Architect says get rid of one-way streets
November 10, 2005

Architect Donald Schmitt addresses packed house at the first Spirit of Red Hill Valley lecture.

Hamilton's remaining one-way streets should be re-converted to two-way traffic as soon as possible, an internationally renowned architect says. "The conversion to one-way traffic took place in one night in the 1950s," said Donald Schmitt. "The re-conversion could take place almost as quickly".

Schmitt delivered the first Spirit of Red Hill Valley lecture on Wednesday evening before a crowd of over 300 people at First Unitarian Church on Dundurn Street. The event was sponsored by Friends of Red Hill Valley and the Hamilton and Burlington Society of Architects.

The annual lecture is timed to commemorate the crushing of local and aboriginal resistance to the controversial expressway a few days prior to the November 2003 civic elections, and included the unveiling of an archival record of the pro-valley movement led by Friends of Red Hill Valley, and the launch of student awards for nature poetry and essays.

Schmitt's Toronto-based firm Diamond + Schmitt Architects has been hired by McMaster University to design its new research park on the site of the CAMCO factory on Longwood Avenue in the city's west end. While he indicated that project is in too early a stage to describe, the architect presented detailed examples of his work in other locations across the continent, where his firm has preserved existing structures and erected complementary new buildings that are designed on a human-scale.

He particularly emphasized the creation of public spaces, both within and around his projects, which provide opportunities for social interaction and relaxation. The company's projects include innovative environmental features such as air filters composed of living plants, wetlands and naturalized areas, and the use of geothermal heat and other energy-saving measures.

Schmitt's comments on one-way streets came in response to questions from a panel of local architects and journalists. He described their installation in 1956 as "a disastrous idea" that frequently turns roads into speedways. "I think it's beyond belief that it has been maintained," he declared.

Using slides, Schmitt also illustrated the right and wrong ways to achieve more intensification - providing housing for more people per acre of land. Instead of widely spaced high-rise towers linked by major roads, he showed how smaller buildings - between six and 12 storeys - achieve the same density and also fit into and define the edges of a conventional grid pattern of streets.

He noted that European cities like Amsterdam and Vienna have dramatically smaller land areas than North American cities with similar numbers of residents, but that the European cities are recognized by everyone as much more attractive.

Schmitt said "congestion," often seen as an evil, was actually something to be welcomed on Hamilton's major thoroughfares. "It makes cars go slower and thereby makes the street safer for pedestrians and cyclists," he said, giving Toronto's Queen Street as an example.