledger,” she says. “They don’t have a big pension. And they feel very vulnerable.”

For seniors with the means, though, life in Ottawa should be sweet. “We’re probably going to hit the era where the hippies of the 1960s are retired and have a lot of time on their hands,” says Miguelez. “That’s a happy place to be.”

Seniors in Ottawa will demand more cultural opportunities, more lifelong learning, Snedden says. They’ll enjoy the city’s great restaurants, music festivals, art galleries and museums. They’ll gather in bars, though perhaps, as a concession to age, in the afternoon instead of the evening. And a growing number will continue to work, by choice or out of need.

Still, the challenges posed by the aging population shouldn’t be underestimated, says Jack McCarthy, the recently retired executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre.

“We’re not going to have enough long-term care beds,” he says. “We’ll have to ensure that we have the kind of care co-ordination in place to keep people in their own homes.”

While intensification may well suit an older population, there will also be a need for more bricks-and-mortar buildings to house and serve people as they age, says Carleton University’s Katherine Graham.

“It’s not just the need for more retirement homes and nursing homes and hospitals. There is a need for services where people can avail themselves of activities and assistance as they need it.”

The diverse city

The city opened its heart in 2016 to 2,000 Syrian refugees. It was the largest single influx since the Vietnamese boat people in the early 1980s. At least 1,000 more Syrians, most of them privately sponsored, are expected to arrive in 2017.

Yet the Syrian wave barely moved Ottawa’s demographic needle. Well over 200,000 residents — 22.6 per cent of the city’s population, according to the 2011 census — were born outside Canada. Nearly as many, one in five, are visible minorities.

ALSO: A Syrian refugee ramps up his catering business in Almonte

Ottawa today is one of Canada’s most diverse cities (though Toronto and Vancouver are in a league of their own). That should only increase.

The federal government has been ramping up immigration levels and will likely continue doing so to fill the demographic gap caused by the aging population, says Carl Nicholson, executive director of Ottawa’s Catholic Centre for Immigrants.

Ottawa typically gets between 7,000 and 10,000 of those new arrivals annually, he says. “I don’t see any reason for that number to go down. I see every reason for it to go up.”

Ottawa, like all Canadian cities, needs immigrants to fill jobs. Almost all of the city’s labour market increase will come from immigration in the years ahead, Nicholson says. And without a steady stream of immigrants, many Ottawa schools would close. “You wouldn’t have the numbers.”

The overwhelming response to the Syrian refugee crisis has changed the city, says Louisa Taylor, director of Refugee 613. Thousands of sponsors — predominantly educated professionals from the middle to upper middle class — have been exposed to the challenges refugees face every day.

“Through them they’re learning, ‘Wow, it’s really hard to get affordable housing, English classes are limited, it’s hard to get around if you don’t have a bus pass and social assistance makes it really hard to afford one.’

“I like to think it means they will be more informed citizens,” Taylor says. And unleashing compassion only strengthens a community, she notes.

There’s no doubt that some of the Syrian refugees are marginalized. “We have to remember that they’re just starting to decompress,” Taylor says. “It will take them several years, and that’s to be expected.”

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

Ayda Noofoori and her daughters were given 48 hours to pack before they were to board a plane to Toronto.

“They called and said, ‘Get ready, you’re leaving in two days’.” the youngest daughter, Luna recalls.

The three arrived in Toronto late at night, expecting to be greeted by their sponsor, and were shocked to see a group of 20 people waiting for them at the bottom of the escalator, holding a banner with their names, written in both Arabic and English.

Their welcome was the first of many gestures the women cite as examples of how “Canadians are all nice.”

“The atmosphere is very positive,” Isis says, who has a twin sister currently living in New Jersey with her husband. (She pointed out that the Arabic pronunciation of her name is different than the English. She prefers to pronounce her name the Arabic way (ees-ees) rather than the English way, “because it’s safer.”)

Luna, 20, who is studying political science and international development at Monmouth College in Illinois, agrees with her sister, saying that “everyone tries to help.”

Born and raised in Damascus, the three women left Syria in 2012 to move to Beirut, Lebanon, where they stayed for three years. Growing up, their mother Ayda ensured the girls practiced their English as much as possible, a lesson that has served them well throughout their transition to Canadian life.

“We underestimated the language barrier,” Isis says, but she is quick to mention the amount of support their family has received from the many services available to refugees, like the YMCA, United Way, and Ottawa Centre Refugee Action.

Isis says they’ve experienced “culture shock, in a good way,” describing the struggles they’ve faced adapting to the colder weather, as well as the humour they’ve found in the number of names “snow” has, such as freezing rain, which is non-existent in the Middle East.

The community has been “very supportive on many levels,” Isis says, but they miss the family they have left behind; an immense challenge to overcome.

“You left all your family,” Ayda says, explaining the only comfort they have is knowing that Damascus is the safest place to be in Syria when compared to other cities like Aleppo.

Luna says that in their experience “everything is wonderful,” but she stresses the fact that as they are privately sponsored, they have no concept of how the government-sponsored refugees fare.

While they find themselves learning new things everyday, Isis says she has noticed how the Canadian approach to helping refugees has shifted as well.

The Noofoori women have witnessed first-hand how the many support workers they have met continue to grow and change as they learn to best assist families who are moving to Canada, adapting their tactics to address the individual needs of new-comers who may not speak the language or have escaped conflict zones.

“Canadians themselves are introduced to things they don’t come across every day.”

More than half of the Syrians who came to Ottawa last year are under 18. If we invest in them now and ensure they get the services they need, Taylor says, “They’re going to pay our taxes, they’re going to be our caregivers, our lawyers, our doctors.”

The transition to life in Ottawa is typically hard for immigrants, Nicholson says. “You don’t have the networks. You don’t know Canadian English, even when you speak English. You don’t know Canadian French. You don’t know what’s permissible in the workplace and what’s not.

“There’s a whole lot of cultural stuff that puts immigrants on a long trajectory before they can get what it would appear their qualifications should get them. That’s just the way it is.”

When the community actively welcomes refugees and immigrants, as they did with the Vietnamese in the 1980s, tremendous assets are developed, Taylor says. “We weren’t as welcoming with the Somalis, and I believe that is part of the reason they had a lot of struggle in the early days.”

When newcomers don’t feel accepted and can’t find their footing in their new homes, some turn to crime. That endangers us all and can fray relations between minority communities and the police.

“This is something I’m thinking about an awful lot,” admits Nicholson, who sits on the police board. When Somali-Canadian Abdirahman Abdi died during an arrest last July, he says, “lots of young folks were angry and upset and feeling fearful. But our community is wise enough to give them the space to talk about it.”

“We’ve never really confronted these things before,” Nicholson says. “We need to have the conversation.

“It took us a long time to get to the biases that we have. I don’t expect we’re going to disabuse ourselves of them in five minutes. But we’re going to work our way through them.”

Health

As 2016 drew to a close, the big health debate in Ottawa was where to locate The Ottawa Hospital’s new $2-billion Civic campus. It was an important decision: top-flight hospitals are a key component of any effective health care system.

But in the coming decades, the focus will shift away from hospitals, to improved primary care to keep us healthy, community-based management of chronic conditions and greater attention to mental health.

The shift will be driven in large part by cost, says Chantale LeClerc, CEO of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network. “We’re in an environment where resources are limited,” she says. “I don’t see that changing in the years to come.”

At the same time, Ottawa residents expect the quality of their health care to improve. “Those trends and forces are going to continue to push us in the health-care system to do things differently,” LeClerc says. “I see more of that coming in the future, and the pace of that change accelerating.”

“I think we have no choice,” says Jack McCarthy, former executive director of the Somerset East Community Health Centre. “There’s not going to be new gobs of money anywhere.”

If we want a healthier city, we need to address the social determinants of health, McCarthy says. “We’ve got to have affordable housing, we’ve got to address inequality. Poverty makes people sick.”

We pay a lot of lip service to that, he says. “But when push comes to shove, where do we put the money? It’s into the medical system.”

The health care system in Ottawa has been built on a foundation of costly hospital services. Now that more of us are living longer with chronic conditions, LeClerc says, “We need services that are much more based on primary care that helps keep us health and helps us manage those chronic conditions.”

Those who provide our care will have to work in a much more integrated way. That’s already beginning to happen: primary providers are increasingly working in teams with health professionals from different disciplines.

People will also be encouraged to look after their own health conditions to a greater extent, instead of seeing their family doctor. “There’s much more of a movement towards giving people the tools they need to manage their own conditions and know what to do when things go askew,” LeClerc says.

Moreover, mental health conditions are becoming more prevalent, and the system needs to shift accordingly, she says. “We don’t yet have a system that’s fully able to meet the needs and the growing demand. That’s an area that will require some significant work and a rethink going forward.”

MORE: Our cruel hypocrisy on mental health laid bare in provincial auditor’s report

There’ll always be a need for hospitals, of course. But their role will evolve, LeClerc says. “We need them to have much better interconnections with other parts of the system, so they can transition people back to their primary care providers and other services, like home and community care.”

It’s clear, says LeClerc, that the hospital of the future will look different from those of today.

There’ll be more focus on healing and wellness, improved infection control practices and space for families and other visitors. All hospital rooms be singles or doubles to minimize the risk of infections, and large enough to accommodate modern technology and equipment. Doctors will be able to check electronic health records right in a patient’s room, instead of having to peer at a computer at a nursing station.

LeClerc is optimistic that the system can cope with the coming demands. “But it’s going to require everybody working together in a concerted way, and a willingness to change how we’ve traditionally done things.”

McCarthy shares that optimism. “In 10 or 15 years, I think we’ll be a healthier community if the focus gets more on keeping people at home, keeping people healthy and keeping them connected with their neighbours.”

Local communities, he says, will be incubators for exciting new developments. “That’s where people come together, problem-solve and figure out what they want. That’s where I see ideas percolating.”

Poverty and inequality

Ottawa is one of Canada’s most affluent cities, with a median family income in 2014 of $102,000, trailing only Calgary. But there’s also a lot of hidden poverty, says economist Judith Maxwell, who has lived here for three decades.

One in five households in Ottawa is food insecure, a bloodless phrase that masks the hard truth that thousands of our fellow residents regularly go hungry. An average of 41,500 people use the Ottawa Food Bank every month. About 6,700 homeless people used shelters last year and 10,000 households are waiting for affordable housing. Perhaps the starkest statistic of all: One in four children in Ottawa grows up in poverty.

“It really is surprising to me that the poverty is so deep here,” says Maxwell, who has seen it first hand through her volunteer work. “There are cleavages in the community that we haven’t dealt with in the past.”

Younger residents, in particular, are not doing as well as earlier cohorts in settling into jobs and becoming self-sufficient, Maxwell says. “They can’t find the bottom rung of the ladder. We’re missing a lot of important connective tissue with those people.”

Like government waste, the poor will always be with us. But those who advocate on their behalf are cautiously hopeful that things could improve somewhat in Ottawa over the next decade or so.

“There’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic,” says Mike Bulthuis, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness. For starters, the City of Ottawa committed in 2013 to ending chronic homelessness by 2023, an objective Bulthuis believes is realistic.

About 500 people in the city are chronically homeless, but that relatively small population gobbles up a disproportionate number of available shelter beds. “We know that housing subsidies are cheaper than paying for a shelter bed night after night,” Bulthuis says.

That’s what the city has been doing, and there’s evidence that it’s working, he says. Last year, for the first time, the average length of stay by homeless people in the shelter system declined.

Photo by Jean Levac / Ottawa Citizen/Postmedia News

Bulthuis is also encouraged by promises from the developers of LeBreton Flats and Zibi to include affordable housing in their projects. “We still need to see the results. But even hearing those statements is something that, five years ago, we didn’t hear much about in Ottawa.”

On the other hand, says Bulthuis, “Lots of folks don’t enter the shelter system, either because it’s full or they don’t deem it a safe place to be.” These hidden homeless include members of Ottawa’s indigenous community, young people and veterans down on their luck. They, too, need attention, he says.

Moreover, infill and intensification development in the city’s core is driving property values up and displacing people with modest incomes, says Ray Sullivan, executive director of the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corp., the city’s largest non-profit housing corporation,

Gentrification is a double-edged sword, says Jack McCarthy, former director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre. “If I walk up Wellington Street from the Bagel Shop into Hintonburg, invariably I bump into someone I know,” he says. “It feels really good, with lots of people moving.”

But in the process, a neighbourhood that gentrifies eventually becomes a costlier place to live, forcing out lower-income residents. That’s a problem, McCarthy says. “It can’t just be a corridor of condos for people with upper incomes.”

Those working to ease hunger in Ottawa also see some hopeful signs. “There has been a lot of energy and momentum behind increasing community access to food,” says Kaitrin Doll, an anti-poverty co-ordinator at the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre. “There is a lot of potential for us to really keep food on the radar.”

Community-based initiatives such as Just Food, the Good Food Market, the Good Food Box and Doll’s own project, the Marketmobile, are helping to make fresh food more accessible and affordable. They’re also building community engagement and capacity. “People are healthy in their communities when they’re involved and actively engaged in projects that affect their lives,” Doll says.

In the case of Marketmobile, a social enterprise that buys food at wholesale prices and resells it at low markups in eight low-income neighbourhoods, it seems to be working, she says.”We’ve seen a big uptake in the project, as well as volunteer engagement and capacity engagement from across each of our eight locations.”

Photo by Doug Hempstead / QMI

As well, recent bylaw changes have expanded the opportunities for people to grow — and sell — their own food, says Moe Gaharan, executive director of Just Food, which works to develop sustainable farming systems in the Ottawa area.

Community gardens are now permitted in green spaces such as parks and church lands in urban and suburban Ottawa. Anything grown there can now be sold at farm stands, farmers markets or online.

“Given that Ottawa is such a land-rich city,” Gaharan says, “we have a unique opportunity as a capital city to demonstrate what could be possible moving forward, with increased food production at households as well as commercial activities. That could make a real difference in terms of access.”

Still, food insecurity will be tough to eliminate, says Michael Maidment, executive director of the Ottawa Food Bank. There’s “a whole bunch of other system stuff” that needs to happen before city residents can reduce their reliance on the Food Bank, he says.

Nearly two-thirds of Food Bank users are on some form of social assistance, which often doesn’t provide enough money to cover both rent and food in a given month.

There are glimmers of hope in some areas. The City of Ottawa hopes a new low-income transit pass will make it easier for an estimated 8,800 people to get around. “It may not seem like much,” Maidment says, “but it may mean that 8,800 people can purchase more food on their own instead of relying on the food bank.”

There’s also a lot of excitement about a provincial pilot projects that are testing a basic family income model. “That could have a pretty broad impact on people turning to food banks if it’s adopted provincially,” Maidment says.

Photo by Jean Levac / Ottawa Citizen

Green city

Charles Hodgson drives a Chevy Volt, pays extra to buy carbon-neutral electricity and natural gas from Bullfrog Power, and volunteers with Ecology Ottawa. It’s his personal way of fighting climate change. “If we don’t get that right,” he says, “the rest is moot.”

So it’s meaningful that Hodgson thinks the City of Ottawa’s commitment to the environment has improved since the current council was elected in 2014. “There are a good number of city councillors who think it’s part of their mandate to work on environmental issues and, in particular, climate change,” he says. “That’s a very big change to the good.”

Photo by Darren Brown / Ottawa Citizen

Graham Saul, Ecology Ottawa‘s executive director, agrees — to a point. “I think we’re moving in the right direction,” he says. “Just not nearly fast enough. There are a lot of exciting things on the table. It’s a question of whether the city is really going to run with them, or whether they’re going to be held back for one reason or another.”

Ottawa’s green initiatives are important because as many as half of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are under the direct or indirect control or influence of municipal governments.

Saul is delighted by the city’s adoption of a “world class” complete streets policy, to make city streets safer and healthier and encourage cyclists and pedestrians. But he adds, cautiously, “Over the next few years, we’re going to see whether it’s really embraced.”

He’s also watching to see the city’s vision for expanding light rail beyond its second stage, which will open in 2023. “It’s not just about the train. It’s about how we build around our public transit artery.”

While the city has a water environment strategy to protect the health of the 4,500 kilometres of watercourses that flow through Ottawa, Saul says it only pays lip service to green infrastructure, which uses natural systems to soak up and clean storm water.

The city has created a pilot project to manage stormwater through bio-retention along Sunnyside Avenue and has others in the works.

“But we still don’t have a vision of what that looks like,” says Saul, who complains that the city is “still just playing around at the edges” when it comes to green infrastructure. “It’s a hopeful sign, but we’ve got to figure out how to move that forward.”

The city has also been working on a renewable energy strategy with the long-term goal of meeting all of Ottawa’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2050.

“We were hoping to see something happen by the end of (2016),” Saul says. But the strategy has been delayed, in part because of a major reorganization at city hall, and now isn’t expected to be presented until the third quarter of 2017 at the earliest.

Photo by Errol McGihon / Postmedia

The city has ramped up its planting of trees to about 120,000 a year, part of an initiative championed by Ecology Ottawa to have one million trees planted within the current term of council to offset those lost to the emerald ash borer.

“We still have a long way to go, especially on private land,” Saul says. “The city is making a good faith effort. We’re trying to rally the rest of the community to make that happen.”

Ultimately, Saul says, the urban form the city adopts will determine its environmental future.

“Does it look like the kind of suburban neighbourhoods that are to some degree impermeable to proper transportation planning, that force people to drive just to get a quart of milk, that have huge ecological footprint? Or are we actually going to try to say no more massive above-ground parking lots and one-floor box stores, no more sprawling neighbourhoods?”

The jury is still out on that, Saul believes. “We’re not seeing a particularly inspiring vision for the 21st century. It’s more business as usual within the 20th century.”

Better or worse?

Safe to say, Ottawa will change — a lot — in the next decade or two. There will be underground trains, bicycle tracks along major streets, gleaming new neighbourhoods filled with towering buildings and innumerable places to buy high-end coffee. (OK, so not everything will change …)

There’ll be more superb bars and restaurants, new parks, cultural institutions and hot neighbourhoods, more people with skin that isn’t white, driverless vehicles roaming the streets like riderless horses and old people everywhere you look.

But will it be a better place to live?

“You need a futurist to give you an answer to that,” says the NCC’s Mark Kristmanson.

Or maybe a soothsayer.

“I think the makings are there to do it,” Kristmanson says. “We have an incredible public realm that’s not yet at its full potential. There’s such strength in the basic knowledge assets of the community, and strength in the institutions of our universities, the federal institutions.”

‘We don’t want to white-bread the capital’ — Katherine Graham

Ottawa will become a more interesting place as it attracts more visible minorities, says Carleton University’s Katherine Graham. “We don’t want to white-bread the capital,” she says. “We do need to recognize the fact that the city is becoming more diverse. That’s a very healthy, good thing.

“Is Ottawa aspiring to be a Toronto or a Vancouver in miniature, going higher and higher?” Graham asks. “I think there will be continuing conflicts on those questions.”

Jack McCarthy, who watched the city evolve during his 27 years as head of the Somerset West Community Health Centre, is optimistic the future is bright.

“Ottawa’s got a highly educated population,” he says. “They’re not going to stand for mediocrity. They want to be engaged in their communities. That building of social capital, I think, is strong in this city and will get stronger.

“We have to make sure we elect civic politicians who appreciate the value of social capital and being innovative and entrepreneurial in the best sense of that word,” McCarthy says. “Now’s not the time to be risk averse.”

Pollster David Coletto has no doubts about his adopted home’s future. “As this city transitions into really a modern city, with a modern transportation spine and all these great amenities and activities,” he says, “Ottawa’s going to be a different place. You’ve got the fundamentals for greatness.”

dbutler@postmedia.com

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