Winter Cities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 285

categories, one in design changes to increase the sustainability and quality of life
by Winter Cities, the other by providing opportunities for more social activities in
winter.

8﻽4 Winter City Settlement Designs

The Winter City movement has helped to encourage a revival of interest in the
modification of older traditional winter settlement designs to counteract the effect
of winter on cities, while many new planning principles with the same objectives
have been developed. These have either involved the addition of new structures and
plans based on these principles, or have retro-fitted new buildings and designs into
existing urban fabrics. Most of these schemes are still city-specific, although often
based on guidance from national planning agencies. Only in planned economies
such as the former Soviet Union have attempts been made to develop a national
system of planning systems of cities with appropriate adaptations to northern con-
ditions, although it has been argued that the Soviet approach failed to produce the
desired results because of poor building construction methods (Bukin 1988 ). All
these ideas have the goal of making cities more comfortable in winter, to reduce
inconveniences and enhance the opportunities available, in order to create a better
life, in work as well as play, during the cold, dark months.

8.4.1 Settlement Scale

A general trend in the recent planning of cities in winter climates has been to try and
increase the degree of compactness and density of these habitations, which leads to
reductions in heating costs and a benefit from the urban heat island effects. In ad-
dition, higher densities reduce overall travel times between different activity areas,
reducing costs and exposure to the worse conditions of winter. The development of
multi-functional buildings is also encouraged, again to avoid going outdoors when
moving from one function to another. In some small northern towns, large town
centre buildings have been constructed in place of the typical single shops or of-
fice buildings. If oriented correctly, these buildings act as wind-breaks against the
prevailing storm tracks, creating shelter for areas behind.
Perhaps the best example of this trend can be seen in the new town of Fermont
(literally iron mountain) built in the late 1970s near a new iron ore mine in North
East Quebec. This is dominated by a major wind-break, a building known as Mur-
￉cran (wall screen). This large multi-functional structure is 1.3 km long, five and
a half storeys high in the centre and tapering to three and an half on the edges.
The outer edge does contain projections that house many different functions. The
building contains shops, administrative buildings, schools, recreational facilities
and over 300 apartments. The building is orientated to the north-northwest but with
an angled construction, providing a large wind break to the prevailing winds, shel-
tering 300 houses within its lee and partial shelter for a similar amount (Fig. 8.1 ).