St. Catharines downtown densification
A vision for densifying the downtown of St. Catharines.
St. Catharines is a medium-sized Canadian city, whose downtown is not too different from its other North American counterparts. It has a patchy downtown where big parking lots take up valuable land better suited for other usages. A well functioning city center has a good balance between day-time population (workplaces) and night-time population (housing). Maximizing the amount of people present in downtown during as many hours as possible in order for the city to fully ensure its growth potential and support the many restaurants, pubs and stores that naturally thrive in such balanced environments.
North American medium-sized cities usually lack housing in downtown areas, as the cities often developed a pattern of promoting living in detached houses just outside of the downtown limits. I propose to redeveloping existing ground parking into low-scale homes (3-5 floors), and instead concentrating the still much needed parking in two new parking buildings. With this type of low-scale redevelopment, downtown St. Catharines can become home for an additional 2000 people.
The Swedish city of Linköping (160 000 people) is of similar size to St. Catharines (140 000 people), as well as having similarly sized downtown areas. However, Linköping has almost no ground parking lots in its central areas, instead housing its cars in parking garages. During a typical summers day the city center of Linköping is active with more than 420 people eating and drinking outside on restaurant seating and 120 people simply sitting around in its public places. Do St. Catharines have the potential to be just as vibrant?
