| Ottawa Vision 2002- A Focus on Self-Reliance. Speech to the Mayor's Breakfast about using the "Magic Wand" of Municipal Government: a costless way of using the leadership, power, laws and influence of City Government and the Mayor's Office to effect change at no cost to the City, April 18, 2002. Ottawa, Canada |
| Urban Design Principles Leading to Community Consensus |
| Development Charges are Inequitable and Damage the Prospects for Building Affordable Housing- memo to CAOs in the City of Ottawa and environs |
| Teamwork in the 10th Millennium B.C. |
| Affordable Housing in Africa |
| Livable Cities |
| Housing Preferences Survey of Suburban Grade 8 Students in Kanata, Ontario |
| Billboards: a Visual Blight or a Freedom-of-Speech Issue or Both? |
| Real Estate and Development- by Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Adjunct Research Professor, Founder, Ottawa Senators Hockey Club, Chair, Hickling Capital Corporation and Manchester Development Corporation. To obtain access to the Course Outline you will need to contact the lecturer. School of Architecture-78.392, Carleton University (Looking for Class Schedules?) The workshop focuses on the theoretical and practical underpinnings of real estate development – its economics, finance, risk and returns. This course is aimed at students who want to understand the real estate development business and how it shapes the urban fabric. Students who either want to become engaged directly in the real estate development industry as developers or who, as architects or planners, want to understand the needs and market realities of real estate developers will benefit from the course. The politics surrounding real estate development are examined in detail with an emphasis placed on the interplay between special interest groups, developers, their architects and municipal and provincial or state politicians and approval authorities. Case studies of actual and contemplated projects both commercial and residential and original course material drawn from the experience of the lecturer are utilized to provide students with a reality-based perspective of how projects and cities actually develop and change. The inevitability of conflict between developers and special interest groups is examined and explained. This course will be attractive to students from Architecture together with those from business, Commerce, Finance, Engineering, Urban Studies as well as Geography. Assignments will be project based and involve teams of students. The link between architecture and business is a key element of the course. Assignments will include examples of real estate projects, examples drawn from the residential, commercial and entertainment industries. These include the design of sub-divisions, house construction, commercial office and retail construction, outdoor amphitheater, theme parks and arenas (the Corel Centre, Ottawa, Canada). Students will examine the forces that have shaped the development of western cities in the post World War Two period. Emphasis will be placed on the extraordinary changes that are taking place in urban planning and economics– the models that guided urban planners in the last two generations will be shown to have failed to adapt to the new reality. The need for new standards and practices in urban design, the need for deregulation of the rigid cast of rules (such as city zoning control by-laws) imposed on our cities and the need for a deeper understanding of how cities must be permitted to adapt to the myriad changes taking place in the local, regional, national and global economy of today, will be explored. Creativity in design and the interplay between excellent design at the micro level and financial success of the project will be demonstrated. Objectives One of the objectives of this course is to provide the student with a better understanding of the role and needs of the developer. By the end of the course, students should have an overview of the fundamentals of real estate design, development and economics and they should be able to conduct a feasibility study of an individual project including market analysis, budgeting, financial analysis, risk and return calculations, project schedules and the approvals process. They should also understand the wider urban context in which they work and the importance of creativity in design to create new added value. Moreover, students will better understand the principles that guide urban design on both a micro scale (the design of streetscapes) to the macro level (neighborhoods, subdivisions and towns). The interplay between special interest groups and the political process will be examined with a view to understanding the underlying causes of conflict. The highly controversial conversion of rural lands to urban uses will be studied in a context of the not-in-my-back-syndrome. Contemporary urban design is creating an urban blight made up of burbclaves and gated communities that result in segregation by income which, if left unchecked, will lead to more social unrest. Copyright. Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Ottawa, Canada. 2001."Not in my Backyard", Sculpture by Pat Lussier and Anna Radice |
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