To each his own roof | A child has to walk to school

This summer, the editorial team of The Press offers you a series of texts on urban densification as the key to overcoming the housing crisis, a widespread issue throughout Quebec that will certainly be at the heart of the next election campaign.

The best clue to whether your neighborhood has been designed densely enough: do your children and their friends all walk to school?

In any large city in Quebec, children should be able to walk to primary school. Because we built densely enough so that all the houses and apartments are located near the school.

In 1971, about 80% of children aged 7-8 in the country walked to school.

This proportion has dropped significantly.

In 2008, around 30% of children walked to primary school (2% also cycled), according to a study by urban planning professor Paul Lewis. There are no more recent figures (the Quebec Ministry of Education does not know the percentage of elementary students who walk to school), but the trend has certainly not reversed.

“Who am I to say to a young family: since the fashion is for densification, are you going to live in a 12-storey tower? »

The declaration of the Minister of Transport of Quebec, François Bonnardel, on densification caused a lot of talk. Let’s examine it, because he is not alone in Quebec in thinking this way. To densify, it will be necessary to convince many skeptical people that their fears are not justified.

Let’s forget for a moment the immense collective benefits to be densified, for example contributing to the fight against climate change. And let us approach the debate from a strictly individual point of view.

In his statement, Minister Bonnardel presents only the individual disadvantages of densification… not to mention the individual advantages!

Having denser neighborhoods in Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Quebec, Laval or Rimouski makes it possible to have public services within walking distance. The best example: primary school. If children can walk there, it makes life easier for families, promotes physical activity and fights obesity.

But that’s not all. In a fairly dense neighborhood, other public services (eg daycare) and local services (eg grocery store, pharmacy, convenience store) are located within walking distance.

Families then do almost all of their daily activities on foot. Their cars leave their parking lots less and less, because the neighborhood is dense enough to be well served by public transport and by a car-sharing service (eg: Communauto).

In such a neighborhood, families save hundreds of dollars a month by giving up a second car or avoiding buying one. They even ask if they really need a full-time car, or if a cocktail of public transport and car-sharing would do the trick…

This obviously requires thinking, planning, developing our neighborhoods differently. To make concessions to curb urban sprawl. To sometimes have buildings of a few floors, and more small townhouses. To accept that the grounds are smaller or shared. To replace large individual courtyards with common spaces.

For citizens to fully benefit from the advantages of intensification, cities must plan it well. The example not to follow: one of the densest neighborhoods in Quebec, Griffintown in Montreal, which does not yet have a primary school.

This vision of well-planned density is accessible to all major cities in Quebec. We also feel a wind of change in terms of urban planning. This week, Laval presented a new urban plan to green the city and reduce the place of cars and parking lots. This is an excellent first step, a refreshing vision. It means things are changing. But we must not stop there: Laval and the other cities of Quebec must also take the turn of intelligent densification.

If the cities take this turn, in a few years, an overwhelming majority of young Quebecers will perhaps walk again to go to primary school.

Because dense, modern neighborhoods have been provided for them.