Edmonton Transportation Plan in Lego

[I wrote the piece below for the Edmonton Examiner last month but am just now finally getting around to posting it here. It follows up from a previous post on Lego urban design from last year and a video on transportation choice illustrated with Lego that we did during the last campaign. The City’s blog post on all this can be found here. And yes, those are my Mr. Data-like hands assembling the attractive brownstone in the city’s promotional video above. The whole display is up for another week and a half so go check it out if you have a chance.]

What influence do our development plans have on our transportation patterns, and what influence do our transportation plans have on our development pattern? These are some of the questions Edmontonians of all ages are asked by a City Display which depicts Council’s vision for development and transportation using Lego.

The large display is set up at the Telus World of Science as part of “Wheels, Wings and Waves: a Lego World of Transportation” exhibit running until January 2.

Engineers and planners from the city have been hard at work (on volunteer time) designing and assembling this sixteen foot by five foot display containing more than 20,000 pieces. It was an incredible feat, as I can attest having helped them build for just a couple of hours.

The layout depicts three distinct areas in the city: downtown, a mature neighbourhood undergoing redevelopment, and a new suburban area. Each of them is linked together by roads, LRT, bike paths and good sidewalks. There is special emphasis on space to move goods, especially by truck, to reflect the needs of commerce.

Of particular note were the intricate rendering of City Hall and Churchill Square, and the lovely medium-density brownstone townhouses and duplexes in the mature neighbourhood, where people can afford to invest in more expensive land and housing because they save money by relying more on transit and walking instead of that second or third car.

To illustrate the point that this is an interactive and ongoing process, ‘lots’ were left vacant within the layout for the public to ‘develop’ through a building contest that was held [in November].

I had the privilege of judging the winners with Councillors Karen Leibovici and Ben Henderson. We struggled to select from among dozens of very creative entries, but we particularly liked the very colourful multicultural centre and museum for downtown. We also chose the multi-purpose mixed-use library, day care, bike parkade and seasonal lemonade/hot-chocolate stand for the mature neighbourhood. In the suburban area we liked the high-efficiency solar-powered home with the garden and apple tree for food production.

It was encouraging to see that most of the entries reflected Council’s vision for our city’s future.