Ottawa's Makeover
NCC proposals for a capital makeover are expensive and unattractive. Here's a better idea
By WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI

The government center of Ottawa, unlike Washington's or Canberra's, was not formally planned. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Canada, hardly a world power, does not need a monumental capital. Indeed, the attractions of Ottawa are low key: the pretty Rideau Canal, winding river drives, a lively market district. The National Capital Commission, the crown corporation charged with the physical planning of the capital region, deserves credit for these adornments. Yet the NCC has failed in one important aspect of its mission: creating a vital city center. A walk down from Parliament Hill is a trip through a dreary commercial district characterized by banal office buildings, tacky tourist shops, a seedy pedestrian mall and desultory attempts at urban landscaping.

Last June the NCC, which usually works behind closed doors, published an illustrated report titled A Capital for Future Generations, which aims to rectify the situation. According to NCC chairman Marcel Beaudry, the new master plan will "revitalize the capital's core area, to ensure its role as the symbolic heart of the capital, and the center of a large city." Grand words--and grand ideas. Taking a leaf from Baron Haussmann, who overhauled Paris for Emperor Napoleon III, the NCC plans to improve the shabby downtown by creating dramatic new urban spaces. Haussmann, however, did it much better.

Perhaps anticipating controversy, the NCC offers two alternatives. The first is to widen Metcalfe Street to create a large square directly across from Parliament's Peace Tower. It is not a compelling idea. The space would disrupt the south side of Wellington Street, whose "street wall" is an effective foil to the open green space of Parliament Hill. In any case, the architectural gesture is inappropriate. High Victorian Gothic architecture, unlike classical, is best experienced in picturesque bits and pieces, not head on. The NCC would do better to fill in the remaining gaps along Wellington, including the uncongenial plaza it has created in front of its own lackluster headquarters.

The second alternative involves widening Metcalfe Street to create a monumental boulevard that would start at Parliament Hill and end 2 km away. Sir Wilfred Laurier, who disliked Ottawa, once said that he wanted to make the Canadian capital "the Washington of the North." So, apparently, does Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who is said to support the second proposal, which has been likened to Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a weak analogy. Pennsylvania Avenue leads from the White House to Capitol Hill and effectively symbolizes the separation of powers in the American Constitution. Parliamentary Boulevard, as it would be called, would terminate at the Canadian Museum of Nature, creating a distinctly odd juxtaposition of legislators and stuffed birds.

Parliamentary Boulevard is conceived as a parade route: the NCC report includes an illustration of a red-jacketed, bearskin-topped regimental band marching down the route's middle. Yet Ottawa already has a ceremonial grande allee: Confederation Boulevard. Created in 1967, this processional way links Ottawa to Hull and sends out a spur along Sussex Drive, past a series of embassies and ministries to the Governor-General's residence. Despite the name, this combination of streets, parkways and bridges is not a real boulevard, but it is an authentic expression of national ideals. Moreover, its patchwork and improvised nature charmingly resembles Confederation itself.

Parliamentary Boulevard, like much of the NCC master plan, appears hastily conceived. A broad, windswept avenue would be ill suited to Ottawa's chilly climate; a linear park along the lines of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston would have been more useful and more sympathetic to Ottawa's Victorian heritage. In any case, design is hardly the main problem. In order to center the 90-m-wide boulevard on the axis of the Peace Tower, Metcalfe Street would have to be broadened considerably on its west side. The cost of demolishing (or, in the case of historic buildings, moving) dozens of structures, including recently built high-rise offices, would be several hundreds of millions of dollars at least. (The entire annual budget of the NCC is only about $100 million.) It seems a foolhardy use of taxpayers' money.

Yes, the NCC should pay attention to downtown Ottawa. But there are better models than the pomp of Washington or Paris. Oslo and the Hague, for example, are lively small cities where the symbols of state coexist comfortably with mundane life. A portentously named Hall of Canadian Heroes or an expanded Capital Information Centre, as the NCC proposes, is not going to revive downtown. What is needed is more housing, careful architectural guidelines and smaller-scale, mixed-use development. In other words, not a grand plan but a bit of pruning, some careful transplanting and judicious clearing of undergrowth: gardening, not clear-cutting.

Witold Rybczynski, the author of City Life, is Myerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.END