Small Town Charm

I’ve written before about “small town charm” in various ways, but it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about as life has slowed down this summer. Spending time downtown, or at the beach, and noticing all of the people who come to visit Brighton, has made me think about what draws them here. And hearing comments from locals, both in Brighton and in nearby communities, with regard to proposed developments and the desire to maintain that “small town charm” has made me drill down a little to try to articulate what that really means.

Before I even get started I want to acknowledge that it’s one of those terms that we apply to a gut feeling, and so no answer (no matter how careful) can cover all that it might mean to everyone. But it surely does mean something to everyone, and it’s one of the things I hear about most often when we experience change in our community. So here we go.

What’s a Small Town?

Breaking the phrase “small town charm” down into its two parts, let’s start with what we mean by “small town”. What makes for a small town? If you look it up on Wikipedia, there are actually a lot of different ways to define a town or small town, as they vary depending on the country or region. “In some countries, such as Australia and Canada, distinctions between towns, cities, and rural areas are based on population thresholds.” It goes on to note that “A place’s population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns” (emphasis added).

Of course, I didn’t start thinking about this by reading definitions. But it struck me that I hear the phrase “small town charm” from people who live in all sorts of communities. There are a lot of folks from Cobourg talking about it lately, and Cobourg has almost double the population of Brighton, in a much smaller footprint; they’re quite near the historic minimum size of a city designation in Ontario (25,000). There are now no minimum thresholds for city designation (not since 2003), and the smallest City in Ontario is Dryden, with less than 8,000 residents. Meanwhile, the largest Town in Ontario is Oakville, with upwards of 213,000 residents! Why does Oakville call itself a town, while Dryden calls itself a city? I think it has everything to do with how a community sees itself. Or, as the kids say, it’s about the vibes. Or…the charm?

Small is Beautiful…or is it?

So what are the vibes of a small town? When we talk about small towns, we tend to think about a few rather specific things:

• People know each other
• It’s not too busy
• The downtown, at least, is walkable

These are all functions of scale: if it were too big, there would be more strangers than acquaintances, you wouldn’t be able to walk all the way down main street, and there would be more traffic than is comfortable. Everything in a small town feels familiar, safe, and manageable.

The other aspect of small town vibes is that, somehow, it has managed to maintain this for a long time. Part of knowing your neighbours, in the small town sense, is that your grandparents also knew each other. Very often when people decry the loss of small town charm, they’re expressing concern about the loss of community networks that are as old as the town itself. Sadly, that’s something that I’m not sure anyone anywhere can do anything about, unless we want to start limiting where people can go and what they can do. People from those networks and lineages will move away, and others will move in, and the web of people and local history will break down over time. That’s one of the reasons why the Brighton Digital Archives are so important!

But sticking with smallness, the flipside of it is not quite so comforting. Smallness tends to also mean a lack of amenities, mobility, and wealth. The other classic term for a small town is a “one horse town,” and that captures the scarcity of smallness well. Not everything about a small town is charming. A lack of traffic can also just mean a lack of activity, a place where nothing happens. Everyone knowing everyone might reflect a strong sense of community and solidarity, or it might reflect isolation and forced interdependence. Everyone knowing everyone doesn’t mean anyone likes each other.

The thing about smallness itself that I think is ultimately what we want to hold onto is that sense of community. Community-building, in the sense of building and nurturing a web of relationships between neighbours, is possible at any scale, but it’s easier at smaller scales. What makes for a healthy community is not that everyone is part of the same web of relationships, but that everyone is part of some web of relationships, whether that’s a result of neighbours knowing one another, or a local book club or gaming group, or a service club or municipal committee, etc. A healthy community of a larger size just has more of these opportunities to connect with other people, and works to build connections between those groups, so that everyone can feel that they belong.

Charm, Vibes, Rizz

By adding “charm” to “small town” it’s clear that we’re after the best parts of the small town experience. But what makes something charming? Being charmed is an emotional, relational experience: it’s about how we feel, the effects of charisma. Acknowledging again that the way that we feel is subjective and therefore what’s charming to me might not be charming to you, I want to propose that small-town charm comes from a combination of:

• Familiarity: feeling the security and comfort of knowing the places and people in my community very well, having a sense of belonging and even ownership. I feel this every time I go to the post office on Main Street, where I never fail to see someone I know.
• Character: feeling that there are features of this place that make the place itself a character in the story of our community. Sometimes this means unique or historical buildings (again, that post office! But also, Proctor House, the Presqu’ile Lighthouse, etc); other times it means places that are defined by the people who use them and the way they are used (like Memorial Park, which is used for both joyful concerts and sombre Remembrance Day commemorations). Such places lend their sense of character to the area around them, too: many aspects of Memorial Park can be felt by anyone who looks at them, whether they’re sitting at Lola’s or browsing at Lighthouse Books. A bookstore in the industrial park would have a very different vibe!

These two aspects, familiarity and character, don’t always get along with each other. They hold one another in tension. There is a sense of familiarity that can come from uniformity, or a sense of fittingness or fitting in. And there is a sense of familiarity that comes from recognition and relationship with someone or somewhere unique. The difference between these two is important to tease out, because we have policies that use this language and can have very different effects depending on what sense of these words we really mean.

Character of the Neighbourhood

Every municipality has an Official Plan (OP), a document full of policies that interpret provincial laws and policies, and county policies, to help the municipal Planners and councils apply those in local development planning. Development proposals should comply with those policies, though of course there’s room for an Official Plan Amendment if someone wants to build something that doesn’t fully comply with the OP. The goal of an OP is to be a framework or guideline for development decisions, not to be hard and fast laws that must be complied with for all time. OPs are therefore also living documents, updated regularly to ensure that the community is growing in ways supported by best practices as those best practices themselves evolve. And the field of planning has evolved a lot over the years! (For a good review of how planning has changed, check out Not Just Bikes on YouTube or Nebula.)

Most OPs have a policy that states that a new development should “conform to the character of the existing neighbourhood.” This makes a lot of sense from the perspective of familiarity I mentioned above that relates to fittingness, or fitting in: if you have a neighbourhood of modest single-family detached dwellings, it would be somewhat jarring to see a highrise apartment complex come up in the middle of it! In the same way, a street full of mid-rise apartments might look odd with a single-family detached dwelling in the middle of it. Good planning supports gradual shifts in density and size, and to some extent even style.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there is still some sense of fittingness or fitting-in (or standing out!) that can affect building style. I’ll offer two personal stories to illustrate this:

• I was married on the veranda of the Montrose Inn, an historic building on hwy 2 just west of Belleville. At that time it had an unobstructed view across the stone walls that lined its property, and across the highway, to the Bay of Quinte; it was a scene almost frozen in time (at least if you could ignore the traffic). Now, the small bit of shoreline on the south side of the highway features a large, flat-roofed modern minimalist home. It’s a beautiful home, and its builders had every right to build a home of their preference on property that they own. But the “character of the neighbourhood” was certainly set by the historic mansion across the road, and the juxtaposition of the two very different styles can feel a little bit jarring just driving by. I’m sure that I’ll get used to it eventually, but it doesn’t quite feel fitting.
• When I was a kid I had the privilege of my family co-owning a ski cabin at Silver Star Mountain Resort. As you can see from the photos in the link, the aesthetic of the ski village is distinct: everything built up there needed to have its colour scheme approved in advance. This was (and surely is) not negotiable. So I spent a certain summer, when I was about twelve, painting siding boards bright yellow and green so that our cabin would fit in with the neighbourhood aesthetic–though in this case, “fitting in” means being distinctly different colours from every other building, though all of the buildings had the same general architectural style and materials.

So, good planning does encourage a good “fit” in a neighbourhood, whether that means common uses (which are controlled through the Zoning by-law, which is part of the Official Plan), or size and density, or even to some extent style. But what happens when we take that too far?

When Character Becomes Uniformity

Now consider any neighbourhood in Brighton outside of downtown or Presqu’ile. Most of our neighbourhoods are subdivisions filled with single-family detached dwellings, and are largely only distinguishable from each other by the era of building or size of the homes: they’re big and new on Castle Ridge, but smaller and older on Hope Street. But not only are most subdivisions in Brighton comparable to most other subdivisions in Brighton, they’re just as comparable to subdivisions in Cobourg and Oshawa and Kelowna and Calgary and Halifax. Across the country, and largely even across the continent, suburbs are pretty uniform. On one hand, that means that there’s a sense of fittingness to such neighbourhoods, which can make a street feel comforting and secure.

But on the other hand, a place that could be just about anywhere doesn’t have much sense of place, or character. There’s nothing Brighton-y about most of Brighton, and nothing Cobourg-y about most of Cobourg. In order to have character, there needs to be some sense of distinction, even uniqueness. Sure, a generic house can provide shelter and a generic park can provide shade and fresh air, and both can provide a sense of familiarity in a broad, conceptual way: yes, I can recognize a park as a park, no matter how bland it is. But sticking with parks for a moment for the sake of analogy, Memorial Park and King Edward Park are very distinct from each other in features, form, and use, and that changes the way that I feel when I’m in those places. It wouldn’t even be appropriate to make them the same: a splash pad doesn’t really belong in the same space as a war memorial, with such different purposes adding such different characters to those spaces (and I can’t even really explain why those uses seem at such odds, so please let me know in the comments if you think they belong together!). But if we were to make them both fit into the same character for the sake of complying with the “character of the neighbourhood” clause of the OP, we would only be able to do so by removing the things that give each of those parks their distinctive character, reducing them both to just grass and trees.

Advocates for maintaining strict neighbourhood character would say that that’s fine, just keep them apart. But what happens when the only thing that’s ever built is subdivisions with the same neighbourhood character? This is the catch-22 of small-town development: if we can only ever build things that match what’s already here, we’ll only ever have more of the same, even if more of the same ruins our sense of what’s already here.

Opposing Development

Small towns, whether they’re the City of Dryden or the Town of Oakville, continue to grow. As land owners seek to build on their land, municipal planners strive to ensure that development happens in an intentional and orderly way, applying the rules of today to the needs of today while keeping an eye on the mid- and far-future. We want our neighbourhoods to make sense, both today and a hundred years from now. But as we grow, we face growing opposition to the very types of development that might actually preserve or enhance the character of the community and the amenities available there.

I never ever have people complaining that there’s too much to do in Brighton. Everyone wants more amenities. When we ask what the municipality should be focused on, very often we hear about the types of businesses that people think should exist here (and to be clear, the municipality does not run businesses, though we do try to support them through our Economic Development department!). Very often the only complaint people have for me is that there isn’t enough to do here, or that there aren’t enough restaurants or shops. We want the type of growth that means more goods and services are at our fingertips.

But the complaint that I hear even more often is that people feel that we’re “becoming just like the big city.” When I ask them to drill down a little bit more into what that means, they tend to point to the development of new subdivisions. These developments are slowly stripping away our small town charm, they claim. And, with nothing against local developers and the people who live in those neighbourhoods, I agree.

To be clear, subdivisions are not a “big city” thing; they’re a suburb thing, and are terribly wasteful of land and infrastructure. As comfortable and familiar as they are, they result in high tax burdens to residents, and low levels of service. Big cities tend to have levels of population density that allow for services within your own neighbourhood, and transit services between one neighbourhood and another, so that they’re truly walkable. Suburbs are car-dependent, which means we need to set aside half of our downtown just for parking, and traffic will always be high. If we were truly becoming like “the big city” we wouldn’t be building subdivisions at all; we’d be building higher-density developments downtown.

But if we treat the “character of the neighbourhood” as a law that must be abided by, especially when it comes to building height, small towns can never grow upward; they can only ever grow outward, one generic subdivision at a time. If instead “character of the neighbourhood” is treated as a general guideline for a living community that is constantly changing and growing, we can plan for new developments that strive to preserve that character, that charm, in style and use without sacrificing the amenities they might otherwise provide, and the new character they might add to the neighbourhood through their own uniqueness.

When a major development is being planned, the proponent will often hire designers to determine the building style and aesthetic, and the first thing those designers do is visit the community and look for the common themes and design aesthetics that they feel are represented in the existing buildings, and try to implement that in a way that suits the community while still facilitating the purpose of the building. We can argue about whether or not they got it right, but my point is that this is explicitly part of the process for some developers. For example, while the new OMNI long-term care facility on Georgina is one of the largest buildings in town, they put considerable effort into fitting the aesthetic in with the community. The Hilton TRU hotel, on the other hand, has a style based on the hotel’s brand rather than any community fittingness. While we can’t force stylistic considerations, we do ask for them wherever we can. But in both cases, whether the style is intended to fit in or not, the size of the structure became the basis for opposition under the “character of the neighbourhood” argument. And if that’s the case, then we just can’t have hotels or long-term care facilities.

A similar example comes from the new commercial building currently under construction along hwy 2 at Orchard Gate. It’s only three storeys, in a neighbourhood primarily of 1 or 2 storey buildings, and its roofline and windows were designed to mirror a residential-style building in order to fit in. Even so, because of its size alone, one resident told me vehemently and with much disgust that it was “a monstrosity.” I’ve seen people sell their houses and move away for less feeling than that resident expressed, and in this case it was all because that building was one storey higher than surrounding buildings and despite the fact that it was designed to look like them.

So if the only thing that we can be sure will suit the character of the existing neighbourhood is another subdivision that is just like every other subdivision, then we’ll end up with a community whose only character comes from the few places that don’t conform to that character – which is to say, our few historic spaces. Building characterful places becomes something we did in the 19th century, when our historic downtown was built, rather than something we do today. We will continue to sprawl outward, one farmer’s field-turned subdivision at a time, and we’ll all drive downtown for our amenities and complain about traffic and parking. And that will fulfill the negative vision of “the big city” that people have when they complain about growth in our small town.

Characterful Growth

It is possible to have neighbourhoods full of character that also have growing density and new development. It’s possible to increase the amenities available to us without making our community bland and uniform. It’s possible to have more people in town, and therefore more strangers, without feeling like you don’t know anybody. But only if we take an active approach to placemaking.

Placemaking is about planning a neighbourhood or development around the way that people will use it. It’s building for that web of relationships that we love in a small town, rather than just building homes and hoping that those connections will form. According to the Wikipedia article linked above:

Across Placemaking practices, “quality places” share the following characteristics^[16]:

Coherent, legible and attractive

Preservation and value of cultural, built and natural heritage;

Diverse functions and activities;

Highly adaptable to long-term socioeconomic changes;

Accessible within and between public spaces, through well connected networks that prioritize walking, cycling and public transport

Our downtown in Brighton is a quality place according to this definition (and, I think, according to the experience of everyone who’s ever been here): it’s coherent (our downtown has a coherent vibe, but note that this doesn’t mean all of the buildings look the same, are the same size, or have the same function!); it’s legible, in the sense that you can tell where you are and what these spaces are for; it’s attractive, with no decrepit buildings, clear sight lines, and integration of nature; it preserves historical buildings and park space; it has a combination of residential and various types of commercial spaces, along with public and natural spaces; downtown buildings can easily be converted between commercial and residential, giving the space flexibility of use over the long term; and it’s very walkable!

Note that this is the only neighbourhood in Brighton with these characteristics. Until recently, this was the only place in Brighton with buildings higher than two storeys; if you want to have mixed-use with commercial on the main floor and residential above, you usually want at least three storeys. Subdivisions are generally built for exclusively residential use, so even where commercial uses are allowed in such neighbourhoods, you won’t have someone browsing at a shop run out of a home in a cul-de-sac. There will be no tourists there, either. Those spaces are designed to ensure that they are not on the way to anywhere else, and they’re far enough apart to ensure that nobody is walking through. Parks in suburbs are intended for the use of the people who live in that neighbourhood, each of whom tends to already have private greenspace in their own backyard and so are unlikely to use a generic public park down the street. In terms of the definition of “quality places” above, a suburban street tends to fulfill the need to be “coherent, legible, and attractive,” and occasionally preserves cultural, built, and natural heritage, but can’t hope to achieve any of the other criteria.

And in order to have spaces that do meet those other criteria within a walkable area, or at least without drowning in traffic, you need to have higher density, and that means taller buildings. Without them, we simply can’t have the density needed for the mixed-use spaces in walkable areas. But everywhere a taller building is built, we see new opportunities for more quality places.

Consider Brighton Retirement Living and the low- to mid-rise apartments beside it (note that mid-rise starts at 4 storeys, and this development featured our first 4-storey building!): while I’ve been hearing for YEARS that we need community gardens in Brighton, the gardens there are the first time we’ve had enough uptake on the idea to actually make it work. Gardening isn’t for everyone, but there are enough people living across the street from those gardens to allow for the gardeners among them to maintain a gardening community in that shared space. Those gardens are becoming a quality place, and community networks are forming around them already. Had development there been limited to single-family detached or semi-detached dwellings, as had been the norm at the time that they were proposed, we wouldn’t have those gardens today.

Personally, I find those apartment buildings to be attractive. They are interesting because they are different from what’s around them, but they also aren’t jammed into the middle of a low-density neighbourhood. We should still strive to ensure fittingness, or for development to be “coherent,” but that doesn’t mean that we should oppose all development that doesn’t fit a strict definition of the “character of the neighbourhood.” Indeed, the only way for our neighbourhoods to have character at all is for them to be designed for human use, not just human storage. And that means diversity and scale.

What do you think? What, in your opinion, is the most Brighton-y place in Brighton? What do you love about it? Tell us in the comments, or send me a message, I’d love to hear from you!