The James Bay Neighborhood Association has raised an important question to consider: “What ‘quality of life’ do we enjoy or aspire to as member of Victoria’s oldest neighborhood, James Bay?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Healthcare professionals may refer to “quality of life” as an overall sense of well-being with a strong relation to a person’s health perceptions and ability to function. On a larger scale, quality of life can be viewed as including all aspects of community life that have a direct and quantifiable influence on the physical and mental health of its members. And, they may dedicate themselves by working towards improving the quality of health care by increasing accessibility to affordable and appropriate treatment and prevention of disease. They may also work to reduce negative affects on an individual level, by disease.

 

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Quality of Life Research Unit define quality of life as “The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life”. Their Quality of Life Model is based around the categories “being”, “belonging”, and “becoming” – respectively, that is who one is, how one is connected to one’s environment, and whether one achieves one’s personal goals, hopes, and aspirations.

 

The term quality of life is also used by politicians and economists to measure the liveability or sustainability of a given city or nation. These measures calculate the liveability of countries and cities around the world, respectively, through a combination of subject life-satisfaction surveys and objective determinants of quality of life such as divorce rates, safety, and infrastructure. Such measures relate more broadly to the population of a city, state, or country, not to the individual level.

 

So, while it is true that an urban quality of life may include such things as traffic volumes, noise, air and water quality, public safety, and availability of parking, recreational facilities as well as health and social services, it may also include one’s ability to earn an income to sustain oneself, i.e. to pay for one’s food, shelter, and health care.

 

In this light, one might ask, if health and well-being are considered a quality of life issue, how many James Bay residents do not have a family doctor because of the overall shortage of physicians in Victoria and throughout the province; or, how many have been turned away by the walk-in clinic or James Bay Community Project for whatever reason?

 

How many people who live in fixed income find it difficult to make ends meet in the face of continually rising food, fuel, pharmaceutical and rental costs? How many young families cannot afford to live in James Bay because they cannot finance the downpayment or the mortgage, let alone cover the maintenance or repair costs and/or strata fees associated with owning a condo or a single-family dwelling?

When these questions are rarely if ever discussed in neighborhood meetings and not even posed in community surveys, it’s difficult to know what or whose quality of life we are talking about.

 

Perhaps if organizations providing services to the community such as the James Bay Community Project, the James Bay Community School, the James Bay Neighborhood Association, James Bay New Horizons and the James Bay Beacon Newspaper Society would engage in meaningful discussion with members of the community – those who live and work here and invest in the community – they might learn just what quality of life people want in James Bay, as well as what, where, when and how they are prepared to improve it.

 

In conclusion, maybe it’s time to put aside our pet projects, personal biases, and special-interest group agendas and explore our common ground for sustaining a healthy, safe and caring community. By relying on the formidable nurturing spirit of “all for one and one for all”and valuing the notion that “every little bit counts”…we can perform miracles. After all, isn’t that what make life truly worth living, be it in James Bay or anywhere else for that matter.

 

And in the interests of promoting further dialogue and discussion, "What does quality of life mean to you? Are you satisfied with the quality of life in James Bay? What things would you like to change that would enhance, improve or increase the quality of life in this community?"

 

 

 

 

It’s one of the last warm sunny days of September and I’m visiting Victoria’s Tourist District. Created through the James Bay Neighborhood Plan (1993), the City expanded it to include the Belleville Park Tourist (BPT) zone in 2001. Its purpose is to “encourage the improvement of the quality and character of tourist amenities in this area.” Consequently, this area is supposed to permit only transient accommodation and its associated accessory uses (travel agents, hairdressers, restaurants). Sales of goods and transactions related to recreational and pleasure uses are allowed, provided they are directed strictly to transients (hotel guests).

 

After coming across the “Tourist District” moniker recently, I wondered: are cities and their residents better served by differences or duplications? That is, should we encourage zoning that restricts districts to a single use, or should we encourage cross-use within districts and pay attention to how they perform?

 

On a sunny weekend with tourist crowds milling about the harbour, you’ll also find locals using the area: they’re performing or hawking wares on the Causeway, or heading to work at the many hotels and restaurants. This is all exactly in accordance with what the zoning allows (entertainment and sales directed at transients/hotel guests). The zoning regulates the built environment toward a single use (tourism), and controls activity within the district toward that use. In other words, within the Tourist District, the zoning demands continuous duplication of use. Differences, which would entail cross-use or mixtures, are regulated away.

 

Now head over to Belleville Street on a gray November weekday, and the deleterious effects of forbidding mixed or cross-use become more apparent. Gone are the tourists, and the buskers, hawkers, tour guides, and extra staff. The district goes into a kind of dormancy. But a dormant district is underused, and fallow periods permit a false complacency around issues that arose during the active season. Cities must use their spaces well.

 

What brings under-used districts back to life is cross-use. City districts, as Jane Jacobs noted, need to generate diversity, and if they are to be healthy, they need to attract “mixtures of users” to them. In Tourist Districts, it’s not uncommon for locals to feel out-of-place. Diversity and cross-use – both in physical form and in performance—on the other hand, mean that everyone belongs and can feel included.

 

Districts thrive when they are used for many purposes instead of being restrictively zoned to single-uses. This is starting to happen on the Tourist District fringes. On Humboldt and Fairfield Streets, where new residential construction mingles with existing hotel towers, we can observe the emergence of activity that extends into seasons beyond the tourist summer. Residential use brings in other forms of commerce including a weekly pocket market, for instance.

 

Overly restrictive zoning means you won’t have, in Jacob’s words, “different people, bent on different purposes, appearing at different times, but using the same streets.” You instead create situations where only one built form gets approved—in this case, hotels or other tourist-related enterprises. By eliminating other uses, you’re effectively restricting to just a singe category the way the built form itself is allowed to perform. In other words, you’re limiting the ability of the district to perform over time.

 

Our Tourist District was probably conceived both to protect the industry and to provide a “buffer” for James Bay’s residential areas to the south. Additionally, James Bay has a second single-use district, the Legislative Precinct. Its residential area occupies an unusual position, as it’s actually “buffered” on all sides against effective cross-use by strong single-use districts or barriers.

 

It strikes me that these buffers (single-use districts and natural barriers) are in a deadly embrace with James Bay’s residential district. Consider Jacobs on neighbourhood centers: “Centres of use grow up in lively diverse districts… . But centers cannot carry the load of district identification by themselves; differing commercial and cultural facilities, and different-looking scenes, must crop up all through. Within this fabric, physical barriers, such as huge traffic arteries, too large parks, big institutional groupings, are functionally destructive because they block cross-use.”

 

James Bay’s heart is encircled to the east by Beacon Hill Park (large enough to discourage cross-use) and the west by Marine/Industrial areas (Ogden Point, the Department of Defense lands), with ocean/shoreline to the south, all restricting cross-use. To its north, the Legislative Precinct and the Tourist District exert enormous pressure: they sever residential areas from healthy cross-use because they themselves are so rigorously zoned to single-use.

 

The neighbourhood is surrounded by all the obstructions on Jabobs’ list, minus the huge traffic artery. Yet even this barrier could still emerge if Dallas Road morphs into a ring road for the area, which would effectively strangulate the center. It would be better for the neighbourhood if trolleys or a fixed-link public transit route actually criss-crossed through the area, rather than going around it. That would bring cross-use into the center, and cross-use is what James Bay needs more than buffers.

 

Because the surrounding districts are single-use they effectively limit cross-uses within the residential district. This raises the question: should the neighbourhood continue to reinforce the barricades (strengthen surrounding single-uses), or should it figure out ways to increase porous cross-use within all districts? Which strategy would promote better district performance, expressed through diversity and health?