Undergraduate students from the University of Regina’s urban planning course were tasked to develop proposals for the renewal of the Scarth Street Mall.

The City has awarded the tender for a consultant to develop a preliminary design of what the renewal of Scarth Street could look like.

While the consultant was working on their preliminary design, students like Noah Richter, a fourth-year student at the U of R, explained his plan.

“I plan to keep the mall pedestrian-only access; I have a big emphasis on a sense of place, public art installments, and creating a space where people want to linger.”

“By looking through Regina’s official community plan and the downtown neighbourhood plan, a lot of the language in those two documents speaks to prioritizing pedestrians, creating a better network, and really creating a sustainable future with less use of the automobile.”

Richter said he believes keeping it pedestrian only would help revitalize the downtown.

“I personally think keeping it pedestrian oriented would be a huge first step in that revitalization; I think that, along with the Victoria square, has huge potential to be that centre block for expanding out and really allowing people to know that our downtown can be revitalized, it just takes prioritization and effort.”

Jocelyn Adema, a four-year student at the U of R, said she is interested in creating some ‘tactical urbanism strategies,’ which are rapid-low cost strategies that are temporary and allow us to have a vision of the space before we have a permanent reconstruction of it.

“Putting in clusters of street furniture into regular intervals of public seating, but also private patios, sites of plants, trees, and shrubs, having a lot of lighting to enhance and create a beautiful welcoming, comforting, but also safe space for people to enjoy,” she said. “I would like to work with local artists to bring art to the space.”

Adema also said she would keep the street closed to vehicles.

“I think with a few strategic design shifts; we can enhance the space and bring more people to the space. I think also having elements that extend into 11th and 12th avenue connect and create cohesion between the downtown spaces, instead of having it an isolated space.”

She said keeping it pedestrian would put a focus on being people first.

“People being out, gathering, that socialization is really important for us as a community, but also for commercial aspects. Having people gather in space brings people to the business, helps us support our local economy and creates a sense of vibrancy to our downtown.”

Vanessa Matthews, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, said she wanted the students to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to the real world.

“I wanted to try to figure out a way that our students could apply some of the ideas, theories, and practices that they were learning in the classroom to a real-world example,” she said. “This gives them the opportunity to kind of take what we are learning in the classroom and to be able to apply some of those ideas in a way for a project that is very much ongoing and is of interest to the public.”

She said she encouraged the students to explore the space and the downtown.

“I think it’s a big part of understanding the past, and one of the requirements was to kind of go into that space and go into it at different times of the day to kind of think about how to animate things differently in the evenings, how to make it more engaging for difference sense of users just to kind of get an understanding of what the possibilities are for that space.”

Coun. Andrew Stevens said that he was excited to hear that students would be looking into the project.

“I think there are really cool ideas. I think what is really neat is they all have different nuances and specifics, but they really want it to be in an active space for people who are walking and biking; there are few here that want to respect that, plus allow for certain circumstances that you could drive down there for feeding into the businesses that depend on foot traffic and people dropping off.”

Stevens also noted that he was excited to see the students engage and read their plans that outline the City’s future.

“I’m quite excited to know that they are actually reading these documents in a meaningful way, far beyond what I normally encounter, and there is a lot of energy here,” he said. “These are young people that obviously care about the community, and they are relating those master plans, which are beats of documents, to real-world livable experiences that make a city better.”

The City has said that details on public consultation for the Scarth Street Mall renewal project will be confirmed soon.

The project is expected to cost about $4.75 million and will consider features like landscaping, lighting, event flexibility, accessibility, pedestrian safety, business needs, and what vehicle access could look like.

Pending the timing and outcome of the consultant’s design and community conversations, construction on Scarth Street could start in 2024, aligning with the 11th Avenue revitalization project.