Great cities are made up of great neighbourhoods – great places to live, work and play. And great neighbourhoods have identities and names.
So Barrie is looking for residents to name the older neighbourhoods that ring Kempenfelt Bay as part of its new way of getting people, rather than city planners, to lead the process.
“If we can get people involved and build a people-led plan, we can end up with something that can shape and guide the development of these neighbourhoods for decades,” said Ward 2 Coun. Jeff Lehman. “We’re trying to look at these neighbourhoods in a different way and do planning in a different way.”
Rather than taking an issue and applying it to the city as a whole, Barrie is looking at issues – recreation, streetscapes, urban design, shopping, business, pedestrian and traffic flow – and looking to improve them to create the most-livable spaces.
“Great cities are about neighbourhoods,” he said, citing Toronto’s Yorkville as a prime example.
“Anyone would recognize our old neighboruhoods are different. Because of changes in the city centre there will be changes in these neighbourhoods and provincial planning policies will create more changes. It’s the city’s role and responsibility to go out and ask people what they want to see.”
Barrie launched its Historic Neighbourhoods Strategy – which features the naming contest as well as a website to encourage people to discuss what they like and don’t like about their neighbourhoods – on Wednesday. Anyone can suggest a name by going onto http://hns.barrie.ca and exploring the photo galleries for inspiration.
A map of the seven neighbourhoods can be found on the website; they include the downtown core, old Allandale on one end and the older neighbourhood north of the library (east of Bayfield Street and generally south of Grove Street) on the other.
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Light snow and -10°C
Light snow and -10°C
