ACTIVATING FAIRWAY
TRANSIT-ORIENTED URBAN DEVELOPMENT, 2023, Kitchener
In collaboration with: Aaron Wong, Nathan Choi, Naya Sanchez
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. The Design Principals
2. Redefining the Mall?
3. Community and Transportation Hub
4. Circulation and Pedestrian Access
5. Activating Community Spaces
6. Our Affordability Approach
7. Indigenous Reconciliation
8. Environmental Approaches
REDEFINING THE MALL
Currently, Fairview Park Mall is very internalized and as a result creates a disconnect between this central landmark and its surrounding community. The facade has minimal windows and provides service entrances on all sides of the mall which makes the site unfriendly and unapproachable. In addition, the existing mall is occupying a lot of real estate that we propose can be given back to the environment and more importantly the high-crime neighbourhood located behind the site. With that, our strategy is to design a city center that creates a more engaging and safe social experience for the entire community. The concept of vertical stacking is necessary to create a base of human-scale retail stores with offices and residences on top. By removing the mall, an emphasis on the ION station can be made and a park and recreation corridor can be built to provide the community with several amenities that they currently don’t have, including: gallery and studio spaces, an arena, community center, ecology garden, walking trails and many more (figure-1). Lobby spaces and pockets of resting are spaced out to provide places to loiter -- one of the largest activities that happen in malls today. Having external pedestrian access also allows people to reconnect with their neighbours as well as the environment as they travel along the park-retail corridor. Overall, this new strategy helps to revitalize public transit, the community, the environment and the economic development of our MTSA.
OUR DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Our project aims to create a community center around the Fairway ION stop that feels safe and is constantly activated by community initiatives. To do this we came up with the following design principles:
1. Develop Fairway into a transportation and community hub
2. Create substantial connectivity between surrounding communities and the central hub for both pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists.
3. Construct safe, direct, and convenient pedestrian access to all amenities.
4. Establish a multi-generational diverse community where residents are encouraged to linger and socialize.
5. Provide ample support for the Indigenous community in the surrounding area.
The Fairway ION stop is the last completed stop to date. In turn, the stop symbolizes the arrival and exit of Kitchener and is one of the first things you see when exiting the freeway onto Fairway Road -- one of the most high-traffic streets in Kitchener. Therefore, creating an overall threshold when you enter this MTSA is crucial. We achieve this through creating an activated retail front along Fairway Road with boosted public spaces and widened sidewalks. Providing considerable access from all directions to the transit and community hub will allow for more people to gather and feel safe while accessing the station. Currently, Fairview Park Mall is located on the site and its massive parking lot is not safe for pedestrians. Establishing canopied walkways and separated bike lanes allows for each type of commuter to feel safe while accessing the amenities within the MTSA. Furthermore, activation of the community comes from creating a space that can house a diverse community. The typologies discussed later will explain the multi-generational housing approach to the MTSA. In addition, about 20% of the land within our MTSA is allotted to be land back for the indigenous community. This land is near the ION and GRT stations and the surrounding amenities.
COMMUNITY AND TRANSPORTATION HUB
The existing amenities on Fairway are separated by large expanses of parking lots. We propose to consolidate many of the Fairway strip plazas into a more human scale, pedestrian shopping experience rather than the car-centric approach that currently exists. The main change of the site is instead of the traditional mall, which is rather an interior facing entity, we create outwards facing shops that create small pockets of gathering spaces. These shops have offices and residential apartments on top of them which allows for easy access between live, work and play. The park corridor is situated between the mixed use and recreational bands to provide a larger green space for the surrounding community, which until now have only had smaller park blocks with little to no recreational space. Our parks system has an area for trails, community engagement and open activity space as well as recreational courts and a dog park. Adjacent to the vast green space is a corridor of community buildings. The idea to create corridors of program allows for people from all sides of the community to have convenient access to all amenities and facilities rather than everything being spread out along Fairway Road which greatly skews the distances people would have to travel to access certain spaces.
The current transit hub in our MTSA has very noticeable problems with its existing structure. The largest problem noted is the bus circulation when exiting and entering the bus terminal. Buses must make a direct turn onto Fairway Road right before the largest intersection in the MTSA. This creates traffic back-ups and problems for bus flow through the terminal. To solve this, we re-imagined what the terminal could look like. The new transit station has a shared bus and ION platform that allows for easy access between the two forms of transportation. The station also has shops that are targeted towards 24 hour services so that the station always feels active and awake. Located on the other side of the ION track (which is accessible by the two crosswalks on either side of the station) is a larger plaza with retail on the bottom floor, along with offices and residential spaces on the upper floors. These offices are easily accessible from the transit station for commuters from outside of the community. Furthermore, the community, park, and retail corridors all conjoin at the transit station, making it easy to access the rest of the site’s services
CIRCULATION AND PEDESTRAIN ACCESS
Improving the MTSA requires improving the circulation of the entire site. The proposal includes adding a street hierarchy system (figure-5) of arterial, major, minor and local streets and the addition of new roads to better connect the residential neighbourhood and the main artery, Fairway Road. Designing proper roads means defining streets as living spaces -- a stage for which people’s lives play out. With this idea in mind, we created boulevards on Fairway Road and gave plenty of space for cycling and pedestrian flow through the site. Each road uses these boulevards to create buffers between vehicular, cyclist and pedestrian traffic all while re-greening the MTSA. The pedestrian crossings in the middle of local roads are designed to be raised speed tables to control the speed of cars on pedestrian oriented streets and optimize accessibility for wheelchairs and strollers. In addition, all the retail is accessed by foot, with human scale details and storefronts for comfort and ease. The above-mentioned station design also allows for a well-integrated transit stop into the urban fabric. The stops are easily accessible and safe for all pedestrians. We have also proposed extra bus stops to accommodate the new avenues of traffic we created. This allows for easier access to the fitness facilities and athletic park area (figure-6).
OUR APPROACH TO AFFORDABILITY
There are five major typologies that cover a wide mix of living arrangements on the site: mid-rise residential towers with podiums, family-oriented apartments and townhouses, co-operative housing apartments and stacked townhouses, seniors/long-term care housing, and live-work buildings (figure-7). We aimed to provide a diverse range of typologies like including missing middle housing to work towards more inclusionary zoning and developing a more inclusive and equitable community. Much of our standard mid-rise housing meets a 40% affordable housing target as the value generated from the retail and office developments is used to offset the housing costs. Our co-operative housing apartment is built on a market rate system that allows members to participate based on the current rates that the market can handle at the time. Beyond that, we aimed to provide multi-generational housing to include groups from young professionals to families and even seniors. This diverse range of housing ensures that this community can be supported for many generations and will continue to grow in the future.
Some of our affordability strategies are on a smaller scale. This includes having shared laundry spaces and less washrooms per room. This allows for faster plumbing installation during the building process as well as less mechanical engineering throughout the building’s lifespan. Some of the larger moves include maximizing the density on the site and having retail and office floors on the bottom so that the developer does not solely depend on rent or mortgage income to make a profit. Maximizing the density also allows for more housing throughout the MTSA. To do this we propose changing the zoning of the site to allow for FARs that are in the ranges of maximum 5.0 rather than the FAR of 2.0 that we are currently zoned to use. Part of the multigenerational approach is the ratio we have created between rental and ownership units. We decided to split the amount of rental and ownership units 50:50 to allow for younger individuals and families who need a starting home and for seniors who are moving to smaller scaled living to be able to use rentals, and for longer term families who are looking to stay put to be able to buy a space. Part of this model is also renting with the option of buying in the future. These units would be available in multiple scales and allow for tenants to rent their apartment for a set amount of time while being able to save up for buying (on an agreed upon price at the start of the contract). This allows families and single individuals to become financially stable before needing to permanently buy. Out of the ratio of units, a portion of both rental and ownership models would be targeted towards this model with future possibilities to expand.
INDIGENOUS RECONCILIATION
We proposed that the southern side of the MTSA becomes a land back initiative for Kitchener-Waterloo's Indigenous population which amounts to about 20% of our site. The existing site has very few buildings, including a movie theatre, medical building and some restaurants that have been moved to the other side of Fairway Road, which would now benefit both communities equally. Moving these companies to the centre of the MTSA gives them a larger opportunity for pedestrian-oriented use rather than solely depending on the car-centric style that Fairway is currently designed to be. In this proposal, we have demonstrated a basic high-density approach to show what the maximum capacity the land given back to the Indigenous could be used for. This includes retail along Fairway Road which could be either rented out (giving the Indigenous an income source) and/or run by the Indigenous community. The plan also comes with a community center that would provide a safe and sheltered space for people to practice ceremonies, receive counseling and socialize. One of the main features of this space is also the amount of green space in between the housing units. This allows them to grow their own food, have open spaces for ceremonies and activities. In addition, there is an Indigenous center in the community corridor that has a community garden attached to it. It is located beside the park to provide ample open spaces and a connection to the environment. Also, the park corridor creates a gathering space for reconciliation. Both spaces are centralized for to accommodate for any surrounding Indigenous communities not associated with the land back initiative.
ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACHES
The proposed MTSA compared to the existing MTSA shows a significant increase in public green space and vegetation. This touches on all the points about environment including sustainability of the MTSA area, biophilia for creating better psychological impacts, and mitigates against heat sinks in the urban fabric. These parks can also create better community gathering spaces and benefit economic developments by attracting people to the stores facing the park (figure-8). The boulevards on Fairway are designed to be bioswales to help retain storm water runoff by collecting and filtering it before it seeps back into the ground. Many trees have also been planted on the site, this creates smaller micro-climates when trees are placed in proximity to buildings or other trees. Micro-climates start to allow more diverse ecosystems to develop. On the northeastern side of the site, a density of trees is used to act as noise barriers to protect against the adjacent highway. Healthy streetscapes also have trees and green spaces to defend against the heat of summer and slow down wind tunneling affects during the winter months.
