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“Although this book includes works from all phases of Kahn’s career, it is neither a “complete works” nor a monographic survey. To maximize the area dedicated to Kahn’s iterative and exploratory drawings means to minimize those photographs and print-ready images that are the conventional means of presenting architecture. The text, too, by focusing on drawing and representation, omit much contextual information that belongs in more general project descriptions. And yet architectural drawings such as those reproduced here work best in the space between what we see and what we know. Those readers who know Kahn’s work well will hopefully recognize in this lack of photos and conventional descriptions an invitation: to dwell in that space between seeing and knowing, and so to participate more intimately with Kahn and his associates in their acts of creation.
- From the Preface
Edited by Michael Merrill, Lars Müller Publishers (2024)
Rare are books that have distilled a subject to its essence, allowing an auteur the ability to curate a reading of a particular idiom, as is the case in this book on architect and educator Louis Kahn. For an architect who passed away in 1971, his legacy continues to inspire architectural students and practitioners alike, and editor Mike Merrill has done a masterful job of providing us with a view of the great architect through his hand drawings, with reproductions of many yellow trace doodles along with formative sketches from his travels.
As noted early in the book, those who know him less (and shame on you!) should have a monograph with the photos of the many works featured here close at hand, but the learned crowd will revel through the details of his work as they appear in a new and wonderful way.
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing offers a compelling exploration of the relationship between drawing and architectural thought in the work of the celebrated architect Louis Kahn. Rather than presenting drawings merely as preparatory sketches for completed buildings, the book argues that drawing was central to Kahn’s creative process and intellectual development.
Through a rich collection of sketches, travel drawings, architectural studies, and project documents, the publication reveals how Kahn used drawing as a means of inquiry, reflection, and discovery. For architects, students, and scholars interested in design methodology, the book provides invaluable insight into one of the twentieth century’s most influential architectural minds.
The book’s central premise is that drawing was not simply a technical tool for Kahn but an essential way of seeing and understanding the world. Throughout his career, Kahn filled notebooks with observations of landscapes, ruins, urban spaces, and architectural details. These drawings were not intended as polished artworks; instead, they functioned as explorations of form, light, proportion, and spatial relationships.
The authors demonstrate that Kahn’s sketches were instrumental in shaping his architectural philosophy and that many of the ideas found in his most celebrated buildings can be traced back to his drawing practice.
The book itself is cloth-bound and hard-covered, and at 512-pages, 12″ x 9.5″ and two inches thick, it provides for the large-format reproduction of his drawings, in which one can pore over all of Kahn’s glorious details.
The book includes hundreds of reproductions of Kahn’s drawings, ranging from quick observational sketches to carefully developed studies. These images allow readers to witness the architect’s thought process directly. Unlike conventional architectural monographs that focus primarily on finished buildings, The Importance of a Drawing emphasizes the creative journey that precedes construction.
The drawings reveal moments of experimentation, uncertainty, and discovery, reminding readers that architecture is fundamentally a process of investigation rather than a straightforward path from concept to completion.
The organization of the book contributes significantly to its effectiveness—rather than presenting drawings chronologically alone, the editors group them thematically, allowing readers to understand recurring concerns in Kahn’s work. Themes such as light, monumentality, geometry, and the relationship between nature and architecture emerge repeatedly throughout the volume.
This approach highlights the consistency of Kahn’s intellectual interests while also demonstrating how his ideas evolved. Readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the continuity between his early sketches and later architectural masterpieces.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the book is its treatment of Kahn’s travel drawings. During his journeys through Europe, Egypt, and other regions, Kahn produced numerous sketches of ancient ruins, historic cities, and monumental structures. These drawings reveal his profound fascination with timeless forms and enduring architectural principles.
Rather than merely documenting what he saw, Kahn interpreted these places through drawing, analyzing their spatial qualities and emotional impact. The book effectively illustrates how these experiences influenced projects such as the Salk Institute, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the National Assembly Building. Readers can clearly trace connections between the architect’s observations of historical architecture and his own innovative designs.
As we are all currently navigating the undiscovered country of AI, perhaps the book’s most important contribution is its challenge to contemporary assumptions about architectural practice. In an age dominated by machine learning, digital modeling, and computer-generated imagery, Kahn’s drawings serve as a reminder of the value of hand drawing as a mode of thinking. The book argues convincingly that drawing enables a unique form of engagement with space and form that digital tools cannot entirely replace.
Kahn’s sketches demonstrate how the physical act of drawing encourages observation, contemplation, and experimentation. For architecture students accustomed to working primarily on computers, this message is particularly relevant and thought-provoking.
In addition to his drawings, the accompanying essays written by architectural historians, critics, and scholars provide valuable context for understanding Kahn’s work. These texts explore the theoretical and philosophical dimensions of his drawings. Rather than simply describing the images, the essays analyze how drawing functioned within Kahn’s broader design process. They discuss his belief that architecture should express fundamental human values and explore how drawing helped him search for what he called the “beginnings” of a project. These scholarly contributions enrich the visual material and help readers understand why drawing occupied such a central place in Kahn’s practice.
The book also raises broader questions about creativity and design. By examining Kahn’s drawings, readers are encouraged to consider how ideas emerge and evolve. The sketches reveal that innovation often results from sustained observation and reflection rather than sudden inspiration, demonstrating how, in Kahn’s work, a drawing can function as a dialogue between the designer and the world, allowing complex ideas to develop gradually over time.
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing succeeds as it reconfirms for the Kahn cognoscenti the importance of drawing to the architectural act, while for those new to his work, it will illuminate the importance of this essential but often overlooked aspect of architectural practice—revealing drawing not as a secondary activity but as a fundamental mode of thinking.
Through its extensive visual documentation, insightful essays, and thoughtful organization, the book provides a nuanced understanding of how Kahn developed his architectural vision, deepening our appreciation for both his buildings and his creative process.
Overall, Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing offers an outstanding contribution to architectural scholarship and visual culture, reconfirming for those who know his work well that drawing was at the heart of his approach to architecture and offering readers a rare opportunity to engage directly with his creative thinking.
Richly illustrated and intellectually stimulating, the book will appeal to architects, students, historians, and artists alike in the relationship between observation, imagination, and design. More than a study of one architect’s drawings, it is a powerful argument for the enduring importance of drawing as a tool for understanding and shaping the world.
For more information on Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing, go to the Lars Müller website.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
The post Book Review: Louis Kahn – The Importance of a Drawing appeared first on Spacing National.
THIS EPISODE: When Policy Pauses Public OwnershipWe’ve spoken a lot about community land trusts in this series, and it’s been gaining momentum in cities and towns all over Canada. But there are some policy choices that are stalling some land trust projects. Here we bring you two cases from Vancouver, and how these barriers can be removed.
First, we speak to Djaka Blais, executive director of the Hogan’s Alley Society. There is a municipal plan in place to rehabilitate an historically Black community, which was ruined years ago when viaducts were built over top of it for an expressway that was never completed, but the plan can’t move ahead while those unused viaducts still stand:
We want to see municipal, provincial, and federal governments prioritizing moving forward with this plan, which includes the removal of the viaducts, to really be able to deliver on the commitments that were made in this municipal policy, speaking to cultural redress and reconciliation.
And we speak to Andy Bond, executive director of the Downtown East Side Community Land Trust, speaks about his organizations success in acquiring property for affordable housing in this low-income neighbourhood. But the City has also changed zoning in the area that previously mandated 60% non-market housing:
Concerns for us is the possibility of land values being driven up because of this… the time that we’re in right now with market conditions, I don’t think there’s a rush to buy buildings… but, down the road, it could be problematic in terms of raising land value through speculation.
How can policy changes help community land trusts move forward?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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Author: Gregory Dreicer (MIT Press, 2026)
We tend to think of infrastructure as something we build. Concrete, steel, timber—assembled into roads, towers, and bridges that quietly organize our lives. But what if infrastructure is not only physical? What if it is also narrative—constructed, repeated, and reinforced until it becomes indistinguishable from fact?
Gregory Dreicer’s American Bridge: Reinventing Building, Making History begins from this unsettling premise. It is not, despite appearances, a book about bridges. Or rather, it is a book about bridges in the same way that a mirror is about reflection. The object is there, but what matters is what it reveals.
At the centre of Dreicer’s account is the nineteenth-century lattice bridge, patented by Ithiel Town in 1820—a structure composed of small, repeatable parts assembled into a seemingly improbable whole. Histories of engineering have long treated such innovations as steps in a linear progression: wood to iron, craft to industry, simplicity to complexity. But Dreicer refuses this narrative. He asks a more difficult question: not how bridges evolved, but how we came to believe that they did.
The answer, he argues, lies in what he calls “evolutionism”—a storytelling device that arranges technologies into neat, forward-moving sequences, imbuing them with inevitability and direction. These stories feel scientific, even objective, but they are anything but. They are narratives that prioritize continuity over rupture, nation over network, and progress over ambiguity. In doing so, they obscure the messy, collaborative, and often contradictory processes through which technologies actually emerge.
This is where American Bridge becomes something more than a history of technology. It becomes a critique of how knowledge itself is constructed. Dreicer shows how historians, engineers, and institutions have collectively reinforced these narratives—often unintentionally—by privileging visible artifacts over invisible processes. The bridge, as an object, becomes easier to document than the systems of labour, organization, and exchange that produced it. The result is a historical record that is materially rich but conceptually thin.
The lattice bridge disrupts this record. Its significance lies not in its form, but in its logic. It reimagines building as a process of assembly rather than craft, distributing labour across standardized parts and reducing dependence on specialized skill. In this sense, it anticipates industrialization—not through the factory, but through the construction site. Dreicer goes so far as to suggest that this transformation rivals the Ford Model T in its impact, though it has been largely forgotten in canonical accounts of industrial history.
But if the lattice bridge is so consequential, why has it remained peripheral?
Dreicer’s answer is as provocative as it is convincing, because it does not fit the story we prefer to tell. It is neither heroic nor singular. It does not belong to a single inventor or nation. It resists authorship. And perhaps most importantly, it foregrounds process—something far more difficult to narrate than object.
This critique extends beyond evolutionism to nationalism. The very term “American bridge,” Dreicer notes, is less a technical classification than a narrative construction—one that assigns identity to an artifact in order to stabilize its meaning. Yet the history he reconstructs reveals a far more fluid reality: one of transnational exchanges, itinerant engineers, and shared techniques that defy clear boundaries. “Places don’t invent,” he reminds us. “People do.”
For readers attuned to contemporary debates in planning and urbanism, these arguments will feel uncomfortably familiar. We continue to rely on simplified narratives—of supply and demand, growth and progress, innovation and inevitability—to explain complex systems. These narratives do not merely describe reality; they shape it. They determine what counts as evidence, what remains invisible, and what forms of intervention are considered possible.
In this sense, American Bridge resonates far beyond its historical scope. It offers a way of thinking about infrastructure not as a fixed system, but as an ongoing negotiation between material and meaning. The bridges we build, Dreicer suggests, are inseparable from the stories we tell about them. Both function most effectively when they remain unseen. Both become visible only when they fail.
If there is a limitation to the book, it lies in its distance from the present. Dreicer stops short of fully connecting his analysis to contemporary conditions, leaving readers to draw their own parallels. Yet this absence may also be its strength. By resisting the temptation to prescribe, the book maintains a critical openness that invites reflection rather than resolution.
That openness is not always easy to navigate. American Bridge is dense… at times demanding and unapologetically theoretical. It asks its reader to question not only what they know, but how they know it. For those expecting a conventional history of engineering, this may prove disorienting. For others, it is precisely the point.
Like the bridges it examines, the book operates as a kind of crossing—between disciplines, between narratives, between ways of seeing. It asks us to reconsider what lies beneath the structures we take for granted, and to recognize that the most consequential infrastructures are often the ones we cannot see.
The question Dreicer ultimately poses is a simple one: can we change the story?
It is a question that extends well beyond bridges—and one that feels increasingly difficult to ignore.
For more information about American Bridge, visit the MIT Press website.
**
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
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THIS EPISODE: What We’ve Learned About EvictionsThe Balanced Supply of Housing research node was formed to imagine real, working solutions to the housing crisis in Canada. But the first step to solving a problem is understanding it.
We’ve covered many issues with this special series, but the issue we keep returning to is security of tenure (or lack thereof). The BSH has completed various studies into evictions since its inception — why they happen, how, who they impact, and the outcomes — and now they’ve brought all their evidence, data, and recommendations together into a free book for anyone to access.
University of British Columbia Professor Alexandra Flynn and BSH Research Manager Alina McKay return to The Overhead to tell us about the evictions book, a digital tool for comparing tenants’ rights from province to province, and breaking the taboo of talking about evictions.
Here’s Alex:
The majority of evictions are happening through no fault of the tenant… And yet it’s true: it does seem extremely taboo. If you’ve been somebody who’s been subject to eviction, it’s like you’ve robbed a bank, you’ve done something wrong, when it’s a failure of policy. And it’s especially acute because there is so much tied to having a good income and being able to be housed it’s like, if you’re not, you have failed.
What do we know about evictions in Canada?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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“To redesign the environment we really have to redesign our whole value system – question the sacred cows – and ask ourselves what we really want, what has priority. For each project in my office we define our goals and set up a priority system. As we work with the client and begin to absorb the pressures to compromise we have a yardstick to measure our changing course. This makes it possible to intelligently evaluate the pressure in terms of our goals and decide whether or not to accept the change and if not, having completely identified the pressure we can at least attempt to reason with it. In practice, we find the system forces a greater depth of involvement between architect and client in the programming and the whole design process ultimately leading to the solving of more aspects of a project than is usually possible.”
- Frank Gehry, from Chapter Nine, ‘Easing the Edges‘
Written by Paul Goldberger, Knopf Publishing (2017)
With Frank Gehry having passed away in December, in memoriam I undertook reading Paul Goldberger’s massive opus on the late architect. Representing some five years of research by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Goldberger must be commended for succinctly capturing both the man and his work in its detail-laced 450+ pages. Providing an inside look at the deal-making behind some of our age’s most famous buildings, and populated with several smaller black and white photos of his personal life, the book’s only shortcoming is its all-too-brief colour insert—providing the requisite images of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. the Disney Concert Hall in his hometown Los Angeles, and one of his last projects, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, along with a picture of himself aboard his sailboat, Foggy.
Many architects may already be familiar with some of his early history, including his childhood in Toronto. Goldberg devotes several early chapters to this period, recounting his father’s struggles to maintain steady employment at the same time his mother was taking him to the Art Gallery of Ontario and to hear the symphony at Massey Hall, opening his eyes to both culture and art.
Along with working as a young boy in his grandparent’s hardware store, Goldberger describes Gehry’s early architectural education, including his introduction to the Los Angeles-based teachers and practitioners who would shape his thinking and provide ongoing mentorship. Most importantly, he describes Gehry’s immersion into the LA art scene and the enduring friendships with artists that would influence his work throughout his career.
Half the book is devoted to his early career, including his time working for a large commercial firm specializing in shopping mall design, where the two senior partners embodied the poles he navigated between throughout his career—one the business-minded dealmaker, the other driven by architectural form-making. If Goldberger has one central task here, it is demonstrating Gehry’s working philosophy—revealing how his buildings were not simply formal flights of fancy, but the result of a rigourous method, one that demanded active participation of the client.
The narrative arc of the book mirrors his professional career, with the pivotal moment being the unveiling of his redesigned Santa Monica home in 1978. Literally breaking the box of the stereotypical suburban home—using cheap materials like chain link and plywood—it ushered in a decade of important milestones, including the Pritzker Prize in 1989, shortly after winning the competition to design the Disney Concert Hall.
The book does not shy away from the challenges Gehry faced over the years, describing both personal and professional setbacks, including the delay of the much coveted LA concert hall through the 1990s, with its complexity to construct becoming one of its main criticisms (with another architect selected as Architect of Record, much to Gehry’s dismay).
Of course, the end of the 1990s brought his crowning achievement in Bilbao (1997), which demonstrated—to the Disney board and the world—that using sophisticated computer software (in his case CATIA) one could translate the architect’s vision into built form for the now unbelievable cost of $100M USD. This breakthrough enabled the concert hall project to resume—and despite having started before Bilbao—it was completed and opened in 2004 to great civic and critical fanfare. Goldberger adeptly captures all the wheeling and dealings between the architect, various clients, and civic authorities for both projects—storytelling that alone justifies the book’s price of admission.
Among many stories and anecdotes, a few stood out, particularly from Gehry’s early foray into architecture in schools in the late sixties, where he and his sister Doreen—herself a teacher and sociologist—worked for one term with a fifth grade class to design a new city. As Goldberger notes, a short film documenting the event may still exist and perhaps could now see the light of day. Another nugget the book daylights is the moment when Gehry shelved his Easy Edges cardboard furniture line—despite its potential to be a huge commercial success—for fear of becoming known as a furniture designer rather than an architect.
Having written about architecture for decades—and counting among his contemporaries such greats as Herbert Muschamp and the late, great Ada Louise Huxtable—Goldberger reflects in the afterword on the challenges of becoming a biographer for this book, a fundamentally different beast from writing about buildings alone. In addition to the several biographers he acknowledges as inspiration for Building Art, he surely owes a debt to Brendan Gill’s Many Masks (1987) about the other Frank, and whose author had a personal friendship with his subject. With Goldberg and Gehry, one senses a comparable camaraderie: a relationship formed before Gehry became a household name, lending the narrative a light, conversational tone, reminiscent of the easy banter Gehry shared with his friend Sydney Pollack in the 2006 film Sketches of Frank Gehry.
Published in 2017, the book’s final hundred pages candidly discuss Gehry’s status as a brand, questioning whether his firm could survive without him, with discussion of a partner’s attempt to buy him out—an offer Gehry declined. Several Gehry Partners projects were surely still underway at the time of his passing in December—and the office will most certainly carry on without him to finish those projects—including the high profile Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.
With Building Art closing out at the occasion of the architect’s 85th birthday—a lavish 400-person affair in the great hall of the Bilbao Guggenheim—one can imagine given his good health at that time he would’ve continued to work right up to his final days. For as the book makes clear, the work was all-encompassing and central to his life—alongside his wife Berta, his friends, and his family.
For Gehry, professional success mattered deeply but so too did living well—and in both respects, he seems to have succeeded.
For more information on Building Art, go to the publisher’s website.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
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THIS EPISODE: Rent Control and Rent HikesIn Ontario, we have rent control on buildings occupied before November 15, 2018. That means the landlords for these buildings can only raise rents for current tenants once a year at a percentage or “guideline” set by the Province. If they want to raise the rent higher, they have to apply for an Above Guideline Increase (AGI), and their stated reasons have to meet certain criteria such as paying for expensive improvements to the building or hiring security.
But researchers have been studying these increases to how and where they’re applied, who is affected, if they’re being used appropriately.
Two of the researchers studying AGIs are University of Toronto Scarborough Professor Julie Mah and University of Waterloo Associate Professor Martine August. They worry these above guideline increases are being used by landlords as an extra revenue tool or even a means to push tenants out. Here’s Martine:
For tenants in these buildings, the landlords are doing things like trying to push people out with more eviction filings, effectively maybe pushing them out through economic eviction as prices are getting higher, making life very unpleasant through very disruptive renovations, while at the same time they’re own individual units are going left and neglected, and then also achieving higher rents through vacancy when people do leave. So it’s kind of lots of different things going on, lots of strategies being used, and lots of loopholes to rent control being exploited in ways that harm tenants and benefit landlords.
To find out how these AGIs affect tenants, we spoke to Douglas Kwan, director of advocacy and legal services at Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. He questions whether AGIs are even necessary in many cases, when the landlords make more than enough from current rents:
It’s really a scheme that is open to abuse because there’s no measure in terms of forcing landlords to justify that type of passing down of the cost is necessary. There’s no analysis in terms of what’s the overall income that they’re generating, rate of return of investment on these buildings to justify passing it down to tenants. And so that’s why tenants are angry. Because they know and see that landlords are earning quite a significant amount of income from their buildings. Why can’t they use that income to pay for the necessary repairs that they’re responsible for?
Are rules around rent increases being exploited for profit?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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Author: Reinier de Graaf (Verso, 2026)
When Reinier de Graaf published Four Walls and a Roof in 2017, it stood out for its rare willingness to expose architecture’s contradictions from within the profession itself. Architecture appeared there as a strange, conflicted discipline: simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, technically modest yet culturally overburdened, deeply implicated in global systems it neither controlled nor fully understood. The book did not propose solutions so much as illuminate fault lines—an act of exposure that felt both necessary and, at the time, sufficient.
Five years later, de Graaf’s architect, verb—with its chapter on Vancouver, republished with permission in Spacing Vancouver—demonstrated how easily architecture’s language of care, livability, and design excellence could be mobilized to legitimize deeper structural forces. In Vancouver, livability emerged less as a social achievement than as a brand: a symbolic asset deployed to reconcile inequality, speculation, and environmental stress with a reassuring image of urban success. Architecture did not drive these dynamics, but it helped render them palatable.
Architecture Against Architecture marks a decisive shift from those earlier modes of critique. In the book’s Preface, de Graaf offers a revealing self-assessment of his previous work. Four Walls and a Roof, he writes, dismantled myths cultivated by architects themselves, while architect, verb. took aim at myths cultivated about architects. Both were provocations rather than prescriptions. Writing, he insists, “isn’t necessarily propositional; in fact, the best writing isn’t.”
And yet, the Preface closes with an unmistakable escalation. “No debunking of myths this time,” de Graaf declares. This book, he writes, confronts “uncomfortable realities” that, if left unaddressed, will inevitably get the better of the profession. It is, explicitly, “a manifesto for the future of architecture.”
That tension—between a long-standing refusal of solutions and the adoption of manifesto form—animates the entire book.
Structured as a two-part manifesto, Architecture Against Architecture addresses, first, the organization of architectural practice itself, and second, the discipline’s relationship to the wider world. Part I, “Architects,” is an unflinching examination of how architecture is produced: the persistence of figureheads and founders, the feudal logic of authorship, the concentration of symbolic capital in individual names, and the widening gulf between those who design and those who own the means of production.
De Graaf’s discussion of celebrity architects, labour exploitation, and unionization is not framed as moral failure but as structural inevitability within a profession that continues to mistake reverence for relevance.
The now-familiar scandals surrounding high-profile figures are treated not as aberrations but as symptoms. A discipline that insists on branding collective labour as individual genius, de Graaf suggests, should not be surprised when power concentrates, accountability dissolves, and abuse follows. The call to “end the focus on figureheads” is less a cultural critique than a survival strategy.
Part II, “Architecture,” widens the lens. Here, de Graaf argues that architecture’s traditional preoccupations—form, authorship, permanence, even beauty—have become increasingly detached from the realities that now define the built environment: climate breakdown, political instability, inequality, and technological acceleration. The provocation to “stop building” is not a literal injunction but a challenge to architecture’s default assumption that construction itself constitutes social contribution. What the world requires, de Graaf insists, is not more architecture, but fewer illusions about what architecture can meaningfully deliver.
Across both sections runs a consistent claim: architecture depends on the world far more than the world depends on architecture. The discipline’s failure lies not in its marginality, but in its refusal to accept it.
Taken on its own terms, Architecture Against Architecture is at its strongest when it abandons nostalgia for professional authority altogether. De Graaf is unsparing about architecture’s impotence in the face of climate change, its complicity in housing speculation, and its habit of mistaking symbolic gestures for political effect. The book’s clarity derives from its refusal to console: there is no return to ethical purity, no redesigned toolkit that will restore architecture’s moral standing.
At the same time, the manifesto form introduces an interesting, unresolved tension. Historically, manifestos announce collective direction, shared purpose, and future action. De Graaf’s manifesto does something stranger—and arguably more real. It names the end of architecture’s self-mythologizing, but it remains deliberately ambiguous about what follows.
Is “architecture against architecture” a strategy for transformation, or a call for withdrawal? Does the future of architecture lie in institutional reform, in diminished ambition, or in ceding ground altogether to other forms of expertise and governance?
As mentioned, de Graaf has already disavowed the expectation that critique must culminate in solutions. The absence of a program is not an oversight but a position. By invoking the manifesto, the book invites a question it cannot entirely evade: whether refusal alone can constitute action, or whether it merely sharpens the terms of an impasse.
Important food for thought.
The significance of Architecture Against Architecture extends beyond the discipline it addresses. The book reads as an anatomy of professional authority under late modern conditions, tracing how expertise persists even as its capacity to shape outcomes diminishes. In this sense, architecture appears less as an exception than as an early warning. Other fields—planning, academia, policy, even governance itself—may recognize similar patterns: symbolic influence without control, procedural power without democratic legitimacy, and a growing reliance on image to compensate for structural inertia.
De Graaf’s intervention matters because it refuses to defend the profession against these conditions. Instead, it asks whether architecture’s continued insistence on relevance may be the problem itself.
To be clear, Architecture Against Architecture is not a hopeful book…it is an unusually lucid one. Its ambition lies not in charting a new future, but in insisting that the old one is no longer tenable. Whether the profession can endure the level of introspection the book demands remains an open question. What de Graaf makes clear is that the time for debunking myths has passed. What remains is the harder task of deciding what, if anything, architecture is willing to give up to persist at all.
That this question is posed from within one of the world’s most influential architectural practices only sharpens its force. The manifesto does not arrive from the margins. It comes from the center—and it is addressed, uncomfortably, to everyone still standing there. As such, Architecture Against Architecture stands as a must-read for architects willing to confront not just their image, but the costs of continuing to defend it.
To learn more about Architecture Against Architecture, visit the Verso website.
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
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The much-anticipated final volume in the critically acclaimed series, New York 2020 explores the planning and politics of building the city in the first decades of the 21st century. More than 2,000 buildings are described and illustrated, giving details of their planning and design, and the critical reception. Among the milestones featured are the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, the creation of the High Line and Hudson Yards, the jagged line of Supertalls on the skyline, and the transformation of derelict waterfront and parkland.
- From the press release
Authors: Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, & Jacob Tilove (Monacelli Press, 2025)
At the end of 2025, architecture lost two juggernauts: Frank Gehry and Robert A.M. Stern. To say we lost two titans is a vast understatement, as collectively the two architects represented in many ways our architecture culture for the last several decades. One, the true formalist and the other, the historicist, their influence was felt in schools and the public realm, in boardrooms and on the city streets, by both seasoned professionals and the laity public alike.
But as yin to the other’s yang, while Gehry was a true design practitioner realizing such projects as the Guggenheim in Bilbao and LA Disney Concert Hall, Stern ran a successful practice and was Dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1998 to 2016. During this time, his academic acumen included documenting the architectural history of New York City, and before his passing this past November, released this 10-pound, 3-inch thick tome of NYC’s five boroughs, containing 2,000 illustrations and accompanied by essays on current events that occurred between 2000 and 2020.
This, of course, means the book begins with 9/11 and closes with Covid 19, which understandably provides a staggering amount of subtext for the buildings that were designed and built at this time. After a 100 page introduction, which concludes with the effects of Covid on the nine million inhabitants of the city that never sleeps, the book’s contents include a chapter on each of the smaller boroughs—Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island—with Manhattan divided into six chapters, including one devoted entirely to the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre. One imagines that the single-page Afterword on page 1,295 is perhaps Stern’s singular voice, a closing comment on the city he loved very much, as attested to by the six volumes he has produced on it over the decades, including New York 1880, 1900, 1930, 1960, and 2000.
And as the book points out, a lot has happened in the past twenty years…
In the first chapter, the editors recount the September 11 event itself, followed by the immediate aftermath to rebuild and the visions that were pursued, right up to its current form, including the architects and developers that made it happen. There is a section on the memorial for the victims, and the competition process that yielded the two fountains occupying the site now. There is also a section on the architecture of Santiago Calatrava, including the PATH station, great hall, and new St. Nicholas church he has contributed to the site, as well as the new Perelman Performing Arts Centre by REX, the most recent addition to the site. And of course, there is a section on the new WTC tower itself, starting with Daniel Libeskind’s Freedom Tower and proceeding to the final WTC One by David Childs and SOM.
The next chapter – Lower Manhattan – includes some of New York’s most notable recent additions, including Little Island by Heatherwick, a curious private-public park development that is accessible from the newest section of the High Line along the Hudson. SANAA’s New Museum of Art, accompanied by its recent addition by OMA is also here. As is the new Whitney Museum, along with 8 Spruce Street by Frank Gehry, the late architect’s last contribution to the New York skyline, in addition to his IAC building in Chelsea, both featured here.
The next chapter, entitled Midtown, also features some formidable recent additions, including the High Line by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, joined by all the new buildings around it. A section on the massive development at Hudson Yards, home to the Vessel and Shed, is also here as one would expect it to be. This is joined by the new Moniyahan train hall next to Madison Square Gardens, representing a throwback to the days of grand transit halls, and perhaps what the original Penn Station might’ve been like. The chapter closes out with the new Supertall high-rises along the south edge of Central Park, with the three tallest by Rafael Vinoly (432 Park Avenue), SHoP (111 West Fifty-seventh Street), and Smith and Gill (Central Park Tower), topping out at 85, 84, and 98 storeys respectively.
Other highlights in the Midtown chapter include updates on such favourites as MoMA, the New York Public Library, and Lincoln Center, which includes the recent renovation of the NY Philharmonic’s home, David Geffen Hall, by Diamond Schmitt Architects.
The Upper East Side chapter also includes a section on Roosevelt Island, where Louis Kahn’s long ago commissioned design of the south point known as FDR Four Freedoms Park, was finally realized and opened in 2012. The chapters that follow on Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island also feature some wonderful new public spaces for the boroughs, including Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards and Barclays Centre, and Queens’ wonderful Hunter’s Point Park by Weiss/Manfredi, including a new Steven Holl-designed library.
Of the book’s 1,488 pages, over 200 are reference notes, a testament to the immeasurable research Robert Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove undertook for this magnificent tome. One can only hope that with Stern shaking off this mortal coil that its legacy will continue—perhaps New York 2050 when the city has become 100% renewable! If it makes it there, it will make it everywhere, so perhaps its microcosm of New Yorker’s can solve traffic congestion, affordable housing, and climate change all in one false swoop—such would be what Robert Stern would want to see and hear in the next iteration.
And though you may need to buy a new bookshelf to store it in our post-Covid micro-dwellings, it will be, in this architect’s opinion, worth the real estate. Stern and his cohort here have provided what could be one of the last great architectural surveys of its kind, as it will remain to be seen if the next generation prefers to have this kind of information made available in analog paper form or as a digital archive, spoon-fed by AI algorithms. Both Robert Stern and Frank Gehry departed at what is shaping up to be a most interesting time, certainly as along with AI we take the next step into our brave new world, ChatGPT and all.
It is for precisely this reason that we need guidebooks like New York 2020, reminding us that as there are surely nine million stories in the naked city, the way we share and inhabit our communities will always say the most about just how civilized a society we are.
For more information on New York 2020, visit the Phaidon website.
**
Sean Ruthen is a Metro-Vancouver based architect.
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THIS EPISODE: Community Land Trusts Gaining GroundA good news story in recent years is the amount of progress Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have made in communities across the country.
New CLTs are being established, and existing ones are winning by-in from various levels of government, as well as buying up land to preserve as affordable housing in perpetuity, sheltering units from the runaway, unaffordable housing market.
Often, CLTs preserve often overlooked and stigmatized housing such as rooming houses and single room occupancy hotels.
Joshua Barndt is executive director of the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust (PNLT) in Toronto, one of the first CLTs to rekindle this model in Canada. First, the PNLT was able to acquire property for affordable housing, then the City of Toronto created the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition program (MURA) to help create CLTs across Toronto. We asked Joshua what is needed to scale up, and out, and replicate for other communities:
We have a well-regarded, working program in Toronto, and the best ways for the province or the federal government to support it would be to provide funding to the City, so the City can expand and continue to implement the program… Since the City created the MURA program, other cities across Canada have begun to explore creating similar programs.
Norm Leech is the president of the Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust. They’re just begging their mission in Vancouver’s famously impoverished downtown. Norm tells us how this CLT uses a decolonized governance structure, co-led by Indigenous peoples, and with tenant-led programming:
If we look at the flaws of so-called ‘democratic systems,’ who actually ends up governing… it sure seems to be a pretty small interest group… our governance model was really more balanced. It was not overrepresented by that same small interest group… So we’re trying to consciously see if we can restore the position of authority and respect and power to grandmothers. Because, our communities, that was our greatest source of wisdom and care and compassion.
How can we help communities secure affordable housing for their neighbours?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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THIS EPISODE: Decommodifying HousingOn previous episodes of this series, we’ve talked about the impact of an over-financialized housing market. It adds to the affordability crisis, and leads to eviction and displacement.
In this episode, we ask two experts if it’s possible to decommodify housing. To build housing that isn’t simply a product to be bought, sold, and traded.
David Wachsmuth is an associate professor in the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, and he describes a sort of catch-22 in the the current housing market:
It’s actually quite problematic to on the one hand say, very appropriately, we need to protect tenant rights and prioritize letting tenants stay in apartments, but then also say we really hope that the private market is going to build housing to meet those demands. You’re making it impossible for the private market to do that, because you’re not letting them make money. But you’re not supplying the alternative which is non-market housing that can fill that need. So we’re left with the kind of worst of both worlds.
Leila Ghaffari is an assistant professor of geography, planning, and environment at Concordia University, who says part of the barrier to decommodifying housing is it doesn’t actually benefit the politicians who say they want to create more affordability:
They don’t really want to decommodify housing… because our economy is so dependant on real estate right now, the real decommodification of housing is not in the interest of our governments at the moment. Not even at the municipal level: they are so dependant on property tax money. So it’s something we say, but the actions don’t show that we really understand the crisis we are living in. And this crisis today, the vulnerable population has been living through it for years and years. It’s just that now it’s more visible because the middle class is also feeling it.
Is it truly possible to decommodify housing when it’s become one of the biggest industries in the country?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre.
CET ÉPISODE: Découvrez comment Montréal repousse les limites de l’innovation urbaine. Grâce aux témoignages de Maxime Thibault Vézina, Chef de division au Laboratoire d’innovation urbaine à la Ville de Montréal, et de Raphaël Guyard, conseiller sénior à la Maison de l’Innovation Sociale, explorez comment la technologie, des démarches participatives pour adapter la réglementation, et la collaboration entre acteurs publics, privés et citoyens s’unissent pour façonner une ville plus inclusive, durable et tournée vers l’avenir.
Spacing Radio · Future Fix: l’innovation au service des citoyensThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
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THIS EPISODE: Why Toronto is a Role Model for Urban EcologyThe City of Toronto has been named a “role model city” by the United Nations Environment Program for Supporting Urban Ecosystems. It’s part of an initiative the UN calls “Generation Restoration,” part of their Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
To find out why Toronto has been named a role model, and what that city can teach others across the world about fostering and protecting their urban ecosystems, we speak to Kim Statham, director of Toronto Urban Forestry, and Wendy Strickland, project manager for the Toronto Ravine Strategy.
It may seem counterintuitive, but cities need to lead the charge on protecting ecosystems. As Strickland says:
Cities are seen as the culprits in biodiversity loss, but we can be, and should be, at the forefront. The UN is actually recognizing this now: that cities have to play a role. Because they are the main way that people engage with nature (with most people being in urban centres). Many cities like Toronto are biodiversity hot spots.
Listen to the episode to hear how cities can play a role in ecosystem restoration.
The Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
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A city’s arts form an ecosystem. It’s easy to focus on the big features – the trees, as it were – but the true health of the system lies in the understory, in the buzz of life at the ground level, in the shoots springing up and creatures hustling in the earth that supports the larger structures. A thriving ecosystem is continually growing, evolving, renewing at the base.
That base can be easy to overlook, but if its environment becomes inhospitable and it starts to decline, the system will lose its vitality, even if the presence of the large trees above continues on for a time. Toronto’s art ecosystem has been buffeted by some significant stresses in the past few years, and while there’s been plenty of attention to the challenges experienced by the larger, more visible parts, in this issue (#68) we dig into what is happening in that essential understory.
The big, splashy, relatively well-funded institutions that tend to dominate attention in Toronto – TIFF, Luminato, Nuit Blanche, the Toronto International Festival of Authors, Mirvish productions, the AGO and ROM, the opera, symphony, and ballet – are mostly about bringing outside arts to Toronto. It’s a valuable and important role, but a truly creative city needs to generate its own art as well.
And Toronto does so. Our city has a long and proud history of locally-grown creativity in many areas – visual arts, music, live performance (theatre, comedy, dance), movies and TV, and more. It’s largely a grassroots ecosystem, often growing in cracks and margins, always a bit fragile but at the same time adaptive and resilient.
In recent years, that ecosystem has been buffeted by even more shocks than usual. The pandemic that prevented audiences from gathering in person threatened its sense of community – both between artists themselves and between artists and audiences. While that restriction is thankfully past, the lingering effects continue to be felt, a kind of long Covid of the arts leaving many suffering even after the acute crisis has passed.
Meanwhile, the rapid rise of rents in the past decade and, along with it, the filling in and conversion of the kind of neglected spaces that provide venues for artistic creation have made it increasingly difficult for artists to find places to live, to create, and to show their work.
Yet Toronto’s artists are finding ways to persist, adapt, and even flourish. We explore how local artists are finding ways to overcome these challenges to create and show their work, and continue to generate that sense of community. But artists also need support – from audiences, exhibitors, venues – and we look at that too. At the grassroots level, our writers look at venues for film and performance, and the potential of land trusts to provide affordable spaces for artists. And at a high level, we talk to Mayor Olivia Chow about how the city can help support the arts.
Beyond the typical venues, in a healthy the city the arts are everywhere, and that’s true of this issue as well. This fall, the Bentway staged a remarkable happening, an extended line of dominoes that fell across 2.5 kilometres of the city, captured in in our front section by photographer Steven Evans. Elsewhere in the front section, Trent Weston evokes the vibrant annual Día de los Muertos celebration in Wychwood Barns, while Tatum Dooley shares her enthusiasm for Katharine Harvey’s gorgeous floral mosaic that brings life to Chester subway station.
Other pieces in our front section also capture the constant evolution of the city. Ian Darragh profiles Stephen Velasco’s 3D maps of upcoming developments. Sanaphay Rattanavong looks at the disturbing evolution of cars into vehicular megafauna. Emilie Adin casts an eye on the changes of fashion – even the extinction – of urbanist terms. Emily Wiens analyzes how street trees fit into our urban environment. Meanwhile, Colin Ellard takes the question in the other direction, asking how our cities fit with the way we humans have evolved.
Cities, like a forest, give a first impression of solidity and permanence – the buildings and streets concrete and imposing. But, like a forest, in fact they are full of movement, activity, and change. The arts are an essential part of that vibrancy, not only bringing life to the city, but contributing to that process of evolution and adaptation. Sometimes, like the dominoes, their contribution is ephemeral, happening once and then gone, but that flash remains in the memories of those who experienced it, and opens possibilities for the next event. Other times, the contribution is longer-term, like Chester station’s flowers, bringing the kind of colour, variety, and detail to the overwhelming city that Ellard says is vital to making it human. It’s a reminder that arts aren’t a frill, but essential to city life.
This issue is available now at the Spacing Store at 401 Richmond St. W., and soon at fine book and magazine stores, as well as arriving soon in subscribers’ mailboxes. Note that subscriber deliveries may be delayed if there is a postal strike.
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THIS EPISODE: Preserving CommunityWe’re pleased to bring you another season of The Overhead, and we begin by checking back on a topic we’ve been tracking from the start: community land trusts.
This time, we’re focusing specifically on the “community” aspect of land trusts. We’ve spoken about the benefits of removing certain land from the market, preserving it as affordable housing in perpetuity. But how do land trusts help longstanding cultural communities so they can continue to call their neigbourhoods home?
We see different communities turning to land trust model as a way to avoid displacement, or reassert cultural ownership over land they’ve traditionally called home: in the traditionally Black neighbourhoods of Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver and Africville in Halifax, or in Toronto’s Chinatown.
To answer this, we spoke to Nat Pace, network director of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, and Chiyi Tam, managing director of the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust. As Tam puts it, when we talk about the heritage of a place, we spend a lot of time speaking about the buildings or the character. We lose sight of what really makes a place:
Heritage is the people, it’s not the buildings. And affordability is a core function to do heritage preservation work, in and amongst all of our communities — whether that’s dragon dancing or whether that’s the literal existence of Africville.
How can ownership over land help preserve our diverse communities?
Listen here for The Overhead:
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I first moved into my current home around this time of year, in early August. I’d moved from downtown to a greener, more residential area, and when we sat outside on our first evening in the new place, we were astonished by the loud chorus of the cicadas, something I hadn’t really experienced living near the centre of the city. That sound now always brings back happy memories of a new home.
The sound of cicadas isn’t unpleasant – in fact, it’s rather hypnotic – but however pleasant, it’s certainly more noise than music. And noises can be good or bad – depending not just on some absolute characteristic, but on our taste, our associations, and even on the circumstances and time of day. In August, the evening sound of cicadas blends in with any number of other noises in the city – traffic, airplanes and helicopters, air conditioners and heat pumps, construction both public and private, children playing, birds chirping and animals chittering, conversations and music on patios, balconies, porches, and decks, and so on.
Sound is both inevitable and necessary in the city – we live close together, and we need to build and maintain buildings and infrastructure, to socialize, to get around. But at a certain point sound can also become disturbing, interfering with concentration, work, leisure, and sleep, all also necessary for living.
Sound is also inevitably public. In open spaces, noises travel easily, invisibly and inescapably pervading our experience when we go outside. So noise fits right into Spacing’s mandate to explore Toronto’s public realm. And the theme coincides with the City of Toronto updating its noise bylaws this year.
In this issue (number 67), we look a both the good and the bad of public sound. We hear from people seeking to reduce noise, and people seeking to create opportunities to make music. We look at the rules for managing noise, and how sound can bring joy or be misused. We discover that Toronto has been trying to figure out how to deal with noise ever since it grew into a significant city. In an accompanying online piece, Sarah Hood explains the meanings of a much older non-human sound that pervades the city, that of birds.
Like soundwaves, our theme spills out from our cover section. In the front of the issue, Sean Marshall has mapped the levels of noise complaints across the city. And at the back, Shawn Micallef’s column reveals how the urban observer can explore the city without moving, by following sounds as they drift by.
The rest of the front section moves from the ethereal to the more material. Christine Estima looks at a new technique for supporting urban trees, while Steven Evans documents the clearcutting of trees in the Don Valley for transit construction. Michael McLelland shows how Toronto was introducing elegant Georgian city planning almost two centuries ago, not long after it was first being developed in London and Edinburgh, while Josh Sherman looks at how an elegant ancient game is infiltrating Toronto parks.
Our noise theme completes a set of sorts – four issues exploring the ancient concept of the four elements: earth (“Growth,” issue 58), water (“Rain,” issue 59), fire (“Fire!,” issue 63), and now air. (All are available at the Spacing Store, by the way.) Speaking of back issues, we were very pleased to be nominated for a National Magazine Award for our landmark, super-sized 20th anniversary issue, even if we didn’t win. (It’s also available at the store!). It was a tribute to how a small magazine can still survive and thrive in the current challenging media landscape.
This issue is available at the Spacing Store at 401 Richmond St. W., and at fine book and magazine stores, as well as arriving soon in subscribers’ mailboxes.
Correction: in this issue, in the extract from the book Rhythms of Change – Reflections on the Regent Park Revitalization by Mitchell Cohen, an incorrect description of Mark Guslits was inserted into the first paragraph. The description does not appear in the book, and Guslits was at the time Chief Development Officer for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
Bonus quotation, from Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale:
“Don’t talk to me about the country. The doctor said I was to go there for six weeks last summer. It nearly killed me, I give you my word. The noise of it. All them birds singin’ all the time, and the cocks crowin’ and the cows mooin’. I couldn’t stick it. When you’ve lived all the years I ‘ave in peace and quietness you can’t get used to all that racket goin’ on all the time.”
A few doors away was the Vauxhall Bridge Road and down it trams were clanging, ringing their bells as they went, motor buses were lumbering along, taxis were tooting their horns. If Mrs. Hudson heard it, it was London she heard, and it soothed her as a mother’s crooning soothes a restless child.
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See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
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See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #17: Highrises help fight the effects of climate change! appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Once upon a time, in a land not–so far away, a local Writer stepped out of an elevator and into the lobby of a shopping mall in Vancouver. Frantically running through the labyrinth of cell phone shops and food stalls, they desperately sought out their destination. For some reason unbeknownst to the Writer, the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky from The Nutcracker was playing through the mall’s audio system.
And where were they heading, you might ask, dear Reader?
To play a game of Dungeons and Dragons, of course.
Andrea Robertson, one of the owners of Rain City Games, was at International Village Mall to greet the weary Writer as she finally approached the shoppe. Peter Davoust, the Writer’s dear acquaintance, is also waiting upon her arrival. He was to be the Dungeon Master for the evening’s affair, having written the campaign himself.
There has been much chatter about the legend of this long-standing mall over the years. Is it haunted? Why isn’t it fully leased? The food court slaps, at least. Nevertheless, Robertson is content with their allotted parcel of commercial retail.
“So the first tenants for this space were a bridal salon, which is why the walls are pink”, she recalls.
But with a determined heart, Robertson and her partner transformed the retail space from the fantasy of a dream wedding to the fantasy of… fantasy.
Dungeons and Dragons, first invented in 1974, has a much larger dedicated fanbase than one might imagine. Davoust, a long-time devotee of this beloved tabletop fantasy game and owner of Shrimp Cult Press, has seen mortals from all walks of life participate in this gameplay.
“I think that shows like Community and Stranger Things that have come out have sort of normalized D&D a little bit more”, he says. “I think people are realizing that like okay, first of all, it’s not about summoning Satan. And second, it’s actually quite fun, and anyone can play.”
Who has time to play though?
While there is still magic in living in this city, Vancouver, with all of its cost of living perils, has more than its fair share of citizens who work more than one job to make ends meet. A report from Statistics Canada indicates that as of August 2023, more than one million people in the country were working multiple jobs.
So when one does have time to relax and unwind, one of the great appeals of Dungeons and Dragons finally starts making sense to the Writer: for just a few hours, one can transport themselves into a world completely their own. One without interest rates or development permits. One where the meadows are lush and the fields abundant.
It matters not who the other players in Davoust’s campaign are in the outside world. The Writer did not ask the others what they did for a living—for all they needed to know was that they were in the company of a Charlatan, a Goblin, and a Bard that evening.
In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the Writer, who has since become a Wizard, can fall in love with the village schoolteacher and marry her.
In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the Wizard and the village schoolteacher can afford a single detached home with a white picket fence where mortgages, fixed or variable, don’t exist.
In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, they can all live happily ever after.
Jamie (she/her) is a Freelance Writer with a focus on urbanism, real estate and development, as well as Partner of a marketing agency, Burke By Burke, with her husband Eddie. She is an avid reader, self-proclaimed foodie, urban land economics enthusiast, Barry’s Tea drinker and part-time yogi. She lives, works and plays in Port Moody, BC, on the ancestral and unceded homelands of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), qʼʷa:n̓ ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen), qiqéyt (Qayqayt), and Stó:lō (Sto:lo) Peoples.The post Perspectives in Place: Dungeons and Dragons – A Quest for the White Picket Fence appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
This article is published in conjunction with Spacing‘s new issue (#67), which is themed around noise in the city. Click on the links of bird names to hear the relevant birdsong.
It’s ubiquitous the world over, and yet ignored by most of us. Except on the furthest reaches of the ocean and in the most extreme of biomes, the sound of birdsong underscores and comments upon every daily occurrence.
To many, it seems like a senseless chorus: an aimless and irrelevant twittering. But those who tune out the layered vocalizations of our city birds are missing out on a rich stream of conversation, warnings and even jokes.
On a Toronto summer’s day, it starts around 3AM, and I used to dread it as a teenager: that first decisive chirp in the darkness. On some nights it’s a robin; on others, a cardinal, signalling the coming of dawn, and soon to be joined by another and another, until the full chorus is underway, an orchestral greeting for the first rays of the rising sun.
As the day brightens, the earliest risers are joined by a gentle throaty hooting that might be mistaken for an owl, but it’s what one toddler of my acquaintance has dubbed The Morning Duck. Really, it’s a mourning dove, the long-tailed pigeonlike bird whose call resembles a soft, sad lament.
Next may come rapid-fire hollow bursts of tapping from woodpeckers mining the local tree trunks for insects. We have three varieties in the Toronto area. The downy woodpecker is a black-and-white fluffball who, if male, will feature a smudge of red on the back of his head. The hairy woodpecker is taller, slimmer and more robust, also with a red streak. If you spot a pileated woodpecker, you’re lucky; they’re far less common. Pileated woodpeckers are quite big, and both the males and females are crowned with an impressive bright crimson crest.
Woodpeckers aren’t merely interesting to watch; they also deliver important news, because if they favour a certain tree, they’re letting us know it’s got lots of bugs under the bark, and we should be warned that it may be in poor health.
One of my favourite sounds is the chirring call of the red-winged blackbird in summer; to me it signals the long warm days of July and August. But beware if you hear them while canoeing or strolling around marshy areas, even in local parks, because they nest among the waterside reeds, and they will fiercely dive-bomb you if they think you’re too close to their young.
These migratory birds nest in late spring and early summer – which is why I was puzzled to hear one in midwinter a few years ago. I looked around and spotted not a blackbird but a glossy iridescent grackle – a prolific imitator – playing tricks on listeners.
Blue jays are also good at impressions, and I often wonder whether they learned one of their most characteristic cries from the pulley-fed laundry lines that were once such a common backyard feature. Their high throaty caw sounds exactly like a squeaky wheel (after 0:52) when the line is tugged to advance the clothes.
Blue jays also imitate hawks very well, either to warn other birds that danger is hovering in the vicinity or to fool them. But the best notice of a raptor’s presence is the sudden silence of the smaller birds. If you notice that no birds are calling, look around, and you may well spot a hawk or an eagle circling above you; if not, look out for storm clouds, because they’ll likewise go silent when a pressure change gives warning of bad weather on the way.
Another warning cry is the piercing whistle of the kildeer. These ring-neck waders lay their eggs on sandy shores – or else in a scattering of gravel and glass pebbles on a cracked strip of pavement on any seldom-used parking lot or deserted building foundation. You can walk right up to the nest, but if you do, the guardian adult will leap between you and the babies, dragging one wing as if injured, to lure you away.
As evening descends, robins respond with their liquid chirping to the change in the light – which they also do simply if clouds darken the sky. As the sun lowers, starlings too gather together, and a crowded flock may fill a single bush with their “chattering”: a chorus or many whistlings and chucklings. The starlings, recognizable by their pale toothpick beaks, are the only birds that flock in a mesmerizing cloud, wheeling and swirling, as the sun goes down. This “murmuration” is an unforgettable sight, one that sometimes fills the air above Yonge-Dundas Square.
And, rarely, you will hear a singular sound, one that feels like it is meant for you alone. For instance, some years back, my stepdaughter was anxious about a pressing college assignment that required her to produce a newsworthy photo essay. As the deadline approached, she called me in a panic: a critical photo shoot had disappeared from her camera, and she had only a few hours left to capture some shots of birds – with sunset rapidly descending on a short winter’s afternoon.
I joined her at a nearby park, where we hoped for some sort of lucky sighting, in particular an owl. I had only once seen an owl in Toronto (that’s another story), but as my foot touched the park pathway, I waved one hand like a magic wand and said, more in hope than expectation, “I give you an owl!”
Apart from a few distant seagulls, there were no birds in that park, and we were losing the light. Then, in some scrappy undergrowth near a hidden pond, I heard a little low grunt, or a soft squawk. I paused, and heard it again. Quietly, carefully, I approached the sound, which turned out to be the voice of a splendid long-eared owl lit by the last rays of sunlight, who posed majestically for about half an hour, until it was too dark to see.
Was that owl calling me? It sure felt like it. Regardless, the birds are speaking to us all the time, and if we listen, they’ll introduce us to an entirely new dimension of urban life.
The post Listen Up! What birdsong tells us about everyday life appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
An Etobicoke native plant gardener is ordered to cut his “turfgrass and weeds” (he actually has neither) to 20 cm (8 inches). An Annex ecologist is ordered to cut down his oak saplings. A Scarborough native plant gardener is ordered to cut down her rain garden. A Little Italy pollinator gardener is ordered to cut down her “weeds.” A Swansea native plant gardener is ordered to cut down all of her habitat garden.
These are just a few recent examples of bylaw enforcement actions in Toronto targeting those who are tending ecologically beneficial landscapes that look different from conventional lawns and gardens.
Toronto is by no means unique in this. Across Canada, vaguely worded and arbitrarily enforced property standards bylaws place barriers that discourage and/or prohibit residents from creating habitat gardens in support of biodiversity.
The benefits of habitat gardens are clear. They offer food, shelter, and nesting sites for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife; improve air and water quality; reduce erosion and improve soil quality; enhance urban resilience; manage stormwater and reduce flooding; sequester carbon; enhance human health and well-being; and reduce landscape maintenance costs.
These ecologically positive features of habitat gardens align with the progressive policies that many municipalities have enacted with respect to climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet many of these same municipalities also have property standards bylaws (also known as “grass and weeds” bylaws) that work against environmental goals and aspirations.
Habitat gardens demonstrate positive local responses to global challenges. But as long as outdated, anti-ecological bylaws remain in municipal codes, habitat gardens will continue to be mowed down or face threats of removal. Or, at the least, habitat gardeners will continue to face onerous, and uncertain, processes that force them to defend their planting.
In response, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, Canadian Wildlife Federation, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecological Design Lab at TMU, and I have launched a national campaign to advocate for the reform of property standards bylaws and enforcement policies and practices in support of biodiversity and community well-being. We have written an open letter to municipalities (PDF) and sent it to municipal staff, mayors, and councillors across Canada. We are encouraging groups and individuals to download the letter and send it to their mayor and councillor(s), as well. As part of this campaign, the David Suzuki Foundation has launched an easy-to-use Action Alert that individuals can use to send an automated letter to their municipal representatives in support of bylaw reform.
Specifically, we’re calling on municipalities to:
- Reform municipal bylaws: Revise existing property standard bylaws that discourage or prohibit habitat gardens, ensuring that new versions support biodiversity and ecological health.
- Initiate bylaw enforcement training: Bylaw enforcement policies and procedures must include training for bylaw enforcement officers on native and prohibited plant identification, essential and permitted habitat features, community relations, and the legal rights of gardeners to express their environmental ethics.
- Lead by example: Insist on a high level of ecological gardening awareness and practice among city employees tending to public gardens, green infrastructure, natural areas, and other lands.
- Commit to community outreach and education: Effective outreach programs are crucial for shifting public perceptions and fostering a deeper understanding of sustainable practices. Municipalities should partner with community leaders and committed organizations to deliver habitat garden resources and events, and install and maintain habitat gardens on public land.
As part of this campaign, we’re convening a national conversation, via a webinar, to take place in late autumn, 2024, in which participants, including municipal representatives, can share the challenges, opportunities and successes of bylaw reform. You can register for details about the webinar.
If you’d like more information about the problems associated with current bylaws, why the work of reforming bylaws is crucial, and existing resources available to help in the reform of these bylaws, we’ve prepared a background report (PDF).
We acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of municipalities to date and offer our encouragement and support to further advance essential bylaw reform and enforcement policies and procedures. We look forward to collaborating with and supporting municipalities working towards enhancing biodiversity within their communities. And we look forward to a time when habitat gardens are supported in their crucial work as local solutions to the twin global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Photo by Douglas Counter.
You can listen to Lorraine Johnson talk about the open letter on the most recent episode of Spacing Radio.
Lorraine Johnson is one of the partners in the national campaign for property standards bylaw reform, and an author of numerous books on native plant gardening, including her most recent, A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee, co-authored with Sheila Colla.
The post OP-ED: Free our Front Yards appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #16: Towers Suck (Wage$) appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
We heard a lot about drones at the Paris Olympics, but what about in our own backyard?
In this episode, Spacing‘s John Lorinc tells us about a piece he wrote called Eyes in the Sky, which documents the stealthy creep of the Toronto Police Service’s use of drones to keep tabs on residents.
Next, author and green advocate Lorraine Johnson tells us about an open letter she co-signed urging Canadian municipalities to change their outdated bylaws which prohibit growing habit gardens and other helpful plant species in our lawns and backyards.
Finaly, Ingrid Buday founded No More Noise Toronto out of frustration with the city’s high-volume noise pollution, especially traffic sounds. The group advocates for new bylaws protecting residents’ right to peace and quiet, and gathers its own data to make the case.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.
Spacing Radio · Episode 80: Toronto’s Drone ScandalThe post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 080, Toronto’s Drone Scandal appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
For the past two decades, Spacing contributor Sean Ruthen has written several architectural travelogues on places near and far – here in Canada from Calgary to Charlottetown, and in Europe visiting Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Rome. In this latest in the series, he visits several new and old architecture destinations in London, with stops at Bath and Windsor/Eton along the way.
To visit any city is to visit its history, but in the case of London it is a gross understatement to say its streets are dense with it—applied in equal portions to its buildings and people. To visit the city, along with millions of others over the summer months, you need to mind your step. With a metropolitan population of 8.9 million, it has over twice that visiting annually as tourists, something I can now personally attest to having just spent part of July there, mercifully ahead of schools getting let out for summer vacation.
Trafalgar Square, Covent Gardens, Picadilly Circus, and the South Embankment were jam-packed with tourists and locals alike, a dizzying display of humanity I had never seen before in the city. With only a few days in London to see a carefully curated shortlist of stops—the Sir John Soane museum, the Victoria & Albert museum, and the Serpentine pavilion—everything beyond that was extra sauce.
As it turned out, this bonus material would include a visit to the Sky Garden atop the late Rafael Vinoly’s 35 Fenchurch Street tower—known to Londoners as the walkie-talkie building—along with a stroll by Inigo Jones’ Queen’s House, now Royal Navy Academy, as seen from the Greenwich observatory with Canary Wharf behind. Other highlights included visits to both the Tate Modern and the British Museum.
Moving from bonus to sublime was Evensong at St. George’s chapel in Windsor under the High Gothic tracery, listening to the choir and organ interplay with the architecture. Equally divine was a stay in the home of a former British PM, William Pitt the Younger, whose five-storey rowhouse in Bath was built at the same time as the city’s great Crescent and Circus.
But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was the Sir John Soane museum itself, which even having seen pictures could not prepare me for the visceral sensation of being there, face-to-face with so much history. While several large rooms where he and has family had lived remain, the museum portion of the house is in an exercise in restrained archaeological layering, such that pictures of the central space can simply not do it justice. It is said his students from the Royal Academy would come to study the artifacts and occasionally archive a newly curated piece for him.
Densely packed into a London rowhouse in Holborn, the museum and former home of Sir John Soane is an exquisitely curated collection of over 10,000 objects which he collected and stored in his house, including a great Egyptian sarcophagi which is the museum’s centerpiece. As a professor at the Royal Academy teaching arts and architecture, Soane was also a working architect who was official architect to the Office of the Works. Having designed Whitehall along several other notable structures, Soane designed his rowhouse along with the two adjacent ones, allowing the rent collected on his neighbours to provide for an endowment to leave the museum to.
Compared to other London tourist stops, the Sir John Soane Museum welcomes a modest 100,000 visitors every year according to its website. Modest that is when compared to the British Museum, which sees 6 million visitors a year, along with our next stop—the Victoria and Albert Museum. Housing some 2.2 million works of art, the V&A museum welcomes over 3 million visitors annually.
With so much on offer, from whole wings solely dedicated to silverware and stained-glass (the tapestry section was closed), one had to contend oneself in the space of an afternoon to selectively sample from the 12.5-acre site. Much like the Louvre and British Museum, its contents are for the most part displayed chronologically. However, good manners go out the window in the museum’s great central hall—called the Cast Courts—two massive glass barrel-vaulted atria built to display two full-scale plaster recasts of the famous Trajan column in Rome.
Housing ancient classical statuary, renaissance painting, and sculpture, alongside religious altarpieces from both Gothic and Romanesque periods, all are careful reproductions made for study and contemplation. While photos were permitted while I was there, there were also many sketching the art, a living testament to the public amenity that Victoria and Albert had wished it to be. And where else can one go to see three full-scale Michelangelo reproductions all side by side—David, Moses, and the Madonna of Bruges—all being watched over by a reproduction of Raphael’s School of Athens.
Not too far from the V&A is Kensington Gardens, host of the final stop on my architectural bucket list—the Serpentine Gallery. Having visited two previous Serpentines—Frank Gehry in 2008 and Sou Fujimoto in 2013—I must say the 2024 one will go down as the most Spartan ever, as designer Minsuk Cho’s Archipelagic void treads so lightly that it might blow away. A geometric play of triangles and circles in plan, function takes precedence to house the pavilion’s requisite program—a cafe and library, along with a two-storey play structure.
Following our visit to Kensington Gardens, we had the good fortune to see the view of the city from the Sky Gardens at 35 Fenchurch Street, the observation deck of which is open to the public (with pre-booking naturally), along with a restaurant called the Darwin.
The view is breathtaking. A higher vantage point open to the public than the Eye, from the top one can see all of the city’s history—from the Tower of London and bridges along the river, the CBD to the north including the Gherkin & Lloyd’s, St. Paul’s Cathedral to the west, with the Globe theatre, Tate Modern and Shard to the south of the river, and a bit further off to the west the towers at Canary Wharf.
One last stop before leaving London: the addition to the Tate Modern, new since our last visit in 2011. Built close to two residential towers immediately adjacent, despite the background noise we could still appreciate the material and spatial richness that I encounter in all of the Herzog & deMeuron buildings I have had the good fortune to visit (with the Tate Modern several times now).
While there was no major exhibit to see, the main event has always been for me the building itself. With the main gift shop now moved to the new tower’s base, the new gallery space to the south of the original power plant footprint is crossed by a series of pedestrian bridges to the main building, a new experience for the gallery visitor.
With time for one last-minute stop at Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait gallery, we were finally off to Bath, to escape the hectic city for the country, going to perhaps one of the country’s oldest and most famous spa destinations.
Without a doubt, a visit to the Roman baths is mandatory, as it helps one come to terms with the notion that one million litres of hot water a day has been coming up out of the ground at this location since as long as there has been recorded history. The Druids had since time immemorial called the place sacred before the Romans built it up in the first century AD, at which time they erected a twenty-metre-high barrel vault over the main bath.
After the sacking of Bath and the collapse of the barrel vault in the Dark Ages, it was rediscovered again in the 1750s and rebuilt to the extent that it is seen by the general public now. The columns are not from Roman times, however. They are Georgian, named for the king who commissioned the work. This included much of what we think of as now Bath, the layout of its streets with its Abbey, along with the construction of the Crescent and Circus, whose neo-classical architecture is a wonderful reproduction of Palladian Renaissance Italy.
Bath is built on the Thames, but with weirs to manage the water—the city is built in a bowl in the landscape, and one of its most charming moments is a Ponte Vecchio-style bridge over the river, the only bridge with shops on it in all of the UK. It has been recognized on two occasions as a World Heritage Site by the UN as a place on our planet where history has collided with our natural world – the baths – and where in 60 AD the goddess Sulis of the ancient Druids merged with Minerva, goddess of war of the conquering Romans.
Perhaps at times like these, set in divine places of nature, we can for a brief moment forget our differences.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
The post Notes from Britain appeared first on Spacing National.
Unlike his Parks Series, which highlights the inclusiveness of the City’s recreational facilities, Goss’s Toronto Water Works Series documents what was at that time exclusively a man’s world of civil engineering, heavy construction and hard manual labour.
Although most of the 1,190 glass plate negatives Goss produced for the Water Works series have survived despite being abandoned in the attic of Old City Hall after his death, some did sustain damage from being stored in acidic paper envelopes. There are also some gaps in the numbered sequence, possibly due to breakage, but more likely the result of pilfering by the amateur photo collectors who had access to the storage space.
In editing the photos presented below, I have chosen not to attempt a chronological presentation, but rather to create a narrative sequence covering as many different aspects of the series as possible. Following their own interests, future researchers will no doubt make quite different selections from the same series.
A bonus for historians of technology is that in addition to technical photos taken on worksites, the Water Works Series includes numerous sharp photographic copies of plans, diagrams, charts and maps related directly to the construction and operation of Toronto’s potable water system.
Toronto is currently served by four water treatment plants, which span the waterfront from east to west. The oldest of these facilities is located on Toronto Island and dates from 1874. By 1910, with private wells becoming polluted by groundwater contamination, the Island plant was the city’s sole source of safe drinking water and remained so until the R. C. Harris plant opened in 1941. Goss’s Public Works Series deals in detail with upgrades to the Island plant between 1910 and 1917. The drifting sand filtration system he photographed under construction remained in use until 1977.
Upgrades to the intake pipe feeding the Island plant and the treated water conduit linking it to the John Street Pumping Station seem to have given engineers a lot to think about from about 1910 onward. Goss was commissioned to photograph barge-mounted dredges, pile drivers and a concrete batching plant involved in this work.
Toronto Water Works No. 56, June 9, 1911
Intake Pipe Repairs
City of Toronto Archives, f200_s0372_ss0072_it0056Although they are engaged in necessary tasks related to public health, Goss depicts the Water Works construction and maintenance workers as easy-going participants in a team effort. Both his work progress photos and his informal portraits offer us relatable individuals rather than archetypes of heroic or downtrodden labour.
Photos number 3 to 10, of the series below, taken in 1911 and 1914, record maintenance and repair work involving diving crews outfitted in what was called “standard diving dress.” The first image shows a scow equipped with a hand operated air pump that was connect by a hose to the diving suit. In the next image, almost obscured by clouds of steam and coal smoke, a diver is seen emerging from the water.
Photos 5 to 7 record what seems to be a pause in the operation of moving sections of the Island plant’s intake pipe into or out of the lake. There follow three portraits of the diving crew and supervisors posing with a sculptural arrangement of debris removed from the intake.
Other photos in the series document the enlargement of the system’s two main pumping stations, the John Street station and the High Level Pumping Station on Poplar Plains Road. Goss’s photos of these functional buildings show the elegant brick and steel vernacular forms common to much industrial architecture of the period.
The duties of the Water Works department included responding to breaks in the city’s brittle cast iron watermains. Emergency crews were dispatched from the St. Andrew’s Yard at Richmond and Brant Streets. A photo from May, 1915 shows the service truck fleet, and in the background the east facade of the Renaissance Revival St. Andrews Hall and Market. In 1932 this complex was replaced by the surviving Art Deco Waterworks Building.
Along with the John Street Pumping Station, the Toronto Island plant is now integral to the Enbridge Deep Lake Water Cooling System, which supplies cooling energy to 80 downtown buildings. (The John Street station had to be moved to allow the construction of the Sky Dome. None of its original structures survives.)
The earliest machine hall of the High Level Pumping Station remains in use. This station currently houses the central control for the city’s water distribution system. It is also visitable as a museum of steam powered water pumping technology.
The recent premature failure of a critical watermain in Calgary is a reminder of how important maintaining a reliable water supply is to urban growth. The history of Toronto’s water system since 1874 has been one of carefully planned upgrades to meet constantly increasing demand. The artistic record Arthur Goss created of the growing system between 1910 and 1939 is a unique document whose subject remains relevant today.
See earlier articles in this series:
- The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 1: : Career and technique
- The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 2: The housing series, 1936-1940
- The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 3: Parks and Recreation, 1913-1940
CLICK ON IMAGES TO LAUNCH GALLERYThe post The urban photography of Arthur Goss, part 4: Toronto Water Works, 1910-1939 appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Ok, so we Lower Mainlanders are well positioned to land world capital in the form of new addresses that will continue to pay their property taxes (whether folks live in the units or not) for decades to come. An expanded tax base is the gift that keeps on giving. Good for us, maybe.
The so-called best practice of TOD (Transit Oriented Development) continues to be referenced as justification for higher densities near transit services. BTW (by the way) TOD is the same as TOA (Transit Oriented Areas) which is more recent professional planning lingo (read justification) for dropping towers near stations and exchanges adjacent to established neighbourhoods.
What happens when TOD aspirations collide with service reductions given the recently announced transit budget shortfall ($4.7 billion by 2033)? Shouldn’t such budgetary drama, at a time when we justify blockbusting as “best practice rationale”, also mean NSNT “No Service No Towers”?
Should tower heights be cut in half if transit service is reduced by 50%?
We are heading down a dangerous road (transit arterial) when we pre-justify and don’t deliver the services, especially when daily lives become even less affordable because transit costs will increase thereby impacting the ability to pay for NECTBAH “not even close to being affordable housing”. The province, with its housing mandate that overrides municipal zoning, can’t have it both ways. The same goes for the costs of infrastructure upgrades and expansion.
Remember, more density is supposed to mean stabilized/lower taxes by expanding the base unless your neighbourhood zoning policy creates more lucrative “highest and best use” potential. You will be forced to sell out and relocate (assuming you can find housing elsewhere) when you can no longer afford to pay property taxes that reflect the government’s speculative behavior embodied in each successive planning policy overlay.
Let’s (playfully) extrapolate where this is all going by inventing some new “best practice terms” that help pay for the daily services we all currently cherish. By overly relying on the “magic of exploiting density”, local governments might start to excuse themselves from providing the necessary services that have somehow been delivered for decades (thank you Vancouver Parks Board for showing us how to do this before your operational budgets were taken over by previous councils).
Here are some future, intentionally exploitive, “Best Practices”:
- POD: “Pool Oriented Development” which is the practice of introducing towers within 200 meters of an existing swimming pool (including wading pools). Additional tower height will be considered to pay for lifeguards. This new best practice means that areas near Kits Pool, the West End Aquatic Centre, a new pool for Britannia, and the various “dry” wading pools throughout the city would be up-zoned.
- BOD: “Beer Oriented Development” which is the practice of up-zoning neighbourhood pub locations, and then allowing pub sites to transfer their paper density into a BDB (Beverage Density Bank) thereby allowing the pub to remain in operation while the province and city exploit the drinking process towards expansion of the tax base.
- COD: “Coffee Oriented Development”. As with beer, exploiting coffee drinkers through up-zoning.
- VOD: “Viewcone Oriented Development”. As with pubs and coffee houses, if I am a landowner of a recently unlocked tower site within former view cones, I would be allowed to bank any density that potentially encroached, and then sell this density to other development sites for bigger and taller buildings, all in the name of view retention. AKA (also known as) SGD “Shell Game Density”.
- SOD: “Soccer Oriented Development”. This means site-specific up-zoning to generate SACs (Soccer Amenity Contributions) to help pay for the FIFA World Cup, including new sod.
- FOD: “False Creek Oriented Development”. This means up-zoning city-owned lands to generate funds to pay for unrelated costs of operating the city with the intended consequence of forcing established, multi-generational neighbourhoods to relocate or downsize. Another intended consequence of eliminating such a successful laboratory for urban living would be to remove an internationally respected precedent for all neighbourhoods in favour of expanding the tax base by replacing it with towers (Assessment question: Will new towers reduce property taxes for those who lose their views? Answer: Hell no.)
- HOD: “Housing Oriented Development”. This means thoughtful, contextually sensitive, up-zoning without land assembly towards reducing project costs, and eliminating speculation, thereby delivering family-oriented units that sell or rent for less than the current definition of “affordable”. Unfortunately, this best practice has been put on HOLD (Housing Oriented Lost Development).
And finally,
- NOD: “Nothing Oriented Development”. This means density for density’s sake with no particular reason for allowing it other than the addiction to CACs (Community Amenity Contributions). NOD assumes the electorate has “nodded off” and will not wake up for future elections. We’ll see.
You can imagine the “best practices dilemma” when such service-oriented interests, disguised as best practice, compete for market share. This is already happening with Translink’s proposed tower at Broadway and Arbutus which begs the profoundly important question for our times: what is more important, transit or beer?
I wonder what my city will look like in a few decades when all I want is a decently affordable cup of coffee, or beer if not too early in the day, after an outdoor swim while enjoying views of our majestic setting, and a place to call home that does not require a car.
Will the hyper-speculative path we are on mean that governments will overly rely on density to pay for traditional service delivery?
Will this make housing costs even worse for our young people appreciating that the best practices noted above rely heavily on land speculation and banking which contributes absolutely nothing to a sharing society?
Be afraid of density exploitation disguised as best practice, especially when such justification does not deliver the housing, daily services, and necessary infrastructure that makes cities thrive.
The post _________ Oriented Development (Please fill in) appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #15: Broadway NIMBY appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
From November 1, 1972 to September 30, 1975, a Black cultural hub known as the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre operated in a building located at 15 Robina Avenue, just north of the St. Clair West/Oakwood intersection. It was a meeting place, music hall, and after school program all in one.
The Harriet Tubman Youth Centre was unique because it was housed within, and financially supported by, the Young Men’s Christian Association’s (YMCA) social program outreach. After a reorganization in 1972, the YMCA’s board formed a special committee to study uses of its Robina building, which had been vacant since 1971. The directors decided that a “St. Clair Black Youth Project” would receive funding, and operate as the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre, in recognition of Tubman’s leadership, perseverance, and strength.
Harriet Tubman (1822 – 1913), who escaped slavery in the U.S., became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. She led other enslaved people to freedom and lived for several years in St. Catharines, Ont., before returning to the U.S. during the Civil War.
Today, the Harriet Tubman Community Organization (HTCO), which is located at Don Mills and Sheppard, keeps that legacy alive through its support of Black youth and young adults via programming that deepens their connection to culture, heritage, and community.
For a three-year period in the early 1970s, that Youth Centre filled a void created when the Home Service Association (HSA), on Bathurst Street near College, shut its doors. From the 1920s to mid-1960s, the HSA had, as its objective, the promotion of “the welfare of the negro community in Toronto,” noted Toronto Metropolitan University sociologist Melanie Knight in a ‘Canadian Journal of History’ article. “The HSA, in its quest to remain a Black-led centre, was continually reminded of its lesser worth, whether its existence was warranted for taxpayers, and that substantial investment had already been given for reorganization.”
The HSA had a nursery school and ran cultural events with guest speakers, fundraisers, choral groups and dances. One was a performance by the acclaimed Afro-diasporic dancer Katherine Dunham who, alongside 22 of her dancers, visited the HSA in 1944. It also had after-school programs for teenagers and sports teams.
Following in the HSA’s footsteps, the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre, which had 7 full-time and 6 part-time staff, offered tutoring, steel band instruction, and Afro dance lessons. In addition to its general recreation hall, it also operated a coffee shop, basketball courts, and a library.
In light of recent debates about the re-naming of now-Sankofa Square – an act meant to remove the site’s namesake, Scottish politician Henry Dundas, a proponent of the slave trade – and as Canada marks Emancipation Day, August 1, 1843, the moment when slavery was eradicated across the British Empire, I think we also need to reflect on the Black cultural spaces that no longer exist, and the rich connections these spaces had to Black communities across multiple geographies.
When the first “Caribana” was held in 1967, the Caribbean Cultural Committee (CCC) had a vision for building a Black cultural centre, though it never quite materialized. Then, in 1969, the Underground Railroad Restaurant (URR), which offered Cajun, Creole, Black Southern, and Caribbean cuisines, became a meeting place/destination for Black culture in Toronto. Founded by Toronto Argonaut quarterback John Henry Jackson, teammate Dave Mann, jazz musician Archie Alleyne and Howard Matthews, the eatery was first located on the north side of Bloor Street East. In the early 1970s, it moved to the south side of King Street East. In 2021, Heritage Toronto established two commemorative plaques for the URR, which closed in 1989.
In an interview with the Toronto Star in 1974, the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre’s first director, Ken Jeffers, discussed the venue’s mission to give “young blacks a place of their own.” It would be, he said, “the only centre of its kind for blacks in Metro.”
The Centre opened with an operating budget of $56,200 ($419,443 in 2024 dollars), and received some of its initial funding from then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Opportunities For Youth (OFY) program. (Launched in 1971 as a summer employment program, OFY was geared toward students, and funded new approaches to community services, like the Youth Centre. The government eliminated the program in 1976.)
“Sometimes it breaks my heart, what happened,” Jeffers, who left the Centre in 1975, reflected in a February, 2021, interview with the West End Phoenix. As so much of Toronto is being demolished, rebuilt, or gentrified, I took Jeffers’ statement as a call to action to figure out what happened to this landmark Black cultural space.
During a visit to the City of Toronto Archives, I found two remaining documents. The first, “Harriet Tubman Youth Centre …. A ‘Y’ Project September, 1972,” was published by the YMCA and it outlined the reasons why the program was dedicated to Tubman, its “urgent need,” and its three-year objectives. The other document, a “Bulletin” dated January 25, 1974, provided an overview of the Youth Centre’s staff, activities, and progress.
The Youth Centre’s initial intention was to respond to the lack of social support for Black youth, in addition to the “culture shock” experienced by newly arrived immigrants, primarily from the Caribbean (called “West Indians” at that time).
“Toronto’s largest black group is West Indian,” the Youth Centre document explained, “West Indian Youth come to Canada often uninformed about prevailing conditions. Unemployment, a complex educational system, crowded housing, strange new social customs can shock these young people into disillusionment and alienation.”
Specific examples were outlined regarding Black youths’ experiences in the late-1960s and early-1970s. Many had been thrown out of existing youth centres and settlement houses; according to a Contrast report from March, 1972 cited in the document. “Black youth now say that they have been refused entrance to Italian and Portuguese halls and restaurants in the area.”
The Bathurst subway station was also cited as a place of friction for Black youth who often experienced confrontations with police and white people for “liming,” a Caribbean colloquialism for hanging out in public spaces, often stigmatized in Canada as “loitering.”
What’s more, hostilities existed in the school system, as Black youth were often mis-diagnosed with learning disabilities and behavioural problems even though most were actually experiencing culture shock. An April 10, 1975 feature in the Globe and Mail, for example, outlined these experiences: “Your Toronto – where the teacher says she can’t understand you and why don’t you talk English. Where classmates titter when you don’t know the capital of Canada or how to spell Trudeau…. Toronto – where your skin is black. You feel your blackness everywhere.”
Understanding the context of the early 1970s helps me appreciate all the progress today with regard to establishing spaces that affirm Black culture, music, and heritage. The most notable example: the Blackhurst Cultural Centre (formerly A Different Booklist), which received a $14.12 million joint investment from the federal government and City of Toronto to “expand its role as Toronto’s hub for Black culture and history.” (The second phase of its expansion will be completed in 2025).
The list further includes the Nia Centre for the Arts, a not-for-profit organization focused on Black performing, recording, and visual arts for the African Diaspora, which opened in 2023 in the Eglinton-Vaughan Road area; and the Somali Cultural and Recreation Centre (SCCR), approved by council in 2022 to “be a hub to preserve and celebrate the rich contribution and histories of Toronto’s Somali communities,” and will be housed in Etobicoke.
These kinds of long-term investments into Black culture can make folks complacent about the past, and a time when there were no such spaces in Toronto. The Harriet Tubman Youth Centre was the first go-to spot for Black musicians to co-mingle with Black youth. Thanks to the photography of Joan Latchford, and Jeffers’ first-hand accounts, we have a record about the role the Youth Centre played in cultivating Black culture.
I imagine there are hundreds of photographs documenting this time in Toronto’s history, in the attics and garages of seniors who witnessed these moments. However, Latchford, a white woman who immigrated to Toronto from the U.K. in the late-1950s, was one of the few non-Black persons documenting Black cultural life in Toronto. She often captured moments that the dominant media missed.
For example, the official record states that reggae legend Bob Marley played a sold-out Massey Hall on June 8, 1975, in a show the Toronto Star described as “his first Canadian appearance.” However, Latchford snapped Marley kicking a soccer ball in the Youth Centre parking lot in 1974.
In his first appearance in Toronto in August, 1974, Isaac Hayes hit the O’Keefe Centre (now Meridien Hall) stage. Hayes was “attempting a departure from his usual form and was trying to achieve a low-key, almost intimate, atmosphere,” according to a review in the Globe and Mail.
However, Jeffers remembers the day when Hayes, who was at the height of his career as a soul artist at Stax Records, visited the Youth Centre. As the West End Phoenix reported, “Jeffers had been invited to lunch with Hayes and, on a whim, asked him to visit the centre. Hayes agreed, so Jeffers put the word out to some community members. When Jeffers arrived at the centre 15 minutes later, crowds were already swarming. A steel drum band performed for Hayes, who quietly handed Jeffers a wad of 100-dollar bills afterward. ‘He said, ‘Do what you need to do for these kids.’”
Latchford also photographed blues legend B.B. King on a visit to the Youth Centre where he gave music lessons to children and signed autographs – something he did on a regular basis.
These images fill in some of the gaps in the city’s “official” cultural memory. Unfortunately, after the Youth Centre left the YMCA because of operating cost challenges and occasional vandalism, it no longer played the same role. In 1978, the Youth Centre began operating independently. In 1998, the YMCA’s building at 15 Robina was demolished and redeveloped as a commercial building and residential housing.
Remembering institutions like the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre, and the role they played, is doubly important because these physical spaces no longer exist. I have passed Robina Ave. on the streetcar almost every day for nearly a decade, and I had no awareness that once upon a time, a youth centre represented hope for a community of first-generation immigrants. As a descendant of that generation, these places continue to inspire me and to have limitless hope for Black culture in Toronto, and they also fuel my desire to bring the stories of past eras into the present.
As director of Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA), I am actively looking to preserve local Black histories. If you have images of the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre that you would like to donate to this mission, please contact MobaProjects. As a final note, I hope this story encourages Heritage Toronto to put the Youth Centre on its list of commemorative plaques.
Cheryl Thompson is an Associate Professor of Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is also director of Black Creative Lab and can be reached on X @DrCherylT.
The post Remembering the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre On St. Clair West appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #14: The only party for the average British Columbian appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
This isn’t your typical house slated for demolition.
The lawn isn’t wildly overgrown, and the structure isn’t dilapidated. Instead, 91 Barton Ave. is bustling with activity, a sense of rebirth fills the air, and with it the promise of creative freedom .
It’s not the situation that is typically found when a changing of the guard takes place – when old homes become new ones. But here, it’s an ephemeral canvas where artists, both established and emerging, have the space to try something new, if even just for a moment.
So, what exactly is happening in this Seaton Village house and why?
For that, we turn to Stephanie Avery, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Toronto who has been practising for nearly two decades.
Artist Stephanie Avery at 91 Barton Ave. Photo provided by: Stephanie AveryDescribing her general approach to art as intervention, with much of her work based on found objects and spaces, Avery takes creative approaches to explore how we interact with these objects and spaces.
She’s also an emerging muralist, which led Avery to gather artists to transform the exterior and interior of 91 Barton Ave.
The home was recently bought by Green Street Flats, a Toronto real estate development company. Like many old houses in the city, the property was purchased to make way for something new. But this story has a twist.
Roof mural by Nick Sweetman. Photo provided by: Stephanie AveryAvery emailed Green Street Flats asking if the home that once housed a family of nine could have one final send-off before its demolition, to turn the building into an immersive mural instillation for the public to enjoy. And the developers said ”yes.“
To help fund the project, Avery reached out to The Awesome Foundation’s Toronto Chapter, a community-focused organization that supports innovative projects through $1,000 micro-grants. With the grant in hand, the money went towards the cost of paint and materials.
As part of a collective of muralists, Avery, along with Jieun Kim, Jenneen Marie, Tara Dorey, Andre Kan, and others are using the grant to transform the space into an offering for Toronto.
Avery says, “In here, we’re turning absolutely everything into the art.”
An installation created from found items in the home. A photo of the family’s patriarch inspired the artwork on the wall. Art by: Chris PerezThey are all being influenced in some way or another by the objects and décor that already existed in the house and the bits of history they represent, for example incorporating furniture left in the house into their work. It’s an homage to a family that once called this house a home, while providing the artists with the opportunity to experiment
“You don’t really get a lot of canvases like this. I mean, this one is outside, but I’m doing the basement, too. So, like, just being able to take all these different surfaces is awesome. ” says muralist by the street name Monkyi. Art by: Monkyi. Photo background art by: Ghazaraza and Elicser ElliottEach artist can do what they like. “Nobody has to run any designs past the developers. They’re giving us free rein to do what we want. We get to play and be free and try new things in ways you can’t when you’re doing a commission,” says Avery.
And because the house will be demolished, it’s “very liberating for us as artists to be able to come here and know that that’s going to happen. It frees us in a way to be even more creative.”
Moises aka Luvs discovered multiple layers of wallpaper throughout the home. A bird takes shape on the wall by carefully cutting and peeling the wallpaper.But this project is about more than providing a playground for a select group of artists to do their thing. It’s about supporting the arts in general; it’s about community and housing; it’s about utilizing empty spaces; it’s about celebrating what once was and adding bursts of colour through a little or a lot of paint, providing some additional beauty and wonder to our city.
Avery is also making it a priority to create spaces in the home for emerging muralists. She explains that building a portfolio is a massive challenge because most don’t often get opportunities to paint walls unless they’re already established.
But how do you gain the experience? Well, these types of projects could be the answer.
A playful dragon by the emerging muralist Catchoo.“This house is just sitting here empty for however long between it being purchased by the developers and it being demolished, and we might as well use it for something, right?”
These types of structures could be the entryway for many artists to get the professional experience they need, which is hard to attain. And how many other properties like this are just sitting vacant before they’re torn down?
Avery hopes the Barton project model could catch on and be done in more spaces across the city.
“I love finding and getting opportunities for other artists; like, it fills me with so much joy.”
Tiger mural by Jieun Kim aka June. Photo provided by: Stephanie AveryThis project also serves as a final farewell to a home where seven children were raised, who now have families of their own. The artwork helps tell the story of those who lived here for decades before moving on to a new chapter – much like the property itself. Projects like these are a way to explore the history of the buildings we lose in Toronto.
But Avery’s interpretation sees this in a positive light – and she’s using her artwork to explain.
She’s creating a mural of a fire creature coming out of the fireplace to represent a cleansing fire, like a controlled burn in a forest. A way for something old to bring new life. And that can be a beautiful thing. A metaphorical phoenix rising from the ashes.
The stencil for Stephanie Avery’s fire creature emerging from the fireplace.“There’s something very beautiful about the cycle of life and how everything is temporary, but we kind of try and insulate ourselves from that. So, with what I’m painting is more trying to embrace that. And like, the beauty and the ephemerality of everything.”
One of the children who grew up in the home even came by to visit the project.
“It was really wonderful that she’s so supportive of the project. She came in and she was getting such a kick out of seeing how we’ve transformed everything. She answered so many questions. She really loves what we’re doing,” says Avery.
Caption: Photos found throughout the home become inspirations. Art by: Moises aka LuvsAvery had always planned to reach out to the family that lived in the building, but they came to her before she had the chance. She hopes more family members will come and visit.
The Barton project also speaks to housing affordability, gentrification, and the cost of living in Toronto.
Avery explains that development has negatively impacted many artists, whether that’s by losing their studio spaces, homes, storefronts, or galleries. She herself has lost one of her studio spaces.
However, even though much of her work is critical of the current state of development and housing affordability in Toronto, Avery isn’t totally against development.
“I do agree that it needs to happen. And we need more density, but it’s like we could be doing this in a way that’s so much more considerate of the communities that already exist.”
Doing this initiative in conjunction with developers serves as a bridge between two worlds and could become a way to get communities involved in development projects and for developers to support the arts and other communities.
Artist Jenneen Marie holds artwork found in this room, which acted as her inspiration for this piece.Enabling the public to visit these types of spaces, meanwhile, provides exposure to artwork they might not otherwise have the opportunity to see and also makes us more considerate of our neighbours. How often do we walk past old houses time and time again and not think of the families that lived there? This could serve as a window into who we are as people. It’s a great way to meet others when visiting, too.
Avery and Green Street Flats are still determining how the exhibit will run. Ideally, she is aiming to have everything ready for the second week of August, when the house will then become open to the public, free of charge.
Objects left behind get new life as part of this installation. Avery and others also hosted a pay-what-you-can yard sale to find a new home for objects found in and around the house. Art by: Jieun Kim aka JuneYou can visit the project’s Instagram page to follow along in the Barton transformation, and to receive updates on how and when public visits will take place. The artwork featured in this article is incomplete, so be sure to watch as each piece progresses.
All photos by Trent Weston unless otherwise specified.
The post The bold, the fleeting, the beautiful appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Scot Hein was one of the most respected planners at Vancouver City Hall. For the last few years, he has been using his skills to train other planners. He has now announced a new short course that will be of value to neighbourhood activists and all those interested in dealing with the City’s zoning and planning departments.
As Scot describes it: “Essentially I will be sharing my best tools, methods, case studies/precedents and engagement practices for all stakeholders towards positive shared results. We’ll also practice how to start a productive design oriented conversation in the neighbourhood.”
It is a four-week course in September that includes a walking tour of Kitsilano. Full details are here: https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/courses/city/introduction-to-neighbourhood-design.html
Course DescriptionMake a difference in the future of your neighborhood. While city-building has traditionally been a top-down undertaking, neighborhood design has focused on building from the grassroots up. In this course, you will learn the basic tools and strategies to help you join the conversation and advocate for the neighbourhood you want to live in.
You will build a toolkit to help you navigate public processes, including: permitting, zoning, economic planning, context reading, and choosing appropriate built forms. Through examinations of relevant case studies, you will learn how to strategically convey local aspirations towards thoughtful, transformative outcomes.
You’ll also have an opportunity to discuss the current urban design challenges facing your neighbourhood, and develop specific co-design participatory strategies to address them. Walk away with an achievable plan and a support network comprised of others who are passionate about place-making.
OverviewLocation: Online and Vancouver
Duration: 4 weeks
Tuition: $455
Schedule* Tue, Sep 10, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class) * Sat, Sep 14, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time (field trip) * Tue, Sep 17, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class) * Tue, Sep 24, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class)
For more information, visit the SFU website.
The post EVENT: Introduction to Neighbourhood Design (SFU) – Sept. 2024 appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
The more things change the more they stay the same. – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849
Robert Moses is a controversial figure in urban planning history, whose influential reach exploded far beyond the native soils of his New York City boundaries. Known as NYC’s “Master Builder”—and more recently the focus of 99% Invisible’s The Power Broker series—his projects span the 1920s to the 1970s and radically reshaped the urban fabric at all levels. From the construction of highways and bridges to parks and public housing, Moses was not only known for his grand vision, but also his ability to execute large-scale projects with remarkable speed and efficiency.
His secret formula? Top-down, autocratic methods that disregarded public opinion complemented by his ability to convince those in power that he was simply an agent of an unstoppable global force called modernity. Consequently, his projects displaced thousands of low-income and minority communities—easy targets for locating his works. While some argue that his projects brought “modernity” and “progress”, they highlight the social costs and inequities inherent in large-scale urban planning.
One of Moses’ most memorable statements: When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. I’m just going to keep right on building. You do the best you can to stop it. Implication? Animal corpses are “people in the way.” It’s enough to make one wince.
Marshall Berman—who would later write the renowned and insightful book, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity—who had grown up in the Bronx, and recalls standing above Moses’ Cross-Bronx Expressway construction site and weeping openly, emotionally shattered, for his beloved neighbourhood. He was not alone.
Vancouver was not spared his influence. Local apostles proposed a multi-lane highway cutting across East Vancouver with surgical precision through the ethnic enclaves of Chinatown, Strathcona and Gastown on its way across the downtown waterfront. Hogan’s Alley ” the first and last neighbourhood in Vancouver with a substantial concentrated black population” was one of its several casualties. All this, in the name of “progress”.
The fate of the proposed highway, the government that supported it, and that of Moses mirror each other. Moses’ 40 years of creative destruction fostered the growth of thousands of “smaller” enemies, many as resourceful as himself. His proposal for the Lower Manhattan Expressway and extension of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park that threatened to displace thousands of residents brought to light one particularly important unassuming figure: a prominent urban activist and writer by the name of Jane Jacobs who championed a different version of ‘modernity’: one built on the recognizing the strong patterns of the everyday lives of urban communities.
The yin to Moses’ yang, she proposed an approach to urban planning that emphasized preserving vibrant neighbourhoods and advocated for the involvement of residents in shaping their environments. An approach that recognized and embraced the complexity of the urban and did away with the oversimplified models of the urban planners and politicians of the time.
Jacobs paved the way (pun intended) to preserve many important historic neighbourhoods by mobilizing community support through grassroots activism, public demonstrations, and media campaigns. Her influential book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” insightfully criticized large-scale urban renewal projects for destroying the important social fabric of communities and offered a swift and deadly strike: leaving Moses’ top-down planning methods impotent and marking a significant shift in urban planning philosophy. One that made an impact locally in the creation of processes that built community trust. This showed the ignorance of simplistic views of cities and the power of community activism. As a result, Jacobs and her supporters profoundly influenced the development of cities worldwide.
Jane Jacobs was no stranger to Vancouver: joining in the rallying cry that brought Vancouver’s freeway dreams—and those politicians who upheld Moses’ vision of progress—to an end. This forever changed the course of the city—resoundingly in the best possible way. The intelligence of Vancouver’s urban communities was clear.
Over five decades later, Vancouver and we, its urban communities, find ourselves where we once were, against the next generation of Moses apostles. Similar top-down, autocratic methods underpin many current initiatives, from the Province’s heavy-handed approach to Transit-Oriented Areas to Vancouver City Council’s handling of the Broadway Plan, let alone their attempts to end community input altogether. They are “hacking their way with the meat ax” through mature, vibrant neighbourhoods and established community-led processes with one-size-fits-all, market-biased solutions at breakneck speeds to make up for decades of underfunding and “pro-market” neglect.
Consider this: the Broadway Plan and failed Freeway proposal are roughly the same length. The Broadway Plan has 500 blocks directly slated for transformation—a.k.a. destruction—most of which are existing mature communities and some of which are already among the densest in the city. Statistically, the Broadway Plan will directly affect and displace more people than the Freeway. Add the regional transformations mandated by the Province and the numbers are staggeringly higher. All this with minimal, if any, meaningful community engagement and a blatant disregard for public opinion.
Sound familiar?
Say goodbye to mom-and-pop stores that enrich our daily experiences. So long to the neighbourhood and community plans that so many people fought tooth-and-nail to create and uphold. Farewell to the mature rental buildings and all those who live in them. Fear not, they will promptly ship you elsewhere. This crisis demands your sacrifice. The New Vancouverites will thank you from their FOB-secured buildings as they swagger their way to their private rooftop gardens.
Socially just planning simply has no place in this crisis-ridden time—“esteemed economists” say so and have modeled this out of their perfect, utopian world. A world where people are abstract numbers. Their homes, communities, and support systems….blank spaces within dashed circles of “Prescribed Distances”. Those unfortunate enough to be in the void are simply externalities. Why bother taking them into account when they are temporary squatters, right?
Like Moses, our government is seduced by the (over)simplistic assumption of the blank slate. The clean sheet for urban destruction. Buoyed by the arrogant, Modernist confidence that the new will somehow be better than the old. That adding abstract, anonymous people alone will save the city. Moses approves.
Frances Perkins—who worked closely with Moses and was America’s first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet as Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt—astutely described one of Moses’ more disturbing qualities as a person who “…loves the public, but not as people.” This incredible cognitive dissonance holds for both the Province and the City of Vancouver.
Now, Moses supporters argue that he made important contributions to public infrastructure, housing, and public spaces—like parks—that would benefit many over the years. A legitimate argument: although a true, non-biased cost-benefit analysis has never been done…and never will. But this is certainly more than the Province and Vancouver Council can argue about their work: one that offers minimal public good while maximizing private benefits—hiding behind highly debatable arguments and false accusations of “NIMBY-ism” to support their dictatorial behaviour.
Another Moses quote: “There are people who like things as they are. I can’t hold out any hope for them. They have to keep moving further away….Let them go to the Rockies.”
Sound familiar?
A challenge: if they are so confident in their decisions—their bullet-proof arguments—why not be completely transparent and lay it all out for the Public to decide? Models, formulas, and all. Majority wins. The Community is smart enough to understand them. We promise. Let’s call it a “market analysis” if it makes you feel more comfortable. The Community dares you.
Love him or hate him, at least Moses was transparent enough to not pretend to listen to anybody. He was honest enough to call a meat ax what it was. And let’s be clear, Moses’ fabricated “crisis” was as much about “modernity” as ours is about “affordability”. In both cases, it is a crisis of planning. Nothing more, nothing less.
Insofar as our local governments are learning from the Book of Moses, it is important to remember this small lesson: his transformative power—built on an oversimplistic arrogance similar to what we are seeing today—was ultimately bested by the humble authority of urban communities. A recurring historical pattern that has tumbled much more than just freeways.
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
The post Learning from Moses appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #13: Planning Department Sponsorship appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
In the coming weeks, Waterfront Toronto crews will remove the final plug in the new Lower Don, thereby allowing the river to finally flow naturally towards the harbour through the $1.25 billion flood protection valley constructed in the Port Lands over the past five years. (Yesterday’s epic deluge offered a timely reminder of the importance of flood protection in Toronto’s low-lying downtown.) For the first time in more than a century, the river will be able to avoid the sharp right turn that shunted the Don into the stagnant and polluted Keating Channel.
Success, as the old saying goes, has many parents, and this undertaking — an achievement that is unique to Toronto and without parallel in any other major city — is no exception. Yet much credit should flow all the way upstream, to the founders of the Taskforce to Bring Back the Don — a citizen’s group that spent well over three decades advocating for this moment.
Spacing asked Mark Wilson, one of the founders of the task force, and later a director and chair of the Waterfront Toronto board, to describe the realization of a far-fetched idea.
Spacing: So, we brought back the Don. To paraphrase the anthropologist Margaret Mead, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizen can change the world…” Since you were there at the beginning, I wanted you to talk about what that beginning was like. Tell me how it began.
Mark Wilson: Well, it began for me personally in 1988, when we moved all the way across the Don River from downtown Toronto into the wilds of what now is called Riverdale. I was on the Bloor Viaduct going, “This is ridiculous. There’s this huge space, this huge river and no obvious connection to it whatsoever.”
The Globe and Mail had a Toronto magazine at the time, and they published an article called “Rebirth of a River,” by Pat Ohlendorf-Moffat. Associated with that, there was an event advertised at the Ontario Science Centre and about 500 people showed up. Towards the end of the meeting, Jack Layton stood up and said, “We’re forming a citizens’ group down at City Hall. Come on down, join us.” The initiative actually was a bit of a spin off of a Gardiner study that Jack had completed. They were turning the corner and paying attention to the Don. So in 1989, I joined a small group of people, 10 or 15, a very informal group, all of whom were interested in the project, which was supported very much by Jack Layton’s office and by the late Dan Leckie and by Barbara Hall. But very much citizen organized.
Out of that emerged a proposal to city council to establish a citizens’ task force, which got called The Don River Cleanup Interim Task Force, which just shows you the mindset at the time. You would go out and pick up some garbage and everything would be fine.
It had a staff person and a small budget. That group decided to create a vision for the Don as an important step. And it also re-labelled itself as Bring Back the Don, which was an incredibly important moment. It wasn’t “save the Don.” It wasn’t, “clean up the Don.” It was Bring Back the Don.
Spacing: It’s a great name. What do you recall about the conversation about that moniker?
Mark Wilson: The idea was that restoration was needed. It wasn’t about protecting a natural system that was unsullied and needed protection. It was a restoration movement. I don’t remember exactly who first suggested the name but it very quickly stuck. There are other parts of the Don that were about saving, up in Maple or the Charles Sauriol Reserve. But the part we were dealing with in the old City of Toronto, the lower Don, was full of infrastructure, and is still full of infrastructure.
We discovered it was quite a dump site, with ashes and cinders and all kinds of things like that, which we discovered when we created Chester Springs Marsh. There was no growth, because there was no soil. It was just very thin layer and ash underneath.
With the budget we had, the decision was made to hire a team to develop a vision. We ran an RFP process, all the good standard procurement stuff. Fortunately, Michael Hough led the team with Bob Stanbury as his hydrological guy. There was always this focus that we have the Keating Channel at the end of the Don, and this is wrong. What should we do about it? They basically proposed a marsh at the mouth of the Don, pretty much in the location where it now is, interestingly enough. It was a radical idea, and was quite poo-pooed in many quarters for a long time.
Spacing: The idea of saving a river is a hairy audacious goal, right? It’s this big space, a complicated problem, and then you’re presented with this idea about rebuilding a marsh in an industrial wasteland. What were your expectations?
Mark Wilson: It felt inevitable and necessary. Yeah, it was audacious. But everyone immediately went, “This is the right thing to do.” And, no, it won’t be done instantly. But this wasn’t just about the lower Don and it wasn’t just about the marsh. It was also proposed all the way up to Riverdale Park, in terms of dealing with the with the river, none of which ever got implemented.
Spacing: How much were you plugged into what David Crombie was doing at the time with the Royal Commission and then the Waterfront Regeneration Trust?
Mark Wilson: That’s an interesting story. We were one of the deputants at his public hearings, and we played him a song, with the famous tenor Mark Dubois singing a 19th century folk song called “Come to the Vale of the Beautiful Don.” If you speak to David and say “Mark Wilson,” the first thing that will come out of his mouth is the story about how captivating it was, and the idea that we should have a `beautiful Don’ caught his imagination. He made a decision that that was going to be an illustrative study of what he meant by regeneration. He really picked up the idea and made it respectable. I mean, if Crombie and his gang thought this was a good idea, then others took note.
Flooding caused by the Don RiverSpacing: There’s been a lot of writing and material posted online about the history of the Don, the industrialization of the lower Don, Sauriol’s work, Cat’s Eye. It has become this object in the middle of the city’s culture. What do you recall knowing about that history when you started?
Mark Wilson: Not much. Much of Bring Back the Don is, in fact, a history of the Don. It was probably one of the first attempts to bring that history to light, whether it was the industrial history or the ice jams and flooding, or bare ass beach, and people swimming in the Don. There wasn’t much around at the time. In fact, I created one of the first websites at the time to make that stuff available. Collected old postcards of the Don and publicized those. In fact, in the 19th century, it was valued and treasured, a place you would put on postcards. Bring Back the Don was a way of making it apparent to people that this wasn’t just a fantasy, that this had been a reality, and that rebirth, regeneration, bringing it back, was, in fact, what should be done.
The other thing the Taskforce did from the start was illustrative small projects. At the very first tree planting we did in 1990, Ken Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet, picked up a shovel and was planting trees in Riverdale Park East. We were illustrating that small things could, in fact, be done. You needed to take action. We were not so much about criticizing people, but illustrating by example the fact that it could be done.
With the Chester Springs Marsh, we did a small study. We’re proposing a marsh at the mouth of the Don so we should restore a march somewhere, right? We hired a consultant, and they developed a plan, and people were going, “you’re nuts.” There’s no money to implement this plan. And we said, “if you don’t have a plan, when the money comes, you won’t be ready, right?” There’s always a new infrastructure fund. At one point, Peter Tabuns stood up at city council and said, “This is green infrastructure. We should fund this.” And they did.
So we dug a hole and filled it with some water and plants and trees. It’s kind of overgrown by now, but it was a way for us to demonstrate that, even on a small scale, you could start restoring marshes.
Prince Charles and Mark Wilson overlooking the Don River mouth, 1983.The other thing that Crombie did for us was that Prince Charles and Diana were visiting Toronto, and the Prince’s entourage was looking for community group to support. And they said, The Taskforce to Bring Back the Don. So I took Prince Charles on a tour of the Don. We literally built a platform at the Keating channel, and we said to him, “We’re going to put in a marsh.”
He was kind of shocked but with that collection of dignitaries and politicians, the credibility associated with that was very strong.
The other critical thing that happened was the failure of the Ataratiri project. It failed, both on soil pollution and, as importantly, on flood protection. There had never been the flood modelling for the lower Don. The provincial government [owner of the Ataratiri lands] discovered that if Hurricane Hazel hit the Don, downtown Toronto would be underwater. So flood protection suddenly came to the fore as a topic. The original Toronto Waterfront corporation’s mandate and budget included an environmental assessment to deal with flood protection.
Again, from the start, there was the idea that some kind of regeneration was what was needed. Things got slowed down in the Rob Ford era. Doug brought his ferris wheel and monorail ideas. And that was another very seminal moment, because that was really a competing set of ideas about what should happen in the Portlands. [Ford’s vision] passed executive council unanimously and was rejected at city council unanimously a couple of weeks later, because of the citizen outcry. That happened because we had done so many events, engaged so much of the public, and we had put all these positive messages out. There was a community of people that supported the idea of regeneration.
Spacing: Let me ask you the cliché journalist question: when you set out to involve yourself in this thing almost 35 years ago. did you think that there was going to be this result?
Mark Wilson: I was optimistic because the idea was so compelling. The critique of it would be, it’s impractical, can we find a cheaper solution, can we find an engineering solution? But no one said, “this is ugly, we don’t want something like this.” People would critique it on practicality, not on the core attractiveness of the idea. So it’s the old saying, that there’s nothing so compelling as an idea whose time has come. I didn’t think it would take this long, of course. But you know, once it entered the realm of accepted planning objectives, it just was a matter of, how long would it take and what was going to be the final plan?
Spacing: In Toronto, we tend to default to the cheapest solution and often not very high minded solutions when it comes to public space. Whenever I tell people about this project, I stress that it is quite dramatic and unique by any urban standards. How do you account for the fact that it was this project that got Toronto to not only think big, but act big?
Mark Wilson: Two words: Waterfront Toronto, and its commitment to design excellence. I mean, if it had been a City of Toronto Public Works project, it would have had the mediocrity that you just described. Maybe even worse,
Spacing: Where are you going to be when that last plug comes out?
Mark Wilson: I don’t know. Hopefully. we’ll have another celebratory event when the river is actually connected to the New River, and there’s lots more celebration to come.
Spacing: Any last thoughts about Margaret Mead’s adage about small groups of committed citizens?
Mark Wilson: Yeah, I think it kind of works. I think the other part of the story, though, is that we engaged the power structures and seduced them. We didn’t attempt a revolution or attack them. We seduced them, and that worked.
photos courtesy of Mark Wilson
The post They Brought Back the Don appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Toronto is often accused of being over-regulated. It’s a fair criticism.
For example, photographer and urbanist commentator Dan Seljak tells us how he stumbled upon the small Finch Store selling espresso, fighting to stay open in the face of City zoning laws.
For more of the story, and how Finch Store was granted a reprieve, we speak to local City Councillor Alejandra Bravo.
And we speak to Councillor Gord Perks, chair of the Planning and Housing Committee, about why Toronto works on complaints-based bylaw enforcement, and how we can improve the system for small businesses, special events, and more.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.
Spacing Radio · Episode 79: Is Toronto strangled by rules?The post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 079, Is Toronto strangled by rules? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #12: Views for Sale appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #11: VancouverSim Frankenstein appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
On the evening of July 1, after the sky darkened and the fireworks over Ashbridge’s Bay began, some participants noticed eight police drones monitoring the crowds, occasionally sweeping their lights down on specific locations to indicate some activity for the accompanying officers to investigate.
“Six of them had a red light and two of them had a green light,” according to one observer who had also seen them on Victoria Day. “The red-light ones were equipped with this intense spotlight capability. [On the] Victoria Day weekend, when someone in the crowd set off their own private firework, the drone would rush over, shine the light on the spot, then officers would rush over in their small ATV-type vehicles with their sirens on while the spotlight was maintained on the spot! It really was dystopian.”
These drones — or, as the Toronto Police Service dubs them, “Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems” (RPAS) — are part of a fleet of 21 units which “support the full spectrum of police operations,” according to an FAQ provided to Spacing.
The list of uses includes search and rescue, tactical response, hazardous material incidents, disaster incidents, public safety at large gatherings and special events, aerial documentation of collisions and crime scenes, subject apprehensions including Canine Unit operations, fire scenes, and site safety surveys.
The TPS first acquired a handful of drones in 2016 — the second year of John Tory’s mayoralty — and initially used them mainly to map traffic accident scenes and conduct search and rescue operations. The fleet’s size has grown steadily in the years since then. In 2022, according to a drone industry magazine, the TPS had 16 RPAS and 25 trained pilots. The fleet size has expanded 37% in just two years.
Some of the drones used by the Toronto Police Service. Image from Toronto Police Service.So, evidently, have the applications, raising tough but important questions about mission creep and public accountability involving a powerfully intrusive technology that’s attracted regulatory scrutiny in many jurisdictions. These include issues such as the combination of drone video capabilities and AI-based facial recognition software, the retention of video footage captured by the drones, the potential deployment of these devices during political protests, and the collection of surveillance video when the drone is not within the sight-lines of the operator.
Besides provincial privacy laws and federal navigation regulations, there are no policy constraints on how the TPS may use its fleet, nor much in the way of a regulated paper trail about what happens to the video/surveillance data captured by these devices (more on this point in a moment).
The civilian oversight body, the Toronto Police Services Board, has never held public consultations or adopted any kind of policy framework governing drone use, and this despite the steady expansion of the program over a period of eight years. “After reviewing our policy library and available documentation, I can confirm that the Board does not currently have a policy on the use of drones/RPAS nor is there a record of such a policy being discussed by the Board,” Anne Arthur, the TPSB’s senior advisor, strategic analysis and governance, told Spacing.
The policy vacuum is surprising, given that Ontario’s former Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, publicly upbraided the Hamilton Police Service for its failure to properly manage its drone fleet. “What Hamilton police is doing with these drones is appalling,” Ann Cavoukian told CBC Hamilton in May, 2023. “I don’t believe the value of it is greater than the harm it introduces.” The Canadian Civil Liberties Association called on HPS to halt the expansion of its drone program altogether, citing uses identical to the ones cited by the TPS.
The CBC also discovered that HPS never consulted the Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario (IPCO) about its drone program. (The IPCO earlier this year issued a “guidance” document to Ontario police services about the appropriate use of facial recognition software on mugshot databases and a range of concerns associated with such practices.)
Toronto and Ontario’s seeming indifference to the regulation of the use of police drones stands in sharp contrast to the approaches of other jurisdictions, including the U.S. and the U.K. In the U.S., there are now an estimated 1,500 agencies, the majority of them involved in federal, state or municipal law enforcement, that use drones. Eighteen states have passed legislation requiring agencies to obtain search warrants prior to using drones for surveillance, according to an overview of regulation published by Airsight, a drone security technology firm.
An important driver of the regulatory activity is the fast-growing adaption of drones by law enforcement agencies. Police1, a law enforcement news site, estimates that the number of American agencies using drones has risen 54% in the past six years alone.
One particular trend that has provoked concern among civil liberties groups is the use of drones as first responders to 911 calls. While such applications potentially provide first responders with better “situational awareness,” the practical result, according to a June, 2024, brief by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is that “law enforcement’s desire to get `a view of the scene’ becomes a justification for over-surveilling neighborhoods that produce more 911 calls and for collecting information on anyone who happens to be in the drone’s path.”
The U.K. has seen similar rising rates of adoption, prompting the national Biometric and Surveillance Camera Commissioner last year to issue a series of recommendations about improved controls based on a survey of law enforcement agencies showing “patchy” practices around issues such as the security of data gathered by the drones, lack of external scrutiny of ethical use of drones by police, and the need for “consistent guidance.”
“Drones represent one of the biggest future flashpoints around new policing technologies,” says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law and the author of The Rise of Big Data Policing (2017). “The privacy dangers are much greater than other technologies and yet there has been little public uproar.”
Data retention, he points out, is an especially murky piece of this story.
According to TPS, video gathered by its drones is uploaded to a site called Evidence.com, which provides secure private cloud storage. “RPAS photos and videos are saved for a period of seven days unless they are categorized as evidence in an actual crime or formal investigation. In such cases, they are stored for a period of time consistent with all other evidence related to that specific incident or investigation.”
Evidence.com belongs to a US$1.9 billion/year Arizona-based security technology giant called Axon, which describes itself as “a force multiplier for your agency.” The company offers a range of highly integrated products and services — everything from tasers and body-worn cameras to a wide array of software, among them for evidence retention.
Ferguson observes that Axon, through Evidence.com, seems to want to corner the market on data storage — not just drone footage, but also video from body-worn cameras — vast amounts of data, necessitating substantial computing capacity. “Our growing reliance on video footage is changing the balance of power between public officials and private vendors,” he says. “Public images taken by public servants for public safety purposes are now dependent on a private cloud provider that must answer to its profit-minded shareholders.”
It’s also worth noting that all of the TPS drone footage gathered at events such as those July 1 fireworks displays ends up in a cloud run by an American company, presumably in a server farm outside Canada’s borders.
There are no extant rules about the storage of such data outside Canada, according to University of Ottawa law professor Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy and an expert on smart city technology.
“There is no localization requirement for the broader public service in Ontario, although the police would have to take reasonable steps to ensure that the data are properly secure and are not being used for unauthorized secondary purposes,” she says, adding that the only way for the public to be independently assured that such precautionary steps have, indeed, been taken would be through an assessment by the provincial privacy commissioner.
A generation ago, the TPS and then-mayor Mel Lastman became embroiled in a media controversy about the use of police helicopters, including donated ones. That fight, today, seems positively quaint, even though it generated far more sound and fury by comparison to what little has passed for a proper policy scrutiny about the TPS’s current and future use of drones.
Not surprisingly, such a debate did not happen when Tory was mayor and the TPSB was stacked with cronies. But the political wheel has turned, so one could reasonably ask whether the councillors now on the board — Lily Cheng, Amber Morley, and Shelley Carroll, as well as council appointee Nadine Spencer — are prepared to initiate a detailed discussion about drone accountability.
Given that we’ve reached the point when the TPS evinces no qualms about dispatching its RPAS fleet to Canada Day festivities to keep an eye on a celebratory crowd, that debate seems long overdue.
The post LORINC: Eyes in the Sky appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
What is the true value of a view? This question should be top of mind among all Vancouverites as the City of Vancouver Council considers removing the current view protections that have remained in place for 30 years. With the Council review set for tomorrow (July 10th), it seems appropriate to remind us—the Vancouver community—of their relevance as a gift to the public: one in danger of being handed over to wealthy patrons who can afford to live above the city of general public within their artificial mountains.
Views of the North Shore Mountains and our natural environment are easily taken for granted. We appreciate them daily from different parts of the city—sitting reflectively on the beach of Trout Lake Park, or looking over the city from Queen Elizabeth Park and simply walking along parts of Main Street, to name just a few. It’s so common that we forget—or perhaps do not know—that within Vancouver, they are “designed”. These are not random and they certainly do not exist at all.
Over three decades ago, the need to protect significant sightlines in the name of the public good was necessary. It was determined that certain sightlines, particularly of the North Shore Mountains, were to be preserved for public enjoyment amidst urban development. The concept was first introduced in the 1980s and made official in 1989, with Council-approved protection of these public views. The policy was created on the enlightened idea that certain aspects of our natural environment were too important to give over to private interests.
As stated City of Vancouver website, they were created to balance economic growth with housing while “preserving landmark views for future generations.” I italicize the latter to emphasize that they were created in the service of the public good—that is, something provided to ALL members of our city, visitors included, without profit. This is to say that everyone can and should benefit from it without reducing its availability to others for decades to come. Implied in this was the humble admission that they would be lost if given over to the market. Government intervention was necessary to ensure they remained accessible to all, promoting social equity.
But their significance goes beyond this, as we all know: these views are integral to Vancouver’s cultural identity and sense of place, contributing greatly to the aesthetic quality of the urban environment. We all know this inherently….just imagine Vancouver without views to the mountains. Without the Two Sisters? Without views of the Triple Crown Mountains?
These protected sightlines have become a defining feature of Vancouver’s cityscape. Millions of people enjoy them annually both passively—while meandering about the streets or some of our parks—and actively, seeking out to specific parts of the city to enjoy them. No fee necessary. It is a gift given by forward-thinking leaders who used them to limit building heights and placements to ensure that views of the mountains, water, and other natural landmarks remain visible from various vantage points across the city.
An enlightened leadership of today would recognize that the policy did not go far enough. Many argue wisely that their creation was ethnocentric and could have done more to accommodate the insights and values of the First People who inhabited the land for centuries before George set foot in the area. This is still possible, of course. Imagine expanding the list and policies of ‘significant’ views to include other cultures. This is certainly a pipe dream given the City’s motion to move in the opposite direction.
The view protection policy—and the public good of present and future generations that it is founded on—is in danger, courtesy of a Council that seems to be dead set on privatizing all aspects of urban life and widening the current socio-economic divide. Eliminating view cones monetizes and privatizes views for the wealthy. Only those who can afford premium real estate will have be privileged access.
Is this progress?
If so, I’d like to know by what measure. Based on Vancouver’s current direction doing so will open the city up to unrestricted development—creating a city dominated by tall buildings. One that will cover the natural landscape that characterizes the city and ultimately diminish its unique urban identity.
Preserving public access to our natural beauty, upholding Vancouver’s cultural and aesthetic values, and promoting social equity, should be non-negotiable. That the Vancouver City Council is considering their removal demonstrates how far the City has moved from a community-oriented city…and is a large slap in the face to all Vancouverites, and the enlightened minds that thought to put future generations before their own.
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
The post A View to A Kill appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
If there is a good way to make city streets safe, Avenue Road is a bad example.
By the time a proposed interim safety plan for Avenue Road reached City Council at the end of June this year, community groups had been demanding action for seven years; the plan for the two-kilometre segment had been chopped into three shorter sections; and yet another family was mourning the death of a loved one on this dangerous roadway. With more timely action, the story would have had a happier ending.
In late March 2024, after comprehensive public consultations, the city’s Infrastructure & Environment Committee was ready to debate a solid plan for interim safety measures along this six-lane, high-speed stretch of road. But the plan disappeared without a hearing. One month later, Ali Sezgin Armagan was killed cycling on Avenue Road, south of Davenport Road. Suddenly, a 700-metre cycle track — previously recommended in the staff proposal — was back on the committee’s agenda.
The remaining part of the Avenue Road project was divided into 280-metre and 1,000-metre segments, split between the wards of Councillors Dianne Saxe and Josh Matlow. The shorter section, between Davenport and Dupont Street, was debated by the Toronto & East York Community Council on June 11, but confusion about last-minute adjustments — including a new, controversial centre median at Dupont — meant the plan was sent to council without recommendations. Council passed the plan, less the median, on June 27 with no debate. The remaining segment of Avenue Road in Matlow’s ward has yet to re-surface.
The purpose of Toronto’s Vision Zero Road Safety Plan is to prevent road deaths – not to react to tragedies. (Sadly, two other cyclists have been killed over the last decade in the same stretch where Armagan died.) Vision Zero declares that “human safety should be prioritized over all other objectives within all aspects of the transportation system.” Facilitating the historic privilege of motorists to drive anywhere, anytime, and in any sized vehicle (and typically alone) is no longer the priority.
In Toronto, safe roads contribute to another key policy goal: promoting active transportation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the TransformTO Net Zero Strategy aims to convert to walking, cycling, and transit 75% of all trips under five kilometres by 2030. Time is quickly running out.
Respondents to the most recent public consultation for the Avenue Road safety measures were evenly split between people who wanted a safer road and those who worried about (motor) traffic congestion. What else is new? While the results could have been treated as a compromise — after all, the plan simply reduced six lanes to four (but more at intersections) — city plans and policies should easily have tipped the scales toward action.
Road safety must be the default position, not an afterthought. And yet we continue to treat public consultations as a ritual that begins with obsequious apologies to motorists for any potential inconvenience – even though the success of city policies depends on significantly reducing driving. It’s no surprise that delays in remedial action are measured in years, and blood.
Since the beginning of this year over 100 people have been killed or seriously injured on Toronto roads. And in this particular area of the city, it doesn’t even appear to matter that a substantial majority of residents already walk, cycle, and take transit to get around.
By emphasizing the right to safe roads as a starting point to public consultation, the onus would shift to the defenders of the deadly status quo. Unfortunately, the resistance to change — despite the casualty toll and worsening climate crisis — continues to be loud, its volume exaggerated by the oversized influence of the motorist’s perspective in our political, corporate, bureaucratic, and even neighbourhood organizations, including conservative residents’ associations with ready access to city councillors.
The cycle track is now scheduled to be installed before the end of July. That’s good news. But if the death of Armagan could motivate such a short timeline, why couldn’t our Vision Zero plan have prevented his death in the first place? It’s a question City Hall must answer, quickly.
It’s time to take the words of Vision Zero and the right to safe roads seriously. Seven years — and counting — is too long to make (part of) Avenue Road safe.
Albert Koehl is the coordinator of Community Bikeways, an environmental lawyer, and author of Wheeling through Toronto, A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders (University of Toronto Press).
The post OP-ED: Avenue Road – a bad way to make good roads appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In a city that loves to make, but not execute, plans and then overthink, but not solve, problems, there’s surely no better illustration of this twin-set of frustrating civic habits than the recently released 25-year Toronto Island Master Plan, which has done an absolutely masterful job of missing the proverbial forest for the trees.
The two-volume plan took four years to gestate, clocks in at 228 pages and has over 100 recommendations. It comes with numerous sidebars outlining engagement strategies, a “framework” document and a web of links to no fewer than nine other City strategies. The second volume concludes with a two-page appendix outlining all the various “ongoing studies,” “new studies” and “updates to existing studies” that will need to be completed in order to get all of us to the point when…we’ll need a new master plan.
You can spend several hours, like I did, trying to dog-paddle through all of it, seeking an answer to a question that no other grown-up city would force its residents to confront, which is this: will there ever be easier and less expensive — or even free, perish the thought! — ways to get to what is arguably Toronto’s pre-eminent public park?
All I can advise is, don’t wait up.
It is certainly important to acknowledge that Toronto Island is a complicated precinct, what with the Indigenous history, the Ward’s island community, a bunch of infrastructure, a superannuated amusement park, sandy beaches, flooding issues, erosion issues, etc., etc. There’s also a collection of constituencies that assert various claims to the Island’s spaces, some of which are premised on the maintenance of a degree of spatial exclusivity barely acknowledged in the Master Plan.
Mainly, it’s a large park in a rapidly expanding city where a growing proportion of residents don’t have backyards and cottages — a metropolis, what’s more, that fumbled the ball on building a major new public space (Rail Deck Park) and has lost access to another one (the bulk of Ontario Place) for, well, who knows how long.
The Master Plan, to be fair, does acknowledge that the Island has access issues, but the subtext all the way through this bewilderingly unfocused document is that the City doesn’t want to meaningfully expand the number of visitors. As the authors put it, the Island’s well-being demands “a light touch.”
The exact opposite is true of the visitor experience. The report notes that for the typical group travelling to the island, the cost to get there — $46 on average, for ferry tickets or water taxi, plus transit — is the single largest outlay they’ll make. There are no other cities which charge residents fees to visit major parks. It’s just not a thing.
The authors also conducted a largish online survey and found, unsurprisingly, that most visitors go there to get away from the city, socialize with friends and family or spend time outdoors. Yet a non-trivial proportion of those who took the survey also said it was difficult to get there or too expensive (44% in total).
The vast majority of the people who filled out the survey were already regular visitors to the Island — a self-selected minority. I suspect if the City had bothered to cast the net more broadly, it would have found that many more Torontonians never go because it’s just too complicated. This is an omission worth stressing: the City has no idea how many residents simply never visit. A lot, I’d bet.
The document, of course, repeats the now tread-worn promise about the imminent delivery of two larger, electric replacement ferries. (Two of the five ferries in the current fleet pre-date World War Two; one pre-dates World War One.) According to the latest staff report, which landed this week at the Infrastructure and Environment Committee, council has earmarked $83.4 million in its 10-year capital budget for these vessels, with the dollars coming over the next three years from a confection of debt, reserves and a ferry replacement fund that currently contains $8.6 million. According to the city, the ship-building contract will be tendered at some point this summer.
Yet there’s a distinctly Waiting-for-Godot like quality to the replacement ferry drama, which has been put-putting along for over a decade. The ten-year-capital budgets are subject to endless fidgeting, and a placeholder number that may appear in the latest cycle may well be gone next year or the year after. What is certain is the projected cost of the ferries only rises — from $11 million in 2015 to $63 million in 2022 to $83 million in 2024.
The ship delivery, what’s more, will require significant overhauls to the docks both at the foot of Bay Street and on the island, especially the Centre Island landing, and so we arrive at the fearsomely complicated riddle of carrying out major structural upgrades to the berths while attempting to maintain some vestige of service to and from the Island. The Master Plan is silent on this staging nightmare, made worse by the bottleneck that has long existed city-side. The City claims the project, which includes electric charging infrastructure, will take two years.
In 2015, this design by KPMB Architects / West 8 / Greenberg Consultants was chosen as the winner of the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal and Harbour Square Park redevelopment competition.Parks, Forestry and Recreation has spent a bit of pocket change on the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal — there are efforts to improve the ticketing, for instance. The piece that’s gone completely AWOL, however, is the plan to completely redesign the notoriously utilitarian ferry terminal — an idea that became the subject of a high-minded design competition hosted a decade ago by Waterfront Toronto and which has since vanished into the ether. [Update: A Waterfront Toronto spokesperson says that “should full project funding be identified, the master plan concept selected through the previous design competition would be a starting point for revisiting the design.”]
Setting aside aesthetics, you’d think that the custodians of the Toronto Island might be contemplating contingency plans for maintaining access during the period when the dockside infrastructure is being re-built, but you’d be wrong.
Besides tacitly discouraging more visitors, the Master Plan’s few sentences devoted to the prospect of a pedestrian/cyclist-only fixed link — tunnel or bridge — across the Eastern Gap implies that such a “generational” undertaking is comparable in complexity to a moon shot. As a sidenote: at council last week, a member’s motion tabled by Don Valley East councillor Jon Burnside asks staff to report on the feasibility of such a connection, which many have advocated, most recently city council candidate April Engelberg.
There’s nothing especially complicated about this idea from an engineering or political point of view. After all, when Porter founder Robert Deluce wanted to connect Billy Bishop to the foot of Bathurst, he found ways to cajole the powers that be to build a tunnel under the Western Gap at a pace virtually unheard of in this city.
A permanent link at the east end makes abundantly good sense from a planning perspective, given all the population growth anticipated in coming years for the Port Lands, East Bayfront and the Lever Brothers site. Despite all that, the City’s parks mandarins — and the “stakeholder” groups that whisper in their ears — have prevailed with a schemata that prioritizes Toronto’s unkillable Toryism over the very real and specific needs of the contemporary city.
In the Master Plan, that priggish controlling impulse comes dressed up as environmental and Indigenous concern, wayfinding, programming, and all the other subtle ways that the City communicates its deep seated mistrust of Torontonians when they have the temerity to avail themselves of the city’s public spaces.
Next thing you know, they’ll even want to have fun.
The post LORINC: The Gordian Knot that is Toronto Island appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #10: Broadzilla (TODzilla) appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Much-needed repair work to the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway began this spring, sparking a lot of consternation about the disruptions to drivers resulting from the work. In response, this week City Council approved a motion from Mayor Chow asking Transportation staff to look for ways to accelerate the project.
It is sad, yet not surprising, to see Council spring into action to save drivers a few minutes on their commute, while at the same time larger safety issues that are looming for vulnerable road users around the urban expressway are left undiscussed.
In November 2023, Mayor Chow and Premier Ford came together, agreeing to a historic financial new deal between the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario. This deal centres on the province taking over the large financial burden of the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway (DVP). Six months later, there are still a lot of details to be worked out and questions to be answered. While the financial implications for the city are significant, a deeper question must be asked: what is the city losing in handing over these highways?
There are three potential consequences of this deal:
1) Loss of Control Over Road UseOne of the most significant implications of the province taking control of the Gardiner and DVP is the loss of municipal authority over road use and projects. The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) will gain jurisdiction over everything within 400 metres of an on-off ramp, or the centerline of the highway. This includes sidewalks, curbs, bike lanes, and safety islands. For the Gardiner, this 400-metre radius extends from the lake in the south to Queen Street in the north. That’s a big chunk of real estate that impacts the residents of Canada’s largest city.
The experience of municipalities in Ontario seeking MTO approval for road improvements within this 400-metre zone is very discouraging. The province seems uninterested in supporting municipal requests for much-needed safety upgrades. By giving up control of these highways, Toronto may be sacrificing its ability to build Complete Streets that support critical city plans and policies, like TransformTO climate goals. Densely populated neighborhoods like Parkdale, Liberty Village, and Mimico, as well as the Lakeshore East LRT, an important transit project that Mayor Chow campaigned on, are all areas that would be subject to MTO oversight. As the experience of the Eglinton Crosstown construction has shown, provincial oversight of transit projects does not always go very well.
2) Conflicting Road Safety & Vision Zero PrioritiesMany on-off ramps along the Gardiner and DVP do not conform to current MTO guidelines. which prioritize moving motor vehicles at very high speeds. This priority directly conflicts with the city’s posted speed limits and Vision Zero Road Safety Plan. Reducing traffic fatalities and serious injuries (KSIs) hinges on reducing the volume of speeding traffic, especially in areas bounded by arterials and on-off ramps to expressways and 400 series highways. MTO’s guidelines do not allow for signalized stops, which are essential for enhancing road safety.
Consider Toronto’s recent safety improvements to the DVP ramp eastbound on Danforth Avenue. These enhancements, including a signalized intersection to separate cars and bikes, might never have been possible under MTO leadership. What if MTO wants to remove such safety features, or rejects similar installations in other locations? When the city and MTO disagree, the province will win, every time.
3) Lost Opportunities for Economic Development and Public HealthOver the years, Toronto has benefited from repurposing and revitalizing sections of the Gardiner and DVP. Numerous community events, such as Bike for Brain Health, utilize these highways to promote public health and recreation. The City has transformed parts of these highways into iconic spaces like The Bentway and Love Park. The Six Points interchange project in Etobicoke will see a vibrant, mixed-use, transit-oriented community built in place of a tangled network of highway interchanges and car-centric infrastructure. All these initiatives provide significant public health benefits, support TransformTO’s climate goals, and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in economic benefits. However, these initiatives may come to an end if the MTO gains control of the urban expressways. Public space and public health have never been MTO priorities.
While the financial aspects of Toronto’s new deal with the province are important, it’s vital to consider the broader implications of this transaction. The City may be giving up more than just highways; it could be surrendering control over the future of its road safety and climate action goals, along with countless opportunities for a more sustainable urban environment. It’s essential that both the province and the city carefully evaluate the long-term consequences and strike an agreement that allows Toronto to maintain control over its destiny while benefiting from the financial relief this deal offers. Only by considering the hidden costs can we ensure a brighter and more sustainable future for our city.
David Simor is Co-Chair, Toronto Alliance for Safe and Active Streets (TCAT, Cycle Toronto, 8 80 Cities, Toronto Environmental Alliance, Access Alliance Multicultural Health & Community Services, Friends and Families for Safe Streets, Walk Toronto, Bicycle Mayor of Toronto)
The post OP-ED: What the Province’s takeover of the Gardiner and DVP really means appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #9: Eby Must Be This Tall appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Given all the powerful arguments articulated by commentators like Elsa Lam, in Canadian Architect, or Alex Bozikovic, in The Globe and Mail, there’s every reason to conclude that the Doug Ford government’s abrupt and unjustified move to shutter the Ontario Science Centre last Friday is yet another disgraceful example of its taste for demolition by neglect.
Ford and his infrastructure minister Kinga Surma seem to know exactly how they want this story to end. Meanwhile, the rapidly swelling ranks of those opposed now includes individuals who are offering, quite remarkably, to pay for the roof repairs out of their own pockets in order to keep the pioneering institution open to school groups, tourists and local residents.
How this confrontation resolves in the short term is anyone’s guess.
What I’d like to focus on, however, is the longer term, and the role of this complex of iconic buildings in what will become, two or three decades hence, a dense hub with tens of thousands of new apartments and offices, all served by one of Toronto’s few rapid transit interchanges. Once the Ontario Line and the Eglinton Crosstown are up and running, the intersection of Don Mills and Eglinton is certain to evolve into a bustling city-centre, potentially like Yonge and Eglinton, North York City Centre or Scarborough Town Centre.
To my mind, there are two parallel but not entirely overlapping issues at play here: one has to do with the future of the Science Centre as an institution and the other involves the future of Raymond Moriyama’s exceptional building.
Ford & Co. are obviously determined to relocate the institution to Ontario Place, in the face of a growing stack of reports and audits recommending otherwise. Yet as even Queen’s Park concedes, such a move doesn’t preclude the existence of an OSC satellite on the current site. Indeed, many great museums operate multiple sites, and there’s no reason why the OSC shouldn’t have a second location programmed more specifically at school groups, for instance.
If we accept this change — and I respect the fact that many people don’t — then the City and Queen’s Park have an generational opportunity to engage in a much more forward-looking dialogue about renovating and repurposing parts of a very large structure such that it serves the needs of a populous community centred on Don Mills and Eglinton.
Toronto, of course, has a terrible track record when it comes to protecting its architectural heritage from the wrecking ball. But when we’ve figured out how to save old buildings, we do a respectable and even imaginative job at recycling them. Think of examples like the Wychwood Streetcar Barns, the Distillery District, Queen’s Quay, York’s Glendon campus, several theatres, and the Brickworks. There’s no reason the OSC can’t join this club.
Moriyama designed the OSC in three distinct but interconnected parts, and these have been expanded further over the years to produce a highly modular complex, not all of which has architectural value (e.g., the back-of-house structures on the lower level). With some imagination, it isn’t difficult to envision the OSC re-configured to house multiple community facilities and services, as well as an OSC satellite, all while preserving and restoring the unique parts of Moriyama’s architecture.
What might be on the list of tenants? A library for sure (there are none in the area), offices for local non-profits, performance spaces (e.g., the high-ceilinged interiors of the display halls), artists’ studios, recording facilities, affordable programming spaces for community groups, health clinics, etc., etc.
It’s true the City is in the middle of a meandering exercise to build a new community centre on the old Celestica site, on the north-west quadrant of the intersection. The funding comes from Section 37 grants tied to the redevelopment planned for that property and others nearby.
The planning process for this facility began in 2018 and likely won’t produce a functioning building until 2030. When it opens, the new Don Mills Community Recreation Centre, like most such Parks Forestry and Recreation projects, will primarily serve as a sports facility, with rinks and pools and gyms, plus a bit of generic rental space at the edges.
I have no problem with sports-based recreation facilities, of course, but no one should pretend that this community centre alone will meet the demand for all the many sorts of non-residential/non-commercial spaces required to serve the sustained influx of new residents and families to what has long been an under-served neighbourhood. What’s more, the flow of funding for such amenities will slow significantly in coming years due to provincially mandated reductions to development levies that have long been used to fund community spaces.
We know all too well how school boards and the provincial education funding formula have dramatically short-changed vertical newcomer communities in places like Flemingdon, across the street from the OSC, or Thorncliffe Park (e.g., Grenoble Public, a JK-6 school that’s a 15-minute walk from OSC, will be at 158% capacity by 2025, according to Toronto Lands Corp.). While the TDSB is considering a new public school in this area, the planning is highly preliminary and it’s a safe bet that lots of the newly planned towers will go up long before it gets built.
You don’t need to look too hard to find earlier examples of dense vertical neighbourhoods built without adequate local amenities/services (e.g. St. James Town), and whose low-income/newcomer residents suffered for years as a result. Toronto also has a stellar example of the opposite in St. Lawrence, which was developed from the get-go as a complete community. The new Regent Park was also rebuilt with a keen awareness of the importance of third spaces.
My point here is that if city and provincial officials can see beyond the political sparring over the location of the Science Centre, they could commence a constructive planning exercise that would save a valuable heritage structure, avoid the massive amount of waste and carbon generated by demolishing and then redeveloping a huge building, and create the kind of community infrastructure that becomes incredibly costly to shoehorn into mature neighbourhoods. As the saying goes, not an either/or but rather a both/and.
Yes, such a directional shift will require capital investment and involve some technical complexity. But these are by no means insurmountable obstacles. The tab at the end of the exercise will surely be less than what it would cost to start from scratch. And the real dividends, in terms of community building, will be measured not in dollars but quality of life.
photos courtesy of Moriyama Teshima Architects
The post LORINC: The case for adaptive re-use of Ontario Science Centre appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #8: Civic Assets for Sale. Welcome to the Parq Stanley Cup Hotel and Casino. appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
City of Glassholes
World Classholes
dog eat downward dog
city of narrow shoulders
city of broad stereotypes
city that ever sleeps
long legs running off at the mouth
view corridor
view corridor
view corridor
short tight-packed sipsters press long espressos for fat lattes
each vacant condo a bright guiding light of false hope above a marathon of dope
the cubic checkbox of an obvious tax dodge, a marathon of nope
seafoam green
seafoam green
seafoam green
adam smith grind late capitalism economic pressure flip
take a little bitcoin my heart with your rubber cheque in the alpha mail
you are the wind above my wings that cuts like a knife in my back
land of the free, market
home of the brave, new world
home on the range, rover
typical floor
typical floor
typical floor
nation of mullions, eyes glazed into curtain walls of passive solar aggression
crystal-clear high-gloss scalpel-thin panes of exclusion slicing have from not
smells like guillotine spirit under this class ceiling so uncracked by a smile
a seitan chicken in every pot, an übervillain in every garage
northern exposure 86ed by false cliques
landmindful lululemmings stretch incredible assumptions, tall stories above
a tense city of renovictims, in a vanxiety down by renovictory square
twenty tenants pack a vancouver special, a postwar terryfoxhole
twenty landlords torch olympic village warehouses, insuring gold metals
flame fentannihilated by rain downloaded from the cloud
see walls
see walls
see walls
City of Glassholes
World Classholes
Derek DeLand has designed the architecture of tall towers, urban tech hubs, entertainment, hotels, art schools, theatres, residential, Passive Haus, seniors housing, master plans, skateplazas, skateparks, public art and competitions. • Vancouver-based, with built work in BC, Canada, Seattle, UK, Mexico and even Paris, Derek has collaborated with a wide range of clients, from municipalities to high-profile developers to BC Housing. • Educated at U of Calgary and UBC SALA, Derek has been featured in Migrating Landscapes for the Venice Biennale of Architecture, has an award from IOC IPC IAKS for sport architecture, awards for concrete design from BCRMCA and Ontario Concrete, and a Certificate of Recognition from the AIBC. • Also a writer, he’s been published in Architizer, Spacing, Canadian Architect, and international design books and magazines, and has done public speaking in Los Angeles and the UK. • Derek’s architecture is idea-driven, highly creative, sculptural, movement-oriented, tectonic and experiential.
Beautiful dichroic glass art courtesy of talented artist, designer and non-glasshole @cinderkrukstudio.
The post City of Glassholes appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Following the appointment of Charles E. Chambers as Parks Commissioner in 1912, Toronto’s park system entered a period of continuous expansion, creating new parks, playgrounds and recreation centres to meet the needs of a growing population.
Between 1913 and 1939, Arthur Goss produced more than 2,000 photos for the Parks Department. His work on this commission overlapped with work he was doing for the City Architect’s office and the Board of Education. It involved a combination of landscape and architectural photography, sports action shots and portraiture.
Although Toronto during that era had a reputation for being dull and sanctimonious, the photos in this series depict Torontonians engaged in celebratory social rituals, educational activities and friendly sports competition. Organized sports included baseball, football, hockey, tennis, soccer, swimming, gymnastics and lawn bowling.
One popular new park, Willowvale, opened in 1909. Only in 1983 did this facility acquire its current name, Christie Pits. Goss’s 1922 photo of a baseball game shows the main diamond already established in the northeast corner of the site. It also records the unfinished state of the park. Spectators sit on the rough slopes of the original sand pit which are today covered in grass.
Parks No. 1001, May 13, 1922
Willovale (Christie Pits)
City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0052-it1001Starting in 1914, Goss was assigned to take portraits of each season’s champions in the individual and group sports that fell under the aegis of the Parks Department. The victorious athletes were usually photographed outdoors under shadowless skylight. They were posed in variety of configurations, sitting or standing, in a single row or in tiers, frontally or in profile. The background might be the entrance to a field house or the edge of a sports field. These variations give life to what might otherwise have devolved into a rote exercise.
Parks No. 1339, March 3, 1928
Carlton Park Bantams, Playground Champions, 1928
City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0052-it1339While Toronto continues to add new features to its parks, including indigenous storytelling circles, sculptural lounge chairs and luxurious dog corrals, the photos Goss took of High Park and Toronto Island Park are for me a reminder of the need for a less determined kind of recreational space.
In choosing the group of images posted below, I have attempted to represent all the major subjects Arthur Goss’s covered in his Parks series over the 27 years he worked on it.
See earlier articles in this series:
- The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 1: : Career and technique
- The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 2: The housing series, 1936-1940
Click on any image below to launch the photo gallery
The post The urban photography of Arthur Goss, Part 3: Parks and Recreation, 1913-1940 appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #7: Welcome to the Bellagio Casino at Kits Pool! appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Stupid is as stupid does. We’ve forgotten how to make cities that work for everyone.
Critics will say that our local affordability crises can be root-caused by Vancouver’s longstanding, hyper-capitalistic, approach to rewarding development proponents with density, height and other land use entitlements in exchange for better livability, neighbourliness and contextual response. There is truth to this criticism of what, at the time, was considered world-leading best practice. Our highly discretionary zoning simply never went far enough to secure affordable housing in exchange for taller, denser buildings.
Reaching back to the advent of this type of zoning, a unique system that awarded economic wealth in exchange for making cities and their neighbourhoods better, we can hopefully appreciate the proactive intention of “enjoying” the market in a way that served all interests, not just those of development proponents. We became decently effective at administrating this win-win approach after a few decades of practice. The entire world was interested in how we would work more creatively with the development community in a way that secured public benefits for all to enjoy. We practiced, through our home-grown approach to regulation, how to share. We were able to achieve an amenity-rich city without overly rewarding speculators who contribute nothing to making our lives better.
The development industry prospered while we strengthened the city by focusing on our distinctive neighbourhoods. Our shared “zoning wealth” was attributed to social, cultural, and recreational needs. Housing was not out of reach and somewhat aligned with local incomes. Property taxes were kept low and contributed to political stability. Senior levels of government were participating in non-market housing that, while always insufficient, at least augmented what the city could generate via the market.
Urban design mattered too, with the market financially benefitting from best practices that made projects more saleable.
Then it all fell apart. Simply, we should have asked for more. Land prices would have adjusted to meet more socially responsible discretionary approval obligations, including affordable housing.
Arguably, because we did not do this, the discretionary tools that helped negotiate productive market responses that strengthened local communities, have now been sidelined in favour of simplistic (in the case of the Broadway Plan – unsophisticated) re-zoning programs that first generously award speculators, and second, produce heavily relied on (read: presumptive) development revenue for capital projects to keep property taxes “artificially” low. All before housing is actually constructed.
The end renter/purchaser pays for these costs disguised as “business as usual”. We do not question whether we are being smart about how we do this, with the consequences of shackling our young people to their rents and mortgage payments. The current “let’s re-zone our way to affordability” is having the opposite effect of stealing their future. No amount of supply produced under the current development paradigm—especially generated by expensive towers requiring land assembly—will make their lives better.
We have developed bad habits.
Ok, so our old system of city-making was complicit in the ever-increasing costs of land and related housing. Again, no argument from me that we “released the development hounds” as we practiced better ways to engage the market. Being amenity-rich comes with a cost. We at least got something back over those decades of practicing—amenities, livability, neighborliness, character—for our genuine attempt to make a better city for all.
But more recently, self-promotional political leadership aided and abetted by senior bureaucrats, “imported” planning leaders who were more interested in personal legacy than proactively involving neighbourhoods to address the grand challenges of the day. Staff attrition and a related lack of best practice training have led to corporate memory loss and a disconnect of shared values. This, coupled with the budgetary pressures of a growing region exacerbated by senior government downloading, has caused governments to develop bad habits.
With each passing day, these habits grow, becoming accepted as accepted behavior. The current momentum is too strong to reverse through public engagement and consultation, especially when solutions are well-developed before they hit open houses.
Very bad habits.
These take us even further away from what truly matters—a city that works for everyone. Local governments have little capacity to learn from their policy mistakes, let alone confess when they are or were wrong. Instead, the opposite happens with “another new policy” extending or amplifying bad practice momentum, leading to worse policies that do the opposite of their intention, which we hope is to generate affordable housing so all people can thrive.
But is creating truly affordable housing for all the real intention of recent policies, including the Broadway Plan and Provincial Bill 47?
These have put the speculative market into hyperdrive. As of this writing, approximately 60 towers are proposed for the Broadway Corridor! Yet, this is still not enough to satisfy the City of Vancouver and their “development partner”—the Province of British Columbia.
Or…is the real driver that underpins recent housing policies simply focused on producing more addresses that generate new property taxes, with towers as the most exploitive form for printing $ because upper floor views of our awesome natural setting generate higher assessments and produce more taxes compared with lower scaled buildings without mountain or ocean views.?
These new towers—housing an expanded tax base—are the gift that keeps on giving so that municipal taxes remain as low as possible, with our children picking up the bill.
Again, they pay as we steal from their future. I would not be surprised if somewhere, hidden away in a locked file cabinet, is a spreadsheet comparing presumptive tax revenue of “towers with awesome views” vs “neighbourhood-scaled buildings, that do not block bust, while providing family-sized housing with ground-oriented addresses”.
Local governments should rebrand as “Towers R Us”.
None of these freshly minted towers are truly affordable when indexed to local incomes. Again, land speculators will take their pound of flesh at the beginning before re-zoning and related development applications are submitted—with many investors also just sitting on their assembled land, waiting for future policies that further reward their land banking, as with the current Broadway Plan.
Let’s not forget that re-zonings are the most expensive approval process ever conceived. We continue building in concrete— expensive! We continue to put a few cars underground—expensive! And, of course, tower projects need to be cleverly named and marketed to distinguish themselves and gain market share.
Our kids pay for all of this.
Yet, we continue to ram these projects, generated under the current development paradigm, down their throats. Oh, and they block bust, too.Yes, a few landowners who are lucky enough to have their overpriced property acquired and assembled can retire early to somewhere exotic.
Our kids pay for their early retirement, beach time, and fruity drinks.
Well, at least the folks living next to these new towers are in perpetual shade as global temperatures rise.
It is time to hit pause and realize the madness our leaders and highly paid civil servants have created, to better understand how we arrived at this moment. We can then take stock of how to produce true affordability by re-tooling how we engage with the market so that a leaner, neighbourhood-friendly, approach to city making can be understood, implemented and practiced.
This is not a dream. It is possible through more productive discussions leading to better ideas.
There is a better way that relies on minimal land assembly, more efficient approvals, smarter construction approaches, and little to no marketing or real estate commissions. The projects sell themselves to families and friends.
There are better practices that keep private land private, opening up new possibilities for wealth creation and family legacy over time. No more non-value-added speculation, flipping or additional costs of our current exploitive development culture is required. This serves very few, and as mentioned, ultimately, our kids pay for it.
Current landowners can still retire early and sip fruity drinks on an exotic beach. They can do this without selling their land—a gift that keeps on returning value to themselves, to their kids, and to your loved ones.
We already have all of the regulatory tools to do this. We have simply put them away when they could evolve to better achieve the social objective of true affordability. Land prices will adjust.
To those that have overpaid in their presumptive speculation: get over it…you will still make a generous profit.
Otherwise, our bad habits will only get worse—as now under consideration with the Broadway Plan. Political leaders simply need to roll up their sleeves and take the time to understand that there are better ways to achieve the shared goal of cities that work for everyone.
This assumes our leaders care about what is truly important. Hopefully, better ideas will be habit-forming.
Scot Hein is a retired architect, former senior urban designer at the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia. He is an adjunct professor of Urban Design at UBC, lecturer at Simon Fraser University and founding board member of the Urbanarium.
The post Practicing Bad Habits appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #6: Sim City appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
“There’s a tranquil spot at Georgina Point on Mayne Island where I sat in 2021 and looked back across the Salish Sea to the mainland. It was a clear day, the north shore mountains and the towers of Vancouver faintly visible in the left distance but so far away as to be just a memory. As I painted, the water lapped against the rocks and a seal swam slowly by.
A gnarled arbutus tree clings to the rocks there – like many on the BC coast, it is ailing, slowly dying of a fungus and the repeated droughts of climate change. I thought of the totem poles on Haida Gwaii, left to fall to the forest floor and slowly return to the soil, not preserved the way settler culture – my culture – tries to do with its art, buildings, and monuments. And how many years I’ve spent watching Vancouver change and evolve, trying to keep its culture alive.”
- From the Afterword
Text and art by Michael Kluckner, Midtown Press, 2024
For over three decades now, our understanding of the Lower Mainland in BC has had the benefit of Michael Kluckner’s watercolours. Whether of buildings that have now been demolished or others that have defied the real estate lottery and remain standing, Kluckner’s adept eye has captured the zeitgeist of Vancouver and its environs in a much different way than historians like Hal Kalman and Chuck Davis, or journalists Frances Bula and Kerry Gold.
With Kluckner, one is given the impression of this place—the way light plays on the trees that surround an old Craftsman in Kitsilano, for example—and the body of work he has done over the years is astonishing, captured in the many books he’s published since the 1980s. As he notes in the introduction, Surviving Vancouver is in response to three collections of his paintings, but most notably Vancouver the Way it Was (1984) which he released leading up to Expo ’86. To see how much has changed over the years, his art is accompanied by his erudite experience of growing up in Vancouver, especially through the activist spirit of the 1970s.
Divided into two parts, the first half of the book looks at the buildings and places that have survived the region’s rampant development over the last three decades, with one casualty depicted on the book’s cover—the Landmark Hotel on Robson Street—the demolition of which Kluckner refers to as a climate crime. It is one of many buildings that are now gone from our streetscape, including the old Ridge movie theatre in Kitsilano which is now just a sign on the side of another real estate development. As such, the first half of the book is an up-to-the-moment snapshot of our surreal real estate market, including depictions of tents on the streets alongside articles on empty home taxes and short-term rentals.
A lengthy section dedicated to the zoning evolution of housing in Shaughnessy is paralleled by another focusing on Chinatown, both portrayed as positive narratives compared to those of Japantown and Hogan’s Alley, two neighbourhoods that have not survived to our present day. Reflecting on his initial paintings of these places, he never could’ve foreseen their transformation into contested spaces, where soaring real estate values would intersect with truth and reconciliation efforts. Vancouver is now in a turbulent period of repositioning, and Kluckner’s artwork and historical writings serve both at once as a poignant reminder of our recent past while pointing to potential future paths forward.
In the second half of the book, Kluckner explores the experience of trying to survive in Vancouver amidst our current real estate climate. A telling sign of the book’s timeline is his mention that the Crab Park encampment remained intact, something that changed in early 2024. He traces its origins to earlier encampments like those in Oppenheimer Park, reaching further back to the era of the Great Depression when unemployed men hopped off boxcars to establish shantytowns near Ballantyne Pier. This section starkly illustrates the great divide between the affluent and the marginalized, juxtaposing the history of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with portrayals of new multi-tower developments around Oakridge and Brentwood malls.
In one of the book’s more whimsical moments, Kluckner riffs on the Gesamtkunstwerk of the Vancouver House—a recent addition to the city skyline—with another expression, “schadenfreude,” to describe the debacle when a water main gave way shortly after the building opened, flooding twenty luxury condos. His wit and sense of humour have graced all of his books, including my personal favourite Vanishing Vancouver (2012), in which he provides illustrations of several Vancouver house types, including the notorious Vancouver Special.
While he may think of himself as an artist first and an activist second, he describes his meeting with Caroline Adderson when she published Vancouver Vanishes in 2015 as the moment when he realized Vancouver was demolishing thousands of the very houses he had been painting every year, replacing many with empty monster homes built for the real estate speculation industry. And while much of what he recounts here will be familiar to many, there are several gems peppered throughout the book, including the demonstration at Lost Lagoon in 1971—itself a tent city occupation—to protest the plans to build a 15-storey multi-tower commercial development at the doorstep of Stanley Park. While the development never got built, the ensuing violent VPD cracked down on the protesters became known as the Gastown Riots, and has been immortalized by Stan Douglas in a photomural at the new Woodwards development close to where the riot occurred.
But more than any of his previous books, Surviving Vancouver is a reconciliation with the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh who have stewarded and shared this land we call Vancouver since time immemorial. While this acknowledgment is a start, he notes we still have much work to do, succinctly capturing in his watercolours the struggle of people from all walks of life. He notes how no one had cellphones in those early paintings from the 80s and 90s, something much different than today. Kluckner also updates his visual narratives to include short-term rental folks on city sidewalks with their luggage, along with a tattooed youth on their laptop in a coffee shop.
Michael Kluckner continues to be our modern Virgil—guiding us now as he has so many times before. Surviving Vancouver is a blueprint to help us navigate the tumultuous changes affecting our city. We are better for being able to see the world through his eyes, impressing on us a view of the world where we could collectively re-imagine and re-evaluate this place we call Vancouver.
For more information on Surviving Vancouver, visit Midtown Press.
**
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
The post Book Review: Surviving Vancouver appeared first on Spacing National.
In 1979, when the renowned American sociologist William (Holly) Whyte published The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces — which is, let’s face it, a love letter to New York — he was training his gaze on a city that had been through the ringer.
After decades of Robert Moses’ mega-project megalomania, Greenwich Village had only just narrowly escaped his bulldozers. The South Bronx was on fire. The subways were a stinking mess. Crime had spiked. Muggers lurked in Central Park. And even as the city teetered on the brink of insolvency, Gerald Ford famously shot down then Mayor Ed Koch’s plea for a bailout.
Yet amidst the chaos, something was germinating. Night clubs and artists’ lofts were colonizing the abandoned warehouses of lower Manhattan. Hit musicals were drawing audiences back to the Great White Way. And a new marketing slogan, “I New York,” revealed, at least initially, something about the affection New Yorkers felt for their bedraggled home.
Perhaps sensing a change in the urban zeitgeist, Whyte and his researchers took their clipboards and video-cameras to a handful of Manhattan public spaces and set to work documenting the ways in which New Yorkers used New York — where on the sidewalk they stopped to speak to one another, how and where they sat for lunch, what caught their attention as they moved down busy sidewalks.
Arguably the most far-reaching observation in Social Life is also the most quotidian: “People,” Whyte wrote, “tend to sit most where there are places to sit.”
Allowing that his adage may not be “a bombshell,” Whyte went on to parse what makes for a good place to sit in public space — seat backs, comfort, armrests, etc. But seating, he added, “should be socially comfortable [emphasis added].”
In other words, lots of options — stairs, ledges, benches, etc. — as well as moveable chairs, which “enlarge choice.” “To move into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put (pp 34-35).”
New York today bursts with the energy that flowered from Whyte’s words. After former mayor Michael Bloomberg empowered his transportation commissioner Janet Sadik-Khan to fully or partially close hundreds of city blocks and fill them with thousands of simple folding chairs and tables, New York’s public spaces exploded with the vitality that surfaces when people reclaim pavement from the zealous dominion of the automobile.
Those chairs and tables, by the way, are now everywhere, including parks. And despite the crowds, there always seem to be lots of unoccupied ones — a testament to New York’s rejection of stinginess as a design principle. This kind of seating is plentiful in cities like Paris, London, and Boston. Jan Gehl, the high priest of public space and an advisor to Sadik-Khan, has been advocating moveable chairs for years, as have advocacy groups like the venerable Project for Public Spaces.
Some cities, of course, provide extensive public seating in their parks — Mexico City, Madrid, Montreal — and so there’s less need to augment the existing street furniture.
With the exception of a couple of bespoke parks that have been (re-)designed primarily with tourists in mind — Berczy or the recently opened Love Park — Toronto doesn’t do moveable anything. Park benches and picnic tables are mostly bolted or shackled in place, and there are, as everyone who uses public space in Toronto knows, not nearly enough of them. Some BIAs set out a few of those fake Muskoka chairs to add a splash of colour to a corner, but these cumbersome objects don’t exactly invite re-arranging.
So as we roll towards July, I’ll pose the eternal question (and hopefully Mayor Olivia Chow is listening): Why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is Toronto so parsimonious with the provision of pedestrian-grade seating in our public parks and squares?
For clarity, I’m not talking about the ones we show to company. What about on Toronto Island (which we’re not supposed to visit because, to quote Yogi Berra, it’s so crowded no one goes there anymore)? Trinity Bellwoods? High Park? David Pecaut Square? Rosehill Reservoir? Or the sprawling suburban parks filled to the brim on summer weekends with extended families, many of them newcomers, who bring grills and tents and coolers and, of necessity, their own Canadian Tire folding chairs because, well, there are no chairs…
I do actually know the answer: because to do so will (pick any of the following) wrest control from the Parks department; invite, ahem, undesirable activity; and trigger the spending of public money on public space, which we absolutely can’t tolerate.
Spacing has spilled plenty of digital ink on the subject of improving the design, placement and configuration of Toronto’s park benches. The City’s response has always been lugubrious (see previous paragraph), and the ensuing civic conversations rarely lead to improvements, beyond the aforementioned showcase parks, which are intended to leave tourists with the (incorrect) impression that we are way more cosmopolitan than we actually are.
Instead, we burrow into very deep rabbit holes, at the ends of which are warrens of circular debates about accessible design, hostile design, high-concept design and, well, cost.
It seems to me that if Toronto council can get its head around drinking in the parks and opening park bathrooms, it should be able to muddle through what is an incredibly easy fix without resorting to all the usual bureaucratic foreplay of consultations and pilot projects and surveys.
The City could simply buy a whole lot of those cheap and cheerful folding chairs and tables, and then leave them in public places, with the proviso that Parks department staffers cable them up at night and unfold them in the morning. Maybe a few will get palmed or broken, but almost certainly many more will not only get used; they’ll invite others to partake of the city’s extensive park network.
Over two generations ago, in a city struggling to extricate itself from a depressing funk, William Whyte told New York officials to have a little faith in the choices that ordinary city-dwellers made.
With Summer, 2024, upon us, the evergreen question Toronto and its public-spirited mayor faces is not “how,” but rather “why not?”
The post LORINC: The public space miracle of the moveable chair (redux) appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
It’s Bike Month! It’s a time we celebrate cycle culture in Toronto and surrounding cities and towns. At least officially. Despite some significant gains in cycling infrastructure, there are still a lot of people and (more troubling) politicians who’d like to run riders off the road.
To put this all into perspective, we spoke to Lanrick Bennett Jr., a cycling advocate who, for the last few years, has represented Toronto as the Bicycle Mayor.
And, Spacing co-founder Shawn Micallef tells us about the new edition of his book Stroll: psychogeographic walking tours of Toronto. In 2010, Shawn wrote the book as a series of guided walks, with historic background and personal reflections, through different parts of the city. Now, 14 years later, he’s retread those steps for a brand new version of the book.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.
Spacing Radio · Episode 78: Bike MonthThe post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 078, Bike Month appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Eric Davies is one of Toronto’s most vocal advocates for the heritage oak trees that have managed to survive in this rapidly developing urban environment. For more than a decade, Eric has been collecting and propagating acorns from the city’s oldest oak trees and giving young trees to community projects, schools, residents’ associations, Indigenous land stewards, neighbours—basically, anyone who’s concerned about Toronto’s urban forest and wants to grow trees for the future.
Ironically, the mini-forest Eric has planted in front of the apartment building where he lives in Toronto’s west end is now under threat. The City has issued a Notice of Violation, ordering the vegetation—oak saplings and native perennials—cut to below 0.85 metres and the removal of the 100-year-old red oak log Eric salvaged, with permission, from the City’s forestry facility and that serves as a welcoming neighbourhood bench for passersby.
According to the Notice of Violation, the vegetation is “obstructing/encumbering/damaging/fouling” the street and the “decorative log” causes an “obstruction/nuisance/dangerous condition.”
Like most front-yard gardens in the city, Eric’s planting is on the municipal right-of-way, what’s known as the street allowance, which in small Toronto yards can extend to the porch or house. Perhaps most residents who garden in their small front yards aren’t aware that a significant portion of their planting is actually an encroachment. Indeed, most gardeners care for these right-of-way spaces with impunity. In Eric’s case, most likely someone complained. This triggered an inspection, a Notice of Violation, and an order to cut the trees and plants down to 0.85 metres within seven days or face “further enforcement measures,” including a fine.
Given the City’s goal of increasing the tree canopy to 40 per cent by 2050, one might expect that Eric’s mini-forest would be embraced, not threatened with destruction. Along with his own front-yard contribution to the tree canopy, Eric has given away thousands of oak trees for others to plant. But the value of what he’s doing goes far beyond numbers alone: by propagating acorns from the city’s old-growth oaks, he is preserving the irreplaceable genetics of heritage trees before they succumb to old age, the degraded conditions of the city’s ravines and natural areas, and to development. Eric is a champion of the future forest, preserving through propagation the unique adaptations to local conditions that these oak trees contain in their genetic make-up. Climate change and biodiversity loss add urgency to the crucial work Eric is doing.
The order to cut down to 0.85 metres the oak saplings and the dozens of native perennials Eric has planted with them and that naturally grow in association with oak trees, is an order to cut down a regenerating oak ecosystem. This ecosystem has much in common with the rare oak savanna in High Park, which the City has committed to protecting. Eric’s planting is one piece in what could be—should be—a matrix of oak ecosystem protection in the city.
The Notice of Violation would be understandable if the planting interfered with sightlines or if the log obstructed passage on the sidewalk. But they don’t. The planting is set back at least four feet (1.2 metres) and the log 12-15 inches (30 to 40 cm) from the sidewalk. The sightlines are clear. Nearby, throughout the neighbourhood, are large City-planted street trees, and gardens with plants higher than 0.85 metres in the municipal road allowance. As with Eric’s planting, these feature safety, the ability to see past the trees, and carefully nurtured growth.
The City recently revised its “grass and weeds” bylaw in an effort to support biodiversity and naturalized yards. Eric’s is a banner project in support of these twin, connected goals. Unfortunately, it’s also a banner example of how bylaw enforcement continues to be a problem—whether through the mistaken identification of native plants as prohibited plants or, as in Eric’s case, through claiming there are public safety hazards when there aren’t (indeed, quite the reverse: Eric’s planting contributes to the health of the city and all its inhabitants).
Now that the City has updated its “grass and weeds” bylaw, what needs changing are bylaw enforcement policies. Quite simply, the City needs to stop placing barriers and threatening to punish those who are trying to protect our collective future.
Lorraine Johnson’s most recent book is A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators, co-authored with Sheila Colla.
The post Saving an oak forest – from bylaw enforcement appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra once said: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” This is top of mind for many as the City of Vancouver kicked off four open houses on Saturday—the first in a series that will be held over the next week and a half to gather feedback on proposals related to the controversial Broadway Plan.
A recently published analysis of the proposed 21-storey tower at 1540 West 10th Avenue—with its Q&A session concluding on June 18th—continues the controversial handling of the Plan to date, highlighting a project that breaches regulations within the Broadway Plan itself. This is the second iteration of a design that initially violated the Plan’s regulations and has left the public dazed and confused, further fracturing the little trust remaining between the City and Vancouver citizens.
Designed by the office of mcfarlane biggar architects + designers and submitted by Reliance Properties—led by CEO Jon Stovell—the proposal includes 112 rental units, 20% of which are to be below market rate. For the Number Geeks among us, a building height of 65.8 meters (226 feet) is being requested, with a floor space ratio (FSR) of 6.5. The plan includes 47 new residential parking spaces and replaces 33 commercial spaces per an existing covenant with 2609 Granville Street.
The 3D model was built using measurements from posted drawings, such as the elevation (left) from the rezoning application booklet: building the model up level by level from floor plans. The final rendered elevation is on the right (without terrain).The property was assessed at $8,483,700 as of July 1, 2023, with nearly all value attributed to the land. There has been no sales history in the past three years. The current ownership includes members of the Chechik, Cohen, Goldstein, and Leshgold families, raising questions about the dynamics and beneficiaries of such rezoning initiatives.
The design, described as a ‘tower in the park,’ fails to comply with the Broadway Plan’s specifications across several issues and scales. Some of the key ones are summarized below. The specific regulations are given at the end of this piece, for those who are interested.
At the building scale, the proposal violates the requirement to provide a “consistent 4-storey podium” within residential areas: a regulation created to ensure compatibility with the existing neighbourhood and preserve solar access along the street.
An excerpt from the Broadway Plan showing the requirement for a 4-storey podium (11.4.2).Given the latter, it isn’t surprising that another issue revolves around shadows and solar access. More specifically, the proposal would cast shadows over solar-protected greenspace during the pivotal hours between 10 am and 4 pm on the spring and fall equinoxes. This directly contradicts the solar access guidelines within the Plan designed to preserve sunlight for parks and schoolyards around the city at key times throughout the year.
Excerpt from the Broadway Plan showing the Solar Priority Areas and the Vancouver School Board Park within it.Solar access to the Vancouver School Board greenspace is protected under the Broadway Plan. This proposed rezoning would violate the solar protection rules by introducing new shadow between the spring and fall equinox (at any time between 10am to 4pm) as evident here with the shadow impact for March 20 at 10am.Building height is another area of contention. According to the analysis, the floor-to-floor height maximums of 3.0m are exceeded. In the future, these heights could be reduced a little to allow two extra storeys in the later development permit stage. This is an often-used “bait and switch” tactic that can ultimately lead to the final building exceeding the maximum storeys allowed by the Broadway Plan.
Infractions are apparent even at the scale of the apartment unit. The analysis shows that the tower’s floor plans include two suites per level that lack balconies, deviating directly from the requirement of each dwelling having an outdoor living space.
Required balconies have been omitted for some of units within the building, including the two studio units per level above.This proposal has ultimately ignited a flurry of questions about the Broadway Plan‘s integrity and the forces driving such rezonings and other municipal behaviours. Speculations swirl about the influence of political donations on policy decisions and who truly reap the benefits of these developments. Within this chaos, it’s unclear who is protecting the public interest and what is motivating the City’s blatant violation of its own rules.
In a classic case of baptism by fire, Chief Planner Josh White—who took office on May 1, 2024—faces calls to rigorously enforce the Broadway Plan‘s guidelines. City Manager Paul Mochrie, Mayor Ken Sim, and the City Council are certainly not off the hook, as it is their responsibility to uphold public trust as the city transitions the Vancouver Plan into the Official Development Plan—an act that will eventually phase out public hearings checks and balances. As Piper Stone once said: “Trust is earned, not given” and this situation offers the City an opportunity to earn public trust that has been on a rapid decline since Sim swaggered his way into office.
Vancouverities must also be held accountable, however. This is an opportunity—dare I say, a responsibility—to speak up and demand answers to the shroud behind which the City continues to operate. Public consultation for the rezoning—which was posted on May 17, 2024—allows for direct feedback through an online form until June 18th. Citizens can also post questions on the ShapeYourCity page, where staff supposedly promise responses within two days. However, those who submit questions would be wise to keep track of their submission and whether questions are answered or not.
In a city forever evolving, Vancouver finds itself at a critical moment. The integrity of current city planning and processes rightfully stands under scrutiny. The expectation is clear: the public interest must be safeguarded—a tall order from a City that cannot even honour its own rules, but not an impossible one if citizens demand accountability and transparency. There is still time to move towards a place we know we want to end up.
Below are a few excerpts of the Broadway Plan. The full 500-page document is available here.
Building Height
- 11.1.12 Generally, residential floor-to-floor heights of 3.0 m (10 ft.) are supported, office floor-to-floor heights of 3.65 m (12 ft.) are supported, and industrial floor-to-floor heights of 6.1 m (20 ft.) are supported.
- 11.4.1 A consistent 4-storey podium should be provided in residential areas to create a consistent street wall that is compatible with existing neighbourhood character and preserves solar access across the street.
- Privately-Initiated Rezonings* (p. 70)* : “In all instances, the overall height, density, and form of development should be sensitive to the surrounding context. This would include consideration of street character, views, shadowing, topography, access and circulation, and privacy.”
- “Tower site frontage requirements: The Policy Area summary tables in Chapters 8-10 typically have a minimum site frontage requirement for tower forms. For areas where the minimum site frontage is 36.6 m (120 ft.) to 45.7 m (150 ft.), development proposals with lesser frontage may be considered at the discretion of the Director of Planning, where the proposal meets the following criteria:
- Sites have a minimum frontage of 30.2 metres (99 ft.);
- The project satisfies the Plan’s built form and site design principles; and,
- The applicant demonstrates that the development reasonably mitigates development limitations on adjacent properties.
- Shadow limits (p. 288): “Proposed new development should not create new shadow impact on parks and public school yards from the spring to fall equinoxes between 10AM and 4PM.“
An excerpt from the Broadway Plan.***
Read the in-depth analysis on CityHallWatch here. You can also read the analysis of an earlier iteration of 1540 West 10th Avenue that also violated the Broadway Plan here. For further details on participating in the consultation, visit the ShapeYourCity website.
*
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
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Information matters….and so does context. So, as the City of Vancouver embarks on four open houses related to the Broadway Plan over the next week and a half, we want to share the wonderful information in the interactive map below. Updated to June 12, 2024—and continually refreshed—it shows the active rezoning applications and possible sites for rezoning for the Broadway Plan.
Although the City has its own interactive map for Vancouver as a whole, this one allows viewers to get more nuanced information about the projects easily. It also provides a greater visual understanding of the areas slated for potential change over the coming years, as they relate directly to the Broadway Plan.
Originally published on CityHallWatch, one can click the markers to see further details about each site, including links to City websites, if available. Here is colour-coding convention used:
- Green markers show the approved rezonings
- Red markers are buildings that have been submitted for residential rezoning. However, they are not yet on the City’s ShapeYourCity website. More information about the proposals can be found on the City’s permits page. One can use a creation date range to get rezonings and building grades or search by address for all permits for a property. Note that some properties have both development and building permits.
- Orange markers on the interactive map indicate rezoning applications officially made public through the active listings on Vancouver’s ShapeYourCity.ca portal website for public consultation. Each has links to ShapeYourCity webpages, accordingly.
- Purple markers indicate are used for office/industrial rezonings undergoing consultation.
- Dark blue markers are sites of interest for office/industrial.
- Light blue markers are a catch-all for information including but not limited to pre-rezoning letters of inquiry and exploratory work done.
What does the map show?
As mentioned, the map depicts active rezoning applications along with possible sites for rezoning. Although there are a lot of markers, this represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of the volume of tower applications in the works related to the Broadway Plan. The current list shows over 60 buildings at some stage in the cycle ranging from 5- to 32-storeys. Although most sites have only one tower, some have two. In total, the current list would account for nearly 8,000 units, although one must importantly subtract those lost by demolition and demovictions.
The interactive map is based on independent research and is provided “as-is.” Since applications are continual, one cannot guarantee the accuracy of this map or related information. If you have concerns about any site, please check with the City of Vancouver for further details. For more information about the applications included, see the bottom of this post.
Sharing and Additional Information
If you feel sites are missing or want to share updates or clarifications, please write a comment on CityHallWatch here, email citizenYVR@gmail.com, or use Twitter/X to @CityHallWchVan. There are some of the telltale signs that someone is interested in redeveloping a property including but not limited to delegations of well-dressed persons touring the site; surveyors with equipment doing site surveys and placing survey marks on the sidewalk or road; recent real estate sales; changes in property management companies; and units being left vacant after a tenant moves out of a rental unit.
In the case of multi-unit rental apartment buildings, the potential upheaval and disruptions to individual renters and families can be pronounced, given the amount of displacement and demovictions that may follow after a site is rezoned. If tenants know well in advance that their building might be redeveloped, they may have a better chance to organize and negotiate for better terms—especially if relocation and eviction from their homes is a possible outcome. This map is useful towards this end.
It is important to know that the City introduced what it claims are “enhanced” tenant protections for renters in the Broadway Plan area, to supplement the City’s existing Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy (TRPP). However, some say the “protections” provided offer limited benefits to affected tenants. Consequently, the ABC-dominated Council rejected a motion to simply monitor and track demovictions.
Considering the City’s lack of interest, CityHallWatch is considering a volunteer effort to do so. Please contact them for information. If you are a renter concerned about your situation, Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre (TRAC) is an excellent starting place.
Related more specifically to the Broadway Plan, one can also visit the Vancouver Tenant’s Union (or VTU, see https://www.vancouvertenantsunion.ca/). There sire includes information on RentersPlan as “an alternative to transit-oriented displacement along Broadway.” VTU also has a special page on “How to find out if your building is for sale,” to unite and support tenants who may risk being demovicted. If your apartment building has been identified for redevelopment and the developer and City is holding a briefing, consider networking with your neighbours as well as getting outside help (like the VTU) so that you know your rights.
If you feel sites are missing or want to share updates or clarifications, please write a comment on CityHallWatch here, email citizenYVR@gmail.com, or use Twitter/X to @CityHallWchVan.
Here’s a list of identified sites. Some of these sites may well be abandoned and not go to a rezoning or development permit stage.
| Address | Storeys | Units/use | FSR | Notes/Proponent | | 2520-2532 W 16th Ave | 5 | 2.4 | near Broadway Plan area | | 2267-2275 W 7th Ave | 22 | 190 | 6.8 | mature rental apartment at 2267 W7th | | 2233 W 3rd Ave | 20 | DA Architects + Planners | | 2225 W 8th Ave | 20 | 207 | 6.15 | JTA Development Consultants | | 2226 W 8th Ave | 20 | 185 | 6.33 | Townline Homes Inc. | | 2175 W 7th Ave | 20 | 182 | 6.5 | Gracorp Properties LP | | 2103 W Broadway | DP refused for 11 storeys in 2021 | | 2156-2172 W 14th Ave | 18 | 170 | 5.8 | HAVN Developments Ltd. | | 2096 W Broadway | 30 | 260 | 11.4 | PCI Developments and TransLink | | 1960 W 7th Ave | 20 | 183 | 6.5 | mature rental apartment on site | | 1855 W 2nd Ave | 17 | 184 | 6.5 | JTA Development Consultants | | 1726 W 11th Ave | 20 & 19 | 295 | 6.8 | mature rental apartment on site | | 1750 W 13th Ave | mature rental apartment on site | | 1676 W 11th Ave | 21 | 160 | 6.5 | mature rental apartment on site | | 1635-1645 W 12th | 20 | two mature rental apartment buildings on lot assembly | | 1665-1685 W 11th | 22 | 190 | 6.8 | one mature rental apartment in lot assembly | | 2323 Fir St | 12 DP | 46 | Building Permit for 12 storeys | | 1551 W 7th Ave | 21 | 125 | 8 | La Maison de la Francophonie / would shade Burrard Slopes Park | | 1540 W 10th Ave | 20 | 98 | 6.5 | Reliance and DIALOG | | 1550 W 11th Ave | 17 | 124 | 6.5 | JTA Development Consultants | | 1551-1535 W16th Ave | 20 | Stuart Howard Architects Inc. | | 2301-2329 Granville St | 8 DP | not under construction | | 1434 W 8th Ave | 25 | 162 | 8.07 | PCI Developments Corp. | | 1414 W Broadway | 30 | Stuart Howard Architects Inc. | | 1441 W Broadway | Shato Holdings Ltd. | | 1364 W 11th Ave | 20 | 175 | 6.48 | mature rental apartment on site, opposite side of laneway from 1365 W12th rezoning | | 1305 W 13th Ave | 20 | 180 | mature rental apartment on site | | 1365 W 12th Ave | 20 | 116 | 6.5 | mature rental apartment on site | | 1368-1398 W Broadway | previously a gas station (fenced off) at 1398 W Broadway | | 1395 W Broadway | 24 | office | 9 | Yuanheng BH Developments Ltd. | | 1245-1265 W 10th Ave | 20 | 164 | 6.5 | 3 mature rental apartments on lot assembly | | 1190 W 10th Ave` | 21 | 172 | 6.8 | JTA Development Consultants / StudioOne | | 1171 W 12th Ave | 17 | Stuart Howard Architects Inc. | | 1045 W 14th Ave | 20 | 202 | 5.95 | Wall Financial | | 2219-2285 Cambie St | 10 | office | 7.48 | MCM Partnership / Nicola Wealth Real Estate | | 855-865 W 10th Ave | 12 | office | 6.12 | rezoning approved May 9, 2023, no construction | | 426 W 14th Ave | 18 | 134 | 5.5 | Stuart Howard Architects Inc. | | 288 W 8th Ave | 7 | office-industrial | MA+HG Architects | | 210 W 6th Ave | 11 | office and HRA | 6.6 | PC Urban Properties Corp., in view cone 3.2.4a | | 121 W 11th Ave | 18 | 165 | 5.8 | HAVN Developments Ltd. | | 130 W Broadway | 29 & 28 | 524 | 8.46 | IBI Group / Reliance Properties | | 4 W 3rd Ave | 10 & 11 | industrial-office | 6.6 | PCI Developments | | 11 E 4th Ave | 9 | retail-office-lab | KMBR Architects Planners | | 2-24 E Broadway | 14 | 152 | 7.5 | Chard, requests no office space on 2nd floor (non-conformant) | | 10 E 11th Ave | 16 | 114 | 6.5 | insufficient tower separation with 25-55 E 12th rezoning | | 25-55 E 12th Ave | 20 | 397 | 6.8 | JTA Development Consultants | | 45 E 16th Ave | 18 | 152 | 6.5 | JTA Development Consultants | | 125 E 4th Ave | 8 | mixed-use industrial-office | Acton Ostry Architects Inc. | | 124-148 E 6th Ave | office-industrial | 6 | Henriquez Partners Architects | | 1940 Main St | 49 | 3.75 | was approved as 6storeys on Dec 11, 2019, no construction work | | 2015 Main St | 25 | 210 | 6.22 | approved Jan 30, 2024 without private balconies | | 2111 Main St | 24 x 2 | 377 | motel site | | 215-229 E 13th Ave | 21 | 194 | 6.64 | JTA Development Consultants | | 233-245 E 11th Ave | 5 | 45 | Metric Architecture | | 320 E 2nd Ave | 20 | previously approved DP for 5 storeys | | 2950 Prince Edward St | 32 & 25 | 565 | 8.5 | QuadReal | | 465-475 East Broadway | Reliance Properties, previous 5-storey approval | | 464 E 8th Ave | 8 | 64 | 4 | | 461 E 16th Ave | 20 | 177 | | 523 East 10th Ave | 19 | 175 | 6 | Fastmark Development | | 2535 Carolina St 557-569 E10th | 18 | 150 | 5.8 | HAVN Developments, 2nd tower on blockface is non-conformant | | 701 Kingsway | 24 | 201 | 8.5 | tower would shade Robson & McAuley Parks | | 1302-1318 E 12th Ave | 6 | 33 | 3.2 | beside Broadway Plan area | | 2904 W 4th Ave | 6 | C-2 SRP |
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
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Carolyn Whitzman* is a senior research associate with the Canadian Urban Institute and Roy Brooke* is the Executive Director of the Natural Assets Initiative
The next generation of Canadian affordable housing developments should preserve and enhance natural assets, according to a new report from the Natural Assets Initiative and the Canadian Urban Institute.
Natural assets are features of an ecosystem that provide, or could be restored to provide, essential services and benefits to Canadians. Especially in times of increased climate-related risks of fires and floods, the environmental and economic benefits of carbon sequestration through woodlands, and flood regulation and nutrient recycling through wetlands should inform how and where new housing is developed. The need to preserve and enhance parks and waterways — nature in the city — for physical and mental health is especially acute if we intensify housing close to public transit and services.
Since the 1990s, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has acknowledged that restrictive municipal zoning and approvals processes which do not consider the full lifecycle costs of infrastructure have been fuelling suburban and regional sprawl, worsening greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and destroying irreplaceable natural resources.
Built-up areas of cities are already serviced by physical infrastructure such as water and sewer lines and public transit, as well as social infrastructure, including schools, recreation centres and hospitals. However, populations in the most built-up areas of cities have declined over the past 50 years, due to smaller households, an aging society, rooming houses conversions, and increasingly restrictive planning rules.
The federal government has recently stepped up its efforts to address the national shortage of affordable and well-located housing supply across Canada, with a plan to more than double home production to 3.87 million new homes by 2031. This agenda includes a renewed interest in using government land for homes — one of the mechanisms that helped enable the development of thousands of post-Second World War Victory Houses as well as innovative mixed-income developments such as St. Lawrence Neighbourhood in the 1970s.
Through the Housing Accelerator Fund, the federal government is already pursuing conditional infrastructure agreements linked to relaxed restrictive zoning. It is now providing further funding for public transit, water and waste infrastructure to provinces and territories, in return for freezes on development charge increases and the implementation of natural Homeowner and Renter Bills of Rights.
Other countries show how to provide social and environmental benefits through strong government leadership. Singapore, for example, has pursued integrated planning co-benefits of affordable housing supply within a ‘city of nature’ since independence in 1964. The Housing Development Board has developed over a million homes, accounting for 80 percent of the homes in a city-state of 5.5 million people. The emphasis has been on limited equity home ownership, with government control over sale and resale prices.
This approach has paid off: in 2021/22, typical prices for a one-bedroom home ranged from $95,000 to $234,000 CAD, and for a four-bedroom from $372,000 to $525,000. At the same time, Singapore has developed a network of 7,800 hectares of green space, connected by 370 hectares of park connectors. The housing itself is actively planted with 300 hectares of ‘skyway greenery’ like landscaping on roofs and walls.
The re-naturalization of existing water and land assets is ongoing, with the state converting concrete canals into naturalized rivers, and building new reservoirs that serve as naturalized lakes to catch and retain rainwater. These natural systems support rich biodiversity, including the return of formerly endangered species. They also protect nearby homes from the risk of flooding brought about by climate change.
The City of Paris increased its proportion of non-market housing from 16 percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2022, with over 75,000 new non-market homes aimed at low and moderate-income households, as well as 35,000 acquired from the private sector. The municipality’s focus is on underutilized sites, such as former office and commercial spaces and parking lots, and on refurbishment, rather than demolition, of existing public housing, a choice that reduces carbon emissions and tenant displacement.
Paris’ strong emphasis on environmental justice underscores the simultaneous prioritization of sustainable transit, affordable housing, and natural asset management. In response to recent fatal heat domes, Paris has planted hundreds of ‘green oases’ in the past decade, starting with school yards. The target is that no Parisian will live more than seven minutes from a shaded park by 2030. It achieved a target of building 30 hectares of new parks, mini-forests and community gardens between 2014 and 2020, many in the courtyards of new housing developments. The buildings themselves have up to 200 hectares of green roofs, with green walls (using clinging vines such as ivy) helping to cool the buildings as well.
In Canada, developments such as Dockside Green, in Victoria, B.C., have encouraged environmental innovation through a ‘sandbox, not staightjacket’ outlook. The City took a ‘performance-based’ approach to rezoning the formerly industrial site, doubling the residential density immediately and then trading off further density for environmental performance. A blue spine of interconnected wetland ponds, with native plantings and re-introduced local fish, anchors the development, acting as wastewater treatment as well as amenity and community gathering space.
This green/blue infrastructure more than pays for itself, with the wastewater treatment plant recovering stormwater, sewage, bathwater, and dishwater, thereby exempting residents from fees assessed to pay for a new citywide sewage system. Treated water is looped back into buildings to flush toilets and irrigate site landscaping. An additional 68,000 litres of treated water is sold to nearby industrial users.
Dockside GreenIy’álmexw, or Jericho Lands as it is more commonly known, is an even more ambitious project, with at least 13,000 homes planned on 36 hectares (90 acres) in Vancouver. The site is being jointly developed by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (MST Partnership) and Canada Lands Corporation, on a former Department of National Defence site.
The MST Partnership wanted to start with the existing natural systems and design around them. Significant trees and key habitats that enrich the ecology of the site and provide natural carbon capture and storage will be kept and connected to adjacent parks, naturally managed areas and open spaces. Changing climate conditions are being considered with the plans calling for “clean air shelters” in community spaces — a recognition of the increased frequency and severity of forest fires, and reuse of rainwater for most non-potable uses.
The natural assets report provides recommendations to the federal government, including mapping and costing the value of services from existing and potential natural assets on federal land suitable for housing, and developing precinct master plans that preserve and enhance these assets through the creation of new urban parks, forests, and wetlands alongside higher-density housing.
Finally, infrastructure agreements with municipalities and provinces should prioritize the retention of existing natural assets and development of new enhanced ones. As part of negotiations over federal lands, local First Nations must be included as full partners from the outset, prioritizing co-development and land back models.
photo by Wylie Poon (cc)
Carolyn Whitzman is a housing policy researcher and senior research associate with the Canadian Urban Institute. She is the author of the forthcoming Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis (UBC/ On Point Press, 2024).
Roy Brooke is the Executive Director of the Natural Assets Initiative. He has worked in Canada, Europe and Africa in urban sustainability, national politics, international development and humanitarian affairs.
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A day or so before the deadline for a threatened TTC strike, New York State governor Kathy Hochul torpedoed a much anticipated and controversial congestion pricing plan that would have seen drivers entering Manhattan on all the bridges, tunnels and avenues south of 60th Street pay a toll, the proceeds of which would fund long-overdue expansions to the transit network (the proposed daily rates for passenger vehicles was $15, with $7.50 for motorbikes and $2.50 for ride shares).
The Big Apple has a weird and dysfunctional transit governance system that places authority for the city’s subways and buses in the hands of Albany legislators rather than City Hall. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) therefore gets to be the battlefield upon which New York’s governors and mayors do battle. Hochul’s unexpected 11th hour move — the congestion charge, which both the governor and her predecessor actively promoted — means the anticipated billions raised by the new levy have gone up in smoke.
Reeling, the MTA’s top officials quickly held a press conference saying they’ll now have to double down on keeping the system — which is decrepit but indispensable — alive and screeching.
I have no insight into the reasons or timing behind Hochul’s decision — election year calculus seems like an obvious suspect, according to several media analysts — but one can say this much: at least there had been the political ambition to take a bold step towards financing transit infrastructure, and perhaps this latest version of the plan, or some variation on it, will rise again.
The coincidence in timing between Hochul’s reversal and a possible TTC strike underscored for me the total lack of ambition that currently pervades transit politics in Toronto, such as it is.
The prospect of a TTC stoppage, though definitely dire, may have tracked differently than the threats of previous ones. For the hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who suddenly had to work from home as of March, 2020, a TTC strike likely seemed less ominous because they already had a tried and tested Plan B.
The strike, in other words, would have mainly disadvantaged everyone deemed to be an essential worker during the pandemic. Some continued riding buses to destinations like hospitals or long-term care homes, while others drove to their workplaces or pivoted to active transportation (and may not, in fact, have returned to the TTC). The upshot is that the people in the former category — who are likely earning at the bottom of the income scale — would have been the main victims of a walk-out.
It’s also true that traffic congestion in the city — but particularly the core, and the drastically reduced Gardiner Expressway — has become terrible all the time, because of road construction, closed off lanes around development sites, and the Ontario Line construction.
A strike would certainly have made traffic worse, but maybe just by degree — not a non-event, to be sure, but neither the kind of big bang disruption created by previous transit strikes. Either way, it seems clear that City officials now have even less incentive to press ahead with the handful of generally modest proposals to pedestrianize streets like John or lower Yonge for fear of arousing the car-war bear.
Against this backdrop, we find ourselves stuck in a strange limbo state. The roads are horrible, transit usage has almost bounced back, and, with the exception of Finch West and maybe the Eglinton Crosstown, the various Metrolinx mega-projects won’t be ready for prime time for years (tunnelling on the exquisitely delayed Scarborough subway only began last year). The replacement of the Line 2 subways similarly won’t happen anytime soon; likewise the culmination of the interminable track-level signalling project, which theoretically will reduce head-times, if it is ever finished.
Meanwhile, Mayor Olivia Chow and council seem oddly content to do little more than tinker with existing plans. They’ve accelerated the bus rapid transit lane strategy and budgeted money for a bus corridor to provide shuttle service along the former Scarborough SRT route.
Council also voted to continue to flow funding for engineers and designers to prepare technical plans for the two big complicated surface rail projects that are on the books — the $2.6 billion Waterfront East LRT, which is meant to connect Union Station and Villiers Island, and the $4.7 billion Eglinton East LRT, which will run from Kennedy to UTSC and on up to Sheppard East.
Yet there’s virtually no funding earmarked for either, and Chow has made it clear that she’s not prepared to borrow to finance transit expansion projects, given the city’s backlog of infrastructure maintenance. Interestingly, the TTC’s newly approved 2024-2028 corporate plan has been scrubbed of any mention of those two LRTs.
Money for such ventures won’t be coming any time soon from Queen’s Park, which now owns Toronto’s two legacy highways. As for Ottawa, let’s just say that if Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives win next year’s federal election, Toronto may well get even less infrastructure funding than it currently receives, if only as a punishment for being so Liberal.
I’d argue that a realistic, and not even excessively pessimistic, prediction is that the full complement of rail-based Toronto transit lines that are either under construction or in the planning process won’t be fully operational until the mid-2040s — almost two generations after David Miller unveiled his Transit City plan (2007), which first proposed most of this network. Villiers Island, needless to add, will be mostly built out, and gripped by Liberty Village-calibre gridlock, long before the long-planned LRT loop out to the Port Lands goes into operation.
Indeed, we’re so mired in the utter inertia of our spectral brand of transit politics that it’s almost impossible for anyone to propose some kind of alternative. (Remember that John Tory essentially edited Toronto out of transit planning politics when he off-loaded responsibility for capital projects to Queen’s Park.) Even an argument that’s made to order for fiscal conservatives — i.e., delaying infrastructure projects means they always cost taxpayers more — doesn’t extricate Toronto from this kind of path dependency.
Which brings me back to New York’s iced congestion charge. Like Toronto, New York is no slouch when it comes to transit foot-dragging. The Second Avenue subway scheme has been on the planning books for generations, and the congestion charge scheme — it would have been the first of its kind in North America — has been run around the political block numerous times. What’s also worth remembering is that the City and MTA have already sunk millions of dollars in the tolling infrastructure now deployed around Manhattan.
The point is, at least grid-locked New Yorkers, their grumpy neighbours and state legislators generally acknowledge that somehow, they’ll need to raise the money to maintain and expand a transit system that allows America’s first city to get from one day to the next. By contrast, we’ve settled in with polite silence, passively hoping that somehow, our own extravagantly expensive mess will take care of itself.
photo by Sam Javanrouh (cc)
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Affordability, climate change, and thriving communal spaces are prevalent themes of mainstream policy talk amid Vancouver’s exacerbated housing crisis. Yet, the innovative visions behind Urbanarium’s Decoding Density winners, Ericka Song and Justin Oh, are pushing toward a future of sustainable living.
As co-founders of Studio Oh Song, a North American architecture firm, Ericka and Justin’s extensive practice in urban design continues to break the conventional boundaries of innovation. From single-family homes to large-scale city infrastructures, their development projects across Kelowna, Los Angeles, and New York have informed their perception of future urban homes, which they hope to capture in Canada’s housing landscape.
“When we see these competitions, we are always drawn to them because I think deep down, we are optimistic about housing. We are optimistic about the future,” says Justin enthusiastically during a video call. Fascination and hopefulness beam in the chestnut eyes of two Canadian architects whose two decades of experience radiate confidence in their speech. “The competition allows us to do what we want,” says Ericka. “Just being able to list out the ways that we stray from the limitations was really great because we were able to break down the form.”
Among 85 submissions presented at Urbanarium’s Decoding Density contest, their first-place Towerhouse model was lauded for its versatile approach to social awareness. The design features an efficient family-oriented space dedicated to optimizing the social well-being of community residents. It reveals two grey, six-story apartments adorned with emerald green plant climbers. Both structures are attached by a small bridge and sit in the middle of a spacious haven of vibrant trees, two critical design elements. They interlink the importance of maximizing social health through a close-knit and nature-friendly communal space.
“Everyone, especially after the pandemic realizes we need this connection to outdoor space. So, we ask, can this be integral to the project itself? says Justin. “Having this outdoor space gives back to the neighbourhood. Everyone can use this space; it is not just for residents either.”
In fact, numerous research suggests developing a harmonious bond with nature through sustainable living has significant benefits on social well-being. To illustrate, a 2017 study found integrating green space intervention in housing models can help reduce pathological ailments, from anxiety disorders to depression. As a result, creating a reserve for nature-bonding experiences such as physical exercises allows neighbours to foster a positive relationship with one another.
Yet despite its minimalist, subtle appearance, the award-winning Towerhouse highlights a unique correlation between Urbanarium’s theme of sustainable community to social health, which many traditional urban models lack.
“The form of housing attends to many things. How our culture exists, how we relate to one another” says Cedric Yu, an award-winning principal architect and founder of Altforma, a Vancouver-based design firm. “If you study the way human settlements have been for a long time, the housing structure was around larger families.”
Cedric was among the jury members appointed to deliberate the winners of Urbanarium’s competition. He found the submissions were commonly praised for their emphasis on design choices improving social well-being and ecological health. “In a jury like this, we are trying to find a very well-rounded, holistic proposal,” says Cedric in a video call. “But there were some proposals that may not have been as well-rounded but had one or two elements that were exceptional.”
From Hong Kong to Paris and Stockholm, Cedric’s acclaimed design projects across international firms have exposed him to unique architectural movements that he feels Canada can strongly benefit from. To illustrate, he asserts efficient European housing models are adopting the latest iteration of communal living, an ancient form of human cohabitation that has existed among many tribal cultures.
Yet Cedric feels the miniature, confined spaces of traditional high-rise apartments lack the conscious design elements for social cohesion and communal support. “When you look at most forms of housing here, people who are more isolated don’t know their neighbours as much” says Cedric. “So that has a social trickle-down effect on one another. So, the community is affected. How we socialize is affected.”
Much academic literature highlights the importance of co-housing arrangements for people’s social health. A 2020 study suggests communal living has reduced feelings of social ostracism, enhanced emotional well-being and quality of life. Beyond pathological advantages, it further reaps a plethora of socioeconomic benefits including affordability and restricting the excessive need for human resources.
However, Canada’s current housing market prioritizes traditional models which attain higher profitability but result in ecological and social deterioration. Yet, the Towerhouse model reflects a series of conscious design components that produce enriched sustainable living conditions.
“A lot of these housing projects are trying to cram in as many units as they can into buildings,” says Justin. “A lot of these buildings receive so much opposition because they don’t offer much back to the neighbourhood. They are prioritizing several units they can fit on a lot. Part of what we thought when starting this project was: what can this project give back to the neighbourhood in addition to housing? How can we get the best of both worlds? “
Yet, sketching a holistic home design that appeals to diverse socio-demographic needs is difficult. Existing research suggests children and seniors preferably live in neighbourhoods with a lively social network to avoid susceptible feelings of ostracism. As a result, the Towerhouse model introduces a low-rise apartment community that offers residents convenient access to social spaces and outdoor reserves, thus strengthening ties with neighbours.
“So how does housing become more niche in a way to the community that it serves?” says Cedric. “What would it look like to have housing that is geared towards a certain group?” As an adjunct professor of landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia, Cedric is always enamoured by the optimistic flair and creativity of his students for their experimental approach toward future Canadian homes.
“One thing I will say about the students is they are very innovative in trying to understand the demographic better. Trying to understand the productive capacity of people” says Cedric. “What I have learned from the students is their hopefulness to their vision of the future. Students are unencumbered by the competing forces in our industry and are free to think in so many ways. I would say some of the innovations I saw were very much this desire in mixing forms of production with housing”
He asserts aspiring architects are continuously seeking creative avenues for designing sustainable communities, such as integrating upcycling centres within a co-housing neighbourhood.
“They are thinking much more about the ecology of things within a project which we often don’t find in existing projects because it takes time. It takes energy” says Cedric. “There is a risk factor and the development in the private sector is very conservative. They want to focus on something that already works.”
Unfortunately, Cedric feels archaic building codes combined with the sector’s stringent profit-oriented agenda hinder young architects from exploring rising trends in ground-breaking design movements.
“There is no ability now to innovate,” says Cedric “There is no room for failure. If there is no room for failure, then how do you innovate? How do you try something that may not work? But some might work and end up adding value to society. We are constricting the oxygen for our youth in this tight condition.”
Yet Cedric praises his students for their ceaseless innovative ideas and resiliency to put forward tangible changes. In fact, for many young architects, their vision of an ideal housing design is often characterized by a simple, high-quality efficient space that adequately shapes a feasible living condition.
“I think as architects in having practiced in different offices that have informed our career, we learned these things don’t have to be super expensive to create quality space,” says Justin.
“If we are going to build new,” says Erica “then do it in a way where these buildings are simple enough that they can be adapted or reused in fifty to a hundred years from now.”
Sara is currently a fourth-year journalist student at Guelph-Humber University. She has always harbored an undying passion for educating readers on complex political phenomena, from localized events to international headlines. She is always on the lookout for opportunities to expand her political knowledge and enjoys crafting words to promote inclusive discourse on important public issues.
The post Millennial architects redefine Canadian dream of homeownership appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
In the Venn diagram of nerdy pursuits, there is a special place where enthusiasm for public space overlaps with the obsessive and irrational drive to collect books. For self-described “book-besotted troubadour” Corin Raymond, books are the keys to unlocking memories of places and the emotions that are felt there.
His one-man show Bookmarks, presented as part of the Provocation Ideas Festival, features Raymond telling stories from his past through the lens of the books he las loved and often lost. As Raymond wanders through memories of his childhood and of his life on the road as a musician, books act as mnemonic devices for cities from his past, from Sao Paolo to Montréal to Berlin.
The show opens in the airport bookstore in Melbourne where Raymond is having trouble controlling himself. Pockets heavy with “pre-boarding funds,” Raymond considers buying “gleaming paperbacks I wouldn’t normally allow myself to buy.” His suitcase is, naturally, full of books already, but he falls for a copy of Helen Garner’s True Stories.
“I fell in love with Helen,” he says, floored by her first-person descriptions of her life in Melbourne. The book travelled with him through Taiwan and eventually back to Australia. It was there that Raymond had his heart broken by Helen, at the exact same place he first met her. I lost my copy of True Stories at the Melbourne airport,” he says, ten years after its purchase, “she left me.” The books’ loss triggered feelings of grief and abandonment, flinging him back to the places he experienced as a child.
Illustration by Nicholas LuchakRaymond’s childhood home in Cochenour, Ontario, was a nest made of books. As the distribution hub for his father’s business, Beaverlodge Books, Raymond would explore the stacks and pillars of books piled up in his basement. “I could hide in them,” he explains, casting “books as safety, as shelter, as home.” As Gaston Bachelard writes in Poetics of Space, “the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” He describes his ritual, enacted decades later, upon entering a new hotel room, of placing books on the bed-side table in a little stack to make the room feel more like home. “I unbook myself,” he says.
Moving through his stream of memories, Raymond brings us to a bookstore in London, England. Drawn to a copy of The Collected Works of Tennessee Williams, he picks it up only to find that it was previously his, sold to the second-hand bookstore weeks before after a bad breakup. (Don’t fret: after explaining the situation to the bookseller, he bought back the Williams and three of his other books at a fifty percent discount).
He loops back to the Melbourne airport, dwelling on themes of loss and attachment. Garner’s sudden absence in his life reminds him of the pain he experienced as a child, losing two mothers (one at his own birth and another at the age of seven). Buying books, for Raymond, is a protective mechanism, revealed as “a bid against my own death.” He quotes Warren Zevon here: “we love to buy books because we believe we’re buying the time to read them.”
As such, Raymond knows that, at least one day, he must let his books go. His tourmate, folk singer Scott Cook, doesn’t understand Raymond’s obsession with owning books. “Scott has one book,” says Raymond, with a curled cover, jammed into the dashboard of his car, “the one he’s currently reading.” When he’s done, practicing the Buddhist concept of detachment, he’ll give it away to the next person he sees.
For now though, Raymond still surrounds himself with books and the memories they store. “How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!” writes Walter Benjamin in his classic essay “Unpacking My Library.” “Other thoughts fill me… not thoughts but images, memories” continues Benjamin as he unpacks crates of his books after moving. “Memories of the cities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich, Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel, Paris.” Raymond’s memories of cities are also catalogued like this, as chapters in a travelogue that grows story by story, book by book.
He brings us to a laundromat in Parkdale where he gives a boy his copy of The Neverending Story, in the original German, purchased some years before and devoured on “a park bench in Berlin.” (Bachelard again: “Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches.”) His copy of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, held together with elastic bands, travelled around the world with a friend, read by dozens of backpackers in hostels and parks. It now acts as an aide-mémoire that triggers stories from the voyage.
Raymond includes in his monologue references to books lost and lent introduced with the familiar refrain, “where’s my copy of…?” When packing and unpacking his own library for a move, he realizes he has amassed three entire shelves of books he’s borrowed from others but never returned. Those books also pin memories, to specific times, to places, to people. As Jack Lasenby writes, sometimes, “the book reads you.”
The literary references keep coming: Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, John Fowles’ The Magus, Keats, The Little Prince, “(anything by) James Baldwin.” They all make appearances in Raymond’s travels, like little luggage tags with unique home addresses, woven into a narrative of Raymond’s life that doubles as an homage to the world’s great cities.
The Provocation Ideas Festival continues this weekend, presented in partnership with the Toronto International Festival of Authors
Saturday June 8, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm, Harbourfront Centre: “Critical Conversations: Looking for a Familiar Face: The Justice System and Canada’s Diverse Communities,” with Christa Big Canoe, Dr. Julius Haag, Keith Merith, and Kevin Donovan.
Saturday June 8, 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm, Harbourfront Centre: “Critical Conversations: Through a Mirror Darkly: Why We Love True Crime,” with Kristi Lee and Kevin Donovan.
Sunday June 9, 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm, Harbourfront Centre: “Critical Conversations: The Real World of Crime Investigation,” with Kerry Watkins, Ralph Steinberg, David Perry, and Arshy Mann.
The post ‘I remember where I was when I read that book…’ appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS #2: The Vancouver Stampede (Coming to a neighbourhood near you!) appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
THIS EPISODE: Fighting wildfires with drones and video gamesWildfire season has already begun in Canada. Due to climate change, we are seeing more frequent and devastating fires. They choke the air, the decimate the landscape, and they displace people from their homes. So we have to fight them with everything we’ve got.
Neal McLoughlin is superintendent of the Predictive Services Unit at BC Wildfire Service. He tells us how drone technology is helping to monitor, fight, and prevent forest fires:
Applications where we’re using drone technology right now is to go monitor the leading edge of a fire and look for hotspots. You can fly a drone out in line of sight and you can use infrared or heat-scanning sensors… to help direct a fire suppression crew.
Moulay Akhloufi is a professor at the University of Moncton, where he heads their Perception, Robotics and Intelligent Machines Lab. He tells us how his team has been exploring every avenue available to detect wildfires, and predict how they’ll spread. That includes video games:
What we are doing right now is using game engines [from video games] because they are realistic now, they have really photorealistic perception, you can see the trees as if they are real. And we are using that to create models of fire spread, different conditions, and we can do a lot of experimenting.
Listen to the episode to hear more about fighting wildfires.
Spacing Radio · The Future FIx: Fighting Wildfires With Drones and Video GamesThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
The post The Future Fix: Fighting wildfires with drones and video games appeared first on Spacing National.
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate. And also, announcement by CityHallWatch.
The post UCS Cartoon #1: It’s irresponsible to spend money on something we don’t need, like an elected Park Board… appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
This is an op-ed column by Jonathan Diamond, a principal at Well Grounded Real Estate
Development in Toronto primarily consists of condos, with significantly more condos being built than rental apartments. Furthermore, the skew towards condo development exists in an economic context in which rental vacancy rates are at an all-time low and relatedly, rents are at an all-time high.
One would think this scenario provides developers with an incredible opportunity to develop rental buildings, and it does, in theory. However, the fact that very few rental apartments are being built, especially in the lower rental markets, raises the question of why this gap persists.
I want to explore this seeming paradox and provide insight into one of the main barriers to apartment construction: the substantial equity requirements these projects demand.
To begin, it is useful to understand how condo developers finance their projects and why they require such little equity compared to apartment developers. Unlike purpose-built rental apartments, condo projects are sold to individual owners. In this way, the construction lender will be paid back from the revenues generated from the sale of condo units.
The lender therefore evaluates the estimated revenues generated from these sales relative to the cost of the project and lends accordingly. The condo construction loans typically require only 15% equity with 70% of the project cost coming from a construction loan, 10-13% coming from presales and 2% coming directly from sales revenues that pay for deferred costs.
By contrast, apartment projects are much more equity intensive because of the way the construction loan is repaid together with the absence of presales and deferred costs. Specifically, the loan on an apartment project will be repaid through a subsequent term loan, which is effectively a mortgage amortized over 25 to 50 years, usually with fixed monthly payments for a set term.
The size of the term loan is based on the capacity for cashflows to service the loan, i.e., the debt service coverage ratio. This metric is determined in a similar way to how banks limit a personal mortgage based on the borrower’s income. Another factor limiting the term loan size is the so-called loan-to-project-cost ratio, which can be up to 95% of the project’s total cost, similar to how a personal mortgage is limited by the value of the property. However, the latter threshold is rarely reached except for the highest rent buildings.
To illustrate what these constraints mean for apartment development, we modelled a typical rental project to compute loan balances for a series of 200 rent scenarios, ranging from $1,145 to $6,120 per month. The example project was a 100 unit building with a mix of unit types i.e., 15 bachelor (375 sq.ft), 35 1B (550 sq.ft), 35 2B (750 sq.ft), and 15 3B (1,000 sq.ft) with a total project cost of $700 per square foot ($58 million). (All variables aside from rent — interest rates, amortization duration, unit count, and project costs — were kept constant.)
The graph below [insert graphic] shows the results. The red line reveals that the loan amount increases with increasing rents. The higher the rents, the greater the loan until the loan-to-project-cost threshold is reached. (This formula is due to the fact that higher rent buildings have a greater loan carrying capacity.) Conversely, the yellow line shows that equity decreases with increasing rents or loan amount i.e., equity + loan = 100% of project cost.
In this example, the upper bound for a loan on this project is achieved only when rents reach $3,802 (bachelor), $4,083 (1B), $4,367 (2B), and $4,616 (3B). This demonstrates the limiting role that building income, i.e., rental rates, has in determining loan balance in most rental markets. Even a reasonable 85% loan-to-cost ratio (15% equity) would require rents of $3,352 (bachelor), $3,633 (1B), $3,917 (2B), and $4,166 (3B).
It should be clear to any Toronto resident that these figures are a far cry from typical rents. For instance, the City of Toronto estimates average rents for bachelors, 1B’s, 2B’s, and 3B’s to be $1,427, $1,708, $1,992, and $2,241, respectively. To build an apartment to support these rates would require an approximate equity investment of $34 million in our $58 million example project. The result is a loan-to-cost ratio of only 42% (requiring 58% equity)
This high equity requirement limits the amount of building one can construct for a given equity amount, meaning each dollar invested does not go as far. Compare this with the condo market where $34 million of equity could be leveraged to yield almost $230 million worth of building, roughly 390 units based on the present assumptions of projects cost, unit count and sizes.
The substantial equity requirement for apartment development will eliminate any possibility of developing this kind of mid-market rental building; i.e., it wouldn’t pencil. What’s more, such a project would produce a tiny return for investors. All this highlights that a builder’s debt-carrying capacity on a given project represents one of the single greatest barriers to apartment development.
Unlike condo projects, where invested capital exits upon the sale of the units, capital in an apartment venture is tied up until the building is sold. This represents a double whammy for the apartment market. These projects are not only massively equity intensive but also illiquid, meaning that a builder cannot readily redeploy their capital from one project to the next, as is the case in the condo market. Rental projects, therefore, depend on continual capital investment.
To make apartment development viable, the industry needs bring down project costs to reduce the amount of equity developers need to invest up front. Both the development industry and the government must collaborate to find a solution.
On the developer side, there is substantial room for innovating better design and construction methods. For instance, our firm, Well Grounded Real Estate, is actively addressing design efficiency issues with our hybrid timber project at 1925 Victoria Park using the CREE Building system.
Designed by Partisans Architects and executed by Serotiny Group, this 185-unit/12-storey mid-market rental is a prototype using Serotiny Group’s design and construction strategies. We hope it will forge a viable path for simple, high quality, mid-market apartments.
The building will go up on an arterial in Scarborough and is being underwritten as a mid-market apartment. The equity constraints have presented us with a significant hurdle in terms of getting a precedent-setting project off the ground.
On the government side, cost reductions can be achieved by simplifying the approval process and reducing fees, e.g., with the recent the removal of GST/HST. Development charges are another such cost burden for purpose-built rental projects.
In our example, the development charges amount to $3.2 million, which is 5.5% of the total project cost. It is a significant line item which can only be financed in an amount equal to the loan-to-project cost ratio.
Furthermore, development charges are fixed, meaning they do not vary according to rental rates. Consequently, such levies disproportionately burden lower rent projects. Indeed, there are further governmental fees that escalate the cost of rental developments, including community benefit fees, application fees, separate school board education charges, parkland dedication fees, and slow application processing times.
While application processing times are not fees per se, the substantial carrying cost of land, e.g., via interest charged on land loans, contributes substantially to overall project costs and thus project viability.
The bottom line is that substantial equity requirements and illiquidity of capital for rental projects represents a massive hurdle for developers. It follows that lowering soft costs and fees presents an opportunity to make such projects more viable, thus expanding the universe of tenants to households that can’t afford to rent at the top of the market. A combination of private sector innovation and improved government policy will go a long way towards making rental buildings accessible to more people.
photo by Marc Dufresne (iStock)
Jonathan Diamond is a Principal at Well Grounded Real Estate, a private family-owned business that operates a portfolio of residential and commercial retail buildings. Jonathan is interested in strategies that reduce construction costs and scale apartment development for the mid market. Follow him on LinkedIn.
The post Op-Ed: Why is there so little rental construction? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Though it normally seems as if the gears of Toronto’s planning machinery are barely moving, the reforms of the past four years add up to what will, someday, be seen as revolutionary moment for a city so dedicated to that most Tory of virtues: incrementalism.
The scope of change leaves no piece of the city untouched: all residential lots are now entitled by law to house up to four dwelling units, including a secondary suite and a garden suite. Parking minimums on multi-unit buildings are gone, as are locational restrictions on rooming houses. Small scale retail is once again permitted in neighbourhoods. The areas around subway and LRT stops, including new ones, are being significantly up-zoned.
The City is using its own real estate to build housing and its coffers to buy older apartment buildings. The feds have cut taxes on affordable rental and are expanding the financial supports for non-profit housing organizations. Meanwhile, homeowner groups now have fewer levers to pull to halt or slow projects they dislike thanks to Planning Act reforms.
Some of these and other moves have emanated from inside City Hall; others were imposed by the provincial and federal governments. All are long overdue, as the intensity of the housing affordability crisis noisily attests.
Council this week will tackle the most consequential reform to date with a recommendation to allow the development small-scale apartment buildings (up to six storeys) and townhouses on any “major street” in the city. (The interior of residential neighbourhoods and some strips with “designated neighbourhood parcels” — i.e., single-family homes — remain off-limits to such projects.)
Click on image to enlarge mapThe major streets [see graphic above] include the obvious candidates, as well those roads that have only ever been lined by single-family homes — places like long stretches of Lawrence Avenue West, Ossington, Dovercourt, and St. Clair East, as well as long stretches of arterials in many parts of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York.
From a zoning point of view, the goal is to provide a much broader canvas upon which moderate scale intensification can occur, as well as an alternative to the re-development ethic that has ruled the roost since the earliest days of amalgamation.
In 2002, council signed off on “the Avenues” approach to adding European-scale density along wide arterials and high-rises in high-growth “nodes” such as Yonge and Eglinton. The thinking, advanced by then chief planner Paul Bedford and embedded in the Official Plan, was that by encouraging mid-rise, mixed-use projects along corridors like Kingston Road, as well as sky’s-the-limit re-development downtown, the City would focus investment in commercial areas and justify transit investment. It could also avoid poking the bear — i.e., homeowners in house neighbourhoods that would remain “stable,” with their “character” intact, for ever after.
The problem with this grand bargain was that the City reckoned it could shoehorn several decades of anticipated population growth into a relatively small amount of space, at least by comparison to the sprawling geography of Toronto’s Yellow Belt.
Over the years since, council has signed off on all sorts of bespoke and time-consuming planning policies (e.g., midrise guidelines, neighbourhood character rules, etc.) that made intensification frustrating and costly even in the areas where it was permitted (bait, meet switch). The upshot: only those with the deepest pockets could afford to play the intensification game, and their investors, consequently, demanded maximum returns.
The “Major Streets” policy — the last instalment of the planning department’s “Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods” suite of land use reform — is meant, more or less explicitly, to dismantle the underlying logic of the 2002 Official Plan. By vastly expanding the places where development can occur, the Major Streets policy basically bets that smaller-scale contractors and investors, including those interested in rental properties, will finally be able to enter a market that has long been out of reach. It’s essentially a supply-and-demand argument.
It’s always crucial to note that while market forces may work adequately for consumer goods, they do not pass muster with housing. For this reason, it’s incumbent on council to learn from the failures of the Avenues and apply those lessons to the Major Streets reforms.
Several come to mind: if the city wants investment, it should incent the type of investment it wants, which means removing the impediments that we know discourage builders. These include troweling on design requirements, approving policies that work at cross-purposes to high-level planning goals, and insisting on a rigid application of the rules.
As I wrote in The Globe and Mail last week, the City is trying to build a missing-middle pilot on a Green P lot in the east end — 28 units across six storeys, with two sets of stacked townhouses behind, all fronting a residential street a few steps from the Woodbine subway station. Because the City is the developer, it must confront nit-picky requirements it imposes on private builders, and hopefully figure out which can be jettisoned without provoking Chicken Little.
There are plenty of advocates for the Major Streets policy, and they’ve been making their views known to the planning department and council. But this being Toronto, there are lots of contras, too — homeowners’ organizations like the Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations, which submitted a 73-page brief itemizing, in minute detail, why the Major Streets proposal can’t possibly work in this area or along that street.
Arguably the single most salient lesson of the Avenues strategy, and the generation of planning studies and design guidelines and official plan amendments that have followed in its wake, is that council must not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
Planner Graig Uens, the architect of the EHON strategy who has unfortunately left the City for private practice, has often made the point that when he and his colleagues were building out the laneway suites policy and then the garden suites policy, their overarching goal was to get something out the door and then deal with the glitches later. (To that end, the planning department has been actively reviewing rejected applications for both types of projects to figure out how to remove roadblocks that serve no public policy purpose.)
It’s too bad Uens is not at the City anymore to impart this critical insight to council and the mayor’s office, so I’ll take the liberty by re-surfacing his argument, and even offering it up to whomever succeeds Gregg Lintern as chief planner later this year.
Planning, after all, is about preparing the city for the future. What better way to proceed than by fully understanding what failed in the past.
photo by Reg Natarajan
The post LORINC: Major planning change for Toronto’s major streets appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Political cartooning has been a significant form of social and political commentary for centuries. It took off in the 18th century when artists like James Gillray in Britain and Honoré Daumier in France used their drawings to call out political corruption, social injustices, and the ridiculousness of leaders. Their cartoons made complicated issues easy to understand and got people talking. Over the years, political cartoons became a regular feature in newspapers everywhere, using humor and sharp commentary to influence public opinion and keep folks engaged with important issues. However, recent years have declined due to many factors, like the shift to digital media and changes in how people engage with news.
We’re interested in reviving this important form of commentary. So, in collaboration with CityHallWatch, Spacing Vancouver is happy to launch a collaborative new syndicated cartoon series called the Urban Cartoon Syndicate.
So, how is it going to work?
Well…much like our standard online contributions that are donated. Anybody interested in contributing their cartoons will give Spacing Vancouver and CityHallWatch non-exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and display their cartoons on our platforms, with a focus on civic themes. So, illustrators will retain all copyright and ownership of their work.
As always, we want to capture a diversity of “voices” through the cartooning, so we welcome all submissions. We reserve the right to accept or reject any submission based on internal criteria for appropriateness.
If a cartoon is selected, we will not publish the illustrator’s identity to ensure that Illustrators’ identities remain anonymous unless we get permission to publish their names. If you don’t want your name to be connected to the cartoon, for whatever reason, we will put it under “Urban Cartoon Syndicate”.
Since strong political cartooning always gets attention, if a different media organization requests permission to reprint a cartoon, either for free or for payment, Spacing Vancouver and CityHallWatch will contact the cartoonist immediately to mutually determine the best course of action, considering the interests of all parties involved.
Sound good?
If interested, please contact erick@spacing.ca (Spacing Vancouver) and/or citizenYVR@gmail.com (CityHallWatch Media Foundation).
We look forward to hearing from you…and stay tooned!
The post Urban Cartoon Syndicate (UCS): Introduction and Call appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
If you walk, bicycle or drive along Millwood Road along the edge of the Don Valley, a fringe of greenery hides the moonscape below. There are huge clearcuts where heavy machinery has logged over sections of Crothers Woods, a mecca for mountain bikers, walkers and birders. You can easily miss the extensive clearcuts below that make the Don Valley look like logged over sections of British Columbia.
So far Metrolinx says it has cut down 2,712 trees, including old-growth oak and maple, in three sections of the Don Valley: Crothers Woods; Walmsley Brook (on the northern edge of Thorncliffe Park); and Ernest Thompson Seton Park on the West Branch of the Don River south of the Ontario Science Centre. Of those, they say 685 trees were invasive or diseased. That means a loss of 2,102 healthy native trees. Metrolinx does not say how many of those were mature trees, or what species. They’ve promised to plant an average of three native seedlings for every tree cut, depending on its size. But how many of those seedlings will survive? And it will take 50 years for the planted saplings that do survive to develop into mature trees.
“We plan to plant more than 22,000 trees and 27,000 shrubs to compensate for the vegetation removed for Ontario Line construction in the Don Valley,” says Metrolinx. (Despite repeated requests, I could not get Metrolinx to reconcile their numbers. I was forced to conclude they must be using some form of New Math, because if they replace 3,000 trees that were clearcut with three times the number of saplings, that amounts to only 9,000 new trees planted.)
Old-growth tree felled in Crothers Woods.Trails like this, once completely enveloped by the verdant canopy at Crothers Woods, will soon be blocked by Metrolinx as construction ramps up. After this area was clearcut, volunteers from Don’t Mess with the Don rescued native species on the hillside, including mayapples and trout lilies. In the background is Millwood Bridge, which spans the Don River and Don Valley Parkway.During construction there is a risk of extensive erosion and debris washing into the Don River, according to Metrolinx’s environmental impact assessment. Every Fall salmon swim furiously up the Don River to spawn. Erosion will affect the salmon spawning for years.
As photographer Steven Evans and I walked along the trail below the bare hillside at Crothers Woods, a red-tailed hawk circled overhead with a branch in its beak, looking for a nesting site. I hoped it would choose a tree that wasn’t going to be chain-sawed. We saw no evidence of any silt fencing or matting to prevent soil erosion. It was the same when we hiked along the West Branch of the Don River near the Ontario Science Centre. The clearcutting was right down to the riverbank. A buffer zone of shrubs and trees should have been left to stabilize the shoreline and prevent eroded soil from silting up the river. There was no silt-fencing or matting to prevent erosion there either.
In response to my concerns, Metrolinx provided this statement, “For construction in the Don Valley, silt socks (long tubes) were identified as the most appropriate erosion and sediment control measures. These measures were installed prior to construction and will continue to remain in place until the site has been stabilized post-construction. Regular inspections are completed by a certified inspector to ensure installed erosion measures are effective and identify any repairs required. Contractors are required to submit management plans in advance of construction which outline potential mitigation measures, including exclusion measures to avoid wildlife within the construction site, daily inspection requirements and procedures should wildlife be encountered (utilizing wildlife specialists to safely handle and care for animals). Metrolinx and its contractors will continue to implement environmental mitigations for all future contracts in the Don Valley to protect the natural environment.”
Left: engineer Philip Wu of Metrolinx’s project delivery team shows the route of the Ontario Line on his smartphone to stakeholders in Crothers Woods, including Jen Hawkins of Wild Betty’s Women’s Mountain Biking Club (left) and Avrum Jacobson of Don’t Mess with the Don (right).Lawrence Warriner, president of Don’t Mess with the Don, a non-profit group whose mission is to protect and restore Toronto’s ravines, often runs along the trail beside the West Branch of the Don. “Before the clearcutting, I was running through there at night, and saw a mink and a coyote. I’ve seen beaver there multiple times. Their habitat is fragile because of all the invasive species in the valley. I’m not concerned about the deer because they have the ability to move and there’s a lot of them, but a lot of the animals are not able to move so easily. Like the mink. It was right in the middle of that clearcut in Ernest Thompson Seton Park. It was in a log looking out at me. Now its home is gone. The double impact is, not only have they severed wildlife corridors, they’ve killed thousands of animals because they can’t get out of the way of the construction.”
At an Ontario Line community consultation, we were told Metrolinx will be fencing off sections of trails in the Don Valley for three to five years. I proposed creating wildlife corridors to allow coyotes, fox and deer to continue to move up and down the Don Valley, if only at night. I mentioned the tunnels under highways in Banff National Park. The Metrolinx staff were sceptical.
The destruction isn’t only of ravine lands: Metrolinx says it has to demolish a mosque and the only halal butcher store in Thorncliffe Park to make way for its maintenance and train yards for the Ontario Line. When Doug Ford unilaterally announced the route of the Ontario Line in 2019, he said it was going to connect two iconic attractions: the Ontario Science Centre in the north with Ontario Place in the south on Lake Ontario. Now Ford has announced plans to demolish the Ontario Science Centre, so there is no longer any rationale for calling the new subway “The Ontario Line.” When Ford announced the launch of the Ontario Line, the cost was touted to be $10.9 billion. Now the estimated cost has ballooned to $19 billion.
Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee said the mosque has found a larger lot and is now able to expand, while the halal butcher has relocated to a larger store. While many Thorncliffe residents look forward to a faster commute downtown on the Ontario Line, there is a lot of concern about noise from the 175,000 sq.-metre train maintenance and storage yards to be located along the northern edge of the community. And residents are concerned about the loss of jobs and educational opportunities for students if the Ontario Science Centre is closed. They are also worried that proposed dense housing around the Thorncliffe Park Ontario Line Station will dramatically change the community of 30,000, known as “Arrival City” for its large population of newcomers.
Everything about the Ontario Line project is complicated. Philip Wu, an engineer with the Metrolinx project delivery team, explained that just in the Crothers Woods section, a hydro transmission line has to be relocated and the bridge carrying the twin rail lines has to cross the Don Valley Parkway and GO Train tracks. But GO service can’t be disrupted, so bridge construction near the rail line and parkway will have to be done overnight and on weekends.
While Metrolinx says it is taking measures to reduce the impact of construction on wildlife, the only visible evidence so far is the installation of 50 bat houses. Studies revealed bats were roosting in trees felled in the construction zone. These bat houses under a hydro line in Crothers Woods were intended to offset the loss of bat habitat. There are eight bat species in Ontario. Four are endangered, all are protected due to their role in controlling insects.Metrolinx says it will have to close trails in the Don Valley for up to five years. Bikers use the trails for recreation and commuting, and have requested consultations on trail closures. While Metrolinx said at a recent consultation that signs would be posted, so far photographer Steven Evans and I have not seen any Ontario Line trail closure signs on our hikes through the valley.Eventually when the Ontario Line is operational in 2031 (or who knows when, given Metrolinx’s track record with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT), Metrolinx says the 15.6-km subway will take 28,000 cars off Toronto’s roads, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 14,000 tonnes per year.
In the meantime, Don’t Mess with the Don says Metrolinx is doing very little so far to mitigate the impact of subway construction on the ecosystem and abundant wildlife in the Don Valley. Volunteers have found that the heavy machinery is spreading invasive species, such as Japanese knotweed, into areas in the valley that had previously been clear of invasives.
The desolate clearcuts in the Don Valley are stark harbingers of what Ontario Place will look like if the Ford government proceeds with its plans to clearcut all 850 mature trees on the West Island of Ontario Place to build a proposed mega-spa.
Lawrence Warriner of Don’t Mess with the Don says mink and beaver used to be spotted along the West Branch of the Don River in Ernest Thompson Seton Park until Metrolinx clearcut both sides of the river to build a bridge. Zunaid Khan, president of Toronto Field Naturalists, reports seeing a barred owl in this area that lost its roosting tree when the clearcutting started. The clearcut bluff above the river will be prone to erosion, silting the river and affecting salmon and other aquatic life. When Steven Evans and I walked here the only erosion control feature was a silt sock tube and it only protected part of the riverbank; there was no silt fencing along the riverbanks to catch soil being washed into the river.Artist’s rendering of the future Ontario Line crossing the Don Valley. The Ontario Line will emerge from a tunnel (right) under Minton Place in East York, then cross the Don Valley on a 500-metre-long bridge designed by American engineering firm HDR. Illustration shows the existing Millwood Overpass Bridge in the background. The rail bridge will carry two tracks and be supported by just three twinned piers using a balanced segmental construction method. The longest span between piers is 137 metres. The artist has depicted mature trees in the Don Valley. In fact, it will take some 50 years for the tree canopy to recover from the extensive clearcutting (Image credit: Metrolinx).All photographs by Steven Evans unless otherwise noted.
Ian Darragh is a former editor-in-chief of Canadian Geographic magazine. Photographer Steven Evans’ latest book is As It Is: A Precarious Moment in the Life of Ontario Place.
The post Clearcutting in the Don Valley appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In a recent ranking index, Toronto is listed as the third worst congested city in the world (after London and Dublin). The metric used by the company (Tomtom) is how long it takes to drive 10 kilometers. Toronto ranks high for terrible congestion by other indices with other metrics, too.
A recent article by the Star offered technology as the solution to the wicked problem of traffic congestion (again). Most of the suggested solutions (make streets ‘smarter,’ make maintenance easier, rethink the network, put a price on traffic) involved AI and other technologies. City Council recently decided to spend serious money to see if AI can help congestion at a few intersections.
Technology is admired by many for how it can increase our ability to collect data to gain insight into problems and come up with solutions that can save time and resources. We agree there is a value to efficiency and mobility technologies can help in that regard. But we would like to offer another perspective.
While there is a place for new technology to improve urban mobility, we believe questioning and addressing governance structures is a better place to start. Indeed, we note that even Kurtis McBride, the CEO of a traffic improvement consultancy and an engineer by training who was interviewed for the story, may not disagree. “I think people, procurement and thoughtful policy should precede technology investments,” he said. He also acknowledged that it would take more than tech to improve traffic.
The congestion problem and its purported tech-based solutions are steeped in power relations. Improving urban transportation is not merely a technical or engineering problem; it is a governance problem where it matters tremendously to ask: Who decides how to solve the problem? Who is at the table?
By “traffic” we usually mean motorists in private automobiles, who are often from higher income groups. But there are other commuters facing “congestion” and delays due to crowding, insufficient infrastructure, and so on. Some of those commuters are also on the same roads, but in buses and streetcars. We need to think about everyone whose mobility throughout the region is unnecessarily time-consuming.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade took it upon itself to create its own task force to address the traffic congestion that had propelled Toronto to the top of traffic congestion ranking indices. The task force is made up of 21 members, including McBride. All 21 members represent the private sector, and are mostly white, male, CEOs, presidents, or directors.
The task force lacks representation of diverse groups. Representation matters. For instance, Uber is represented, but not the TTC or other municipal transit operators from the region, or other entities in the transportation realm. Even the only two expert members (WSP Canada and Deloitte) are from the private sector. Where are the transportation and urban planners of Toronto and other municipalities? Why are community-based organizations not represented in the task force?
If we are discussing moving cars faster, we must do so in a way that is safe for everyone (think school zones, vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, older adults, people with disabilities etc). Solving traffic also needs to ensure the solutions are balanced in equitable ways where burdens and benefits of the solutions are fairly distributed among different parts of the city and its various communities. To ensure that, diverse representation on the task force is crucial.
And let’s remember that we are not starting with a level playing field. Not all commuters have the same resources, or flexibility of schedule experiences or opportunities to work from home. Modes of transportation are not all equal in efficiency or comfort. There are many whose mobility in the city is already limited—physically, logistically, socially, and economically. Are those voices part of the discussion? Are their needs being considered?
If we talk about technology without including these perspectives, we end up offering the most help to those who need it least. As Germaine Halegoua wrote in her book Smart Cities, “Algorithms, big data, and AI may change how and what decisions are made, but not what the underlying apparatus and sociopolitical infrastructures that support and carry out these decisions or whom these decisions benefit the most.” Technology is never neutral.
It is an oversimplification to believe that new technology will get us “unstuck.” Transforming decision-making is the place to start. This could begin with the inclusion of all stakeholders. Diversify the task force to bring diverse solutions to the many problems that contribute to traffic congestion, towards more equitable solutions.
McBride says congestion “isn’t an intractable problem.” We disagree. There is a reason we call issues like traffic “wicked problems,” because they are intractable: they are dynamic and have many sources. They need multiple solutions and the participation of diverse groups—especially those most negatively affected by the problem.
We should not assume that it is clear what the problem even is. It is important to ask ourselves whose problem we are solving. Whose time really counts? We must think beyond private automobiles when we think about who is impacted by traffic.
How do you solve a problem like Toronto traffic? Our answer is: you begin by acknowledging that it is indeed an intractable problem whose solution requires the meaningful participation of diverse stakeholders.
Improving urban mobility is a complex topic that no one column and no one “solution” can answer alone. It is important to have extended, public conversation. We encourage further response, so the conversation can continue.
Photo by Donovan Wood
The post OP-ED: Addressing Toronto’s congestion will take more than technology appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Spacing’s senior editor and co-founder Shawn Micallef has expanded and updated his 2010 book Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. The new book is out now and available in person and online at the Spacing Store and at other bookstores. The new edition includes updated, hand-drawn maps by Marlena Zuber. Toronto changed so radically in a decade and half that the book required a near-complete overhaul to note the changes and add considerable new material (that is, more of Toronto walked).
Stop by the (free) launch event on May 22 where Shawn will be in conversation with Edward Keenan of the Toronto Star.
Wednesday, May 22, 2024 @ 7:00 PM
Lula Lounge
1585 Dundas St.
Toronto, ON
Hungry? You can grab dinner at Lula beforehand!
RSVP here
From Coach House Books:
What is the ‘Toronto look’? Glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.
Shawn Micallef has been examining Toronto’s streetscapes for decades. His psychogeographic reportages situate Toronto’s buildings and streets in living, breathing detail, and tell us about the people who use them; the ways, intended or otherwise, that they are being used; and how they are evolving.
Stroll celebrates Toronto’s details – some subtle, others grand – at the speed of walking and, in so doing, helps us to better get to know its many neighbourhoods, taking us from well-known spots like the CN Tower and Pearson Airport to the overlooked corners of Scarborough and all the way to the end of the Leslie Street Spit in Lake Ontario.
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$2,650 to $4,200 per month—affordable?
“Dad, that is literally twice the rent I am paying now!” My 30-something son was looking over my shoulder at the website advertising one of the first “affordable rental housing” projects nearing completion in Vancouver. It was announced with great fanfare 2-1/2 years ago, a partnership between the city of Vancouver, BC Housing, the province, and a private developer.
My son rents a studio in an older, three-storey walk-up building that is great for his bachelor lifestyle except for the fact it is at ground zero for the Broadway Plan, a couple of blocks from the Broadway/Granville SkyTrain Station. We’ve talked about the disruption that plan might mean for his block, which is currently comprised of a mix of older rental and strata buildings and one 14-storey strata high-rise, which the Broadway Plan now ironically calls “mid-rise.”
I recently attended a Jane’s Walk event sponsored by Abundant Housing Vancouver (AHV), called Kitsilano Missing Midrise Walking Tour. The guided walk through Kits north of Broadway somehow missed all of the ten current high-rise proposals in Kits under the Broadway Plan that mostly start by demolishing existing affordable rentals. I can’t say how many rentals will be demo’d—the city has closed its renter support office and does not keep data about rental demolitions—at least not in a place accessible to ordinary citizens.
A suitable City Conversation about this walk eluded me until reality gifted me, in the form of this new rental website for the project at Larch and 2nd Avenue pictured above, which featured prominently in the AHV guided walk as a soon-to-be-completed “affordable” rental housing project.
Let’s examine what AHV’s “affordable” means in the context of this project’s rental website:
- Rents for the smallest studio starting at $2599 per month. That’s the one that’s twice what my son currently pays, and his is a nicer floor plan;
- One-bedroom rents starting at $2,999;
- Two-bedroom rental starting at $3,999;
- The three-bedroom units touted in the project’s original BC Housing announcement are a no-show on the rental website—no idea where they went.
This project was announced in December 2021 by BC Housing as a partnership between them, the developer, and the City of Vancouver. At that time, according to the announcement:
- The Province was providing $31.8 million in financing;
- 80% of the resulting homes were to be targeted “at- or below-market level rents restricted to middle-income households within the provincial middle-income limits.” Again, that’s my son;
- The remaining 20% of homes “will be tenanted at moderate-income rent levels and to households earning less than $80,000 per year.”
Simple math tells me that the cheapest studio in the building will consume 39% of that $80,000 per annum “household” income—and that’s for a studio! For the cheapest one-bedroom unit, count on a 45% hit, 60% of income for a two-bedroom home.
Looking at this sad math another way, at a maximum of 30% of gross income devoted to shelter, the usual limit for loans and mortgages, the studio occupant needs an income of more than $103,000 before they have sufficient “spare” cash for a bank loan. For the one-bedroom it’s more than $119,000, and for the two-bedroom you’ll need more than $159,000. How does your income stack up against those numbers?
How many Jane’s walkers can afford $47,000+ per year rent?
I believe that cherry-picking specific homes in the rich tapestry that is Kitsilano to support an agenda that is really abundant real-estate development rather than affordable housing is designed to create wedge issues between Vancouver residents that will not be resolved by upzoning everywhere. As for my son, he concluded after one of his signature hugs and another beer:
“When they come for my building to build one of these, I’ll be forced to leave the city. And at those rents, I won’t be back.”
This was originally published on City Conversations.**
Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant, and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, still teaching, writing, and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 50-year career including the planning, design, and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon bestseller and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and hoping to start a book about how we can accommodate a growing population in the cities we love in 2024.
The post “Is that all there is?” appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
For almost as long as there have been bicycles in Toronto, there have been politicians who considered the bicycle licence as a solution to some cycling issue. The latest proposal, approved by the Infrastructure & Environment Committee, but with little debate, calls for the Provincial government to change its regulations in order to allow a municipal licencing power over food couriers.
Councillor Dianne Saxe’s motion, which was tacked on to a debate about the city’s Micro Mobility strategy, now goes to the full council on May 22. The motion doesn’t actually mention bicycles, though Saxe has made clear that her target is e-bike riding food couriers, specifically individuals riding on sidewalks. She wants Queen’s Park to grant the city a new licensing power under the City of Toronto Act. The motion also encompasses a requirement for food couriers on bicycles (or other micro mobility devices) to carry third-party liability insurance. There would be little impact on car-based food couriers, given that they are already licensed drivers who use registered cars.
Cyclists have no business riding on sidewalks, although on dangerous suburban arterials with no bike lanes, seeking refuge on sparsely-used sidewalks is understandable. A bicycle licensing regime has populist appeal as a solution, even though, as city staff have pointed out, it would likely be ineffective, inequitable, and cumbersome. The goal may at least be politically effective in giving the appearance of action, even if merely diverting attention from real solutions.
Ironically, about a century ago when Toronto started licensing bicycles, it was also after the city convinced the province to grant it such authority. The bicycle licensing regime introduced in 1929 lasted until 1956, its demise due to rising costs, a heavy administrative burden, and the awkwardness of cops chasing kids for failing to obtain the annual licence. A new regime focused on food couriers, many of them from racialized communities, new to Canada, and struggling to make ends meet (many can’t even afford to live in the city) will put police in a similarly awkward position.
The earliest calls to licence bicycles in Toronto date back even further to the Bicycle Craze of the 1890s. The potential revenues were seen as a way to fund better roads or bicycle paths. These calls were all defeated, largely because cycling groups were dominated by upper class residents with significant influence. When the city adopted a bicycle licence in 1929, it was when children, lower income groups, and messengers dominated the ranks of cyclists.
Saxe’s motion isn’t based on actual research. Do we even know why couriers ride on sidewalks: is it because they don’t know the law, don’t care, or are induced by work pressures. It’s also curious that Saxe targets poorly paid couriers who face dangerous road conditions — a courier was killed on Avenue Road in her ward on April 30 — while their corporate masters, including giants such as Uber Eats, Skip the Dishes, and Door Dash (Foodora abruptly left Canada after their workers won greater labour rights) are given a free ride. Why not ask the province for the power to license the app-based food delivery companies (or “digital platforms” as they prefer to be called)? What about the potential of pushing more food delivery into cars, despite the obvious absurdity of delivering 500-gram burgers and burritos in 1,500 kg cars. The result of her licence is likely to include more road congestion, more noise, more danger, and more air and climate pollution. And why be so quick to go after bicycle couriers so soon after the pandemic when we were happy to shelter at home, and hail food couriers as heroes for braving an uncertain outside world.
There is also an obvious issue about how to enforce a bike licence, even if the complexities and costs of creating the system in the first place could be overcome. It’s worth noting that licensed motorists in cars bearing licence plates currently park in bike lanes with virtual impunity. Does Saxe now expect police to respond, sirens blaring, to a complaint about a sidewalk rider – or believe that the police would follow up on a resident’s report of an offending courier bearing licence xyz? This is certainly not the case with cars illegally parked in bike lanes.
In any case, riding a bike on the sidewalk is already illegal. Under existing laws, if police spot a courier riding on the sidewalk, the courier can be charged, regardless of the existence of a bike licensing regime. (The law, by the way, has long been clear that a person observed by police committing an offence is legally obliged to identify themselves, under threat of arrest. The violator faces more serious consequences if they misidentify themselves, or try to flee.)
Saxe could have taken the opportunity to address an underlying problem with the current food delivery industry model – one that allows corporations to avoid accountability for the conduct of their workers, treating them as “independent contractors.” The councillor should be calling on the province to designate food couriers engaged by the delivery apps as dependent contractors (as their own leaders are demanding). If app companies were accountable for couriers who “work” for them, they would be obliged to put in place measures to ensure that their delivery staff were properly trained, properly equipped (with safe bikes and batteries), and obeyed the law.
The current system allows the food apps to offload the real costs of food delivery to the community. Saxe would do better to push the apps into a model that hikes pay, reduces pressure to speed, and moves more deliveries from cars to bikes. If the companies, for example, provided overnight parking for couriers’ e-bikes, GO trains wouldn’t be overwhelmed with them at the end of couriers’ work day.
There are important issues that arise from the surge in food delivery, but we can do better than turning back to failed bike licensing solutions.
Albert Koehl is an environmental lawyer, coordinator of Community Bikeways, and author of Wheeling Through Toronto, A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders (University of Toronto Press)
The post OP-ED: The bicycle licence, again appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
“The way he stares, he’s forcing you to engage with him.”
Zun Lee, the renowned street photographer known for his profound interactions with his subjects, vividly recalls his encounter with Ekow Nimako, the captivating subject of Ekow’s Helmet.
“It’s not like on Instagram where you look at something for two seconds, and you keep scrolling, he’s like ‘no, you’re going to stay here. You’re going to have a conversation, and you’re not just going to wander off. You’re not just going to shoot a picture and then go.’”
“And then we talked for 30 minutes.”
These types of interactions set Lee apart from image-takers who aimlessly wander the streets of Toronto.
“These people aren’t props… here’s a whole person, not just an object to photograph,” says Lee.
“Doing this forces me to slow down and be more mindful. Hopefully, that will also translate to the people who watch them.”
“It allows for audiences to also then say, hey, ‘what does it mean for me to be in a space?’”
Zun Lee at the Contact Photography FestivalIt’s May, and that means it’s photography month in Toronto.
The CONTACT Photography Festival has long been a way for artists to reach broader audiences – amplifying photo exhibitions beyond professional galleries and bringing them out into the cafés and public spaces of the city. CONTACT shines a light on photo art in Toronto.
By giving local photographers a platform to share their work, CONTACT offers worldwide access to the diverse mosaic that is Ontario’s capital city. It’s a space where those behind Canadian lenses can showcase their work – in person or online – to be discovered by the global community. Visitors from across the globe come to attend the festival or exhibit their images, bringing international perspectives to our city.
The festival illuminates individuals like Lee, a physician, educator, and street photographer from Frankfurt am Main who immigrated to Toronto in 1997. Lee wants to demonstrate that it’s not merely the images themselves that are important; it’s the meanings, people, places, discussions, and questions behind them that we must examine. And he’s taking a different approach to achieve these ends.
Street photographer Zun Lee at the opening of for:GROUND. Harry Choi, Goethe-Institut, Toronto, 2024.Through a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and curator Jutta Brendemühl, Lee’s latest exhibition, for:GROUND, opens up a space for conversation rooted in mutual exchange. A goal of the Goethe-Institut is to create a cross-community space that bridges cultures and creates a safe space for debate.
for:GROUND is an offering to Toronto, exploring how people perceive themselves and their bodies in public spaces. Do they feel regulated, threatened, precarious, or at home? “What does it mean to even just move through a certain location,” asks Lee. In essence, what does it mean for a human being to interact with a space, and what questions arise from that interaction? Lee aims to explore why people’s experiences are so varying when public spaces are supposed to be neutral.
Loitering as a reclamation of spacefor:GROUND serves as a critique of the rise of flâneurism in street photography – a practice of wandering often dominated by a white-male-centric gaze. In response, Lee utilizes lingering and loitering in public spaces as a way to reclaim space, especially for marginalized communities.
The term loitering traditionally carries with it a negative connotation, one of criminality and over-regulation. Not belonging, not allowed, not welcome. Merely staying in a public space without apparent purpose is viewed as suspicious. You can be fined, pushed out, or forbidden from coming back. And the “luxury” of hanging out in public spaces without intervention is not equal for everyone. Lee’s purpose with for:GROUND is to examine the disproportionate manner in which marginalized and racialized communities are viewed as ”loiterers” in public spaces rather than citizens connecting with each other in oppressive cityscapes.
“If we don’t see it, we can’t talk about it,” says Lee.
Lee also explains that in street photography there’s a sense that BIPOC people cannot do what white flâneurs can do – leisurely wander about and take pictures without being questioned. What are you doing with a camera? What are you doing here, period?
So when Lee hits the public arena, he doesn’t stroll, nor does he wander; he loiters. And it’s opened up a new world of possibilities.
Based on the German cultural concept of Verweilen – meaning dwelling and appreciating the space you’re in – Lee is reclaiming his space and inviting others to do the same.
Zun Lee’s approach to the streets“I want my images to be intimate and not just kind of stolen, or what people call candid.”
Lee’s loitering practice allows him to connect with subjects more deeply. When hurrying along in a daily routine, it’s challenging to learn about people or see the world through their eyes. But when you stop, look, and listen, you can discover new things about someone that perhaps you’ve always wondered. You can see them.
Zun Lee, Mind the Gap, Toronto, 2018. NE Corner of Bay and Bloor.By staying put and being seen, he’s allowing himself also to be vulnerable, present in the moment, grounded, rather than hunting for the next shot.
“It forces you to really develop a relationship with the city in that very moment and stay in that moment,” says Lee.
It gives him an appreciation of the city and the people in it, and makes him feel more connected, a feeling he hopes others will gain from his photographs.
“I hope the images are not just for the sake of the images.”
Sometimes he’ll repeatedly go to the same spot, stay for a few hours, and not take any photos. He’ll simply notice the same people who occupy the space he’s in and become part of that space himself. And a different relationship then emerges.
“It requires an investment, right, of time, of energy, and just even making yourself visible to others, and not just kind of stealing a shot… You’re not hiding who you are and what you’re doing.” He says this can open the chance for the next encounter to be even more intimate.
The practice also serves Lee, who has struggled with belonging and identity, feeling too much in some places and not enough in others. As someone who sometimes wrestles with isolation and what it means to be a Torontonian, the project has been a way for Lee to reconnect not only with the city but with himself.
“I want you to look at these images, not just as images of somebody or something else, but a way for you to also examine your own relationship to space, to Toronto.”
Much of Zun Lee’s work focuses on questions about black masculinity and fatherhood. Zun Lee, On the 29 North, Toronto, 2018. On the Dufferin Bus near Dufferin Grove Park.Lee has an insider/outsider perspective, having come from West Germany but also having lived here long enough to have memory and history in this place. This allows Lee to view Toronto through a unique lens, a situation he says is familiar to many Torontonians.
Lee wants to draw attention to the issues in this city, especially the inequitable access to public space, gentrification, social precarity, racism, and marginalization. Part of Lee’s message is to start talking about these issues, have conversations, and ask questions.
Lee aims to foreground those often viewed as invisible by broader society – older women, the LGBTQ+ community, differently-abled people, and unhoused individuals. Whether that’s owning their corner of Bloor and Bathurst or navigating their daily routines, Lee wants people to realize that everyone deserves to be seen. If nothing else, Lee hopes his photos will make individuals more empathetic to those they see on the streets.
Zun Lee, They Call Us Aliens, San Francisco, 2011. SE Corner of Ellis and Jones. Mural by t.w.five.“He is very generous, and it feels like the entire world is a level playing field to him,” says Brendemühl. He’s working to “empower people to reconstitute their Toronto,” with images that help people realize this is their city.
As Brendemüh puts it, “Zun manages to give us perspectives outside of our own experiences.” He portrays communities and people that many Torontonians don’t have access to, don’t intersect with, or simply ignore. When we move around public spaces, we must see it from our own viewpoint, but through this exhibition, Lee helps us learn to see the world through other perspectives.
for:GROUNDThe for:GROUND project is a living, moving, developing “exhibition in the making,” says Brendemühl, dedicating one of its walls to ongoing contributions from local and emerging photographers such as Kalmplex, Sarah Espedido, Ammar Bowaihl, and isi bhakhomen. Lee and Brendemühl say these will add something to the conversation.
Harry Choi, Goethe-Institut, Toronto, 2024.The exhibition will host a panel of Black arts workers, curators, and artists from Berlin to internationalize the concept of racialized wayward bodies being regulated in public spaces. There will also be a one-on-one portfolio review for TMU photography graduate students.
Harry Choi, Goethe-Institut, Toronto, 2024.for:GROUND also features carefully curated playlists, a film screening, Lee’s influential book list, and a sticky note message board for visitors to leave comments, ask questions, and contribute to the conversation.
“We all care about this space. Deeply but differently.” – Zun Lee
for:GROUND runs from May 3-29, 2024, at the Goethe Space in Toronto.
The post The Ground We Share appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Moore Avenue is a small but busy street in North Toronto that usually has a steady line of cars moving in both directions. But for the second time in less than a year, the road has been narrowed to a single lane at the crosswalk where pedestrians and cyclists leave the Mount Pleasant Cemetery and begin their descent into the Mud Creek ravine.
In April, pylons and caution tape festooned what had become a major drop in the pavement that threatened to bottom out cars. The sidewalk that flanked it was cracked into pieces. By May 1st, the entire road was closed for repairs. But no matter how often the city repairs that stretch of Moore, the end result always seems to be the same: water washes out the sediment below the road and eventually the pavement above cracks and sinks.
This is because Mud Creek runs buried under the cemetery and Moore Avenue and only resurfaces on the south side of the street, where it carves a path down through the ravine all the way to the Evergreen Brick Works.
It is frustrating to wait idling in line while the cars take turns passing by the sinkhole, but I can’t help but marvel at the power of the water to stop traffic and once again ruin the city engineers’ plans to build a smooth road over it.
Water goes where water wants to go. You can build all the houses you like on a buried creek or a forgotten floodplain, but the water will remember its ancient route even if you do not, as the 30 people who died on Raymore Drive during Hurricane Hazel, in October, 1954, learned too late. We forget this at our peril.
WATER IS NOT PASSIVEI grew up on the edge of a ravine and had a constant fear that we were going to slide into it.
This fear was not entirely unreasonable: the plaster ceiling in our living room actually caved in one night because the corner of our house was “travelling south”—as one contractor put it—at a rate of one centimetre each year, sinking down into the ravine.
Ravines are notoriously unstable places. Water falls into them, following gravity, pulling trees and soil down. Pavement cracks at their edges. They are mountain slopes turned upside down.
In the age of the Anthropocene, it’s tempting to think of land and water as something so fragile it needs our protection. There is, of course, truth to this: human beings have become a major, if not geological, force, which puts us in the peculiar position of trying to protect the land and water we depend on from ourselves. But it is also true that land and water are not passive objects that we simply act upon; they are the original agents of geological change, and they have always shaped the way we live just as much as we shape them.
It can be easy to forget this truth when you live in a city. We build our homes and offices mostly wherever we want and we lay down hardpacked roads and bridges that rarely fail. We have cars and buses and streetcars and bicycles to carry us quickly across the city. So it’s easy to feel immune to the power of the environment we live in. It’s almost possible to believe that we live in a world of our own making, one that is rational and predictable and mostly under our control.
Years ago, I encountered an observation that Margaret Atwood had made, describing the city world above the ravines as “the conscious life of electrified houses” and suggesting that going down into the ravines was like “going down into sleep.” It was a moment of recognition for me: I’d always felt the ravines were a mostly unnoticed, unseen force in the city, directing our movements and in some ways controlling our lives—while most of us went about our business above, in the conscious city, hardly aware of them or their power. Moreover, the ravines were also dumping grounds, places where we hid the things we wished to forget: from abandoned shopping carts to runoff from the sewers and the many pollutants that were entering into the water system from the city above.
After mulling this idea over for years—and observing and writing about the city’s ravines for decades—I began to search for a new way to capture the mystery and power I felt when I entered the ravines. I knew I wanted to capture something I did not know how to articulate in words so I decided to try photographing the ravines instead of writing about them. I began to take my camera with me whenever I went for a walk.
Someone once said that cameras are instruments that teach us how to see. This is certainly true for me: the more I images I made, the more I began to see in the ravines. I became alive to the minute changes in the colour of the water, the feathery beginnings of a horsetail growing out of a puddle and how the textures of the leaves on the trees changed from seasons to season: from glossy spring to meaty summer to papery fall. I noticed the minute changes in the colours of the earth and the leaves that covered them as they went from wet to dry and wet again, darkening into humus. I began to listen for the water as it rushed through the city storm sewers towards the ravines after a rainfall. I also saw the ways in which water was always grading and re-grading our streets, forcing us to build this way and that, follow its path to the ravine edges.
As the ravine project grew, I decided I would challenge our naturally human-centric viewpoint by prioritizing the land and water around people rather than the people I saw in the ravines. But I knew that I also did not want to try to make images of an `untouched,’ wild landscape (as if there is such a thing!). So there had to be some kind of evidence of human life in each shot, even if that evidence was very subtle: like the evidence of erosion, which is compounded, not just by climate change but also by the invasive fast-growing Norway maples that now out-compete our deep-rooted native species, and the uncanny green of a nutrient overloaded swamp.
And I wanted to capture the ravine as its own being, still becoming: and as an active subject rather than as a passive object that people act upon. So I went back to the same places over and over again to try to capture a place that was constantly transforming itself and constantly in process.
SHADOWLAND, the product of my work, is now a solo art exhibition on display at the Evergreen Brick Works. It features 12 images from the ongoing ravine project printed on rice paper scrolls and hung unprotected from the ceiling. Viewers are challenged to look at the ravine in new ways and from new points of view—first as they see the shadowy images looming through translucent rice paper. And they are involved in the future of the exhibit itself. The care (or not) that people take in moving through the exhibit will determine how quickly the scrolls begin to wear and age over time—as will the environment they are hanging in. It’s an interesting experiment. Several people have asked if I am worried about vandalism, since the gallery space is not guarded by security. I just shrug my shoulders: this, too, is part of the experiment. It will be interesting to see what happens. Can we be trusted to care for a space that depends on our protection? Will we respect what it needs?
Similarly, I am curious what will happen to the sink-hole on Moore Avenue. Will the city repave it again, blindly expecting new results from an experiment that always yields the same outcome? Or will someone finally agree to let the river run where it wants to run?
They say a fool is a person who keeps doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sometimes I think this describes every one of us, as we carry on our business as usual in the conscious city above the ravines, hoping that the ways in which we’ve constricted and provoked our watershed won’t catch up with us, even though it already has.
photo courtesy of Sasha Chapman
Sasha Chapman is a Toronto-based writer, photographer and artist working on a project about cities and their watersheds. The next installment, WHAT THE RIVER CARRIES, explores the Tiber River and what it means to live downstream from Rome’s imperial legacy. SHADOWLAND, a seven-month experiment in images and sound, is on display at the Evergreen Brick Works from May 1 to December 31.
The post Shadowland: Photography down in the ravines appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The imminent end of the 20-year contract with Astral Media to supply and manage Toronto’s street furniture is a foreseeable follow-up to Spacing’s 20th anniversary. The development of the contract began just a few years after we were founded, and it was one of the issues we were most active about in those early years. It sat right at the heart of our mandate to discuss the public spaces of Toronto, and fit into our continuing interest in design.
While we’ve had many magazine and online features about street furniture, though, we never dedicated an issue to it. Now that the end of the contract is in sight, it’s time to start a conversation about where to go next. So we’ve taken the opportunity to put it on our cover and reflect on the two decades of the contract and what could be next.
The street furniture contract was one of few places we parted ways with David Miller as mayor. We has problems with the principle of outsourcing a civic responsibility to a third party, the reliance on advertising, and the uninspiring (and, it turned out, sometimes dysfunctional) design. As John Lorinc points out in his history of the contract, trying to manage the city’s furniture with constant reference to a private-sector third party is inherently clumsy and unsatisfactory.
To be fair, some elements worked out. The city has a lot more street furniture, it’s reasonably consistent, it’s mostly not terrible and often an improvement on the crappy excuses for furniture that featured before (remember those suburban plastic benches with a big ad on the backrest?). The garbage bins have been bad both aesthetically and functionally, but part of the problem has also been maintenance – they’re just not emptied often enough in high-traffic locations. (Ironically, the same week this issue arrived in our store, the City announced new, slightly improved garbage bins. But we still hope for a complete rethinking in the next round.)
The impetus and funds from the contract also enabled the city to set up a unit dedicated to managing the public realm, which it had never had before. This innovation recognized one of the key reasons we founded Spacing: the public realm is vital to the health of a city, and needs to be taken care of consciously and directly. The unit developed principles, for example, about how to manage sidewalks so that they were free of obstructions but provided amenities, functionality, and vibrancy through street furniture, utility boxes, and patios.
The unit has since disappeared in a reorganization, its functions shared out among new sections. But if Toronto wants to finally take full responsibility for street furniture and bring its design and management in-house, it will need to build capacity, and that will mean a dedicated, focused team of staff. It cannot be a responsibility shared between other units for whom it’s always a secondary concern, or we will continue with the mediocre and half-hearted process we’ve experienced through a private-public contract. The public realm is where the city comes together – it needs its champions in-house as well as outside.
The issues that come through when talking about street furniture also apply to the other shared infrastructure that underpins the city. In our front section, Nathan Abraha shows how Toronto Water plans ahead for the future to keep our water systems maintained – perhaps a model for how a civic street furniture program could function. The map of outdoor skating rinks by Jeff Alan and Teresa Lau reminds us that the inequalities present in the pre-amalgamation cities can persist to this day, 25 years later. Evening out those inequalities was one of the goals of the street furniture program – one that was partially successful, but still needs to be a focus for the next two decades. A mini-feature of two articles about accessibility highlights the need for amenities that make our sidewalks welcoming for everyone.
And in the end, that’s the purpose of street furniture – to encourage people to use our public spaces. Teru Ikeda talks to some of the denizens who bring life to the somewhat sterile expanse of the soon-to-be-renamed square at the corner of Yonge and Dundas. Drew-Anne Glennie explores how putting out goods for re-use makes our sidewalks into spaces for free exchange. And Natalie Welsh brings to life the former TTC Guides, who used to animate our transit system in their trim uniforms, providing assistance to anyone who needed it. Street furniture is important, but it’s the people who use it who make our public spaces thrive.
This issue is available at the Spacing Store at 401 Richmond St. W., and at fine book and magazine stores shortly, as well as arriving soon in subscribers’ mailboxes.
The post NEW ISSUE: Furniture for the People appeared first on Spacing National.
The 20th anniversary issue of Spacing (#65) was nominated for a 2024 National Magazine Award for Best Editorial Package. Winners will be announced at the June 8th gala event. Congratulations to our editors and contributors for their outstanding work on this issue.
The post Spacing nominated for National Magazine Award appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
With the change of the seasons, we talk about different kinds of renewal.
First, Senior Editor John Lorinc talks about the special Spacing investigation into the cyber attack on the Toronto Public Library that shut the service down for months. How did it happen, and how do we make sure our public institutions are hacker-proof?
And, the latest Spacing Magazine issue is on shelves now. As a preview, we share the full conversation with Toronto Public Space Committee organizer Cara Chellew (available in the issue as a Q&A) about the need for new Toronto street furniture: garbage bins that work, bus shelters that actually provide shelter, and places for people to sit.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.
Spacing Radio · Episode 77: Spring cleaning in TorontoThe post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 077, Spring cleaning in Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Shadow studies often get lost amid the seemingly more pressing issues related to current urban planning and design. However, the relevance of shadow studies has only grown, as cities face increasingly complex challenges related to density, sustainability, and livability. Ultimately, well-designed neighbourhoods strike a balance between built density and access to sunlight as a means of ensuring that residents enjoy comfortable, just, and healthy living conditions. Shadow studies play a crucial role in achieving this balance. So, let’s remind ourselves about where they came from and why their neglect by developers, architects, and planners should be questioned.
A genuine look at the history of shadow studies and cities would trace things back to the earliest human settlements and vernacular architecture, where people intuitively oriented their structures to maximize sunlight exposure for warmth and illumination. It is no surprise that humans need light, physiologically and psychologically. Ancient civilizations across every culture recognized the importance of sunlight in architecture and settlements, accordingly. This is evident in the orientation of sacred temples, amphitheatres, public squares, and other spaces designed to capture the sun’s rays during specific times of the day.
During these early days, the “regulation” of solar control varied across cultures. However, the birth of sun-shadow regulations—as with all regulations—is connected to religious and cultural values systems related to proper behaviour. That is, shadowing and access to the sun were an issue of ethics. For example, in Arabic-Islamic tradition, an initial building allowance in early settlements that allowed people to build as high as they wanted within their “air space” was overturned once it was found that people were using it to harm neighbours intentionally by taking away access to sun and air.
It’s worth noting, however, that solar control strategies were climate-dependent. For example, in many hot environments, shade and shadow were intentionally “designed” into cities—through elements such as courtyards and narrow streets—to provide relief from the powerful sun. As such, shadowing was seen as something positive. Conversely, as people and their settlements moved into colder climates, maximizing sun exposure for warmth and light became paramount for survival.
Equally important is that for the majority of urban history, solar access was somewhat self-regulating since building heights were limited by construction systems. So, in parts of the world where sun access was desirable, the “harm” done to individuals and the public through shadow creation was constrained by building technologies.
The history of shadow studies in contemporary urban planning can be traced back to the mid-20th century when cities experienced rapid growth. With the rise of urbanization and high-rise construction, shadow studies became essential tools for addressing the challenges of daylighting, solar access, and urban microclimates. As skyscrapers and high-rise buildings began to reshape urban skylines in sun-desiring cities, concerns arose about the potential negative impacts of shadows on streets, parks, and public spaces. In response, planners started incorporating shadow studies into the development approval process to assess the sunlight access and microclimate effects of proposed projects.
One notable example of the significance of shadow studies in urban planning is the case of New York City’s zoning regulations. In response to concerns about the excessive overshadowing caused by tall buildings, particularly in Manhattan, the city implemented zoning laws in the early 20th century to limit building heights and preserve sunlight access to streets and parks. These regulations were informed by detailed shadow studies conducted by architects and planners to balance density with livability. A city of shadow-dwellers was unanimously seen as negative.
Although these contemporary regulations attempted to detach themselves from religious and behavioural codes of conduct, their ethical roots remained the same: in locations where the sun is desirable, the unsaid underlying reason behind the shadow study regulations is that solar access is an ethical right, and any infringement of this basic human need is necessarily undesirable.
Let’s dig into this a bit more as it relates to cities in colder climates where access to the sun is important.
One of the key considerations in contemporary shadow studies is the concept of solar access—that is, the availability of sunlight to buildings and public spaces. Based on the most recent research, solar access has a wide variety of benefits to city inhabitants, including but not limited to the following::
Health and Well-beinga. Mental Health
- Sunlight Exposure: Access to natural sunlight positively impacts mental health by helping to regulate circadian rhythms and mood.
- Reduced Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Sunlight exposure can mitigate the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is prevalent in areas with limited sunlight.
- Improved Emotion Health: Sunlight exposure has been linked to improved emotional health, leading to a greater sense of well-being and happiness.
b. Physical Health
- Vitamin D Production: Sunlight exposure stimulates the body’s production of vitamin D, which is essential for bone health, immune function, and reducing the risk of certain diseases.
- Improves Sleep: Exposure to natural sunlight during the day can help regulate sleep patterns, leading to better sleep at night.
- Reduced Stress: Sunlight exposure can reduce stress levels and lower blood pressure.
Promotion of Green Spacesa. Urban Forests and Parks:
- Strategic Location: Shadow studies identify suitable locations for urban forests, parks, and green corridors, which provide shade, reduce temperatures, and improve air quality.
- Cooling Effect: Parks and green spaces created through shadow analysis act as “cool islands,” providing relief from high temperatures and mitigating the urban heat island effect.
b. Green Roofs and Walls:
- Strategic Placement: Shadow studies inform the placement of green roofs and walls to maximize their effectiveness in absorbing heat and reducing the urban heat island effect.
- Temperature Reduction: Green spaces created through shadow analysis absorb heat, lower temperatures, and enhance air quality.
- Increased Evapotranspiration: Green spaces increase evapotranspiration, which cools the surrounding air, reducing the overall temperature of the area.
Optimized Building Designa. Shading:
- Strategic Placement: Shadow studies help identify areas where shading can be strategically placed to reduce direct sunlight exposure on building facades, sidewalks, and streets.
- Use of Overhangs and Awnings: By using overhangs, awnings, and other shading devices, architects can minimize solar heat gain, reducing the need for air conditioning and lowering energy consumption.
- Tree Planting: Shadow studies inform the strategic placement of trees, which provide natural shade and help cool the surrounding environment.
b. Building Materials:
- Reflective Surfaces: Shadow studies guide the use of light-colored and reflective building materials to reduce the absorption of solar radiation and minimize heat retention.
- Cool Roofs: Analysis of sunlight and shadow patterns helps determine the most effective locations for implementing cool roof technologies, which reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat than traditional roofs.
Street Design and InfrastructureUrban Design
- Street Orientation and Width: Shadow studies inform street orientation and width to maximize shading and promote natural ventilation, reducing the overall temperature.
- Pedestrian Comfort: By reducing direct sunlight exposure on sidewalks, streets, and public spaces, shadow studies enhance pedestrian comfort and encourage active transportation.
Water Features
- Strategic Placement: Shadow studies inform the placement of water features, such as fountains and ponds, which have a cooling effect on the surrounding environment through evaporation.
Energy Efficiency and SustainabilityReduced Energy Consumption
- Daylighting: Solar access reduces the need for artificial lighting during the day, leading to significant energy savings.
- Passive Heating: Sunlight can provide passive heating during colder months, reducing the demand for space heating.
- Cooling Load Reduction: Proper solar access can minimize the need for air conditioning during warmer months by allowing for natural ventilation and reducing the urban heat island effect.
Promotion of Renewable Energy:
- Solar Power Generation: Solar access enables the installation of photovoltaic panels on buildings, contributing to the generation of clean, renewable energy.
Economic BenefitsIncreased Property Value:
- Desirability: Properties with good solar access are more desirable, leading to increased property values.
- Lower Energy Costs: Homes with efficient solar access have lower energy costs, making them more attractive to potential buyers.
Environmental BenefitsUrban Heat Island Mitigation
- Heat Reduction: Solar access helps mitigate the urban heat island effect by allowing green spaces and buildings to absorb and reflect less heat.
- Improved Air Quality: By reducing the need for air conditioning, solar access contributes to lower energy consumption, which in turn leads to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved air quality.
Social EquityEquitable Access:
- Equal Access to Sunlight: Proper urban planning and solar access considerations ensure that all neighborhoods have equitable access to sunlight, promoting social inclusion and well-being for all residents.
- Enhanced Public Spaces: Parks, plazas, and streets with good solar access become vibrant community spaces, fostering social interaction and a sense of belonging.
- Addressing Heat Vulnerability: Shadow studies identify areas that are particularly vulnerable to heat stress, allowing planners to implement targeted strategies to improve sunlight and shade access for vulnerable populations. This is particularly relevant for cities that are experiencing extreme heat events during the hot months of the year, such as heat bubbles.
It is because of this wonderful variety of benefits that many municipalities implemented and continue to include shadow studies in their regulations. Typically, cities ask designers to see the shadows on summer and winter solstices (the shortest and longest shadows, respectively), as well as the two equinoxes in March and September, capturing shadows cast at 10 am, 12 noon, and 2 pm on those days. These dates are carried over from the days before computer modeling—when designers had to draw manually—and give one a sense of the shadow extremes along with their midpoints. This allowed people to mentally “fill in the blanks” between those dates.
However, given that advanced simulation software is the norm for architects today, it is well within reason for municipalities to ask for full digital shadow animations for the entire year. This will take the guesswork out of the process and allow people to accurately assess the full impact of buildings on their surrounding environment, assuming the model is constructed correctly. Current technologies even allow for this to be done at the scale of the city and not just the lot.
Yet, despite the benefits, developers, and architects often try to find ways to undermine shadow studies. From creating inaccurate photorealistic renderings and using image frames to cut out true shadow lengths to simply providing drawing packages that exclude the winter solstice (the day with the longest shadow), there is no shortage of ways people have tried to subvert the regulations and the public good from which they were born. Several local examples of this can be found in Some Useful Resources below. At best, this is done out of ignorance, at worst these are intentional tactics used to lie to municipal officials and the public—profiting the few at the expense of the many.
Ultimately, shadow studies were born from values recognizing that equitable access to sunlight and daylighting in urban environments is an ethical issue prioritizing human well-being. Related regulations attempt to preserve this for future generations. All the fancy advanced digital tools and simulation software used to model the intricate interplay of sunlight, shadows, and urban form, serve this simple end. In this way, any attempt to undercut shadow studies can be seen as an attack on creating a just and livable city.
In summary:
- Shadow studies can be traced back to the earliest human settlements, where people intuitively oriented their structures to maximize sunlight for warmth and light.
- Although the “regulation” of solar control varied across cultures, they were founded on values concerning proper “neighbourly” behaviour and considered an issue of ethics.
- Solar control strategies vary with climate. In hot environments, shade and shadow were often intentionally “designed” into cities to provide relief from the powerful sun. In cold climates, attempts were made to maximize sun for warmth.
- For the majority of urban history, solar access was somewhat self-regulating as buildings were limited by construction technologies that kept their heights quite low.
- With the rise of urbanization and high-rise construction in the 20th century, concerns arose about the potential negative impacts of shadows on people, streets, parks, and public spaces. In response, planners started incorporating shadow studies into the development approval processes to assess the sunlight access and microclimate effects of proposed projects.
- Despite the large changes in urbanization and building technologies brought by the 20th century, the ethical roots of shadow studies remained: that is, solar access is an ethical right, and any infringement of this basic human need is necessarily undesirable.
- The concept of solar access—the availability of sunlight to buildings and public spaces—is critical to shadow studies. This, in turn, has a wide variety of benefits touching on issues such as mental health, the promotion of green spaces, social equity, optimizing building design, promoting energy efficiency and sustainability, street and infrastructure design, property values, urban heat island mitigation, and social equity.
- Despite its many benefits, developers and architects often try to find ways to undermine shadow studies—from creating inaccurate photorealistic renderings to providing incomplete information. This is done out of ignorance or intention, profiting the few at the expense of the many.
- It is common for regulations to ask for shadow studies for set times of the year—the winter and summer solstices, as well as the equinoxes—allowing for people to mentally “fill in the blanks” between these dates, it is well within reason for municipalities to now ask for full digital shadow animations for the entire year, given that advanced simulation software is the norm for architects today,
- Shadow studies were born from values recognizing that equitable access to sunlight and daylighting in urban environments is an ethical issue prioritizing human well-being. As such, any attempt to undercut shadow studies can be seen as an attack on creating a just and livable city.
Some Useful Resources:
- What are Architectural Shadow Studies and Why Are They Important?
- ArchDaily – The Role of Shadows in Vernacular Architecture
- NYC shadow study regulation document
- NY Times: Mapping the Shadows of New York City: Every Building, Every Block
- Spacing Vancouver – Deconstructing Visuals 2.0
- City Conversations – A Shadow of a doubt
- City Hall Watch – Incorrect shadow studies for 1551-1581 W7th Ave rezoning (Acton Ostry Architects), and case study at 228-246 E Broadway & 180 Kingsway (same company). Big problems with renderings vs reality in the Broadway Plan area.
- City Hall Watch – Ground Truthing Shadows
- City Hall Watch – How accurate are the shadow studies of the proposed 1477 W Broadway tower? See a comparison against a few different sources and judge for yourself.
- At 215-229 East 13th Avenue, a 21-storey tower rezoning. Online Q&A April 10-23. Renter demoviction. Breaks Broadway Plan solar access rules for Main Street. False shadow studies. JTA Dev Con.
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Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
The post S101S – Understanding Shadow Studies: Why They Matter appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Finding a public space to sit down and write this article was a struggle. My neighbourhood library is under renovation and will be for the next 12-18 months, and it was still too chilly and rainy this past month to set up in a park nearby. When the weather eliminates outdoor options in Toronto, it’s hard to find a ‘third place,’ where I can settle in for an extended time outside of home or office.
I have issues with Starbucks, the flavour of their coffee, their exorbitant prices, their union-busting tactics; but they were an industry leader that understood the impact that providing a comfortable café environment had on the experience of spending time within their stores.
Starbucks has – since its inception – benefited from a business model based on the cultivation of a community-centric experience that attracts customers not just for the coffee, but for the people and the space itself. Customers enjoyed the conversational atmosphere, people joked about the baristas who almost know their name, and the warm Wi-Fi-enabled seating area invited you to lounge for hours.
This experiential element of Starbucks’ success isn’t a secret; the public mission statement of Starbucks Canada is a motto so syrupy it’s fit for their menu: “With every cup, with every conversation, with every community – we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection.”
Starbucks has for decades attempted to cultivate ‘Third Places,’ or casual social settings found outside of the home and work. They’ve frequently used the term in their marketing and even brag that their innovative café predates the term, which was first coined in 1989.
In the case of my own neighbourhood store, it was able to provide this setting for over two decades. But the location’s gradual transition, from a spacious two-room coffee lounge with ample seating to a one-room mobile pickup lane, undermines that function.
The location in question has just been renovated into a new layout that could best be described as ‘express,’ a style that will soon be replacing many other locations across the chain.
Perhaps the best way we can recognize when a third place is under threat is if we dig a little further into their history.
A brief history of the Third PlaceThe year is 1633; fearing the propagation of radical ideas, Sultan Murad the IV of the Ottoman Empire issued a new law whose violation was punishable by beatings for perpetrators’ first offence and being sewn into a leather bag and thrown into the sea for their second. In 1672 King Charles II of England embedded a network of spies throughout the country to, as he proclaimed, “Restrain the Spreading of False News, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government.” The crime targeted by both leaders? The operation of coffee houses.
Coffee houses are one of the earliest examples of ‘Third Places,’ a term popularized by urban sociologist Raymond Oldenberg, who described them as “public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), Third Places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them.” More than that, Third Places are essential to community-building because they bring people together within a shared space who may otherwise remain in more disparate social circles.
It was not the energizing effects of coffee drinking itself that these laws were targeting, but instead the atmosphere its consumption brewed, and the stimulating yet sober conversations that were commonplace at many coffee houses. These ‘penny universities’ became a space where for one penny per cup, the high classes and the low, political rivals of every faction, town gossips, academics, and revolutionary thinkers could all intermingle and build upon the insights of those they would have little reason to interact with otherwise. It was the informality of these settings and the irreverent discussion of society challenging ideas that was deemed by those in power to be the real threat.
Third places are valuable because they cultivate social communities who are more aware of their neighbours, who discuss local news, and where attendees can talk about issues and perspectives that they may not find at home, or would be taboo in the professional setting of work.
Enter StarbucksFirst launched in Seattle in 1971 as a coffee bean roastery, it wasn’t until the onboarding of Howard Schultz in 1984 that they even served their first brewed cup. The massive expansion of the chain over the following decades has been undeniable, but in the 1990s the layout of the store was first standardized to include warm colours, coffee tones, and comfortable seating arrangements. Schultz was very aware of their community capture goals when he described the design ethos as “intended from day one to build a Third Place between home and work … at a time in America when people are hungry for human connection.” As of 2023 there are more than 38,000 Starbucks locations worldwide, many of which follow Schultz’s design ethos.
My local Starbucks can be understood as having gone through three distinct design phases.
Initially the location was a two-room space, with one side serving as a seating area complete with tables, leather chairs, and even a fireplace. The location was frequented by neighbourhood families, and I vividly remember waiting there for after-school activities with various crowds who each needed large community spaces to meet up.
The Starbucks circa 2007Around 2012, in phase two, the lounge half of the store was sold off and the remaining room renovated to a layout many Starbucks locations still use today. A coffee counter then took up half the remaining space. Limited benches and smaller tables replaced the leather lounge chairs, and a new counter was installed along the window, lined by highchairs. This stage of the store was undeniably tighter but still welcoming, though noticeably more individualistic with a seating plan that prevented most customers from facing each other.
Another round of renovations have recently been finished and the space has yet again had its layout changed. According to official messaging from Starbucks, this new style of franchise was meant to improve accessibility for customers, providing more space for movement and lower counters for service. While accessibility is undeniably an important goal, it does seem that Starbucks is using the virtue of accessibility to obscure their real goal of reducing the amount of customer seating. The lower counters may indeed assist customers with mobility constraints, but the addition of a massive flat screen for listing mobile order numbers doesn’t seem to make the space noticeably more accessible.
The warm creamy colours, rounded minimalist edges, and scant furniture feels straight out of Marie Kondo’s design book, but this clean modernism strips the location of any distinct personality. Where there were around 20 seats just last month, there are now maybe 4-6 seats total in the exact same space. All of these seats are individual and face a blank wall with a ledge just deep enough to place one’s coffee, but not quite comfortably support a laptop.
Most egregiously, all of the window seating is gone, and in its space stand faux chic leather leaning bars that most closely resemble what a horse would be tied to outside a saloon. I guess customers are expected to awkwardly rest against the bar while waiting for their coffee to be prepared, after which point, they are expected to promptly leave.
It’s unsurprising that the location would optimize its layout for a new digital ‘frictionless’ consumer era, one in which social communities have all but shifted online to platforms, and where companies focus increasingly on the commodity, rather than the setting, community, and atmosphere that the commodity is consumed within. The reason this redesign is concerning to me is not just that the company has decided to literally cut corners off their counter and their overhead, but just how antithetical adding hostile architecture to the space should be to Starbucks’ own purported ethos.
From their design choices to their public messaging, I’m concerned that Starbucks may not actually know what a Third Place is. After all they were the ones that claimed “the Third Place has never been defined solely by a physical space, it’s also the feeling of warmth, connection, a sense of belonging Starbucks [sic].”
Starbucks has decided to side-step this contradiction by claiming that what they are doing is actually helping to ‘evolve’ the Third Place. In their article they promise they’re “keeping coffee and connection at the centre” which they will achieve by “making work easier for partners [staff], enabling stronger engagement and connection between our partners and the customers they serve, and delivering experiential convenience.” ‘Connection’ sounds great, but the word is strategically used so that each time they say it it’s only describing the connection between their staff and the customer. Not once do they suggest these changes will support ‘connection’ like community bonds forming between the customers themselves. What this promise really says is that Starbucks’ plan is to deskill their baristas, increase service satisfaction, and make ordering convenient through focusing on mobile pick-ups.
Even the corporate art is just boring cell-shaded images of coffee pots and mugs. One piece that encapsulates the heart of Starbucks’ current contradiction is placed above one of the uncomfortable leaning bars. It’s an illustration of a community of locals congregating around a Starbucks location, the first ever location opened in Seattle to be precise. They’re young, diverse, artistic, queer-coded, and sharing the public space in front of a community-integrated coffee shop that even the busking musician has decided to get their coffee from. It’s a pleasant image, but it reflects the corporate mythos that Starbucks so desperately wants its clientele to still see in them.
The Starbucks this piece occupies is no longer a community hub – its capacity to function as one has been filtered out by profit-seeking decisions such that all that’s left is aesthetic and iconography.
Starbucks has reached a crossroads in deciding what it is: a contributing cornerstone of the community, or an express take-away spot. Compared to their indulgent motto, my local Starbucks no longer cultivates conversation, community, and human connection, and yet these remain the ideals the corporation prides itself on. The chain is facing a crisis of identity as it tries to balance its preferred image as a quaint, local, Seattle-based, community-oriented coffee shop, with the alienating reality of each store becoming one optimized location of a $102-billion multi-national coffee empire.
The death of the Third PlaceThere is a risk inherent to entrusting the cultivation of a Third Place to a business that only wants to sell that experience back to customers. A for-profit company is not going to altruistically provide a community space just because they love your neighbourhood that much, unless you’re willing to pay for it. The issue then for Starbucks is that customers thought that they already were paying for it.
People go to Starbucks and are willing to pay a premium price for the premium experience, but by removing that experience from the equation Starbucks is now competing exclusively on product, and the bad news for Starbucks is that their product is not premium.
A Third Place doesn’t necessarily have to be free, and in fact most Third Places are not free – a couple dollars or so for a coffee or a snack gives you the permission to take up space in the store for an extended period. It used to be that if you went with a friend to a Starbucks but only one of you got a coffee, the other friend was still welcomed to spend time in the store.
Third Places must ultimately be community cultivated and not just community occupied. When a space is being provided by a multi-national corporation like Starbucks, they have no obligation to customers to preserve that space. Especially if a smaller store with faster turnover would ultimately be more profitable for them.
For readers looking to find Third Places the good news is that for now they do still exist throughout the city. However, without regular patrons that could always change. Seek out the cafes, reading rooms, and esoteric bookstores of Kensington Market. For world renowned collections of books and high speed free public Wi-Fi, one hundred Toronto Public Libraries are scattered throughout the city. For close quarters laughs many small bars host casual open-mic nights for everything from comedy to music to poetry.
Though convenient and recognizable, Starbucks is not your friend. If you want to cultivate a lasting Third Place in your community it has to be locally owned, socially oriented, and staffed by members of the community who you know, and who know you. Whatever your scene is, Third Places exist because they attract returning local regulars, so my best advice is to find somewhere local that you want to return to regularly. Soon enough you too will be a part of what makes that Third Place special.
Right now, our Third Places are under siege and are rapidly being lost. I encourage you to consider if your favourite Third Place, as long-standing as it may be, is in a similarly precarious spot.
Sincerely (at least according to my Grande Caramel Macchiato),
Frank
The post Are commercial “third places” a dying breed? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
I’m one of many who swim and paddle in downtown Toronto year-round. I have no summer cottage. The beach is my cottage.
Until our last swim on January 7th, 2024, we swam nearly every day year-round at Michael Hough Beach, Ontario Place West Island. It is now closed for development. This fine pebble beach has been our joy and pleasure for more than 50 years. It looks pretty much the same as it did in my childhood, except that the trees are much larger now. It is Toronto’s cleanest and most accessible beach. Many of us prefer the fine pea-sized pebbles to sand, as you don’t need to put down a towel or blanket — you can just lay on the pebbles like a giant beanbag bed.
What will “development” do to our fine pebble beach?
Let’s compare the original West Island, as yet untouched by developers, with the Ontario Place East Island, recently developed into Trillium Park. Trillium Park is wonderful but for the water’s edge, which is the reason many of us go there. Instead of nice beaches, the entire shoreline perimeter is buttressed by big rocks, making it dangerous for swimmers and paddlers alike.
For safety, especially when the water is colder, we paddle close to the shore and stop to take frequent rests and check the safety of our vessels. But getting out of the water along these large slippery rocks is treacherous.
The massive number of condominiums along the waterfront puts additional strain on our scarce green and blue space, and we need more, not fewer, clean beaches. At the same time, we have a massive problem with a Combined Sewer Outfall (CSO) at Sunnyside beach behind the breakwall, making it is often unswimmable. Likewise the large sewage treatment plant in the east end often makes Ashbridges Bay, Woodbine, and Cherry Beach unswimmable. So we look to natural beaches further from the mainland.
Many of us with disabilities or mobility issues are also looking for accessible (e.g. fine pebbles rather than sand) beaches as alternatives to the now-closed Ontario Place West Island. Several members of our swim group, SwimOP.com = Swim at Ontario Place, are now swimming at Humber Bay Park. But that series of beaches is also being bouldered over.
While perhaps well-meaning, the city’s consultants and advisors are often not users of recreational water. Their idea of water access means being able to have a footpath that comes close to the lake, but not actually getting into and out of the lake. If all we want to do is look at the lake, we can do that with a VR (Virtual Reality) headset. But one thing we can’t do in VR is jump in the lake and go for a swim or paddle or jump into a ball and run around on the lake.
What about the new Don River developments? I’ve been running the Waterhci = Water-Human-Computer Interface Symposium for 26 years and we invite speakers from around the world to talk about the intersection of water, humans, and technology. The Symposium brings together thought leaders from MIT, Stanford, University of Toronto, and elsewhere working at the intersection of the physical, virtual, and social worlds. I invited Waterfront Toronto to come and talk about their new development. They seemed interested until they asked what I wanted them to talk about. I said I wanted them to talk about the new beach they plan to build. They then immediately declined.
The City could do a lot to improve water access. Take a look at the condition of safety egress ladders, for example. They’re in a state of disrepair. I’ve tried talking to many people at the City and attended meetings at City Hall to present the problem in deputations, and the like, but have been unable to get a meaningful response regarding the state of the safety ladders.
Will it take a tragedy or death for the City to respond?
As more and more of our beaches are sold or leased to private developers or bouldered over, we have more and more people packed into fewer and fewer remaining beaches. This leads to overcrowding, and loss of water access at a time when the city’s population is expanding and its density is increasing.
We don’t want to be packed into little roped-off swim areas, or to buy tickets to swim in a concrete bowl. As Kate Rew said so eloquently: “We do not want to queue up and pay for a swim, we want to swim as people walk: at 5am, for three minutes, at midnight, for hours.”
Ontario Place was supposed to be the “cottage for people without cottages,” but now that it is under private development, and likely closed for years of construction, where do we swim?
Water access is a basic need and a basic human right. It is time to make it safer rather than destroying it or making it more dangerous.
A number of us have decided to engage in a water-access and water safety campaign to raise awareness with a series of “swim ins,” “paddle ins” and “ball ins” at public fountains and basins, as well as sunbathing in the city away from beaches, to get the message across.
Give us a safe place to swim, and a place to paddle in downtown Toronto!
Steve Mann is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Full Professor at University of Toronto. He invented HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging, the smartwatch, wearable technology, and the hydraulophone (underwater pipe organ). He also founded the new field of Water-Human-Computer Interaction (WaterHCI.com). Join him at facebook.com/groups/swimop
The post Dangerous Development: ‘Boulder beaches’ are unsafe and bad for us and our environment appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
“As developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, to experience the sublime is to feel an acute sense of being overawed by nature, a combination of terror on the one hand and attraction on the other. The difference between the sublime then and now, however, is that whereas for the Grand Tourists nature was something God-given, awesome, and seemingly inviolable, for us post-moderns it is something polluted and irrevocably altered by technology.”
- From the Introduction
Author: Richard Weller, Birkhauser Basel, 2024
In this new book from Richard Weller, professor of landscape architecture and urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, he states outright that our restless world is in need of a new Grand Tour, which since the 17th and 18th century has been considered a rite of passage and educational necessity for young students, to visit Italy and Greece and study firsthand the art, architecture, and landscapes of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. With two years of Covid lockdown to collect its contents, Weller’s book of 120 curiousities is a primer for several earthly and unearthly destinations, but moreso it is an eye-opening exposition of our collective hubris when it comes to our relationship with the only planet we have.
Featuring several notorious locations, Mar-a-Logo and the World Trade Center among them, the 120 carefully curated entries also include sites of new hope for the planet, including the Great Green Wall in Africa and the Eden Project, along with several sites that have existed since the birth of the environmental movement in the 1970’s, such as Camp Leakey Weller has been teaching in a time when our awareness of climate change has grown in parallel to truth and reconciliation with the original Indigenous stewards of the land, and making explicit here the negative impacts that colonization and industrialization has had for them and our planet.
For as the title of the book suggests, as much as these are ideas of places along with their physical geography (with longitude and latitude coordinates provided in the margin of each page), so does it suggest the extremes that civilization has gone to in order to command Mother Nature, showing how we have often altered the landscape for the worst in the process. As a counterpart to this, Weller also provides some astonishing up to the minute signs of hope, including several projects under the purview of the United Nation’s Decade of Ecological Restoration (2020-2030).
With each of the 120 destinations succinctly captured in a single page of text, along with a facing page illustrating the site in plan, Weller uses each moment as an opportunity to dig into the backstory of each place, often with an accompanying moral lesson. As an example, his narrative on the Athabasca Tar Sands extends from a technical explanation of the extraction process to both its environmental and sociological ramifications, along with it being Canada’s biggest black eye on the International stage. Similarly we learn about the Three Gorges Dam and China’s history of moving water, alongside a generic data center in the Nevada desert emblematic of the large shadow Silicon Valley casts. There is some similarity in Weller’s journey with the imagery of Edward Burtynsky, especially in Manufactured Landscapes.
Divided into seven chapters, the first thirteen destinations are more Platonic ideas that physical places, what Weller refers to as Hyperobjects. With the first few pretty obvious: the body, the universe, the city, Weller steps things up by including more modern notions such as the Critical Zone, Climate Change, and the Sixth Extinction. And of course the Internet is here, along with the Economy, and the Environment. With this firmament established, the six remaining chapters are pairings: Paradise and Utopia, Machines and Ruins, Monsters and Instruments.
In each chapter Weller starts with a brief exposition on each sub-heading, branching into a different discussion of how the ends of the earth are tied to the ends of our intellect, whether Judeo-Christian dogma or the lessons of the Greek philosophers. While the twenty examples of Paradise he lands on orbit around the Garden of Eden and its religious underpinnings, similarly the twenty he has chosen for Utopia gravitate towards the more modern idea of the city in the world, extending from Plato’s Republic to Sir Thomas More‘s treaty of the same name. Catalogued in this way, no ethical hierarchy is necessary, such that Mar-a-Lago appears in Paradise while Pruitt-Igoe and Seaside appear in Utopia.
In the book’s darker moments, especially in Ruins and Monsters which the author describes as the negative results of using Machines and Instruments, Weller reeducates us on such horrors as Auschwitz and Chernobyl. As he explains in the introduction, Monsters like the original Mary Shelley creation are ongoing car accidents environmentally, but Weller believes there could be a redemptive aspect:
“What Frankenstein’s monster teaches is not (only) that we shouldn’t have transgressed natural limits or theological taboos in the first place, but that we have to take responsibility for the consequences when we do. Translated into practical terms this means returning to the wastelands of the modern world and doing the hard work of now repairing the landscape. This is what is meant by the United Nations’ declaration that this is now the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.”
The Athabasca Tar Sands is a Monster, along with Fracking Wells, the Israel-Palestine Border Wall, as well as the already mentioned Chernobyl Reactor #4 site. Monsters, Weller points out, are presented here in juxtaposition to Ruins, which are static and simply the result of the passage of time – everything, he says, becomes a Ruin. And having stated in the introduction that the 120 sites would only be from the 20th and 21st centuries, perhaps the most famous Ruins of all time – the Forum and Acropolis – do not appear here as they most certainly would’ve been a part of the original Grand Tour.
Rounding out the book, Instruments includes twenty technological marvels that are extensions of our physical body, quite literally touching the heavens at the ends of the earth. While one would expect to see the microchip and smartphone here as our physical selves extend into the digital universe, Weller has also included here a Large Hadron Collider, the Greenland Ice Core Project, and both the Mars Rover and Voyager Spacecraft, the latter of which left the Earth’s atmosphere in 1977.
Not just a book for cultural anthropologists and urban educators, To the Ends of the Earth is a clarion call to all environmentally conscientious citizens of our planet, with several sublime moments of ongoing habitat restoration and climate justice, including the Parque de la Papa in Peru. Weller introduces to the reader, with astounding clarity, what will be to many new and important concepts of our age, such as rewilding, the Anthropocene, and the Carbon Cloud. Part instruction manual for saving our planet, part guidebook for the new Grand Tourist, this book takes us on a journey not to be missed!
For more information on To the Ends of the Earth, go to the website.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
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I walked into a room one day, and for a moment I could literally see the fierce neural blaze of consciousness in the people around me, and the shimmering flux of neuroelectricity radiating from their nervous systems.
In the weeks preceding this experience I’d lost two family members, so was probably more attuned than usual to the great privilege and possibilities of being alive. My own mind was in overdrive, and I started seeing in a new way.
The insight was revelatory. People were lit up like tungsten filaments. It made me want to bypass these crude digital communications and just hack into individual human consciousnesses directly.
I didn’t mention it at the time. I talked about the weather instead because it seems to make people more comfortable. Snow in April? Well, I never. You are the pure cold fire of consciousness. Pass the brie.
This is how I know my people. The light in your eyes is clear and playful and sparkling and alive, and as powerful and piercing as a searchlight.
Derek DeLand has done tall towers, urban tech hub, entertainment, art schools, theatres, residential, seniors housing, Passive Haus, master plans, skateplazas, skateparks, public art + competitions. Vancouver-based with built work in BC, Canada, Seattle, UK, Mexico + even Paris. Educated at UofC + UBC SALA. Featured in Migrating Landscapes for the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Won IOC/IAKS, BCRMCA + Ontario Concrete awards. Writer for Architizer, Canadian Architect, Spacing, international design books + magazines. Public speaker in Los Angeles + the UK. Derek’s architecture is idea-driven, sculptural, movement-oriented, tectonic + experiential.
The post Seeing Consciousness appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
The building pictured above — a three storey walk-up with five units — is located at the end of the block where I live. I’ve always thought of it as kind of radically non-conforming.
The front wall is at least two metres closer to the sidewalk than all its neighbours, thus upending the tidiness of the street wall. The building is literally and mysteriously attached to the house next door. It is half a storey too tall, based on the prevailing roof lines.
And given that this walk-up fully occupies a small corner lot, it manages (illegally) to achieve three-times coverage in a residential area where the bylaw permits 0.6 coverage and the official plan allows you to nudge up to one-times coverage.
No contemporary Committee of Adjustment (CoA) would have allowed this building to be erected. It exists because it was built in an era before the City institutionalized the practice of considering “minor variances” and then asking neighbours to opine on whether or not they were tolerable.
Today, it provides five dwellings on a lot that we’d today deem to be too small even for one house. The sky hasn’t fallen. Yet if the city had consulted, it would never have been built.
I’ve been kicking around the question in the headline for several years. But yesterday’s preposterous outcome in a CoA hearing on the fate of a proposed three storey, ten-unit multiplex (including laneway suites) at 91 Barton, in Seaton Village, drove home the answer.
If we genuinely want to slay the housing crisis and densify house neighbourhoods that have been bleeding population for years, we need to burn down the CoA and replace it with something that doesn’t function like a kangaroo court in which homeowners seek to shout down the kind of gentle density that will do nothing but enhance the liveability of a community.
A few words about the 91 Barton application: situated on a deep property abutting a laneway, the project would have added maybe 30 or so residents to an area within easy walking distance of two subway stops and every type of amenity you can hope for. It’s not going to be a tower or some architectural nightmare. And yet it attracted a mob of opponents, many of them pretending to be planners and none, axiomatically, concerned with the big picture, which is to say whatever happens beyond the enclave bordered by Bloor, Christie, Bathurst and Dupont.
There are, what’s more, several much larger mid-block apartment buildings within a few dozen metres, as well as a venerable laneway-based food co-op, which would likely be shouted out of the area if its owners were to propose it today.
I don’t want to argue here for a completely laissez faire approach to development. But we need to think more closely about whether and how public scrutiny backfires.
In the course of approving a project, the City requires builders, contractors or renovators to jump through a range of technical hoops in order to get their permits.
What’s unclear is why the public gets to weigh in if the proposal doesn’t meet the exact letter of the planning law. We live in a messy city, and there are all sorts of anomalous properties, in both older and newer areas, that don’t quite align with prevailing zoning bylaws. Some proposals, in turn, won’t fit tidily into the volumes prescribed by said zoning bylaws.
When someone wants a building permit, the city has inspectors who vet the applications and the drawings to ensure code compliance, fire safety and so on. But if a roofline has the temerity to nose a metre or two above those of its neighbours, our system suddenly flips this question over to a public tribunal that oversees an expensive and faux democratic process that is ostensibly about problem solving but in practice invites a very specific kind of conflict and opposition.
Urbanists are well aware of the concept of induced congestion — the idea that a highway attracts traffic and thus undermines its ostensible raison d’etre. CoAs do the same thing, except with objections. They induce unaccountable grassroots push-back.
As my Globe and Mail colleague Alex Bozikovic points out, the technical issues relating to minor variances can be sorted out by planners, architects and urban designers. So let’s ask the question: why is this the point at which the public gets to barge into the process?
It’s not obvious to me how the current system, with its vagaries and bottlenecks, can be reformed sufficiently to ensure that the committees are aligning their decisions with changes in land use policy that have been studied, debated, vetted by city councillors and eventually approved. In situations like this, the whole thing seems like a farce rigged to thumb its nose at the considered actions of decision-makers and experts.
Point is, by killing off a project as innocuous as the 91 Barton application, the committee reveals itself to be more interested in a slavish adherence to both narrowly scoped rules and noisy neighbours than the public policy of the government in whose name it acts.
The rub, of course, is that this project will probably get built, but not before a costly and time-consuming trip to the appeals tribunal. The units, therefore, will be that much more expensive, and will come onto the market that much more slowly. To what end, exactly?
The unintended consequences and the obtuseness of Toronto’s CoA cries out for reform.
Yes, we will always need to sort out minor variances. But it shouldn’t be done like this.
The post LORINC: It’s time to talk about the Committee of Adjustment appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Over a weekend in late March, teams of high school students gathered a conference centre in Toronto’s new Canary District for Design Jam, where they were tasked to brainstorm, design, and prototype urban planning ideas for the redevelopment of the vacant Downsview Airport area. The winners would get a top prize of $300.
The event was part of the 1UP conference organized by Urban Minds, a non-profit whose mission is to “create meaningful ways for youth to shape equitable and sustainable cities.”
Among those attending was Manuela D’Cunha, a Grade 12 student whose team won the top prize. She first became interested in city planning after observing the spaces around her.
“I would say what got me interested in city planning was just confronting the issues in my own community – the lack of public transportation, the lack of accessibility, the lack of third spaces – and having to deal with those things got me interested in how we can more equitably plan cities and communities for our future,” she says.
She found the 1UP conference scrolling through Instagram Reels and saw a golden opportunity.
“It was my first time ever attending an urban planning conference. It was amazing, It was great to speak with like-minded individuals as well as just hear so much feedback from planners working in the industry,” D’Cunha says.
The event was conducted in partnership with Northcrest Developments, in charge of the real 370-acre redevelopment of the Downsview Airport area, a project that’s set to be ongoing for the next 30 years and set to be the largest development project in North America.
Having direct interaction with the youths, not only potentially contributing to the project through their work but also living in the surrounding areas, was one of the most exciting aspects of Design Jam for Mitchell Marcus, executive director for site activation and programming at Northcrest Developments.
“You know, this isn’t a project for me. I’ll be an old man by then. The people in high school today – people who are 14, 15, 16 – this is most likely the group who are going to be calling this site home,” Marcus says. “The opportunity to be part of Design Jam and have 100 really smart, passionate young people contribute what they would do if they were holding the pen was just well aligned with what we’re looking to do.”
As far as winning the prize, D’Cunha’s group had two hours to figure out their plan. After a smooth brainstorming session they decided to approach the presentation with a unique angle.
“We kind of took a risk, instead of doing a traditional pitch we decided to approach it from more of a storytelling perspective. So we actually presented two people as romantic interests who meet in the space and how the space would meet their needs while connecting them to community,” she says.
Thinking of the future, her mind is looking beyond the gloom of the modern day, instead being hopeful and ambitious.
“I always wanted to transform community spaces and hopefully one day I will get to work for Northcrest Developments and see where this project goes and how it evolves over the 30 years,” D’Cunha says.
Susan Wiggins, executive director at Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI) is hoping to keep cultivating in others the same ambition, creating a real opportunity to combat the province’s shortage of new planners. OPPI was one of the sponsors of the conference.
“You’ve probably heard through the news that, like most professions, there is an extreme shortage of planners,” Wiggins says. “So we are using a multipronged approach as an institute to find different ways to attract people to the profession.”
Part of that is a commitment to the next generation. A natural link was formed with Urban Minds, which is working to involve youths in shaping the future of their cities with equity and sustainably as their pillars.
Since being founded in 2016, Urban Minds has worked with over 700 students from 70 schools across the GTA. The partnership with OPPI gives the organization valuable access to a pool of Ontario’s most seasoned planning professionals.
“The youth care about the community that surrounds them, and that’s what planners do,” Wiggins says. “Everything from housing to transportation, all the infrastructure around the houses – what’s important is creating living, liveable, sustainable communities that are future-focused – that’s what we want to help educate the youth about.”
Over the next three years, OPPI and Urban Minds are set to collaborate in hosting annual events, providing valuable networking opportunities as well as beneficial educational support for any youth with an interest in pursuing careers in the industry.
“We believe that youths have an important role to play in how our cities are planned and built, yet they’re not as involved and engaged as they should be,” says Ryan Lo, co-executive director at Urban Minds. “There is still a lot of work to do in terms of raising awareness among youths, among high school students particularly, about what planning is and what kind of career paths there are. So being able to meet these professionals through our events is vital.”
The 1UP youth program’s focus on high school students across Ontario provides a vital introduction to how city building works. It’s something Lo sees as beneficial whether they enter the field or not.
“Hopefully it inspires them even if they aren’t interested in planning professions in the future, I mean, I hope they do, but even if they don’t, they can still be involved as active citizens. It’s really about exposing them to all these opportunities to get involved now as youths,” Lo says.
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By 2050, an estimated one million new individuals are expected to make their home in the Metro Vancouver area. This projected influx of new residents is in line with the UN’s prediction that 68% of the world population will live in urban centres by 2050 which will inevitably result in more noise pollution—creating harmful urban environments that will need constant monitoring.
Noise can be defined as any undesirable sound that provokes discomfort. Beyond being an inconvenience, extended noise exposure can have lasting effects on our health including, but not limited to, elevated blood pressure, high heart rate, sleep disruption and hearing impairment. It also impacts urban wildlife, especially songbirds who are extremely sensitive to changes in their environment. Noise makes it more difficult for them to communicate with each other eventually leading to lower songbird populations which has an impact on the balance of urban ecosystems. As a result, ongoing noise monitoring is very important as decisions made by our policymakers and urban planners can affect the daily life and health of anyone living in a city.
Burnaby is British Columbia’s 3rd largest city. With a population expected to grow by 43% over the next 25 years, and as more residents now call South Burnaby home due to its many parks and easy access to public transportation, this inevitably implies more cars on the roads, more infrastructure being built to accommodate new residents resulting in a change the city’s soundscape.
Satellite map of survey locations.In light of these transformations, a study was done to collect data to track how the city’s soundscape changes over time and document what drives those changes. The information was collected in South Burnaby, covering an area of approximately 11 km2 with a population of over 66,000 people and an average density exceeding 6,000 inhabitants per km2.
To collect our data, we repurposed smartphones running on Android 6 and 7 using a customized TensorFlow Lite Model, a machine-learning model specifically designed to be used on devices, such as smartphones, capable of recognizing a wide range of sounds. This took advantage of the smartphones’ computing power to conduct unmanned surveys lasting up to 12 hours while the devices run on battery alone. Collecting the information was intended to give people some actionable insight into building urban spaces that prioritize both human well-being and environmental sustainability.
The interactive map below is a visual and audio representation of the data collected. It allows residents to compare acoustic data within certain neighbourhoods of South Burnaby. By hovering your mouse over it one can hear actual sounds recorded during our surveys. Those recordings include for the most part vehicles (cars, buses, trucks), rail transit, songbirds, and ambient noise.
Breakdown of the South Burnaby soundscape by dissemination area.The map provides data down to the local level to allow policymakers and urban planners to make informed decisions. The scale of colours indicates the nature and intensity of the noises. Areas in dark green represent areas with negligible urban noises and mostly songbird sounds, while areas in red correspond to areas where traffic and rail transit are the most common sources of noise. The boundaries used on the map represent what Statistics Canada refers to as Dissemination Areas (DA) and they are made up of adjacent blocks including between 400 to 700 residents.
The surveyed area is not representative of the entire City of Burnaby. So, the following insights and takeaways are specific to our region of interest and should not be extrapolated to the rest of the city. That said, much can be learned from the work.
Zoning and ParksRoughly 88.9% of the area we cover is zoned for residential use, 4.8% is dedicated to parks and open spaces and approximately 4.7% for commercial purposes while 1.5% is zoned for institutional use. Quieter areas are located in the southern part and tend to be closer to conservation areas and ravines (dark green) and to neighbourhoods located close to locations zoned mostly for Single Family Homes (light green). The noisiest neighbourhoods (orange and red on the map) were located near major roads and rail transit: the 2 main sources of noise in the area we surveyed.
RoadsRoads are the main source of noise. The map below shows the different categories of roads that span across the area. Intermittent noise level recordings confirm that the average decibel level varies based on the classification of each road. Residential roads (in blue) are quieter than major roads (in red and white) where most of the traffic happens due to the use of cars, buses, or trucks.
Road classification across South Burnaby.InequalitiesDenis Agar from Movement and Jens von Bergmann from MountainMath have created the map below to show the distribution of renters across Metro Vancouver. When zooming in on South Burnaby, one quickly notices the positive correlation between noise and renter density. In other words, the quietest neighbourhoods have the lowest tenant density while the majority of the noisiest neighbourhoods have a high tenant density.
Our study area with a white line depicting its boundaries.While considering that correlation does not imply causation, we can state that people who rent are more likely to be exposed to urban noises and suffer from long-term health implications. On the other hand, homeowners are more likely to live in areas with minimum exposure to noise and as a result, are less likely to suffer from it. These conclusions align with the World Health Organization which states that “the less affluent who cannot afford to live in quiet residential areas or have adequately insulated homes, are likely to suffer disproportionately.”
SongbirdsSongbirds play a central role in urban ecosystems. They contribute to pest control and their active participation in seed dispersal is equally important to ensure floral diversity in our cities. In 2005, Stephanie J. Melles, then at the Department of Zoology of the University of Toronto, conducted a study in Vancouver and parts of Burnaby that concluded that “wealthier neighborhoods have more native species of birds and that these native species increase in abundance as the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood improves.”
The City of Burnaby’s first Urban Forest Management Strategy whose goal consists in “creating a diverse, resilient and healthy urban forest by protecting, preserving, restoring and expanding tree cover throughout Burnaby.” does not specifically address the year-round support of native songbirds in parks and neighbourhoods. If successful, however, this program would provide healthy and diverse habitats for the songbird population. The data collected allows us to model the distribution of the songbird population and eventually track how neighbourhoods compare over time in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
The Next PhaseOur goal is to set up autonomous noise stations in strategic locations to collect live data and make it available to all. To achieve that goal, we aim to create partnerships with community members and for-profit organizations to help monitor noise levels in different parts of the city. Noise is a powerful indicator. It allows us to measure the well-being of our neighbourhoods and cities while tracking the state of urban wildlife population and pointing out social inequalities. We believe the data we gathered is valuable as it provides actionable data for community members, stakeholders, and policymakers to build neighbourhoods as envisioned in the 2050 Burnaby plan.
Click here to go to the the interactive map.
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Thierry Haddad is the co-founder of The Citrus Index, an organization that specialises in collecting and analysing data related to noise, solid waste and urban wildlife using data science, computer vision, audio classification and machine learning.
The post Noise: The Invisible Pollutant appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
This is a follow up to Spacing’s five=part series on the ransomware attack on the Toronto Public Library in the fall of 2023.
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The City of Toronto has budgeted $1 million to cover costs incurred by the Toronto Public Library following the October 28, 2023, ransomware attack, according to documents obtained by Spacing through an access to information request.
The total includes $160,000 in legal fees; almost $74,000 for a third-party credit monitoring service provided to employees who had their data stolen; and almost $770,000 for cybersecurity experts, as well as forensics, remediation and restoration outlays. As of March 6 — when the FOI request was processed — only $170,000 had been paid out.
The TPL earlier this year revealed the City of Toronto would be covering the costs of the ransomware attack. While the $1 million figure doesn’t seem large compared to other city budget line items, the sum is equivalent to almost 3% of the entire 2024 budget of the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer, whose 84-person division is responsible for cybersecurity for the entire municipality and a number of its agencies, boards and commissions.
(During the 2024 budget cycle, the CISO saw its projected gross spending slashed by $8.7 million, or 12.5%, compared to 2023, with reductions attributed to savings on external consultants and the deferral of $4.5 million on spending on cyber initiatives attributed in budget documents to “evolving business requirements arising from the changing priorities in the cyber industry.” City officials declined to clarify the meaning of this statement.)
None of the ransomware budget figures have been made public previously. TPL chief librarian Vickery Bowles told Spacing in an interview earlier this month that she didn’t know the amounts, but noted that every one of the TPL’s 5,000 computers had to be wiped.
Spacing asked for information on the expenses incurred to restore the TPL’s system, and how those outlays were allocated. The City’s Access and Privacy Office withheld documents covered by solicitor-client privilege, as well as information “whose disclosure could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the financial interests of an institution.”
The total doesn’t appear to include the capital costs of replacing hardware, such as infected servers or laptops, nor is it clear how much the City will pay for ongoing 24/7 monitoring of the TPL’s networks, one of the security fixes announced in the wake of the attack.
The document also doesn’t specify how much either the City or the TPL will be paying to migrate and store some of its data in secure commercial cloud-based servers — a detail that likely would be considered too sensitive to make public. Bowles told Spacing that the initial breach came through one of the TPL’s internet-facing servers.
In a wide-ranging interview about Toronto’s cyber-security readiness, city manager Paul Johnson said the municipality has improved its preparedness in recent years in response to rising threat levels generally and stern warnings from the previous auditor-general. “We are nowhere near [being] able to say we’re impervious to those attacks, but we are certainly better off than we were a number of years ago,” he stated. “We’ve gone through some painful examples of a state of not being ready.” He also said the City should publicly disclose the overall amount that will be spent to clean up after the TPL ransomware attack. “This is public money and we need to account for public money.”
In the wake of attacks on the Zoo, the TTC and the TPL, as well as the City of Hamilton, Johnson explained that the City is working to bring Toronto’s numerous agencies, boards and corporations under a more centralized cyber-security monitoring system, using resources that might not be available to all those organizations. “We need to bring them deeper into the fold and really have the City of Toronto providing more of that leadership role.”
Johnson contended that members of council understand the importance of cybersecurity and have come to regard it as part of the City’s state-of-good-repair responsibilities. But he acknowledged that the City could do “a better job of communicating” the importance of the kinds of investments that residents will never actually see, and whose benefits are by definition indirect, i.e., the pay-off is when nothing bad has occurred in terms of the provision of municipal services.
The balancing act, he noted, is that cyber-security officials can’t over-communicate because to do so would be to tip-off criminal gangs like the one that took the TPL’s data hostage. “There’s a reason why we don’t share all of our plans for cybersecurity,” Johnson said. “However, I think there’s a point at which we can generalize both what we’ve done to improve our security, like, does the general taxpaying Torontonian know that we monitor 24/7?”
Finally, Johnson pointed out that these latest attacks have served as a kind of wake-up call for city employees. “As painful as these moments are, the reality is they do jolt people. You don’t want to be the person that opened the door to having certain programs shut down for a number of months while we recover. But you know, with 43,000 employees and with all of the entry points, it’s a never-ending battle.”
photo by Damien Lee (cc)
The post What is the cost of ransomware attack on Toronto Library? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The Housing Series is the product of the last new project Arthur Goss undertook as the City’s Official Photographer. Between March, 1936 and January, 1940, he produced 675 carefully composed photos of housing conditions in designated “blighted” areas of the downtown core. He went on sick leave in February of that year, suffering from progressive muscular atrophy, and died four months later. He had served the city for 49 of his 59 years, having started as an office boy in the Engineer’s Office at ten years of age.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the question of providing adequate housing for low income Torontonians was as warmly debated as it is today, but the problems politicians faced then, and the remedies they proposed, were quite different. Because apartment buildings hardly existed downtown before the Second World War, low income families were forced to occupy small, cheaply built houses, many of which required extensive renovations to be habitable.
Goss had documented individual instances of sub-standard housing for various city departments, but his most complete coverage of the subject had been a group of about 60 images taken between 1912 and 1918 for the Department of Health. His exterior views show houses hidden in blind alleyways or clustered along main streets that were literally falling apart and sinking into the ground.
Housing No. 28, July. 29, 1936 63-65 Mitchell Ave. Rear City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0033-it0028Throughout his career, Goss had also photographed a wide range of other housing types, including North Toronto farmhouses about to be caught in waves of development, Craftsman Style bungalows spreading over the flat expanses of East York, and the tiny owner-built starter homes that were springing up on the hillsides of Earlscourt.
In 1936, Toronto City Council passed a bylaw requiring landlords to immediately repair sub-standard dwellings or see them demolished. The city was responding to the 1934 Bruce Report on housing commissioned by the provincial government. Goss began his Housing Series three months before the city initiated its program of building inspections under the new bylaw.
Although no administrative records survive, this series was almost certainly undertaken on the authority of the city’s Commissioner of Buildings, Kenneth Gillies. Like Goss, Gillies was a career civil servant who had distinguished himself as an artist. In his earlier role as Assistant City Architect, he had collaborated on the designs of several of the most distinctive public buildings of the interwar period, including the Horse Palace at the CNE and the Water Works complex on Richmond Street West.
Housing No. 97, Nov. 13, 1936, 9-15 Power Street, City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0033-it0097The photos in this series show the variety of housing types to be found in the most blighted downtown neighbourhoods. The Second Empire style was common for row housing, while gothic workers’ cottages and saltbox houses appeared both individually and in rows. Shared architectural elements copied from nineteenth century pattern books gave many of the facades an attractive appearance, despite their condition.
The working-class housing in the city had so far been constructed unconstrained by any municipal building code. Goss’s photos of demolitions on Gilead Place reveal some common structural features. Typically there was no basement. The floor plate was suspended a few inches above the ground on sleepers or wooden piles. The framed walls were sheathed in wide boards, to which the outer cladding was attached.
The cladding materials that appear most often are clapboard and roughcast, a type of stucco that has pebbles and stone fragments embedded in its surface. However, finishing walls in roughcast would seem to have gone out of fashion by the 1930s. The series includes numerous views of newly renovated homes with smooth, whitewashed stucco exteriors.
Housing No. 374, April 12, 1937, 153-157 River Street, City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0033-it0374An important element of Goss’s earlier series on slum housing for the Department of Health was environmental portraiture. Adults and children were photographed in the parlours and bedrooms of dwelling whose sad contents were evenly lit by the photographer’s flash. This later series also includes interior photography, but with a different emphasis. The subject here is not people, but what could be euphemistically described as inadequate sanitary facilities. There are enough starkly lit views of horrid toilets and crude kitchen sinks to make the point about the immediate need for improvement.
Documentary photography is a narrative art form, one in which formal perfection is less important than making images work together. Goss, a master of the documentary mode, maintained the narrative thread of this series for 45 months, progressively adding greater depth while respecting the individuality of each subject.
For me, the evocative power of these images derives in part from the way Goss exploited the changing quality of daylight in different seasons. Surprisingly, he took 352 of the photos, more than half the total number, during the winter months. He seemed to have been unfazed by adverse weather, as demonstrated by the photos he took of Roden Place during a December snowstorm.
Housing No. 468, Dec. 21, 1938, 17-37 Roden Place, City of Toronto Archives, s0372-ss0033-it0468The quality of light in these images gives evidence of the heavy air pollution that plagued Toronto’s downtown when coal was its principal energy source. Living in a working-class neighbourhood meant living with dirty air. In the group of photos Goss took of housing in lower Cabbagetown on November 13, 1936, buildings in the middle distance disappear in a smoggy haze.
The Bruce Report of 1934 had offered a thorough sociological analysis of Toronto’s housing problems a century after the city’s incorporation. Fortunately, Arthur Goss had the artistic skill, and a mandate, to create a lasting visual document of what the report deals with in abstract terms. Through his efforts, we can better imagine what it was like to be marginally housed in Toronto in that grim era.
Between 1947 and 1968, many of the buildings and streets shown in these images were razed to free up land for the Regent Park and Alexandra Park housing projects, and our new City Hall. However, fragments of the old urban fabric remain, for example, the row houses at 1-15 Percy Street in lower Cabbagetown, which first appeared on a Goad’s Insurance map in 1890. When Goss photographed their Second Empire facades in late afternoon on March 22, 1938, they seemed to be awaiting demolition. Instead, they were renovated and remain in excellent condition today.
For the first part of this series, see The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 1
Click on any image below to launch the photogallery
The post The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 2: The Housing Series, 1936-1940 appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The Liberal’s housing, infrastructure and communities minister Sean Fraser is by far the most entertaining politician on the national scene these days, what with his performatively insouciant policy videos, as well as an interesting confection of progressive cockiness and East Coast bonhomie. The guy’s all arms and legs and stubbled jaw line. While I’ve never met him, there’s no way Fraser doesn’t use that height to convey precisely enough alpha to cause his opponents to sniff the air warily.
Let’s also acknowledge this point: he’s a master thief. I can’t remember the last time I’ve watched a political figure in one party pick-pocket a rival as deftly as Fraser has done with the pre-tax-axing version of Pierre Poilievre.
Cast your mind back to when Pierre would frown-march up and down neighbourhoods like some right-wing version of Rick Mercer, threatening to steamroll over the municipal “gatekeepers” who were preventing the common folk from affording homes. Remember how he was going to ring-fence federal infrastructure fund until said gatekeepers yielded to his will?
Pierre’s all about his t-shirts and the carbon tax these days, while Fraser’s become the tough dude who’s been using the threat of withholding federal housing accelerator fund dollars to slap around local governments that refuse to up-zone neighbourhoods or streamline approvals.
Fraser’s message track will be further enhanced during the April federal budget, per this week’s announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the government would earmark $6 billion for those provinces prepared to play housing ball or attempt an end-run and deal directly with municipalities. No fourplexes and the like (listening Doug?), then no federal manna for investments such as water mains. (Trudeau also revealed big dollar pledges for an apartment construction loan program aimed at new rentals, including some affordable rentals, as well as a rental acquisition program to protect older existing apartments.)
Should it matter that a more or less explicitly coercive approach seems more palatable when emanating from a Liberal as compared to a Conservative? In theory, no, but obviously the reality is that Fraser has found a way to soft sell (to urban progressives) what amounts to an explicitly intrusive federal power move into a realm — land use planning and zoning — that the Canadian constitution has long delegated to local and provincial governments.
If I’m being honest, I must admit that I have mixed feelings about the whole effort, and not just because it originated with Poilievre’s incessant sloganeering. Federal incursions into clearly enumerated provincial jurisdictions should always be treated with caution. There is, of course, room for pragmatic accommodation, to be sure, but the separation of powers exists for a reason, and landmines await those political regimes that ignore this constitutional reality.
It’s important to acknowledge that sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act contain enough 19th-century fuzziness that Ottawa, in the post-WWII era, has been able to assert itself in urban policy domains such as housing, child care, and infrastructure. There are a few examples where Ottawa has taken unilateral action, and an even smaller number of instances where the feds have negotiated individual deals with certain local governments, including the City of Toronto, during Paul Martin’s short tenure (2004-2006).
Mostly, and generally with success, the federal government’s approach has been to negotiate individual bi-lateral agreements with provincial governments that allows funding to flow from Ottawa into provincial coffers and then on to whatever program has been bruited, e.g., childcare or infrastructure. In the early 1990s, the Chretien government actually had a name for this strategy: “asymmetrical federalism,” which acknowledged that one size doesn’t fit all.
However, the exercise turned on Ottawa’s ability to strike a deal with its provincial counterparts. The fact that those deals had to be negotiated was key. Both sides had something to gain and something to lose. The deals often required a lot of tough sledding, but there was rarely a sword of Damocles, in the form of a threatened jurisdictional end-run by whomever held power in Ottawa, hanging over the process. As a consequence, both sides understood how to stay in their lanes while cooperating on specific policy files, even in adversarial circumstances (e.g., Jean Chretien vs Mike Harris, Stephen Harper vs Dalton McGuinty).
Things didn’t always work so smoothly. Pierre Trudeau’s attempt in the early 1970s to create a federal urban affairs ministry and pursue city-related projects by cutting out the provinces produced a sharp backlash in nationalist Quebec, and forced him to ice the strategy lest it further inflame separatist sentiment.
After the younger Trudeau’s announcement this week, the governments of Ontario and Quebec immediately started shouting about jurisdictional incursions. Others will surely follow.
Do constitutional niceties that date back to a time when municipalities ran jails and licensed saloons matter in 2024, especially in a housing-plus-climate crisis which creates a powerful case for more density?
I’d argue that the answer is yes, for two reasons: one, because jurisdictional feuding is a massive distraction from the issues that actually matter; and two, because today’s progressive-ish federal incursion can easily flip and become tomorrow’s retrograde federal incursion.
Sean Fraser succeeded in prettying up Pierre Poilievre’s manipulative and politically opportunistic housing strategy. The reality, however, is that there’s very little substantive difference between these two approaches, both of which run roughshod over the fragile architecture of Canadian federalism.
Ottawa, in the end, should stay out of land-use planning and progressive voters in heavily urbanized provinces, like Ontario and Quebec, need to make sure their governments are making the tough political choices that will enable affordable and sustainable housing in their cities.
photo by Andrew Lee (cc)
The post LORINC: National politics vs. local land use planning appeared first on Spacing National.
This is part five in a five-part series independently produced and investigated by Spacing
The Toronto Public Library’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles, sat down for an extended virtual interview with Spacing‘s senior editor John Lorinc to share her perspectives and experiences of the ransomware attack. The interview transcript has been edited and condensed.
Spacing: There was a fairly sharp warning about cybersecurity risk from the Auditor General in 2021. I wanted to get a sense from you about how the library responded to her warning and her subsequent warning, which was issued a year later, and was directed to TPL and a couple of other agencies.
Vickery Bowles: We were delayed in responding because of COVID. We were all focused on that, but we did respond. We’ve completely complied and cooperated, working very, very closely with the [Office of the Chief Information Security Officer, CISO]. They have a confirmation program. We do answer various surveys and questionnaires and have discussions our IT staff with the CISO office so they understand our security environment and technical environment.
Spacing: Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the issues that have been flagged?
Vickery Bowles: We had a digital strategy, which was approved by the Board in 2021. And within that, cybersecurity was a priority. We had a security roadmap and not all of that security roadmap was public because it would compromise our security position. We had made a lot of progress on our digital strategy and security roadmap [prior to the attack]. If there is a silver lining with this cyber-attack, it has provided us with an opportunity to accelerate that process because of the rebuild that we’ve done of our technical environment.
When we worked with Gartner in developing the digital strategy in 2021, we were identified as being at the `developmental stage’ in terms of our [cybersecurity maturity model] and but that was very typical of a public sector institution. Since all of the changes we’ve made, we have not gone through the formal assessment process to determine where we are in terms of our that developmental framework, but we know we are more advanced than we were in 2021.
Spacing: Where are you going to be next year at this time in terms of the maturity model?
Vickery Bowles: I’m sorry, I can’t answer that.
Spacing: In communicating to Torontonians who have been shut out of the library system…
Vickery Bowles: I just correct you on that. They haven’t been shut out of the library system. All of our 100 branches have been open. The Wi-Fi has been available. We’ve continued to check out materials, we’ve continued to take in returns and we continue to register people. We’ve provided people with programs. It’s true they haven’t had access to our catalogue and to their accounts and to public computers. But all of our other services have continued and our staff have worked really hard and wonderfully so our services could continue under these constrained conditions.
Spacing: Okay, I’m glad you mentioned that. I take your point. Still, the question is, what assurances can you provide Torontonians that the library’s cybersecurity preparedness will be more robust next year and that it could survive something like this?
Vickery Bowles: I can tell you that we have been working very closely and collaboratively with our cybersecurity third party experts and with various contractors to rebuild our technical environment and make progress on our security roadmap. The cybersecurity experts who did the forensic analysis of the cyber-attack would not have signed off on the work they did with us, and under the guidance of counsel, unless they were satisfied. As I said earlier, there’s only so much we can share because we have to maintain the security of our environment, but certainly the installation of additional security controls, enhanced processes and protocols was a key part of the work we did with our third-party cybersecurity experts and that’s all been put into place.
Spacing: Do they provide any warranty on their work?
Vickery Bowles: No, there’s no warranty. What they’ve said to us is, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to be attacked, it’s when. That was the first thing they said to us. What you have to do is to mitigate those opportunities, which, of course, is what we were doing in any case.
Spacing: Can you talk a little bit about the about the cybersecurity awareness culture within the library? I’ve spoken to people who felt some of the training that began in 2022 was ‘off the shelf.’ Do you think library staff were a bit too relaxed about cybersecurity and what are you specifically doing to change that culture?
Vickery Bowles: The cybersecurity training we have is mandatory. People don’t have a choice, they have to take the training. And [the attack] did not happen through staff making a mistake with phishing. It happened through an Internet-facing server that was infiltrated and used as a way to get into the technical environment.
Spacing: There are statistics in one of your reports about the susceptibility of your staff to spear phishing.
Vickery Bowles: We also have to be on guard completely. That’s absolutely true, and it’s true of the world we live in right now because there are cyber criminals out there. It’s organized crime, and this is what they do each and every day.
Spacing: In December each year, the TPL puts out a “risk register” report. The metrics were changed from 2022 to 2023. Could you explain what was going on there, because it seems from reading the report that more red flags went up in 2023.
Vickery Bowles: We started our risk register [in] 2020, not that long ago. We’ve had a few risk registers and it’s just been part of our evolution. We change things. We have a manager of risk and privacy and she brings a lot of expertise to her role. It’s been part of her job to develop a more sophisticated and advanced approach to measuring risk and identifying mitigating factors.
Spacing: There’s not much detail in your reports, but it would seem there were more red flags raised in in the 2023 report compared to the 2022 report. The question is, what was going on there?
Vickery Bowles: My recollection is that there weren’t more red flags. In fact, I think that our cybersecurity risk was identified as being higher in 2022 and that we lowered [it] because of all the work we were doing in 2023 and 2024.
Spacing: Can you talk about whether TPL has the resources to hire people with cybersecurity expertise, not the third-party consultants, but staff? I’ve talked to people with differing views on whether or not a public sector organization facing perennial budget pressures has the funding to compete with private sector salaries?
Vickery Bowles: We’ve added a number of staff — a manager of cybersecurity and another staff member who reports to him. We didn’t have those positions previously but we do now. We have a CIO, who has a tremendous amount of technical expertise and strategic expertise. We’ve developed this position and added new staff dedicated only to cybersecurity. The other thing I’ll say is that we started [in] 2022 working really closely with City’s CISO office, and they’re tremendous to work with. We get a lot of support, regular notifications about different applications that may be at risk, or where there’s patching required. They come to me directly and I forward them to our CIO and to the head of cybersecurity. It’s a regular part of our operation. Going forward, [the City’s CISO] is going to be doing 24-hour monitoring of the security of our environment.
Spacing: Is there some transfer of responsibilities from TPL to the City?
Vickery Bowles No, it’s not a transfer of responsibility. It’s a new part of the service environment that we’ve implemented. They are going to take on that responsibility of the monitoring because we didn’t have that previously. It’s not unusual not to have it, but it’s something we have implemented.
Spacing: I’d like ask you about the duration of the shutdown. Did the shutdown go on longer because of the acceleration of upgrading the cybersecurity systems?
Vickery Bowles: What makes us different from most organizations is there are three components to our technical environment. Number one, we use it for our business operations. Secondly, we use the technical environment to deliver services to the public. Then thirdly, technology in and of itself is a service to the public. So, there are three buckets, which adds to the complexity of our technical environment, and they’re all integrated. It’s a very sophisticated technical environment and there’s a lot of complexity.
When you go to rebuild, we have our data centre, and in addition, we have 5,000 public and staff laptops and desktops. Each and every single one of those had to be touched. They were all in quarantine. Every single one of them had to be touched in order to go through the cleaning process and then moved to a clean technical environment. We’ve been very thorough. The cybersecurity experts advised us that we need to make sure there isn’t malware in our system, somewhere on a laptop or a desktop. That’s why it’s taken so long.
Spacing: Can you confirm that Black Basta was the ransomware gang that made the incursion?
Vickery Bowles: I’ve been told by legal counsel not to talk about the threat actor, so I really have to abide by that.
Spacing: Let me just press you on this. The British Library has been much more open about what happened when they were attacked.
Vickery Bowles: Yes, I’ve read their report. It’s excellent.
Spacing: I understand that legal counsel is there to kind of mitigate risk. I don’t quite understand why one entity can make these kinds of disclosures and another can’t. You’re in the same business.
Vickery Bowles: Well, we’re operating in a different legal environment. I can’t really answer that. I just know what I’ve been advised. As a public sector leader, I believe strongly in the importance of transparency and accountability. I’ve worked really hard with the communications that we have provided the public throughout this process, and with our staff and with the board, through the public reports and the closed sessions, to provide the best and most accurate information I can.
Spacing: Just two other small questions. TPL did not pay the ransom, correct?
Vickery Bowles: We did not pay them. I’m not going to negotiate with criminals.
Spacing: And at some point, will either the City or TPL reveal the cost of this incident?
Vickery Bowles: The City has covered the cost for TPL. That’s a question for the City. I haven’t seen any invoices. I don’t know what the costs are.
Spacing: Should that number become a matter of public record?
Vickery Bowles: I don’t know. I think it’s important not to give in to criminal activity, and it’s important to maintain the integrity of organizations, especially public sector organizations. I don’t know if giving a number has an impact on making public sector organizations more of a target or not.
The only thing I want to add is that the public has been so incredible and supportive of us. Our staff had been incredible, too. They’ve been worked so hard, long hours, and they’ve developed all these workarounds and they’ve been so positive, even though it was that it was staff data that was has been stolen.
One of the things that really strikes me about this [incident] is that I feel when you attack a public institution, and especially a public library that’s dedicated to intellectual freedom and openness, it’s an attack on the very essence of civic life. We all should be appalled at the number of public sector organizations that have been attacked, particularly in recent months, but particularly when it’s attack on libraries.
Spacing: These attacks are intended to undermine trust in public institutions. Do you think such events should commensurately increase the level of awareness on the part of public institutions to take these threads as seriously as they can?
Vickery Bowles: Yes, they do. I can tell you I’ve been contacted by colleagues from all over North America about this, wanting that wanting to know more. I’ve already spoken with colleagues in the United States, through the Urban Libraries Council. I’ll be doing a presentation with the Canadian Urban Libraries Council. It certainly has heightened awareness in the public sector and from my public library colleagues throughout North America.
photo by Matt Wiebe (cc)
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The post Spacing investigation: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack, pt. V appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Editors: Martin Søberg and Anna Hougaard (Birkhäuser, 2020)
Architectural representations are more than just visual aids—they are the foundational blueprints for the built environment, embodying the visions of city-builders, and specifications of designers. As powerful tools for communication, they also serve to influence decisions of the public and municipal officials, while serving as tools of exploration, and creative expression for architects. Of the many representation types used daily, perhaps none is more understated and powerful than the architectural plan drawing.
Often referred to simply as a “plan,” this drawing type is a two-dimensional representation of a building or space as seen from “above”. A foundational drawing aid to the real estate industry, it typically depicts the layout, dimensions, and spatial relationships of rooms, corridors, and other architectural elements within a building. As such, they are also the basis of regulatory compliance: detailed plan drawings are a part of most if not all, permit application processes.
At a larger scale, plan views are the basis of urban cartography—from zoning maps to the countless mapping apps we use every day. In this way, plans diagram social relationships and clearly visualize power relationships and political agendas.
Unfortunately, despite their dominance and biases, plans are rarely scrutinized. This makes books on the subject—such as The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured—valuable resources. Edited by Martin Søberg and Anna Hougaard the book offers an important and refreshing perspective on the role and significance of architectural drawing in contemporary art and architectural practices. Its well-curated collection of essays, case studies, and visual examples, offers insights into the evolving nature of architectural plans and their impact on the design process and products.
At its core, “The Artful Plan” aspires to acknowledge, yet challenge, traditional notions of architectural plan as merely a means of technical communication. The book is divided into three parts, accordingly, with carefully curated contributions from a diverse range of architects, artists and educators offering unique insights into this “reconfigured” approach to architectural plan.
The first part—The Conventional Plan, Its Formation and Reconfiguration—brings together essays that focus on the history of the plan, its role in current practice as a drawing convention, as well as its potential as a catalyst for new architectural practices and ways of thinking about space.
The second part—Point Clouds, Chance Operations, and the Disappearance of the Plan—speaks to the rise of digital media within the building and design disciplines. This collection of essays opens the door to questioning the relevance of the plan drawings in the face of the many new representation technologies like Light Detection and Ranging (LiDar) and other scanning techniques.
The final and third part—The Plan and the Expanded Field of Architectural Drawing—focuses on new methods of approaching architectural drawing in light of our “hybrid, post-digital condition” that has greatly expanded the means and methods of architectural drawing. It argues for a more expansive understanding that embraces drawing as a creative tool for exploration, expression, and critical inquiry.
One of the book’s strengths lies in its exploration of various drawing techniques, media, approaches and ways of thinking about the plan and its role in shaping architectural ideas. Through rich visual examples and accompanying analyses, readers gain a deeper appreciation for the nuanced ways in which different drawing methods can inform design thinking and communication.
Moreover, The Artful Plan addresses timely topics such as the integration of computational and digital tools into the drawing process. It examines how advancements in technology are not only expanding the possibilities of architectural representation but also challenging traditional boundaries between plan drawings and making.
The book also underscores the importance of drawing as a form of critical inquiry and speculation. Several essays delve into the role of drawing in architectural research and practice, emphasizing its capacity to provoke new questions, challenge assumptions, and envision alternative futures. In doing so, “The Artful Plan” highlights the vital role that drawing plays in pushing the boundaries of architectural discourse and innovation.
While “The Artful Plan” presents a compelling argument for rethinking architectural drawing, it also acknowledges the ongoing tensions and debates within the discipline. Discussions around the relationship between representation and reality, the authenticity of hand-drawing versus digital rendering, and the democratization of design tools add depth to the book’s exploration of contemporary drawing practices.
Given its dominance as a mode of representation integrated into permits and all types of urban planning documents, I believe the book would have been strengthened further by exploring the plan and its “reconfiguration” at the larger scales of the urban environment. It would have been interesting, for example, to include pieces that examine what effects a more critical stance on the plan as a dominant drawing type might have on the city at large. Books like Stephen Graham’s Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers have done well to open the door to the limitations of the plan drawing and its understanding of the contemporary city, and it would have added a wonderful layer to the many strengths of the book’s content.
Ultimately, however, The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured offers a thought-provoking examination of the evolving role of drawing in architectural practice and theory. By presenting a diverse array of perspectives and examples, the book inspires readers to reconsider the possibilities of architectural representation in the digital age. It is a must-read for architects, designers, educators, and anyone interested in the intersection of representation, art, technology, and architecture.
For more information on The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured visit the Birkhäuser website. You can also sample the book via ISSUU here.
**
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches within the UBC’s School of Community and Regional and KPU’s Wilson School of Design.
The post Book Review – The Artful Plan: Architectural Drawing Reconfigured appeared first on Spacing National.
By John Lorinc and Sakeina Syed
Although TPL officials maintained an official no-comment stance for much of the shutdown — TPL chief librarian Vickery Bowles told The Globe and Mail‘s Oliver Moore in late December that she’d been advised “not to talk about the threat actor” — the organization undertook a public relations effort beginning later in January to burnish its image.
In social media plugs from politicians, upbeat media coverage about its re-opening efforts and regular email blasts, TPL officials over the past month or so have sought to get the message out to Torontonians that their beloved and well-used library system was back in action. (The TPL contends that it has not used the services of a crisis communications consultant.)
What’s far less clear — and certainly not part of the TPL’s dialogue with its patrons — is the ultimate cost of this incident, a candid accounting of the reasons for such an unusually lengthy shutdown, and a clear explanation of how ready the organization is for future attacks.
By contrast, the British Library, which was attacked on the same day as the TPL, earlier this month published a lengthy and detailed paper entitled, Learning Lessons from the Cyber-Attack. This post-mortem (see sidebar below) provides a far more candid and specific account of what transpired, the causes and the recovery process than anything released to date by the TPL.
There are perfectly good reasons for the TPL and the City to be tight-lipped with technical information that could be exploited by cybercrime gangs. Still, these are publicly accountable institutions. The public surely has a right to know whether its municipal agencies have taken adequate measures to protect themselves, especially given some evidence that earlier warnings — e.g., from the Toronto Auditor-General as far back as 2021 — did not appear to produce a sense of urgency among TPL officials and its consultants. (TPL officials in a February, 2024, report to their board claimed otherwise: “TPL has proactively prepared for cybersecurity issues by prioritizing cybersecurity since January 2021.”)
During the 2024 budget deliberations, TPL revealed the City would be picking up the cost of dealing with the ransomware attack, i.e., so it wouldn’t come out of the TPL’s own funds. Spacing asked both the TPL and the City how much was spent — a number that precisely reveals the degree of risk associated with failing to adopt sound cybersecurity practices — but neither organization was prepared to disclose a figure. “This incident is ongoing and final costs are not currently known to the City,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Any costs to the City will be attributed to Finance and Treasury Services.”
Another question-mark is the duration of the downtime. Most organizations that are attacked by a ransomware gang recover within a week or a few weeks, although some do take longer, among them Indigo and the British Library, which is still, as of mid-March, working to return to full service. Every case is different because of the structure of the network, the state of existing software and the hardware, and so on.
TPL officials told the board in February that the library’s IT team and external consultants “used this attack as an opportunity to accelerate [the TPL’s previously scheduled cybersecurity improvement] plans.” Whether these efforts to dial up the implementation of newer and more robust systems resulted in a longer downtime isn’t entirely clear. “The delay was not a result of the acceleration,” says Critchley. “Rather, the work we had to do to secure and protect the network resulted in an acceleration and implementation of this previously planned work.”
As for the state of the now re-started network, and all the various sub-systems meant to protect the TPL from cybercrimes, the library says it has succeeded in moving beyond the “Developing” level of maturity — level 2 of 5 possible — that existed as of October 28, 2023.
As for how much progress, the TPL isn’t saying.
“Since the attack in October,” the February report to the TPL board states, “TPL has matured its information security program by implementing additional security controls, updated some hardware and software applications, and introduced new processes… As part of the rebuilding and restoration work, TPL has not simply replicated the former environment but rather used this attack as an opportunity to accelerate plans. Subsequently, TPL’s IT security program maturity level has increased when assessed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework.”
Public institutions are increasingly targeted by cybercrimeLooking to the future, the TPL cyberattack is a harbinger of a “new normal,” says Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of geography and planning and Director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto. “You have these big public institutions that are important to our cities — that are also increasingly vulnerable, the target of attacks,” he says. “You see the cascading impacts it has, and the challenges that can come from trying to get these systems back online.”
Siemiatycki notes the cyberattack on the City of Hamilton in recent months as a similar example of how municipal services and public institutions are increasingly targeted by cybercrime. In Hamilton, the breach in early February cut off city phone lines, obstructed the overtime pay system for city employees, and compromised many digital services. Closer to home, the Toronto Zoo was similarly compromised by a cyberattack that surrendered staff members’ personal information to the perpetrators.
Pointing to the agencies, boards, and commissions which govern city services, Siemiatycki says each will have “different systems and different degrees of readiness..I think it’s important — now that cities across North America and around the world are becoming targets — that the city plays a central role in making sure that all of the organizations under its management have the tools, techniques, and capacity both to protect themselves and then respond when incidents inevitably do happen.”
As for the question of whether TPL and the City’s public-facing response to the cyberattack would have been more effective with greater transparency, Siemiatycki says that there might be technical benefits behind the scenes to either approach. However, he says clarity from the City regarding the scale of the cyber threats that municipalities are up against can help “speak to the scale of investment” that will be needed, allowing for greater public awareness and engagement.
“If we’re going to be able to keep having these services that we’ve come to rely on,” he says, “I think we as a community need to understand the scale of the threat and how often this is happening, what’s being targeted and what’s at stake.”
Charles Finlay, who heads TMU’s cybersecurity research centre, agrees: “Everybody acknowledges the problem is extremely serious and growing, and resources need to be increased on an urgent basis in order to to try to mitigate these threats.”
He continues: “My perspective is, you either pay something now in terms of investing in law enforcement, people, processes and technology in order to prepare for these attacks and to mitigate these attacks when they happen, or you pay a lot more later. And you don’t just necessarily pay in money later. You pay in the trust that citizens have in their governments and in their communities.”
“I think this is a learning lesson for everybody,” says Scarborough councillor Paul Ainslie, who sits on the TPL board and chairs council’s general government committee. The library got hacked. The zoo got hacked. It was an eye opener for a number of organizations across the city. `Hey, we need to step up our cybersecurity, too.'”
Siemiatycki hopes there’s a silver lining. The months-long incapacitation of the public library served to drive home the far-reaching, singular value of the city service — an awareness that has potential to be transformative. “In many ways,” he says, “it’s a living room for the city.”
Learning from the British LibraryIn many ways, the Toronto Public Library and the British Library are very different institutions. One is local; the other, national. One is primarily a lending library with many branches; the other is a repository and research library situated on a single campus.
Yet the two institutions have comparable annual budgets — $234 million for the TPL in 2023 and $219 million for the BL in 2021/22 — and a similar number of employees (1,808 FTE and 1,702, respectively). They were also both hit by ransomware attacks on October 28, 2023.
In late February, the TPL released a 12-page final report on the attack, which included a summary of the library’s response, the impact on services, a section on “lessons learned” and a confidential attachment from legal counsel.
The British Library’s own “incident review,” an 18 page document entitled Learning Lessons from the Cyber-Attack, offers a substantially more detailed and candid self-assessment compared to the TPL’s report. This document — which should be compulsory reading for policy-makers who were involved in the TPL attack or other City of Toronto cybersecurity departments — explores “why our security measures were not sufficient” and concedes frankly that “the impact on the library’s systems and services has…been deep and extensive.”
Posted to the BL website on March 8, the incident review contains six sections — a deep dive into the incident itself, a look at the impact, a summary of the crisis response, a description of the technology infrastructure, an assessment of future risk, and 18 lessons learned.
The section outlining the incident includes highly detailed timelines, the name of the attacker, the size and description of the stolen files, the suspected point of entry, an admission that the lack of a system-wide multi-factor authentication likely contributed to the incident and an acknowledgment that the self-cleaning features of the ransomware virus, i.e., its ability to erase traces of itself, inflicted the greatest damage because it destroyed servers that could assist with recovery. None of this kind of detailed analysis was included in the TPL’s final report on the ransomware attack, or in any other documents it published after October 28.
Among the many learnings highlighted in the BL’s incident review, one directly addresses the vulnerabilities created by a “historically complex” IT network that consisted of sub-systems and hardware of varying ages and resilience. “There is a clear lesson in ensuring the attack vector is reduced as much as possible by keeping infrastructure and applications current, with increased levels of lifecycle investment in technology infrastructure and security.”
The TPL says it has no plans to publish a comparably detailed incident review.
– sidebar by John Lorinc
photo by Huff Duff (cc)
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The post Spacing investigation: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack, pt. IV appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
EDITOR: It’s 1954. Fictitious Bert Xanadu is the Mayor of Toronto and owner of the Imperial Six cinemas on Yonge Street. Mayor Xanadu has been governing from his twitter account for many years, and also from occasional Spacing Toronto posts straight out of the last century and into Toronto’s comedic political fray.
The people of Toronto often tell me that they want to get the hell out of here.
Transporting them elsewhere is, unfortunately, the responsibility of higher levels of government.
But, starting today, March 30, 1954, Torontonians, and any hangers-on from out-of-town, will be able to ride on the globe’s most fantastical subway system, most of it underground, and all of it as splendiferous as the Empress of Russia’s 18th century ice palace in St. Petersburg, minus the chilblains.
Spanning the variously majestic, commercial, industrial, residential, semi-rural and scruffy miles between Union Station and the far-flung precincts of Eglinton, the Yonge line will thrust us into an unknowable and unaffordable future, except when the transfer machines are down.
As only several hundred Toronto natives have ever experienced “riding on the subway” in other world metropolises (the Laff in The Dark ride at the Canadian National Exhibition does not count), I offer here a guide on how to behave on this subterranean marvel, this spooky cavern of commuting, this civic spine, so essential to a city that lacks one.
Mind the gaspStation platforms are places upon which to contemplate, not to natter, and from which to inhale as much oxygen as one might feel necessary before jauntily stumbling onboard. Trains arrive with an almost erotic whoosh, and the doors open and close with an urgency heretofore only seen in the films of Wile E. Coyote.
How to escalateEscalators are located only in several stations, so as not to encourage laggards. These swift steps-eliminators are nothing like the Boer War-era contraptions still on offer to Eaton’s patrons. Although ascension and descension elicit different feelings of warmth and panic in some, it is best to fix one’s eyes on the shoulder blades of the person ahead of you and remember the TTC’s slogan: “Hope for The Best.”
Etiquette regretFew populaces are better prepared for the close quarters of a packed subway car than Torontonians, experienced as they are at avoiding eye contact. However, some contact, mostly torso-wise, is inevitable during rush hours, so we suggest that the most delicate among us just stay home and enjoy radio programs instead.
Lost near the centre of the EarthIt will happen. The psychic transformation one will experience through this Brasso-Mechanical marvel will challenge even the most virile citizen with its space-time dislocationary properties. Each station is colour-coded (for example the Vitrolite tiles in Davisville station are Divorcée Green, while those at Bloor are cast in a pleasing shade of Surrender Yellow) to lodge your destination in your brain, but when that fails, push the ‘Huh?’ button, and Dolores will bring you a damp cloth.
Ignore that man in the boothSvelte male employees of the TTC will be housed, so to speak, behind spit-proof glass in handsome cubicles to monitor correct fare payments and to ensure that smooch-free civic decorum is observed. It is anticipated that as riders become accustomed to the system, the booths may be converted to scenic aquariums, housing trout, or floating lost articles.
Subway expansion is only the back of a napkin awayAs your hair gets mussed and your jowls flap joyfully in the thrust and parry of the biologically-sound acceleration and deceleration of your train ride each day, prepare yourself for the joy that will surely come when you learn of our plan for the TTC subway’s expansion in the decades, nay, centuries to come. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, at least when it comes to commissioning further expansion of the subway, which, incidentally, calls for the removal of a lot of sand and buried treasures.
Let’s just say that by the time your pesky grandchildren are old enough to have their very own Aikenhead’s charge cards, they’ll be as gods, able to whisk themselves from, say, the Mutual St. Arena to Simcoe St. Goatworks via underground wonders yet to be conceived, but for which you are already being futuristically taxed.
An added benefit of the new subway is that it will send a message to the world: Toronto is open to suggestions! When we bid for the 1967 world’s fair (with the slogan ‘Man, what a Kooky World!’), international judges will be confident we can erect it. After all, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, himself a frequent user of transportation, predicts that the Toronto subway will be “the Avro Arrow of the netherworld”!
In conclusion, let me say that unlike the beasts of the jungle, we are not meant to traverse the soils of the land merely to survive, but rather to engage with our fellows, so that we may form stronger civic bonds. In other words, please don’t just ride the subway to kill time. That’s what the Imperial Six is for!
Images from “Canada’s First Subway” online exhibit, City of Toronto Archives
The post Take the Yonge subway to the future! (expect some delays) appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
This is a five-part series independently produced and investigated by Spacing
At some point in mid-2020, with the pandemic raging, the Toronto Public Library began working with the Gartner Group, a large U.S. research and IT consulting firm, to re-launch the TPL’s 2020-2024 Digital Strategy, work on which had been sidelined by the lockdown.
Tucked into the TPL’s broader strategic plan, the new program — unveiled with a certain amount of bureaucratic fanfare in January, 2021 and subsequently approved by the TPL board — came fitted out with all sorts of promises cast in the impenetrable jargon of the tech world: “consistent customer experiences across channels of engagement” meant to “drive” customer satisfaction; “redesigned or new functional capabilities”; “optimization” intended to improve “productivity” of front line staff, and so on. It was all dubbed “a journey of reinvention.”
“Gartner leveraged industry best practices and conducted a number of assessments, workshops and interviews,” the staff report noted, all presumably with the goal of providing TPL with a menu of assessments and reports and more consulting opportunities. Among these was one on the library’s so-called “digital maturity” level, which Gartner assessed to be at level one (out of five possible levels) — a widely used metric in the cybersecurity world that denotes preparedness against external threats. (A graphic of the National Institutes for Standards and Technology “maturity model” is on page 29 of the TPL’s digital strategy presentation.)
The staff report, likely repeating a claim from Gartner, stated reassuringly that 80% of government services have low to modest digital maturity levels. “Essential to improving TPL’s digital maturity and overall success are redesigned or new functional capabilities and innovation, speed and agility,” it stated. “So Gartner recommended that the focus of TPL’s Digital journey be on optimization and setting the stage for transformation.” In particular, it laid out a timeline to bolster the TPL’s cybersecurity systems that would run from 2021 to 2023. But the strategy made no mention at all of preparing for ransomware attacks.
Toronto’s Auditor General was less sanguine and certainly less patient. In a strongly worded June, 2021, warning released less than half a year after the TPL’s revamped digital strategy, former TAG Beverly Romeo-Beehler told City officials and City agencies to sharply accelerate preparations for high-risk events, and specifically ransomware attacks.
Quoting risk assessments from the so-called Five Eyes and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, among others, as well as examples of recent debilitating attacks on critical infrastructure, Romeo-Beehler said there’s an urgent need for the City to pick up the pace. “The outcomes of a cyberattack can be devastating to the City,” she wrote, noting in particular the risk that municipal agencies wouldn’t be able to deliver services and could lose control over sensitive or confidential personnel information.
Her stern warning went out to City officials fully two years before the TPL attack.
In May, 2022, Romeo-Beehler’s office released an update, which involved a review of publicly available information on the progress of the cyber-security improvements being carried out by the City and a handful of Toronto agencies, including the TPL. Her office provided each of the listed agencies, including TPL, with specific recommendations on what still needed to be done, but these weren’t made public (most information on cyber-security vulnerabilities and preparedness is kept strictly confidential for all the obvious reasons).
In an email to Spacing, the current auditor general, Tara Anderson, said her office had subsequently checked in with TPL to see how it had progressed. “We did the follow-up on those recommendations that were reported by management as fully implemented as of December 2022,” she wrote. “I’m not able to provide further information given it is confidential.”
Just over a year before the attack, TPL chief librarian Vickery Bowles, issued a short report updating the annual “risk register” — a bucket of 27 metrics meant to gauge internal and external IT risk, and which has been in use since 2018. Without providing details, Bowles said six of the 27 risks had “increased,” two had declined and the balance remained unchanged.
(In December 2023, two months after the attack, the TPL updated its risk register evaluation in a report to the board. Library officials revealed that they had adopted a new way of measuring risk — “a revised format that matches industry standards” — along 24, instead of 27, categories or metrics. In eight of the 24, the current risk level scores were found to be “extreme” or “high,” while the remaining 16 were scored as low, medium or medium-high; the report provided no further breakdown. TPL board members were given more details about these scores, but that information was not made public.)
It’s not particularly clear from the public record how much progress TPL made during 2022 in terms of battening down its cybersecurity risks and fostering a culture of vigilance among its far-flung employees. One change that did come into effect was annual mandatory staff training, which was introduced for the first time in 2022. The 60- to 90-minute sessions included guidance on compromises emails, phishing, cloud security, remote work and safe passwords. (The TPL has reported that in 2022, 3% of TPL’s staff were “successfully phished.”)
One TPL branch manager describes the first round of cyber-security training sessions as ” very much an off-the-shelf product that didn’t actually match our working environment as much as it could. [It] was very much there so that the organization could say that they’ve done this thing.” The second round, this person adds, was “considerably better.”
“Anecdotally,” Brandon Haynes, president of CUPE Local 4989, which represents the library workers, “I will tell you that I have heard feedback from people that are not satisfied with the level of training related to cybersecurity, probably as a result of different conversations at the City over the last few years that there was a mandatory cybersecurity training that people are required to attend.” He continues: “The feedback that I hear from people is that they struggle to get time away from their regular duties.”
TPL spokesperson Ana-Maria Critchley stated in an email that TPL had mandatory training in place prior to the ransomware attack but added, “In addition to existing TPL training, we are investigating the cyber training offered through the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer at the City of Toronto.”
As for all the other fixes required by both the auditor-general and the City’s IT officials, the TPL’s last major progress report issued before the ransomware attack suggests, with the benefit of hindsight, a work that was very much in progress. According to a chart in that March, 2023, document, the City of Toronto’s IT division had identified 13 security controls that the TPL needed to implement as part of its overall cyber-security preparedness. Five, however, had yet to be completed. These included: “remediating all critical, high and medium security patches”; putting in place complex passwords in all systems; imposing tight controls on all administrative systems; properly controlling all network access; and putting in place disaster recovery plans.
As the report stated, TPL’s systems had advanced to a maturity level two (out of five), also known as “developing” — a state of preparedness common among governments. A chart in the document depicting the evolution of a fully-fleshed out cybersecurity system shows a pair of lines: one in black that’s trending up, indicating progress with the deployment of various security measures, and the other — in red — trending down, showing the level of risk over time.
According to TMU cybersecurity expert Charles Finlay, the TPL’s assessment of its own security preparedness viz other public sector entities “is likely correct, but this is not a situation we can simply accept. All of us — including governments at all levels, the private sector, the academic community, and the public sector — must work hard to build cybersecurity capacity across the public sector in Canada. The safe functioning of our society and economy relies on our public institutions rapidly reaching an optimized level of cybersecurity maturity.”
In an email, TPL spokesperson Critchley said that the March, 2023, report referenced “initiatives underway…at the time this report was authored. These initiatives include Updated Password Standards, Multi-Factor Authentication, Response & Recovery from Cyber Security Incidents and Vulnerability Management Program. All of these initiatives were either completed or underway at the time of the cybersecurity incident.”
However, the “you-are-here” box on the chart (above) offers a bracing snapshot of the TPL’s preparedness circa the spring of last year. The red risk line was still well above the one plotting progress. The TPL’s lengthy to-do list — everything from phishing risk assessments to the development of disaster and recovery plans — suggested much to be done. “By maintaining and improving policy, practices and technology,” the report states in a tone of studied bureaucratic calm, “the risk of internal and external cyber security threats are minimized.”
Black Basta struck almost exactly seven months later.
photo by Brad Robb (cc)
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The post Spacing investigation: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack, pt. III appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
This is a five-part series independently produced and investigated by Spacing
On October 29, a Sunday, a TPL branch manager got a call on his cell from his supervisor, who relayed the following instructions: “`We’ve had a cybersecurity incident and we need you to basically open the phone tree. Go through your contact list, call the staff tell and them that this has happened, we’re not sure if the scope of it and we don’t have computer access.'”
About 48 hours later, a more specific explanation began to make the rounds of the perplexed library staff: a post in an online publication called BleepingComputer, offering a report on the outage. The story included a screen grab showing an email from the notorious Russian cybercrime gang known as Black Basta. “Your network has been breached and all data was encrypted,” began the note, which included a link.
Although the entire computer system was down, TPL officials didn’t publicly acknowledge the cause for seven more days, and have never confirmed that Black Basta was the attacker. “TPL has proactively prepared for cybersecurity issues and promptly initiated measures to mitigate potential impacts,” it said in a statement released Nov. 7. The hackers, library officials said, seized personnel information for current and former employees going back to 1998. (A TPL spokesperson says the library board will be reviewing its data retention policies in the wake of the attack.)
While most TPL online services are finally back in operation after an unprecedented three-plus-month blackout, the episode raises tough questions that still lack complete answers:
- Why was the TPL targeted?
- Was the TPL, in fact, “proactively prepared” for such an attack, as it has claimed?
- How much has it cost the City and the TPL to make the necessary repairs?
- And is the City of Toronto taking all the necessary steps to bolster its cyber-security defenses to ensure that another crucial municipal service won’t be held hostage like this again?
The ransomware note discovered on the TPL website (Source: BleepingComputer)Most disruptive form of cybercrimeThere’s nothing new about cybercrime or hacking. However, ransomware has, by most assessments, emerged in the past five or so years as a rapidly growing cybersecurity threat, one that is directed both at private firms and public sector agencies. “Right now, no organization, no matter what size or what its mandate is, is safe from ransomware attacks,” says Charles Finlay, executive director of the Toronto Metropolitan University’s cybersecurity research centre.
Attackers aim to gain access to a computer network in conventional ways — spear-phishing, links to corrupted websites, infected attachments and so on. Once the malware has entered a network, it is programmed to disable anti-virus systems, seek out storehouses of data, including data on so-called mirror sites (backups), and then encrypt those files so the owners and users of the network can’t access them. As happened with TPL and hundreds of other targets, attackers demand payment, often in crypto currency, so the network owners can regain access to their data. Attackers also threaten to publish stolen data on a publicly accessible site.
In a growing number of cases, ransomware gangs lease their specialized software on dark web sites to other cybercrime organizations in exchange for a cut of the earnings — a practise known as “ransomware-as-a-service.”
According to the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity’s 2023-2024 national cyber threat assessment report, ransomware has become the “most disruptive form of cybercrime facing Canadian organizations.” The document cites data showing a steady rise in ransomware payments since 2020. (Law enforcement agencies urge targets not to pay.)
Black Basta, according to Blackberry, emerged around 2022 as the spin-off of a predecessor gang with Russian and possibly state connections. (A predecessor gang, known as Conti, pledged its loyalty to the Kremlin following its February, 2022, invasion of Ukraine’s Donbas region, according to the Wall Street Journal.) Late last year, Elliptic, a crypto-compliance outfit, co-published a report estimating that it has identified over US$100 million in ransom payments made to Black Basta in the past two years, the vast majority of them coming from U.S. targets, but also organizations elsewhere, including Germany, Canada and the U.K. The gang last spring was reported to have stolen personal information on hundreds of thousands of British retirees with savings in 300 separate pension funds.
Ransomware groups attack both private firms — Indigo was a victim — and government institutions. “It is a very rapidly growing crisis,” says Finlay, adding that many of the gangs are aligned with regimes in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. “We’ve seen attacks on the widest variety of public sector institutions in Canada. We’ve seen very sophisticated attacks against health care institutions. We’ve seen attacks on communication systems, transportation systems, energy systems. We’ve seen attacks on governments at all levels. We’ve seen attacks on virtually every single part of our financial system. So the question for me is less, why was the Toronto Public Library attacked? The question I would pose is, why wouldn’t it be?”
An editorial published in Nature earlier this year pointed to a notable uptick in ransomware attacks targeting “knowledge institutions,” including universities, research organizations and high-profile venues such Berlin’s Natural History Museum and the British Library, which was hacked, oddly enough, on the same day as the TPL, but failed to publicly disclose the assault for another month. The authors pointed to a pair of factors that made such institutions especially vulnerable: their huge storehouses of data, and the porousness of their computer networks, accessible as they are to countless users and access card holders.
The TPL’s message soon after discovering the ransomeware attackAttacks on municipalities and municipal agencies, Finlay and others add, are also “increasing in frequency and seriousness.” Case in point: in recent weeks, Canadian Press has reported, the City of Hamilton and the Town of Huntsville have both been targeted, resulting in curtailed services as municipal officials and external cyber-security consultants shut down customer-facing computer systems while the incidents are under investigation.
The reason, in part, is that the higher orders of government have more resources to invest in robust cybersecurity protections. According to a white paper published in 2021 by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, “municipal governments in the United States and beyond represent some of the easiest targets for cybercriminal organizations.” The authors pointed to not just a lack of funding, but also the fact that municipal agencies can’t compete with employers in industry when it comes to hiring experience cybersecurity/IT personnel.
Indeed, some current and former TPL employees say that the library has faced difficulties recruiting experienced cybersecurity managers. Alan Harnum, a former TPL tech employee who has been publicly critical of the library’s IT practices, says the TPL’s pay scales for its IT staff were “significantly lower” than compensation offered by the City or the higher order of governments, as well as the private sector. Brandon Haynes, president of CUPE Local 4948, which represents TPL employees, says he can’t comment on specifics but notes that there is “a recruitment and retention challenge” that exists in the public sector as compared to private industry. “But I do know that cybersecurity has been on the radar of the city for a number of years now.”
TPL spokesperson Ana-Marie Critchley said in emailed responses to Spacing that the library provides “competitive compensation” for its staff, including those in its IT department, which comprises 80 staff positions, about 7% to 9% of which are typically vacant. “TPL has a qualified IT team which includes talented cybersecurity expertise that has proven invaluable in the context of the current cybersecurity incident.”
Despite that, municipal officials announced earlier this year that the TPL’s cybersecurity duties will be taken over by the City’s internal IT and information security division. [CORRECTION: The TPL was working with the City’s Chief Information Security Officer prior to the attack and is “now migrating our 24/7 Security Operations Centre monitoring to the CISO office,” Critchley said in an email. “While we welcome and value the collaboration with the City, TPL still maintains responsibility for its own cybersecurity.”]
Ransomware attacks on public sector institutions in OntarioYork University (2020)
A range of York’s computer networks were disabled during a cyber-attack in early May, 2020. In a statement, the university’s chief information officer didn’t describe the incident as a ransomware attack, but one security expert quoted in IT World Canada said that’s probably what transpired. Students and staff were told to change passwords and the systems came back on line within four days.
TTC (2021)
Personal information on as many as 25,000 current and former employees, including names, addresses and SIN, was stolen. The attack occurred on October 29, 2021, and the TTC said full network service was restored Nov. 7. The TTC said in a statement that the incident was similar to hundreds that had been reported in Canada in the previous year.
Sick Kids Hospital (2022)
The hospital detected the attack on Dec. 18, 2022, issuing a “code grey” that resulted in some backlogs but no breaches of electronic patient records. Most of its networks were back in operation by early January. A ransomware group called LockBit publicly took responsibility, apologized and unencrypted the hospital’s data. LockBit, the CBC reported, has targeted municipalities in Ontario and Quebec, and had generated tens of millions of dollars in paid ransom.
London Public Library (2023)
The library’s computer systems were attacked in mid-December, resulting in the closure of several branches, system outages and the breach of employee information. The LPL gradually restored its computer networks through January of this year, and restored access to user accounts and online booking as of January 17, approximately a month after the initial breach.
Toronto Zoo (2024)
Officials detected a ransomware attack on January 5, 2024, and reported publicly three days later. While Zoo officials said none of the animal care systems had been affected, they were looking at breaches that might impact customers, members and donors. The Zoo reported the incident to Toronto Police and worked with an external cybersecurity firm to resolve the problem. On Jan. 17, it reported that personal information belonging to current, former and retired employees, including past earnings information, social insurance numbers, birthdates, telephone numbers and home addresses, was stolen. Those affected were given two years of free credit protection services through TransUnion.
photo of Fort York Library by Kevin Morris (cc)
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The post Spacing investigation: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack, pt. II appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
This is a five-part series independently produced and investigated by Spacing
As a parent to a two-year-old, Markus Harwood-Jones made visiting a Toronto Public Library branch an essential mainstay in his week. Several branches near his area offered opportunities to check out toddler-friendly board books and access play spaces. “They’re an absolutely essential space, especially for parents like myself who don’t want to have to spend money every time I want to take my kid somewhere.”
But in late October, Harwood-Jones’ ordinarily pleasant experience with the library began to shift. “There were fewer and fewer books on the shelves.” The gradual disappearance of books from the shelves coincided with a system-wide cyber-attack that hampered functionality across the Toronto Public Library’s 100 branches. The ransomware attack sent shockwaves through library services, disabling the website, rendering library computers, printing and online bookings inaccessible and suspending the system’s ability to process returns.
As shelves grew sparser, Harwood-Jones’ weekly library visits with his child grew less engaging. There were fewer and fewer materials available to check out or use during visits — Harwood-Jones often relies on the library for access to French children’s books that their family doesn’t own. He is also an author, and their latest young adult novel was released during the cyberattack. Although their previous books are stocked at TPL branches, the online outage represented a barrier for those seeking his new book. “You couldn’t even go and search for it or request it. There was no method to do so.”
Then, one day in early February, the full scope of the ongoing cyberattack became starkly apparent. The colourful dragon-shaped children’s bookshelf at the Dufferin St. Clair branch, normally lined with board books, was completely bare.
Harwood-Jones was just one of hundreds of thousands of library users sent into disarray by the ransomware attack. During the nearly five-month disruption, the library developed a million-book backlog. With the hampered system incapable of processing returns, books piled up in trailers and cardboard boxes. Now, as systems get closer to full restoration, books are slowly being returned to shelves — but tough questions remain regarding how North America’s largest library system was left to unravel.
An assault on the public goodThe Toronto Public Library system’s circulation ranks highest in North America. In 2022, per the most recent data available, it clocked in at almost 10 million branch visits. In the same year, more than 30 million people accessed library websites, while two million people dug deeper, accessing the library’s online databases.
During the shutdown, countless Torontonians found their routines altered; part of the city’s lifeblood had been cut off. From cancelled holds to unresolved academic questions, every library user had their own story to tell.
For Alisha Kurji, going to the Fort York and Toronto Reference Library branches is part of a little ritual. She regularly places holds on thrillers and mystery novels, using her online holds as a personal reading list, then picks them up in-person. Kurji didn’t know the library had been hacked until she visited in-person to renew her library card and pick up a hold. “The employees were having a really difficult time processing my card renewal because of the cyberattack,” she says. “They couldn’t access my file. They weren’t sure if my card had actually been renewed.”
Kurji’s holds hadn’t been delivered, either. When she tried to check out some of the books she picked off the shelves, the self-checkout was out of service. “I had to go to the employee, who had to write me a paper receipt. There was also no way for the employee to attach the book to my account in their online system.”
She ended up purchasing an e-reader, as the library’s e-book service came back online faster than physical holds did. “But of course, an e-reader is expensive,” she says. “I spent around $150 to purchase it just so that I could read library books.” This, she adds, is the opposite of what one is supposed to get out of the library: “access to free resources.”
Claire Battershill is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, specializing in digital humanities. She says the cyberattack compromised both members of the general public and those in academia. “I use the Toronto Public Library both as a human living in the city with my kids, and also as a researcher,” she says. “There’s a lot of stuff that the public library has that the university doesn’t have access to — the city archives and the Reference Library, and other resources.”
Battershill notes that the TPL ransomware attack occurred in tandem with a separate, yet similarly impactful cyber-attack on the British Library; some of her students from UofT who were doing research on site in London were unable to access materials there. The paralyzing impact of a digital outage was made apparent across two major public libraries at once.
To Battershill, the attack on the library’s digital infrastructure reflects an assault on the public good. “Libraries create an open environment where resources can be accessed for free right on site. There’s a lot of digital infrastructure that goes into that access.” She says the cyberattack seemed to represent a rupture that went beyond the initial disruption. “It’s inconvenient, for sure, but it also feels like an attack on values, or at least that was how I was reading it right away.”
Today, signs at library branches herald the restoration of most services. Holds, online room bookings, and digital accounts are all back online. An employee at the Toronto Reference Library informed Spacing that as of March, the Digital Innovation Hub is back in service, bringing with it access to online learning programs and applications like Adobe Photoshop which had previously been cut off. Still, five months later, printing is unavailable.
In the aftermath, library patrons are now acutely aware of what they’d lost.
Harwood-Jones says that the cyberattack had a heightened impact on those who are already vulnerable. “With the cost-of-living crisis and everything else, people are requiring more and more access to free and affordable public services, and public services just literally cannot keep up with it,” he says. “To me, it’s a funding issue. [I]f they had robust funding, they could have done the security work beforehand to prevent this kind of attack, and they could get the resources they needed to get it back online in a more robust and expedient manner. The library being lost as a resource is a real impact on our whole community — it’s a reflection of broader issues around not valuing public care, public literacy, public education.”
“I really appreciate the library because it’s one of those reliable free things to do in the city,” Alisha Kurji adds. “I had the library kind of baked into my regular routine. Whenever I would get an email that a hold was ready to be picked up, it was a way for me to take a break from any of the tasks I needed to do and go pick up my book and walk outside.”
photo courtesy City of Toronto
Part I: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Overview
Part II: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Unanswered Questions
Part III: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Was TPL adequately prepared to defend itself?
Part IV: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack: Where does the TPL go from here?
Part V: Q+A with Toronto’s chief librarian, Vickery Bowles
The post Spacing investigation: Toronto Public Library ransomware attack, pt. I appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Authors: Patrick Condon & Colleen Hardwick
Vancouver’s success as a global city has spawned housing prices that rise farther and farther out of reach of city wage earners. Tied to that process has been a question of whose arguments hold more sway at city hall, those of everyday citizens or the real estate industry.
There was a time when citizens were far more influential in Vancouver’s planning, an era we’ll revisit later in this piece as we make the case for honouring the spirit of those times.
But the 2008 ascendance of the Vision Vancouver party marks a moment when the city government swung away from encouraging strong neighbourhood influence on planning decisions to acceding to the argument of the housing industry. Which was that building much more housing, with less regard for what local citizens would advise, would produce a plethora of social benefits — notably, more affordable housing.
Vancouver’s current mayor and council have moved even further in this direction, with anti-citizen arguments boldly pronounced, rationalized by the housing crisis. Mayor Ken Sim provides one example after real estate industry voices suggested removing a decades-old policy on view cones. He was inspired to assert, “We don’t have a view crisis. We have a housing crisis,” suggesting taller towers equalled cheaper housing.
Behind his assertion is the assumption that housing prices would go down if we let the real estate industry build what is marketable, at whatever height is economically viable, wherever real estate developers decide.
This opinion, seemingly now dominant in the body politic, merits challenge. Vancouver has tripled the number of housing units in the city since the 1970s—most of this growth occurred during the period of Vancouver’s history we are calling consultative. We are not aware of any other already “built out” city in North America that has come remotely close to this heroic mark. If adding housing to this degree lowered prices as we all hoped, Vancouver should have North America’s cheapest housing. It has by some measures the least affordable.
Despite this major contradiction in the empirical evidence, the provincial government has gone even further in restricting local democracy’s role in city building via its new suite of housing bills 44, 46 and 47. These bills remove housing development decisions from local control. Yet none of the current elected officials in Vancouver have raised public objection to this removal of local jurisdiction — again, all in the name of the housing crisis.
How did we get here? And is it really where we want to be?
When we look into the history of how cities are run, especially Vancouver, we find a mix of changing ideas and beliefs about the role and responsibilities of resident/citizens. David Ley’s important 1974 book, Community Participation and the Spatial Order of the City, helps us understand how community development changed during the 1960s and 1970s in this city. His book shows how ordinary citizens became more involved in decisions about their communities, caught up in North America-wide movements like the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War.
A big part of that political discourse focused on different ways of making public policy decisions: either with the interests of investment capital in charge (while getting their main advice from industry experts), or letting average residents have the largest say.
Walter and David Hardwick wrote a chapter in Ley’s book that describes the advantages of a middle ground, suggesting that considering advice from experts is a useful strategy for managing public policy, while still making sure everyone has a say in how things are run. This seems to have become the dominant model between the mid-70s and the mid-2000s.
During this period, Vancouver was transformed from a sleepy and remote resource industry port town to its present brand as a “global city.”
In 1972, the Electors’ Action Movement, or TEAM, won the council majority and the mayor’s chair on a platform that included opposition to a freeway that would have bisected downtown and wiped out neighbourhoods, and the change away from highrise construction outside of the downtown peninsula in favour of midrise and missing middle forms. Less well-known but likely as important in the longer term was the initiation of over a score of local area plans formed in collaboration with neighbourhood groups.
Vancouver histories usually identify this as the moment when a more consultative strategy took the wheel at city hall.
Much of the way our city looks, from the residential infill housing in Kitsilano, to non-market housing at False Creek South and Champlain Heights, to the Seawall expansions, to the tower districts in Yaletown and Coal Harbour, is the physical legacy of that shift.
The existing form of the city embodies that spirit of “gentle density” favoured by residents, a form which disguises the fact that over 100,000 new housing units would eventually be included in neighbourhoods outside of the downtown peninsula.
It’s fair to say that during these decades, ceding power to citizens was simply an assumed best practice.
But that was then and this is now. Motivated by our new dependence on the real estate industry to provide an ever-expanding tax base (and the jobs that go with it), and the severity of the housing crisis that is its corollary, we find ourselves shifting to a former model, where dominant corporations, now almost entirely real estate corporations, hold sway — driven by the idea that letting unfettered investment capital is the best way to ensure a healthy city.
Let’s push back even earlier. In 1936, Vancouver changed how it chose city council members in the hopes of making local-level democracy more “professional and efficient.” The previous government of the city, based on “ward representation,” was scrapped in favour of “at large” representation where each member of council represented not just one district, but the whole city.
Those who backed the “at large” model did so, in part, because it would undercut the strength of the emergent labour left on the east side of the city. The problem with Vancouver’s new at-large system was that it eroded the connection of elected officials to the voters in specific city districts.
The end of the Second World War began a new era of infrastructure development. Given this burst of growth, a “council/manager” system was instituted in the city, mirroring corporate management principles. The intent was to insulate decision-making from partisan politicking. Yet this too diminished opportunities for citizen engagement, while making local democracy more and more structured around “expert” managed, corporate-style government.
Then came the 1970s when the pendulum swung hard away from the expert, corporate model for who called the shots. The newly seated TEAM council replaced the former city planner with Ray Spaxman, who was hired based on his community-focused planning model for the by now rapidly changing city.
Spaxman and the council who hired him adhered to a much more consultative model of planning than in the past. This resulted in the creation of dozens of separate neighbourhood plans and the transformation of former industrial sites into mixed use midrise and highrise communities, with new housing largely affordable to most city wage earners.
That model of citizen-involved urban planning is now largely forgotten and even maligned by some as a blueprint for NIMBY obstruction. However, we are poised to sacrifice much if we accept the new order. We lose a fundamental aspect of civic democracy. We lose any feeling that local area citizens have any democratic agency and are mere consumers of city housing and associated services. We lose the most immediate and local core of democratic action.
On Thursday, March 21st, the Local Democracy Project held one in a series of events on local democracy and sustainable city design, with the hope of bringing some of these contradictions and complications to light and encouraging city and provincial leaders to more clearly identify the real issues. After all, local democracy might not be the reason for our current conundrums. It might just be the solution.
A livestream of the event is available for viewing remotely.
Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program.
Colleen Hardwick, a former Vancouver city councillor, is CEO of Placespeak.
The post Can the City build needed housing while preserving local democracy? appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Politicians and government bureaucrats love process. Let’s not rush to blame them, though, because there’s a lot to love.
Carrying out a series of planning meetings, collecting relevant data, conducting background analyses, and engaging with stakeholders gives the appearance of good project outcomes. It’s also a good way for a nervous leader or bureaucrat to deflect criticism: “We studied everything we could and asked everybody who might be affected and came up with a reasonable compromise”.
Often, though, process gets bogged down in its own elements, like a well-intentioned spider getting trapped in the intricacies of its own web. The management gurus call this “analysis paralysis” when too much thinking and too much searching for the perfect solution results in, well … just delay and more process.
That seems to be the point we’ve reached in Toronto, certainly when it comes to public safety and the use of our roadways. The need for safety for all is, officially, not in dispute. Toronto’s Vision Zero Road Safety Plan clearly articulates that “human life should be prioritized over all other objectives within all aspects of the transportation system.” The city’s Complete Streets Guidelines, say that “our streets reflect our city’s values,” while outlining measures to safely accommodate all road users.
Yet it often seems that safety is compromised if it might inconvenience a minority of people. Take, for example, the issue of the installation of Complete Streets projects in the city. These have been proven repeatedly in multiple jurisdictions to save lives, reduce injuries, and make a city safer for everyone: pedestrians, cyclists, and yes, even motorists.
Despite that, a recent public meeting in Etobicoke was held by the local Councillor ostensibly to consult with citizens about the city’s medium and long-range proposals to “study, build, and upgrade” bikeways. Once the meeting began, however, it quickly became clear why most people were attending: to vent their anger and opposition to bikeways “recently installed, underway, or planned for installation in 2024”, in particular the Bloor Street West Complete Streets project.
The tone was ugly, city staff were jeered and heckled for offering their considered professional opinions, and the issue of safety was routinely ignored by audience members who wanted to concentrate on nuisances to their motorized way of life.
There have been similar incidents elsewhere in Toronto. When Complete Streets and cycling infrastructure are discussed at public meetings, it is often less about how to make a road safe and more about whether it should be made safe at all. This is appalling: in any democracy, the fundamental rights of people to be safe are not subject to the whims of whomever can shout the loudest or drum up the angriest opponents. Safety must not take a back seat. It is not a candidate in a popularity contest.
Happily, there is another, better way which other cities have adopted. Toronto City Council could institute a process whereby it approves staff Complete Street plans (after study, public consultation, and careful design) and then delegates installation decisions to city staff. The staff would then still seek public input about particular installation elements such as locating business loading zones, accommodating persons with disabilities, and preventing motor traffic infiltration onto side streets.
We already do this in other areas where safety is the foremost concern. We don’t, for instance, hold public meetings to decide where to put a traffic light or which crosswalks to install.
Additionally, the city should undertake a comprehensive public education campaign to remind citizens about the importance of road safety, for everyone, and the need to consider road safety as requiring constant vigilance and improvement.
Change is hard, but a more streamlined, less exhausting process to initiate, study, explain, and implement transportation safety improvements is long overdue. Decisions about improving road safety should not be subject to repeated questioning and delay. Safety should always come first, not just for all citizens of Toronto but for the long-term livability and sustainability of any city.
Roger Morier (We Belong on Bloor) and Jonathan Schmidt (Toronto East Cyclists) are road safety advocates and members of the Steering Committee of Community Bikeways.
Photo: Jun Nogami, Biking in a Big City
The post OP-ED: When Process is the Enemy of Progress appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
THIS EPISODE: Dipping Into Water DataWe all know access to clean water is vital. We also know that water quality and access is jeopardized by things like pollution and drought. On the other hand, the growing frequency of powerful downpours causes stormwater issues. All that to say, the state of the water we rely on for so many thing is in constant flux. What we need is good, local data, about the bodies of water that sustain us.
That’s where Mary Kruk, water data specialist with DataStream, and Steph Neufeld, watershed manager with Edmonton’s water utility EPCOR, can help. With DataStream, Kruk helps compile water data from all over the country, and make it available and easily accessible to everyone who needs it. In Edmonton, Neufeld is using that data to inform the City about it’s many important watersheds.
Here’s Neufeld on the importance of water quality guidelines:
What it does is you’re going to start asking questions: ‘Why did it go up? Why did it go down?’ And, once you start asking those questions, you improve your watershed literacy and you start to understand your own impact on that level, you start to understand watershed drivers, and you start to improve general watershed literacy and science literacy for people. And it starts with a base language.
Listen to the episode to hear more about water quality.
Spacing Radio · The Future Fix: Dipping Into Water DataThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
The post The Future Fix: Dipping into water data appeared first on Spacing National.
Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre.
CET ÉPISODE: Vivre en Ville à Victoriaville : les coulisses d’une collectivité viableDans cet épisode, nous sommes allés dans les coulisses de la planification urbaine de Victoriaville. Nous nous sommes intéressés à la manière dont les municipalités comme Victoriaville s’y prennent pour mettre en branle des projets urbanistiques en tenant compte à la fois des paramètres environnementaux, économiques et sociaux.
Les entretiens avec Jean-François Morissette, Directeur des Services de la gestion du territoire et du développement durable, et Valérie Ebacher, urbaniste chez Vivre en Ville, soulignent l’importance des collaborations interdisciplinaires. Grâce à ces échanges, nous comprenons mieux la nécessité croissante d’inclure dans les projets urbains une diversité de compétences afin de relever les défis municipaux complexes auxquels les villes sont confrontées, notamment dans le contexte pressant des changements climatiques.
Spacing Radio · The Future Fix: Vivre en Ville à VictoriavilleThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
The post THE FUTURE FIX: Vivre en Ville à Victoriaville appeared first on Spacing National.
Toronto’s subway system turns 70 this month. Following the completion of the original Yonge line, there was plenty of debate over what rapid transit system to build next, with ideas ranging from a subway line along the Bloor-Danforth corridor to futuristic monorails. This piece, originally published on Torontoist on May 11, 2013, looks at how some suburban politicians within Metropolitan Toronto doubted the financial value of any public transit solution.
If there is one element of Toronto’s infrastructure that politicians love meddling with, it’s public transit planning. Perfectly reasonable plans are debated to death, delayed, or shoved aside by grandstanding municipal councillors and officials from other levels of government who are convinced they have a better idea. During the planning of the Bloor-Danforth and University subway lines in the late 1950s, politicians from Etobicoke, the western lakeshore communities, and Scarborough were among the loudest opponents. They feared that their constituents would be slammed with tax bills for transit they would never use.
While leaders in inner suburbs like East York, Leaside, and Swansea embraced a new east-west subway to relieve congestion, their western counterparts were less enthusiastic when the TTC posted signs in March 1957 promising a future line along Bloor Street. Objections were mainly financial, with fears that the costs associated with building a new transit line would force cuts to other public works projects. Some officials, like reeves H.O. Waffle of Etobicoke and Chris Tonks of York, felt Metro needed to finish ongoing infrastructure projects before proceeding with a subway. In the small lakeshore communities of Long Branch, Mimico, and New Toronto, officials resented the extra cash commuters paid to travel downtown thanks to the TTC’s fare zone system. “I will never support a Bloor subway until the TTC institutes a single-fare system,” declared Mimico Mayor Gus Edwards. “The outer zones are paying double fares for the present [Yonge] subway and they never use it.”
Funding a subway was challenging, as the federal government refused to offer any money and the province gave little hint of subsidies. Metro Council settled on a formula to split the cost between taxpayers and the TTC, the percentages of which caused months of rancorous debate before settling on 55 per cent Metro, 45 per cent TTC. When Metro council voted to request the necessary permissions from the provincial government, especially from the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), to proceed with the new subway lines in February 1958, the local councils in Long Branch and New Toronto unanimously passed resolutions to lobby Queen’s Park to ignore Metro’s requests. Long Branch Reeve Marie Curtis felt residents would be hurt by a tax increase of roughly $7 per year. “I fear we are being bamboozled,” Curtis observed. “I am afraid these taxes will tie people up so tightly it will make them move out of here, the same as some of us moved from the city.” Over in Mimico, councillors declared that the new lines would be “of doubtful benefit to our municipality.”
Over the next few months, other suburban leaders doubted the wisdom of financing a subway. Some were riled when Metro Council rejected a monorail system study championed by Tonks and Waffle. During a marathon thirteen-and-a-half-hour meeting on July 3, 1958, Metro Chairman Frederick Gardiner urged his colleagues to “show vision and courage,” citing the Fathers of Confederation and the signatories of the Declaration of Independence for displaying the foresight to support large projects that benefitted all. Toronto Mayor Nathan Phillips felt the “pulse of the people” favoured a subway. Metro Council voted 16 to 8 in favour of commencing work on the subway, with all of the dissenting votes coming from the suburbs. Among the extreme responses was Tonks’ belief that his children and grandchildren would curse him for the debt legacy a subway might impose on York. “Don’t be misled by visionaries who would lead you to believe they see things the rest of us don’t,” he noted.
Metro councillors attempting to catch a few winks during a 13-and-a-half hour meeting. Left picture: H.O. Waffle (in shades) and Donald Summerville (head resting). Middle picture: Chris Tonks. Right picture: Albert Campbell. The Toronto Star, July 4, 1958.One by one, six opposing suburbs announced they would oppose the subway during the OMB hearing in August 1958. Despite having discussed subway plans for three years, lawyers representing the suburbs requested a two-month delay to prepare their case. OMB Chairman Lorne Cumming refused. The hearings devolved into shouting matches between the suburban lawyers and a belligerent Gardiner. Beyond taxation issues, subway opponents argued that the project was the first since the formation of Metro in 1954 that didn’t offer “equality of service” to all of its municipalities.
The suburban case suffered a setback on day two when lawyers representing Etobicoke, New Toronto, and Scarborough withdrew, citing lack of time to digest lengthy reports. York’s lawyer went on vacation, leaving only Long Branch and Mimico to carry on. The two tiny municipalities dragged the hearings on for as long as they could, employing filibusters and stalling tactics like subpoenaing TTC officials. Newspaper editorials criticized the suburbs for their obstinacy. Mimico lawyer George Gauld admitted he had “a hopeless task,” but insisted the little guys had to fight on. Within the opposing suburbs, councils voted to ask the OMB to force a Metro-wide public vote on the subway, a power the OMB lacked. Frustrations among subway proponents grew to the point that Toronto alderman Philip Givens sponsored a Metro Council motion to force the amalgamation of the three lakeshore communities into Etobicoke to eliminate their opposition, a move which would happen in 1967.
On September 5, 1958, the OMB ruled in favour of the subway, giving permission for Metro to spend $102.2 million and the TTC $98.6 million to fund the project. They had no qualms with Metro’s plan for a two-mill capital levy on property taxes over the next 10 years. Metro wanted shovels in the ground by year’s end. While newspaper editorials urged officials to get on with it, opponents fumed. Doomsday scenarios about the state of public works and threats of local plebiscites abounded. Edwards believed Toronto taxpayers weren’t as enthusiastic about a subway as generally depicted—“There is only a small percentage of the people who are inconvenienced at the intersection of Bloor and Yonge.
Editorial cartoon, The Telegram, August 21, 1958The lakeshore communities, along with Etobicoke and Scarborough, went to the Ontario Court of Appeals to reverse the OMB’s decision. When their attempt was turned down in November 1958, they attacked the local media for politicking in favour of the subway. Scarborough Reeve Albert Campbell felt that past Toronto mayors didn’t act on major issues until they consulted with supportive papers. “This kind of ‘government by the press’ may suit Toronto,” he told the Star. “It is of no interest to us in Scarborough.” Curtis believed the media was out to destroy Long Branch and other small municipalities who opposed the subway.
In municipal elections that December, all of the opposing suburban leaders were re-elected. While Campbell soon switched sides on the subway debate when he saw no further alternatives, Curtis, Edwards, and New Toronto Mayor Donald Russell pressed on. They threatened to go to the Supreme Court of Canada if a flat transit fare wasn’t enacted. The TTC laughed. Councillors in the lakeshore communities continued to resist paying for the line, insisting that their residents had nothing to gain and that full funding should come from the fare box. Lawyers who suggested they should raise the white flag were ignored.
On January 7, 1959, Long Branch, Mimico, and New Toronto filed a Supreme Court appeal against Metro Council, the OMB, and the TTC to halt the subway. Curtis felt assured of victory. A week later, she left a Metro Council meeting in tears after she was voted off the executive committee, on which she had served for three years. Pro-subway suburban councillors, including Campbell, were voted in. Applying the 1950s equivalent of Godwin’s Law, Curtis bitterly observed that “Hitler also tried to stamp out people for what they believed, but he didn’t succeed.” Edwards dubbed her “Saint Marie, the Martyr.”
Marie Curtis gets the boot, while the new Metro Executive Committee smiles for a group shot. The Telegram, January 14, 1959.When the Supreme Court assembled to hear the subway case on February 9, 1959, it considered both the suburban appeal and a Metro motion to quash it. The lakeshore communities, by now admitting the project was all but inevitable, pressed for the project to be financed by 30-year debentures, a move Metro claimed would add $90 million in costs. Suburban lawyers claimed the OMB’s decision to allow a special 10-year tax levy was illegal, that Metro could not force future councils to levy taxes unless they paid off debentures. They charged that Metro could become an “evil godfather.”
The court gave its verdict on February 11, 1959, ruling 3 to 2 in favour of Metro on both actions. There was one slight window of opportunity for further action from the suburbs, as Metro and the TTC had not yet signed an official contract, which could be contested once signatures were applied. Edwards and Russell vowed to fight on, promising to meet with the other lakeshore communities for their next move, including further Supreme Court cases. The TTC used the ruling to give utilities the go-ahead to begin relocating their lines underneath University Avenue.
When Metro Council voted on one of the last obstacles to construction, a new expropriation bylaw, in April 1959, only the lakeshore communities voted against it. Curtis still seethed that Metro won the Supreme Court case on technicalities involving monetary amounts, while Edwards continued to warn the $200 million cost was an illusion. Edwards also opposed early discussions about the Spadina line, sticking to his line that suburbanites were subsidizing subway passengers.
The three lakeshore leaders proved sore losers when they refused to show up for the groundbreaking ceremony for the new subway lines on November 16, 1959. Edwards boycotted the ceremony because “when the people in my municipality are paying two mills a year and a double fare to subsidize subway riders, I don’t feel like celebrating.”
City of Toronto mayor Nathan Phillips and Ontario premier Leslie Frost (?) at the ceremony launching construction of the Bloor-Danforth line, 1959. City of Toronto Archives, series 648, file 59, item 18.While the transit file didn’t go Marie Curtis’s way in 1959, she left a positive enduring legacy that year. On June 5, Marie Curtis Park was officially opened, on former residential land which had been destroyed during Hurricane Hazel. At the ceremony, she noted that the park showed that “we can go a long way if we pull together. Long Branch couldn’t have done this alone. We needed Metro.” She had also proven the lakeshore communities could pull together, even if they fought a losing cause.
In the end, the provincial government offered a $60 million loan to build the Bloor-Danforth and University lines, which shortened the 10-year construction window. The University line opened in 1963, the first phase of the Bloor-Danforth in 1966, and a Bloor extension into Etobicoke in 1968. The fare zone system was scrapped on New Year’s Day 1973.
We’ll give the last word to Toronto resident Alfred Carswell, whose letter to the Star in September 1958 on the craziness surrounding the subway issue may reverberate with those frustrated with our current city council.
When election time comes around, voters in the suburbs which oppose the subway project should remember the farce their representatives are now putting up in opposition to progress. They state they know they are fighting a losing battle but they will go on with it. It has been obvious for some years that the main transit routes were inadequately serviced, especially Bloor-Danforth and almost to similar degree Queen. One wonders if any of Curtis, Edwards, and Co. have had the experience of literally being pushed into a streetcar with the doors trying to close behind your back. Not once, but most mornings and evenings of the week this jostling, pushing and trampling on people’s feet has been going on for a long time.
Sources: the June 18, 1958, September 6, 1958, February 10, 1959, and April 22, 1959 editions of the Globe and Mail; the March 5, 1957, February 27, 1958, July 4, 1958, August 21, 1958, September 2, 1958, September 6, 1958, November 11, 1958, November 13, 1958, December 10, 1958, January 14, 1959, February 11, 1959, February 12, 1959, June 5, 1959, September 23, 1959, and November 16, 1959 editions of the Toronto Star; and the July 4, 1958, August 19, 1958, August 20, 1958, August 22, 1958, August 25, 1958, January 14, 1959, February 9, 1959, February 10, 1959, February 11, 1959 editions of the Telegram.
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Written by Harold Kalman & Robin Ward, Fifth Edition (Harbour Publishing, 2023) This fifth edition of Exploring Vancouver brings the city’s architectural and social story entirely up to date. Ten tours highlight significant buildings from all eras of the city and its metro region, including new projects that are transforming the skyline more radially thanContinue reading "Book Review: Exploring Vancouver – Ten Tours of the City and its Buildings"
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The Tenant Class is trenchant, timely, and terrific. Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist and senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, asks “who benefits” from the current housing crisis. His answer is that the housing market is working exactly as intended for maximum landlord profit. Tranjan begins by providing the kind of class analysisContinue reading "Book review: Ricardo Tranjan, The Tenant Class"
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THIS EPISODE: The Financialization of a Housing Crisis The days of the “mom-and-pop” landlord are largely behind us. Now, housing units are being snapped up or developed by large corporate entities and private equity firms. It can be hard to figure out who actually owns a building. Homes being treated like major sources of capital,Continue reading "The Overhead: The Financialization of a Housing Crisis"
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Our city is built around fire, for better or for worse. The heat provided by fire made it possible establish a city in a cold climate. Burning fuel powered our industry. Scorching kilns processed the bricks and concrete that provided our walls. Our streets and alleys are made wide because they are required to hostContinue reading "NEW ISSUE: Fire!"
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Spacing and the Balanced Supply of Housing research node proudly present The Overhead: Understanding Canada’s Affordable Housing Crisis, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Evictions Evictions can completely upend your life. At best, you have to begin the search for a new home in an increasingly expensive and competitive housing market. At worst, you can’t find anContinue reading "The Overhead: Evictions"
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This past month in Calgary, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada held its first in-person conference since 2019, showcasing the recent opening of several new buildings in and around the downtown core. The City has become a recent hotbed of architectural activity, starting in 2012 with Santiago Calatrava’s Peace Bridge, and leading up to Norman Foster’s Bow Tower, along with a recent Canadian Architect article by Trevor Boddy, who in reviewing Bjarke Ingels Group’s new Telus Sky tower, noted the city is having a bit of an architectural renaissance, with the addition of two new important civic buildings—the library and concert hall—just recently opening on the east side of the Central Business District.
Having grown up in Calgary in the 80’s, I can remember when the Calgary Tower was the tallest building on the skyline, when the then newly opened Saddledome was the only building of note east of City Hall. The buzz in the City ahead of the 1986 Winter Games was similar to that which I experienced in Vancouver ahead of 2010, but still back then in Calgary the large architectural monuments were few and far between. Today’s Calgary skyline is in marked contrast, presently being built out at a staggering rate, with the Bow by Norman Foster now sharing Centre Street with BIG’s Sky Tower in the city’s core at 7th Avenue. The two towers seem to be performing a frozen dance, spatially separated as per zoning but calling to each other across the transit corridor.It is a new look for Calgary, especially along the Bow River which has been totally transformed, made necessary by the devastating flooding 10 years ago, and of which Calatrava’s Peace Bridge forms an exclamation point along this new river promenade. Stretching between 8th Street and St. Patrick’s Island, separated pedestrian and cycling paths were filled with people on the sunny Friday afternoon I was there. However, getting to Stephen Avenue Mall from the riverfront is still not a smooth pedestrian experience: the Plus 15 experience Calgary is famous for in the winter but does not translate so well in the summer. Traversing the 4-5 blocks to get to 8th Avenue on the west side of the CBD while not unpleasant as a pedestrian still could use much improvement.
With 8th Avenue downtown known locally as Stephen Avenue Mall, many of the City’s early banks and other notable buildings remain located here, mostly due to the Bankers Hall incorporating many of them into their building design in 1989s. Of all these building the most notable remains the Hudson’s Bay, built in 1913 and added to in 1929 at which time its distinctive arched colonnade was added along Stephen Avenue Mall. But it is a collection of new buildings at the east end of the Mall around City Hall that have recently turned some heads. The first – Studio Bell – opened to critical acclaim in 2016, which as Canada’s new National Music Centre is already a new hub for Calgary’s performing arts scene along with being an eye-popping addition to the downtown’s east end.
Following on the heels of the Bell has been the opening of the new main branch of the city library, designed by Snohetta with DIALOG as Architect of Record. This stunning new space includes a vast swoop of wooden soffit at the building entry, framing east or west Calgary depending on your vantage point. Through the doors and into the great atrium, this great space according to the architects has had its geometry derived from the shape of an Egyptian oil lamp, an ancient symbol of wisdom. It is indeed a great contribution to the City’s public realm, a delightful civic space for both locals and visitors alike.
The new library and Bell Centre alone are worth the price of admission for a visit to Calgary, which along with the announcement of a new replacement for the aging Saddledome, will continue to see the City grow skyward. Construction on its C-Train is ongoing, especially as the City continues to expand out from all four of its quadrants. Growing up in NW Calgary, the foothills of the Rockies were always within sight, and development to the west of Calgary is also ongoing, especially in and around Banff. No visit to Calgary is complete without a quick side trip to Canada’s first national park, the township of which grew at a lightning pace following the discovery of its hot springs in the late 1800’s.
And no visit to Banff is complete without a quick stop at the Banff Springs Hotel, with its accompanying Falls at the confluence of the Spray and Bow Rivers. The first hotel was almost built on the wrong spot, as its original announcement by Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888 spurned a local Banff resident to personally write to Van Horne and tell him he knew a better spot. This incited Van Horne to travel out to Banff and day hike to the location with the local resident, discovering the confluence and realizing he would have to redesign the hotel. Further disarray ensued as the local builders had the north arrow upside-down on the drawings once construction was underway, giving the hotel’s kitchen windows the view of the river and the guest rooms the side of the mountain.
Banff has over the years also been the site of ongoing arts and architectural dialogue, home to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity as well as hosting the AAA annual conference every other year at the great hotel. The sleepy little mountain community also caught the attention of Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1900s, as he designed a park pavilion with one of his apprentices who went on to work at Canada Parks in Ottawa. Unfortunately, the site to the south of the town centre was prone to flooding with the Bow River close by, and every year the building required costly maintenance to keep it habitable. As the story goes, Parks Canada gave instructions to a demolition crew to raze a nearby structure to the Banff pavilion, and when they accidentally started to knock down the pavilion, it is said the orders from Ottawa were to finish the job once and for all.
The grounds are still used for recreation, with a well-used skateboard park and baseball diamond on the site where the pavilion once stood. A new community centre facility on the grounds has recently been built by the township, to include change rooms and washrooms, and which was almost completed during a recent visit. Given the history of FLW’s structure on the site, one cannot help but notice the similar roofline of the new structure to the original. The design-build contractors are perhaps paying homage to the great master architect, though with a more modern and utilitarian facility, bereft of the multitude of stained glass doors that graced the original structure, and of which only a few black and white images remain.
The news from Calgary and Banff then would appear to be good, and whether you are an urbanite looking to live in the hustle and bustle at the centre of Cowtown, or you prefer to head to the hills and hike the trails in Kananaskis Country, there is much to see and do along the banks of the Bow and Elbow Rivers.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
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With summer coming up, some of us might start to see social media posts with images celebrating Montréal’s festive and convivial open streets. While many of these streets are temporarily closed for the warmer months, Montréal stands out in car-centric North America for making permanent physical roadway changes that prioritize walking, biking, and socializing over car traffic, from fully pedestrianized streets and plazas to shared street or woonerf designs. One of the oldest, perhaps less-celebrated examples, is the 750m of one-way Avenue Duluth Est in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood. At 40 years of age this year, Duluth may be North America’s oldest (and longest) publicly designed and maintained woonerf style street.
Bookended by two major parks, Duluth was reimagined in its current form as part of a citywide commercial streets revitalization program implemented in the early 1980s. The novel design approach to Duluth, along with a fully pedestrianized transformation on a smaller stretch of nearby rue Prince-Arthur between bustling Boulevard Saint-Laurent and bohemian Square Saint-Louis, coincided with Montreal’s now-iconic apportez-votre-vin permissions to enable more festive and attractive commercial districts. Research conducted by urbanist Jérémy Diaz suggests that Duluth’s physical transformation correlated with a marked socio-economic shift in the population and commercial activities on the street, as the diversity of shops and nearby families they served were largely replaced by convivial restaurants serving university students and young professionals.
Avenue Duluth, October 2010Duluth’s design differs from most streetscapes; partially curbless, its interlocking zig-zag paver surface is sometimes more concave rather than the typical of convex (ie. crowned), draining water down the center instead of just along the sides. The traffic calming semi-circle planters are made of sturdy aggregate concrete imprinted with a subtle geometric pattern. The planters feature lanky spruce—an uncommon street tree—that provide a whimsical touch of greenery in all seasons, while overflowing with flowering annuals in the summer.
Avenue Duluth, February 2018Avenue Duluth, October 2010Excluding cobble-stoned historic areas, Duluth is likely Canada’s oldest intentionally designed permanent shared street that allows vehicles while prioritizing people. North America’s remaining pedestrian malls, like Ottawa’s Sparks Street (circa 1967) are older, while short-lived experiments with temporary traffic-free concepts in the 1970s occurred on Avenue Mont-Royal in Montréal and Yonge Street in Toronto. But, Duluth was fully rebuilt in 1983 in a way that more closely resembles the Dutch-style woonerf shared street and has not been altered since.
Besides its design features and permanence, Duluth is also unique for its scale and location. At nearly a kilometer, Duluth‘s transformation transected 12 blocks of a standard working-class Montréal neighborhood that wasn’t absorbing significant commercial investment or centered in a touristy historic district. For comparison, the two blocks of Argyle Street in Halifax’s downtown entertainment district is dubbed as Atlantic Canada’s first shared street and coincided with the $500-million Nova Centre development in 2017.
Considering this broader interest in permanent street transformations across Canada, Montréal continues to lead on the number and length of such projects, highlighted by the recent rehabilitation of 10 blocks of Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, the city’s downtown commercial main street. Some are pedestrian only, like Rue de la Gauchetiere (1981) in Chinatown and the steep block of Rue McTavish (2017) on McGill’s campus, while longer stretches of Rue Saint-Hubert (2020) and Rue des Pins (under construction in 2023) are people-friendly transformations with calmer traffic circulation. The diversity of project types and contexts is also impressive, exemplified best by the multi-season design iterations of the Terasses Roy project on Rue Roy Est in the Plateau, with a segment becoming a permanent plaza in 2023. Perhaps what is most striking is that these Montréal examples all stand out as public, rather than private streets (the road network in Toronto’s Distillery) or small segments associated with an adjacent development (upcoming Markham Street in Toronto’s revamped Mirvish Village). Ironically, it’s often only private actors who are able to build and maintain non-standard roadway designs that city planning departments in Canada and the US increasingly advocate for.
Avenue Duluth, August 2022Today, Duluth is among a growing number of Montréal streets redesigned for public life and fully closed to through traffic in summer. Last year, Avenue Duluth’s business association creatively leveraged the corridor’s foot-forward past, elevating its distinct zig-zag paver as central branding and design element for historical interpretation and permanent seating. In tandem with this refresh, Duluth was among Montréal’s impressive list of 10 streets pedestrianized (temporarily) for the 2022 summer months. It was recently announced that Avenue Duluth, along with Avenue Mont-Royal, would be opening up earlier than last year, extending their car-free season in 2023. While some cities are curtailing open streets programs due to hefty operational costs to mitigate for inherent car-centric design, Montréal continues to expand its temporary pedestrianization programs, built on a diversifying network of pedestrian priority streets.
What is the role of unassuming Duluth, and its 40-year-old pavers, in the city’s multi-decade legacy of innovative street transformations, propelled the past few years under Mayor Valérie Plante’s Projet Montréal political coalition (whose Plateau-based roots first sought a more people-friendly transformation of Avenue Mont-Royal)? Avenue Duluth is an important piece in the story of Montréal’s political culture that supports a stronger urban public life—from restricting right turns on red, to removing highway interchanges and pioneering bikeshare. It is an overall story that perhaps deserves more investigation for its applicable lessons for peer cities in Canada and abroad.
Erkin Ozberk is a city planner in Washington, DC focusing on projects that enhance inclusive public life in growing cities, and once lived at the intersection of Duluth and St. Urbain while a student at McGill.
Photos by Erkin Ozberk
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Edited by Ulrich Knaack, Rebecca Bach, and Samuel Schabel – Berkhauser Verlag, 2023
To identify industrial solutions in the building industry, missing basics such as material parameters must be worked out and verified depending on the area of application. What requirements do buildings and components impose on the material and its manufacture? What standards result from the material and its use, and where can it be used for what purpose? In parallel, it will be necessary to investigate how existing materials from the paper industry can be used in architecture, how technologies from paper production can be transferred and to what extent they can be adapted for building objectives.
- From Chapter One, ‘Paper in Architecture’
Not unlike the challenges mass timber has had over the years to become a serious contender in the building construction industry, so is paper here presented in Building With Paper, a comprehensive research and development narrative crafted by three doctoral scholars who are also currently practitioners and professors in the paper industry. Being released at a time when embodied carbon has become the new buzzword, in the opening pages the trio reminds us that paper has always been at the forefront of recycling, and for this reason stands to provide one of the most sustainable cradle-to-cradle materials with a long proven track record – as they point out, “technologically, it is mature.”
Told over seven chapters looking at the history, science, and biases against the use of paper as a building material, the authors cite the work done by “BAMP! – Building with Paper” as the fountainhead of the book, funded by the State of Hesse, Germany, and noting that “the interdisciplinary composition of the participating scientists made it possible to map and investigate the entire value chain of a building made of paper.”
With the first three chapters looking at the history and science of building with paper, chapters four and five delve into its structural and life safety aspects. Touting paper as Wood 2.0 given its exceptional ability to be 3D printed anywhere, the book’s authors also point out early on its greatest liabilities – fire and moisture – and that while wood too is susceptible to the same, by utilizing its rigidity and mass it can still withstand limited exposure to the elements. As presented here, so too can paper be treated to withstand some degree of moisture and heat, or as a hybrid used in combination with some other materials.
The book also reminds us that the paper industry has for some time been contributing to business and commerce, serving the packaging and publishing industries since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The invention of the continuous paper machine in 1799 by French inventor Louis-Nicolas Robert was akin to Ford’s revolutionary Model T assembly line, and several other innovations in the paper industry are here noted as well, including the invention of corrugated cardboard in 1874.
Chapter six is most definitely the book’s star attraction, showcasing twenty-five case studies of paper construction, including several pavilions by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Most notable of these is his 1995 Paper Log House, which was mass produced to provide shelter housing after the Great Hanshin Earthquake which devastated Kobe and left 320,000 people homeless. It was a pivotal moment for paper as a building material, given the attention by this Pritzker winning architect, with the resultant that the research and building industry has since upped its game looking at paper.
Included here are also several Tiny Houses using paper as a part of a composite wall assembly, with several prototypes looking at the best use of paper as it is currently produced in sheet and tube forms. This extends to full on experiments where it is literally stretched to its limit when used in tandem with steel cables, as best demonstrated here in Shigeru Ban’s KUAD Studio in Kyoto. Ban also fabricated a summer pavilion for himself in 1995 which he still spends time in – called simply Paper House, it looks much as if Mies had used paper tubes instead of plate glass and I-beams in his Farnsworth House.
The case study chapters demonstrate how paper is being explored all over the world as a building material, from the Wikkelhouse in Amsterdam which was the first mass-produced paper-based residential building, to the fantastic Cardboard Bombay restaurant in Mumbai which provides a unique dining experience with its parametrically sculpted cardboard striations. Yet another case study provides us with a test of paper’s resiliency, featuring a showroom in LA constructed from cardboard tubes that have been estimated to last between 10 and 20 years.
The final two chapters of the book provide some outlook and reference for those looking to seriously consider using paper in their next building project. As noted in the book’s opening pages, paper has been used in Japan since the first century as a building material. While our present buildings require much more thermally, structurally, as well as acoustically, by looking at a material that is seldom seriously considered provides an opportunity to reexamine the materials we are currently using, especially concrete and steel.
The book’s authors appreciate that their research is unlikely to be as disruptive as mass timber has been on the construction industry, yet they quickly point out in the opening pages that paper production is not unlike laminated veneer lumber technology. And given that LVLs are only limited by the size of truck that can transport them to a job site, we may be headed to a future where paper can be fabricated on-site the same way as poured in-place concrete, with the difference that paper could be made from post-consumer waste without the massive carbon footprint associated with the production of fly ash, lime, and Portland cement.
A superbly detailed book, right down to its no frill cardboard cover, this is a must read for new building developers and contractors, and is an indispensable reference for architects and engineers interested in this new innovative building science. As it was before for the regulation and adoption of engineered wood products like LVLs, some of this will be already familiar territory, but overall it is here clearly explained for the benefit of government and building officials’ public safety concerns. Pushing the envelope, paper is most surely set to be part of the conversation in how we future-proof our buildings, and this new book is a roadmap for how we might get there.
For more information on Building With Paper, visit the Berkauser Verlag website.
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
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The late Jack Layton used to have an adage about public life that profoundly informed his approach to politics: Proposition, he’d say, not opposition.
Legend has it that this outlook took shape in the 1980s after a bruising accident in which the front wheel of Layton’s ubiquitous bike lodged in a storm-water grate and sent him flying. Until then, Layton had been a strident local pol, outspoken in his NDP-inflected critique of all sorts of development proposals that came before council. But the accident provided a spark, an idea: why not angle the slats in those sewer grills instead of orienting them parallel to the road, and thus the direction of a cyclist?
Layton’s proposal found a constituency, and became not only a part of Toronto’s infrastructure, but a pre-condition to its later cycling culture.
To my mind, “proposition-not-opposition” is an excellent way of thinking about the challenges of city life, which is a stage upon which conflicting interests must be constantly mediated through civic action, collaboration, and, well, a bit of imagination.
Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness. It’s not an ideology so much as a world-view, and one particularly well suited to the complexities of big city government.
Two of the most high-profile mayoral campaigns to date vividly reveal this stark dichotomy in outlooks, raising critical questions about the type of leadership the city needs.
On one hand we have former police chief and presently Ontario Place “advisor” Mark Saunders, whose campaign so far has been all about the encroaching darkness. The Toronto Saunders sees is full of threats and mayhem, unchecked aggression and passive civic institutions rendered helpless by what he describes, without so much as a hint of irony, as the status quo. “Enough is enough” is his Trumpian mantra. (Brad Bradford’s rhetoric, about safety and congestion, isn’t much different.)
On the other hand, we have city councillor Josh Matlow, whose campaign to date has been mostly — though not exclusively — informed by Layton’s weltanschauung. He’s proposed establishing a city building fund, financed by a modest tax hike, that would address deteriorating public amenities. He’s argued for a dedicated $115 million fund for community health and safety fund, to tackle the root causes of violence by redirecting a portion of the police budget. (Candidates like Chloe Brown and Ana Bailao have similarly focused their campaign rhetoric around ways to improve services and equity.)
Earlier this week, Matlow unveiled a $300 million plan to kickstart an affordable housing construction campaign on City-owned land, but one that would — unlike Housing Now — eschew partnerships with private developers. Instead, the City — through two of its agencies — would be the developer, which is how thousands of social/non-profit housing units were built in a period when our society was less beholden to the magical thinking of public-private partnerships.
A few words about Matlow’s housing plan. He claims he’ll secure the $300 million in seed funding by cancelling the reconstruction of the elevated east end of the Gardiner, and then set up a revolving fund, replenished by rental income, to finance non-profit housing projects on city-owned land, including Green-P lots, which is a portfolio of under-used land that the building industry covets. (Using city budget figures, Matlow’s team estimates the municipality would save about $568 million by cancelling the remaining portion of the Gardiner project and replacing the elevated highway with a surface road.)
Matlow’s housing numbers are extremely ambitious — 15,000 rent controlled, affordable and deeply affordable apartments — and the seed money is little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. All of which means his strategy, dubbed Public Build Toronto, turns on funding from the other orders, including Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s rental construction financing initiative, a hefty pot of cash that is doled out with an eye-dropper.
Matlow says John Tory’s Housing Now program — 10,000 units of rental on City land, about a third of which are meant to be affordable — hasn’t produced results, and he’s not wrong: the program, though ambitious, has been bogged down by process, financing logjams (see above) and macro-economic upheaval that threw a spammer into the math for the private sector partners. Matlow has also done his bit to slow Housing Now by tangling up the approvals for a City-owned Housing Now site on Merton Ave. that should have been a no-brainer. (A campaign spokesperson says if elected, Matlow would grandfather the Housing Now sites that have been plodding through the approvals and financing processes.)
His approach is built on the observation that the P3 model will yield modest amounts of affordable housing on those publicly owned parcels. In some ways, the redevelopment of Regent Park by Toronto Community Housing and Daniels Corp. involved the same kind of trade-offs, and also produced little in the way of net new social housing.
The familiar accusation, that the public sector can’t build things efficiently, is disingenuous, but has solidified into received wisdom across a generation during which neo-liberal governments tripped over themselves to outsource the development of everything from court houses to hospitals to transit lines to huge private consortia.
Surely, in the wake of the calamitous failure by Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario, the province’s P3 agency, to finish the Eglinton Crosstown in something approximating a reasonable time frame, the veil of magical thinking about the presumed financial benefits of these “alternative” procurement deals should have lifted.
Matlow’s pitch to voters here is that we can and should go back to the idea that publicly owned land is an ideal place to build social housing, which was true for much of the post-war period, and includes mixed-income success stories like the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. To my ear, it’s a thread well worth pulling.
Saunders — or, more precisely, his Doug Ford-embedded spin doctors — responded quickly on social media, dismissing Matlow’s plan as a “status quo” approach. The put-down, however, does little to obscure the reality that Saunders’ candidacy is, at least so far, almost exclusively about stoking disquiet among Torontonians instead of encouraging voters to imagine a better and more equitable future.
As the election plays out, we’ll learn whether the city’s mood is more attuned to Saunders’ fear-mongering (glass half empty) or the city-building ideas that have emerged from Matlow as well as Bailao and Brown (glass half full).
There is, to be sure, much to fix in the 2023 version of the City of Toronto. But voters need to ask themselves whether they want to entrust that crucial responsibility to candidates who see only the worst when they move through the city, or those who value its strengths and can therefore envision a better way forward.
photo by David Fulmer (cc)
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Toronto’s mayoral election is historic. So many candidates and so many political affiliations, identities, and experiences. Voting is going to be a difficult decision for many. One metric I will be using to narrow my choice is the question of consistency versus performativity. Which candidate(s) has demonstrated a commitment to solving the serious issues facing the city right now – crime, affordability, accessibility, and livability? And which candidate(s) have a long track record of flip flopping and performative allyship?
So far, seven Black candidates from across the political spectrum have added their name to the ballot for mayor. They include former Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood Mitzie Hunter, policy analyst Chloe Brown (who placed third in last year’s mayoral election), former city councillor Rob Davis, barrister and solicitor Rocco Achampong, and Knia Singh, best known for representing Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s family following her tragic death after an interaction with Toronto Police in 2020. Then, of course, there is former police chief Mark Saunders.
Saunders is the one candidate on this list who makes me, and many others, pause (though Achampong and Davis have announced platforms that make little reference to existing social issues, such as cost of living and access to transit, and instead are focused on more police and/or why we shouldn’t rename Dundas Street). Saunders, however, has a long and documented track record of duplicitous behaviour as it relates to the Black community.
When he left his role as Toronto police chief (2015 to 2020), in an article for Spacing in 2020, I talked about the fact that, as compared to police chiefs before him, he was not aggressive and he often tried to find a middle ground – traits that I describe in my book, Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty, as characteristics typical of ‘Uncle Tom.’ In a feature for Xtra, Toronto’s LGBTQ2S+ news and culture outlet, Sandy Hudson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Canada, agreed, arguing that the city “cannot afford Saunders in another position of power.”
“This is a man whose callous refusal to engage with the concerns of community members while chief resulted in him being run out of office. The problems are only larger and more complex at the mayoral level,” Hudson said, adding “This is the man who fought vigorously – and lost – for police to continue racial profiling through carding.” While Saunders did step down due to health concerns, it’s easy to understand why some members of the Black community feel he left for other reasons.
Saunders’ campaign comes on the heels of a failed run as a Progressive Conservative candidate in last year’s provincial election. So far, his single issue focus on policing is not only scary, but also stands in direct opposition to his actions in 2017, when he sided with members of Toronto’s Black LGBTQ community to remove Toronto police from Pride parade festivities. Then, during 2020’s “global anti-Black social movement,” he was in the streets with the city’s Black activists. In case people forget, just before he stepped down as police chief, he took a knee alongside a group of protesters rallying against anti-Black racism at Yonge and College streets, then tweeted a photo of himself with the statement, “We see you and we are listening. The Toronto Police fully supports peaceful and safe protests this weekend and always. We have to all stay in this together to make change.”
To be fair, Saunders was not the only Canadian politician guilty of performative allyship. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also took a symbolic knee at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Ottawa in 2020. And later that year, he promised police reform, stating in a September 2020 Throne Speech that “the government will take steps to ensure that the strong hand of criminal justice is used where it is needed to keep people safe, but not where it would be discriminatory or counterproductive.” However, he stopped short of “defunding the police,” a term that energized activists in 2020.
Initially, city councils across the country expressed a genuine desire to at least engage in discussions about reducing police funding. But when it came down to actually following through, these same city councils leaned into fear, increasing police budgets as a way to ‘keep cities safe.’
In 2021, Toronto-St. Paul councillor and current mayoral candidate Josh Matlow put forth a motion, backed by then Toronto Centre councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, calling for the police budget to be cut by at least 10% with a reallocation of the savings to community services. The motion was defeated with only eight councillors voting yes, and 16 voting no. According to a mapping of this vote on TVO Today, the majority of the no votes came from parts of the city with the highest Black populations (Scarborough and Etobicoke North).
Even though policing is too often framed as a “Black issue,” the Black community is not a monolith on the issue. There are some folks who just believe that policing makes cities safer while others adamantly believe that policing is a form of state-sanctioned surveillance that has, both historically and today, harmed Black lives, as author Robyn Maynard demonstrates in Policing Black Lives.
My issue with “tough on crime” platforms is that they ignore conversations with communities, and disregard real understandings of the issues that cause crime in the first place, such as poverty, racism, mental illness, and homelessness, as both the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star have reported in recent months.
If there is an example that Torontonians should take their cues from, it is our American sister city Chicago. Earlier this month, Brandon Johnson, a Democratic, progressive county commissioner backed by the city’s teachers union, became that city’s mayor-elect after voters rejected “tough on crime” mayor, Lori Lightfoot. In 2019, Lightfoot was elected as Chicago’s first Black female mayor, and also the city’s first LGBTQ mayor.
Her mayoralty, however, was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of protests in the wake of George Floyd, and an ever-increasing problem with violence, especially gun violence. In 2020, amid the anti-police protests, Lightfoot pledged to cut $80 million from Chicago’s police budget, according to InjusticeWatch. But then, in 2021, she publicly pleaded for federal law enforcement agents to come to Chicago to help crack down on illegal guns. In one Lightfoot campaign ad, she also made it clear that as mayor, she would “put more police on the streets.”
With 600 homicides and 2,600 shootings in 2022 alone, according to Chicago Police Department data, it’s totally understandable why a mayor would take the “tough on crime” approach.
However, Johnson ran on a platform that included some investments in policing, but he leaned into “defunding the police,” and has promised an holistic approach to violence reduction that includes investments in youth employment, mental health services, and affordable housing.
Chicago has one of the highest crime rates in America, and yet Johnson’s campaign focused on the root causes of crime rather than more policing, and he still won. What that outcome means is that what matters most is not appearing to be “tough on crime,” but rather spelling out values and a vision for solving the deeply systematic issues of violence plaguing cities across North America.
America has a gun crisis that is very different to the current problems in Toronto. Still, voters need to ask themselves which candidates have a platform that tackles the issue of crime and violence from a holistic point of view. If such an approach can elect a progressive mayor in Chicago, why can’t it work here?
I do not know whom I will vote for in this large pool of candidates, but one thing I know for sure is that any candidate who said one thing in 2020 and is saying something polar opposite today is unfit to be mayor. We just can’t afford good speeches anymore. We need community-based solutions that de-centre policing and instead take a holistic approach to the systemic issues that haven’t been addressed head on for decades.
Cheryl Thompson is an Associate Professor in Performance at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University. Her latest book Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty (Coach House Books) was published in 2021. Follow Cheryl on Twitter at @DrCherylT.
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In back-to-back water’s edge press conferences last week, Ana Bailao and Josh Matlow planted their respective flags on the West Island at Ontario Place, each arguing that the Ford government’s plan to build a $350 million spa there is inconsistent with the the city’s waterfront goals.
Bailao’s pitch is that the province should move the Ontario Science Centre down to Ontario Place and build 5,000 units of housing, including 1,500 affordable ones, on the OSC’s city-owned parking lot. “We can responsibly develop Ontario Place while addressing the housing crisis,” she said. “Instead of spending $500 million of taxpayer money to subsidize a private spa that the majority of ton of Torontonians cannot afford this proposal, builds housing and keeps Ontario Place open for Torontonians.”
Matlow, in turn, said that if he was elected mayor, he’d block the planned sale of 16 acres of City-owned land and water lots that abut Ontario Place as a means of preventing the redevelopment proposal from going ahead. “The city does have a choice as to whether or not it will consent to the sale of the city property given that it does legally belong to us,” he said. “My position is that our waterfront isn’t for sale, and it’s certainly not for sale to privatize our waterfront to allow for a big private spa.”
While they agree that a 700,000 sq-ft private human aquarium doesn’t belong on one of the most iconic spots on the city’s lakefront, Bailao and Matlow’s respective stances offer voters some clues about how they would manage the always fraught relationship between City Hall and Queen’s Park, both on this specific issue and perhaps more generally.
A couple of important points about the city’s positionality. The Ontario Place project involves a development application to the city that requires an official plan amendment, public consultation and, possibly, federal approvals for lake-filling. The city’s works officials also have to sign off on a plan to extend water and waste-water infrastructure to the West Island; a new staff report released last week makes it clear that no one’s cracked that engineering riddle yet.
But the bulk of the land ultimately belongs to the Ontario government, which says it plans to shell out $200 million for site upgrades and an estimated $450 million for a 2,100-space underground garage to serve both Therme and the proposed Live Nation concert venue. The province, ultimately, can do what it wants with a stroke of the municipal affairs’ minister’s pen.
One side holds the legislative cards, but the other side has upped the political ante. How this game of chicken resolves is anybody’s guess.
Bailao’s solution suggests her approach will be focused on trying to negotiate a win-win style deal Queen’s Park. In some ways, her pitch is already partly out the door. The City’s planning officials have already identified the vast OSC parking lots, which extend between the two final stops of the Ontario Line, as intensification zones, known in planning-ese as “protected major transit station areas.”
Transforming them into vertical neighbourhoods makes abundantly good sense, given that they sit just metres from what will be one of Toronto’s few rapid transit interchanges. The truth is they’ll be redeveloped regardless of where the Science Centre and Therme end up.
As seems predictable, Matlow has opted for a more explicitly confrontational approach with the province. Any move to halt the sale of those lands, he conceded, could force the province to expropriate them. But, he added, “I have a plan to address that if he goes there, which I am very intentionally not going to reveal to him. If I’m elected, I will have a mandate to reject the sale of our city property. And if he ignores the will of Torontonians and tries to expropriate the land, then I will take the necessary actions.”
Matlow better have something up his sleeve because bluffing a higher order of government, especially one with full regulatory authority over the city, could backfire in a big way. His proposed tactic also opens up, potentially, a new form of municipal-provincial sibling rivalry — one that pits a left-of-centre mayor against a right-of-centre premier.
There have been a few moments in the city’s post amalgamation history when Toronto’s mayor succeeded in forcing the Ontario premier’s hand. Mel Lastman achieved it once, and so did Rob Ford. But when David Miller tried to call out the McGuinty government for backing off its transit funding commitments, Queen’s Park dug in and hit back. So we’ll see.
Yet the fact that the Ontario Place saga has washed up in the middle of a municipal election shows the depth of the interconnections between these two governments. The Therme controversy has expanded to take in issues of public space, intensification, transit utilization, housing, tourism, privatization, provincial spending, design and, ultimately the future of the waterfront. As it should.
Anyone who contends that the mayoral candidates should stay in their jurisdictional lane isn’t paying attention to the realities of Toronto in 2023. And that includes the current, um, tenants at Queen’s Park.
photo by Timothy Neesam (cc)
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There’s a tactic in marketing: surprise and delight. It’s used to attract and engage with customers new and old by interacting with them in unexpected ways, like when the Raptors have a playoff game and there’s a new T-shirt waiting at every seat for ticket holders. It’s a small thing, but a nice thing.
I experienced some surprise and delight last year during a trip to Vancouver. After checking in to the Delta Hotel downtown, I got into my room and opened up the curtains. My view was of Alley Oop, a laneway painted to look like an oversized basketball court using bright pinks and yellows.
It’s a punch of colour that breaks through the city’s grey and the image puts a smile on my face every time I think about it. The City of Vancouver, working with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and HCMA Architecture and Design, took existing infrastructure — an otherwise forgettable laneway — and turned it into a surprising and delightful canvas.
Vancouver isn’t the only city to have elements of surprise and delight amidst otherwise mundane infrastructure. There’s a street in Copenhagen where trampolines are built into the sidewalk. And Charlottetown, through its “Adopt a Corner” program, has turned one concrete square’s worth of space at select corners downtown into vibrant pocket-sized flower gardens.
Delight is something Toronto needs more of, particularly the bold, colourful variety, and particularly in its infrastructure. But there’s a tendency to think only big. At the recent Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel meeting about proposed changes to Ontario Place, Urban Strategies Inc. partner Joe Berridge repeatedly mentioned the need to go big. “If you don’t do the big, you will never get the small,” he said.
While I admire ambition, chasing after only “big” often falls flat. Remember Rail Deck Park? We’re missing out on small projects, those opportunities to inject a dose of delight into everyday, pre-existing spaces.
In Ward 13, shortly after taking office, Councillor Chris Moise launched Toronto Centre Projects, an initiative that encourages community members to propose and find support for local projects. You’ll find pitches for parking, street signage, and park use. I’m pitching some delight in the form of using public art to reclaim laneways in the ward. (And yes, I could use your vote to support the project. It needs 60 votes before it’s brought forward to council.)
This is a rapidly growing ward that feels, along many arteries, like a permanent construction zone as condos go up. We’re just starting to see the effects of the Ontario Line construction by Metrolinx. Toronto Centre is home to a diverse mix of neighbourhoods, from Cabbagetown to Corktown, St. James Town to St. Lawrence. But we could use something that not only offers a reprieve from the construction debris, traffic and transit woes, something that encourages us to get out and explore nearby neighbourhoods in the ward.
Street or laneway art can turn dead space into a gathering place. In a green paper published by Americans for the Arts, a U.S.-based arts advocacy organization, the authors explain that public art “humanizes the built environment and invigorates public spaces,” and importantly that it’s free to access. By making over laneways, we can turn them into venues for neighbourhood celebrations or tourist destinations (and, in this instance, the term “tourist” applies equally to someone from Willowdale and someone from Wales).
It can also make these often poorly lit and neglected spaces safer. There’s an entire approach to crime prevention that has urban design at its foundation. As the International Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) Association explains, this technique uses built and national environments to create community, deter criminal activity and lower the fear of crime.
Art Alley, a project launched in 2014 in downtown Red Deer, Alta., is one such initiative. Once murals were completed, local businesses noticed a new energy in the area. More people started walking because they weren’t afraid anymore, and it actually slowed car traffic.
Vancouver’s Alley Oop has had a similar effect. Data shows visitors to Alley Oop doubled after the art was completed, and that there was a significant shift in perceptions of danger in the alley. Prior to the transformation, 75% of the alley’s visitors were men. Now, men make up 58% of the visitors.
Toronto has done surprise and delight before. WaveDeck at Simcoe and Queen’s Quay, for example, turns an otherwise nondescript path into something fun. So does the Bentway, under the Gardiner near Strachan Avenue, and Underpass Park near Lower River Street. And we can do it again. All we need this time is some paint.
Maryam Siddiqi is a lifestyle writer and editor who focuses on travel and design. She is the former lifestyle editor at The Globe and Mail. Follow her on Twitter on @msiddiqi.
photo by Ana Iammatteo
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On Saturday afternoon, a group of about 150 people of all ages gathered at 145 St. George, an 11-storey 1960s-vintage apartment building immediately north of the subway station. Their goal: to protest the proposed demolition of this and several other mid- or high-rise rental buildings that sit on land deemed sufficiently valuable that developers can take them down and replace them with much larger ones, and still make a profit.
The applications for 145 St. George and 25 St. Mary Street both come from 10Block, a development firm. There are 389 apartments in these two buildings combined, many of them reasonably priced. Across Toronto, there are about 3,500 rental units in buildings with more than 20 apartments that are now facing demolition orders, according to a city spokesperson.
During Saturday’s protest, Jessica Bell, the NDP MPP for University Rosedale, cited more stats from the city and then sent me a list of current demolition applications. Many are for a few dozen units, but there are several with over a hundred apartments, such as 55 Brownlow, a slab apartment near Mount Pleasant, Eglinton, 48 Grenoble, a nine-storey building in North York, and 7-11 Rochefort Dr., a low-rise stacked townhouse complex near the Science Centre.
The tenants’ associations in three of these buildings have found each other. There’s now a Twitter account and outreach to some local politicians, including mayoral candidate Chloe Brown, and the inevitable sign-up sheets. It will be interesting to see if this network grows, makes common cause with other increasingly dispossessed tenants’ groups, and gathers some political momentum. I suspect it will. And it should.
As we kick off this 200-metre freestyle of a mayoral campaign, I’d urge the people vying for the top job to think about tenants… for a change.
The candidates need to be laser-focused on their plight, and not conflate laissez faire intensification with intentional housing reforms that add genuinely affordable supply. The first step, it seems to me, is to not make the current crisis even worse than it already is.
Half the city’s population are tenants, which means that hundreds of thousands of Torontonians now live with the escalating instability and anxiety that is the rental market. I’m not going to trot out the averages — we’ve all heard them, and the figures are outrageous, if not a crime. Landlords hike rents on units after tenants move out by eye-watering amounts, basically whatever the market bears. Buildings change hands and the new owners drive ahead with renoviction strategies. As for tenants who rent investor-owned condos in newer buildings, they have been completely abandoned in terms of rent control thanks to the Ford government.
What’s more, the development industry has also succeeded in persuading its friends at Queen’s Park to lift one of the few remaining protections afforded tenants, which is the rental unit replacement provision in the City of Toronto Act, Section 111. The upshot is that hundreds of older rental buildings, and not just small ones, have targets on their backs — a turn of events that will force thousands into a market with no breathing space at all. What could go wrong?
A bit of parsing is in order: intensification around transit stops is important, but it can’t be all super-tall condos. The city needs to push for more purpose-built rental, everywhere. Canada Mortgage and Housing, in turn, has to find a way to get the billions it has earmarked for rental projects out the door. The next mayor has to push these last two objectives relentlessly.
But the next mayor also has to find a space to advocate for a sane intensification strategy that doesn’t involve knocking down large existing apartment buildings. Quite apart from the climate impact, such redevelopment projects merely amp up the pressure on the rental housing market.
Several of the demolition projects now in the pipeline promise to replace all the demolished rental units and provide the tenants with some funds to make other arrangements, as well as right of first refusal once the new building is complete. But in this market, these measures (which are no longer mandatory) fail on a human level.
[Correction: According to a city spokesperson, “the City continues to implement its Rental Housing Demolition and Conversion Control By-law and rental replacement policies. The Province, through Bill 23 has introduced the ability to regulate municipal rental demolition by-laws. However, as of today they have not enacted any regulations to remove the City’s rental replacement protections.”]
Thousands will be thrown out of their homes at a time when finding any kind of apartment, much less a half-decent one, is nearly impossible. And then they’ll have to wait, and wait, and wait, until that moment way off in the middle distance when they get to exercise their right of return. However, many won’t because they can’t put their lives on hold for that long.
To be clear, I have no issue with up-zoning main streets and residential streets lined with single family homes, particularly those close to subway stations. Homeowners have agency, and they’ll be amply rewarded if and when they sell to a developer. Knocking down decent-sized apartment buildings, on the other hand, seems wrong-headed and, frankly, cruel.
Over the next two months, we’re all going to hear a lot of breathy rhetoric about crime waves, unsafe transit vehicles, inefficient council meetings, dissembling civil servants, inadequate taxes, or taxes that are too high. The campaign will or should alight on topics of genuine concern — public space in a rapidly intensifying city, the fate of the core, the future of cycling infrastructure, and so on.
But this contest has to be an election about housing, and in particular rental housing. For too many years, council has had more than its share of elected officials who either didn’t care about tenants or pretended they didn’t exist. Everyone understands why: our elected officials, who generally aren’t tenants, knew who buttered their electoral bread.
No more. The reality of 2023 is that the tenants of Toronto are Toronto’s future. As they go, so goes the city. We need a mayor who understands this foundational, demographic reality in their bones. We need someone who can keep their eye on the ball, and not just the prize.
photo by Dennis Jarvis (cc)
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swagger nounplural swaggers
: an arrogantly self-confident way of walking: an act or instance of swaggering
: arrogant or conceitedly self-assured behaviour
: ostentatious display or bravado
: bold or brash self-confidence
“I envision a Vancouver in the not-so-distant future, that is super exciting. A Vancouver with a renewed swagger.” – Ken Sim
It has been over two months since Mayor Ken Sim gave his first annual “State of the City” address to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. Within this, he envisioned a city with “renewed swagger” and an “electric feeling in the air.” Now, language plays a critical part in governing and planning cities, with the built environment straddling a strange and blurry divide between hard-nosed practicality and lofty imagination. Language and metaphors are important to both, as ambiguity makes language particularly useful in the political world. It projects vague, cryptic futures in the hopes of mobilizing a collective vision, while (over)simplifying the complexity inherent to the true problems cities face and the decisions required to solve them. This is what is reflected in Ken Sim’s reference to “swagger”.
Despite its seemingly benign gentleness, it is important to critically reflect on the everyday language used by politicians as they often mask destructive biases. Mayor Sim’s speech will serve as a great case in point: a master class in how language and metaphor can shrewdly support ongoing gentrification and inequalities that plague the city. Let’s deconstruct his speech a little and uncover the history and implied meaning behind Mayor Sim’s words.
open for business idiom1. Currently operational and accepting business from clients.
“I want to get across…that we’re open for business again.” – Ken Sim
In January 2018, in his much-anticipated keynote speech to World Economic Forum delegates, Donald Trump declared that “America is open for business and we are competitive again.” This was defiantly echoed two years later as a priority amid the pandemic and a plunging stock market, adding that “We can’t have the cure be worse than the problem.” As one can see, this metaphor describing places—cities, countries, etc.—as commercial stores, runs deep and is used in narratives meant to attract “successful” foreign companies and industries. Using the language of commerce speaks to economies and finance, implying that a healthy economy has a positive trickle-down effect on all levels of society: a false narrative that has proven its ineffectiveness.
But to what degree are cities and countries truly like stores? And who are the intended patrons?
With few exceptions, contemporary stores and successful companies gain profit at the expense of others, be it locals or others halfway around the world. Destructive resource extraction practices by “successful” businesses on lands inhabited by marginalized groups are well known, as are abusive and racist labour practices that are the foundations for profit-making enterprises. Large companies have also decimated countless local community businesses and “main streets” through gentrification, all supported by “open for business” narratives. Vancouver is definitely no stranger to these processes with “open for business” narratives simply working to consolidate existing power relations based on racial, class, gender, and socioeconomic exclusions.
revitalized; revitalizing transitive verb: to give new life or vigor to
“We’ve started work on uplifting and revitalizing Chinatown…we’re also going to launch initiatives to revitalize Gastown.” – Ken Sim
In 1967, Vancouver activists, community leaders, and residents took to the streets to protest a proposed highway extension that would allow access to downtown Vancouver through the east side of the city, across a number of neighbourhoods housing marginalized communities. Several civil rights demonstrations, sit-ins, and picket lines were organized, with protesters ultimately succeeding in forcing the government to abandon the project—unfortunately, not before demolishing the predominantly black and low-income neighbourhood of Hogan’s Alley. Incidentally, the highway proposal was also slated to cut through Chinatown and Gastown, neighbourhoods that qualified for “urban renewal” funding from the federal and provincial governments.
Vancouver was one of many North American cities experiencing protests at the time against similar ‘urban renewal’ programs that ultimately displaced countless low-income, marginalized residents and businesses, decimated historic buildings and neighbourhoods of cultural significance, and increased economic inequality through gentrification practices that raised property values, rent, and the cost of living. Open for business, anyone?
The backlash against the program since that time made talking about “renewal” within cities taboo. People needed a new language. Fast forward a few decades and we see the expansion of ‘r’ words that disguise the same motives: “rejuvenation,” “revival,” and “revitalization”, to name just a few. The occasional non-‘r’ words like “uplift” and “boost’” are added for emphasis. This vocabulary belittles the neighbourhoods in question, implying that the main solution to their ‘problems’ should come in the form of gentrification and the subsequent inflow of money that follows.
Too frequently, these communities are seen as problems in need of solutions that only ’standardized’ forms of gentrification and economic thought can resolve. Add towers (for wealthy patrons) with a sprinkle of commercial street-frontage housing high-end cafes and voilà…revitalized! Adios to those ‘problematic’ folks who gave the neighbourhood its bad reputation.
But who are these problematic people? Certainly, it can’t be the owners of a small restaurant that has been around for over 40 years serving affordable Chinese food to local residents. Nah. And definitely not immigrant seniors. No…of course not. Only the “bad” ones, right? Interestingly, the historical and geographical forces that created these “in need” communities are the same ones deployed to save them. Historically, the language of “revitalization” and other ‘r’ words has served only to naturalize the dispossession of long-time residents and normalize their displacement.
Over 50 years since the Vancouver highway protests, who would have guessed that all that was required to solve our urban problems was for our political leaders to simply open a thesaurus? Now Chinatown and Gastown can truly be renewed….I mean revitalized…perhaps, revived?
placemakingNo entry found
+
revive intransitive verb: to give new life or vigor to
: to restore to consciousness or life
: to restore from a depressed, inactive, or unused state : bring back
(See ‘revitalized; revitalizing’)
“We’re going to placemake through art to revive our small business districts.” – Ken Sim
A wonderfully insightful chapter in Reinier de Graaf’s recently published architect, verb. The New Language of Building is dedicated to uncovering the origins and evolution of the term placemaking. Cloaked in mystery, the term has no strict dictionary definition. Wikipedia is no help either, opening with a warning that the “article has multiple issues” and is “written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay” in need of “additional citations for verification.”
In response, De Graaf proposes his own satirical definition in the Appendix that covers his dictionary of “profspeak’, used by planners, business people, consultants and other ‘professionals’:
PLACEMAKING, noun. (neologism) an approach to the design of public space which (cl)aims to transform non-places into places. (See ‘non-place’).
Let’s follow De Graaf’s suggestion:
NON-PLACE, noun. A place without inspiring the sense of one.
Definitions as good as any Merriam-Webster could write. What to make of this? Aren’t ‘small business districts’ places by definition? Perhaps not? But will commissioning art really carry these locations over the (imaginary) threshold between non-place to place? Can art truly “revive” them? (See ‘revitalized; revitalizing’)
In the contemporary city, beautification is often used as a carrot to invite gentrification: transformations targeted at wealthier patrons that will ultimately benefit business owners, landlords, investors, and homeowners who can profit from rises in the prices of land and goods. Historically, the areas ripe for beautification are within communities that have dealt with years, maybe decades, of disinvestment and neglect—causing the ‘depressed economic value’ from which others can profit. Reasons for disinvestment are complex and varied but are often tied to power structures founded on exclusions. In the words of Leslie Kern, this puts long-time residents “in the unenviable position of feeling like they have to choose between gentrification or a lifetime of crumbling infrastructure and dwindling amenities.”
Beautification measures are a common lure of neighbourhood Business Improvement Associations since such initiatives are low-hanging fruit—getting murals painted and putting a select piece of urban art on the corner can go a long way to bring in new patrons at minimal cost—but it can and does extend to more important things like improved safety measures, transit service and local amenities such as new playgrounds. Who can say no? Again, Leslie Kern: “What we have to recognize is that none of these changes happen in a vacuum and that they are always imbued with meaning shaped by ideas about race, class, gender, age, and sexuality.”
It’s also important to recognize that gentrification-via-beautification also commonly comes in other implicit forms like attracting events, festivals and other enterprises that can be branded by corporate entities.
Host noun: a country, government, etc. that agrees to allow an outside business, organization, group of people, etc. to operate, function, or live within in its boundaries, jurisdiction, or population
“We’ll also look at accelerating the hosting of major events in our city…” – Ken Sim
(See ‘open for business‘ and ‘placemaking‘)
Okay, I think we get the idea….but let’s throw in one more for good measure:
”The most significant legacies that emerged from both Expo 86 and the Olympic Games were not just about infrastructure, buildings, or sports…It was about the energy and spirit that permeated our city. And this is the same energy we need as we build the future of our city.” – Ken Sim
Lest we forget the displacement of unhomed people, environmental damage, and human rights concerns associated with these events. (See ‘open for business’)
In 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson persuasively described the metaphors we live by. More recently, Robert Sapolski wrote powerfully about the metaphors we kill by. Both ultimately show how language plays a critical role in shaping our perceptions of the world around us and how politicians and other powerful actors often employ language to mask their true intentions and support ongoing pro-gentrification injustices that plague our cities. As such, it is important for us to critically reflect on the everyday language used by those in positions of power, and to question the implied meanings behind their statements. By doing so, we can work towards creating more equitable and just societies that prioritize the well-being of all members, rather than just those with the most power and privilege.
Within this context, Mayor Sim’s ‘swagger’ offers us an important lesson. Not of hope, inspiration, or imagination, but of the Arrogance, Brashness and Conceitedness—or should I say the ABCs—of the language of inequality.
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver. He is also an educator, independent researcher, and designer with personal and professional interests in urban landscapes.
The post Ken Sim’s Swagger and the Language of Inequality appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series.
THIS EPISODE: Smart Cities, ReconsideredThe term “Smart Cities” has been kicking around for about a decade now. When we began The Future Fix series, that term was headline news. Everyone, including multiple levels of governments, was being asked to imagine a new kind of urban space, where data and technology were woven into the very fabric of the neighbourhood. Since then, the Smart Cities conversation has evolved, important questions have been asked, a global pandemic happened, and we have more examples, from communities across Canada, about what works, and what to avoid.
John Lorinc is a Spacing senior editor and author of the book “Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias.” He’s been researching data and tech as it relates to cities and urban politics and planning for years now, and his book earned the Writer’s Trust of Canada Balsilie Prize for Public Policy.
“Because of the pandemic and because so much of our lives had to go online for this period of time, and in many ways stay online, a lot of the ideas around Smart Cities and this hyperconnectivity and this use of big data became actually part of the way our cities our cities function. Except we stopped calling it ‘Smart Cities’.”
Martin Canning is executive director of government innovation at Evergreen. He tells us about what he’s learned about data and technology projects in communities across the countries, through his work with the Community Solutions Network, and what makes a “Smart” project successful.
“There’s a dark side and there’s a light side, and I’ll stick to the light side, when we’re thinking about the future and where technology is often driving us, sometimes pulling us. But when it comes to cities, and public sector markets, and government innovation and community innovation in Canada and around the world, what I see […] is not just an appetite, but a culture that is opening to allow for multi-sectoral partnership like we haven’t seen before.”
Listen to the episode to hear more about the future of “future fixes.”
Spacing Radio · The Future Fix: Smart Cities, ReconsideredThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network: a program of Future Cities Canada. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North and partners to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by Infrastructure Canada.
The post The Future Fix: Smart Cities, Reconsidered appeared first on Spacing National.
After spending much of last Wednesday watching Therme Canada and its consultants perform in public, first during a four-hour session with a combined Waterfront Toronto/City design review panel, and then during a ninety-minute online “consultation” moderated by the company’s head lobbyist that evening, I came away with the distinct impression of a firm sending two sets of messages to different audiences.
The DRP session, held in Waterfront Toronto’s boardroom, was all about appearing to listen closely to the responses from the planners and architects. Representatives from the consulting teams — Urban Strategies, Studio TLA, Martha Schwartz & Associates, and Diamond Schmitt — sat dutifully at the side of the boardroom, taking copious notes, fielding questions and absorbing constructive criticism. Therme Canada’s vice-president of external relations Mark Lawson, a former Doug Ford staffer, rounded out the crew of advisors, nodding eagerly and conspicuously at each and every suggestion.
The comments from the DRP ran the gamut, but focused on a handful of key concerns: that the ticketing pavilion would obscure the views of the heritage structures of Ontario Place; that the tree removal was excessive; that palm trees and other tropical fauna didn’t belong in a building in a Great Lakes city; and that massive glass structure would produce light pollution, generate ice build-up and pose a risk to migratory birds.
But most commented on the immense size of the proposal. “This issue of scale really needs to be wrestled to the ground,” said architect Brigitte Shim, echoing a view expressed by several others. “That to me is really a paramount issue.” DRP vice-chair Betsy Williamson was un-sparing. “I honestly didn’t know that people were still building buildings like this.”
The evening session, by contrast, featured Lawson and just two members of the design team — DSAI’s Gary McCluskie, and TLA Studio’s Jeffrey Craft. They went through a slide deck, which consisted mainly of summer-y renderings and fielded what, to my ear, felt like nothing but lob ball questions, which apparently came from participants, although many people who’d signed up couldn’t get on the chat.
The consultants seemed unmoved by the feedback they’d received only a few hours earlier. “The interior of the facility will be a botanical wonder,” declared Craft, who heads the Dallas-based Studio TLA and had listened as the DRP panelists told the consulting team that palm trees in Toronto felt out of step with a climate crisis. “I’ve had the good fortune of visiting the facility in Bucharest and it’s a fascinating collection of the most beautiful plant material that I’d ever seen. I can’t imagine a larger botanical garden in any indoor garden in North America.”
Herewith, four more take-aways from the latest development.
Therme’s Public Space Management DealThe company’s representatives hinted at this twist during the DRP and expanded significantly on it during the consultation session: Therme appears to have done a deal with either Ontario Place Corp. or some other provincial body to manage all the public space on the West Island. “We’re talking about a project that will create nearly 12 acres of public space that will be built and maintained by Therme in perpetuity,” Lawson said, noting, by way of example, how a new bandstand, to be situated on an expanded western promontory, could hold an audience of several thousand people who might “gather” — the company’s favourite marketing word — to see the Toronto Symphony.
Craft further muddied the triple-P waters: “It’s important to understand that for a facility of this size and a park of this size, to be maintained in perpetuity is really challenging for municipalities.” He went on to cite examples like the Central Park Conservancy.
The prospect of Therme managing the space outside the spa is, for me, a huge problem, and likely poses an explicit conflict of interest. The company wants to enable its customers to get down to the brand new water’s edge, and the public space management deal raises critical questions about whether its staff will project Therme’s authority beyond the walls of the spa.
Do they have rights to provide security, or create space on the beaches for paying guests? What about these new pavilions on the “headlands” — who gets to book those spaces? Do patrons wearing Therme wristbands get a first crack at the seating? So many questions.
By outsourcing the responsibility for that public space, in a deal that is absolutely opaque from both a financial and process perspective, the Ford government has turned the entire West Island, including the new promenades and beaches, over to Therme. It’s a stinky move that both the DRP and the City of Toronto need to scrutinize with an electron microscope.
Parking and the Last Mile ProblemBesides the enormous cost (likely over $400 million, to come from the Ontario government) and the grotesque amount of carbon involved, the proposed 2,100-space underground garage will almost certainly create an induced traffic effect, particularly if and when there are big events at both the new Live Nation stadium and the spa (the company has is talking about DJ pool nights).
During the DRP session, officials with Urban Strategies, which has been retained by Infrastructure Ontario to deal with the project’s overall planning, noted briefly that Metrolinx is working on a so-called “last mile” strategy for linking the GO/TTC and eventual Ontario Line stations on the CNE grounds to the site.
Later, during Therme’s consultation session, it became clear this plan is much more developed than the consultants had disclosed earlier in the day. Diamond Schmitt’s Gary McCluskie, describing the main ticketing pavilion, to be located on the mainland opposite the spa, noted that “a shuttle or last mile connection would deliver [customers] to this location…at a lower level.”
In theory, the notion of providing a shuttle service, not unlike Billy Bishop Airport’s shuttle service to the Royal York, isn’t terrible. But we should all be asking who’s paying for this service, who’s subsidizing it, and what happens to similar projects whose proponents may not be fortunate enough to have lobbyists with ready access to the premier’s office.
The Entrance PavilionMcCluskie and Therme officials have stressed how this looming object has a roof line that resembles a trillium (get it?). But the DRP members mostly responded to its huge scale, designed so that Therme has the ability to process customers in the busiest periods. Therme projects that peak season weekend traffic could reach 14,000 visitors per day, and normal weekends will see 8,200 entrants daily.
The numbers seem, well, fantastical. But whether or not these anticipated crowds materialize, the pavilion itself — a tri-level facility with a soaring atrium that will have underground connections to parking, as well as shuttle buses, taxis and Uber — will be very real, perched heavily on the water’s edge, obscuring the view of the heritage buildings.
As DRP member Joe Lobko said of the pavilion, it feels “massive and barrier-like,” and compared it to a very large modern cottage constructed on a small piece of land.
The bridge of sorrowIf there was one detail that drew the most critical attention during the DRP session, it was Therme’s proposed bridge linking the entrance pavilion to the spa — a three-storey span Brigitte Shim described as more of a “building” than a bridge.
The design is a masterpiece of slyly anti-public architecture. It will contain change rooms and storage space, and provide access to some of the service vehicles that need to get over the spa. But as Therme’s consultants noted in the evening session, the ticketed area on the enclosed bridge, where customers can shed (and presumably store) their clothes, will offer a fantastic view into the inner harbour of Ontario Place — the money shot of the Zeidler pods and the Cinesphere. Therme’s consultants made much more of this configuration during the evening session than they did during the DRP earlier in the day.
When Waterfront Toronto’s DRP first looked at the scheme last July, the members criticized the public space plan for failing to provide a sufficiently wide and accessible pathway around the edge of the West Island. Since then, Therme’s consultants have added an outdoor walking and cycling promenade that will run along the exterior edge of this giant new bridge.
But here’s the rub: this public portion will face Lakeshore Boulevard.
And the great enclosed view from that bridge? Well, it’s for paying customers only.
Design Review PanelThe DRP session included plenty of polite discussion about how to mitigate the visual, climate, and ecological impact of the spa — some members urged Therme’s designers to push it down so it didn’t loom so large over the landscape. Others talked more native species plantings, and the importance of providing another bridge, at the furthest western part of the site that would link to Marilyn Bell Park, as a means of creating better east-west public access that didn’t involve running the gauntlet of Therme’s ticketing mega-structure.
Yet the big questions for me aren’t just about design and heritage protection: We don’t know how much this thing will cost taxpayers. The scheme to put Therme in charge of the public space on the West Island raises huge questions. And notwithstanding Therme’s pledge to build a LEED Platinum structure that will meet second tier of the Toronto Green Standard, the climate impacts haven’t been properly canvassed: after all, it’s still going to be a 700,000 sq-ft glass and steel behemoth, with the temperature maintained at a balmy 29 to 30 degrees Celsius year-round, that will contain 16 swimming pools, all treated with chlorine, all of which will be regularly dumped into Lake Ontario.
These are, or should be, the issues that the city’s planning department and eventually council, scrutinizes. There are more consultation sessions planned for April and May. Stay tuned.
The post LORINC: Ontario Place and a tale of two message tracks appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Editor’s Note:* The following is an excerpt from Reinier de Graaf’s recently published book, Architect, Verb.: The New Language of Building, critically analyzing Vancouver within the context of its claims of ‘liveability’. A heartfelt thank you to Reinier de Graaf and Tim Thomas at Verso for collaborating so well to make this possible.*
Guest Author: Reinier de Graaf
Since 1998, global human resources consulting firm Mercer has been publishing an annual list of the most liveable cities in the world. It does so by assessing the living conditions of more than 450 cities worldwide, 231 of which make it to the actual list. The list aims to provide internationally operating companies with a basis upon which to establish hardship allowances for employees sent on assignments abroad.
The evaluation happens along a fixed set of criteria—thirty- nine to be precise, grouped into ten categories: 1) the political and social environment, assessing factors such as political stability, crime and law enforcement; 2) medical and health considerations, looking at medical supplies and services, the prevalence of infectious diseases, potable water, air pollution and the presence of dangerous animals or insects; 3) public services and transportation, listing electricity, water, public transportation and traffic congestion; 4) consumer goods, considering the availability of food and daily consumption items; 5) recreation, looking at the availability of restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports and leisure facilities; 6) the sociocultural environment, weighing (media) censorship and limitations on personal freedom; 7) the natural environment, focusing on the city’s record of natural disasters; 8) housing, assessing the standard and cost of (rental) accommodation, household appliances, furniture, and maintenance and repair services; 9) the economic environment, considering currency exchange regulations and banking services; 10) education, focusing on the availability of international schools.
Each of the thirty-nine criteria receives marks on a scale of 0 to 10. The average of the marks within each group of criteria determines the eventual mark for each of the ten categories. Marks per category are then weighted according to perceived importance. Not all categories weigh equally. The further a category is down the list, the lower its share in the weighted average between categories. The top four: the political environment, health considerations, public services and the availability of consumer goods account for respectively 23.5, 19, 13 and 10.7 per cent—two-thirds of the overall scoring—while the remaining categories each contribute less than 10 per cent.
Depending on their overall score, cities emerge as ‘ideal’ (80–100 per cent), ‘acceptable’ (70–80 per cent), ‘tolerable’ (60–70 per cent), ‘uncomfortable’ (50–60 per cent), ‘undesirable’ (less than 50 per cent) or ‘intolerable’ (no percentage given), which is further explained as there being ‘few’, ‘some’, ‘certain’, ‘substantial’, ‘extensive’ or ‘insurmountable’ challenges to liveability.
Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey is one of three major city liveability rankings. The others are the annual Global Liveability Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), The Economist’s research and analysis division, published since 1999, and the ‘most liveable cities index’ by lifestyle magazine and media brand Monocle, published since 2008.
[….]
Despite the differences in measuring methods, the lists tend to feature the same cities. In 2019, Vienna topped not only Mercer’s rankings but also the EIU’s index, while it occupied a comfortable fourth place on Monocle’s top ten; Zurich, the number two on Mercer’s list, featured first on Monocle’s; Copenhagen featured on all three lists; Munich featured on two out of three, as did Vancouver and Melbourne. Such homogeneity may have a lot to do with the sources upon which they relied: ‘in-house experts’ in the case of the EIU, ‘correspondents’ in the case of Monocle and expatriates already living in the reviewed cities in the case of Mercer.3 In all three cases the ‘objective’ data concern the subjective opinions of individuals. Mercer even relies on the opinions of those who chose their city based on Mercer’s prior lists. The mechanism which ensues is predictable: Favourable reviews attract more expats; more expats generate more favourable reviews, and each list becomes input for the next. Last year’s liveability rankings barely differed from those of the previous year, or the year before that.
Liveable, livable, vital
The term ‘live-able’ was first recorded around 1610, in England, where towns suffered severe outbreaks of the bubonic plague. It was used in the now-obsolete sense of ‘likely to survive’ and generally had to be accompanied by the prefix ‘un’. The first time the word ‘liveable’ occurred in modern literature was in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, used in relation to the proposed modification of a country estate: ‘There will be work for five summers at least before the place is liveable.’ No longer does the term relate to the possibility of life itself; it is now applied to the habitat in which we live and the possibility of its constant improvement.
The term entered discourse on the city with Lewis Mumford’s essay ‘Restored Circulation, Renewed Life’, published in 1956: ‘If the city is to become livable again, and if its traffic is to be reduced to dimensions that can be handled, the city will have to bring all of its powers to bear upon the problem of creating a new metropolitan pattern.’
Like Austen, Mumford applies the term to the human habitat. The word ‘again’, however, signifies an important difference. With Mumford, ‘livable’ is a condition presumed to have once existed but is now lost—the cause of which, he leaves little doubt, is attributable to rampant modernization and mass ownership of the automobile which has deformed cities beyond recognition. No longer is the term ‘liveable’ weighed against the forces of nature and decay; it is the technologies unleashed by humanity itself which must be mitigated.
The same polemic also underlies Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which appeared five years later. Where Mumford used the term ‘livable’, Jacobs speaks of ‘urban vitality’, defined as ‘something that the plans of planners alone, and the designs of designers alone, can never achieve’.
Jacobs’s mistrust of the powers of planning owes much to her own personal history as a resident of Greenwich Village—a neighbourhood subject to plans for a large overhaul by then-New York City planning commissioner Robert Moses.
[….]
Maoists, Communists, pinkos, left- wingers and hamburgers
Such controversies prevailed in many North American cities at the time. But it was not New York City or Toronto but Vancouver in which Jacobs’s views—which until then had taken the form of protesting pending developments—first resulted in a propositional alternative.
By the early 1960s, Vancouver had grown into Canada’s third-largest city. In the decade before, it had witnessed a sprawl of suburban development and massive increase in car use. To cope with the city’s increasing transportation problems, the ruling Non-Partisan Association (NPA), which had been governing the city since 1932, had created the Technical Committee for Metropolitan Planning in 1954, which, together with several neighbouring municipalities and the provincial government, had submitted the so-called Freeways with Rapid Transit report in 1959: a US$450 million master plan for freeway construction across the Vancouver region.
However, with no central authority responsible for working
on the city’s freeways—decision-making was divided between the federal, provincial and civic governments—the city council was left on its own to raise funds for the freeways. Hoping to secure funding from the federal government, which was charged with building the Trans-Canada Highway, the city prioritized the construction of a freeway that would connect the downtown with the highway. Incidentally, the freeway would cross Chinatown and Gastown, two neighbourhoods that qualified for urban renewal funding from the provincial and federal governments.
Rather than solving traffic problems, the approach caused political turmoil. Leading figures in the city began to speak out against the proposal. At the University of British Columbia, an array of guest lecturers highlighted the negative impact of freeways on cities, essentially turning Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities into a manifesto of popular resistance against the plan. The idea of a freeway across Vancouver’s Chinatown also met with opposition from the business community.
[….]
In the spring of 1967, in a meeting at the headquarters of the Chinese Benevolent Association, a broad coalition against the city council was formed. When, despite promises to re-evaluate the freeway’s planned route, the city decided to press ahead regardless, protests broke out. A march took place through the neighbourhood, participants dressed in black for the occasion. The protests were supported by the city’s upper-income groups, too. A stinging article in the Vancouver Sun protested vehemently against the city council’s plans, raising the argument of lost liveability: ‘The democratic process has been thwarted… by people who are planning a city the majority of citizens don’t want to live in.’
In the North America of the late 1960s, protests to new freeway plans were by no means a rarity. In the US alone, at least twenty-six cities experienced such protests, including New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.
[….]
Encouraged perhaps by the success of those protests, opposition against Vancouver’s freeway plan persisted and the first results seemed to manifest in the fall of 1967, as the federal government announced that it would no longer contribute to Vancouver’s freeway through Chinatown. Following the announcement, support within city council for the plans began to wane.
[….]
Later that year, the Great Freeway Debate ended with Vancouver’s City Planning Commission chairman resigning, leaving the plan to be scrapped in January of the next year.
A freeway construction programme remained on the political agenda, however. But with city hall unable to muster either the cash or a political majority to execute such a programme, responsibility was transferred to the federal and provincial governments, with most of the money coming from Ottawa. Initially hesitant to adopt the new plans given the previous experience, the city council accepted the proposal in 1969. New protests erupted and the city was eventually forced to suspend its decision. Asked for a reaction, then-mayor Tom Campbell blamed ‘Maoists, Communists, pinkos, left-wingers and hamburgers for having sabotaged the plans. Notwithstanding his feisty rhetoric, the federal government formally struck down provincial commitment to the project in 1972.
The Electors’ Action Movement
The success of the protests put an end to forty years of uninterrupted rule of the NPA. In 1967, on the heels of the Great Freeway Debate, a new local political party formed: The Electors’ Action Movement, operating under the acronym TEAM. TEAM had been the initiative of two key players in the freeway protests: University of British Columbia geography professor Walter Hardwick and Art Phillips, head of a successful Vancouver investment firm. Their liaison—a joining of academic and business forces—produced a centre-left political party which aimed to appeal to persons of all political ideologies. NPA’s handling of the freeway crisis had helped profile TEAM as the progressive, more community-oriented alternative.
[….]
In the municipal elections of 1972, TEAM won a majority on the city council and Phillips was elected mayor of Vancouver. Once in power, TEAM made some radical changes. No longer was city-owned property sold off to private parties, using the proceeds to keep taxes low. Instead, Phillips created the property endowment fund, where all revenue from the city’s extensive holdings was deposited, invested and used for the benefit of the city. This paved the way for a much greater role of the city in its physical planning. For the inner city, a new planning policy was introduced with a focus on mixed land use, social diversity, environmental awareness and public housing. Freeways and high-rise buildings were out; neighbourhood planning was in.
A first opportunity to implement those policies presented itself in the form of the redevelopment of the industrial lands on the south shore of the False Creek inlet, directly adjacent to Vancouver’s downtown. With a freeway crossing no longer on the cards, the TEAM-dominated council saw the opportunity to transform the area, previously assigned for industrial use, into a showcase of their new urban planning policies. Under federal funding a master plan was developed for a mix of one third each of non-market rental housing, co-ops and condominiums. Social interaction between residents was promoted via the introduction of ample outdoor public space (including the public use of the waterfront) and indoor public facilities such as the False Creek Community Centre. Several renowned local architecture firms were involved in the design of the individual buildings, which, through a gradual increase in height of the buildings—from three- or four-storey townhouses near the water to eight-to-twelve-storey buildings further away— maintained mountain views for all residents, irrespective of tenure. To add further credibility to the new development, Mayor Phillips and his family moved to a condo in the fledgling neighbourhood themselves.
After Phillips left office in 1976, False Creek South became the calling card of Vancouver’s new urban planning policies. Until Phillips’s tenure, the default growth model for North American cities had been the creation of suburbs, connected to a monofunctional downtown area via an ever-expanding freeway network. False Creek proved that cities could also grow inward. As a mixed-use, mixed-income neighbourhood designed by multiple architects, geared towards pedestrians and achieving a high density without a single high-rise building, False Creek was the place where the ideas of Jane Jacobs, the woman who had inspired the protests, acquired physical form: a built critique of the failed urban renewal policies of the 1950s or, in the words of Art Phillips: ‘A place which brought people in, not threw them out, making the city a place to enjoy, where people wanted to live.’
The liveable region 1976/1986
The political shift which had taken place in Vancouver in the early 1970s was mirrored by a similar shift on a provincial level. In 1972, British Columbia had taken a significant step to the left with the election of its New Democrat provincial government. The presence of like-minded governments at the municipal and provincial levels created significant momentum for the revision of planning policies, not just in the city of Vancouver, but across the entire region.
From just over half a million inhabitants in the mid-1950s, the Vancouver region was expected to grow to about 1.5 million by the mid-1980s. Sandwiched between the mountains and the water, the region’s natural setting, the land available for new developments was limited—a situation which was exacerbated by British Columbia’s policy of protecting agricultural lands. Since 1968, local governments had been informally collaborating under the umbrella of a new regional authority: the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). In 1969, the GVRD further integrated its approach by appointing its first regional director of planning, Harry Lash.
Having averted the doom of a yet further expanded freeway network, Vancouver’s new political ideology spelled ‘liveability’ and was embraced equally by the municipal and provincial governments. It is not unequivocally clear where precisely the term originated or who first used it. In his book Planning in a Human Way, from 1976, Harry Lash attributes the first use of ‘liveability’ as a planning term to Alan Kelly, the regional board’s chairman from 1972 to 1975. Kelly allegedly launched the word at a weekend seminar of the GVRD Planning Committee in 1970 as the new goal for Greater Vancouver: ‘The Livable Region Plan would be a map showing where housing, commerce and industry would go; where the roads, transit links and parks should be located; and it should show where those things should be built.’ In that meeting, Kelly said that ‘the expert’s job was to produce the map, maybe with some explanation; then, since no one in his right mind would expect everyone to agree that what the planner had produced was good, the planner had better produce the map in jig time so that the arguments could start and the board decide who was right’.
Despite the bravura with which it was launched and the unquestionable status it was beginning to acquire, nobody at the time seemed to know precisely what liveability entailed, let alone how to implement it in the form of planning policies.
[….]
In the end, the conclusion was predictable. ‘Quite suddenly, early in 1972, we did discover the signpost: find out from the public what livability means; abandon the idea that planners must know the goals first and define the problem; ask the people what they see as the issues, problems and opportunities of the region. We decided to go to the public and simply raise the question of livability, with as little “inspiration” from ourselves as possible and see how they responded.’
In short: liveability is what the people say that liveability is. Following that conclusion, Lash led an extensive public consultation process which would last until the end of his tenure in 1975. The findings of this process are laid down in the report which would serve as his main legacy: The Livable Region 1976/1986: Proposals to Manage the Growth of Greater Vancouver. The report made five recommendations on how to achieve a liveable region: residential growth targets in each part of the region; a balance of jobs to population; regional town centres; a transit-oriented transportation system; and regional open space. It painted an optimistic picture of the cumulative result of these measures in its description of the region in ten years: ‘Greater Vancouver is an enjoyable place to live. No other Canadian metropolitan region is so close to mountains and water, farmlands and forests, yet so cosmopolitan in its variety of culture, educational opportunities, and business activities … During the past decade we have seen great changes in this beautiful area. There has been a burst of new restaurants, shops, and theatre and music groups. The Vancouver Region is a livelier place than it was ten years ago.’ It also nonetheless included a note of caution: ‘However, the region’s fortunes may not last for much longer’.
The report’s horizon qualifies as uncanny foresight. In 1986, to celebrate its centenary, Vancouver hosted the World Expo on Transportation and Communication. What should have been (or perhaps was) a defining moment in the recognition of Vancouver as a global city also revealed the first cracks in the city’s policies of considered urban growth and carefully guarded social diversity. In the run-up to Expo ’86, pressures on the housing market resulted in the eviction of 500 to 850 residents from the Downtown Eastside and surrounding areas. That same year, the old Non-Partisan Association regained control of the city council for the first time since 1972.
Living first
The next ten years marked a period of strong growth for Vancouver, both economically and demographically. From a population of just under 1.5 million in 1986, the GVRD crossed the 2 million mark shortly before the turn of the millennium. An important driver of the district’s accelerated growth was immigration from overseas—particularly from Hong Kong, uncertain about its future after its reversion to China. Like Hong Kong, Canada was part of the former British Empire and Canada’s relaxed immigration policies, coupled with a large existing Chinese community in the city, made Vancouver an obvious choice for relocation.
Anxieties about the consequences of such growth manifested as early as September 1990, in Steps to a More Livable Region, the sequel to The Livable Region 1976/1986 and the preparatory report for The Livable Region Strategic Plan from 1996. The report describes Vancouver’s liveability as a composite of its natural setting, its unique and envied lifestyle, and a thriving economic and cultural life—all under a perceived threat of an imminent ‘degradation which plagues so many large cities in the world’.
No longer was liveability something that needed to be dis- covered, it was something that needed to be protected from unfettered population growth. The answer was sought in the development of ‘a compact metropolitan region’, one that preserved the area’s natural setting and farmlands at all costs.
The scarcity of land that inevitably followed, coupled to a steady decrease in the number of persons per household, created considerable pressure on the housing market. Despite the enhanced regional cooperation, most of these pressures landed on the city of Vancouver itself, which, through its ‘living first’ policy, had opened the gates for extensive residential developments in its downtown area and waterfront land following the dismantling of the Expo ’86 fairgrounds.
Under the subsequent pressure of the 1990s property boom in Vancouver, it became common practice among developers to go after plots they suspected the city might be open to allow- ing a higher quantum of residential development than strictly prescribed by the zoning plan. This so-called ‘rezoning’ of plots proved highly profitable—both for developers and for the city itself, the latter claiming its fair share of the upturn in land values (sometimes taking as much as 75 per cent). Moreover, the city could insist that new developments created certain ‘planning gains’ in the form of public facilities like libraries or museums or that developers contribute to the financing of public spaces and public parks.
Although arguably a conflict of interest, the ‘joint property venture’ between the public and private sectors benefited both sides. In the 1990s, Vancouver’s downtown successfully absorbed a population increase from 40,000 to 80,000—all of which occurred in the context of a total city population, which, even after the increase, didn’t equal more than 600,000. In fact, the approach worked so well that a new set of problems was created in its wake. The ‘planning gains’ did not cover the provision of affordable housing or commercial uses. As a result, Vancouver’s city centre came to suffer a desperate lack of both, with many of its wealthy residents having to commute to the suburbs for work while the downtown area increasingly needed to be serviced by less wealthy residents travelling in from their affordable homes in the suburbs. Twenty years after its introduction, Vancouver’s ‘living first’ policy had turned it into a strange, inverse echo of the scenario it had so desperately tried to avert in the 1970s and against which the whole idea of liveability had been predicated.
Liveable, sustainable, affordable
In 2005, a moratorium was announced against further high-end residential development in Vancouver’s downtown. To spread development more evenly across the city, then-mayor Sam Sullivan launched the concept of ‘EcoDensity’, in which future residential growth was to be accommodated via a series of dense urban developments around transport nodes across the city.
According to the EcoDensity Initiative Document, the approach would ‘reduce housing costs, increase housing choice, reduce urban sprawl, alleviate traffic congestion and reduce fossil fuel emissions, preserve industrial and agricultural land as well as green space, make transit and community amenities more viable, keep taxes low and the local economy vibrant and healthy, reduce Vancouver’s ecological footprint and keep Vancouver’s high rank in the quality-of-life surveys’. EcoDensity was to make Vancouver ‘more livable, sustainable and affordable’ and ostentatiously ticked all the boxes required for doing so. To its critics, however, it was more of the same: a mere veil to yet more luxury high-rises encroaching on the city. Many of the proposed high-rise clusters replaced existing single-family homes, with many local communities complaining they had not been properly consulted. Once again, planning had become a top-down affair, dictated by infrastructure and the demolition of existing neighbourhoods. Forty years after the Great Freeway Debate, Vancouver was back to square one. Jane Jacobs died in 2006, the same year the initiative was launched.
Top of the list
That year, for the fourth time, Vancouver earned the top position on The Economist’s Global Liveability Index. It would retain that position for another five years, until 2010. However, in the 2000s the notion of what constitutes liveability had come to differ significantly from the early seventies. No longer was the term associated with the counterculture that had flourished in the context of protecting local communities. Liveability had become mainstream.
And with that came a distinct twist on the post-materialist values that had once underlaid the term. Inevitably, these values were rediscovered as a source of material value, ready to be marketed and consumed. Liveability inevitably comes at a price. In the time that Vancouver held the top spot on the EIU liveability index house prices in the city increased by more than 300 per cent, more than they had in all the previous century. The cost of living proved directly proportional to the city’s increased liveability.
The fact that the term ‘liveability’ had never been defined properly in its own right—initially it was oppositional to prevailing powers, but once these had been overturned, it was left for ‘the people’ to define—made it a welcome hobby horse for almost any political course. (After the NPA reclaimed power in 1986, use of the word only intensified, despite the massive increase in house prices.) In retrospect, the meaning of the term evolved neatly in line with the political leanings of Vancouver itself—at first activist, then participatory and finally consumerist. Liveability was whatever Vancouver said it was. The term and the city had become synonyms, making any further search for meaning redundant. When it comes to Vancouver occupying the number one spot on The Economist’s list, one wonders: was Vancouver a reflection of the properties on the list, or was the list a reflection of the properties of Vancouver?
All three former directors of Vancouver’s planning department—Ray Spaxman, Ann McAfee and Larry Beasley—enjoy active retirements in the private sector, selling ‘Vancouverism’ to municipalities globally as a formula to emulate. With their city consistently occupying a high position on liveability rankings, the facts speak loudly. What the Guggenheim was to Bilbao, The Economist’s Global Liveability Index is to Vancouver: the validation for a city, seemingly emerging out of nowhere, to suddenly qualify as a global model. The home of a world-class museum … the world’s most liveable city—captured in objectively verifiable data, be it visitor numbers or expatriate feedback, the success is beyond question.
Conclusion
Given the astounding popularity of liveability rankings over the last two decades, no longer do Mercer, The Economist or Monocle hold a monopoly over the idea. Their number now runs into the dozens: the EU Urban Audit, the OECD Better Life Index, the Livability Index by the American Association of Retired Persons, the Property Council of Australia’s Australian City Liveability Index, the Healthy Livable Communities Urban Liveability Checklist, and so on.
[….]
The more such rankings proliferate, the more their core purpose—to relate the idea of liveability to measurable properties—becomes questionable. Their sheer number invalidates their aura of objectivity. Pending the criteria invoked, any city can top any list at any time. Increasingly, the lists feel like the self-portraits of cities looking to make their mark. Take the properties of a (any) city, package those as key factors for liveability and the same city emerges as the fair winner.
Once again, the idea of liveability becomes elusive. The dismissal of material, and therefore measurable, facts of life in the 1970s led society to project the idea of measurement on immaterial values in the decades after, only to find out that the value of these was, indeed, immeasurable.
[….]
It seems that the more things we can measure, the fewer we can change.
Postscript
In 2017, the City of Vancouver introduced the Empty Homes Tax on properties that stand vacant more than six months. Ever since the city ranked top of the Liveability Index, property speculation and condo ownership by absentee landlords have become major problems. In 2018 the Downtown and West End districts reached record-high vacancy rates—5 and 6 per cent, respectively—safeguarded for residential uses as part of the city’s mid-eighties ‘living first’ policies. The net revenues of this tax are to be invested in the construction of affordable homes. The spirit of Jane Jacobs is still out there, if only because of her seventy-year-old son Ned, who acts as a tour guide through what is left of Mount Pleasant—once a bustling working-class neighbourhood, it is presently one of Vancouver’s most sought- after places for real estate investment and unaffordable for anybody on a median salary. Twenty years into the new millennium, living and liveability are two very different things.
For more information on Architect, Verb.: The New Language of Building, visit the Verso website.
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Reinier de Graaf* (1964, Schiedam) is a Dutch architect and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), where he leads projects in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Reinier is the co-founder of OMA’s think-tank AMO and Sir Arthur Marshall Visiting Professor of Urban Design at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession and the novel The Masterplan*. He lives in Amsterdam.
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Toronto is in an affordable rental housing crisis. Not only have average rents increased rapidly in recent years, but existing private affordable rental housing options are disappearing. One solution that has been initiated by some governments and non-profits is to buy those existing options to preserve them as affordable, but at present the money to do so is limited. Below, I’ll outline an idea for a housing-related source of revenue for the federal government that could be used to help address this problem, and a mechanism for how it could do so.
The disappearance of private affordable rental housing can be seen, for example, in the way divided mansions – big old houses long split up into apartments – are being re-converted into single-family homes. Meanwhile, mid-century purpose-built apartment buildings of various sizes, often somewhat run-down but therefore affordable, are being purchased by large rental corporations, who use the often genuine need for renovations to hike rental rates beyond rent control limits, or evict existing tenants and then rent out renovated apartments at much higher rates.
In some cases, both divided mansions and apartment buildings are being torn down, replaced by more but pricier condos or rental units. Increased supply is necessary to help alleviate the overall housing crisis, and can help reduce demand for upscaling other existing affordable rentals. But, unless governments play a role, private construction cannot create new affordable housing to replace what’s lost, for the simple reason that constructing new buildings is very expensive, and private builders cannot afford to build if they cannot make a profit. (One government role is inclusionary zoning rules that require large new multi-unit buildings to include a percentage of affordable housing, but they are limited in scope and the units are not always as affordable as needed).
The overall result is that between 2016 and 2021, “Toronto lost more than 130,000 rental units available at under $1,500 per month,” according to the Wellesley Institute. And many of these lost units are in locations with good accessibility to transit and services that make it easier to live on a low income.
In recent years, the City of Toronto and the federal government have finally started programs to build more affordable housing. However, if that new housing simply replaces existing private affordable housing that was lost, affordability has not been increased. In all likelihood, it cannot even keep up with the existing loss, let alone address the existing backlog and future demand. One study found that in Canada between 2011 and 2016, “for every (1) one new affordable unit created, at considerable public cost, fifteen (15) existing private affordable units (rents below $750) were lost.”
As well, even when done on a non-profit basis, building new remains very expensive, and it takes time, while the affordable housing crisis is immediate. By contrast, as one commentator notes, “it is cheaper and faster to buy older, affordable apartment buildings — and keep them affordable through co-op or non-profit ownership — than to build new from scratch.”
In recent years, the need to preserve existing affordable housing in addition to building new has started to be recognized. The grassroots land trust movement has started to take off in Toronto (PDF). It acquires existing affordable private properties in areas under pressure from rapidly increasing property prices, with the promise of maintaining that affordability. In addition to housing, these trusts and similar non-profit and co-op organizations might preserve affordable retail spaces, seniors’ housing, and artist studio spaces. These projects are generally funded by scrambling together a combination of different sources, such as section 37 money from development (which will be greatly reduced under recent Provincial changes), grants, and loans from co-operative banks.
The City of Toronto has also started to address this issue, with the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program. It uses City funds to purchase affordable housing properties, preserving them for the use of non-profit housing organizations.
However, these initiatives, admirable as they are, are drops in the bucket compared to the overall size of the housing market and the pressures that are leading to the loss of affordable housing. What they lack is capital. The private owners and developers, both individual and corporate, who are driving the loss of affordable housing are able to do so because they have a lot of capital. To counter it, NGOs and governments need a source of capital that can compete.
The City does not have access to many funding tools, and any additional funding it finds would be needed for other priorities, like transit and maintenance. There are increasing calls for the federal government to develop a “national acquisition strategy that transfers rental homes at risk of losing their affordability to the non-profit sector.” But the federal and provincial governments are all under considerable fiscal constraints at the moment. To fund such a program, they would need a new source of revenue.
I am going to suggest that the federal government does have potential access to a housing-based pool of capital (it could benefit provincial governments too), which it could use to help preserve affordable housing across the country while also somewhat rebalancing housing wealth.
Where to find the moneyWhen Canadians make money from buying things and then selling them at a profit, they are subject to capital gains tax on the profit (it is treated as part of their income, but only 50% of it is counted). However, there is one big exception – when Canadians sell their primary residence, that is, where they live, they are not subject to capital gains tax.
Some commentators have suggested removing this exemption. One issue with removing it is that most people sell their house to buy another house, often of equal or greater value. If they lose, say, 20% of the value of their house if they sell it, it will make it more difficult and less attractive to move houses for, say, a new job or a larger family. (A similar argument was made for the property transfer tax when it was introduced in Toronto. The feared effects did not transpire, but that tax maxes out at only 5% of the value and is usually less). Perhaps more significantly, given that around two-thirds of Canadian households own the property they live in, such a proposal would be extremely unpopular politically and so is unlikely to be seriously proposed by any government.
However, there is one aspect of the primary residence exemption where the one-house-for-another issue is not relevant. When a homeowner dies and passes their home on to the next generation through inheritance, their property retains the primary residence exemption. While the estate has to pay capital gains taxes on all other assets, it does not have to pay them on the primary residence. If the estate’s inheritors then sell the property, they do have to pay capital gains – but only on the difference between the assessed value of the property at the time of death and the value when it’s sold. If it’s sold within a year or two, that might be little or nothing after other deductions. So selling a million-dollar property might result in just a few thousand dollars in capital gains taxes.
The result is a windfall for the inheritors. Often, given the average age of death in Canada, those inheritors will be middle-aged and already own their own home. If they don’t, the inheritance will give them a big leg up in joining the ranks of homeownership. Unlike a living homeowner, these inheritors do not need the full capital from the sale in order to replace one home with another.
Over the next few decades, a massive amount of very valuable real estate will be passed down from baby boomers who first bought property when prices were low to their children and perhaps grandchildren, solidifying their family’s place among homeowners and making it all the harder for those not fortunate enough to inherit property to get on the property ladder.
If the federal government eliminated the inheritance aspect of the primary residence exemption, it could raise a significant amount of money. I don’t have the expertise to calculate the exact figure, but if we imagine an average of 20% of the value of all inherited primary residences every year, it is many millions of dollars a year.
One way to eliminate the exemption could be to have it expire after the death of the last occupant (so that spouses aren’t affected), so that the estate has to pay capital gains on the primary residence. The complicated process of winding up an estate could create difficulties for estates with limited funds other than the value of the home, though. A simpler solution might be to decide that any subsequent sale of the property by the inheritors calculates the capital gains based on the original price paid for the house by the deceased, not the deemed price at death. Tax experts would be best placed to figure out the details and which option is better, but the change certainly seems possible.
While this change wouldn’t be popular – no new taxes are – it would not have the same kind of immediate impact on homeowners, so might be more politically viable.
In addition to raising money, eliminating the exemption would go a small way to reducing inequality in the housing market, by shaving off at least some of the windfall received by families fortunate enough to have a parent who benefitted from the enormous increase in value of housing in recent decades and thus reducing their advantage over families that have not been so fortunate.
How to use the moneyI propose that the federal government set aside the funds raised by this housing-oriented tax change to help preserve existing affordable rental housing (as well as perhaps funding new affordable housing) across Canada.
The federal government could rely on non-profits and municipal government housing agencies to identify affordable rental housing that they want to preserve. When suitable properties are identified and an organization is willing to manage it, the federal government (probably through an agency created for this purpose) would buy the property, and then lease it out to the non-profits or agencies for a nominal dollar-a-year, on condition that it remain affordable. That way, the affordable housing organizations are not burdened by the capital costs of the property. They can use the (affordable) rental income to fund the maintenance and renovation of the property without having to cover purchase carrying costs.
With access to a much larger pool of money, land trusts, housing co-ops, other NGOs, and municipal housing agencies could afford to secure a much more significant proportion of the private affordable rental housing stock that is in danger of being lost, including larger apartment buildings that would otherwise be beyond their reach. They would be able to make a significant difference to maintaining rental housing affordability in Canada.
The federal government would have no role in administering these properties – it would simply be the underlying owner and set the basic affordability requirements. Its fiscal muscle would enable local initiatives without getting entangled in them, giving locals the flexibility to identify the best course of action that suits their location.
A side benefit of this model would be that the citizens of Canada, through their federal government, would build up a portfolio of property owned by all citizens. At the moment, property is owned by individuals and by those wealthy enough to own shares in Real Estate Investment Trusts or other property holders. A significant number of Canadians have no share in that wealth. Having a pool of property owned by all Canadians – even if it didn’t generate income – would help balance out that property wealth. And using property wealth to support renters would help shift the disproportion in wealth between homeowners and renters.
If we are going to maintain some measure of affordability in our cities, we need to act fast. With increasing income and wealth inequality over recent decades, an expanding pool of concentrated capital, both individual and corporate, is being used to buy up the best-located affordable rental housing in Canadian cities. As well, a huge transfer of wealth will be happening over the upcoming decades as the children of property-owning baby boomers inherit. The plan outlined above both helps to somewhat balance out that wealth, and redirects it to give governments the capital necessary to help non-profits and municipal governments preserve enough affordable rental housing to make a long-term difference.
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Our new issue’s cover section theme echoes our previous one a little. We have gone from Ontario Place to the Ontario Line. The similar names are not entirely coincidental — the Ontario Line was named because it will start (or end, depending on your point of view) near Ontario Place and go to near the Ontario Science Centre. As well, they are both massive projects that will shape our city for generations, have been discussed for years, and have been arbitrarily redirected by Premier Doug Ford. They need to be fully discussed and understood if we care about Toronto’s future.
I live near one of the future Ontario Line stations. While my own home won’t be directly affected, the neighbourhood I’m so used to will change a great deal. First, there will be construction — creating noise, closing streets and sidewalks, eventually demolishing buildings that currently house useful stores. But that’s just the beginning — it will be accompanied and followed by intensification, completely altering the landscape I’ve been familiar with and fond of for over a decade.
The project is deeply necessary, as is the new housing that will follow. Tens of thousands of current and future Torontonians will benefit — including myself, once I have another subway route available near my home sometime in the future. But that doesn’t mean the specific choices made for the project were necessarily the best ones. Nor does it mean that the disruptions and losses I and many others will experience are any less real. The tension between the good of the many and our own individual good is one we constantly have to navigate in cities, where we are so closely packed together.
The seeds of the Ontario line were first planted over a century ago. Even once the project got some momentum in the last decade, it continued to morph endlessly. News and disputes about the project have flowed from government agencies, citizen groups, and the media in dribs and drabs — plans here, complaints there. It’s a vast project and hard to grasp in its entirety.
That’s why we’ve devoted our cover section to a comprehensive deep dive into this project. We want to give our readers the big picture. Who is doing the work? What are the changes we can expect? Where are the controversies happening? How is the line different from other TTC subways? Having all the information is the starting point for navigating the tensions that big projects bring.
Of course, navigating the tensions brought by change is nothing new in a growing city. Our front section opens with a photograph by Steven Evans that captures the cacophony of construction. Meanwhile, Sarah Hood explores how whole buildings have been moved in order to accommodate change, sometimes just by a few metres, sometimes part-way across the city. It’s a means of preserving the past while making way for the future — and sometimes it can even create a rich new context for the displaced structures.
Changes achieve their best results when there’s space for a push and pull, when different points of view can be considered and reconciled. That may not have happened enough with the Ontario Line or Ontario Place, but Ian Darragh describes how it helped improve the renovation of David A. Balfour park, as neighbours came together to press the City to reshape its plans.
But the case of Balfour Park is also a reminder that it’s never easy — that was a particularly influential and skilled group. To achieve our best future, we need to find ways to ensure all projects benefit from constructive discussion. In this vein, Aidan Brogan describes the legacy of another citizen initiative, to recognize Toronto’s Chinese presence through transliterated street signs, while Yasmin Afshar explores the need to consider our states of mind, not just our physical requirements, when we seek to create complete communities.
We were about to go to press when John Tory announced out of the blue that he would resign as mayor of Toronto. We were used to having to make sudden last-minute changes in the Rob Ford era, but Tory was supposed to be different. Yet it turns out he had secrets too – of which his underhanded minority-rule bid, only revealed post-election, might have been the most sordid, though not the most fatal. Conveniently, our theme for this issue is long-term, and the Province and Metrolinx have largely taken new rapid transit lines out of the City’s hands, for better or for worse. So we didn’t have to update mentions of Tory, but we’ve foregrounded John Lorinc’s call to take advantage of this opportunity to elect a mayor who will face up to, rather than dodge, Toronto’s accumulating challenges.
Pick up the new issue at the Spacing Store, online, or on newsstands. Subscribers will see it in their mailboxes shortly.
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Tomorrow will be an all-day spa event in Toronto.
The day will end with an online “consultation” session at 6pm, showcasing Therme Canada’s mega-spa scheme for Ontario Place. Orchestrated by the company’s Canadian lobbyist, Strategy Corp. (which played a similar role to mark Sidewalk Lab’s arrival here in the fall of 2017), the “consultation” will invariably feature slick videos, idyllic renderings, and testimonials about the apparent urban healing powers of water, wellness, and art.
But the main event scheduled for Wednesday will take place in person, in Waterfront Toronto’s cramped boardroom, and should — if the participants do their jobs in a principled way — feel much more like an intense Swedish massage than a relaxing poolside afternoon.
At about 9 a.m., WT’s design review panel (DRP) will begin its second assessment of the “public space master plan,” which serves as the physical context for Therme’s proposed spa — a $350 million confection of glass and steel that will tower nine-storeys above the water level, require the felling of hundreds of mature trees, and take up most of the available public space on the West Island. The complex will be served by a 2,100-space underground garage, estimated to cost taxpayers about $400 million and located a few hundred metres from the eventual terminus of the Ontario Line.
For the DRP session, the Ontario government, Therme and its lobbyists are rolling out the big guns: Joe Berridge, founder of Urban Strategies, which is overseeing the public space planning, and Don Schmitt, co-founder of Diamond Schmitt Architects, which is the Toronto design firm on the project, will both be speaking.
The DRP is chaired by former chief planner Paul Bedford, who was the principal author of waterfront secondary plan that sought to reconnect Toronto to Lake Ontario. The DRP’s members are a veritable who’s who of the city’s architecture and planning communities.
These people have all known and worked with one another for years or, in some cases, decades. They also have long histories with the waterfront. Berridge is one of the architects of the waterfront revitalization strategy, hatched back in the late 1990s. Schmitt’s late partner Jack Diamond pushed an inspired but sadly unrealized redevelopment vision for the Parliament Street slip; a decade later, their firm designed what was the very first commercial project on the East Bayfront, the Corus head office, and showed the city how a forlorn brownfield site could be transformed into a landmark waterfront destination complete with jobs and public space.
It’s important to pause here and consider Waterfront Toronto’s positionality in this discussion. When the DRP had its first go at Therme’s heavily lobbied plan last summer, the members were told in no uncertain terms to avoid opining on the merits of the spa, and focus instead on the half-completed open-space plan commissioned by Infrastructure Ontario and drawn up by Urban Strategies. The DRP’s job, in other words, was not to pass judgment on whether it was a good idea to allow the government to privatize a large chunk of Ontario Place.
The people involved on both sides of this mega-project know how power is exercised in this city. They’ve worked in and around both corporate and political power for their entire careers — sometimes in its service and other times as advocates for reform.
Lest we forget, Waterfront Toronto was created to cut through some of the most entrenched and least productive reservoirs of power — those wielded by the multiple public sector bureaucracies bickering with one another and working at cross purposes on various waterfront projects. Waterfront Toronto’s earliest proponents, Berridge and Bedford among them, argued that a single development agency, with accountability only to the three orders of government, was necessary to advance an expansive vision of the waterfront that served the public interest by ensuring accessibility and high-quality open space as a frame for future development.
Waterfront Toronto’s mandate included Ontario Place. As the agency’s public documents stretching from its inception in 2002 to the present day attest, the agency’s “designated” geographical scope includes Ontario Place as well as the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. Waterfront Toronto, in short, has a responsibility to assert its views on the appropriateness of this scheme viz the greater good of the Toronto waterfront as a unified public space.
Waterfront Toronto’s role, of course, is complicated because it has three shareholders with assets on the waterfront and whose interpretation of the public good can diverge greatly. But in the past twelve years, the agency has been able to promote and defend its mandate to build a great waterfront in the face of intense political headwinds.
During Rob Ford’s term as mayor, brother Doug, then a councillor and now the premier, sought to subvert Waterfront Toronto’s planning for the Port Lands. But the agency was able to marshal and channel public support to block his short-sighted gambit. Waterfront Toronto has also worked closely with both the federal and provincial governments on large scale projects such as housing for the PanAm Games. And it succeeded in securing $1.25 billion in funding to re-build the mouth of the Don.
Of course, during the Sidewalk Lab debacle (2017–2020), Waterfront Toronto lost its way and almost ceded a vast chunk of the eastern waterfront to Alphabet/Google’s smart cities subsidiary, which had friends in the highest of places. In the end, however, Waterfront Toronto’s board, led by Steve Diamond, mustered the wherewithal to let Sidewalk know, in no uncertain terms, that it had to stay in its lane if it wanted to do business in Toronto. The company couldn’t abide by those terms and pulled the plug.
We’ve reached a moment when Waterfront Toronto’s DRP and its board must reflect on the importance of these pivotal moments in its 25-year history, and then consider how these decisions inform the task at hand with Therme.
The Austrian company’s proposal fails on every measure — it’s the wrong project, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. We don’t know where the money is coming from. We don’t know what happens if the spa business fails. The proposal makes a mockery of the public space principles that have guided waterfront revitalization for a quarter of a century. And I would be willing to wager a large bet that everyone involved, including the proponent’s consultants, know it.
Perhaps the Ford government is going to muscle this scheme through council and across the goal line. But let that decision be a political one exclusively. Waterfront Toronto knows what its mandate is, and knows — or should know — why a private human aquarium that turns its back on the city has no place on one of the most prominent public spaces in Toronto.
It’s time for Waterfront Toronto to speak truth to power (and capital), as, indeed, it has done at critical junctures in the past. Anything less will be an abdication of its mandate.
photo by Sean Marshall
The post LORINC: Speaking truth to power about Therme’s mega-spa appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In Spacing #29/2013, photographer Jesse Colin Jackson and anthropologist Lindsay Bell wrote about MacKenzie Place, the tallest residential building in Canada north of the 60th parallel. In support of Jackson’s new exhibition “Mackenzie Place” at Pari Nadimi Gallery (254 Niagara Street, Toronto, opening Thursday, March 23rd, 6-8pm) and the launch of Bell’s book Under Pressure: Diamond Mining and Everyday Life in Northern Canada (Saturday, May 13, 2-4pm), Spacing is republishing their feature, “Arctic Rising”.
ARCTIC RISINGHeading north from Edmonton, it’s a 975-kilometre drive to the 60th parallel. Travellers pull over and snap self-portraits with the polar bear sign: “Welcome to the Northwest Territories.” Between May and September, tourists drop into the 60th parallel visitor’s centre to claim their “Order of Arctic Adventurers” certificates. From here, the natural wonders of the Northwest Territories beckon: the Aurora Borealis, highway-blocking bison, world-class fishing and hunting, and more.
Keep driving due north of 60 to the shores of Great Slave Lake and you’ll arrive in Hay River, the second largest town in the Northwest Territories, population 4,000. Rail, river, and road meet here in what is known as the transportation “Hub of the North.” Marking the centre of town is an unlikely urban icon: the Mackenzie Place high-rise, the Territories’ tallest residential building. Like many places in Canada, the north is increasingly urban in nature — a quality that goes unnoticed by many southern visitors as they seek out the expected natural wonders.
Completed in 1975, the construction of the 17-storey high-rise residential tower was highly anticipated. The 80 units were to be filled by an influx of workers and residents that would accompany the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. The pipeline would carry oil and gas from the Beaufort Sea southward to the railhead in Hay River, where it would leave for refineries farther south. The pipeline project was defeated due to a mix of Aboriginal activism, changing Canadian policy towards Aboriginal lands, and a substantial drop in the price of oil. The building has never been filled to capacity.
While a postwar tower jutting up from the sub-arctic landscape may seem unusual, northern Canada has been the site of many experiments in planned urbanization and modernization. Inuvik, known for its above-ground “utilidors” and brightly painted homes, was planned in the 1950s as part of larger Cold War efforts to develop and protect the north. Frobisher Bay, now known as Iqaluit, began as a military base and was expanded to become an administrative centre during these same years. The Mackenzie Place high-rise was part of a planned relocation of the original settlements, which were located along the lakefront on both sides of the river. The original town was prone to seasonal flooding when river ice would break up every spring. In 1963, federal administrators for the region decided that a “new town” would be developed farther up the river. Its centrepiece was the high-rise.
Physically, the Mackenzie Place high-rise has reached its best-before date. Its recently repainted exterior belies its inadequate insulation and tired mechanical systems. The original tower design included shops on the ground floor, conference facilities on the second, and the first coin-operated laundromat in town. These spaces have been repurposed many times. Most recently, the bottom floor was used as remedial classroom space for the nearby high school. Hay River’s lone radio station has been broadcasting from the second floor for the past 20 years. As in many towers, the residential units are stratified vertically, with the nicest units on the upper floors. They’re also stratified east to west, with the river side units seen to be more desirable than the town side units, both because of the view and because of their superior satellite television orientation.
Tower life is not part of most people’s vision of the north as an unruly and unspoiled wilderness. This view is part of our national mythology, but this unlikely northern icon disturbs our collective sense of place. However, from almost every vantage point, the tower is the standout feature in Hay River. It is the only building of its type for over 1,000 kilometres, and yet, by virtue of Hay River’s isolation, the tower is by and large a sight unseen. Those who visit will find that many locals don’t know what to make of the place. For locals, the high-rise went from being a promise of a modern future to an all-too-present eyesore. Unlike many urban towers down south, however, this one singularly dominates in the centre of town and the surrounding landscape, serving as a constant visual anchor of the Hay River experience. Visually, it’s Hay River’s CN Tower.
Locals claim the high-rise is an epicentre of drug activity and complain about the owner’s failure to contribute to the town’s beautification efforts. When the buildinghas garnered outside attention, the focus has been on violence and tragedy. A young woman who moved up from Alberta suspiciously fell from the 16th floor. This was shortly followed by reports that a jealous ex-partner killed a local fisherman and his wife there. These anomalies easily overshadow the everyday life of those in the tower.
Those who move into the high-rise see it as a stepping-stone. For Ivan, Hay River wasn’t supposed to be his “forever home.” In 1978, his family fled Chile just as military dictator Augusto Pinochet had come to power. Ivan arrived just as a nearby lead and zinc mine was moving into full production, and getting work proved easy. Ivan explains: “Being an immigrant and coming up here is like winning the lottery. When we arrived, they were desperate for help. [My] dad took a job as a janitor for $1,000 a week and could not believe it! Although my father had been wealthy in Chile, we became servants, but we were well-treated, so that was confusing to us.” What was supposed to be a brief stay before moving to Miami lasted much longer.
Other residents still are eager to go home. Adore, an engineer from the Philippines, moved north to save money in the hope of returning sooner to his home country. He uses his second bedroom as a mini–recording studio. On any given Saturday or Sunday, you can find him behind an electric piano, wearing headphones, recording songs he has written or adapted, so he can send home CDs to his wife and children. He came to Canada seven years ago and has yet been unable to return to visit them.
Destiny, a 22-year-old Dene woman from the nearby First Nation, folds baby clothes she buys each week at the town’s local thrift shop. For her, the high-rise means doing things “her way.” Like many young adults, Destiny wants to feel in charge of her life. With a baby on the way, she hopes that moving to a bigger town in the Northwest Territories will offer her more job prospects. For Mary, a nurse practitioner originally from Ontario, the high-rise is the road out of many more years of work. She came north to save for retirement. She sits at her dining room table painting pieces of driftwood she collects at the beach on her morning walks with her pug, Oscar. “This place has everything I need. At my age, you have learned that it doesn’t take much to keep on,” she laughs.
The modern concrete residential tower — and its associated physical and existential problems — is no longer an image associated with progress in Canada. Nevertheless, understanding the evolving function of these multi-unit dwellings is fundamental to understanding a community’s strengthening — or weakening — heart. Hay River is no exception. The Mackenzie Place high-rise is threaded into the fabric of the town. Hay River, the north, and even Canada in the broadest sense, cannot be understood without understanding the high-rise and the stories it holds.
photos by Jesse Colin Jackson
Jackson has spent much of his career looking at tower apartment buildings, mostly ones structured of reinforced concrete. The buildings, the material, and their ethos emerged in the early modern period, seemingly without precedent, and have since proliferated beyond our wildest imagination. His new show Mackenzie Place is derived from extended consideration of a unique example of the type. Hay River’s unique concrete tower is far from its typical urban home, rising alone on the south shore of Tucho (Great Slave Lake), in Canada’s Northwest Territories. In 2013, Jackson and Bell began a research-creation collaboration at the intersection of art and anthropology that has now come to fruition. Mackenzie Place will immerse you in what the building sees, how it is seen, and the lives lived within its walls.
“Arctic Rising” was originally published in Spacing #29 (fall 2013)
The post Mackenzie Place: The tallest residential building in Canada’s North appeared first on Spacing National.
by Carolyn Whitzman
In 2019, Canada adopted the National Housing Strategy Act, which commits all governments in Canada to “progressive realization of the right to adequate housing,” with an emphasis on “improving housing outcomes for those in greatest need.”
But many recent mid-way evaluations of the current National Housing Strategy make clear that all levels of government — local, regional, provincial/territorial, and the federal — have failed to provide new homes that are affordable or suitable to those who are unhoused or in core housing need. A growing consensus is reflected from sources as diverse as the Canadian Housing Renewal Association (the industry association for non-profit housing providers) and Scotiabank, which concluded that doubling non-profit housing is a necessary jump start towards the homes Canadians need.
A table showing the affordable housing deficit by household size and income category in Canada, based on the 2016 census.
Central to the problem of steering the right supply is the absence of shared, replicable, comparable and equity-focused data to measure housing need, as well as a lack of understanding of the best policies that can provide the right supply for who needs what kinds of housing where.
The Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project, based at the University of British Columbia (UBC), aims to solve that problem. On Wednesday March 29 at 10am PST/ 1pm EST, we will be launching our new website with three tools that can help governments, community organizations and developers better address the affordable housing and homelessness crisis facing Canada. Register your place here.
The Housing Need Assessment Tool: a new way to plan for affordable homesThis tool will allow the analysis of census data on core housing need by income category, household size and priority populations. Currently, most government programs do not use the CMHC’s standard definition of “affordable housing,” which is no more than 30% of pre-tax household income. They also do not focus on low- and moderate-income categories, as did affordable housing programs from the 1940s to the 1990s, when the federal government abandoned responsibility for national housing policy.
We use five income categories, each based on area median household income or AMHI (since incomes vary so much by community):
- Very low income: These households, earning less than 20% of AMHI, are mostly on fixed incomes.
- Low income: Households earning 21- 50% of AMHI, the Low Income Cut Off or poverty line. Many are reliant on minimum wage.
- Moderate income: These households earn between 51-80% of AMHI and have also benefitted in the past from public and other non-profit housing.
- Median income: These households earn between 81-120% of AMHI, and have traditionally been able to afford homeownership. However, first time homeownership is unaffordable in most Canadian communities, forcing long commutes for many young families.
- Higher income: Households earning over 121% of AMHI. In many of Canada’s larger cities, even higher income households who currently rent find homeownership unaffordable.
The new housing need assessment tool allows calculation of affordable housing costs for every community in Canada.
A table showing the affordable housing deficit by household size and income category in Canada, based on the 2016 census.
Our data shows that most households in core housing need are very low-, low- and moderate-income households. There is simply not enough housing supply available for both one person and multiple person households at the costs these households can afford.
If the federal government wants to achieve its targets of 530,000 households removed from core housing need by 2028 (out of a total of 1.7 million households in 2016), halving the number of those chronically homeless (at least 25,000 people, not included in census calculations of core housing need), and addressing the needs of students, people in congregate housing such as long-term care homes, and farm workers (none of whom are included in census calculations of core housing need), it will need clear targets for housing costs and household sizes.
A chart showing the percentage of households in core housing need by priority population in Canada, based on the 2016 census.
The current federal government has committed to a gender and intersectional equity approach to housing targets, but it has not analysed need for these groups. Ottawa has also announced sub-targets, for instance, 33% of all federal housing funding for women-led households. Those with physical, cognitive or mental health issues and household heads over 85 may have additional support needs. Lastly, the federal government has pledged to support separate For Indigenous, By Indigenous housing and more recently, created a fund for Black-led housing initiatives. Data would help in monitoring equitable outcomes.
Our Housing Needs Assessment Tool will provide data on priority populations in core housing need for every community in Canada, to allow the development of provincial/territorial, regional and municipal targets and sub-targets.
Land Assessment Tool: the most effective way governments can address housing needInternational evidence agrees that use of publicly-owned land for non-profit and affordable housing is the most effective way to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income households. Indeed, the combination of free land (either donated or free-leased) and non-profit development can deliver up to 50% of the cost of new homes.
A screenshot of our land assessment tool map of Ottawa, showing land that is well-placed and available to build affordable housing.
Our Land Assessment Tool shows how to identify well-located government land that is suitable for scaling up non-profit housing, including “housing on top” of existing infrastructure like health centres, libraries, and fire stations. Working with 12 government partners, we have identified thousands of sites that could be used to develop new affordable, transit-oriented homes to meet the needs of those who are homeless or in core housing need, and jumpstart the kind of supply that is most required for the socially, economically and environmentally sustainable communities of the future.
Acquisitions Tool: stopping the haemorrhage of affordable homesBetween 2011 and 2016, 15 affordable homes renting at $750 or less a month were lost for every non-profit home created in Canada. The reason is that the federal government has been largely absent in the development and acquisitions of affordable housing since the 1990s. There are growing calls for a national acquisition strategy that transfers rental homes at risk of losing their affordability to the non-profit sector. Several governments in Canada, including B.C., Nova Scotia and the City of Toronto have launched their own acquisition strategies.
Courtesy of The Community Housing Transformation Centre. A chart showing the funding of affordable housing (new and acquired units) by the Government of Canada from 1946-2019.
Our Acquisitions Tool analyses Canadian and international best practices to provide easy-to-use fact sheets for governments considering supporting acquisition of low-cost rental. It covers the identification of suitable properties, financing rapid acquisition of properties on the market, and considerations to maintain affordability of the homes while improving their condition and environmental sustainability.
For more information on how the Housing Assessment Tools can work for your community, please contact us at HART@allard.ubc.ca, register for our launch, or attend our session at the CHRA Congress in Winnipeg April 18-20.
Carolyn Whitzman, expert advisor for the Housing Assessments Resource Tools initiative, is Adjunct Professor, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, at the University of Ottawa. Follow her on twitter at @CWhitzman.
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By John Cartwright
The Hoggs Hollow Disaster, which occurred on March 17, 1960, killed five Italian immigrant workers: Pasquale Allegrezza, Giovanni Correglio, Giovanni Fusillo, and brothers Alessandro and Guido Mantella. They were clearing a tunnel about 12 metres below ground to create overflow ditches in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel. The men had no hard hats, fire extinguishers, or resuscitators; they were working in a tunnel less than two metres in diameter, and had to crawl under a 36-inch watermain to pass each other.
Soft tunnelling conditions required the use of air pressure many times higher than normal to stop cave-ins and the entry of dirt and silt. The first contractor with a winning (but unrealistically low) bid went broke, and the bonding agency that took over the contract sped up the work, extended the pressurized parts of the tunnel, and ignored numerous fires in the oxygen-rich environment. Safety regulations were flouted, and the workers had no union.
The tragedy occurred after a spark from a cutting torch ignited a rubberized cable and six men found themselves trapped behind a wall of poisonous smoke. The air pressure was cut off, causing a cave-in of silt and water. A valve to blow the smoke out of the tunnel would not open, and timber supports holding the tunnel partially collapsed. Only one worker — Walter Andruschuk — was able to escape.
For days, the public learned more details about the tragedy. The crusading journalist Frank Drea exposed the terrible negligence in front page stories of the Toronto Telegram that shocked Torontonians. Autopsies determined the deaths were by drowning and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Italian construction workers in 1960; courtesy the Toronto & York Region Labour Council
The event sparked a fury within the Italian community that had seen far too many deaths in a ruthless construction industry. Within weeks, a series of meetings drew thousands of disgruntled workers demanding workplace justice, and strikes took place demanding union recognition. The next year, a massive strike wave saw a rally of 17,000 construction workers held at the CNE Stadium. The activism of the community and the labour movement finally led to a Royal Commission on health and safety, and, ultimately, new legislation to protect workers.
For the Italian community, the response to the Hoggs Hollow disaster was also reflected in a desire to make Toronto a place where they were no longer treated as second class citizens. They started challenging widespread discrimination in their neighbourhoods, in workplaces and at the Workers Compensation Board, as well as the treatment meted out to their children in schools.
Forty years later, COSTI Immigrant Service and labour groups sponsored a commemorative quilt, designed by artist Laurie Swim, featuring images of the five men. On March 17, 2000, hundreds of construction workers left their work on the Sheppard Subway project to attend a ceremony at the Hoggs Hollow location, organized by the Toronto Central Ontario Building Trades Council. They heard eyewitness accounts from Drea as well as rescuers Nester Buchinski and John Barrett, who had volunteered to enter the smoke filled tunnel to try to save the trapped men. And finally, the City of Toronto placed a plaque on Yonge Street to recognize the event.
Artist Laurie Swim and her quilt, “Breaking Ground.”
On the 50th anniversary, the quilt was formally inaugurated at the York Mills Subway station to honour their memory.
Today, construction workers have strong unions and far better safety conditions because of the struggles that followed the Hoggs Hollow tragedy. To learn more about working people’s history in Toronto go to www.labour150.ca.
John Cartwright is past President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council. A carpenter by trade, he organized the Hoggs Hollow memorial ceremony on March 17, 2000.
The post Remembering the Hoggs Hollow Disaster appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
One day last week, Toronto history buff Jeremy Hopkin tweeted a then-and-now set of images that told an unflattering story about where we find ourselves. He paired a 1923 photo of St. Clair West, looking east to Dufferin, with one he took a century later, on March 8, 2023.
Apart from the colours and the vehicles, a staggering detail jumps out: the streetscape has barely changed, with the exception of some merchant awnings. Here we are, on a six-lane arterial kitted out with a dedicated streetcar right-of-way, and there’s been virtually no intensification on this corridor in a hundred years. Talk about incrementalism.
By happenstance, I’d participated that week on a Toronto Metropolitan University panel about city-building with architect Naama Blonder, a co-founder of Smart Density. Originally from Israel, she spoke of coming to Toronto almost a decade ago and deciding one day to explore by taking transit out of the core. Blonder ended up on St. Clair West, which didn’t seem all that far, but felt, she said, like a much more remote suburb — the mostly two-storey street wall bearing little resemblance to the comparably far denser streets of Tel Aviv, which are lined with mid-rise apartments.
The question posed by St. Clair West, and indeed hundreds of kilometres of other major streets across the city, is this: why are they so hostile to almost any kind of sustained intensification? Where are the rows of mid-rise buildings, as envisioned by city council way back in the early 2000s when the first post-amalgamation Official Plan was approved?
As per a council directive from before Christmas, it appears the city’s planning department is going to take another crack at this vision — one that will, in theory, include Toronto’s so-called major streets — a network of collectors and minor arterials that cover over 1,200 km of the city. Think about Mount Pleasant north of Davisville, much of Lawrence Ave through the core, most of Dufferin south of Lawrence, O’Connor, St. Clair East in Scarborough, or, indeed, more inarguably urban addresses, like Beverley Street south of College — a stretch that should, by all rights, be lined with mid-rise apartments a la St. George Street.
This move is part of the city’s much more comprehensive effort — dubbed the “Housing Action Plan 2022-2026” — to accelerate the production of new housing, and specifically multiplexes, mid-rises, and affordable rentals as a means of addressing both the crisis in the cost of housing and rent as well as the Ford government’s targets for new supply.
According to a staff report released this week that’s heading for executive committee, the planning department’s “work plan” includes exploring the prospect of allowing four-to-six storey walk-ups in residential zones along major streets (under 30 metres wide) and simplifying approvals to incent more mid-rise along arterials and avenues. Proposed official plan and zoning bylaw amendments, say the report’s co-authors, chief planner Gregg Lintern and housing czar Abigale Bond, will be cooked and ready to serve to council by the end of the year.
I don’t want to be excessively cynical, but we’ve seen this movie before.
A generation ago, Torontonians were told that the city’s future lay in the development of avenues lined with mid-rise mixed-use buildings that would provide sufficient density to justify higher order transit.
Didn’t happen.
Instead, we wasted two decades nibbling away at this vision with “avenues studies,” “mid-rise guidelines,” “performance standards,” elaborate set-back requirements, and all manner of bureaucratic busy-work — everything, indeed, except the one move that would have enabled the plan to be realized: blanket “as-of-right” zoning to align the city’s land use regulations with its land use policies.
There’s a demure allusion to this epic own-goal in the staff report: “Current Neighbourhood policies in the Official Plan permit additional intensification along Major Streets under specific circumstances,” it notes. “However, permissions for low-rise apartments along Major Streets is not consistently permitted through the applicable zoning by-law.” As for the Avenues (e.g. places like St. Clair West), the planners say they’ll “explore policy, zoning and guideline changes to simplify approvals and facilitate the development of mid-rise buildings along Avenues and in Mixed Use Areas.”
These explorations include considering the use of “transition zones” for smaller scale apartments that would sit between the higher densities envisioned for avenues and the low densities in the surrounding neighbourhoods. But the report is already chock-a-block with hedgy language, as such a move will raise the hackles of ratepayer groups and their council allies.
In fact, almost all of this stuff has already been studied to death. In 2015, for example, council quietly shot down a tentative staff proposal to test transition zones. The problem isn’t a lack of analysis. Rather, it’s about how to rip the band-aid off quickly and provide as-of-right zoning along main streets, especially those served by transit — i.e., the crazy idea that you could acquire some property and add a moderate amount of density without being forced to endure the costly contortionist act of figuring out how to please all of the parties that need to be pleased in order to get to yes.
A generation ago, many Torontonians, and, frankly, we in the media, thought that the vision of mid-rise intensification along the avenues would come to pass because it was enshrined in the city’s ur-plan.
The building industry, however, encountered another story all together: each parcel required OPAs or re-zonings, which meant fighting with the neighbours and the planning department and local BIAs and impatient investors. All the while, downtown sites were scoring multiple times the density, and many builders who’d tried their hands at mid-rises decided these projects were one-and-done affairs — way too much trouble for too little reward.
The City, in effect, defeated itself: the bold rhetoric of `as-of-right’ approvals — a hold-over from the mid-1990s, when the old City of Toronto enacted “the Kings” plan to revive the warehouse districts — faded almost as soon as the ink on the Official Plan had dried. In the subsequent battle between big visions and planning minutiae, the nitpickers won hand’s down.
Have we learned anything?
Not sure.
The planning department, for instance, could say it will provide more permissive or even as of right zoning for multiplexes in established neighbourhoods or along major streets, but council could easily kill the baby in its crib by imposing development charges or on-site parking requirements that make such projects economically preposterous.
To my eye, this week’s staff report, for all its bold talk, doesn’t feel especially bold. The word “study” appears no fewer than 21 times in the 31-page document; the word “deliverable,” just twice. We spent a fifth of a century studying the problem of why St. Clair West hasn’t changed in a hundred years. The answer, at this point, is surely staring us in the face.
photo by Jeremy Hopkin
The post LORINC: Why aren’t Toronto’s major streets major streets? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
ON THE BOARDS: ALYSSA SCHWANN + LAURA KILLAM (Presented by the West Coast Modern League)
- TUES, APRIL 4, 2023 – 5:00pm to 7:00pm
- Hosted by Inform Interiors, 50 Water Street, Vancouver, BC
- FREE EVENT with Registration | Open to the Public – Reception at 5:00pm | Presentation at 6:00pm
On April 4th, join the West Coast Modern League at Inform Interiors for the launch of “On the Boards,” a new speaker series focused on showcasing the creative endeavors of our local design talent. For this inaugural lecture, we will be joined by environmental artist and designer Alyssa Schwann and architect Laura Killam, both of whom will present their recent works and/or projects currently underway.
Alyssa Schwann is an environmental artist and designer who for many years taught at the University of Manitoba, Faculty of Architecture. Her professional experience involves design in Canada, Britain, and the Netherlands, with projects in North America, Europe, and North Africa. She spent several years at West 8 in the Netherlands as a project leader and designer, with a focus on parks, gardens and public spaces that included high-profile urban design projects for Toronto’s Central Waterfront and Governors Island in New York City. Recently, Alyssa has been creating installations in an urban forest in Vancouver and this past summer on the island of Korppoo in Finland. These temporary interventions, “drawing” with string, continue her ongoing studies in the intersection of “art + ecology,” examining the temporal and formal relationships between land and place. The work is intended as a meditation on an understanding of the need to nurture a deep relationship to place, using forest–and string–as the subjects.
Laura Killam is a BC native who grew up between Vancouver and an off-grid island on the BC coast. Laura established the small, full service architectural practice of Laura Killam Architecture in 2017. Specializing in residential projects situated on remote, wild sites along the BC coast, the studio looks for design solutions that combine function and aesthetics to produce quiet, understated architecture. LKA strives to make spaces that are deeply connected to their site, that delight in beauty both within and outside of the building, and that respond meaningfully to a client’s needs. Laura will speak about several residential projects on the coast, each aimed at engaging in a conversation with the unique characteristics of the site that it inhabits. Each design aims to connect inhabitants to the natural setting through curating the experience of moving through the landscape, exploring the shift of views, light and shadow, and finding a balance of shelter and expansiveness.
Registration + Event Details: WESTCOASTMODERN.ORG
The post Event – On The Boards: Alyssa Schwann + Laura Killam, April 4th appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
By way of spoiler alert, I’ll begin by saying I have no intention of wasting my time (or yours) rebutting the lunacy of the 15-minute city conspiracy theorists, who have barged into the normally staid world of municipal planning, alchemizing social media rants and COVID-19 paranoia into real world conflict and media coverage.
My question, rather, is this: What now? Do we assume that the 15-minute-city fabulists will soon move on to the next brightly burning object? Or have we arrived at that moment when a domain as dorky as land use planning is forced to circle the policy wagons?
Answer one: I’d say it’s safe to assume that no self-aware municipal planner will ever again use this now poisoned chalice of a phrase in a policy document. The term itself didn’t enjoy full-throated support in the planning world anyway — more on that in a moment — but the municipalities that leaned in to the rhetoric of the 15-minute city (Oxford, Edmonton, Toronto’s Downsview Airport redevelopment etc.) are likely experiencing pangs of pain and regret. Documents will be scrubbed, and new buzzwords, selected for an absence of catchiness, will take their place.
Yet the act of airbrushing this term out of planning policy raises another set of questions: will such defensive moves — reflecting an understandable desire on the part of local planners to avoid insane arguments — read like acquiescence or retreat? Will they merely embolden the lunatics to find even more plots where none exist?
A brief aside here about the concept of the 15-minute city, a term of art coined (or at least popularized) by planner and academic Carlos Moreno, who advised Paris’ crusading mayor Anne Hidaglo on her strategy for transforming the city’s transportation networks. The slogan, which became popular during the (fleeting) build-back-better phase of the pandemic, is undeniably catchy. Yet to my ear, it feels mostly like a clever label that can only be applied retrospectively in highly specific urban conditions, and therefore has limited applicability as a planning philosophy.
In places like Paris, the density and transit infrastructure long pre-dated Moreno’s formulation, as have similar development patterns (streetcar suburbs) and planning outlooks (walkable neighbourhoods, complete communities). It evokes some of the ideas that were gathered under the heading of New Urbanism in the 1990s. Mainly, though, the 15-minute city ideology reminds me of the “100-mile” diet fad of a decade or so ago: a pat formulation, with little relevance to the residents of low-density urban neighbourhoods built after World War II.
Whatever your view, we’re here now, grappling with, well, unintended consequences.
Certainly, not all the people showing up at local planning meetings wondering if they’ll be imprisoned in their neighbourhoods are pitchfork-wielding zealots; some have simply become too stoned on social media to think their way through the nonsense. But the energy fueling these efforts is absolutely malign, and has been pushed out by the unhinged aggression of a segment of society that’s bent on breaking things and identifying scapegoats to torment.
The only way to counter bullying, goes one argument, is to stand up to the bullies, which, in the context of the current discussion, means defending the slogan and reclaiming the ideas behind it. Alternatively, as The Toronto Star‘s Alex Boyd reported earlier this week, local politicians and planners will have to make sincere efforts to persuade the doubters — to fight a war of hearts and minds, so to speak.
I don’t know if there’s a right answer. The summer before last, I felt greatly appreciative of the ordinary people who came down to the University Avenue hospitals and escorted patients or visitors past the crowds of braying anti-vaxxers tormenting health care workers.
On the other hand, I’d say planning departments and local councillors face the very real risk of seeing public meetings hijacked by the kind of protestors who dog Justin Trudeau or try to shut down drag queen readings for kids.
There’s a telling and entirely predictable moment in Alex Boyd’s account of an Edmonton city councillor, Andrew Knack, who was determined not to be dismissive with people who’ve fallen under the thrall of the hard-core 15-minute conspiracists.
At a recent public meeting, she reports, the tedious circular arguments with the few attendees determined to unearth the plot drove off the rest of the crowd. Knack, writes Boyd, argued that he had to address public concerns and fears, no matter how bug-eyed. “You can dismiss it, but then that just pushed them away,” he says. “And it pushes them into that same position that is more and more reinforced by the community they may have found.”
I suppose Knack’s intent is laudable and democratic, but it also feels like some version of a dynamic that exists in many classrooms, workplaces or families — that attention-seekers succeed in their quest for attention at the expense of everyone else. City planners and councillors already have enough difficulty engaging the public in discussions about their neighbourhoods, so it’s pretty easy to imagine that an evening spent in the company of people howling about some nefarious scheme will succeed in driving away the few who showed up to provide the feedback sought.
The silver lining here is the advent of online public consultation, which pre-dated the pandemic but came of age during the lockdown and rapidly revealed itself as a far superior tool for soliciting feedback and sharing information. A quick scan of the city’s public consultation schedule suggests that well over half are now Webex or live-streamed on Youtube, and include features like online surveys that remain open for weeks, posted planning documents and so on.
The merits of digital consultation — not least of which is the fact that the host can hit mute — serve as a reminder of the well-documented failings of public meetings, but particularly the convenience factor for working families, single parents, etc. The downside, of course, involves issues such as digital literacy, connectivity, and language. But the structural short-comings of traditional public meetings represent, in my view, a far greater barrier to resident participation, and we shouldn’t mourn the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo.
In fact, if the mouth-breathers end up hastening the demise of the conventional public meeting, they may well have made an unwittingly constructive contribution to complex business of urban planning. But we should still hope that their 15 minutes will soon be up.
photo by Timothy Neesam
The post LORINC: Is the 15-minute city’s 15 minutes up yet? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
A few weeks ago, a story broke about a family of five who relocated to Toronto from Switzerland for a ten-month work assignment. Unable to find housing, they turned to Airbnb to find a home close to public transit, schools, and work. This story sounds like Airbnb promotional material right up until the point where the family received a bogus eviction notice barely six months into their stay and with less than four weeks’ notice. As a result of the eviction attempt, what could have been an Airbnb ad has opened our eyes to a new problem for Toronto tenants — Airbnb’s long-term shadow rental market.
A deep dive into Airbnb data (checkmark “only short-term rentals” to see how few remain on the platform) illustrates the size of the problem. Today, Airbnb offers more than 12,000 long-term listings in Toronto available on a monthly basis (for a minimum of 28 days, or longer). This inventory represents more than 75% of the company’s total inventory in Toronto. Before the City’s short-term rental rules were enacted in January 2021, which are based on a new bylaw that defines short-term rentals as rentals of 28 days or less and restricts the use of housing stock for short-term rentals to a person’s principal residence, long-term rentals of 28 days or more represented only 15% (or less than 2,000 units) of Airbnb’s total offering. How can we explain this shift? Why has a short-term rental platform become a repository for long-term rentals?
The answer to this question differs from what you would expect. While Toronto has always had some executive rentals available to accommodate professionals on work assignments or out-of-town parents booking into a place while their loved ones were being treated at Sick Kids, what we see today differs from a market response to growing demand. Nor has COVID-19 changed our travel behaviour enough to warrant such a shift. Instead, Airbnb’s long-term rental business is the company’s response to the City of Toronto’s short-term rental bylaw.
Comparing pre-regulation with post-regulation Airbnb data clarifies this point. Once the City’s short-term rental bylaw and associated regulatory framework came into effect in January 2021, only properties that were someone’s principal residence were allowed to be rented short-term on platforms like Airbnb. Investment units routinely used by property managers and so-called “super hosts” were no longer permitted under Toronto’s new bylaw, which defines short-term rentals as rentals of 28 days or less. While observers expected Airbnb to cull its ghost hotel inventory, the company didn’t. To get around the City’s rules, Airbnb adjusted the booking terms for its non-compliant inventory to 28 days or more. This move created a large pool of legal long-term rentals on the platform overnight, growing it from less than 2,000 pre-regulation to over 8,000 after the City’s rules were enacted. This inventory has since grown to over 12,000 available long-term rentals today. We can expect this number to grow even further as time progresses.
Why does this matter, you may ask?
Simply, it matters because the company has positioned itself between landlords and tenants and the tenancies are enacted by signing Airbnb’s service agreement, not by signing an Ontario Standard Lease. While platforms like Kijiji or Craigslist have long advertised apartment rentals, they merely put landlords and tenants in touch, followed by signing a formal lease agreement. Airbnb, however, inserted itself into this relationship by handling everything, from the “booking” to the payment, including issuing hefty service fees. This situation may encourage landlords to use Airbnb to avoid their responsibilities under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). They may feel they can more flexibly dispose of tenants simply by cancelling their “booking.” It is still unclear whether tenants staying in a place booked through Airbnb will be protected under Ontario’s RTA. It may also be the case that many newcomers entering into long-term tenancies via Airbnb do not know their rights as tenants under Ontario law. Moreover, landlords who feel they can make more money during the summer may simply cancel a booking to take on new “guests” at twice the rate. Once cancelled, Airbnb will quickly follow up by sending notes to the tenants reminding them they must leave by a specific date, irrespective of Ontario’s laws, as was the case experienced by the Swiss family mentioned above.
As accessing rental housing becomes increasingly difficult for tenants in Toronto, leaving access to more than 12,000 housing units to a Silicon Valley-based tech company notorious for exploiting regulatory loopholes is a recipe for disaster. At the same time, these 12,000 units present low-hanging fruit in quickly adding already-built inventory to the market for long-term renters.
It is high time for us to examine how to ensure Airbnb acts within provincial laws and municipal regulations, to tweak these if needed, and for any mayoral candidate running in the June election to promise voters that they won’t fall for any of Airbnb’s regulatory tricks.
Thorben Wieditz is an urban geographer who works at the intersection of labour, community and big tech. He is the Executive Director of Fairbnb Canada Network, which helped establish regulatory frameworks for companies like AirBnB in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Ottawa. Follow him on Twitter @twieditz.
photo by Mary Crandall
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Ever since John Tory was elected mayor of Toronto in 2014, voter turnout in municipal elections has been in decline. In 2010, the year Rob Ford was elected mayor, turnout was 50.4 percent. Four years later, 54.7 percent of all eligible voters went to the polls to elect a new chief magistrate. However, in 2018, just 40.9 percent bothered to vote, and in 2022, turnout fell further, to just 29.7 percent.
With the recent release of detailed voter statistics from the 2022 municipal election in the Toronto Open Data catalogue, it is now possible to see how much turnout dropped in each ward.
Voter turnout is typically the highest in Toronto’s most affluent wards and neighbourhoods, though Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign engaged many voters from the city’s inner suburbs who may not voted otherwise. Since 2014, citizens have been most likely to vote in Midtown Toronto, central Etobicoke, and in the city’s east end, particularly in Toronto-Danforth and Beaches-East York. The lowest levels of voter turnout have been in northern Etobicoke, parts of North York, in Scarborough, and in the Spadina-Fort York downtown ward. The 2022 election was no different.
There is no single explanation for these trends, though there are several contributing factors. In Spadina-Fort York, a young, more transient population is less likely to become engaged in civic democracy, even though issues such as housing, access to parks, recreation, and schools, as well as transit and safe walking and cycling route are municipal issues that most certainly matter to young households. In Toronto’s inner suburbs, precarious working environments, long commutes, poor transit, and difficulty accessing city services are matters that discourage civic engagement, which also makes it easy for local politicians to ignore them.
In 2022, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a dull mayoral race where the leading challenger had little name recognition and no lawn signs, and perhaps a general malaise resulted in the lowest voter turnout in decades. In every ward, the voter turnout fell from 2018 (itself an election marred by the sudden decision by the newly elected Ontario PC government to cut city council by almost half, during the campaign period), though the drop was not uniform across the city. Ward 7 Humber-Black Creek saw the biggest drop in turnout, from 34.6% to just 22.1%, a decline of over one-third. That ward had the second-lowest voter turnout in 2018 and the lowest turnout in 2022.
Ward 4, which featured a three-way race for city council between incumbent Gord Perks, former John Tory staffer Siri Agrell, and Parkdale activist Chemi Lhamo, had the smallest decline in voter turnout and the highest ward turnout in 2022. Other wards that featured competitive council races, including Ward 5 York South-Weston, Ward 3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ward 11 University-Rosedale, and Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest, all saw smaller declines in voter turnout, though Ward 5 still had a lower-than-city-average turnout, with just 28.4% of eligible electors voting.
For now, it’s unclear what voter turnout will look like in the upcoming mayoral byelection in June. Traditionally, council by-elections have especially low engagement (Ward 22 councillor Nick Mantas was elected with just 17.9% of eligible voters bothering to cast a ballot in 2021), but a city-wide race for an open mayoral seat might be different, especially with media attention and a clear choice of recognizable candidates who campaign on distinct visions for the city’s future. A mayoral campaign that inspires voters in traditionally low-turnout wards in particular would be especially welcome.
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What: Take me back to Happiness: paintings of Hanlan’s Point art show by Zach Rosen
When: March 9-14 Opening Reception March 10 6-10PM
Where: Northern Contemporary Gallery, 420 Roncesvalles Avenue
Everybody’s talking about Hanlan’s Point of late as the Toronto Island Master Plan planning process caused concern among the communities that hold Hanlan’s dear. In the Toronto Star last week I argued this was, in part, a result of the culture of distrust that has been cultivated at City Hall recent years. Toronto artist Zack Rosen approached the sacred place by sketching what he saw. In his own words:
The idea for “Take Me Back to Happiness” was born at Hanlan’s Point itself last summer. I was trying to solve the familiar conundrum of “what does one bring for entertainment at a beach?” It seemed criminal to be glued to my phone at a nature preserve and I wasn’t in the mood to read. So I picked up a small pad of paper and a set of watercolour pencils, which I had never used before, and figured they could keep my brain and hands busy. My initial goal was to document a day at the beach in a way that would bring me back to sunshine in the cold days of winter – a little piece of Hanlan’s I could keep in a drawer. I drew little pink men under their beach umbrellas, and bird and skylines, and so much sand. After 24 such pieces – the entire pad of paper – it hit me in August that this could be the beginning of a larger series of paintings, and one that I could show the public. Northern Contemporary Gallery was interested, and I’ve spent the months since last summer creating more than 50 original paintings documenting the reality and the mindset of Hanlan’s point. They come in different sizes, styles and moods – but all are united by a singular strip of land that Toronto queers have long called home.
And more description of the show:
This March, gay Toronto artist Zack Rosen is debuting a series of paintings that celebrate the unparalleled queer freedoms of Hanlan’s Point nude beach. “Take Me Back To Happiness” will be hung at the Northern Contemporary Gallery (420 Roncesvalles Ave.) from March 8th- 14th, with an opening night extravaganza on the 10th .
Hanlan’s Point holds a special place in the Canadian queer heart. Nestled at the back of Toronto Island, it has been a beloved queer meeting spot since the ‘50s and hosted one of Toronto’s first pride celebrations in 1971. The city has officially designated the beach as “clothing optional,” making it the rare government-sanctioned safe space.
The gallery show will capture Hanlans’ anatomical and natural beauty. Inspired by Keith Haring, David Hockney and other gay luminaries, the works span a variety of sizes, painting styles and mediums. A few of the smaller pieces were drawn live at the beach this past summer. Expect a healthy balance between gorgeous beachscapes and male nudes.
Named for a haunting club track by DFA Records’ artist Crooked Man, the show captures all the ways that Hanlan’s Point represents an escape from the oppressive modernity of Anthropocene city life. The freedom of nudity, sexual expression and access to nature make it a fleeting and beloved summer destination for Toronto queers.
“Take Me Back To Happiness” brings the beach back in the days that summer seems furthest away. The paintings capture sunshine and joy, flirtation and longing, sadness and hope. As the natural world faces unprecedented threats to its long term integrity, “Take Me Back To Happiness” captures a time and place in Toronto queer life that might not last forever but can be enjoyed right now.
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What is the difference between “net” and “gross” density, and how do these relate to urban planning?
In Understanding Residential Density: Why is it so Confusing? we covered why density is considered an important but baffling issue in urban planning. Although it broadly refers to the number of people living in a specific area and helps us understand how densely populated an area is, there is a lot of misunderstanding about it. One of the most common involves the definition of “net” and “gross” density, so let’s dig in a bit deeper and try to find a little clarity.
As discussed in …Why is it so Confusing?, residential density is often expressed in dwelling or housing units per acre, in contemporary North American urban planning circles. Although one may find densities measured in dwelling or housing units per hectare in particular parts of Canada, acres remain the standard measure for reasons not worth delving into here.
Within this context, densities can be measured as “net” or “gross”, both of which can be important measures in helping urban planners and designers understand the density of population and land use within designated area towards making more informed decisions about how to create or transform the built environment.
Broadly speaking (with caveats coming later!), net density refers to the number of people living in an area, excluding parks, open spaces, and other non-residential land uses. This measure is calculated by dividing the total population by the total net residential land area. Simply put: it refers to the number of units per acre within a specific land area devoted to residential purposes. So, it may—but not always—include in driveways, private yards, and additional residential accessory structures, excluding public rights of way, parks, open spaces, and other non-residential land uses.
Gross density, on the other hand, generally includes all types of land uses, including parks, open spaces, and other non-residential land uses. This measure is calculated by dividing the total population by the total gross land area. Gross density often also includes infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks, and public spaces. This gives us a more comprehensive understanding of the overall land use in an area but often results in lower density numbers since including non-residential increases land area and the resulting units-to-land ratio. It’s important to also note that this also means that mixed-use urban neighbourhoods tend to have lower densities than ones that are primarily residential. Since gross density measures give us a more comprehensive understanding of the overall land use in a given area, many find it useful for comparing density across different areas.
Comparing net and gross density can give us a better understanding of the density of population and land use within a community or designated area. As a simple example: a neighbourhood with a high net density may have many people living in apartments and homes, while a neighbourhood with a high gross density may have many people living in high-rise buildings, as well as large parks and open spaces. As we learned from …Why is it so Confusing? though, ”may” is a keyword here. This might not be the case. Furthermore, labeling a density as “high” is vague since there is no standard definition of what “low”, “medium”, and “high” densities mean. This opens the doors to misinterpretation.
Given their differences, many believe that gross density measurements are often most useful when looking at large development areas that include internal roads, open spaces, and such. Net densities, in turn, are often considered more appropriate when looking at existing areas in search of infill opportunities. Again, however, their usefulness depends on intent.
Net and gross densities come with three important caveats. First, “net” and “gross” density definitions do differ slightly from place to place, so you’ll have to take the above explanation with a grain of salt. When looking at density-related information—be it maps, charts, graphs, or anything similar—the specifics matter. So, what is each municipality includes and excludes in each term is critical if you want an accurate picture.
Second, net and gross density numbers are intimately related to the area of land being measured. Base land area matters.
Third, many public and internal documents that include density numbers don’t explicitly specify whether the numbers are “net” and “gross,” let alone the specifics of each definition. The public document from the City of Vancouver below is a case in point.
2011 Population Density -City of Vancouver. What do these density figures include and exclude?
Presumably, the fact that the green park spaces are visually separated from the rest of the blocks means that the densities are net, but this is an assumption: explicitly clear annotations and definitions are required. Specifics matter: if it is net density, do the numbers include driveways? Yard spaces? The answers to simple questions like this will ultimately change the meaning of the numbers.
Now don’t get me wrong, kudos to the City of Vancouver for providing this scale of density information. Publicly available density by the block information is a rarity. But lack of clarity can and does lead to large misinterpretations of density information by the public, municipal officials, and others. Misinterpretations also can—and has—been used strategically towards more dishonest ends, as a means of legitimizing shady developments under the guise of “necessary densification” of “low-density” areas. As discussed in …Why is it so Confusing? clarity about density numbers is very important given how baffling it is.
So, what can we take away from this?
Well, both net density and gross density can provide equally valuable perspectives on the density of population and land use in a specific area. Net density generally refers to a specific land area devoted to residential purposes whilegross densityrefers to other non-residential land uses including parks and streets. But specifics matter and like so many planning-related issues the devil is in the details.
In summary:
- The definition of “net” and “gross” density is a common point of confusion.
- Net density and gross density can provide equally valuable information on land use and the density of people within a given area. But it depends on a number of variables.
- Net and gross density differ in focus. Generally, net density highlights the residential component of population density, while gross density takes into account all land uses. But specifics matter.
- What is included and excluded in both net and gross density numbers differs based on municipality. Clarity is required to make good sense of the information.
- Base land area matters for understanding net and gross density numbers.
- Frequently, public documents that include density measures do not explicitly cite whether net or gross densities are being communicated. This often leads to misinterpretations of density information.
- In general, gross densities are lower than net densities since they include larger areas including public rights of way. But it depends.
- Mixed-use urban neighbourhoods tend to have lower densities than ones that are primarily residential. But it depends.
- Some believe that gross density measurements are best used when looking at large developments that have several internal roads and open spaces. Many also find it useful for comparing density across different areas.
- Many consider net densities most useful for analyzing existing neighbourhoods for infill opportunities.
- Ultimately, both net and gross density measures can be useful but also be abused.
Some Useful Resources:
- Measuring Density: Working Definitions for Residential Density and Building Intensity by Ann Forsyth
- Visualizing Compatible Density via the Urbanist
Related pieces in the S101S:
- S101 Series: Introduction and Call
- S101S: Understanding Residential Density: Why is it so Confusing?
**
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver.
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It was summer 2021, and I was eager to get away and mentally escape the pandemic. Some wilderness would be nice, forest bathing in cottage country, perhaps some swimming and hiking. In previous years I had rented a car for such a journey, but in summer 2021 car rentals were wildly expensive or unavailable.
Should expensive or unavailable rental cars be an issue? Not really. Rural Ontario is beautiful and it should not only be possible to visit by transit, but normal to do so. But is it?
I decided to challenge my perception that it was impossible to visit rural Ontario by transit, and started to do some research. Bus or train were fine, but my preference was for the latter. I immediately daydreamed about the return of Ontario Northland, while discovering that Via Rail offers service to Parry Sound.
I knew little about Parry Sound, other than it’s a small town in cottage country. I learned that there were harbour cruises, bike rentals, hiking trails, beaches, a heritage garden, and brewery all within walking distance of each other. I figured this would be a nice little adventure and discovery for a few days’ break. I mentioned my research to a friend, a fellow urban planner and also a bit of the adventurous type. We’re both “extreme users” when it comes to transit – we’ll make it work even if the service isn’t great or frequent.
My friend signed on to the idea, and went on to tell me about research she’d conducted. Railways were, at one time, the only reliable way to escape to cottage country from Toronto. Stations like Muskoka Wharf were built beside the water so you could take the train right to your boat. And well-appointed resort hotels were sprinkled along rail routes. She referenced a PhD dissertation by Geoffrey Shifflett, which notes that the extension of the Northern Railway to Gravenhurst was partly funded by the City of Toronto. Imagine!
I was excited and went online to try to book our return journey from Toronto to Parry Sound on Via Rail. However, Via’s website would not allow a return journey — only a one-way journey. No explanation was presented. Perplexing.
Not one to give up, I started searching out the location of Via properties. I found a link that showed there are two rail stations: Parry Sound and Parry Sound South. One handles northbound journeys, and the other southbound journeys. They’re located about a 15 minute walk from each other in downtown Parry Sound. I’ve taken trains in several countries, and have had situations where I’ve booked a return ticket to a town, and been notified clearly on the ticket that the inbound and outbound journeys would be through different stations. Why does Via Rail not do this for Parry Sound? Frustrating.
All transit services in the province should be easy to navigate and easy to connect between — online and on-the-ground. Something equivalent to airline “codesharing,” except all transit should be on one “codeshare.” Sadly, different municipalities, transit agencies, and companies have their own online presences, symbols, graphics, maps, payment schedules, and options, and they don’t connect with each other. Information should be readily available about how all the transit options in the province are connected to each other. Surely the provincial government should provide this and maintain it, but it doesn’t appear to exist.
Though the (unnecessary) puzzle was solved, the 2 trains per week service nevertheless made it inconvenient for us. I had to spend more time trying to determine if there was another way. I eventually found that we could take an Ontario Northland bus from Parry Sound back to Barrie, and then switch to a GO Train back to Toronto. While this is possible, it could be better connected. The train stations in Parry Sound are downtown, but the Ontario Northland bus is a 30 minute walk away in a parking lot just off of the 400 series highway. Then, in Barrie, the Ontario Northland bus stops at the Barrie bus terminal (logical), but does not stop at the GO Train station. The walk between the bus terminal and GO Train station is about 25 minutes.
Coordination among these services does not appear to exist either on- or offline. Surely it is in the Province’s interest to ensure these services are convenient and equitable during a climate emergency. Surely there should be a body which oversees and controls this. A “fair transit controller” perhaps (playing on “air traffic controller”)?
That aside, is it possible to visit rural Ontario by transit? Yes. We hiked through a forest outside Parry Sound where a couple warned of bears along the trail — a far cry from downtown Toronto. We swam in Georgian Bay at an empty beach. We had dinner at the Trestle Brewery with the sound of the river gurgling below, and passing trains in plain view. It was a refreshing little getaway.
But it could (and should) be a lot easier to do. Upon returning, by chance I came upon Sean Marshall’s incredible “Mapping Ontario’s transit connections.” He has published a GIS map showing Ontario’s disparate transit services together, showing their routes and service levels, with links to agency sites. Brilliant. Sean has done something that should be a public service by the Province.
Thanks to Sean’s map, it was now easy to see how transit services connect with each other. The map shows two services that connect from Trenton and Belleville into Prince Edward County, which inspired my next trip.
Though the map assists (but does not fully solve) online transit integration, it cannot solve the issue of on-the-ground integration. On arriving at the Belleville Via Rail Station, it’s about a 30 minute walk to the Belleville bus terminal, where I caught “County Transit” to Picton. I had a lovely conversation with the driver, named Betty, who told me I could have called ahead and they would have picked me up at the Via station. That would have been great. Too bad I didn’t have the benefit of someone trying to ensure these services were integrated for me.
Betty went on to tell me that County Transit started as a volunteer effort by a women’s group to ensure that those with special needs could get around Prince Edward County. Since then, it has grown, and (in 2021) received funding from the provincial government to begin offering transit service in addition to offering specialised services. However, it still relies on donations. This is a model of transit service I had not heard of before and it sounded like a success. However, Betty told me they need more transit riders to help make it work. You know what to do, dear reader! I suspect it would help if we had more integrated systems. Where’s that fair transit controller?
In any case, I had a great time in Prince Edward County as well. My partner and I went cycling among wineries, browsed shop windows in Picton, had some great meals, hiked along a rocky shoreline, and generally enjoyed some time outside in country air.
Both trips into rural Ontario gave me that sense of “being away” and refreshment that I was seeking. I’m looking forward to finding new adventures this year, and I hope that (over time) they become easier to take and services are more integrated.
Photos by Matt Armstrong. Matt Armstrong is an urban planner at the City of Toronto. This article is a personal view that is not connected to his work. You can follow Matt on Twitter at @matt_a7.
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Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series.
THIS EPISODE: Mapping Arctic Sea IceNot all technology has to be disruptive, it may actually be most useful as an extension of our ways of life, instead of as a replacement. In the arctic, the Inuit have extensive traditional knowledge of traversing sea ice for hunting, gathering supplies, and travelling between communities. SmartICE is a social enterprise which uses technology to build on this traditional knowledge and map the ever-changing sea ice, so people can make informed decisions about how and where to travel.
Andrew Arreak is SmartICE Regional Operations Lead for Qikiqtaaluk Region, and explains the benefit this technology provides to northern communities.
“Every year the ice conditions are different… if we knew what was coming in terms of ice conditions, I don’t think we would need a SmartICE at all up in the north. It is a great adapting tool that we are able to use so we can provide the information for our local people. Since I’ve started working there has been less people falling through the ice, less search and rescue callouts, and people are more confident on how long they should be out at certain times of year before the ice starts to break.”
Listen to the episode to hear more about SmartIce. “SmartQAMUTIK run” image by Michael Schmidt, courtesy of SmartICE.
Spacing Radio · The Future Fix: Mapping Arctic Sea IceThe Future Fix is a partnership between Spacing and Evergreen for the Community Solutions Network: a program of Future Cities Canada. As the program lead, Evergreen is working with Open North and partners to help communities of all sizes across Canada navigate the smart cities landscape. The Community Solutions Network is supported with funding provided by Infrastructure Canada.
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According to new data from the TTC released last week, the number of violent incidents on the system rose 46% in 2022 compared to the year previous. Attacks on employees, meantime, rose more or less steadily throughout the pandemic, with 94 offences recorded in December. (The rate of offences per 100 employees has dropped somewhat.)
For the past few years, I have worked as an electrician for various contracting companies working on transit infrastructure in Toronto. And, as essential worker, I took transit almost daily through the entire pandemic. I am a long-time anti-poverty activist, writer and organiser, and I am ex-military. I am not a person who is scared easily.
But the situation on public transit is getting worse — a feeling that was confirmed by a TTC worker friend. I asked him if the recent media attention was scare-mongering or cherry-picking incidents. “It’s`absolutely worse,” he confirmed. By global standards, Toronto is still a very safe city, but there are bad vibes, and much worse, on the transit and in the streets these years.
Cutbacks to transit are cutbacks to public safety. According to TTC Riders, city council is proposing a 9% reduction in service compared to pre-pandemic levels, with up to ten minute wait times for subways, which will mean even longer waits for bus riders. I was on the Queen bus recently with my small child when a dishevelled man repeatedly threatened to rape and murder everyone on the bus.
The driver, as well as all the passengers, seemed terrified, but the driver also seemed afraid to stop and call for help, afraid it would escalate the situation. On that occasion, my child and I were able to get off that bus. But sometimes, I’m in a situation where taking the next bus means being late for work, which, in my industry, can get me fired. Fewer buses increases overcrowding, which increases the possibility of conflict, and makes people vulnerable when they’re waiting at stops for longer.
Some of the safety concerns are certainly due to the partial social breakdown of the pandemic. But others are a predictable result of service cutbacks and automation. Transit gates at many stations have moved to PRESTO-only. The new subways and streetcars trains hide the train operator from the passengers, and trains now have only one operator. GO Train stations, platforms and tunnels can seem entirely abandoned at times.
The effect of automation and de-staffing did not appear immediately. But over time, the absence of staff took eyes off the street, i.e., the opposite of Jane Jacobs famous saying. “One person train operation on the Yonge-University-Spadina [Line 1] has made things a lot more dangerous for drivers,” my TTC worker friend says. “I don’t know why we haven’t done more to speak out and organise and fight back.”
As drivers, ticket collectors and other staff disappeared from view, they were replaced with para-police ticket inspectors. Many people — especially Black and Indigenous people, people with immigration status concerns, and homeless and other low-income people — see the transit ticket police as a threat, not an addition to safety. And there have been some sightings, posted on Reddit and the CBC, of heavily armed police officers armed with what appear to be C8 carbines — a version of the AR-15 rifle — standing at subway stations.
We know what happened when Const. James Forcillo used a pistol to confront Sammy Yatim, an 18-year-old in distress, on the Dundas streetcar back in 2013. Yatim’s killing, and other police involved deaths were triggers for the racial justice and Black Lives Matter movement, but the problem of violent police intervention in mental health issues continues, especially where Black and Indigenous people are involved.
What is the tactical justification for rifles or other weapons? There is none: the attacks that have been taking place have involved broken bottles, bare hands, a hammer, knives, and in one case a BB gun — nothing that requires an increase in police armaments (in my tactical assessment as a military veteran). Standing with rifles at subway stations is pure intimidation and security theatre and they make the city feel less safe to many.
Unlike drivers and other transit staff, the inspectors and police are not performing a transit related job. To the rest of us, who have to be unarmed in these spaces, police with weapons feel like a hostile occupying force in public spaces. And they often treat the crime of poverty and vagrancy — not paying fares, looking poor, loitering, trouble figuring out the byzantine rules of the PRESTO card — the same as they treat threats and violent attacks.
What if all this fare inspection, police theatre at subway stations, and vagrancy-repression infrastructure was instead turned to rapid response, trained in de-escalation and mental health, and reacting only to the small minority who hold out the threat of violent attacks? Some funding for crisis response workers for subways was approved for the 2023 budget. I would hope that these resources can be dynamically deployed so the operators do not have to stop the bus and say, “everybody off,” then sit by himself and wait for help to arrive in an era when I can see the next bus arriving on my smartphone.
Safety issues coming from threatening and violent individuals affect homeless people more than anyone — they have nowhere to hide from constant exposure to such people. Homeless or street-involved people also face hate crimes, most recently, and visibly, with the beating death of Ken Lee. People who are just trying to shelter from extreme cold on the system deserve dignity and the safety from threats or attacks as much as anyone else. It is a waste of public resources to harass them into paying a fare they can’t pay, or to constantly ask them to move along.
City council earlier in February approved some funding to keep one 24/7 warming centre open through to April. When there are only a few spaces available, they are often in shelters widely viewed as violent and unsafe, like Maxwell Meighen or Seaton House in the downtown east. Dumping homeless people into transit infrastructure — buses, streetcars subways, the labyrinth of union station — has placed enormous strain on everyone, but especially homeless people who are forced into this unsuitable situation.
As I texted with my TTC maintenance friend, a situation developed: “Apprentice and I just got threatened on a train. Just now. Stepped off to get another train.” He said that maintenance workers often take off their vests when riding to a job to avoid being identified as transit workers and targeted for harassment. He added, “We probably could’ve handled him but the scary thing is losing your job…There’s cameras on the trains and anything we do could get us disciplined. Could have got smacked in the head with a crutch, then fired. You don’t want to wake up from a concussion with no income.”
I felt the same feeling as a woman worker heading back from work on transit, dressed head to toe in high-viz orange. I also felt like a target, especially during lockdowns when there were fewer people on transit. In one specific incident, I was sitting on the subway chatting with a co-worker after work, dressed in my high viz train worker orange, when a man, snot dripping out of his nose, stopped strolling the subway aisle to stare at me wordlessly and threateningly.
After that incident, I started changing after work into more subdued clothing that did not identify me as a woman trades worker, which i felt made me a target.
As my TTC worker friend says, “It’s a housing issue. So far as transit is concerned, the TTC needs to be free. Most assaults are about fare issues … The cops are a big part of the problem actually. They’re the ones enforcing the evictions, clearing people out of parks, making people homeless. And if we do go on strike, it’ll be those same cops enforcing back-to-work legislation.”
Megan Kinch is a union electrician and freelance writer living in Toronto. You can find her on Twitter at @meganysta.
photo by Enoch Leung
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Here’s a question for the women and men positioning themselves for a run at the mayor’s chair: Do you think Therme’s proposed $350 million mega-spa and accompanying underground mega-garage represent an appropriate re-use of the Ontario Place lands, or is this a generational mistake that squanders some of Toronto’s most valuable waterfront park space, not to mention an epic amount of public funding?
To be clear, I’m looking for answers from current and former councillors Josh Matlow, Brad Bradford, Ana Bailão, as well as Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter, who served in cabinet for the years during which her government could have, but didn’t, take action. (Gil Penalosa and Chloe Brown are also running, and both have expressed their opposition to Therme’s plan.)
To be even more clear, whoever wins the big prize on June 26 will have to cast votes on this boondoggle of a scheme. The city has received a formal application from Infrastructure Ontario to amend the zoning bylaw and the official plan to allow Therme — which seems to have cranked up its PR machinery in recent weeks — to construct what will be an eight or nine-story human aquarium, accessible exclusively to those willing and able to pay to enter this wellness wonderland.
According to a timetable set out by Queen’s Park, the applications, which are going through a technical analysis and a consultation period, will be formally vetted by council later this year. Former mayor John Tory, who led an Ontario Place task force a decade ago, seemed perfectly content to let the Ford government lease a large swath of this park to a company that has not once revealed the source of its funding. But will the next mayor be as compliant?
While the province has the ability to trump whatever council decides, Queen’s Park has claimed it will abide by the planning approvals process. And regardless of what the Ford government decides, the views of the next mayor will matter, a lot. And so we need to know what those views are.
Certainly, the three potential candidates with council experience should, at least on paper, get why this plan stinks.
Matlow hears constantly from his mid-town constituents about the need for more public space in those parts of his ward experiencing high-density growth.
Bailão, in turn, represented Davenport, which historically has had the lowest proportion of park space of any ward in the city.
Bradford, for his part, is a veteran of Toronto’s planning department. He, of all people, knows that in the area where the city’s intensification efforts are bringing the most population density, there’s an urgent planning case to be made for protecting all available park space.
The good-planning arguments, of course, don’t stop there. At a time when land use policy increasingly aligns with investment in mass transit, the province’s decision to situate a massive underground parking garage (with covered connections to the spa) just a few hundred metres from the eventual terminus of the Ontario Line is perverse.
Imagine if, in the mid-1980s, Metro and the provincial government had insisted on ringing SkyDome with hectares of parking instead of connecting it to Union Station? It’s shocking to consider that a current generation of political leaders managed to unlearn those lessons from almost two generations ago. The poverty of the Ford government’s thinking is particularly blinkered in this period of global warming. I’d hope the Tories’ utter indifference won’t be parroted by whomever becomes chief magistrate of a city that has declared a climate crisis.
Earlier in the winter, I spoke with designer Kelly Alvarez Doran, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s faculty of architecture, about the climate implications of that garage, which will house over 2,100 parking spaces and cost almost $400 million. The architectural firm designing it is BDP Quadrangle, whose website includes a video about low carbon design.
Doran in recent years has researched the sources of carbon, both operational and embodied, in various types of buildings. His data shows that over half of the emissions generated by a typical mid-rise apartment come from the concrete required to pour the foundation for the basement — the so-called bathtub.
The carbon in the concrete, he adds, is only half the emissions story. Because it will be constructed entirely below the water table, the garage will require sump pumps to operate in perpetuity. A huge amount of energy will be required to run those systems, plus ventilation. “Of anywhere to build an underground parking garage, in a lake is the most consequential,” Doran states. “This is insane because it’s public money.”
There is still much professional and technical assessment to be done on the Therme project and the parking garage — the joint City of Toronto/Waterfront Toronto design review panel has yet to take a more intensive look at the public space plan and the built form. The City’s planning department, as well as officials in other divisions including transportation, are continuing to work their way through the massive rezoning and development application. The provincial auditor-general might even get into the act, if the NDP’s request for a review is accepted.
Eventually, this thing will land at council, and it will fall to the next mayor to decide whether or not to call out the Therme/garage fiasco as bad for the city — an inexcusable privatization of one of Toronto’s pre-eminent public spaces, and a place that has acquired a renewed importance in the life of a downtown where park land becomes increasingly sought-after with each new high-rise.
Unlike our former mayor, the six likely candidates aren’t rich (as far as I know). They probably don’t own luxurious private recreational homes. They likely use public space. Their work as ward councillors (and, in the case of Bradford, as a planner) should have made them aware of why a great public park in a rapidly densifying city is such a precious commodity. At the same time, Bailão and Bradford have already lined up Ford government insiders and spin doctors to work on their as-yet unannounced campaigns.
So back to my question: Where do they stand on the future of Ontario Place?
Ask them.
photo by John Bauld
The post LORINC: Where will the mayoral candidates stand on Ontario Place? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
This is a virtual bike tour (video with audio) of Vancouver’s waterfront, by the City of Vancouver’s Senior Urban Designer Scot Hein with Josh Bassett for presentation in 2012 at the Waterfront Centre, a respected Washington, DC think tank advocating for design excellence. Since then, much more ongoing design work has occurred, including Northeast False Creek and related park space at the end of the Creek, and more is coming, including waterfront and under-bridge amenities anticipated with Senakw.
The post Video Vancouver: A Virtual Bike Tour of Vancouver’s Waterfront appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
We’re back for 2023, and there is… a lot to catch up on.
To begin, Emma McIntosh, Ontario reporter for The Narwhal, guides us through Doug Ford’s Greenbelt plan. What will the long term effects be? Who stands to benefit? Did certain developers catch wind of the changes to land that was formerly protected?
Then, Ontario Place for All co-founder Norm Di Pasquale tells us about the growing criticism of plans to turn Ontario Place into a privatized tourist destination.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.
Spacing Radio · Episode 069: Worst Case OntarioThe post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 069, Worst Case Ontario appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
A new report sounds the alarm on the housing crisis for immigrant seniors in and around Vancouver’s Chinatown.
Many seniors expect to live out the remainder of their lives there in the urban community. But the limited homes that exist are precious and may also be precarious.
There are units in deteriorating, century-old buildings with steep staircases, poor ventilation, and a lack of formal support for senior care. Buildings may be sold, displacing their residents. Culturally focused care facilities are in high demand with long waitlists. And the seniors’ population is only expected to grow; according to census data, the population of people over age 55 in the area is on track to double in the next 20 years. And there are not enough homes to house them.
The report, authored by Louisa-May Khoo with data analysis by Carmut Me, is the result of research funded by the City of Vancouver and the Chinatown Society Heritage Buildings Association. It surfaces long sought-after data to capture the scale of what it’s like for a senior to find a home in Chinatown, from the scarcity of units to the ever-lengthening housing waitlists.
“It’s not just supply that’s lacking—it’s suitable supply and then it’s culturally suitable supply,” said Khoo, a Ph.D. candidate, and public scholar at the University of British Columbia’s urban planning school.
This is a demographic that easily “falls through the cracks,” she says.
The majority of units in the area do not have senior care services. Many seniors are monolingual in Chinese dialects, with little to no ability to communicate in English.
The Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, which works with Chinatown seniors, adds that there is a significant number of seniors who have incomes less than $15,000 a year. Some are undocumented or haven’t yet been citizens for 10 years, so they don’t qualify for the Old Age Security Pension. They may not have family nearby or have working-class families unable to provide financial support.
These multiplying marginalities of race, age, and class pushes them “further down the line in terms of visibility” when it comes to policy solutions, says Khoo.
Surveying the small supply
Khoo says the report’s data was possible thanks to consolidating data from BC Housing, the City of Vancouver, and various Chinatown societies. These partners — along with others that included Vancouver Coastal Health, the provincial seniors advocate, and the social service agency S.U.C.C.E.S.S. — lent input to the study.
The data revealed that there are 12,788 units of affordable housing in and around Chinatown and the nearby Downtown Eastside. The affordable housing in the study area consists of single-room occupancy units in old buildings and non-market units. Most Chinese seniors live in Chinatown proper and the adjacent neighbourhood of Strathcona, with a small population in the Downtown Eastside.
Of those total homes, 5,269 units are designated for seniors, with a minimum age requirement typically set at 55 years.
Of those senior homes, 1,577 units are in buildings with some Chinese community affiliation, ranging from the neighbourhood’s Chinese benevolent societies to Chinese care homes.
Of those senior homes with Chinese affiliation, only 504 units offer services for seniors. This includes facilities for independent living with limited service, supportive housing, assisted living, and long-term care. The ones that offer more care include services like therapists, nutritionists, social workers, nursing teams, cultural programming, and Chinese meal plans — all of which can be transformative for a senior’s well-being.
Who holds the housing?
Chinese benevolent societies have played a founding presence in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and their advocacy for the rights of Chinese citizens dates back to their vocal fight against the head tax and later, the restrictive Immigration Act. Today, their focus is less on settlement and more on cultural and social programming for their aging members. Having hung onto their real estate in the neighbourhood, they still have a total of about 800 units of housing. Only 390 of them are designated for seniors.
Despite the benevolent societies’ deep historical connections in Chinatown, the housing they provide is not well-designed for seniors to live out the rest of their lives. The historic units were originally built for young bachelors to temporarily stay while navigating a new country.
There is a lack of information available about the accessibility of the housing, says Khoo. While some of the buildings have elevators, they may not be wheelchair accessible. Many of these buildings are over 100 years old and would be considered “run-down,” according to the study.
That being said, benevolent society housing boasts incredibly affordable rents, ranging from $80 to $420 a month. These spaces are generally not advertised publicly, but vacancies are communicated by word of mouth. The Chinatown benevolent society members have strong social ties, based on family clans and kinship from coming out of the same region in China. So the collection of rents is never an issue, the report found.
Spaces in formal facilities that offer services have long waitlists. Depending on which facility, average waits range from one month to one year for assisted living and two months to two years for long-term care.
“It’s already so little,” said Khoo, who stresses the need to protect the existing stock from being sold or converted for some other purpose than Chinese seniors housing.
One of the triggers of the report was last year’s initial sale of Vancouver Grace Seniors Home in the neighbourhood. The announcement left families in fear about the chaotic and impending displacement until the province stepped in to acquire the building.
The facility had 70 units of assisted living for Chinese seniors. Losing them would’ve meant losing 14 percent of the area’s senior homes with Chinese affiliation and services — demonstrating that the loss of any one building would be a significant blow to the limited stock available.
A problem made invisible
This report is “long overdue,” says Beverly Ho, operations manager at the Yarrow society.
While the data isn’t surprising, Ho says having an official source to point to is important because the voices of Chinese seniors “aren’t really validated unless there’s some kind of academic study.”
Ho has seen a lack of understanding about what Chinese seniors go through firsthand.
In the low-income neighbourhood’s food lineups on the street, Chinese seniors have been pushed, yelled at, and spat at, all of which increased during the pandemic. She says anti-Asian xenophobia in mainstream media contributes to a false impression that the seniors are rich and not actually in need. “When they cover topics about Chinese people, it’s usually about real estate or wealthy Chinese,” she said.
Yarrow runs a culturally focused grocery program for seniors, crucial in a neighbourhood whose food resources mostly aren’t attuned to their needs. Ho says Chinese seniors have given her cheese and western sausages they’ve received.
Despite the challenges, Chinatown still remains a draw for Chinese seniors as a place to live the rest of their lives. It’s a rare place where there are organic cultural and community supports. Shops and services are within walking distance and people can conduct business in their home language. Plus there are community hubs to do activities and meet other Chinese seniors.
“A lot of [seniors] grew up in war and famine or really oppressive regimes,” said Ho. “They’re definitely resourceful and rely on each other.”
In times of crisis, seniors will reach out to people in the community from caretakers, and friends to service organizations.
But there’s another side to this: those organic ties can work so smoothly that they hide the formal systemic supports that seniors require but aren’t being provided.
A “campus of care”
The huge challenge of inadequate, limited housing and culturally focused senior care in Chinatown will require partnerships between governments and other agencies, says Khoo.
The report offers three recommendations.
First, to protect and improve the limited stock of housing that currently exists.
Second, to develop new seniors housing with culturally focused care services. Right now, seniors have to navigate a fragmented array of services. A “one-stop shop” would help, says Khoo, and it has to be attuned to seniors’ linguistic and cultural needs.
Third, to envision the neighbourhood as a “campus of care.” While the term includes the presence of medical facilities and housing for different life stages and arrangements, it also refers to the neighbourhood itself as a senior-friendly environment and building on many of the elements that are already part of the neighbourhood’s draw: intergenerational activity, recreational activity, and commercial activity.
There have been decades of conversations about revitalizing Vancouver’s Chinatown and Khoo stresses that senior care plays a significant part. Many Chinatowns around the world have had their residents displaced by gentrification, becoming what she wrote in the report as a “postcard pretty shell of a tourist attraction.”
While Vancouver’s Chinatown has had its share of gentrification, it still has a significant live-in community of seniors.
“Investing in seniors’ living environment actually alleviates health-care costs and health-care consumption,” said Khoo. “We need to see the urban and health as correlated, how the living environment has significant impacts on health, emotional, physical and mental well-being. You can’t see it as zero-sum.”
…
Christopher Cheung is a reporter at The Tyee, where this story originally appeared on Feb. 8, 2023.
The post In Chinatown, Precious Few Places for Seniors to Live appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Almost lost in Toronto’s vault of Black history is a case of racial discrimination in the spring of 1964 that nearly prevented the Bloor subway line from opening on time.
In mid April of that year, Jack White, a 38-year-old Black ironworker and union steward, was laid off from his job as part of the subway construction crew working under the Prince Edward Viaduct, the iconic, 105-year-old truss arch bridge that spans the Don Valley. His union asserted that White was dismissed because of his colour. His co-workers set down their tools alongside his and a protest ensued for the next two-and-a-half weeks, threatening the project’s timely completion and a delay to the official opening. McNamara, the offending company, sub-contracted the job to rival Dominion Bridge rather than re-hire White.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, White did return to the bridge. “Dispute Settled,” crowed the headline of an undated newspaper clipping in the family’s scrapbook, which noted that White’s return had “averted a complete stoppage of construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway.”
Castle Frank Station opened on time along with the rest of the first phase of today’s “Line 2” on February 26, 1966.
Who was Jack White?
He was a hardworking family man living in the home that he and his wife, Alma Dixon, had purchased in 1957 at Dupont and Ossington. A transplanted Nova Scotian with a rich family pedigree, John Edgar (Jack) White was born in Halifax on July 10, 1925. He was 12 when his father, a renowned minister who is federally recognized as a significant historical figure, died. His mother, Izie Dora, was musically gifted and had married Capt. Rev. William Andrew White at age 16. Due to his father’s death in 1936, Jack, like all the boys in the family of ten, was forced to quit school and go to work to support the family. He left school with a Grade 5 education and upgraded himself taking night courses.
Jack took basic training in the Canadian Army, though he did not serve in the Second World War because he had been discharged for medical reasons. In Halifax, Jack worked for CN. That job didn’t last very long, but it was that position that introduced him to the union movement.
It was a quick initiation, as Jack told it:
“I had just come out the army. UIC [the Unemployment Insurance Commission] gave me a slip to report to Canadian National Railroad. The superintendent said, ‘We have no job.’ Then he looked and he said, ‘Wait. Are you related to Reverend White?’ And I said, ‘Yes. He’s my father.’ ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘that’s different’ and he gave me the job.”
Jack continued: “I took the job two days before a pending strike. I knew nothing about strikes. Nobody was telling us anything. So I wrote to the president of the union saying, ‘What the hell is happening here?! I’m a new employee and somebody tells me I may go on strike.’ Before I knew it someone said, ‘Well, you should be our representative.’ So I became the shop steward in the car department. There were porters … but no Black had ever worked in the car department before.”
Jack always made sure he was impeccably dressed. He never wore jeans or shorts. He was not a sportsman, nor a hobbyist – he was a worker’s man and a private, family man.
He and Alma moved to Toronto in November, 1949, and eventually had four children.
He worked in the construction industry, always edited his union’s newsletters, and was editor of “The Canadian Negro,” a landmark newspaper in the early 1950s, for four years.
Those who knew Jack remember his gorgeous singing voice, a trademark of his musical family whose most-acclaimed member was his international concert-singing sister, Portia White. If old enough, they’d also remember Lorne White, a regular on CBC’s long-running, weekly television show, Singalong Jubilee. Jack’s accomplished older brother Bill received a 1970 Order of Canada medal for humanitarianism, was decorated many times for his community service and lauded for his remarkable musical ability. Jack himself sang for a time with the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir.
He earned the nickname, “Jack White the Black Red,” because he was a member of the Communist party for a time. In 1963, he ran as a provincial election candidate for the New Democratic Party in the Dovercourt riding — not expecting to win, but feeling it was important to make a statement as a standard bearer. His son, Allan, recalls driving around with Jack on a rented flatbed truck, his father soliciting votes through a megaphone. One of Jack’s prized possessions was the photo album dated September 25, 1963, from campaign workers. He was one of the first Black people to run for provincial office. Another, Leonard Braithwaite in Etobicoke, was the first in Ontario to be elected MPP in that same year.
Jack became the first Black business representative of any union in North America for the Ironworkers. In the 1970s, he was director of social services for the Ontario Federation of Labour and a business representative for CUPE. His accomplishments were door-opening for others. Jack didn’t think the unions of the day were moving quickly enough in embracing diversity. He was a pivotal figure in the Ontario Black Trade Unionists organization, which named a scholarship after him.
Measured and controlled, Jack’s passion emerged when he was fighting for rights and freedoms, whether outside the American embassy on University Avenue, picketing for “Negro freedom” in the 1960s, or at an arbitration hearing for a sick or injured worker.
After he left CUPE, Jack became an industrial relations consultant, who resolved hundreds of files and counted many unions among his clients. He established a stellar record successfully fighting for workers’ benefits and entitlements — a trusted and able confidante and claims negotiator with an unbeatable North American reputation.
Jack White died on Sept. 10, 2002. When commuters ride 494 metres across the Bloor Viaduct, some 40 metres above the Don Valley Parkway on Line 2, they are passing the spot where an historic union battle was launched to protect the rights of all Black workers.
There ought to be a heritage marker installed at that point, to commemorate the Jack White story and labour’s significance in that fight against systemic anti-Black racism. For more on Jack White, visit the Toronto Workers History Project page at twhp.ca.
Sheila White, a niece of Jack White, is a writer, speaker and Unitarian lay chaplain. Her race relations-themed novel, “The Letters,” is due for release by Yorkland Publishing later this year.
images courtesy of the White family
The post Black History Month: Jack White and the Bloor Viaduct strike action appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
By Cheryl Thompson and Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert
In 1983, Toronto radio personality Ron Nelson introduced local audiences to the program “Fantastic Voyage” — a college radio show hosted on Toronto Metropolitan University’s (formerly Ryerson University’s) 88.1 CKLN FM — which provided hometown and cross-Canada artists (especially those signed to independent labels) with a platform to circulate their hip hop artifacts.
Nelson’s program also shared the airwaves with other college radio stations such as York University’s 105.5 (CHRY-FM) (now VIBE 105.5) and the University of Toronto’s 89.5 (CIUT-FM). Forty years later, the radio landscape in the city is dramatically different.
In 2011, the CRTC decided to revoke CKLN’s license citing “numerous regulatory violations and a lack of quality control.” VIBE and CIUT continue today with shows such as DJ Mel Boogie’s Studio B, and DJ DTS & Matthew Romeo’s Masterplan Show. But as Urban-formatted commercial radio took over the airways, listeners began transitioning away from community radio and it slowly faded into the niche market.
The Urban radio format, which prioritizes Black genres of music such as hip hop, R&B, reggae, soca, and gospel, has always posed a challenge to the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)’s content rules, which tightly regulate content and formats during weekly peak radio listenership hours (6:00 am to 6:00 pm).
Commercial radio stations must ensure that 35% of the music they broadcast during these hours is Canadian content. These requirements feel incredibly retrograde in an era when the music industry is global in its orientation, as evidenced by artist-turned music executive Kardinal Offishall’s new appointment as Global A&R at Def Jam, the iconic American hip hop label. And yet, Canadian radio is guarded like a national border; regulators have long decided they get to decide not only what we have access to, as well the conditions that shape that access.
In addition to commercial, campus and community radio, broadcast licenses are granted to ethnic (non-official languages) stations, and Indigenous stations; CBC/Radio Canada; and not-for-profit stations. Similar to Indigenous radio (at 10%) and CBC/Radio Canada (at 20%), campus and community radio are permitted to devote 12% of their programming to “Special Interest Music,” defined by the CRTC as “Concert,” “Folk,” “World beat,” “Jazz and Blues,” “Non-classic religious,” and “Experimental Music.”
By comparison, the CRTC categorizes Popular Music as “Pop, rock, and dance,” “Country,” “Acoustic,” and “Easy Listening.” As well, there are two unique categories within in this format. According to CRTC regulations, stations categorized as one of these must either devote at least 90% or more of its music to songs composed before 1956 (10% must be Canadian), or, in the other category, 90% of the music must consist of selections released before January 1, 1981. In these cases, at least 30% must be Canadian, and played on a weekly basis during peak listenership hours.
Under these regulations there is no specific Black Music classification; instead “1950s R&B,” “Soul,” “Hip Hop,” “Urban,” and “Contemporary R&B” are all placed under the “Pop, rock and dance” category. As a result of what we view as a regulatory bias, over the past 20 years, Black radio (and the infrastructure that sustains Black music in this country) has been challenged and constrained by Canada’s format and content rules.
In 1990, Denham Jolly’s Milestone Radio made its first application for an Urban radio station. It was denied. The CRTC granted a license to Rawlco Communications instead to create a Country station, despite two existing Country stations at the time. When Milestone put forward another bid six years later, the CRTC denied it yet again. This time, the CRTC gave the city’s last commercial high-power FM channel allotment to the CBC.
After eleven years, three applications, 12,000 signatures, and $400,000 in personal funds, the CRTC in 2000 finally approved Milestone’s bid and Canada got its first Black-owned Urban format on the 93.5 FM frequency.
In February, 2001, Flow 93.5 (CFXJ-FM) premiered with a format that represented a significant change in radio — a mix of Black music, oldies and contemporary — but also a strategically placed radio frequency. The 93.5 band was chosen to woo Black listeners away from Buffalo’s Power 93.7 (WBLK-FM), a station that had been, for many, the only source of Black music up until this point.
Ten years after Flow premiered, the void that 93.5 had filled was again emptied following CTV’s acquisition of the station in a $27 million deal which revamped the station to focus almost entirely on contemporary Black music.
As Flow slowly morphed into a Contemporary Pop station, Black community leaders, like the late Fitzroy Gordon, felt that a more Caribbean-focused station with an emphasis on oldies, history, and community conversations was missing in Toronto. Thus, in 2009, after years of work, Gordon was granted a partial license (without a broadcast frequency) to establish a Black and Caribbean commercial station. It would be called CARN 98.7 (CKFG-FM), for Caribbean & African Radio Network.
In 2011, Gordon’s Intercity Broadcasting Network received CRTC approval to use the 98.7 frequency. But again, objection to the station was mounted by the CBC with support from four commercial broadcast groups (Rogers Media, Astral Media, Bell Media, and Durham Radio), which argued that 98.7 would be too close to 99.1 (CBLA-FM). Despite the objections, Gordon’s license was approved. When the station officially launched on October 1, 2011, it signed on as G 98.7. Its first live broadcast, on November 28, 2011, kicked off with Jimmy Cliff’s 1971 reggae classic, “I Can See Clearly Now.”
However, when Gordon died suddenly in 2019, Black community members were forced to clearly see the station’s financial issues. Within a year, G 98.7 was placed into receivership and put up for sale. In October, 2020, Neeti Prakash (Neeti P. Ray), a multicultural broadcaster of South Asian descent, bought G 98.7. As his first appointment, Ray named former iHeartRadio executive Gary Gunter, an American who had spent years working in U.S. Urban radio, as general manager of the station.
Despite public outcry for the station to remain Black-owned and operated, including an online petition with over 10,000 signatures launched by Toronto author Aubrey Clarke, there were no bids submitted for approval by Black-owned groups to buy the station. The new owners offered reassurances that it would continue its cultural mission to represent Toronto’s Black community.
Then, in February, 2022, G joined with Flow to become the new Flow 98.7. Most of the on-air hosts (e.g., Red and Spec) have remained on this new Urban station, but Gunter made several changes that loyal listeners did not see coming. One was the decision to part ways with a long time show, “Mark & Jem in the Morning,” without any farewell or recognition of their time on Flow. Mark (Strong) and Jem (Jemini)’s morning show had run on the station since its inception.
The new Flow also cut nostalgic programming, reduced news content, and shifted to a mostly contemporary hip hop and R&B format. It was a difficult move that the old Flow had also made within three months of its launch, once the station recognized that mixing talk with music meant a loss in valuable revenue and listenership, and made it difficult for the station to fulfill the conditions of its license, as regulated by the CRTC.
When you dig into the numbers, the merger made good business sense. As the largest radio market in the country, as of fall 2021, Toronto claimed an average radio audience of more than 5.87 million people on a daily basis. Commercial radio station Boom 97.3 (CHBM-FM), with over 2.3 million weekly listeners according to the Numeris ratings service, combined with its competitor, CHUM 104.5, to capture five million of the city’s weekly listeners.
By comparison, G in 2019 drew a daily average of 55,000 unique listeners (over age 12) while Flow captured 747,125 weekly listeners. Thus, pooling the listenership together meant G no longer competed for listeners with Flow, and the new station could also better compete in post-prime listenership hours (6:00 pm to 9:00 pm) with CBC’s other radio frequency, 94.1 (CBL-FM) and its R&B-themed “Marvin Room,” hosted by A. Harmony (which airs two days per week), and the daily show, “The Block,” with former Flow host Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe. The latter offers a mix of hip hop, soul, and R&B, both contemporary and oldies.
We get that commercial radio has tight margins. But 20 years after Flow, and over a decade after G, we’re now left with one Urban music station that has Black content but is not Black-owned. In order to meet content rules, it must play music that’s really more about competing for ears during prime listenership hours than keeping alive Gordon’s vision of a network of Black music — popular and special interest — that spans decades, geographies of space and place, and even into talk radio.
When Mark and Jem’s morning show resurfaced on the not-for-profit 106.5 Elmnt FM (CFPT-FM) in January, 2022, we, like many, turned our dials to this new station, owned by First Peoples Radio, a subsidiary of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). Because it is not wholly commercial radio, Elmnt plays a mix of popular music and special interest, and has a mandate that at least 25% of the music played by the station is by Indigenous Canadian musicians. By the end of 2022, however, the duo (and others) were laid off to keep the station afloat. In an Instagram post, they bid adieu to their decades-long presence on Toronto’s airwaves.
These patterns pose a question: if community radio is not structured to prioritize Black music, and Toronto’s commercial radio is dominated by media goliaths, what will become of Black music — old and new — on the radio if the new Flow doesn’t make it?
In his 1985 hit, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” rapper LL Cool J immortalized the Boombox, a large portal radio that blasted Black music within a limited geographic space. Today, Black music has no limits. Its sonic influences are boundless and exist everywhere and anywhere there are Black people. Many would also agree that Black music today, and for a long time, has driven the pulse of the market and the direction of much of the popular music the public consumes. And yet, in Canada, the CRTC does not prioritize Black music in its broadcasting vision.
For too long, Black music has been stifled by the CRTC’s regulations. This history of Black music in Canadian radio reveals that if the Urban radio format is to survive, the regulators need not overlook the nuances of genre, race, and locality, and truly practice their mission and mandate of ensuring access to compelling creative content, reflecting the nation’s diversity, and protecting the interests of all Canadians.
Cheryl Thompson is an Associate Professor in Performance at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University. Her latest book Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty was published in 2021. Follow Cheryl on twitter at @DrCherylT.
Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Language Research Center at the University of Calgary. She also serves as a researcher on the education committees for the Universal Hip Hop Museum and the Hip Hop Education Center think tank. Follow Francesca on twitter at @hiphopscholar82.
The post Black History Month: Making space for Black music in Canadian radio appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Toronto’s streets are in terrible shape. I notice this as a pedestrian, trying to cross at intersections where the zebra stripes that define my safe(r) space to cross have mostly disappeared and have never been repainted. I notice it as a cyclist, bumping across and dodging sections of crumbling asphalt in bike lanes. I notice is as a transit rider, shaking and jolting as the bus I’m riding traverses potholes rough enough to shake up even a huge transit vehicle.
And I notice it as a driver. Before I started driving again a few years ago, I kind of thought that the crumbling pavements that jolted me as a cyclist would be muted by the sophisticated shock absorbers of a car. But I drive a little car, and I feel every bump and hole shaking me as I negotiate Toronto’s roads. In the driver’s seat, I see a constant reel play out in front of me of the potholes puncturing our roadways.
Massive potholes on Highview Ave at S Edgely Ave and Highview Ave at Pinegrove Ave. @311Toronto can these please be patched soon? pic.twitter.com/YOhph9wsyf
— Kevin Rupasinghe (@KevinRupasinghe) February 17, 2023
And it’s only going to get worse. Toronto’s latest budget specifically under-funds road maintenance needs, with the result that major roads will on average be in “poor” condition by 2024, with local roads following behind a few years later.
From 2023 Budget Notes, Transportation Services (PDF)
The solution is to spend more money on maintenance. But this maintenance is being neglected specifically because Toronto is in a perpetual budget crunch. If we want better roads, where do we get the money?
There’s an obvious solution, already tried. Drivers suffer the most from bad roads – not simply in discomfort, but also potentially from expensive damage to their cars. So it makes sense that drivers specifically could contribute to better maintaining the roads they rely on.
And Toronto has the means to make that happen. The City is allowed to charge a personal vehicle registration tax – a payment drivers make when they regularly renew their vehicle registration. Toronto in fact implemented that tax under Mayor David Miller, adding $60 to the cost of registering vehicles for Toronto residents, raising around $60 million a year. But Rob Ford abolished it as soon as he became mayor.
As we launch into a new, unexpected mayoral election on the heels of a budget that has revealed just how bad Toronto’s roads are expected to get, it might be time to bring this idea up again and debate it.
When Mike Layton was a councillor, he regularly introduced motions at budget time to reintroduce the tax, and they were regularly voted down (although in 2020 it almost got accepted by the budget committee, losing in a 3-3 tie (item 4g), with potential new mayoral candidate Brad Bradford among those voting in favour).
From BU16.2 – 2020 Capital and Operating Budgets, item 4g.
Progressive councillors proposed it again in 2021, to no avail. With Layton gone and a new slate of councillors this year, however, no-one took on Layton’s mantle as a vehicle registration tax champion in this year’s budget deliberations (they may have hoped that a more general review of revenue tools that was approved might include it, but no-one moved a motion to explicitly do so).
Layton always called for the proceeds to be split between road maintenance and the TTC. It was a worthy concept, but dividing the spoils meant the proposal had even less appeal to drivers and the councillors who prioritize driver interests.
If we instead devoted the entire sum to road maintenance, it would still help non-drivers as well as drivers. As a frequent walker, one thing I would want the funds to focus on is maintaining striping on roadways and crosswalks. Zebra stripes were introduced to Toronto crosswalks because testing revealed they reduced pedestrian-vehicle conflicts by making pedestrian spaces more visible. Yet they have been allowed to wear off at intersections across the city. Lane striping for cars has also been allowed to fade across the city, creating uncertainty and danger for drivers. Paint isn’t that expensive – a few million dollars extra a year should help ensure fresh, clear striping that makes the roads safer for everyone.
Cyclists would obviously benefit from better road surfaces. I live in the east end and take the Shuter bike lanes when going downtown – they are like a secret passage from the east to the heart of the city. But until recently, they were in terrible shape, making them a bone-jarring route that many cyclists avoided. But most of Shuter was re-paved not long ago, and the difference is remarkable – the repaved sections are now a joy to ride.
As for transit, people who ride buses – the workhorses of our transit system – would be grateful for smoother rides, and perhaps a few more riders would choose to take the bus. Bus drivers would particularly benefit, since they can suffer stress injuries from the vibrations generated by excessively jarring routes. The buses themselves suffer, too, and better roads would likely save the TTC some maintenance costs.
But car drivers would be the biggest beneficiaries, which is why it makes sense to have them contribute specifically to the road maintenance budget. It’s worth noting that, even with their contribution, the vast majority of the road maintenance budget would continue to be paid for by all Torontonians, including non-drivers, through property taxes.
One argument for leaving roads in poor shape is that it discourages speeding. However, the records from the recently installed speed cameras show that there is still plenty of speeding, and rough roads increase the danger of loss of control and accidents resulting from that speeding. Instead, what we should be doing is reconceiving roadways when we resurface or rebuild them, so that they structurally discourage speeding – something we can accomplish more quickly if we have the funds to catch up on maintenance.
Other safety measures can be incorporated in road rebuilding too, such as bulb-outs that both reduce pedestrian crossing times and “daylight” intersections by preventing drivers from parking illegally where they block views for other drivers entering the intersection (Ottawa has a lot of these, for example).
A significant obstacle to a renewed personal vehicle registration tax would be Premier Doug Ford. Not only was cancelling the vehicle registration tax one of the first actions he and his brother took when his brother became mayor and he became a councillor, but Premier Ford recently cancelled the provincial registration fee for personal vehicles. Toronto re-introducing the tax would probably make him apoplectic, which might be part of the appeal for some but puts the proposal in peril. It’s entirely conceivable that Premier Ford would in response introduce an amendment to remove this tax from the City’s powers.
The province’s rescinding of its own vehicle registration fee also adds practical complications, since the City can no longer simply piggy-back on it. However, the actual process is not much changed – car owners still have to renew their registration, and there is still a fee-paying structure for heavy vehicles. It does not seem that challenging technically – the issue might be more the province refusing to co-operate.
One interesting option being proposed in California is to charge different amounts depending on vehicle weight, reflecting the greater wear-and-tear heavier vehicles cause. This could help discourage the trend towards drivers buying oversized trucks and SUVs that might not be necessary in an urban environment and that are more dangerous in collisions. The Province already charges weight-based fees for large vehicles, so the concept is not a stretch. But this concept might be easier to implement at a provincial level, should a government more open to the idea get elected. For the City to re-introduce the tax independently, it would be simpler and perhaps more political feasible to charge a flat rate.
Given the terrible and declining state of Toronto’s roads, a vehicle registration tax that was entirely devoted to improving road maintenance might be supported by many drivers, and by the councillors who listen to them, where they would have not been supportive in the past when the roads weren’t quite as bad and the funds would be split with other services.
In one of his last acts, former mayor Tory got council to agree to ask staff to investigate various revenue tool options that the City could use. The focus was on a commercial parking levy, but the mandate is open-ended. Given the need for more funding to maintain the city’s roads, staff should definitely delve into the details about how a vehicle registration tax could work – and politicians, led by whoever becomes our new mayor, should be willing to consider the idea.
While it might be safer to wait until a friendlier provincial government is in place, there’s no guarantee that will be the case for many years. But we can guarantee that Toronto’s roads will continue to get worse if we don’t find more money for their maintenance. It might be time to do something about that.
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Author: Richard K. Rein (Island Press, 2022)
“In our attention to making organization work we have come close to deifying it. We are describing its defects as virtues and denying that there is – or should be – a conflict between the individual and the organization. This denial is bad for the organization. It is worse for the individual.”
- William H. Whyte, from The Organization Man
In the history of our modern world, there have been only a few who have been able to call themselves true Renaissance men, and if ever there was one it is most certainly William Hollingsworth Whyte. Known best by planners and architects as the author of The Exploding City, his dozen years as an assistant editor at Fortune magazine in the 1940s and 50s gave him an audience for his then best-selling The Organization Man. A polymath if ever there was one, American Urbanist – How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life is a wonderful portrait by Richard Rein, who reveals this man ahead of his time—US marine, traveling salesman, magazine editor, and pioneering urbanist – who recognized that he came from a life of privilege, and so realizing this made himself one of its most fiercest critics, especially against the shortcomings of post-war America status quo thinking.
Told in nineteen chapters with an introduction and afterword, Rein spends the first hundred pages of the book focusing on his family and upbringing, culminating with his time at Princeton between 1935-39. Enlisting in the marines after Pearl Harbour, Whyte’s time as a salesman for Vick’s vapour rub was cut short as he was shipped overseas to Guadalcanal, as Rein tells us in chapter four Vicks and the Marines – Information to Intelligence. Rein points out how Whyte was editor of the Marines newsletter much as he had been for the Princeton one during his time there, and how he wrote extensively during the war.
As the urban landscape was about to be transformed after the war, with soldiers returning home to get jobs and start families, Whyte had his boots on the ground quite literally to be a commentator on what he saw happening around him. Having managed to get a writing position at Fortune magazine, he set about interviewing the heads of major American corporations including General Electric and Ford, and after publishing his first book Is Anybody Listening? in 1952 it was followed up a few years later by his seminal Organization Man, one of the most influential books on management ever written, in which he declares conformity as the new sleeping enemy.
Having coined the term Groupthink in his first book, Whyte expanded upon the dichotomy between a productive corporate employee and individual creativity in Organization Man, rallying against the use of personality tests by companies in the hiring of new employees. But Whyte went even further, interviewing not just the corporate managers for his research, but the workers themselves, both men and women, and it was at that moment when he was first introduced to the phenomenon that is the American suburb, a subject which would become his full time occupation for the rest of his life.
What Whyte was most astonished to learn was how modern planning seemed to reject everything about the City that was to be celebrated, including the integration of various ethnic groups and working classes. Such tenets that “density was bad, crowded cities were unhealthy, and people on the streets should be feared,” were presumptions that had been assumed more than tested, and simply followed as scripture by the city officials and developers of the day, such that a new set of voices was needed to speak on behalf of the person on the street.
Such was the raison d’etre for Whyte’s next book, The Exploding Metropolis, for which he asked several current thinkers and writers to contribute essays. Among the essayists was Jane Jacobs, whose critical essay “Downtown is for People” raised the ire of developers who were looking to remove inner city buildings and infrastructure, to replace them with new urban renewal projects, including the Rockefellers as they prepared to build their new Lincoln Center, and later on Robert Moses’ freeway projects.
As has become more and more evident in our post-George Floyd age, these projects were almost always discrimination disguised as gentrification, displacing poorer disadvantaged communities to the benefit of the privileged class. It is a conversation that continues to this day, i.e. who gets to live in our cities? And Whyte and Jacobs were there at the onset of the problem, noting in the opening pages of The Exploding Metropolis: “more and more, the city is becoming a place of extremes – a place for the very poor, or the very rich, or the slightly odd.” One reviewer at the time of the book’s publishing remarked in 1959 that it was “the first blink of the fire-warning light in the aircraft cockpit.”
The urban renewal projects that took place in the US and Canada between the 1950s and the 70s are coming again to the mainstream conversation, shining a light on those communities that were discriminated against in the name of urban planning. This includes the African American neighbourhood of Hogan’s Alley in inner-city Vancouver that was all but eradicated when the Georgia Viaducts were built through the neighbourhood, an event that has been recalled this Black History month. Rein reminds us in his book how forward-thinking visionaries like Whyte could see the writing on the wall, and used his own words in his own books to dislodge complacency and conformity, especially in the construction of the urban realm.
American Urbanist comes at a pivotal time in human history when critical thinkers are desperately needed, especially how we combine environmental and cultural agendas, and how the yet understood technologies we are bombarded with on a daily basis—Midjouney and ChatGPT just the latest buzz—such that we would do well to heed Whyte’s advice to constantly question that which the masses takes for granted.
As Rein shows us here, without Whyte there may very well have been no Jane Jacobs along with many others who followed in his footsteps, as he was looking at problems of urban sprawl, gentrification, and even the missing middle before anyone else knew these were even issues. Representing an astonishing body of research on an important commentator and urban philosopher on the modern city, Rein’s book will be quite at home on the bookshelves of planners and architects alike.
And whether we now work from home or live for our work, are in fear of missing out or isolated out of fear of the masses, Whyte’s declarations that the voices of all classes and races need to be heard in our public realms continue to resonate today, whether in bricks and mortar or in the metaverse.
For more information on American Urbanist, go to the Island Press website.
**
Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
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I am currently on sabbatical leave in Mumbai, India. Last week, I went to an eye-opening lecture at IIT Bombay by Dr. Sunetro Ghosal, “Immoral Wilderness in Urban Spaces.” He raised provocative questions not just about where leopards should live, but what we understand a city to be and how we measure risk.
I came out of the talk chatting with the speaker and another colleague. We found ourselves wondering if it would be good to think of cars the way we think about leopards. Let me explain how we got there, and why this might be a useful way to think about cities right now, in light of the pandemic-related struggles of public transportation and an associated rise in car use.
Many wild animals live within the municipal boundaries of Mumbai, including large carnivores. Their presence in the city, especially very close to houses, frightens residents, some of whom feel those animals have no “right” to be there and should somehow be permanently removed.
India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, among the strongest such legislation in the world, ranks animal protection according to six schedules. Those in Schedule V are considered “vermin” and can be killed without penalty. These currently include crows, rats, mice, and fruit bats. The list has also previously included foxes.
It is also possible for the central government to declare animals (other than Schedule I and part of Schedule II) in a specific area as “vermin” for a limited period of time, and chief wildlife wardens can authorize the hunting of specific animal that has been determined to be a threat to life or property. Various parties have petitioned over the years to have protected animals declared vermin. Determination of animals as “vermin” is mostly about nuisance, damage to economic assets like crops, and health risks.
All large carnivores are included in Schedule I and provided the strongest protection. Yet the Wildlife Minister in the state of Kerala also recently commented that the state might consider (as locals had requested) a tiger cull in the wake of a famer’s death from an attack. Some Mumbai residents feel similarly about leopards when they are spotted near residences.
Dr. Ghosal explained that the main obstacle to improving the safety of interactions of humans and wildlife (for both parties) is the way we think in oppositional dualisms, such as urban/rural or civilized/wild, instead of recognizing the greater interweaving and complexity that exists.
Indeed, we often think what defines a city is the absence of wildlife. Another wildlife expert, Dr. Vidya Athreya, has argued that the idea that humans do not or should not encounter leopards is “a completely urban construct.” Dr. Ghosal pointed out that developmental plans don’t even mention animals. How can we plan for safe coexistence with wildlife if we don’t even acknowledge their existence at all?
The highest number of leopard attacks on people in Mumbai was in 2003-04, with 25. In an average year, there are maybe one or two deaths.
Meanwhile, 75,000 people are bitten by dogs each year, and an average of 21 die from rabies as a result. (It is estimated that dogs are 60% of the leopard diet in Mumbai, and there is evidence that leopards help control the stray dog population and reduce the incidence of dog bites.)
But more than 20 times that number are killed by the city’s most notorious “predator”: Mumbai had 447 automobile-related deaths (from collisions; not counting pollution) in 2019, 47 percent of which were pedestrians. Mumbai is far from India’s most lethal city; in 2019, the city of Delhi had 1,463 deaths from road collisions.
It’s not just a problem in India; road collisions are the leading cause of injury and death in young people around the world.
If we felt the same way about every person killed by a car as one killed by a leopard or tiger, I suspect we would have long since culled the cars in our cities and fenced them into reserve areas.
Not only have we not taken such steps, we have done the opposite: we build freeways through city centres; we give them storage space on roads rent-free; we remove bike lanes and pedestrian scramble intersections that slow cars down; we cut away sidewalk to round out corners and make turns faster. We have bent over backwards to accommodate the car. We have turned the city into its protected habitat.
Cars are never missing from our transportation plans. People and animals regularly are.
In Toronto, we have actually given serious consideration to whether pedestrians crossing the road while looking at their phones should be fined, including if they are crossing legally. What that reveals is that some have accepted the city is the habitat of the car, and humans are merely vermin, a nuisance to be cleared from the path of its movement.
Maybe it would be useful to see cars as the dangerous “predators” that they are.
What if we treated cars like leopards? Then we might recognize the real risk they pose to our well-being, and manage our interactions with them with extraordinary care. Maybe everyone with a suspended license should wear a satellite tracking collar so we know immediately when they get behind the wheel again. (I’m kidding.) (Sort of.)
Or, what if we categorized cars not only as predators, but also as vermin, whose population needs to be managed and controlled in the interests of public health? Maybe that would lead us not just to build safer sidewalks, but also to ban certain car designs, such as high front hoods. Maybe it would help us rethink whose habitat the city is. No one would ever think humans in Toronto could coexist with over a million leopards.
Urbanists have lessons to learn from wildlife experts here, especially to think of the city always as a habitat: for humans. It makes sense that people are afraid of animals that can seriously hurt them. But our sense of risk does not match where the greatest danger lies: we are nowhere near as afraid of cars as we should be.
If the city is first and foremost a habitat for people and other living things, then we should take all steps to prevent fatal encounters with dangerous creatures that threaten our lives irrespective of whether they are furry or have four-wheel drive.
The author would like to thank Dr. Sunetro Ghosal and Dr. Himanshu Burte for their helpful feedback on this column.
Photo by Steven van Dortmond.
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Let’s not talk about candidates and the horse race, just for a fleeting moment.
The end of the John Tory era, which came to a screeching halt at about 8:40pm on Friday evening, is, of course, a calamity for the individuals involved. It’s a hot mess for a guy who promised to end the politics of hot messes.
The end of the John Tory era, however, marks a generational opportunity for Toronto council and the city in general to break away from the insidious incrementalism and tight-fistedness of the past twelve years and opt instead for a politics of far-sighted investment, inclusiveness, and genuine — as opposed to performative — fiscal probity.
I won’t bother fully enumerating the ways in which the Tory administration not only ran out of ideas but had become dangerously attached to a brand of politics that makes the right noises but simultaneously encourages division and a callous disregard for basic needs, and in particular housing and housing equity.
To my eye, the agenda for this council, with a new mayor, should read not like a rebuke to the stagnation of the Tory years, but rather as a way of genuinely confronting the problems that are afflicting the entire city, and will only accumulate in a crushingly costly way in the years to come.
The first step to sorting out the highly tangled issues begins with restoring the office of the mayor to its proper position as a driver of change as opposed to a broker of backroom compromises with the province.
Toronto desperately needs an outspoken mayor who is willing to use his or her bully pulpit to advocate for the solutions we need. That’s about creating and then occupying space in the political and public discourse for potentially ground-breaking shifts in direction; forcefully calling out the provincial government when its actions harm Torontonians (e.g., the sustained attacks by the Ford government on tenants and rental apartment buildings); leaning hard on council to get off the pot; and, finally, really pushing the civil service to deliver on the promises made by council in the form of policy directives.
Second, and relevant to the current budget debates, the next mayor needs to make a strong case to the residents that articulates not only why the current fiscal arrangements are unsustainable, but lays out a compelling strategy for overcoming them. This move will include political pain, in the form of higher taxes and fees, but it also requires the next mayor to take full advantage of the revenue generating powers in the City of Toronto Act. Begging the upper orders for money won’t ever work if the mayor and council aren’t prepared to spend political capital.
Third, and following from point two, the new mayor needs to engage in a sustained conversation with the residents of the city that clearly links structural under-funding to the failings in municipal government that are obvious to everyone. There can be no ambiguity or double-talk about this component of a reform agenda.
Fourth, we need a mayor who can connect the dots. There’s a stunning chart in the Shelter, Support and Housing budget memo showing the hockey-stick growth in shelter demand in the past year [editor’s note: link has been updated since originally published). This surge is about the housing crisis, and all the planning reforms now in play don’t address the spike.
The city next year will spend almost $300 million on shelter operations that provide beds for about 9,000 people per night, and this figure doesn’t include all the money that’s been spent on the cruel sport of uprooting encampments. Since Tory was elected in 2014, council has spent about $2 billion — a staggering sum — running the shelter system. However, in the past two years, with assists from the federal and provincial governments, the city brought on stream 250 permanent supportive housing units in modular projects for less than $50 million.
The shelter system is radically unsustainable, and the solution is not to keep pouring money into it or harassing people who have been thrown on to the streets for all sorts of reason, but rather to sharply accelerate and expand the construction of low-cost, permanent, supportive housing. To get there, however, the mayor must take the lead, explain clearly why the status quo has essentially seized up, and charge ahead with what is clearly a viable alternative.
Fifth, the next mayor needs to make a forceful argument for public amenities and community investment in areas that are seeing or will see high density development in the years to come. In particular, s/he should tell the province in no uncertain terms to scrap the highly dubious Ontario Place re-development and use the space for much needed park space, uproot antiquated regulations that police public space, and rebuild the public realm.
Finally, Toronto council needs to wake up to the fiscal reality that the Gardiner re-build is not just an absurd project in the era of climate crisis, but also a ticking fiscal time-bomb, and one that is destroying the city’s ability to make long-term capital investments in the years to come.
By scrapping this ridiculous project and introducing new revenue sources, the city could spend half those Gardiner dollars on a massive investment in new buses to sharply improve service on busy trunk lines, and perhaps halt the vicious cycle we’re now seeing with transit use in Toronto. And it could allocate the balance on a much-needed expansion of permanent supportive or ultra-low-cost housing — a move that will, in the long-run, help reduce the ever-increasing amount we spend on shelters each year and thus protect residents from the associated tax hikes.
Tory’s exit paves the way for a new form of politics in Toronto. It is a gift, and we need to seize the moment.
photo by Bruce Reeves (cc)
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It feels like matters of policing, never far from view, have hung particularly heavily over the city’s business in this past month — an arc that began early in the new year with Mayor John Tory’s $50 million house-warming present for the new police chief, extends to the city’s ham-fisted response to violence on the TTC (not to mention the homelessness crisis), and currently informs the budget discussions about how we spend tax revenue that never seems to be adequate.
University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach watches these developments with a keen eye, not just for what they say about the practice of policing, but also about how Canadian society governs its law enforcement institutions. In his latest book, Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change (Irwin Law, 2022), Roach — a veteran of the Ipperwash and Arar inquiries, and an advisor to the Public Order Emergency Commission — argues that law enforcement agencies operate in a democratic fog that militates against the kind of accountability such organizations need. The book was short-listed for the 2022 Writer’s Trust Balsillie Prize in Public Policy.
For decades, Prof. Roach writes, Canadian governments have ducked responsibility for laying out clear rules governing police operations. Politicians have opted instead to rely on Supreme Court rulings about police conduct that are often difficult to implement consistently, as well as civilian oversight bodies that do little to deter the worst practices of policing. One result, he says, is the paradox of what he describes as the over-policing and under-protecting vulnerable populations and communities. Another: the abject failure of law enforcement that occurred on the frozen streets of Ottawa last year, which will be the subject of the much-anticipated forthcoming report by Justice Paul Rouleau.
“There is a large democratic deficit at all levels of Canadian policing that needs to be addressed,” Prof. Roach writes. “Those with responsibility for the police — whether they be the responsible minister, the police board, or the local council — need to be prepared to take responsibility for policing policies and to be held accountable for such decisions. The alternative of allowing the police to govern themselves should not be acceptable in a democracy.”
I spoke last week with him to hear his take on what’s been going on in Toronto.
Spacing: Mayor John Tory announced he is adding $50 million to the police budget and we’ve lately seen these directives to put more cops on the transit system. How you read these moves from the point of view of the governance of the Toronto Police Service?
Kent Roach: In theory, the mayor and the council should be able to make these decisions. After George Floyd in 2020, there was a minority on council who wanted to reduce the police budget and redistribute it. Although I favoured their approach, I also accept as a democrat that we’re not a majority of the council. Much of the book is a plea for democratic policing, but I accept that democracy is entitled to make what I think may be mistakes. I also think this shows that the defunding movement that was started in the wake of George Floyd just hasn’t really gone anywhere. And defunding as a slogan doesn’t capture what I think many of its proponents wanted, which was a re-funding of community and social services.
Spacing: Council last year established a new community crisis response service. But the mayor and the new police chief immediately reached for police on the TTC instead of deploying psychiatric nurses or social workers. Did we just forget about that new service?
Roach: Yes, I think we did forget about that part. I think some of this represents the lack of detailed research on what works and what doesn’t work in Canadian policing. Go back to the Rethinking Community Safety report, which in about 20 pages, and with a broad coalition of groups, including the Gerstein Center, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Black Lives Matter, looked at some of the research from the United States to support de-tasking, albeit de-tasking with evaluation. But we really don’t have a lot of good research about whether we’re getting value for money by adding extra police officers at a cost of more than $100,000 a year.
Spacing: One more question about the issue of violence on the TTC. Is it clear in your mind that this is actually a problem or are we just dealing with a random series of incidents?
Roach: That’s a question criminologists will be able to answer in about five years’ time. But I do accept in a democratic policing model, there is a need to respond to public anxieties. Certainly, as a person who uses the TTC, I’ve noted that these incidents have taken place at a range of stations. Whether it’s a blip or not, it is legitimate to expect a response. I just hope that it is a response that is better informed by research, and, frankly, cost effectiveness.
Spacing: What you make of the new memorandum of understanding between the Toronto Police Service and the Toronto Ombudsman? Is it filling a gap in the legislated accountability mechanisms that already exist for police, or is it an extra layer?
Roach: There are many layers of accountability to the police. One of the reasons I wrote the book was that I felt, as a lawyer, that I knew most of these processes, whether it’s the SIU, police complaints, civil lawsuits, and the like. I’m skeptical whether they are improving policing, because they happen after the fact. They often have high levels of burden of proof, especially with the SIU, although these may be necessary to ensure the rule of law is applied to police officers like anyone else. I see no evidence that [these accountability mechanisms] are improving police.
Now, the MOU with the Ombudsman revolves around quality of service to the public. And I think that that is something where review has been generally lacking. We review the police in multiple ways to ensure the propriety and the legality of their actions. But we rarely review the police to ensure the efficacy or the efficiency of their actions. That takes a very different skill set, which looks not at individual acts, but at data, to the extent to which this data is available. I don’t instinctively think that more review, especially of the ex poste variety, is the answer to policing. I saw this in the G-20, where there were about ten different reviews, and some of them reached very different conclusions. So I’m skeptical about simply adding another layer of review.
But if the Ombud’s review is one that is focused on efficiency, and policy, I think it may have a role to play. The other thing I would say is, under the Ford government, there are real concerns that the underfunding of the OIPRD will prevent it from doing the systemic reviews that it had done with respect to G-20, strip searches, and other areas. I’m a big fan of systemic review because I think you get your biggest bang for the buck.
Spacing: We’re at the beginning of a new term of council. We have a new police chief. We have this bulked up system of mayoral powers. Is there anything that Toronto council, the mayor’s office and the Toronto Police Services Board should be doing at this point to improve democratic policing in Toronto?
Roach: I don’t think this is the road Mayor Tory has taken, but I could imagine someone like Mayor Tory saying, “you know, police is the biggest budget item, we’re under huge budget strain, we’ve got to make sure we’re getting value for money,” and to look at policing through that lens. If a mayor or a significant number on council took that approach, not necessarily using the divisive language of defunding, but asking, “are we getting this right?” then I think that would be a way forward.
One of the things I really criticize in the book is the Community Safety and Well-being plan that Toronto came up with [in 2021]. It’s frankly a pitiful document compared to the Rethinking Community Safety document prepared by civil society. And it’s pitiful even compared to what other cities like Hamilton and Ottawa have done. Of course, the province is partly to blame. I give the province credit for requiring these community safety and wellbeing plans. But having looked at quite a few, a lot of them come down to, “we don’t have enough housing, we don’t have enough addictions treatment, and we’re never going to have enough money with our tax base unless the province ponies up more money.” At the provincial level, you have the same silence. The community safety and well-being plans have a potential to break down silos. But all the funding and all the accountability still runs in the silos, so the community safety and well-being plans are fighting against the current bureaucratic life of the municipal or provincial levels. We still haven’t gotten it right about how to implement them.
Spacing: Given what’s been happening over the last couple of months with the surge of violence in public places, would you say it’s time for council to give that document an overhaul?
Roach: Yes. That document really doesn’t show a lot of policing involvement. Potentially, this is a strong mayor and [he could be] saying, “you know, this plan means something, and we’re going to do evaluation, and we will potentially use this plan to redistribute budget among different parts of city government, including the police.” The problem has been that the police are pretty confident they can get raises in their budget.
Spacing: I want to ask you about police use of technology. We had a very short public consultation period last fall about the use of AI-based policing technologies. Is this an adequate way for the public to engage with the way the police use and acquire technology that can be very powerful in terms of surveillance?
Roach: It’s a good question. I think that body cameras are partly a response to George Floyd, but they are only used with respect to after-the-fact accountability. I’m not saying that’s not important. A body cam may very well lead to more successful prosecutions of police who engage in either criminal or other forms of misconduct. But the question then is, what happens next? What do you do to ensure it doesn’t happen again? Just relying on deterrence — I’m not a real believer in that when it comes to criminal law in general. In policing, what you see is a lot of concern about police not knowing where we want them [to be] with respect to using surveillance as a possible crime control technique. I think that’s why we need democratic policing. We need a democratic debate. There will be people that will lean on the privacy side and there may be people that will [say], “if a camera is half as effective and a hundredth of the price of putting out a police officer, given that we’re already underwater when it comes to the budget, then let’s do it.” To me, that is a quintessential democratic debate, and we should just allow that to play out.
The problem is, does it play out in city council? Not really. It would have to play out at the Police Services Board and police service boards may not necessarily have the resources or the will to make informed decisions about these new forms of technology. The other thing is that when you’re talking about technology, you’re really pushing the limits of democratic capabilities. Even if you had a good debate in 2023, two years later, you’re going to have a new technology, and you’re going to need to have that debate all over again.
Spacing: You say in the book that you’re still a fan of the Peel Principles of policing. (Peel, a British politician, famously said, “the police are the public and the public are the police.”) If you had to pick something that we should really learn from what Sir Robert Peel talked about back in 19th century England, in terms of how policing gets done in Toronto in 2023, what would that be?
Roach: Well, that not only do the police need to look like Torontonians, but there needs to be a sense from Torontonians that, since we’re paying a lot of money for the police, we want to have some degree of control over the police. This is going back to something that [former Ontario premier] John Robarts talked about, which is that maybe the days of police boards should end and either we return [responsibility] to council, or, as in Britain, we directly elect some form of governing body for the police. That’s what we need to think about.
We also need to know that historically, Canada has not been based on the Peel model. It’s been based on the Royal Irish Constabulary model, which is a much more militaristic and colonial model, where the police were subject to orders from on high. As Torontonians, we just have to say, “We don’t want that,” and that we’re willing to take responsibility and we’re also willing to admit that we may make mistakes. Although Mr. Tory’s initiatives seem to me to be a bit knee jerk, I’d rather have someone take responsibility for that.
(This interview has been edited and abridged.)
photograph by Julie Fish
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Author: Hank Dittmar (Island Press, 2020)
DIY, or “do-it-yourself,” as it relates to urban planning, most easily evokes images of colourful tactical urbanism projects. Tactical urbanism is directly accessible to almost anyone with a can of spray paint, and it’s truly something you can “do yourself.” Hank Dittmar’s book DIY City goes beyond this grassroots definition and is aimed more at politicians, planners, and community organizers.
Sprinkled with pop culture references that tie projects and movements to cultural moments, DIY City is about how small changes can lead to significant impacts, but it is not prescriptive. Instead, it argues that city planners and other community leaders need to make intentional room for these small changes to occur naturally through careful policy and strategic relaxation of regulations to create “slack” in the system.
Many examples are drawn from international case studies and specifically from Dittmar’s work with the Prince’s Foundation—an organization headed by King Charles (formerly Prince Charles) which focuses on sustainable community development. Because of this, the title “DIY City” – specifically the DIY part, must be taken with a grain of salt. Many of the case studies in the book were motivated either through significant world events (i.e. zoning changes aimed at increasing housing density in Washington DC in WW2) or the backing of international aid organizations (Princes Foundation). But that is not to say they are not helpful; the message is that small interventions are critically important to enable and foster community health and are essential in promoting creativity and equity in cities.
Three critical examples from DIY City of the kinds of policy changes available to politicians, community organizers and planners in fostering small incremental change include:
Allowing Small Scale Development
In most municipalities, new development is regulated through a constellation of bylaws, whose primary purpose is to ensure new projects proceed in a way that reflects community values. However, when applied to smaller projects, these bylaws can play against a community’s goals for things like housing. For example, Dittmar cites examples in certain places where getting permits for new buildings is easier than retrofits to existing ones. By creating barriers for small projects, poorly designed regulations stymie small-scale builders who, in aggregate, have a sizeable collective power to make progress in adding new housing supply.
Encouraging Meanwhile-Uses
“Meanwhile-uses” are temporary activities that can take place in a space while financing and approvals are being arranged for more complex developments. This can take years for big projects, and unless there are clear incentives or requirements to maintain some level of activity, sites can sit empty the whole time. Meanwhile-uses can include those on bare ground or in existing buildings. Examples from Dittmar’s book include a variety of artisan and market spaces which can actually draw more interest to a site and create added value and a sense of place. If done well, meanwhile-uses can be incorporated into what comes next and continue the story. However, if meanwhile-uses are desired, they must be permitted, encouraged, or mandated.
Formalizing Informal Arts Spaces
Reducing barriers and regulations is a common theme throughout DIY City, but it is not to say that Dittmar wants to do away with them altogether. In most cases, building codes and bylaws were created to protect people from fire, earthquakes, electrical, or other potential hazards. However, a city’s most culturally productive sites can find and grow in some of its oldest and most at-risk buildings. Instead of condemning these spaces and removing them in the name of public safety, Dittmar argues that cities should recognize the value of these spaces and work with tenants to ensure they are safe. One grassroots tool is the D.I.Y. Harm Reduction Manual, a crowd-sourced manual full of recommendations designed to help organizers make their venues safer.
DIY City is a call for community planners, organizers, and politicians to loosen up a bit. Leaving some slack in the system can make it possible for people to make small interventions, start and grow local businesses, make changes to their environment, and try something new. By locking the city down with too many regulations, you lose that innovation, culture, and economic benefit, and it chokes the city’s ability to evolve and grow. It’s important to ensure enough regulation to keep people safe, help the community achieve its goals, and allow for some spontaneous creativity. By allowing small and leaving some slack in the line, it becomes possible for the city to become something more than just a collection of buildings.
You can learn more about DIY City by going to the Island Press website.
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Andrew Cuthbert is a community planner who works on land use plans, zoning bylaws, and active transportation plans all over British Columbia. He loves helping communities solve problems. When not working, Andrew can most likely be found on his bike taking in the sights and fresh air.
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The Ontario government’s proposal to cannibalize Ontario Place by building a monstrous, for-profit spa on public land will destroy a waterfront ecology that has matured over the last half century. Yes, Ontario Place deserves to be revitalized after years of neglect, but how can this process be conducted in an equitable and democratic manner? In response to this question, true leadership is needed to ensure that Ontario Place is protected as the vital piece of a grander vision for our public waterfront.
In 2020, the Future of Ontario Place, an organization of designers, activists, and academics, hosted a design competition, driven by similar concerns, to solicit counter-proposals on how to conceive of Ontario Place differently than the ideas coming from the current provincial government. Implicit in the brief was a criticism of plans to privatize the site and, instead, create an aspirational and democratically envisioned public place. Invigorated, we offered a counterproposal with a simple premise: Ontario Place is a successful public park and the participatory principles that govern its design should be applied to its surrounding context.
Our initial analysis of Ontario Place determined that it is segregated from its wider urban fabric by both Lake Shore Boulevard and Exhibition Place, which is also segregated by an archipelago of isolated buildings and inhospitable parking lots used by the Midway for only two weeks of the year. Furthermore, transit connections via streetcar, GO Train, and the forthcoming Ontario Line are all north of the Exhibition and disconnected from Ontario Place.
Connections are better to the east and west via the Martin Goodman Trail, but have enormous potential for improvement towards unifying our waterfront lands into a cohesive whole. Trillium Park, newly built on the east side of Ontario Place, is hugely popular and shows the promise of this potential, but it is currently too small. What is needed is a comprehensive design and a participatory framework of governance that envisions the entire landscape south of the Gardiner Expressway, from Humber Bay to the Port Lands (and beyond, to the Beaches), as one integrated waterfront of parks.
Our counter-proposal, titled “Megalandscape Ontario,” proposed a flexible, phased, long-term framework that can allow for an inclusive process of community empowerment. Through this framework, the innovative approach to landscape that permeates the original Ontario Place site could be scaled up and applied to its wider context. Informed by the topography of the land and the ecology of the water, a coherent megalandscape could be developed slowly over time to act as a dynamic, yet stabilizing, binder between disparate neighbourhoods, infrastructures, and ecosystems. Its dynamism would emerge from its incremental evolution through bottom-up community participation and empowerment rather than top-down planning. Its stability would stem from its governance by a non-partisan body like Waterfront Toronto, holding a long-term lease agreement with all three levels of government.
Calls from various politicians and advocates to consider Ontario Place in its wider context have been heard before — notably by Ken Greenberg, David Crombie, and Joe Pantalone, all of whom have also proposed the physical integration of Ontario Place and Exhibition Place. What requires more discussion is a means by which competing interests surrounding Ontario Place can engage equitably. Currently, the provincial government is leaning on its jurisdictional claims to the Ontario Place lands, but other actors, such as the City of Toronto, the Canadian National Exhibition, and significantly, Indigenous Peoples, must also have a role in its governance. With Waterfront Toronto as a successful model for public engagement, our counter-proposal calls attention to a proven methodology that could facilitate slow and thoughtful revitalization, unencumbered by the timeframe of election cycles and partisan politics.
In this spirit of embracing slow development, our key interventions are proposed through a series of phases. Phase 1 re-designs Lake Shore Blvd. to reduce its size and to slow its traffic, and also “flattening” it to allow for a comfortable pedestrian experience at grade with multiple crossings. The existing Ontario Place parking lots are converted into expansive public beaches, creating a swimming lagoon along Lakeshore that is easily accessible from the city. The iconic pods, which have deteriorated to a point where extensive investment would be required to make them usable once again, are re-conceived to accommodate non-anthropocentric, ecologically symbiotic uses.
Phase 2 envisions a southwards extension of Dufferin Street and a westward extension of the West Island, allowing for a connection to the Dufferin 29 bus. North of Lakeshore, the Exhibition lands are slowly transformed into parkland, tying this part of the site to the Ontario Place islands and creating a landscape framework that binds the various scattered buildings together. This landscape would be designed to accommodate the Midway during the last two weeks of August.
Phase 3 relocates an all-season amphitheater to a more accessible location on the Exhibition grounds, while still allowing for an outdoor performance venue on the islands similar to the original Forum. The northern band of the site is rezoned to allow for affordable residential development along the Ontario Line transit corridor, with new stations book-ending the neighborhood at Dufferin and Strachan Ave. Development here would help fund this megalandscape while connecting north across the Gardiner and rail corridor to Liberty Village and beyond.
Most importantly, these proposed interventions are not conceived of as autocratic schemes to be imposed on the site, but are instead offered as stimulants for public conversation and collaboration, encouraging transformation and evolution over time. Crucially, we recognize the importance of the site to Indigenous histories, cultures, and futures, such that a robust engagement with Indigenous Peoples by the Ontario government must occur prior to any re-development of Ontario Place. Indeed, a different future is possible; one that builds on the original conception of Ontario Place as a forward-looking yet respectful public place. This counterproposal is an invitation for all Ontarians to build something, together.
Catherine Howell, Ramsey Leung, and Joe Loreto are graduates of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Their counterproposal, Megalandscape Ontario, won the Jury Prize in the Future of Ontario Place design competition.
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What is residential density and why is it so confusing?
Residential density is critical to urban planning. It refers to the number of people living in a specific area and is significant because it helps us understand how densely populated an area is. It’s also very controversial. In certain folks, increasing density evokes fear about large buildings, unruly people and parking problems. In other circles, it’s associated with walkable neighbourhoods, more housing options and better infrastructure. This points to the fact that there’s an unfortunate lack of clarity around the issue of residential density: what it means, and how it’s measured.
Let’s see if we can clear things up a little.
As mentioned, at its most basic, density refers to the number of people living in a specific area. It’s usually measured in terms of people per square kilometer, people per square mile, dwelling units per hectare or dwelling units per acre. Although the latter is arguably the most commonly used in zoning and development reviews, all are useful in their own way, giving people different information about the area being considered. It’s worth noting, though, that there is no ‘standard’ definition of density. Each discipline develops its own method of discussing the issue: a key aspect of why it’s so baffling.
Here are the other common points of confusion about density:
There is no standard for “high”, “medium”, and “low” densities
Talking about “low”, “medium”, and “high” densities is common in planning circles, but there is absolutely no agreement about what that means in real terms. A “high-density” neighbourhood in Toronto may be considered “low density” in Hong Kong.
Associating density with specific building types
It’s often assumed, for example, that detached houses are lower density than attached housing or that high residential density is synonymous with high-rise buildings. This is not always the case. A tower with large units located in a park-like setting can have a lower density than a set of detached houses on small lots.
Relating density to social and economic characteristics of residents
Too frequently, ‘high densities’ are wrongly connected to high-crime neighbourhoods with renters and low-income households. This misperception leads to underestimating the residential densities of wealthier areas with larger numbers of owners. Simply put: density and socio-economic conditions are separate issues but relate depending on the context and the architectural form a certain density takes.
Density versus crowding
Concerns connecting too many people living together—crowding—and increased densities are common. These two terms are unrelated. Crowding refers to people per room, per square foot, or per bedroom. Many people live in very high-density developments spacious apartments with no crowding. Similarly, a detached farmhouse can be crowded by having a lot of people per room.
Household size affects population density
An example: a site with 15 dwelling units per acre can have a density of 20 people per acre if the area is full of empty nesters and elderly people, or a density of 40 people per acre if families with children or extended families live there. Similarly, a tower targeted at couples with no kids can have a lower number of people per acre than a mid-rise development targeted at families with children. The devil is in the details. This difference can have a huge impact in terms of how many people are available to support community services, transit, and infrastructure. Given that regulating household size is a challenge for governments, policies tend to focus on dwelling unit densities as a surrogate.
Base land area matters
What’s included and excluded in terms of land area is critical to the density number. Is it for the block? The parcel? The entire neighbourhood? Density numbers can vary widely within the boundaries of the study area. The table below shows density numbers for a hypothetical site with the same residential site density in dwelling units per acre. How different measures can be, based on different density definitions, is explicitly clear.
Table comparing density measures for the same location from Ann Forsyth’s, Measuring Density: Working Definitions for Residential Density and Building Intensity.
Net versus Gross Density
As mentioned, residential density is often expressed in dwelling or housing units per acre. This can be measured as “net” or “gross”, a topic worth looking at more closely in another S101S. Very quickly, however, “net density” refers to the number of units per acre within a specific land area devoted to residential purposes. This often includes driveways, private yards, and additional residential accessory structures while excluding public rights of way, parks, open spaces, and other non-residential land uses.
“Gross density”, on the other hand, means the density of a given area (typically) including all types of land uses, including infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks, and public spaces. This gives us a more comprehensive understanding of the overall land use in an area but often results in lower density since including non-residential increases land area and the resulting units-to-land ratio. Also worth noting is the fact that mixed-use urban neighbourhoods tend to have lower densities than ones that are primarily residential.
Two more important things about net and gross densities. First, the above are definitions are generally true, what is included “net” and “gross” density definitions do differ slightly from place to place. So, what is considered within each definition needs to be specified by locale. Second, too many public and internal documents citing densities don’t even specify whether the numbers are “net” and “gross,” let alone the specifics of each definition. This leads to large misinterpretations of density information by the public, as well as government officials.
Whew….that was a lot. But that covers the majority of issues that make residential density a headache, despite its usefulness. This won’t be the last we see of residential density in S101S—we haven’t even mentioned Floor Space Ratio or zoning regulations…Yikes!—but it’s a decent start.
So, a quick recap: what’s residential density and why does it matter?
Well, at its most basic, residential density is a calculation of people living in a specific area: a number that can be helpful for understanding a location and planning changes, accordingly. At a very, very general level, higher residential densities can mean that there are more people living in a smaller area, making the area more densely populated. What this means in terms “look and feel” however is a large question mark with many possibilities. So, higher density can—but might not—lead to more efficient use of land, more convenient access to public transportation, and a wider variety of shopping and cultural opportunities. It can also mean—but may not—increased traffic, noise, as well as a lack of open space and privacy. Ultimately, it depends on a host of other decisions, some of which we’ll encounter in other S101S pieces.
In summary:
- Residential density refers to the number of people living in a specific area and is used frequently for urban planning and development decision-making.
- Density is controversial since what it means and how it’s measured is unclear.
- Density numbers are relative. That is, there is no standard definition for “high”, “medium”, and “low” densities. Context matters.
- Density may or may not relate to specific building types. It depends.
- Density may or may not relate to social and economic characteristics of residents. It depends.
- Density and crowding are very different and unrelated issues.
- Household size affects population density numbers. Demographics matter.
- Base land area directly affects density measures.
- Net and gross density differ in focus. Broadly, net density focuses on the residential component of population density, while gross density takes into account all land uses. But specifics matter.
- Frequently, public documents that include density measures do not explicitly cite whether net or gross densities are being communicated. This often leads to misinterpretations of density information.
- In general, gross densities are lower than net densities since they include larger areas including public rights of way.
- Broadly, mixed-use urban neighbourhoods tend to have lower densities than ones that are primarily residential. But it depends.
Some Useful Resources:
- Measuring Density: Working Definitions for Residential Density and Building Intensity by Ann Forsyth –
- Demystifying Density: A comparison of different forms of density in five case studies in the Greater Vancouver Region by Patrick Condon, Jone Belausteguigoitia, Sara Fryer, and Kristi Tatebe
- Julie Campoli: Visualizing Density
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Related pieces in the S101S:
- S101 Series: Introduction and Call
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Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver.
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Toronto’s journey towards urban renewal could witness a new stage unfold with plans to transform overlooked areas beneath the Gardiner Expressway between Dufferin and the Don Valley Parkway. The Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan is a transformative vision seeking to reclaim and enliven this unique area of the city. With its focus on community building, arts and culture, and sustainable design, this progressive public realm concept promises a new chapter of hybridity in the story of Toronto’s growth and renewal.
In partnership with the City of Toronto, the Bentway Conservancy organized an interactive drop-in Open House at 55 Fort York Blvd. every Tuesday from 3 pm to 7 pm, January 17 to February 7. The Bentway Conservancy is a non-profit that is dedicated to transforming the underutilized space beneath the Gardiner Expressway into a cultural space for the city. It has already developed a 1.75 km-long multi-use trail running from just east of the Fort York Visitor Centre to Bastion St. This space has included a community garden, public art exhibitions, space for concerts, festivals and markets, and a seasonal 220-meter skating rink. With a goal of creating inclusive and accessible destinations, the Conservancy aims to further develop projects like the Bentway throughout the rest of the Gardiner area.
Unlike a typical city planning public meeting, upon arrival at the drop-in visitors are immersed in a five-column installation that walks them through the planning process. These columns act as informative presentations for each geographical area the Conservancy plans to revitalize. Each of these four-sided columns shares its location’s current state alongside its transformation proposal, while providing space for community feedback in shaping its future. Meanwhile, visitors can check out a comically large model of a bent — the iconic architectural concrete pillars that support the expressway — and ask Sam Carter-Shamai, the Bentway Conservancy’s Planning Manager, questions about all things under the Gardiner.
This project was built on the shoulders of the community. Through direct mailing campaigns, interactive map comments, and street team outreach, among other forms of data collection, the Bentway Conservancy team has been able to gather over 18,000 points of contact from surveys sent out, post cards mailed, website impressions, and so on. After an afternoon of talking to people on the street Carter-Shamai said, “once people realized I wasn’t trying to sell them something, but rather asking for their opinions, they seemed happy to talk!” Although many Torontonians are enthused about improving this area in the city, others have concerns about cost and funding, the impact on traffic and transportation, and the displacement of existing communities.
At 55 Fort York Blvd., thoughts and suggestions from attendees can be found on colour-organized sticky notes throughout the space. Ideas such as improving way-finding and pedestrian access, safer crossings, and posting site maps were recurring recommendations. Through their interim consultation summary found online, key elements of the plan include new public spaces, improved connectivity, cultural and recreational programming, and sustainable design. With consideration for the needs of the community, some of the ideas set out in the plan include increasing pedestrian and bicycle connections, creating spaces for events, organizing festivals and programs, and incorporating environmentally-friendly measures and technologies such as prioritizing green spaces and water features.
Carter-Shamai emphasizes, “Today’s Toronto is the cumulative product of choices, decisions, and priorities we make as a city — when it comes to major infrastructure like the Gardiner, we need to move past a mid-century view of single-purposefulness, toward hybridity, and a system that enables safe multi-modal mobility and accessibility, considers environmental impact, and provides for our shared social, economic, and cultural needs. Hybrid infrastructure can, and must, be our future.”
The plan is no small feat, and there is no direct timeline for completion. The Gardiner has a 75-year structural turnaround, as can be seen through the ongoing construction on the east end of the Gardiner in conjunction with the Gardiner Expressway Hybrid Plan, Carter-Shamai says. While the Gardiner Expressway Hybrid Plan seeks to address the future of the Expressway itself, the Under Gardiner Realm Plan focuses on the public realm beneath the Expressway. As construction continues on the Expressway, we should expect to see development beneath it as well.
The evolution of a city is a complex and ongoing process, shaped by a multitude of factors, but at the heart of every transformation lies the spark of inspiration and the drive to create change. Carter-Shamai passionately describes the impact this project can have on Toronto, “The Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan is a long-term vision which balances aspirational ambition with grounded pragmatism. It’s a yes-and proposal at the city-wide scale.” The Under the Gardiner Public Realm Plan is a testament to this principle, demonstrating how the collective action of a community can bring about positive change and lay the foundation for a brighter future.
Here, beneath the concrete and steel of the Gardiner Expressway, a diverse community is coming together to share experiences and create a new and unique public realm in Toronto.
Photos courtesy of the Bentway Conservancy, except sticky notes photo by Nicole Capogna.
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Toronto is a safe city. Not just by global standards, but by North American standards. It doesn’t feel that way right now. At least not to public transit riders.
I can rhyme off statistics about how the homicide rate has been relatively low and stable for decades or that you’re more likely to get hit by lightning as you are to be murdered by a stranger in Canada. And while the number of homicides in the City of Toronto jumped from 71 to 85 in 2021, the number settled back down to 70 in 2022. But I don’t think that makes anyone feel any safer.
Perception and reality of crime can diverge wildly. And perception can become reality if enough people change their behavior. They might use transit less often or avoid certain neighbourhoods, for instance. If we think a place is dangerous, it can become dangerous.
This isn’t something we see too much of in Toronto precisely because it has been perceived as so safe for so long. Toronto isn’t like Chicago or even Winnipeg where people avoid certain neighbourhoods, whether it’s rational or not. But that can change if we let fear get the better of us.
This morning a woman was assaulted while walking alone at Yonge and King. Awful and scary. I was in the area at the same time. (Didn’t witness it ). I was just walking around alone while I waited for a friend. Is my city not safe anymore? 1/ #TOpoli
— Beth Levy (@Beth_Levy66) January 20, 2023
Jane Jacobs long ago observed that having “eyes on the street” keeps communities safer. With fewer people downtown because of the pandemic, there are fewer bystanders to dissuade potential criminals. And with several years of COVID and a worsening opioid epidemic, there are a lot of people with unaddressed mental health issues wandering around. Having fewer people using transit or spending time in the city means fewer eyes on the street. Fewer eyes on the street one day can mean even fewer the next.
This problem isn’t unique to Toronto. New York is grappling with similar problems. Several high-profile cases of people being pushed onto subway tracks caused already skittish people to avoid downtown. A narrative took hold. It spilled over from the subway being dangerous to people thinking that all of Manhattan was dangerous. That narrative became so powerful that it had national political implications.
In Toronto, like New York, the perception of danger started on transit. It could also spill over into perceptions of Downtown, if we’re not careful. News that some taxi drivers are now requiring pre-payment to go to “dangerous” neighbourhoods like Dundas and Sherbourne (a few blocks south of my old apartment) suggests that might be happening.
Here's where we're at. If I Google "TTC woman" the first two fill-in options are "set on fire" and "pushed onto tracks"
— Oliver Moore (@moore_oliver) January 26, 2023
You might wonder why I’m focusing on perception of danger rather than crime itself. That’s because the underlying causes of crime are complicated, and the solutions aren’t obvious. Otherwise there’d be a crime free utopia somewhere we could emulate. Perception is something we can control. If we recognize that the city is reasonably safe, we can keep it that way. But we need some leadership from public officials.
The easiest thing politicians can do is show up. Spending time in the city core projects safety and stability. This is something the Mayor and the Premier should do more of. Not in a panicky way – that won’t help – but subtly spending more time in the city core, particularly on public transit. Mayor Tory or Premier Ford taking the streetcar would send a strong message, for instance.
Some more costly, indirect solutions might help. For instance, ensuring reliable public transit service. Anyone who rides the streetcars knows they have been less than reliable lately. That can dissuade people from visiting downtown. I live on Queen Street and I’ve skipped many trips downtown because I can’t count on getting the streetcar in a timely manner. I doubt I’m the only one.
Another potential solution, already being implemented, is a more visible police presence on the TTC. Even if adding officers doesn’t necessarily directly make cities safer, it can make some people feel safer. This might be viewed as a waste of resources and might worry some communities that have tense relationships with law enforcement. But if we’re going to avoid a transit death spiral, we need to do something to break the narrative that the TTC is dangerous. It’s a Band-Aid, but sometimes that’s exactly what is needed. Addressing the root causes of crime is a longer-term endeavor.
For what it’s worth, transit crime has decreased since New York increased enforcement. It’s not clear whether law enforcement actively prevented crimes or whether they just created the impression of greater safety. Either way, the crime narrative is much different than it was a few months ago when things seemed to be spinning out of control.
Fixing small problems with the public realm can also help by encouraging people to linger in public. Failing to keep public washrooms operating, overflowing trash cans, and questionable pedestrian safety make a casual trip Downtown less appealing even for those who aren’t worried about crime. These are all issues worth addressing if we’re going to maintain a vibrant downtown. The sidewalk ballet is resilient, but only to a point.
Finally, we need to address the region’s housing crisis. A housing shortage combined with strong population inflows means that some people are getting pushed off the housing ladder. That means more homelessness and more pressure on the shelter system. There is no short-term fix. But if we don’t want people sleeping on the train or the parks, we need to make sure they have somewhere else to sleep.
Getting these things right is crucial given how easy it is for a lot of people to opt out of the city. A lot of white-collar workers are resisting the call back to the office. And when news breaks about crime on the TTC or in the city, those stories make the rounds in both physical and virtual offices. It’s watercooler talk now. The perception of danger gives people an out – whether it be from office hours or dinner plans.
The most important thing most of us can do is to go about our normal lives. We need to remind ourselves that being the victim of a random crime is extremely unlikely. It’s a hard thing to convince yourself. Human brains are riddled with biases. But we shouldn’t let our biases control us.
I know it’s easy for me to say this as a straight white man. A lot of other people have reason to feel less safe than I do. But collective action problems can’t be solved individually. We all need to be the eyes on the street that help to keep other people safe.
Toronto is a great city. There’s a lot of room for improvements, but we have to make sure that we don’t let the perception of crime spin into a vicious cycle. That starts with us. So keep calm and carry on.
Steve Lafleur is a public policy analyst and columnist based in Toronto.
The post OP-ED: We can’t let perception of danger become reality appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
How safe is the TTC? Notwithstanding a media narrative that is solidifying faster than quick drying cement, the quick answer to this question is: very.
According to the latest CEO’s report, the rate of offences against customers in January was just under two in 1-million boardings, and that number had been more or less the same for much of 2022, with some ups and some downs. The rate was higher early in the pandemic, while in before-times, the figure hovered around .63 per million boardings.
In other words, the frequency went up. But the variation is extremely slight. How slight? The TTC sent me monthly numbers last week. Between 2017 and early 2022, the offences against customers figures vary from about 40 reported incidents per month to over 80, with a few much lower totals in March and April, 2020. But measured against all boardings — the daily average ridership at present is just under 800,000, so we’re talking about tens of millions over a month — the difference between the high and the low is, well, statistically insignificant, even if you are a frequent user.
Of course, there’s nothing insignificant about each individual attack. A woman died. Others have been stabbed, hospitalized, accosted or had their sense of personal safety shattered. The aftermath of these attacks spreads like an ink blot, to family and friends and neighbours and co-workers. For some, it will be indelible.
Yet context should be important, and so here are a few more comparisons: You are quite a bit more likely to be assaulted on the TTC than to win the lottery. You are far less likely to be killed in a plane crash or in a car accident (my tweet from last week on this comparison was completely wrong, as several followers pointed out). As for your lifetime risk of developing cancer — it’s significantly greater than being caught up in violence on the TTC.
In a charged atmosphere where everyone is reaching for solutions, none of this contextualizing seems to matter. Some reports have raised the spectre of Toronto falling into downward spiral like New York City in the 1970s. Others ratchet up the sense of menace: “Once blank transit spaces are now filled with anxiety,” as one headline asserted. The media coverage, in fact, has been long on heat and short on light, almost to the point of distortion. Case in point: the incidents that have received the bulk of the coverage took place in the subway or on streetcars, but the TTC’s monthly data suggests that reported injuries are more prevalent on buses, and that number has been rising.
Unsurprisingly, there are now all sorts of armchair theories in circulation about the causes — mental illness and homelessness seem to be at the top of the list. But the reality is that no one has established a causal pattern or a set of common denominators beyond the fact that there’s been a cluster of attacks, which, in turn, has brought additional media attention to lesser incidents that normally wouldn’t bob to the surface in the day’s news cycle, thus prompting some to avoid the TTC.
The media coverage last week spurred a political response, the most notable element of which is the city’s decision to deploy more uniformed security personnel and cops in visible locations. Yet it’s a huge system, with millions of riders and hundreds of stations and stops. Will a few dozen uniformed officers make a difference, or will this showy gesture mostly lead to more homeless people riding the TTC being, ahem, shown the door — you know, just in case.
I suppose it’s inevitable that no politician is willing to swim against the tide of the news coverage or make even a half-hearted attempt to encourage transit users — and the city more generally — to consider their actual risk. But by failing to send these signals, they’re courting the parallel risk that comes with the avoidance of public spaces like the TTC.
The issue of the perception of the risk of urban danger — and the media’s role in stoking public fear — is nothing new, of course. There are countless studies and surveys on why these attitudes are formed and how media consumption habits not only reinforce public anxieties, but also affect the way people use public space.
Perhaps the most consequential and also the most misleading example: a 1964 story in the New York Times, by future editor-in-chief Abe Rosenthal, about how dozens of people who apparently heard the shrieks of a young woman being brutally attacked didn’t come to her aid. The story spawned a cottage industry dedicated to the phenomena of the so-called “bystander effect,” but the story — which articulated the sense of fear of random violence that helped gut New York in the 1970s — also turned out to be false, as the Times acknowledged in 2016.
Now, as then, we are living through a fear-infused moment. During the pandemic, we all had a crash course in how to respond to the potentially grave health risks posed by COVID, and then a second crash course in how social media succeeded in amplifying, distorting and misinforming people about said risk, to the point where public health officials and statistics culled from reliable sources struggled to compete with the conspiracy theories advanced by the do-your-own-research crowd. One particular result: that many people abandoned public transit for fear of contagion, notwithstanding a substantial amount of evidence that transit systems tended not to be especially risky.
Here’s a somewhat different example: perceptions of risk and danger related to aggressive driving, and the incidence of cyclist and pedestrian collisions, injuries and fatalities. As with violent incidents on the TTC, the absolute number of fatalities (70 last year) is very small relative to the total number of trips taken, either by car, by bike or on foot. (No one systematically tallies non-fatal collisions.)
The perception of risk, however, is justifiably informed by the prevalence of near misses and/or confrontations with aggressive drivers that don’t result in injury. I’d guess — admittedly without statistical evidence — that the direct experience of cyclists and pedestrians with aggressive or distracted drivers is likely far higher than commuters’ direct experiences with violent incidents on the TTC.
After a great deal of advocacy, the City finally began to implement a Vision Zero plan which included measures that can directly impact the specific risks identified by those using public roadways: segregated bike lanes, reduce speed limits, more traffic signals, pedestrian priority lights, etc. There’s a lot more to do, needless to say, but the solutions aren’t shots in the dark or speculative. We know how to make roads safer, and these are among the ways to do it.
Do we have a similar set of answers for whatever it is that ails the TTC? No. We’re not even sure that what’s happened in the past month or so is systemic or symptomatic of a set of underlying conditions that can be identified and then addressed.
Instead, commuters and politicians are taking their cues from hyper-ventilating news coverage that has raced to fill the vacuum by imposing a set of explanations on what might simply be a random series of discrete events — tragic and painful events, yes, but not connected to one another except for the fact that they mostly happened in January.
I know this isn’t a popular view, but it feels like we’re all jumping to conclusions, including those who have platforms and influence. So here’s my question: Would it be so difficult for either city officials or the media to go out of their way to remind Torontonians that the TTC is — still — incredibly safe by almost any measure?
photo by Ryan Raz (cc)
The post LORINC: How safe is the TTC? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Interiors and urbanism are often considered opposites of one another. But are they so different? Spacing Vancouver’s Erick Villagomez recently had a wonderful opportunity to discuss this issue and the role of interior designers within the larger context of urban planning and design with Vancouver Interior Designer Jeremy Senko
EV_Thank you for chatting with me, Jeremy. I’ve been looking forward to this. But as I usually do before getting into our discussion, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and your background, for those who might not know you?
JS_Agreed, I have always enjoyed our back-and-forth related to the built environment, so thank you for involving me. My story is pretty simple, all things told. I grew up with a vast fascination with stories and narratives, and I started to see at a young age how connections or parallels to how spaces could make someone feel differently depending on the space. I had no idea what any of it meant, and my understanding of any of it stayed completely rudimentary until I was sketching at my mother-in-law’s house, and she told me I should find a way to do whatever it was that I was doing at that moment for work.
I enrolled at Kwantlen, graduated in 2013, and after a short foray into thinking about architecture as a field, I was steered towards staying with interiors after a dinner and conversation with architect Michael Green. From there, I went to work at BYU Design, or Bob’s Your Uncle Design, a local Vancouver firm with almost 20 years of experience in multi-family developments, where I have been since I graduated. I started here as a junior and have made my way up to now holding the role of Director of Interior Design.
Along the way, I have had a lot of fun and mentally engaging opportunities (some great ones writing for Spacing!) to expand beyond the bounds of my day-to-day work. During COVID-19 and the lockdowns, I was able to tee up with the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) to join a select group of individuals working on their IMPACT Review Task Force, which was an extremely rewarding dive into all the studies coming out at the time about COVID and infectious disease mitigation in general. I find research surrounding the built environment, specifically looking at interior spaces, is lacking, so I try to come at design through a mix of science and storytelling.
EV_A great intro, Jeremy. Thank you! I’d definitely like to chat about some of the issues you’ve brought up—particularly what you feel is lacking in research concerning the built environment and interior spaces. But I want to kick things off from a slightly different angle. I think you are one of a select handful of interior designers in Metro Vancouver with a very strong interest in city-scaled issues, and I know you read a lot about urban design and planning, accordingly. I think this is what you meant a second ago when you talked about engaging issues that expand beyond the bounds of your day-to-day work.
Now, as someone who teaches and practices across a number of design scales and disciplines, I’ve always found it odd that issues about interiors are rarely if ever, discussed at the level of urban planning and design, and vice versa. Yet, it’s well-researched that modern North Americans and Europeans spend roughly 90% of their time indoors. Moreover—and as Emily Anthers outlines in your incredible book The Great Indoors—the area of indoor environments dwarf outdoor ones within most major cities…and is continually expanding. This points to the reality that many find surprising: that by virtually all metrics, the experiential quality of cities and “urban landscapes” is intimately tied to the quality of their interior spaces.
I know this issue has many complex facets to it—an important one being issues around ‘private’ versus ‘public’ space—and I’m sure we’ll get into that but for now, I’d like love to hear your thoughts on this issue in broad terms. Perhaps starting with your feelings towards the division between urban planning/design and interiors.
JS_Well, I have never been known to “stay in my lane” as it were [chuckle], and so I appreciate you seeing that about me. It’s true that I feel very deeply that interiors are, at times, treated as window dressing. We are tied heavily to decorating or are seen as the difficult consultant on the job, and as such, we are typically engaged later on in the design process. I do know that some people love the decorative aspect of interiors and it does play a role in spaces, and I think there is a place for that within the “decor” lexicon. I don’t want to cast an unnecessarily large net on this overall, however. Some developers and/or architectural firms do understand the value and engage interior designers quite early before their development permits go in, to ensure that we are working with everyone from the start. Consequently, those projects have been some of the most successful of my career.
I can’t speak for all interior designers, but I got into this line of work because I wanted to increase someone’s well-being and life satisfaction in the spaces we spend most of our time in. We know that a major concern of urban design and planning is trying to engage people at the street level, but we often hide a lot of the potential uses from our more public-facing spaces. Or, we go the complete opposite direction: making the street-facing design a precious, museum-like box, when we have seen that some of the most successful spaces blend their uses with more public, usable programming.
For example, certain practices have started trying to push having co-working areas—or generally activated lobbies—to enliven the street. But again, it takes a select few to try their hand at it, before it cascades and everyone is doing it. Innovation within multi-unit residential developments is slow. You aren’t steering a speed boat, but an ocean liner, so the pace of adopting change is trying at times.
I look at a project like “The Line” in Saudi Arabia that has polarized so many people: if we leave out the horrible human rights abuses, and other political issues, and look at it purely as a design, interior designers have essentially said “don’t go outside, it is inhospitable, we’re going to give you everything you need right here”. Is it the right call? I personally don’t think so. You just have to look at something like Mark Foster Gage’s Architecture in High Resolution and see how he treated building with, not against, the landscape in the Middle East.
But we know that people are spending more time indoors, so how do we engage with the larger scale design issues if we aren’t at the table to bring in our expertise in at the same time as the rest of the consultant team? Even referencing the above book by Gage, the interiors are there but they aren’t nearly as thought through as the exterior design, the landscape architecture, the building systems, the intricate envelope systems.
We also know that—whether it is another round of isolation due to an infectious disease, or an increase in extreme weather events thanks to climate change—people will find themselves more frequently indoors, yet we are not investing enough in the research and development of making the indoors the best that they can possible be. A large part of that is on us in the profession of interior design for not looking past the trendy or saleable into what we can actually do to increase the livability and well-being of the intended occupants.
So yes, we need more stakeholders to bring interior designers to the table early to have these discussions, but as an industry, we need to push ourselves to be better, as well. We can do so much more than we do now if we’d allow ourselves to venture into that realm and actually take it seriously.
EV_You touch up on some interesting themes here, but before we continue, I want to step slightly off the current path to touch upon something important for our readers. Based on my teaching experience in the Lower Mainland, interior design stands out from several other design disciplines in constantly referring to “we” and related pronouns—like “our” and “us”—when talking about the discipline and their own work. This seems to be ingrained at the educational curriculum level, where even First Year students start using “we” for work that they have created individually.
It took me a little while to get used to when I started teaching Interior Design, coming from the architectural tradition where “I” and “my” is the norm, especially for individual proposals. But I quickly appreciated that this instills in students—and ultimately practitioners—that their work is always done within the context of a larger team: a perspective that I personally think the other design disciplines could benefit from. All this to say that readers will have to decipher the many “we”s that they encounter over this interview [smile]. I’m not sure whether you have any thoughts on this issue, but I do think it’s a telling difference with other design disciplines: very much in keeping with “human-centred” perspective on which interior design is based.
JS_I agree, and it was confusing for me entering KPU as well. All students have to adjust to it pretty quickly, and while I don’t remember the exact textbook reason for doing it, I do know it is exactly as you are saying, a great way to ground yourself without ego in the design. I quite enjoy it actually, and still use it in professional practice to this day. The ‘we’ typically refers to the design team, but as you noted, it kind of ends up having roots in the human-focused level of Interior Design.
I remember reading a book a couple of years ago that tied all this up together quite nicely, it was by Douglas Rushkoff and was called Team Human. It is a manifesto to fix the alienation and polarization of our civilization, but there are many parallels to the world of design. I remember very early in the book a quote that kind of sets the stage: “The first step toward reversing our predicament is to recognize that being human is a team sport.” I firmly believe this. I believe we, as in humans, cannot excel in an isolated, siloed vacuum, and yet it’s becoming more and more of the norm since social media and then ratcheted up tenfold after COVID. I always try to begin with empathy, at the human scale, when working on any project, and I do think the projects are better for it. If the team has a breakthrough, that’s ‘we’, even if myself or someone else on the team contributed 80% of it. It won’t always be that way, so speaking of ‘we’ keeps everyone engaged, involved, and interested in the project’s outcome.
I see this scale across disciplines as well, when we work with well integrated teams or firms and clients that are used to large scale collaboration. They use the ‘we’ as well, but it becomes macro now, encompassing the moves the whole consultant team is wanting to take, which also usually leads to a unified conceptual direction. And ideally, this is where this would sprout wings and people would think of the ‘we’ as being all of us who would use these spaces; the ‘we’ becomes the local population, and continues going outward to spark more change.
It’s like meditation practice, in that you need to remove the ego; there is no ‘I’ there is just this moment of conscious awareness. And someone may say, “well how the hell does that have anything to do with design,” but if you are thinking about spaces as they rightfully should be thought of—long term designs that should create experiences for people over decades, beyond the scope of the immediate ‘I’—then it makes complete sense that it can’t be about you and only you. And if we truly keep this in mind then we (designers) cannot be ok with treating things as passing fads or window dressing because we are not thinking beyond ourselves. It is much easier to build for the ages when you can zoom yourself out to that wide view of your position in the scheme of things. I think a lot of architects do this quite well already when they can, because their contribution is immediately seen to be part of the fabric of a neighborhood.
EV_Tying together the themes of building for the ages, interiors needing to be considered long-term, and urbanism as an interior undertaking, I’m reminded of a story you told me a little while ago where you experienced the history of a city being used as a driver to design a series of interior spaces on your recent trip to Italy. From what I recall, certain elements of adjacent outdoor urban spaces were extended into the interior and it really seemed to strengthen your conviction about how the intimate relationship between the interior and the “outside” urban landscape can be brought together in a meaningful way. It would be great it you could recount the story and how it affected your perception of this idea of “Interior Urbanism” we’ve been discussing.
JS_Yes, most definitely. My trips this year were incredible, and I feel so grateful to have been able to have taken them. I had never been to Europe or the UK (cue audible gasps) but after getting the opportunity to see parts of Italy, and then London & Paris later in the year, I have started to really cement the idea in my head that context is the absolute key to proper human-centric design on any scale.
To recount the story quickly, there was a fashion store just outside the Brera in Milan that I stumbled upon when I was taking photographs of a beautiful church tucked just off of a busy street. The entire square and the church itself was made of pink granite, and as I was snapping away photos, I saw this store and moseyed my way inside to check it out. Amazingly, they had brought the pink granite right through, utilizing it in the flooring and as these amorphous, organic rock-like slabs where they displayed clothing. It was definitely a minimal design, the remaining materials were part of the brand and also striking in their beauty and contrast: stainless steel, mirror, and that was it. They had pink stucco on the ceiling which tied to the pink granite but everything else was one of these other materials.
I ventured into that same brand’s store in Paris and saw the same thing: it was built right next to the Louvre, and they’d used the same travertine on most of the surfaces throughout, unless they used their signature stainless steel or mirrored surfaces. Both spaces struck me in their simplicity, but also the fact that they respected their location to an absurd degree. It didn’t feel like they’d tried to mimic the Louvre, or that little pink church, but to celebrate their existence within this contextual sphere of a neighbourhood.
Without context, these spaces would have made no sense, and may have even been cold or alienating. But the minute they respected what was around them, they were able to add to the narrative of the community at large, and to me, that is what is lacking so much in our local discourse as a profession designing interiors. Humans want to be rooted in place, connected to their neighbourhood and community, and when that is taken away—when we all live in facsimiles of places with zero attachment to the here and now—we are creating spaces of alienation.
This is something you don’t see in all of these places where cultural heritage is so important. Interiors expand on that mesh of a neighbourhood, which inherently creates humanistic spaces. I walked into multiple bookstores in every city I went to, and they were meeting places, coffee bars, debate arenas, and study rooms. And everywhere I went, bookstores were rampant, they were wide open and inviting, and they were on nearly every block.
I’ve heard arguments against my perception of alienation when I got back from Italy, and it always fell into the refrain that because Canada is a melting pot, it is harder to achieve cultural cohesion. But I do not even remotely agree. First off, London was extremely diverse in its population, and their communities buzzed with a life I had never seen here (aside from maybe a big playoff hockey game). We have such an amazing and diverse group of cultures in Canada that we should have no problem creating more inclusivity in our spaces and rooting them to context.
The problem here is that we haven’t defined what any of this means. We haven’t defined it like the Italians or the Parisians. You could argue it is the youth of our country as a nation, but fine, then we need to start that narrative now. Are we cold and shut off, creating bubbles for people to avoid each other in, or are we a culture that wants to foster connection, rooted in local context? Are we just putting useless stuff into spaces because marketing says it’s a buzzy thing that will sell spaces, or are we looking at what communities actually want and need to thrive as hubs of community?
Unfortunately, it seems as though the Interior Design community is keeping themselves out of the loop on these bigger questions, either from a lack of interest, or from a feeling that we don’t belong, which causes us to lower our voices, or back away from research.
I believe we do belong. We craft the spaces that people spend a vast amount of their time in. If we are doing it without any research or thought beyond trends, we are a massive part of the problem.
EV_You bring up a lot of important issues…I love the call to arms for the Interior Design profession! [Smile] I agree: as a discipline that prides itself on being human-focused, not actively contributing to important conversations such as alienation, community-building and cultural values—for whatever reason—is a missed opportunity.
This divide between interiors and “the rest of the city” runs very deep. Your story brought to mind the renowned 1748 map of Rome by Giambattista Nolli that depicts the interiors of important public buildings across the entire city as extensions of the street. A poignant and important idea: accurately depicting everyday experience with precision and clarity. To my mind, one of the most important drawings in history. Ironically, despite the many advances made within the design fields, we’ve moved further away from this idea even at the level of drawings.
When I started teaching interior design, I was caught off guard—and honestly very disappointed—to see that students left the space outside the exterior walls blank, as though the world beyond the walls of the building didn’t exist! Sadly, this also translated into the profession: far too many interior designers, despite talent, fail to understand interiors as simply part of a continuum that includes the city as a whole, similar to what Nolli drew centuries ago. To my mind, Nolli didn’t go far enough, every building interior should have been drawn!
But even drawing the interiors of a small fraction of the buildings within the context of the larger city would be a virtual impossibility today. One would have to get countless permissions by the lot and building owners, alongside the usual slow-moving City processes. Ultimately, it would be illegal to produce a publicly accessible map like Nolli’s. Perhaps the only exception where it’s plausible would be university campuses since the schools own all buildings and open spaces. Campuses are much different than cities, however.
In 2002, Renee Chow wrote a book, Suburban Space that highlighted this very issue—our inability to depict and therefore think about interior and exteriors as a continuum-as one of the main causes for the poor quality of the built environment. Is this the type of research you’d like to see more of?
JS_There is a lot to unpack here, all exciting stuff, and I fully agree with all your branching-off points, as it all comes back to the fabric of our cities.
I have not read Suburban Space—but will now find it and read it, of course! [Smile] But even just reading the blurb from the Amazon link, I can deduce that it is exactly what I am talking about. The fact that it focuses on direct observations over conjecture is exactly what we need more of, but this type of work goes unseen – it certainly isn’t taught at the level it should be, nor do we do enough post-occupancy evaluations to determine if what we attempted was successful.
When you zoom out and look at Nolli’s map, you do realize that these spaces are extensions of the context they inhabit. You could argue that each “space” is merely a response to the adjacent context; i.e. the interior is contextual to the courtyard (exterior), is contextual to the architecture, is contextual to the street, to the neighborhood, until you reach the fabric of the city as a whole. If we spoke that language, we would quickly see a connection, a diversity of spaces—interior and exterior— unlike anything we’ve attempted in our young cities.
And while you are correct, we wouldn’t be able to recreate this document today, and while we know that homogeneity is not the name of the game anymore with skyscrapers holding a multitude of uses, this doesn’t mean that we couldn’t strive for a “public” level of transparency. Most office lobbies are fully open, yet serve as empty spaces of no importance beyond a “monumental” perception, despite having the opportunity to expand these uses and fold them into the fabric of the neighbourhood in a meaningful way. Is there a happy medium here? Probably. I’d wager that as “Smart” cities move forward, this type of data will be fully front-of-mind again. I could easily see a digital map like Nolli’s crafted by AI capturing data from an IoT connected city.
Thinking of multi-family housing, security is important as a lobby is also a gateway to someone’s home, however, there are other options here. The shift has been that more and more buildings require commercial spaces at grade—like coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, or other retail fronts—but this can to be further explored and prodded. What if these spaces were secondary lobbies that provided a public area, access to retail, and furthered into the private lobby experience of moving into your home? There will be issues with this, of course, leasing discussions and lease line locations, ownership issues, strata issues, fee questions, but we aren’t discussing or exploring it at all, so these spaces are designed as bubbles adjoining other bubbles. There is no connective tissue forming. Urban planners are likely discussing all this, but we aren’t at the table to offer our voice to the discussion. We aren’t researching prototypes of these types of ideas, except in small pockets of data like the Happy City project. There are no Interior Design professionals on that team, but they do fantastic work.
This is where your comment about interior designers leaving a blank void through the windows of our projects rings true—it still happens in practice! We say that it’s because we don’t have the scope to input landscapes information into our drawings, or at the extreme, we just don’t care about the context. And to be fair here, why would we? When you are designing a silo, you only worry about what is in the silo, there is no neighbourhood fabric to contend with. We pay lip service to thinking cohesively about our designs, but it isn’t enough to merely wax poetic about what we hope to achieve, when the final result drops us right back into the removed and detached instead of the connected design. And again, to be fair here, there are some fantastic people in development who frequently ask us to review the connection between interiors and exteriors, but then we must hold each other accountable as we (the profession of interiors) do not do enough to think of this fabric, so our responses are one dimensional (think: we used this tone of wood indoors, lets make the patio furniture the same wood tone). Here, when given the chance to push beyond our boundaries, we fail to reach the possible heights available to us because we have not looked beyond our own field enough to even have a base understanding of those specialties outside of our own.
And finally, I need to pull back a bit and say, there are people doing this. There are architects and urban designers, and I am sure even some interior designers out there, working towards this ideal—or at least poking at the edges of accepted norms to see what is possible. There are clients looking to create communities, beyond just a buzzy bubble of sales, towards a vibrant, walkable, public core for your home. I don’t want any of my ire to be pointed toward any of these individuals or corporations, because my true issue falls within our profession at large. It is easy to blame others, but until we show that we have reason to be at the table, others will continue innovating with us standing in that blank void outside the windows, picking pretty things.
Here is an example of what I mean, and then I’ll let you step in to pick this all apart: I mentioned bookstores previously because they are extremely important to me, and I think, a supremely important part of society (I am including libraries in here as well – generally anywhere we can congregate around books). Through my travels, I have learned that Amazon has to obey laws in other countries that prevent its foothold from being too large. This allows smaller retailers to compete, especially bookstores. There are also tariffs set by book publishers that are egregious in Canada, that other countries do not deal with.
These issues are beyond the scope of an interior designer, right? No. And that is my argument.
If we do not have the respect of our command over the interior environments we craft, as architects have had for centuries, we will not take on any of these issues. Architects are frequently requested to speak on matters of the political, the social, the very fabric of our civilizations. If we, interior designers, truly believe that we manufacture spaces that people spend the majority of their time in, and want to create community like we say, we need the respect to be able to appeal to the government when a big issue arises, and not be sneered at because we focus on the aesthetic over the scientific or cultural. If we want to effect change on the scale that other professions can, we need to elevate ourselves to that level. No one else will do it for us.
EV_Strong words. I think the issue of disciplinary boundaries and silos is critical here. You’ll be disappointed to find out that, based on my experience in practice and as a teacher, issues like rethinking the lobbies and retail space you mentioned—issues that reach across scale and discipline—aren’t in fact even happening at the urban planning level. At least not locally. The pull to specialize is simply too great and we see the negative effects of this all around us.
A great relatively recent example of this was when laneway homes were initially legalized in Vancouver. At that time, planners, with their limited knowledge and understanding of interiors, took to the ‘drawing board’ developing policies focused on building massing—lengths, widths, heights’, etc.—that were meant to ensure the laneway house ‘fit in’ with the surrounding community. This included requiring cars to park within each house to minimize cars on the street.
Despite good intentions, the result was horrible. The living spaces were extraordinarily bad. Between the required car, the mandated setbacks, allowable floor space, window limits, and gabled roof biases, all living spaces had to fit within a 9′ width, including circulation—hallways and such. The houses were effectively two levels of dark bowling alleys. At the time, I was helping out a friend by doing energy inspections, so I went into countless speculative laneway housing units. All brutal, especially given the premium people were charging for rent.
I’m always baffled that planners would not have simply reached out to interior designers at the time when developing their policies…and vice versa, that interior designers wouldn’t be up in arms and tell the City how far off they were in terms of their regulations when the first units were built. As one would expect from any trial-and-error approach, regulations have improved a little since that time, but the standard was so low to begin with that it’s difficult to imagine getting any worse.
So again, things run very deep. In my teaching roles within various design schools, I’ve always attempted to expand the scope and scale of student projects to include the domains of other disciplines in the hopes that it will translate when they are out in their respective fields. But, these classes are often one-offs within a great educational curriculum that pulls them away from integrative thinking towards a more specialized, siloed approach. This makes sense given that most faculty have been trained to think and act through their specialization and teach accordingly. So, it’s a self-reinforcing cycle.
Let’s be clear: I think the movement towards specializing has offered, and continues to offer, many important and meaningful contributions to the world. But it seems to me that there hasn’t been enough critical discussion about what was lost in that societal movement and what needs to be corrected accordingly. Although we’re talking here about the design fields, the same holds true for most other disciplines. Somehow we need to find a balance between the two extremes.
Now, it’s clear that you’re advocating for interior designers to be much more aggressively proactive at taking part in important societal discussions and breaking through the standard disciplinary boundaries in order to do justice to the field’s larger public ambitions. You mentioned appealing to the government when big issues arise, as an example. Are there other ways you feel the Interior Design Community can and should be proactive?
JS_What a fantastic example. It is disheartening to hear because I do tend to believe that other disciplines are inherently more “in order” than ID at times, if only for our relative newness in the built environment (on a long-term time horizon). But you are exactly right that it is very much what I am advocating for. I think to pull back for a moment, we can look to a few different ideas as examples of how this could move forward.
I have a thing for following fashion, not intensely, but it’s design, and I love design, so I follow bits here and there. The way I picture this would be comparable to saying there are two types of fashion: the aesthetic form, and the functional form. And we’ve heard this argued forever, function follows form, form follows function, etc. and it’s accurate, yet we seem to align ourselves in these two camps. Whether you are a diehard believer of either idea doesn’t necessarily matter to the bigger picture. Gucci or Chanel or LV (pick a name) do some interesting things. However, so much of the world can’t afford it, can’t fit in it, a host more don’t like it, and then another ample amount of people look at it like art, and don’t even worry about it being worn, so they don’t care how it feels, or how it performs. It’s a statement.
Then there are brands that cost relatively the same, but their costs are higher than “normal” because the methods they use for construction are new and innovative. They may be funding further R&D, or are made from fully recycled material, or they use a new type of mycelium-based polymer, they were 3D printed, they can withstand puncture from small sticks or rocks, or are black until car lights hit the material and they become luminescent….you get my drift. They’d be considered the ‘technical product’ – the ‘function’ for lack of a better word.
I don’t think these two camps need to fight each other, but in fact can be two sides to design that work in tandem. You have your R&D side, your functional and technical product, that isn’t always as nice looking or aesthetic, but it has a host of good benefits to its use. The problem is, people do still crave nice things, so there will always be a niche where they’d use anything if it meant they were healthier, saner, more active, safer, and so on. When you steal a bit of the ‘aesthetic’ realm from the ‘functional’, and they in turn steal a bit from the functional and bring it over to the aesthetic realm, both benefit and move forward cohesively. It doesn’t mean we have to dislike or feel superior/inferior to someone based on their view of which should come first, as long as they are both innovating in their own ways.
So, how we apply this to the built environment is key. Right now, I would argue that a lot of designers act like ER Doctors; we are design triage specialists. We have projects that arise that are usually behind schedule from the start of a permitting journey. They are profit ventures, and as such, we are always at capacity or just near it to keep the business going. All of this isn’t bad; we need some version of this productivity to keep the machine turning and spaces being made for people. Let’s consider this the ‘aesthetic’ side of things.
However, what we also need is a research division, and you and I have spoken about this before. There are great firms doing this, but from my review of the work published, it is either architectural in nature or very narrow in its scope for Interior Design. When you look at the WELL V2 standard, the work they’ve put in is fantastic, they’ve cited their sources publicly and you can trace it right back to the original papers or sources, which is exactly what we need. But in doing so, you also realize a lot of their information is not coming from design research, but from other fields and then adapted to design.
Again, there is no issue with that for a while, but the researchers were not tasked with looking at these questions with the built environment in mind at all times. A study on biophilia may report less anxiety in individuals exposed to nature regularly, but does the same effect occur when that nature is a potted plant in someone’s space, or does it require an interior courtyard? What about just painting a wall green? Again, the work is being done, but I would push interior designers to look further, to create a repository of trusted information, and eventually develop our own research. There are one-off research items, but we need to move with purpose within our field specifically. We need to have a group of people who are ok to step into these issues, outside of the for-profit model, without bias, and become a true research arm—researching the things people need to know.
I was recently working with a large governing body on reviewing their Continuing Education Unit (CEU) courses to ensure they were actually meeting the standards of their charter, and after a thorough review and many rounds of discussion, we had to remove quite a few because they lacked transparency in their results, or they were biased by the sponsors. A lot of designers rely on these CEU’s. We’ve mandated as a profession that they are required to keep ourselves in good standing, which is the right idea, however, the CEU’s should then need to meet a stringent standard to ensure we are getting actual factually based, scientifically researched information.
To further the profession, we need deep reviews of how people communicate, congregate, and move through spaces. We need this post-COVID more than ever, as we know that pandemics radically alter societies when they hit. Since the pandemic, I’ve read quite a few books on the subject, and a couple of standouts noted that we go through massive upheaval after pandemics—more specifically Until Proven Safe by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, Plagues Upon the Earth by Kyle Harper, and Plagues and Their Aftermath by Brian Michael Jenkins. A governing body here would be incredible, something removed from a firm, but paid for with dues from members as well as grants and donations.
Why, when we are speaking about how to keep interior environments safer for people during an infectious disease outbreak, did we have to wait for other professions to lead the way?
If we were prepared with expertise and trusted that our expertise was valid, we could have hit the ground running and helped learn from what happened. The change could also be something that starts systematically within schools, providing research opportunities for graduates, or even students looking to pursue this avenue.
We have an advocacy body pushing for recognition among government and municipalities, so why not bump that up a bit more and include a research wing? Eventually, this could grow to be a respected source for important scientific information within the Interior Design community and beyond. And when we think back to the fashion parallel, this allows the aesthetic to keep pumping out work, but with the understanding that as our standards rise, the aesthetic thinkers would follow this logic like they do taking bits of “technical” products, or for us, building codes.
It’s definitely up to us as interior designers, that is clear. No architects or urban planners should need to step up to fix this problem. This is a ‘we’ issue, the ID community. If we truly want to be taken seriously by governments, clients, and even the public, we need to earn that. We need to show that we can officially accept the torch from architects for the interior design of a space. All work should be collaborative, and we as a profession have a duty to work in tandem with others’ ideas. However, we need to be the final word when it comes to interiors, rooted in scientific reasoning. Our spaces are experienced by many people, they deserve to know their spaces were designed by experts at their craft.
EV_To your point, Princeton Architectural Press just released a book by the name of The Pandemic Effect that includes 90 short pieces by 90 experts on the immunization of the built environment. As one would expect, there are countless contributors related to the field of architecture including Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley. But there is also a healthy diversity of contributions from folks from other fields—from epidemiologists to folks in the technology industries, all the way to art curators and physics professors. Yet, I don’t recall one single interior designer in the mix. Not one!!! Assuming this publication is a decent reflection on the research status of the ID profession, your words certainly ring true.
Building from your ideas about how you think ID should have a research arm, I’ve had many chats with architects, landscape architects, and urban designers that lament the fact that few within those professions actually go into politics or government and attempt to change the world through that field. Architects and designers are presumably trained to deal with complex problems and systems: methodically trying to find meaningful compromises between competing and contradictory issues. This is the type of thinking that would be useful to have within government positions, let alone having a voice that advocates for the creation of well built environments at that level.
Now you’ve mentioned governments and municipalities a number of times in our conversation, in a way that subtly implies that you’d like to see interior designers in those types of positions as well…but haven’t been explicit about it. Am I reading that right? That, over and above going further into research and strengthening the discipline’s knowledge base, you’d like to see more interior designers go into government positions and make changes from the inside? Or am I projecting here? [Smile]
JS_So first and foremost, I need to recognize that the American Society of Interior Designers does have research grants being put to good use, but the rate is still slow – they’ve covered 2 studies across the entire US this year. It is still fantastic work that they do, I don’t want to diminish that, but my call to arms is that we need vastly more of this.
In that same e-mail they noted that a government body in an American state (I believe it was New Mexico but can’t find the e-mail) is pulling their professional status legislation for Interior Designers, so this very nicely ties to your point about government positions. I do think that we need more designers in these roles, and while I understand that being mayor of a city or working that fully in government is likely not what a lot of design professionals look toward, I am also consistently shocked to see all these fantastic proposals for tall wood, or carbon neutral concrete, or net-zero building designs languish through red tape by people that don’t understand what the professionals are saying at a root level.
So yes, I think we need further expansion of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, mechanical, electrical, and interiors, to all come to the table. I would love to see government offices holding more panel discussions with these professionals, or hiring consultants to work alongside them on policy decisions. Again, I know this happens, and I don’t want to speak in generalities, but it needs to happen at a much higher level, and in order for that to even be considered for Interior Design we have to overcome the hurdle of being thought of as the “aesthetic-only” consultants, by working more on the items I’ve highlighted.
The book that you are referencing sounds amazing, but it proves this point to a tee – interior designers need to bring something to the table to be seen alongside these other big thinkers, especially when you think that the majority of the pandemic related to indoor transmission and pathogen control in interior spaces, as well as the health and wellbeing (psychological & physical) for the inhabitants. I hope we can get there soon.
EV_To that point, the Introduction of The Pandemic Effect explicitly speaks to the significant role of interiors in the transmission of the illness, making it even more telling that no interior designers were included in the book.
Wow…well, we’ve covered a lot of ground here and I sincerely appreciate the time you’ve taken to chat with me. Do you have any parting thoughts you’d like to share?
It has truly been a pleasure! This discussion has made me question and rethink a whole bunch of positions and interesting avenues in design. I think my grand takeaway or final thoughts would be that this will likely fall on the next generation of designers, so—no pressure as an educator [Smile]—we need to ensure that they are being set up in a way that they can explore these topics and take them on full force if they want to.
If they want to take a research route, they should have the option. If they love the aesthetic part of the design field and want to make beautiful things, they should have that option. And if they want to pursue legislation and large-scale change at a municipal level, they should have that option.
The biggest disruption to the interior design profession—in the best sense—will be this incoming generation of individuals, and I have really high hopes for what they can achieve with their work and their advocacy. It’s an exciting time, and interior design is an incredible industry to work in. I’m extremely lucky that I get to be a part of it, and hope that others see this as a chance to start a conversation or raise counterarguments. It has to be a debate or we will never grow.
EV_Great thoughts to end on. Thanks again, Jeremy!
You can learn more about Jeremy Senko and BYU Design by visiting their website.
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Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver.
Jeremy Senko is happily lost in the world of theoretical architecture and design. He is forever a student at heart, consistently reading, experiencing and learning about the world he inhabits. More specifically, he is a Registered Interior Designer with a Bachelor of Interior Design from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, where he pushed the limits (and the patience) of his professors.
The post On Interior Urbanism: An Interview with Jeremy Senko appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Can anyone who pays attention to City Hall say they didn’t see this one coming?
The latest news from the budget committee’s deliberations is that the City’s proposed fees for CafeTO may be high enough to kill off the popular program. The pilot-now-permanent-but-soon-to-be-DOA program had been operating in a state of fee-free bliss for these past two years. Yet CafeTO must finally submit to the perverse impulses of a municipal administration that punishes what’s good for public space and rewards that which is not.
Case in point, also from this year’s budget fest: a discouraging memo from the city’s finance staff, enumerating the myriad difficulties and short-comings associated with establishing a parking levy. And this from a municipal government that, by its own admission, can no longer come close to balancing its books.
There’s been chatter about a parking levy in recent weeks, with advocacy groups like TTC Riders and downtown councillor Chris Moise connecting all the policy dots that should be connected, e.g., how such a levy would discourage driving, encourage transit use, off-set the need for a TTC fare hike, and on and on.
Ever since the American planner Donald Shoup published his seminal work, “The High Cost of Free Parking,” back in 2005, there’s been a spirited and expanding debate about the dubious role that parking plays in the urban context. Shoup argued that the prices for main street parking should be set by the market, municipalities should re-invest the revenues in local improvements, and that the city shouldn’t go out of its way to provide parking off main streets.
Others documented the ways in which low income or property taxes on parking lots could inadvertently trigger the demolition of older buildings that struggled to find tenants — a dynamic that was very much in play in downtown Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s, and persists to this day in places like Ottawa.
The policy debate over parking has dovetailed with the push in many places to implement the various approaches to road pricing (congestion charges, tolls, etc.). For a brief shining moment back in 2020, those advocating for temporary curb-side patios succeeded in persuading the city that the daily revenues from even a middling CafeTO location far exceeded the funds generated by the street parking spaces it replaced.
However, this lonely exception merely proved the rule, which is that Toronto doesn’t do any kind of road pricing, including parking levies, which are permitted as a new revenue tool under the City of Toronto Act, and nonetheless languish, unused either as a cash generator or a policy instrument, on the island of misfit taxes.
Mayor John Tory has been quick to throw cold water on the idea. Parking levies, he said this week, “have plenty of complexities which just don’t make it an easy thing to do. And that’s not the responsible way to run the government. And I won’t run the government that way.”
His comment is obviously political: Tory and council’s right know that their constituents don’t want to pay to park at the shopping mall; they also know that the handful of gigantic pension funds and asset managers that own so much of Toronto’s blacktop wouldn’t be thrilled, either.
But the politicians barely need to get off the couch to express these views because the city’s finance staff are more than happy to supply all the negative information they could possibly want. The five-page budget briefing note on a parking levy is a veritable study in how to make sure an idea never makes it to the floor of council. The document is chock-a-block with grave cautions about long implementation times, endless requests for exemptions, and computational complexities, as well as dated warnings (from a 2016 KPMG report) that even if council goes to the trouble of implementing said levy, it won’t produce much green.
What’s missing from the document is any analysis beyond the financial — how a parking levy might help the city achieve its climate goals (lest anyone forget that council declared a climate emergency a few years back), enhance public space, or drive up ridership on the TTC.
Nor would readers — i.e., councillors on the budget committee and the geekier members of the general public — know that parking levies are commonplace in many other major cities. It’s not like we’re designing a new type of space ship.
Here are but a few of the examples I found without much effort:
- Melbourne, Australia, where a parking levy applies to off-street private and public parking spaces across parts of the inner city.
- Scotland, where a law passed last year allows municipalities to impose an annual tax on parking spaces provided by employers. Edinburgh is considering one to discourage people from driving to work.
- Manhattan, where the city charges a parking tax of more than 18% on rented spaces.
- London, U.K., which uses “workplace parking levies.” I’ll let Transport for London explain the rationale: “WPLs are used to encourage commuters to switch away from using private vehicles to get to work or school – this will help us meet the Mayor’s aim that 80% of trips in London be made by walking, cycling or by public transport by 2041. The revenue raised will be spent on improving local transport.”
- San Francisco, California, where the city treasurer imposes a 25% tax on all off-street parking.
- Montreal, Quebec, which imposed a parking lot tax in 2010 for parking spaces in non-residential buildings, and is applied variably in different parts of the city.
While council did make a significant move last year by eliminating parking minimums on new developments, the City remains defiantly out of step not just with climate aware policy making, but its own fiscal sustainability, Tory’s protestations to the contrary. Put another way, officialdom’s disdain for a parking levy reads like a doubling down of the self-destructive behaviour on the part of the one institution best positioned to drive, if you pardon the pun, carbon reduction in the sector — transportation — that produces the most of it.
With apologies to Nero, we’re fiddling — or, more precisely, looking for a cheap parking spot — while Rome burns.
photo by Matthew McGillvary
The post LORINC: The taxing discussion about a parking tax appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Scot Hein was one of the most respected planners at Vancouver City Hall. For the last few years, he has been using his skills to train other planners. He has now announced a new short course that will be of value to neighbourhood activists and all those interested in dealing with the City’s zoning and planning departments.
As Scot describes it: “Essentially I will be sharing my best tools, methods, case studies/precedents and engagement practices for all stakeholders towards positive shared results. We’ll also practice how to start a productive design oriented conversation in the neighbourhood.”
It is a four-week course in April and May that includes a walking tour of Kitsilano. Full details are here: https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/courses/city/introduction-to-neighbourhood-design.html
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Make a difference in the future of your neighborhood. While city-building has traditionally been a top-down undertaking, neighborhood design has focused on building from the grassroots up. In this course, you will learn the basic tools and strategies to help you join the conversation and advocate for the neighbourhood you want to live in.
You will build a toolkit to help you navigate public processes, including permitting, zoning, economic planning, context reading, and choosing appropriate built forms. Through examinations of relevant case studies, you will learn how to strategically convey local aspirations toward thoughtful, transformative outcomes.
You’ll also have an opportunity to discuss the current urban design challenges facing your neighbourhood, and develop specific co-design participatory strategies to address them. Walk away with an achievable plan and a support network comprised of others who are passionate about place-making.
Note: This course includes a walking tour through Kitsilano.
SCHEDULE
Tue, Apr 11, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class)
Tue, Apr 18, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class)
Sat, Apr 22, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time (field trip)
Tue, May 2, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time (virtual class)
COST: $455
WHAT YOU WILL LEARNAfter completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Explain municipal development processes and related regulatory language
- Examine a neighbourhood along the dimensions of urban form context and density
- Determine the optimal set of urban design best practices for a given neighbourhood context
- Initiate strategic public engagement processes aimed toward shared outcomes
- Identify case studies that are relevant to local issues important to neighbourhoods
- Understand how co-design processes should/could work
HOW YOU WILL LEARN AND BE EVALUATED* Expect instructor-led presentations and class discussions * Prepare to discuss, debate, and formulate your own opinions
You will be evaluated on:
- 2-page report due after the course
WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE?This introductory course is for both professionals and engaged citizens with an interest in learning about neighbourhood design.
For more information on the course, visit the SFU website.
The post Event: Introduction to Neighbourhood Design’ Courses – SFU, Scot Hein, April-May 2023 appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: cities are complex. But that doesn’t mean they need to be complicated. Complexity refers to systems that are more than the sum of their interconnected parts, while something that is complicated is convoluted and difficult to understand—often resulting from the jargon and specifics of different disciplines. The built environment definitely has much of both, but we at Spacing Vancouver believe that we can help demystify some of the complications.
So, with the start of a new year, we thought it would be a great time to kick off our newest experiment: the S101 Series, a.k.a S101S. This ongoing initiative is intended to give readers a strong baseline for understanding fundamental aspects of the built landscape in a clear, accessible manner. It is going to cover a broad range of issues, from “hard” topics that are quite defined—like, what is Floor Space Ratio?—to ‘softer’ subjects that are less clear-cut, but equally important, such as affordability.
Supported by our strong contributors and access to folks in the field, we intend on explaining frequently-used urban planning jargon and exposing misunderstandings and misconceptions. This is done with the belief that, in order to collectively transform our environment for the better, all levels of society need to have a basic level from which to build our understanding. This starts with untwisting the knot of complication that has gathered over decades, if not centuries, of planning, designing, and constructing built environments.
In the spirit of our venture—and for convenience and clarity—the structure of each S101S piece will have the same format. The headline image will attempt to capture the essence of the topic. This will be followed by a very short introductory question and/or problem statement in bold text, including the necessary context. After this, readers will see the main body of the piece. This is the longest section and will cover the necessary research, background, etc. needed to address the question/problem. The piece will end with concluding bullets summarizing the key points within the main body. As the number of S101S pieces accumulates, the latter will be followed by links connecting to related pieces in the Series. All topics will be tagged S101S, for easy reference.
We believe this format will allow for both quick scanning and more in-depth reading, without losing valuable information. We hope it will be useful for the widest possible range of people, from students and passive urbanists to municipal officials and practitioners.
Although we have a decent sense of the types of topics our readers would like us to cover based on the frequent questions we’re asked, we would also like to officially call out to you, our readers, to email us topics they feel would fit the bill for the S101S. We also welcome those who want to write a piece for the Series. Please reach out to: erick@spacing.ca.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing how S101S evolves!
Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver.
The post S101 Series: Introduction and Call appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
With the launch of the annual budget slam dance, at the beginning of a new term of city council, on this, the 25th anniversary of amalgamation, it seems like as good a time as any to pose a timeless question to our municipal leaders: What have you done for us lately?
On its face, plenty. Council is poised to authorize a $16 billion annual budget and a $50 billion/10-year capital plan, enabled by a hefty tax hike and some magical thinking. However they arrive, all those dollars do all sorts of important things, which I won’t enumerate here.
But one could pose a slightly different question, too: what can you, as members of council, do? And are you, in fact, doing it?
This is a more subtle problem, and the answer is somewhat ambiguous. When the Mike Harris government passed legislation to merge Metro and the six local municipalities in 1997, there were over 100 local elected officials. That number fell to 57 as of January 1, 1998. The size of city council has shrunk steadily since then, as have the responsibilities of its members.
They don’t much deal with local service concerns — 311 is supposed to take care of that. Council, under John Tory, has pretty much exited the transit expansion game. High level land use planning is largely dictated by Queen’s Park. And thanks to the mayor’s pre-Christmas power grab, members of council have lost their ability to win a vote by winning a vote.
Perhaps the strangest detail of the atrophying of local government authority in Toronto has to do with the way city planning officials and council teamed up to end-run their own planning and consultation rules in order to fast-track the creation of affordable housing — an objective that could scarcely be more visible in the city’s own planning policies.
During the pandemic, the city, through back-channels, pushed the Tories’ municipal affairs and housing minister Steve Clark to issue ministerial zoning orders (MZOs) to fast-track the construction of modular supportive housing for homeless individuals. With Ottawa footing the bill, Clark was only too happy to oblige, except in one North York riding, where a member of his own caucus persuaded him to hold his fire.
The city’s acquiescence — maybe submission is a better word — to Clark and his MZOs reads like a straight-up instance of the ends justifying the means. In the depth of the pandemic, the city woke up to the fact that shelters were and are a terrible solution, and, uh, innovated by persuading the provincial government to wear those decisions in ridings they’d never win.
At this week’s planning and housing committee, chair Brad Bradford, the planner turned pol who represents Beaches East York, has tabled a motion pushing for a work-around to the work-around — a more genteel version of the MZO, dubbed “Community Infrastructure and Housing Accelerator” (CIHA), which appears to be a provincially created “tool” that municipalities can now use to, well, accelerate community infrastructure and housing projects.
Bradford’s pitch is that council should be using CIHAs to fast-track a full range of affordable housing applications, including modular housing, Housing Now projects, and Toronto Community Housing redevelopment sites, as well as co-ops, affordable rentals and non-profits.
If you need any further evidence of how the city gets mired in process with affordable housing, consider that Tory’s signature Housing Now plan, which launched in 2018 and promised thousands of purpose-built market and below-market rental apartments on 11 parcels of city land, has yet to deliver a single new unit. There are many culprits here — the pandemic, rising interest rates, the intransigence of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., etc. — but the city’s planning protocols produced several own-goals in the halting progress of this scheme.
The CIHAs aren’t that different from MZOs, except they formally originate with the city, and must be accompanied by justifications for suspending council’s normal-course planning processes. With MZOs, it’s more like Minister Zeus, hurling lightning bolts at whatever s/he chooses.
The inter-governmental politics here is subtle: the results — end-runs — are similar, but CIHAs represent a formal request from council as opposed to the notes-passed-under-the-desk approach that marked Clark’s modular housing MZOs in 2020 and 2021. But they also require the minister’s approval, because the Tories don’t trust council to do the right thing.
There’s a distinct after-you/no-after-you quality to the CIHA policy. But the subtext is that the Tories no longer want to do the city’s dirty work in fast-tracking affordable housing.
Mark Richardson, Housing Now TO’s senior technical lead and an enthusiastic supporter of the Tories’ record on affordable housing MZOs, says the Tories’ new tool does raise some important questions, such as whether getting the CIHAs approved will be a time-suck, whether the fast-tracking actually produces less costly projects, and how much private developers will have to ante up if they want one, too.
He also wonders what the mayor is going to do with a developer who has asked for a CIHA and is offering an attractive affordable housing deal in exchange, but is aiming for a tract of land in a ward where the councillor staunchly opposes such projects. It’s a good point, and certainly suggests that the Tories’ decision to kill Section 37 agreements didn’t put an end to the horse-trading baked in to the development approvals process.
In a housing crisis, there’s nothing in this latest work-around that seems excessively problematic. We need affordable housing, sooner is better than later, and the days of the city cow-towing to NIMBY-minded homeowner groups are clearly over.
But to my eye, the technicalities and the acronyms serve to obscure an almost existential problem, which is this: if the city and members of council know what needs to be done, understand the root causes of the constipation afflicting in the planning approvals system, and have a government at Queen’s Park that’s happy to provide political cover, why can’t they reform their own processes?
The housing mess has a thousand causes, and Toronto’s circumstances are far from unique. But every city needs to find its own way out of the crisis of affordability that hangs like a pall over so many large metropolitan areas. Here, Toronto’s Incredible Shrinking Local Government (TM) agrees that something — something! — needs to be done. But having lost so much of its muscle mass in the past two decades, the best council can do now is turn, yet again, to Queen’s Park for help getting out of its own way.
photo by Sam Carriere (CC)
The post LORINC: How to expedite affordable housing during a crisis appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The following is the afterword by Spacing‘s Shawn Micallef in the new book Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic published by University of Toronto Press (you can purchase it through the Spacing Store website or stop by the shop at 401 Richmond Street West). In Displacement City, outreach worker Greg Cook and street nurse Cathy Crowe present the stories of frontline workers, advocates, and people living without homes during the pandemic. The book uses prose, poetry, and photography to document lived experiences of homelessness, responses to the housing crisis, efforts to fight back for homes, and possible solutions to move Toronto forward from this humanitarian disaster.
A city that is one of the richest places on earth, where supercars roll through the streets, cranes keep putting up skyscrapers, and money keeps being made. It’s possible to walk for an entire afternoon or ride a bike for a few hours through neighbourhood after neighbourhood of incredible wealth, of multi-million-dollar homes, many of them once considered working-class dwellings. Where does all the money come from? How can there be so much of it? Even with some familiarity of the economic foundations of Toronto, it still doesn’t feel like the physical size of wealth here, the sprawl of it, is possible. It seems vast and never-ending, and then, of course, it ends.
The starkness of the “end” of wealth here was magnified by the pandemic, with tent encampments appearing in parks and ravines, built by people trying to escape a shelter system made inadequate and dangerous by both the pandemic and systemic issues. This end of Toronto was, to be sure, always here. The “Toronto the Good” or “New York run by the Swiss” narratives were convenient myths that always obscured the inequity here, even if it was in plain view. Toronto was never without those who didn’t get to share in the prosperity of this place that has, through its history, had more boom times than not.
There was The Ward neighbourhood, one of those inconvenient inequalities that existed right next to prosperity in the form of Old City Hall, a Victorian trophy of sorts for a proud mercantile city. It was no wonder then that The Ward and its shacks and privies, its burlesque halls and immigrant enclaves, were bulldozed to get it all out of sight but also to create a clean slate for a new symbol of postwar boom times. New City Hall rose as Toronto coasted into the last half of the twentieth century as a magnet for immigration across Canada and around the world, but it erased something too. Toronto doesn’t much care for seeing the poor.
The prosperous story of Toronto in the last decades was slowed down by the recession of the early 1990s and then the doldrums created by the amalgamation of Metro Toronto in 1998, but it soon boomed again and has never really stopped booming since: the city kept building and growing even as the United States went into a deep recession in 2008. When would, or will, the Toronto bubble pop? That particular question hasn’t had an answer yet, but perhaps a better question is when will we collectively recognize the partial deflation of the Toronto bubble?
Despite these decades of growth and of the kind of success that make most North American cities envious, the divides that were always here grew as the most basic necessity of life, housing, has become a crisis of access, affordability, and livability. The city is a real estate money-making machine for some, but Toronto is increasingly a desperate and hard-to-live-in place for many others. The question “is it even possible to live in Toronto?” is being raised often, and many people have already made their exit. Indeed, if it wasn’t for immigration, Toronto’s population would actually decrease with this steady stream of outward migration, another fact contrary to the city’s popular mythology.
Left behind are the hundreds of thousands of people without much of an option to move away, the people who keep this place running, the ones who used to be able to afford the shacks that sell for millions of dollars now. Their place in the city has been pinched and squeezed and made more uncomfortable. Even middle-class people, once the foundation of the city, wonder if they, or their kids, will be able to live here. It wasn’t always this way though.
On those long walks or bike rides through the city there’s something else to notice: the incredible amount of affordable housing that was built in the few decades after the Second World War. A lot of this housing was stand-alone or semi-detached housing, an incredible building boom that grew as the boomer generation exploded, encouraged by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation and various government policies. The idea behind it all was that Canadians needed secure housing if this country was to prosper. It was nation-building, not just home-building.
More importantly, actual affordable housing was built. Out of the city centre into what were once the suburbs but now are as much “the city” as downtown, social housing of various kinds was constructed in the form of low- and high-rise apartments, townhouses, courts, and other sometimes unique configurations. The ubiquitous slab apartment building is a Toronto architectural look if there ever was one, built in the style of the day with gusto.
By the 1980s, the slabs and brutalist apartment blocks had evolved into a postmodern style, with quirky references to older styles of architecture and a pastel palette of pinks, greens, and oranges, with some darker accent colours here and there, like the series of co-ops on Lake Shore Boulevard in New Toronto, built on the site of the former Goodyear factory, or the Hugh Garner co-op in Cabbagetown. On a long wander, these sorts of buildings will often turn up in slivers of land next to transportation or utility corridors, as the choicest land was most often scooped up by the stand-alone homes earlier, though there are some stunning ravine-edge locations that give the impression of a space-age utopia, buildings rising out of a green canopy.
The postmodern buildings are particularly striking, not just because the style fell out of favour quickly by the mid-1990s, but because they represent the last great era of affordable housing in Toronto and Canada. In 1993 the federal government got out of the business of funding housing with Finance Minister Paul Martin’s austerity budgets, followed by Ontario leaving the game when Premier Mike Harris was elected in 1995, and then the maintenance budgets of the existing stock were starved and those buildings began to decay and affect the quality of life of the people in them. We, as a civilization, decided something as essential as housing should be left entirely to the market, and thirty years later the effects are evident.
Another factor is just how few places it’s possible to build in Toronto. Though it appears there’s a lot of new construction – and there is, but not enough – it’s limited to relatively few places, as much of the city is off limits to even the gentlest additions of density due to exclusionary zoning. This is why so much of the dense housing, truly affordable or not, is relegated to the corridors with the most pollution. Think of Liberty Village, a place scorned for its density by people with backyards, wedged in between the Gardiner Expressway and two rail corridors, all of them linear carbon bonfires, spewing pollution. What messages does Toronto send to its current and potential residents by pushing density, and humans, to busy streets and worse?
All of this, the intentional limiting of where housing can be built and the absence of housing programs on a scale that would make even the slightest difference, makes the violence of encampment evictions even more egregious. The profound meanness of Toronto has been in full view these past three years, as has its long tradition of wanting to get what makes it uncomfortable out of view. What we have witnessed is a profound failure of empathy.
Is this the kind of city Toronto is?
Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness (McClelland & Stewart, 2016), Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto (Coach House, 2010), and The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure (Coach House, 2014). He is a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing. Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011–12 Canadian Journalism Fellow at Massey Colllege. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary.
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How can Canada possibly spend five years and tens of billions to fix the housing crisis, but still have no idea if it’s working? That’s the question raised in a recent report by the federal auditor general.
Canada’s government is in the process of spending $78.5 billion — about $5,000 per family — to fix housing. But it can’t show that money is having any demonstrably positive effect — not in reaching the goal of cutting homelessness in half and not in reaching the goal of supplying hundreds of thousands of housing units for lower-income Canadians.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. takes the bulk of the auditor’s heat as CMHC leads the so-called “National Housing Strategy.” But that strategy also identifies roles for Employment and Social Development Canada and Infrastructure Canada. The audit identifies a severe lack of coordination between the departments as a major source of the problem.
What do we even mean by affordable?
So, halfway through this decade-long plan, what was it supposed to accomplish? The bulk of the $78.5 billion was allocated to build, repair and provide subsidies for housing. The target is a nationwide crisis of unaffordable housing for moderate to low-income Canadians, and its natural result—homelessness. Here’s how all that cash was distributed:
Financial distribution across programs. Infographic via Auditor General of Canada.
The report is particularly scathing when examining the nation’s Reaching Home program that supplies funding to 62 Canadian municipalities experiencing ever more serious problems of homelessness.
The top related finding about that initiative: “Overall, Infrastructure Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. did not know whether their efforts improved housing outcomes for people experiencing homelessness or chronic homelessness and for other vulnerable groups.”
The auditor reveals that little to no evaluation of these programs has been made, and that there is a similarly shocking lack of clarity around who, if anyone, has been responsible for oversight:
“As the lead for Reaching Home, a program within the National Housing Strategy, Infrastructure Canada spent about $1.36 billion between 2019 and 2021 — about 40 per cent of total funding committed to the program — on preventing and reducing homelessness. However, the department did not know whether chronic homelessness and homelessness had increased or decreased since 2019 as a result of this investment.”
The report indicates that the truly big money was not spent on temporary housing for the homeless but on subsidies for the construction of market rental housing under the National Housing Co-Investment Fund.
A case might be made that by creating housing supply higher up the affordability ladder, you vacate, and keep rents lower, for units that very low income or unhoused folks can inhabit. Wonks call this attending to the “housing continuum.” And so the National Housing and Co-Investment Fund supplies loans and grants to both private and non-profit housing providers in the hopes of alleviating our national housing crisis across the low to moderate price range of that housing continuum.
But is it working? Who can say? Wrote the auditor: “We found that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. did not know who was benefiting from its initiatives. While the corporation knew vulnerable groups were intended to benefit, it did not know whether those groups were actually occupying housing supported by its initiatives. Moreover, it did not measure the changes in housing outcomes for priority vulnerable groups. We also found that rental units approved under the National Housing Co-Investment Fund that the corporation considered affordable were often unaffordable to low-income households.”
The housing continuum. A chart in the auditor general’s report adapted from ‘About Affordable Housing in Canada,’ Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., 2018.
The report traced the reason for this confusion to the definitional ambiguity of the phrase “affordable housing.” It said, “We found that the National Housing Co-Investment Fund had a measure for affordable housing that was not the same as the National Housing Strategy overall. The result of this was that rent for approved housing was often unaffordable for low-income households, many of whom belong to priority vulnerable groups. In the strategy, affordable rent is calculated as less than 30 percent of before-tax income.
“In the National Housing Co-Investment Fund, affordable rent is based on rent being less than 80 percent of median market rent. We calculated that rent for units approved under the initiative was typically about 63 percent of the median market rent, which was less expensive than the 80 percent criterion. When we compared rent using the two affordability measures, we found that overall low-income households would have to spend 30 percent or more of their before-tax income on rent.”
All of which is a nice way of saying that the “affordable units” were not really affordable by the Canadian families nominally targeted by the program because “more than 85 percent of Canadian households in core housing need had a before-tax income of less than $50,000. This meant that monthly rent would need to be less than $1,250 to be considered affordable.”
The report concluded, therefore, that very few of the units delivered in partnership with private real estate developers ended up affordable for Canadians experiencing the brunt of the housing crisis.
In Vancouver we are more than acquainted with this bizarre split in the definition of affordable housing. Coun. Pete Fry has tried, so far without success, to change the city’s definition to one pegged to average city dweller incomes rather than calling affordable prices and rents that merely are lower than average in a city with some of the highest housing costs in the world.
What would actually work?
The damning report on Canada’s failure to credibly claim results for its $78-billion program to make homes more affordable and put a measurable dent in homelessness invites the obvious question. What would be a better way to spend that money?
My response starts with the observation that these billions now are spent in “partnership” with private industry in return for largely unaffordable units. I would argue that money better spent to increase support, lapsed since the 1990s, for non-market housing such as co-ops. Currently, funds to support new co-ops in the housing plan amount to less than two percent of the total $78.5 billion.
In my view, the philosophy of our National Housing Strategy seems largely based on a misdiagnosis of the problem that leads to a simplistic assumption that merely increasing the supply of housing, of whatever variety, will solve our problems. We see the same thinking winning the day in British Columbia. Unfortunately, scarce as hens’ teeth is the evidence that simply adding a substantial number of rental units nationwide will reduce and hopefully reverse the recent increases in market rental rates.
Canada’s auditor general has provided us with a sharp lesson by demanding we tie any subsidies or incentives for constructing new housing to demonstrable proof that the kind created will directly benefit those hardest hit by housing unaffordability.
This story originally appeared at The Tyee on January 5, 2023.
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Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program.The post What Does Our $78-Billion Housing Program Really Fix? appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Here’s a strange little detail about the 20-car pile-up that is the Ontario Place redevelopment scheme: Shortly before Christmas, the province posted a heritage impact assessment (HIA) on its EngageOntarioplace.ca website. The document contained what, for me, was an ah-ha detail about a plan that has continued to evolve behind the scenes ever since the earliest version surfaced last summer at Waterfront Toronto’s design review panel.
The project has grown to include a $450 million, 2,100-space underground parking garage. Updates to the plans also began to reference a “science pavilion,” to be located on top of said garage, which would replace the west parking lot.
A schematic in the HIA confirmed what many observers had begun to suspect, which is that the “pavilion” will become the new home for the Ontario Science Centre. That reference, which I noticed in late December, has since vanished from the document, likely since The Globe and Mail‘s architecture critic Alex Bozikovic alluded to it in his harsh assessment of the design of the Therme spa, which he predicted would become Toronto’s “worst building.”
This (perhaps inadvertent) surfacing of what might be happening at the other end of the Ontario Line, which will extend from the CNE to Don Mills and Eglinton, is not only a crucial piece of the puzzle, but one that offers the province a way out of this extravagant mess.
The draft HIA, prepared by ERA Architects and commissioned by Infrastructure Ontario, is a document required under provincial planning law and subject to public consultation (feedback will be accepted through January 20th). Although the 140-page report doesn’t use these words, it poses the eternal question: can you put lipstick on this pig? And will it help?
The HIA proposes a series of design tweaks that aim to mitigate the visual and experiential impact of a nine-storey glass and aluminum blob that will dominate the west island in every conceivable way.
These moves, which appear to have been pre-negotiated with Diamond Schmitt, the project architect, include adding some porousness to the bridge to the spa in order to ensure slightly better views of the pods and pavilions; commemoration plaques and documentation; and additional tree retention “where possible” (the Therme plan removes some 800 trees).
The HIA also suggests that the massing of the new “megastructures” — i.e., the spa and the expanded Live Nation stage — be ‘sculpted,’ with additional step-backs and setbacks meant to protect “approach views” of Ontario Place’s signature structures from the east and west.
The reality is that the sprawling spa buildings will still be, to switch cliches, the elephant in the room that was Ontario Place, leaving little space for much else at its edges.
The heritage and environmental impact is, in fact, enormous, and this key point has been getting an increasing amount of public, political and media attention. Yesterday, in fact, former mayor David Crombie released a scathing public letter to Mayor John Tory and the members of city council, denouncing the Therme plan as “abysmally tone-deaf” and imploring them to protect Ontario Place and the west island in particular as invaluable green space.
There’s a certain ambiguity about the discussion of heritage impact. Certainly, Eb Zeidler’s architecture and Michael Hough’s landscaping provide the formal foundation for Ontario Place’s heritage. But because of its closure in 2012, the 2017 opening of Trillium Park and finally the pandemic, Ontario Place’s appeal, as Crombie duly notes, is very much a living thing, emanating from the way many people, including those living in the vertical neighbourhoods nearby, have re-discovered it as a park during and since the lockdowns.
In an interesting and important way, ordinary city-dwellers, without the help of planners or capital, have created an adaptive re-use for the landscape of Ontario Place, which, as all heritage planners will attest, is the high-water mark of heritage preservation.
ERA’s report doesn’t really address this user-driven evolution, but it does bruit another important possibility — a future life for Zeidler’s unique pods, which always struggled to find a purpose. Such as step is “critical to the conservation of cultural heritage value at Ontario Place,” notes the HIA. “The Megastructures have great potential as a catalyst for broader revitalization and site activation; their adaptive re-use should be prioritized accordingly.”
The notion of re-locating the Science Centre to Ontario Place (which was proposed informally to the Wynne government) and incorporating the pods as exhibit spaces, represents an ideal adaptive re-use, and unlocks a range of wins for both the city and the provincial government, while ridding Toronto of what will be an epic mistake by the lake.
To get there, however, we need to have a wide-open debate about both ends of the Ontario Line, which the province seems to not want to do.
First, if Doug Ford’s Tories are prepared to sink over half a billion dollars into Ontario Place in order to make it attractive to spa goers, we need to ask how else all that public money could be spent in order to revitalize this space. What is the opportunity cost?
The Science Centre, in its present location, has been a fading enterprise for years, and the buildings are now in need of major repair. More importantly, its two vast parking lots sit between a pair of future subway stations (Flemingdon Park and Science Centre, with the latter serving a major transit interchange (with the Eglinton Crosstown).
The city knows and is planning for the intensification of the Don Mills/Eglinton node, which is already designated as a major transit station area, meaning it will be zoned to attract a lot of density. From a planning perspective, it is insane to have two huge publicly-owned parking lots book-ended by subway stops; in short, the Science Centre lands that front onto Don Mills Road must be seriously intensified with offices, apartments and community amenities.
Relocating the Science Centre to Ontario Place enables the evolution of that intersection, and also allows for the adaptive re-use its structures as community amenities.
Down at Ontario Place, meanwhile, the Science Centre becomes the visitor attraction that the Tory government craves, allows for a second life for Zeidler’s pods, and protects the already adaptively re-used west island as public green space. No trees or birds will be harmed.
It’s also worth saying that from a programmatic perspective, the OSC has huge potential. Compared to when it opened in the 1970s, Ontario today is far more focused on science, technology, and innovation, as well as the fruits of all that inquiry, in fields like biomedical research, cleantech, and computing. A renewed version of the Science Centre can go well beyond static electricity up-dos and IMAX’s planetarium films for school groups.
There’s clearly someone at Queen’s Park thinking these thoughts. It’s well past time that we allow those conversations to occur in public. The Ford government has a way out of this disastrous venture, as well as a bridge to something much better. All the premier has to do now is open his eyes, stop listening to Therme’s lobbyists, and do the right thing.
top photo form Toronto Archives (fonds 124, file 9, id 41)
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In the early 1980s, when inner city crime was soaring in many large metropolitan areas, a pair of American sociologists concocted what they dubbed the “broken windows” theory of policing and community safety, which held, roughly, that if municipal and law enforcement officials sweat the small stuff — graffiti, loitering, broken windows, etc. — the big stuff would take care of itself.
There were many explanations for what caused violent crime rates to plunge in the ensuing years, and it’s certainly true the reasons were far more complex than the magical thinking that lurks at the heart of the broken windows school. Yet this outlook, which is fundamentally conservative and, proved to be highly influential, informed all sorts of municipal decisions, from cleaning up subway cars to launching countless community policing programs, many of which gave law enforcement agencies license to harass racialized young people.
All of which is to say that Mayor John Tory had a choice of symbolic conservative cure-alls to, uh, address the wave of crime that prompted his decision, announced yesterday, to hire 200 new cops and administer a $48.3 million vitamin injection into the hide of the perennially sullen Toronto Police Service.
He could, for example, have declared that he was going to shovel a whole lot more money into erasing the most visible signs of accumulated neglect on our city streets (we got a very short-lived blitz instead). Or he could have hired new security guards or even transit cops to keep an eye on things on the TTC, from whence the surge of random violence has come.
In both cases, Tory would have made the blue folk happy. But he instead reached for that most tired of all quote-unquote solutions, which is to put more boots on the ground, as if a hiring binge — which can’t be done overnight — will put an end to whatever it is that ails us now.
Which is, well, ambiguous. Yes, lots of media attention directed at violent incidents on the TTC, and that has certainly got everyone’s attention. But the Toronto Police Service’s latest crime stats — which offer an incomplete snapshot — shows a sharp year-over-year drop in homicides and shootings, not much change in the rate of assaults and sexual assaults compared to the past five years and, get this, a long-term decline in property crimes except for car theft, which is way up.
Basically, what Tory has done is serve up a housewarming gift for the new police chief.
Let’s consider a few of the other head-scratchers with this move. In the past two years, city council has debated and then approved the establishment of a new form of emergency response — specialized, non-police teams called in to deal with people in the throes of emotional crisis or mental distress.
For years, the police service itself has complained that uniformed cops spend more time dealing with mental health calls than almost any other task — tens of thousands per year. Amidst the George Floyd protests and calls to defund the police, an unlikely point of consensus emerged between the police and those treating individuals with mental health and addiction problems, which is that crisis intervention teams led by trained psychiatric nurses should become the first responders.
Tory, who frequently (and I believe genuinely) talks about the impoverishment of mental health services, supported the creation of the new so-called 211 service, dubbed the Toronto Community Crisis Service, last March.
How quickly we forget.
It remains to be seen how Tory’s opening gambit augers for the 2023 budget deliberations. There’s no question this 4.3% bump to the police budget will make everything else more difficult. The city is entering this year’s budget Olympics with a deeper than usual shortfall, and Tory himself has called on the feds and Queen’s Park to provide a bail-out so he doesn’t have to sell a property tax hike to Toronto’s entitled homeowners.
Surely if the police need a 4.3% hike to address what’s being sold as a violent crime wave, the other departments that support community safety and well-being (parks, recreation, libraries, housing, etc., etc.) deserve a similar increase. After all, if what we’re seeing is more than just a series of random crimes, then it makes sense for council to take a holistic approach by considering the other factors that contribute to the erosion of the city’s sense of security.
Perhaps the mayor and his budget chief will prove me wrong, but I’m guessing that the next chapter in this year’s budget saga won’t coalesce around a holistic approach. Rather, we will hear the political right call on departments to do “more with less” and distinguish between “must-haves and nice-to-haves” — in other words, all the normal-course BS that our leaders deploy to justify their desire to shield homeowners from the burden of adequate taxation.
More than anything else, though, what I see here is Tory reverting to, well, the mean, which is to say the fundamentally conservative world-view that he managed to conceal earlier in his mayoralty, but which has been cast overboard now that he and Doug Ford have figured out how they can work in harmonic alignment for the balance of their respective terms.
I’m always tempted to ask why Tory hasn’t read the room. But the fact is that he has.
photo by Ashton Emanuel (cc)
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Expand upon our embedded assets
This lyric essay digs inside the psyche of planning processes. It uses the oblique projection of poetry to throw light on places the approval process is pressured to overlook. Focused on the Broadway Plan, these thoughts are common to other urban transformations. This is a time of spirals, twisting vortices that stampede us to value ‘place’ in terms of money instead of public wellbeing.
The issue is not growth, but the quality of care taken to shape that growth. We need sensitive urban husbandry. Clearcutting the last fifty years of livability will not lead to affordability, and nowhere near to the sustainability we would want to sustain.
We can benefit from knowledge such as emerged from forest husbandry. For example, the mycorrhizal network, the symbiotic relationship between fungi and plant roots, is vital for the well-being, and thereby economic value, of our forests.
Existing buildings can be seen as weeds and new buildings as seeds. But woe betides us if we think that clearing away the old, and stuffing in the new is a recipe for healthy urban ecology. The private risk being avoided is financial return getting bogged down on overpriced land. For that, the public risk is losing the workforce that keeps all the bright and shiny new stuff humming along, The barn is deluxe but the horses have fled, taking with them the shovellers of shit we depend on.
This loss of fields of existing households loses the diversity needed to work the farm. High-rent customers with no one to cook and clean. The mistake of approving the wrong scale and surrounds of new buildings triggers economic tremors whose ghostly destruction of housing stock will haunt us for generations. The disastrous precursor of Metrotown’s scorched earth is being remediated. But land speculation is always eager to subvert the next public obstacle, and turn it to private advantage. The machinery of financial rhetoric is implacable, but we must prepare the ground to guide its tracks.
Without being cynical, there is an essential paradox at the heart of any large-scale city planning process. This is expressed in the bittersweet poem ‘Considering the Asset Management Plan’, a poem that expresses an inevitable arc of urban transformation (even of historic preservation).
Sweating the small stuff That poem was one of 120 community submissions read to City Council in October 2021. Their cumulative deep thought won a unanimous vote by Council to reject the Real Estate Department’s conceptual proposal for False Creek South. In its place, Council mandated a focus on not-for-profit development to accomplish the overall density that the community and Real Estate had a general agreement on.
This new approach would use the embedded affordability and expertise of the existing community in holistically building and managing housing on leased land.
It was as though Council had taken good counsel. But, more than six months later, City Staff still had not met with the community to discuss how to start work on this planning. In the meantime, the fanfare of the advancing Broadway and Vancouver Plans trumpeted the call of doom if the ground were not cleared for a Great Green Wall with forests of tall towers, unobstructed by roots.
‘What lies between Council and counsel’ explores the personal dimension of life experience as altered by new development. Changes can be brushed off as inevitable, but underpinning the stories are principles of designing with respect for the past and future context. This needs to be embedded in every urban design decision. But neglect of the intrinsic value of daily life is becoming the new normal for this unfortunate city and its future inhabitants. Everything is framed as a stampede.
The ‘X’ we place in the survey box does not solve anything, whether marked by you, me, or the Director of Planning. Planners have little idea of what will actually happen. But, like carbon dating an ancient tooth to understand changes in the drinking water, the forensic analysis of wordsmithing points to what a planning decision might become when it grows up.
Context is everything. There are fine lines that decision-makers, ‘Council’, need to see in the ‘counsel’ they are being given, by proponents and opponents of places proposed to be made. Concealed in this counsel are details inserted at the behest of development. Untended, like roots under sidewalks, they trip up the public interest Council and counsel claim to serve.
We all need to be concerned when the Council’s view of context is blurred or buried by City Staff’s counsel, and a development’s counsellors. The concern is more than just the power play involved. Inattention to the small stuff that makes daily life worthwhile is like ripping out the underbrush and fungal network of a tree to make it more appealing to a buyer, regardless of the slow death being planted.
Stumbling Past Public InterestSweating the small stuff is nurturing the fungal connections that are vital for the mycorrhizal network, and thereby the health of the whole. In essence, this provides insight of advance forensic archaeology before the event of weeding and seeding takes place. This ensures the grubby bits around the design’s fingernails can be given equal weight of consideration to the flashy promises tapped into the display screen.
From the commercial realities of professional practice, I am all too aware of the pressure to simplify and superficially skip over the contextual impact of new development. The fallback is to employ the dynamic of dollar signs to hint at a richer future. Context is not looking backward, not NIMBY territory, but looking ahead carefully to the life to be lived in and around new development. This is the story of ‘Council context / Counsel context’
It is with these thoughts in mind that I carefully dug in the ground around the ‘X’s in the Broadway Plan process. From 2019 to 2022, through the City’s rounds of consultation processes, I was one of the dutiful folks who submitted our ‘x’s, thumbprints, and likes and dislikes. The following is some of what I thought I was thinking.
- The maximum height and bulk of development should be determined by urban design and not the speculative price of land transactions.
- The nuanced aside to ‘consider additional height’ is the knife edge of the sharpest concern. This leads to the inflation of land pricing and building mass, cutting into affordability rather than enhancing it.
- Had Council’s 6-5 vote on the Denny’s site gone the other way, then the 4-storey increased height already negotiated, would be the context for all the Broadway Plan’s contemplation of ‘consider additional height’, and the ‘rules’ for the marketplace of land.
- The public now has to assume those words actually mean more than doubling of the urban design’s maximum heights. This had a fully defensible urban design rationale, and a well-paced build-out that is now reaching its mature urban form.
- Urban design principles are not fashion accessories. They serve successive generations in guiding development investment in a manner that supports existing and future populations to thrive together.
- Global financial trends encourage investors to override common sense in gambling on the price of land. Knowing priceless views could be sold for the price of a few small units overlooking the dustbins, a false narrative has been spun to encourage panic building because the developers depend on the tower model of development to maintain their profitable financial machinery.
- Small and middle-scale development, only benefits smaller-scale, more context-focused developers, as well as the general populace. As these do not constitute an organized lobby with deep pockets and a concentrated voice, they are easily dismissed. Thus the majority lack access to influence in the decision-making process, except last minute stands at public hearings.
A city is a dynamic network. In 1975, as a callow newbie in Vancouver, I spoke to Council in favour of the radical, new and different C3-A Zoning and Guidelines. It is logical to reconsider ideas after 45 years, but indefensible to discard public interest in the stampede of spurious financial propositions. Their outcomes threaten to darken our future forever and cut the mycorrhizal networks at the core of our well-being.
Resisting InsensitivityNow the Broadway Plan has been approved, the planning vigilance does not lessen. Concern over future outcomes led Council to install seismograph instruments to monitor shocks on the mycorrhizal networks of affordability. But the drive towards bigness for its own sake has intensified.
Through the years we publicly buried our statements in the City’s survey pile, the hoofbeats of development have been hard at their weeding and seeding. Their hubbub has taken advantage of the naive ticking of boxes that replace critical thought as the engine room of the approval process.
Every building can now be expected to more than double the scale of the reasoned thoughts behind the planning principles, solely because that is what the price of land wants.
Forensically reviewing the Broadway Plan ‘refinement’ to March 2022, it is tempting to cynically express the discarded shards of urban design credibility as ‘Pattern Language Redlined’. This would be a toxic epitaph for Christopher Alexander’s ‘Pattern Language’; that seminal work of urban caring, whose fundamental principles of social livability were embedded by his fellow travelers in False Creek South.
The tall densities offered as carrots for developers to increase population are intended to address affordability. But this gets defined as an investment calculation, not value placed on the worth of working people.
Affordability is not rooted in the world of financial investment, but in the world of community. People want to be where they are held worthy. We are now flying blind into whether the Broadway corridor can create a place worthy of affection. How better to address this than by example?
The replanning of False Creek South is imminent to be commenced.
This will have to be intentional planning and urban design, as opposed to the whack-a-mole chase of speculative development through the private lands of the Broadway Plan,
The challenge for planning the City-owned lands in False Creek South is to overcome the dynamic whereby thoughtful consideration of ‘intimacy gradient’ and ‘light on two sides of every room’ is being pushed from aspiration into impossibility. The lexicon of the 1970s cannot be left to obscure fundamentals of human-oriented design that are equally relevant today. Because land has become divorced from life, new patterns of imperatives focus on numbers in a box, to better preserve private benefit on the financial bottom line.
The language of design has festered into a travesty of itself in a triumph of marketing slogans. Instead of aspiration, there is fear, and to combat that fear is an exhortation to sell on at a higher price, en route to a promised land of exclusive seclusion.
The fear of 300ft. high Railway stations and Mercedes Benz dealerships, now threatens to carry the takeaway from Denny’s drive-through across to the north side of the street.
The root rot of the numbers game needs to be stopped in its tracks.
Rediscovering what we do this forTake a lingering pause to consider what we are doing this for. Lingering is an essential amenity, and without it, you don’t have a place worth being in. It is more than a luxury to be enjoyed in a world we can no longer afford.
As I have noted elsewhere and endlessly, “the goal of city building is that the café canopy be in the right place”.
A short explanation of this is as follows.
- To place that canopy requires a civil society free of terror.
- There, people can feel comfortable investing in welcoming people-serving businesses.
- Entrepreneurs can then attract enterprises to locate along the daily routes of a diverse clientele.
- Savvy ones settle in urban environments whose outlook and capture of sun and shade encourage passersby and lingering.
- Here, in the embrace of private and public realms, amidst the comforting gaze of strangers, we all benefit from an exchange of greeting and currency.
- Some may never take refuge under that canopy, but all take comfort from its common ground and inclusive, place mattering, spirit.
‘Tall Op-Ed Column’ takes us to the root of what buildings are for, a reminder of what we are fighting for. The moral of this tale is that we must not only continue to place our ‘x’s, but place them with even more care. Place mattering matters.
You can read Part One of Taking Us Where The Sun Don’t Shine – The Broadway Plan here.
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Graham McGarva has been a Vancouver-based Urban Activist for 40 years, 30 of them as Principal of Baker McGarva Hart / VIA Architecture. Throughout he has striven to balance ‘poetry & mathematics’, in the creation of connective communities.
The post Digging Into Where The Sun Needs Shine – BROADWAY PLAN – Part 2 appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Author: Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Jeffrey S. Anderson (Actar Publishers, 2021)
Given the number of books I read and review every year, it is rare to be surprised by a book. Like all cultural products, patterns in the themes, content, and structure of books readily appear with enough exposure. So, I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to read The Ecologies of The Building Envelope: A Material History and Theory of Architectural Surfaces.
As most students and academics know, typical theory books—especially those on architecture—are often challenging to wade through, no matter how meaningful the narrative. So, admittedly, I was very hesitant upon receiving the book, given the blatant reference to theory in its title. But my interest was piqued almost immediately upon flipping its first numberless page open: where Alejandro Zaera-Polo gives the most memorable, pointed dedications I’ve read to date—a sharp blade strike to the jugular of the academy, and scholarly protectionism and pettiness. To my mind, this dedication alone is worth picking up The Ecologies of The Building Envelope and it’s a shame that Actar kept it out of the pages accessible through its website.
Given such a spirited opening, I was compelled to see if the book would deliver on its promise of breaking the standard academic mold, and giving readers something truly worthwhile. Or whether it would follow in the tracks of so many architectural theory books, fertilizing vast tracts of landfills the world over.
Did it live up to expectations?
If giving an architecture bibliophile and design theory teacher an enhanced appreciation of the complex systems that service a seemingly mundane architectural feature—the building envelope—is any indication, then the answer must be a definitive yes! Let’s be clear, however: the focus of the book is building envelopes, so this will naturally limit the audience to those who enjoy the more technical side of architecture.
However, a far cry from the many technical books on building envelopes and technologies, the wonderful contribution of this work lies in its novel approach: one that focuses on contextualizing the social and cultural conditions under which certain building envelope systems and technologies developed and evolved.
So, readers are thankfully neither slapped in the face with an over-conceptualized theory of building envelopes or facades nor blinded by jargon-filled technical manuals about the minutia of building envelope construction and detailing. Yes, these books have their place, but as squarely stated in Zaera-Polo’s dedication, most of these are done by “puppets who think themselves authors, only capable to repeat what they have heard.” To the point of oversaturation.
In contrast, The Ecologies of The Building Envelope rides a fine line: grounding a “theory of architectural surfaces” within socio-cultural and economic realities of particular time frames. As such, the book’s motley crew of architectural characters—from mullions to caulking, membranes to joints, acrylic to mirrored glass, mortar to titanium, insulation to tar paper—unfold, not as the heroes and heroines that have evolved to a current “perfect” state based on merit. Instead, they are seen as emerging out of chance, as much as anything else. Right place, right time.
And so we see our many precious, beautiful architectural achievements alongside their not-so-pretty lineage, much of which lies well outside of the architectural discipline inside the messy trenches of industry—a dirty secret often held close to the chest of refined design practitioners. A strange maze of narratives filled with glorious triumphs as well as exploratory dead-ends…..some potentially waiting for rediscovery!
Although some jargon must necessarily slip into such a targeted book, the ultimate result is a very accessible piece of work as precisely detailed and rich as the building envelopes and systems described within. As such, I do not hesitate to say that The Ecologies of The Building Envelope: A Material History and Theory of Architectural Surfaces will give its fortunate readers a refreshing take on a seemingly mundane subject in dire need of a new story.
For more information on The Ecologies of The Building Envelope, visit the Actar Publishers website, where you will even be able to access 88 pages of the book via Issuu.
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Erick Villagomez is one of the founding editors at Spacing Vancouver and the author of The Laws of Settlements: 54 Laws Underlying Settlements across Scale and Culture. He is also an educator, independent researcher and designer with personal and professional interests in the urban landscapes. His private practice – Metis Design|Build – is an innovative practice dedicated to a collaborative and ecologically responsible approach to the design and construction of places. You can see more of his artwork on his Visual Thoughts Tumblr and follow him on his instagram account: @e_vill1.
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Toronto is a city whose residents are encouraged (or encourage one another) to dislike certain things, but who have also forgotten (or never really knew) the source of their animosity. Maybe other cities are similarly afflicted, but the combination of Toronto’s civic amnesia, and the astonishing persistence of certain urban myths, is especially pronounced when the debate turns to housing.
Exhibit A: apartment buildings inside neighhourhoods. Verdict: bad. Why? Once upon a time, the city banished apartment buildings on residential streets because they were seen to encourage immoral behaviour, especially among single women who may be living in them.
We profess not to worry about the conduct of single women living in apartment buildings anymore, but we still suspect that apartments in residential neighbourhoods are a scourge of some sort. New ex post facto justifications sprouted like deep-rooted weeds over many generations — impact on property values, noise, overlook, shadows, parking. Never mind that apartment buildings exist inside neighbourhoods in older parts of Toronto, and in basically every other big city on the planet. But for years, they were still seen as a sky-is-falling problem.
There are so many other examples: slab apartments (banned for largely aesthetic reasons); basement apartments (long seen as another form of residential blight); and, in much of the city, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, or any other type of house that dared to present two doors to the street — a rule of boundless idiocy which nonetheless remains a feature of the City’s planning laws. Why are we exercised about two doors? Who knows, but we are, or were.
Set against the peculiar tenaciousness of Toronto’s Victorian attitudes about the poor, the unhoused and those unfortunates who don’t own property, last week’s debate on recasting some of the city’s bedrock land use planning policies revealed a struggle not just among the members of this council, but also between the city’s striving present and its judgmental past.
Struggle isn’t exactly the right word to describe the debate at council, about which more later. Mayor John Tory’s housing action plan had two components — one, basically, a request for staff to lay out a strategy to add gentle density to neighbourhoods and mid-rise apartments to main streets, which, truth be told, is a file that’s been open and active in the planning department for several years.
The second was the third attempt to pass a bylaw legalizing multi-tenant dwellings across the city, and not just in the old City of Toronto and parts of Etobicoke, where rooming houses have long been licensed and regulated.
Parkdale-High Park councillor Gord Perks, in his speech to council, described the serpentine, slow-moving process that preceded this latest debate — years of advocacy tracing back to a lethal rooming house fire at the Rupert Hotel on December 23, 1989, in which ten people died. A Google search reveals that Perks has given versions of this speech many times, and his core message has been nothing if not consistent: it’s time to legalize rooming houses.
The inaction is due to some extremely stubborn misconceptions, and these go way back. Planning scholar Philippa Campsie, who has written extensively about the history and regulation around these dwellings, points out that until the 1940s, rooming houses — a.k.a. lodging houses — were neither unusual nor problematic, nor dwellings of last resort.
Unrelated people lived for extended periods under one roof and shared common facilities — bathrooms, kitchens, etc. — without arousing the ire of municipal officials or the moral condemnation of the city’s churchgoers. But, she explained in her 1994 history of rooming houses, the growth of the post-war suburbs and the development of high-rise apartment complexes finally provided many lodgers with an opportunity to buy or rent their own premises.
“Rooming houses,” Campsie wrote, “became the housing of those who had no other option: students, the working poor, or the unemployed. For students, rooming houses were a temporary expedient; for the poor, they were often a permanent home. Still, they were an accepted feature of the urban landscape, necessary if unglamorous, and a decided cut above the flophouses where men on skid row paid a dollar or two per night for a dormitory bed.”
Through the 1970s and 1980s, rooming houses came to be associated with politically triggering shorthand — “flop houses,” “skid row,” and the moral panic about the proliferation of “bachelorettes” in south Parkdale. The media dutifully covered the steady stream of rooming house fire stories and the inevitable deaths of poor tenants. But the political take-away from this sensational coverage was exactly backwards: instead of improving conditions through licensing regulations, municipal politicians outside the core found creative ways to block this kind of housing.
What’s more, the media characterization glossed over the reality that countless Torontonians have lived in shared houses for various durations, motivations, and life circumstances without incident, specifically because they were an affordable form of housing.
In a pair of fairly recent studies for the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre (here and here), Campsie unpacked the exquisite political complexity of earlier efforts to legalize multi-unit dwellings across the amalgamated city — a tale that consists of endless definitional permutations, strenuous discussions of minutiae like parking regulations, consultations held and later ignored.
Her analysis stresses a point that rooming house foes have always chosen to ignore, which is that the Mike Harris government’s decision to gut tenant protection laws and kill affordable housing programs drove demand for multi-tenant housing, as did other factors, like the dearth of student housing on the campuses of the city’s colleges and universities.
“Rooming houses, whether licensed or unlicensed, present an important question of human rights,” she noted in a 2018 paper published ahead of one reform effort. “On the one hand, the current licensing regime, where it is in force, gives homeowners considerable control over the lives of renters in their neighbourhoods. On the other hand, the lack of licensing in some parts of the city creates spatial inequities: shared housing in such areas is not subject to safety inspections. Resolving these issues will not be easy.”
Campsie also pointed out the grandest and most pungent irony of all, which is that Ontario planning law has long been premised on the principle that zoning and land use policies regulate form, not tenure. Except, it seems, when it came to places where unrelated adults were sharing bathrooms and kitchens. In those instances, we blithely regulated people.
Which brings me to last week’s council meeting. The current political context was crucial, of course: during and after the election, Tory promised to crank up housing production, and convinced the provincial Tories to give him anti-democratic powers to get it done. As the old saying goes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
There was a critical step that preceded last week’s rooming house debate, although its significance didn’t strike me until after the fact. Amidst the bloviating about Bill 39 and the mayor’s new super-powers, 15 councillors from all points on the political spectrum signed a letter saying they opposed minority rule. Perks himself wrote to Tory demanding a debate on the use of these powers. With the benefit of hindsight, those letters sent a clear message to the mayor: don’t assume you can rely on a rump of left-leaning councillors to deliver the politically contentious aspects of your housing agenda.
Tory was being put on notice: if he wanted reform, he was going to have to lean in and get it done in the old-fashioned way, which was through persuasion rather than fiat.
During last week’s rooming house debate, Perks and deputy mayor Jennifer McKelvie orchestrated the compromise that got the bylaw across the finish line — a rider about parking minimums for new multi-tenant dwellings in the inner suburbs where they’d been banned.
In his speech, Perks name checked several suburban councillors who had publicly advocated an end to the ban. Council’s left and right met in the middle — a compromise achieved not with the phoney legislative muscle provided by Bill 39, but through the art of the deal.
The trade-off, notably, puts the city back in the business of regulating form, however imperfectly, rather than tenure — which is the bedrock principle of Ontario planning law. And, more importantly, it begins to remove the stigma, cruelty and precarity that our housing crisis inflicts on tens of thousands of Torontonians.
I don’t know if Tory — who is arguably one of Canada’s most accomplished political coasters — grasped the gravity of what happened. Not just an historic decision about who gets to live in the city, but a vote showing Tory that local democracy can still work, in spite of his best efforts to wreck it. Perks handed the mayor a Christmas present for the ages. I hope someday he will return it in kind.
photo by Can Pac Swire (cc)
The post LORINC: Toronto’s Rooming House deal: Solving the ultimate puzzle appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
A decade of neglect has transformed Ontario Place into an accidental playground. As you will discover in our cover section, what was once intended as a provincial showcase has evolved into a destination for walkers, cyclists, swimmers, paddleboarders, partiers, birdwatchers, lake watchers, and human watchers, along with movie- and concert-goers to its more established venues. All, as Shawn Micallef notes, with an unusual-for-Toronto legacy of attractive, functional washrooms.
In this role, Ontario Place can be thought of as the mirror image and bookend, on the western side of Toronto’s harbour, of what has been dubbed the “accidental wilderness” of the Leslie Street Spit to the east.
Like the Spit, Ontario Place is an artificial land mass extended out from Toronto’s shoreline into Lake Ontario. And, since its official closure in 2012, it has, like the Spit, been colonized unofficially. In the Spit’s case, it was nature that did the colonizing – plants, birds, animals, and insects gradually settled and took it over, transforming it into an unplanned wilderness. In the case of Ontario Place, while nature (especially birds) has played its part, as Francesca Bouaoun describes, the colonization and evolution has been more at the hands of humans. People have discovered this largely open space, with its lakeshore, parklands, space-age architecture, and charming ruins of abandoned rides, and have re-imagined it into their own recreational space, one much-needed amid the burgeoning population near the waterfront and the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ontario Place was always intended to be recreational, but what the closure of the paid recreational sections revealed was that its best use is as a public space, a park where people can improvise their own pleasures. Even its isolation is a boon – without nearby residents, there’s no worry that how it’s being used will disturb anyone. Like the Spit, again, it’s an escape from the city that’s right at the city’s door.
The provincial government has plans to wrest the space back to private use and impose grand schemes on it – just as governments once had plans to come up with “practical” uses for the Leslie Street Spit. It’s the classic urban conflict between organic evolution from below versus planning imposed from above. As with the Spit, it will be up to the people of Toronto to stand fast and insist on letting this outcrop’s own messy path emerge naturally as people use it.
Some of the features in our front section also speak to the situation of Ontario Place. Jay Cockburn wonders if the “right to roam” the countryside that he experienced growing up in England could be transplanted to Canada. In England, the right to roam didn’t just happen. It was the result of decades of campaigning from the grassroots, as ramblers insisted on their right to use England’s natural environment for the enjoyment of all, not just private property owners – much as everyday visitors have developed unplanned ways to enjoy Ontario Place.
Meanwhile, Sarah Hood explores the development of the remarkable StreetARToronto program on its tenth anniversary. The program grew out of the realization that the way to deal with graffiti was not to fight it, but to embrace it. Graffiti was a sign that blank walls and grey infrastructure need life. Rather than wasting time and money making walls boring again, the City began paying street artists to cover them with art. The result was a more colourful, vibrant city and an ecosystem of talented artists. The City, in other words, paid attention to how its residents were reshaping the city, and built on that organic process rather than suppressing it. Likewise, Toronto’s residents have pointed the way to how to make Ontario Place thrive – it’s up to governments to build on that rather than fighting it.
Our big picture, meanwhile, is a striking example of StreetARToronto’s patronage. It is Toronto’s first tactile mural – an image that people without sight can experience through touch. When artist Leyland Adams asked people who had lost their sight what they missed, a common refrain was the sunset from Toronto Islands. It’s a reminder that the waterfront is fundamental to Toronto’s identity and mythology. It needs to be accessible to everyone in the city.
Pick up the new issue at the Spacing Store, online, or on newsstands.
The post NEW ISSUE: Ontario Place appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In advance of Spacing’s upcoming issue focused on Ontario Place, we are sharing some of photographer Steven Evans’s images of the site. See his website for the full three sets of photos.
I first visited Ontario Place as a teenager, some 50 years ago. Ontario Place had just opened, and I remember my sense of wonder at this exotic engineering achievement, perched delicately off the shore like a futuristic city. I bought into the idea that my province and my city were places of great promise. From the novelty of watching North of Superior at the then-revolutionary IMAX Cinesphere, to exploring the grounds, Ontario Place was my one of my first tastes of unsupervised downtown adventure.
A few years later, I returned with my new girlfriend to take in a concert at the original Forum. We joined the audience on the hills surrounding the revolving stage as the sun set for an evening of music, which was mostly lovely except for an embarrassing misstep on my way back after intermission and falling head over heels from the top of the hill in front of hundreds of concertgoers. Fortunately my date (now life partner!) didn’t witness this part of the Ontario Place spectacle.
It would be a while before we returned, this time with two young children. I had just started my career as a photographer and money was tight. Ontario Place was accessible and inexpensive, and our kids really enjoyed several visits to the Children’s Village – which included the unruly and exciting playground covered by a huge orange canopy and the spectacular waterpark with its terrifyingly high water slide. However, the spectre of problems was rising. In the face of competition from the newly opened Canada’s Wonderland amusement park, Ontario Place’s efforts to increase attendance and revenues inevitably took away its lustre and appeal. It started to feel commercial, prices rose, and the site began to look and feel tired.
Years passed before I would make it back. COVID had taken grip on all our lives, and my countless “therapeutic walks” through Toronto’s parks and ravines eventually led back to the Ontario Place shoreline, where once again I found myself admiring the architecture and the beauty of the surrounding landscape. Time and mismanagement had taken a heavy toll. The Cinesphere and Pods were rusty, their crisp white surfaces dulled by years of accumulated grime and neglect. The once-colourful Commons was boarded up and the Children’s Village had disappeared. The circular tower to the beloved water slides stood alone overlooking a vast concrete field, and the Forum, which had been replaced by the Molson Amphitheatre, had now become the Budweiser Stage. The Wilderness Adventure Ride lay abandoned and decaying like the movie set of a Western ghost town— its allusion to a natural wilderness being subsumed by the real thing as it becomes an inadvertent nature reserve under threat from current development plans.
This is Ontario Place at a physical, political, and economic crossroads. It seems an important moment to record it, as a reminder of what it once was, and to consider what it can become. These images of Ontario Place’s architecture and landscape are part of an ongoing personal photographic documentation entitled “As Is,” which I hope to publish and exhibit in the near future.
With thanks to Peter McCallum and Beth Kapusta.
The solitary remains of the now-defunct waterslide tower.
The Pods are steel and aluminum structures connected by bridges and suspended above the water. They originally housed a restaurant and exhibition spaces.
The Cinesphere is a triodetic dome that still houses the first permanent IMAX cinema in the world.
Roofs of the dilapidated modular buildings that housed shops and restaurants.
The former helipad for National Helicopters is now rented out as an event facility.
The grounds of the former Children’s Village and Market Square.
Under the chute of the Wilderness Adventure Ride.
A simulated northern Ontario landscape is part of the stage set for the Wilderness Adventure Ride.
A convincingly fabricated rock face is part of the Wilderness Adventure Ride.
The vast parking lot south of Lakeshore Boulevard.
All photos copyright Steven Evans.
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Update: Council passed Mayor John Tory’s Housing Action Plan, with a raft of tweaks, including a provision to require parking minimums for multi-tenant dwellings (aka rooming houses). For generations, rooming houses were only ‘legal’ in parts of the old City of Toronto, although they exist illegally across the 416. The decision marks a historic shift in the rules governing what’s allowed in neighbourhoods, although some critics condemned the parking requirement compromise, which was proposed by deputy mayor Jennifer McKelvie. The decision and all the amendments is here.
With a 40,000-foot view from above, there’s much to like about Mayor John Tory’s big bang “housing action plan,” which he will table in council today, thus setting in motion his third session-opening bid to confront Toronto’s housing woes (the first two were the Open Door affordable housing program, launched in 2015; and Housing Now, launched in early December 2018).
Tory’s plan — which is, in reality, a request that the City’s new CAO draw up an actual plan — includes a bunch of ‘missing middle’ ideas that have been circulating in the past few years, including revisiting the city’s restrictive design guidelines, adding gentle density to residential neighbourhoods, enabling mid-rise on main streets, ending “exclusionary’ zoning, and creating a dashboard that will provide actual data on the number of new affordable housing units that have been completed as well as approved (those two numbers aren’t always the same).
The report also marks a third attempt by council to pass a bylaw allowing multi-tenant housing across the city. (Council’s last pass, in July, 2021, was an especially grevious display of poor governance.)
It’s an over-used cliche, but the devil in all this planning reform really does lurk in the details, and there are all sorts of ways that council could end up passing a set of reforms that doesn’t do much of anything. Without setting out on a detour into the twilight zone politics of the mayor’s veto powers, I’d say that if Tory does, indeed, want to crack this nut, he’s going to have to confront the ways local councillors mis-use planning rules to stay in power.
Here are four of the devilish details that await us….
CharacterEveryone was asleep at the switch when council, in 2015, signed off on Official Plan Amendment 320, which the Land-use Planning Appeals Tribunal finally approved two years later. This policy change emerged from the bowels of the planning department and likely traced back to a bunch of activist residents’ associations. It added subtle but insidious language to the Neighbourhoods section of the Official Plan, enshrining “neighbourhood character,” a largely bogus concept, as a cudgel that could be weaponized to block development.
Which it has. This ill-considered move has been well used by residents’ associations to challenge projects on the basis that they represent an assault on neighbourhood character, whatever the hell that is.
All that language is very much baked into the city’s official plan’s policies. There are no fewer than 32 mentions of “character” in the latest version of Chapter Four, which sets out land use designations. Here’s one of the first references: “The stability of our Neighbourhoods’ physical character is one of the keys to Toronto’s success.”
If Tory is genuinely serious about eliminating exclusionary zoning, the city’s planners will have to present a plan to extricate the character language, root and branch, from the OP, and then he’ll have to get those changes approved. This one, to my mind, is a deal-breaker.
ResourcesLast year, the City of Toronto’s overall operating budget was $15 billion. Of that, council allocated $56 million — one third of one percent — to planning, and the bulk of those expenditures were recouped from fees. The planning department has 470 employees, which is equivalent to one percent of the city’s entire workforce (41,080 as of September).
There’s an old saying that you can judge a government’s priorities by examining how it spends its money, and these figures not only explain the endemic backlog within the planning applications process, but cast a long shadow over the rhetoric of expanding the housing supply.
Planners are not just red tape jockeys. We have policies and regulations approved by a democratically elected council that govern development, and the planning department is the institution that ensures these guidelines are respected.
Yet we know the division’s lack of resources throttles business-as-usual development; the ramp up envisioned by both the province’s housing reforms and Tory’s own action plan will produce enormous, crippling bottlenecks unless council is prepared to take significant steps to expand that workforce and its budget.
But: not through the cost-recovery formula that drives so much misguided thinking about development and growth. If the provision of more housing and more affordable rental housing in particular is a broad council priority, then we should all pay for it instead of forcing most of the financial burden on applicants.
And, as with the character language in the official plan, the size of 2023 planning department budget will provide clear evidence to indicate whether or not Tory is serious.
Prioritizing ResourcesVery large development applications, of the sort we’ve seen on huge redevelopment sites like those found on Eglinton East near Victoria Park or at the south-east corner of Dundas and Bloor are the planning equivalent of cash crops that require enormous quantities of water: they suck up almost all available resources — staff time, consultants budgets, etc. — and leave only a trickle for everything else.
What I’d like to see is council authorizing the planning department to align its work plan with other top-level priorities, and specifically two; the need for more affordable rental, and sustainability. In other words, projects that unequivocally advance these council priorities should move to the front of the line, while luxury condos made entirely of concrete should have to wait their turn.
We don’t do this, and the reason is that the developers will squawk. But it seems to me that if council decides that incenting gentle density, mid-rise projects on main streets, and affordable rental are its priorities, these are the applications that should have first dibs on the planning department’s resources.
As well, the city has a generational opportunity to make significant strides with its decarbonization efforts, which, lest we forget, are expressed in council’s declaration of a climate emergency. Too often, the planning and development sectors over-think sustainability, or allow builders to dress up their projects with largely cosmetic benefits.
But in the case of rental anything, the case for transitioning away from gas and onto high efficiency electric heat is a no brainer. Equipment like heat pumps and electric water heaters are now widely available, reliable, efficient and cost-competitive with gas. But at a time of rising gas prices, such systems also bring long-term energy savings, which can be passed on to tenants. The city is entirely within its remit to tell developers that their projects will be prioritized or fast-tracked if they fit out their designs with low-carbon HVAC equipment that doesn’t run on gas.
ParkingThe city’s parking policies have improved dramatically thanks to a recent council decision to eliminate parking minimums on new projects, using elaborate formulas that relate to the types of buildings, the proportion of space they occupy within their lot and various other factors. This shift definitely represents progress, especially on high-rise buildings situated on or near transit. It’s actually a solid example of how to align council priorities and planning rules.
Here’s my question: if Tory’s pledge to eliminate exclusionary zoning in house neighbourhoods is genuinely intended to enable property owners to build triplex or fourplex projects where detached single family homes once ruled the roost, council will need to think closely about how it deals with parking. After all, some of those projects will be in inner suburb locations where transit is not especially accessible, and marketed to people who commute into the 905 for work.
The answer here is not to force all the parking onto those properties; rather, the vast majority of the inner suburbs have strict on-street parking prohibitions that support the exclusionary nature of the zoning we’re trying to eliminate.
Why not allow on-street permit parking in neighbourhoods that are seeing the kind of gentle intensification envisioned by Tory’s plan? I understand that this question is a third-rail problem, and poses very direct challenges to the way local councillors can exert their own preferences through the use of certain types of municipal rules that effectively support exclusionary planning policies (the prohibition on lot severances is another choice example).
I also recognize that the provision of parking can and often does undermine carbon reduction objectives. But I’d argue that we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are many low-density neighbourhoods outside the core where a car-free or car-minimal lifestyle poses difficulties that are surmountable for people living downtown.
For better or worse, the city has long allowed on-street parking in the older neighbourhoods in the core. It now needs to consider some variation on this option — applied on an as-needed basis — in neighbourhoods in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke.
photo by Kevin Morris (cc)
The post LORINC: The devil will be in the details of John Tory’s housing action plan appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Author: Adele Weder (Greystone Publishing, 2022)
Drawing on extensive archival research and over one hundred interviews, this definitive biography – filled throughout with historical photos – sheds new light on one of the most important architects of his generation, and on a transformative era in Canada’s cultural history.
- From the Introduction
Ten years in the making, Ron Thom Architect – The Life of a Creative Modernist is an artfully composed collection of revelations on its subject, providing us a glimpse into the life and career of one of the nation’s greatest West Coast modernists. At long last giving the architect his due as one of Canada’s most important and influential architects, architectural critic and curator Adele Weder has also included the narratives of several other important Canadian architects alongside Ron’s life. With Thom’s lifetime concurrent with many Canadian landmark moments, the author also interweaves the nation’s centennial and Expo ’67 with Thom’s career, including several seminal moments in the history of the two cities he practiced in, Vancouver and Toronto, as well.
The subject matter is certainly no stranger to the author—Adele has been researching Thom since doing her master’s thesis on him at UBC, and more recently has authored one of SALA’s West Coast Modern house books on Thom’s Copp House. In 2013, she curated the book and exhibition Ron Thom and the Allied Arts, such that this new book is a career capstone for her, gathering as it does in one place the culmination of her research on Thom through the interviews and archival photos she has amassed over the years.
Coming in at just two hundred pages, the book’s 21 chapters are divided between Thom’s time in the West and East respectively. Adele condenses his childhood into the first chapter, noting how he grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, and how his mother wanted him to become a concert pianist. At the Vancouver book launch this past September, Adele noted humourously how grand pianos often ended up in Ron’s floor plans, despite clients not owning or asking for one.
The matters of Ron’s personal relationships are handled deftly by Adele in the book’s narrative, and she notes in the Foreward going to great pains to ensure she did not use any material not approved by members of the surviving family. She also discusses her subject matter’s excesses as delicately as possible, much to her credit, such that it never distracts from the spectacular architectural achievements that are at the core of the book.
Those who know the story of Ron’s early training constantly marvel at his good fortune, as he was schooled at the Vancouver School of Art—now Emily Carr University—when Jack Shadbolt and Bert Binning were teaching there, both of whom Adele notes would have had a profound influence on his career choice. While Shadbolt encouraged him to pursue painting, it was Binnig who told him to pursue architecture.
As a young architect in booming Vancouver, Ron soon found himself at the busy architecture office of Thompson Berwick Pratt (TBP), most notably under the wing of its senior partner Ned Pratt, who would later become both Ron’s mentor and nemesis. At the time, as Adele describes it, Ned divided his office into two types of architects—”neck-up” vs. “neck-down” types, summing up the distention between himself and Ron, respectively.
One Vancouver project, in particular, would come to define Ron’s early career, the B.C Electric building which Adele recounts in ‘Electrifying the West.’ Completed in 1957, the building at the time showed Vancouver as a forward-thinking city, and TBP as the architecture firm that would be the ones to move the needle.
And with the firm busy designing the new YVR and UBC campus along with many other projects, several designers at TBP did work on the side, designing single-family homes for the post-war housing boom. Ron was no different. After designing his own house on a site in North Vancouver, he offered to design his neighbour’s houses as well, free of charge, to maintain the overall street aesthetic.
As it happened, his successes in Vancouver would attract the attention of several movers and shakers out in central Canada, including the founders of two new university campuses—Massey College in Toronto and Trent in Peterborough. With these new powerful patrons, Ron was able to apply his design to the entirety of the project, down to the light fixture and ashtray designs. One of Adele’s interesting asides is how Ron’s getting awarded Trent so incensed Peterborough’s local architect, that he moved to Toronto. The architect was in fact Eberhard Zeidler, who would go on to design Toronto’s Eaton Centre and Ontario Place, and who recently passed away.
Adele also provides some asides on how many of his contemporaries crossed paths with Ron at the beginning of their careers, including Barry Downs and Jack Diamond, both of whom we sadly have lost just this past year. Adele admits as much in the book’s opening pages that several of her source interviewees have now passed away, highlighting the need to preserve this oral history before those who remember Ron are all gone.
For this reason and more, Ron Thom Architect is essential reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in Canadian architecture, and even more so for practicing architects and students. Adele here has demonstrated her skills as an expert storyteller, having culled through what must’ve been a mountain of material to make this an entertaining and richly informative book.
For more information on Ron Thom Architect, visit the Greystone Publishing website.
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Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
The post Book Review: Ron Thom Architect – The Life of a Creative Modernist appeared first on Spacing National.
This week marks the third anniversary of the original COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
While many have moved on from COVID-19, as evidenced by the shedding of masks and the return of handshakes and hugs, the pandemic and its lingering after-effects remain in our midst. As we edge closer to 2023, the third calendar year of the pandemic, we have an opportunity to take stock of the pandemic’s trajectory and continued impacts on Toronto’s economic vibrancy. Examination of policy measures and pandemic-related metrics, in combination with data visualization, can shed light on our past, inform decisions about managing in the present, and help guide us to a more resilient future.
Early on, the pandemic surfaced critical challenges related to the collection and use of data, along with calls to leverage data for social good. Metrics that were regularly reported on, such as unemployment rates (Statistics Canada), average rents and home prices (Toronto Regional Real Estate Board), and transit ridership (Toronto Transit Commission), took on new meanings during the pandemic. Declining rents in Toronto, especially in studio-sized units in the city’s dense downtown core, signaled the damaging effects of the pandemic on the area’s attractiveness as a place to live. Transit ridership figures highlight the extent to which the pandemic has severely constrained transit use and revenues – and continues to do so.
Combining traditional data sets with novel data paints a fuller picture of pandemic distress and the contours of recovery. Real-time data — collected most prominently by private sector firms with large digital footprints such as those in finance, mobility services, real estate, retail and tech — was needed in order to better understand and triangulate, in real time, the extent of pandemic shocks to the city. Some firms provided data freely (eg: Avison Young Vitality Index), while others scaled up their data analytics operations through contracts with data users.
The duration and complexity of the pandemic makes it challenging to take a comprehensive look at the impacts of COVID-19 on Toronto. Through Toronto After the First Wave (my version of a COVID-19 passion project), we collected, monitored and visualized the impacts of COVID-19 on the city with respect to measures including public health, mobility, economy, housing and work. However, as the pandemic wore on, and the dashboard data grew, it became increasingly difficult to develop a concise yet comprehensive picture. This challenge prompted us to create a chart that tied together policy measures, pandemic spread and impacts in a single image.
The graphic, Toronto & COVID-19: Pandemic, Policy, Patterns, reveals elements of Toronto’s pandemic story. Click on graphic to see larger image.
Creating the infographic required the collection and collation of information from the following sources: Avison Young Vitality Index, Canadian Institute for Health Information, City of Toronto, National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases, Province of Ontario, Statistics Canada, Toronto After the First Wave, Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, and the Toronto Transit Commission.
In attempting to understand the implications of the pandemic on the city, it is obvious that access to data is insufficient. Public agencies should be required to share public data. For instance, to obtain the transit ridership data, we had to seek out the monthly TTC CEO report and manually enter the details into a spreadsheet. The TTC provided regular bi-weekly ridership updates in early fall, 2021, but then stopped abruptly around the same time as ridership increases slowed or reversed.
The quality of data changed too. For example, rules around who was eligible to receive a PCR test to determine if they have COVID-19 notably shifted during the pandemic. In Ontario, access to tests was limited initially, but then opened up. Provincial testing guidelines shifted once again though at the end of 2021 and most people were no longer eligible to be tested for COVID-19. As soon as this change was implemented, we could no longer use the number of positive PCR tests as a guide to the number of COVID-19 cases in the city. The number of fatalities is the only data point that is somewhat consistent across the duration of the pandemic, and even these figures are suspect.
This data shows us that the pandemic has been massively challenging for cities and urban life. At the start of the pandemic, from March to May 2020, we saw evidence of the city on pause and in crisis: the closure of schools to in-person learning, the closure of non-essential businesses to in-person activities, high numbers of fatalities. During this time, unemployment rose to over 14%, house prices and apartment rents declined, and TTC ridership and office occupancy bottomed out at -88.1% and -90.6% respectively.
There are important details that this infographic won’t tell us: for instance, the selected data does not say anything about the unequal impacts of the pandemic on the elderly, racialized populations, low income households, essential workers or the unhoused.
In the summer of 2020, the city experienced a reprieve from what was thought to be the worst of the pandemic. Policy measures were relaxed with respect to business closures, fatalities dropped, unemployment remained stable, and somewhat surprisingly, house prices began to increase. At the same time, apartment rents, TTC ridership and office occupancy all remained depressed.
As new COVID-19 strains emerged in the fall of 2020, the city returned to crisis mode, fatalities rise, and non-essential businesses are once again closed along with (temporarily) schools. The city entered what appeared to be a steady state of low transit ridership and office occupancy that lasted from November, 2020, to June, 2021.
Yet, hope was on the horizon. As vaccines were approved, procured and distributed across the city in the spring and summer of 2021 (albeit in a totally chaotic rollout), a sense of optimism spread throughout the city that the end of the pandemic might be near. Remember the gum commercial showing the joy of life, post-pandemic? It was released in May 2021.
In summer 2021, non-essential businesses re-opened, restaurants re-opened, and we started to see the recovery of apartment rents approaching pre-pandemic prices. Transit ridership rose (albeit slowly) and office occupancy climbed very slowly. While the city’s state of emergency and mask mandate remained in effect in the fall of 2021, schools went back to in-person learning while transit ridership and office occupancy rose to their highest levels in November, at 49.6% and 20.5% of pre-pandemic averages, respectively.
But after a period of relative pandemic calm, a new strain – Omicron – emerged in November 2021. It spread rapidly and evaded vaccination. Fatalities rose. Omicron decimated office occupancy and and transit ridership dropped.
However, we did not see sharp evidence of Omicron’s impact on unemployment, rents or house prices. In fact, house prices continued to rise precipitously across the country and especially in urban centres. The Bank of Canada made seven interest rate hikes in 2022, which have had the impact of dampening house prices and sales.
The relaxing of public health measures, such as indoor masking and reduced capacity in indoor spaces, as well as the end of Toronto’s state of emergency (after 777 days) in May, 2022, heralded the end of most COVID-19 related measures. Through September, 2022, the most visible lingering impact on the city based on this infographic is that transit ridership and office occupancy remain deflated and are expected to stay that way, possibly for years to come.
The speed with which emergency measures were enacted in Toronto, supported by all three levels of government, is credited with influencing both improved economic and public health outcomes, albeit unequally. At the same time, the city’s economic make-up is also understood to have slowed recovery.
As we plan for Toronto’s recovery and future, we need to prioritize data. Access to data, understanding of what datasets do and do not represent, and the resources needed to obtain, interpret and share data publicly are critical components in the creation of an adaptive and resilient city.
photo by Francis Mariani
Shauna Brail is Associate Professor, Institute of Management & Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga. Follow her on twitter at @shaunabrail
The post Visualizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Therme Canada’s proposal for a spa is better suited for Woodbine Entertainment’s renewal plan, and would allow the City of Toronto and the Ontario government to strengthen their investments in north Etobicoke by implementing a Community Benefit Agreement to create new revenue for the community.
In 2005, city council enacted Toronto’s “Strong Neighborhoods Strategy” (TSNS), identifying the need for improvements and partnerships between residents, community agencies and businesses in 13 priority neighbourhoods to improve the quality of life; six years later, council expanded the strategy to cover 31 neighbourhood improvement areas.
Today, when the City buys, builds, or provides financial incentives, it may include conditions that promote community benefits. In 2018, the City of Toronto signed a community benefit agreement (CBA) with One Toronto Gaming, the operator of Casino Woodbine in Rexdale to ensure local employment in casino operations and construction jobs, social procurement to attract diverse vendors, responsible gambling measures, a childcare centre, and low-cost community access to venues.
Therme would fare better in north Etobicoke, which sits within the second-largest employment area in Canada, second only to Toronto’s financial core. With a $350 million investment, Therme could capture greater value as part of the Woodbine Master Plan, with its proximity to the Pearson International, Brampton and Mississauga.
It is estimated that 16 million people will commute through this area every year once the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, the Finch LRT, the Kitchener Rail Corridor, and the Woodbine Station projects have been completed by Metrolinx.
The Woodbine Master Plan will transform an under-developed 684 acres tract into a vibrant neighbourhood with transit-oriented, mixed-use facilities for entertainment, recreation, gaming, dining, education, employment, and housing for over 50,000 residents — an integrated and multifaceted area that will be known as the Woodbine District.
With its proximity to Pearson, the Woodbine Complex would enable Therme to capitalize on becoming a popular layover, vacation, and getaway destination for local residents, tourists and visitors attending conferences, trade shows, and events.
Woodbine Entertainment’s international marketing plan could promote the spa as one of the top urban entertainment districts in North America, with Therme providing a complementary and powerful presence to the area’s hospitality sector. Through pedestrian bridges, Woodbine Mall’s family-friendly fair and Woodbine’s Casino and Racetrack will provide a platform for Therme’s holistic wellness experience, which will appeal to a diverse audience.
As a Torontoian and leisure enthusiast, I do not see Therme surviving the bitter cold of a lake-side location or the fierce competition with the downtown’s hotel spas and independent wellness providers. This new site would create a pipeline for new jobs and businesses, and maximize the use of Therme’s botanical gardens, pools, water slides, wave pools, sports performance and recovery services. In the western GTHA, it would become a star attraction for the guests of the 25 hotels surrounding the airport and Toronto Congress Centre, local neighbourhoods and the next generation of Woodbine District.
In the Woodbine District, One Toronto Gaming’s expansion includes two hotels, restaurants and retail stores, a large event space, and a 5,000-square-foot training facility that can be used for Therme’s 10-year philanthropic partnership with the Toronto International Film Festival’s Cinematic Cities Initiative. This pairing could transform Woodbine Mall into a creative hub for artists as well as contribute to Toronto’s cultural diversity by commissioning performances and installations for residents and tourists to experience immersive forms of art.
Therme could match One Toronto Gaming’s $5 million contribution to the City’s Children’s Services Division for local community and Casino Woodbine employees, to expand childcare to Woodbine Mall, and thereby create more affordable childcare options for Therme’s employees.
Through the Longo Faculty of Businesses, Humber students are trained in Esthetician/Spa Management, Hospitality & Tourism, Culinary Skills, all of which are integral to Therme’s operations. Additionally, these skills are crucial to reviving retail and services sectors that are needed by the casino and mall to attract visitors and employees from the Pearson employment zone.
Through its partnership with The BlackNorth Initiative and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Therme can quickly implement its diversity strategy, programs, and initiatives to support Black and Indigenous communities to support the recruitment and re-skilling of local talent with employment options and as equal stewards in decision-making processes that impact the land and water.
Humber’s Centre for Skilled Trades, LiUNA Local 183 Training Centre and the Blue Door Support Service’s Construction with a purpose, would enable Therme to meet its responsible sourcing goals using social procurement agreements for any training and hiring need for delivering Therme’s architectural vision.
Leading Environmental SustainabilityIn the northwest corner of the site, a drainage basin divide will create a green corridor which will divide the site into a northerly drain into Humber River, and a southerly drain into Mimico Creek to connect Humber River Valley and Mimico Creek, and provide a connection between the racing surfaces, the infield, Woodbine’s new central park, and Urban Promenades.
The SWA Group’s master plan for Woodbine shows that the floodwater is diverted to quality control facilities in the northern ponds, which will discharge into the Humber River, whereas in the southern ponds, stormwater management ponds will receive flood waters for management.
With Therme’s advanced water management technologies at the mouth of Black Creek, Swim Drink Fish Canada, and the Center for Urban Ecology can aid in reducing urban and flooding at Smythe Park for Black Creek’s neighborhoods and assist the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority with watershed management along Mimico Creek and Humber River.
The green corridor can serve as a connector to urban agriculture that would help Therme further promote its commitment to Horticultural Wellbeing. Therme could support the addition of community gardens and green rooftops by partnering with Humber Food Learning Garden, and help Black Creek Community Farm transition into an all-year urban agriculture center for residents and Therme’s guests access to healthy, sustainable food.
The Toronto Multi-Use Trail Design Guidelines, in turn, can serve as a holistic approach to bringing communities closer to nature with connected trails across Humber Arboretum, Humber Valley Trail, Humberwood Park, Humber Gate Park, Pan-Am Path and local golf courses. In support of Urban Biodiversity, Therme could even fund the work of local wildlife groups to regenerate agriculture, restore natural habitats and add Indigenous healing gardens while maximizing multi-use trails for outdoor recreational, entertainment, and leisure activities.
Ultimately, Therme can be a leader, but not at Ontario Place. Our future park is universally accessible, communal, and is made for Ontarians to showcase their creativity and ingenuity through outdoor leisure activities. In Etobicoke, there is a beloved old space that has lacked health, wellness, and fantasy, but is now ready to be transformed. Woodbine is calling.
Chloe Brown is a Policy Analyst at the Future Skills Centre and a former mayoral candidate in the 2022 Toronto election. Follow her on twitter at @chloebrownTO
The post Rexdale deserves a spa: An invitation to Therme appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
At some point this week, City officials will upload the Ford government’s zoning bylaw amendment application for the Ontario Place redevelopment to the Toronto planning portal (search “955 Lakeshore Boulevard”).
Submitted in late November, this document marks the beginning of what will be a year-long exercise in vetting the province’s plan to put a $350 million private spa and a new concert venue on the 50-year-old site — a process that will include $200 million for site remediation, the removal of several stands of mature trees, the installation of enough new municipal infrastructure to accommodate these massive indoor structures, and possibly even the construction of an underground parking lot that could run to $100 million.
An official plan amendment and then the formal development application will follow, along with site plan reviews, public consultations, design tweaks, council debates, and a vote.
Technically, the City has the authority to accept or reject the proposal. In both theory and practice, the province can do what it wants. Ontario Place is provincial property, and Queen’s Park can always impose a ministerial zoning order (MZO) that trumps everything else.
Last week, the company sent out a flood of refined renderings in what has clearly become a public relations battle. Critics, including the Toronto Star‘s editorial page, are challenging the very premise of this plan. “Keep Ontario Place as a public space,” as the Star’s editorial put it. As this scheme moves into the City’s vetting process, here are ten questions I’d pose about what’s happening, what we don’t yet know, and who ultimately decides.
- How much is the province/Ontario Place charging Therme Group and Live Nation to lease the spaces on the east and west islands?The details of the lease — its duration, the rent both companies will be paying and any other arrangements involving development charges, municipal water and wastewater fees, etc. — should be made public immediately. We have no idea if the Ontario government has cut a sweetheart deal with Therme and Live Nation, or if they’re charging a rate commensurate with the desirability of a unique waterfront location.
It’s a public space and the public has a right to know.
- Why has the government opted to exempt the project from a Class EA?Infrastructure Ontario earlier this year posted the results of an EA for the remediation of Ontario Place, and the document identified a range of issues — site contamination, for example — as well as ecological concerns, including threats to “distinctive environmental features,” and the potential for the project to jeopardize species at risk and their habitats (i.e., migratory birds). But Infrastructure Ontario has opted to exempt the project itself (i.e., the spa and the concert venue) from the EA process, arguing that Therme and Live Nation are private ventures and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the legislation.
The obvious question is, why? After all, both are being built on public land, as a result of a public procurement process.
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Why did Infrastructure Ontario not tender the project to a complete bidding group, i.e., including contractors, financers, equipment suppliers, etc., as is standard practice with other large-scale projects (e.g., rapid transit, court house construction, etc.)?So far, besides Therme, the only member of the project team that has been made public is the local architect, Diamond Schmitt. In all other major IO undertakings, the bid is awarded to a consortium. There’s no indication as to who else is involved, and neither IO nor Therme have explained the source of financing for this project. Therme is owned by a large German heating and cooling equipment supplier, but the company, according to its own public statements, has a pipeline of ten projects on the go, with an approximate combined value of almost $2 billion. The public should know where the money is coming from.
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Will a fairness commissioner be appointed to ensure that the procurement process is transparent and accountable?There are lobbyists and Therme Canada officials with extremely close ties to the Ford government, so the process cries out for oversight from a fairness commissioner. These officials, often judges, are tasked with overseeing complex procurements to ensure they are carried out in a transparent and accountable way. A specific concern for me has to do with the money the province intends to spend on municipal infrastructure on the site, and, possibly, an underground parking garage. None of this work has been tendered yet, nor have we seen third-party evaluations of the proposed outlay.
The public deserves assurances that the costs — an estimated $300 million, but probably more — will be apportioned appropriately between Ontario Place and Therme/Live Nation. As well, the Ford government is in a position to make huge public investments in the site that financially benefit former Tory insiders. The whole thing cries out for way more transparency.
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Is the provincial government prepared to over-ride a council decision to reject the zoning bylaw and official plan amendment which will be tabled by the city in the next few weeks?The Ford government has used MZOs for everything from large development tracts on environmentally sensitive land to modular supportive housing projects. If municipal affairs and housing minister Steve Clark is planning to override all the City’s analysis and council’s ultimate decision just to get this project going, let’s skip a year’s worth of expensive planning foreplay. Queen’s Park needs to come clean on its intentions instead of cranking up public expectations.
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Who will be financially liable for the structure if the Therme Canada spa venture fails?As part of the RFP, bidders, including Therme, were required to submit business plans, but these have not been made public, except a claim that the spa will contribute C$150 million to Canada’s GDP. The company is counting on several million visitors per year and has pledged an entry fee of $40 per person (the real revenues will be generated inside the facility).
Therme has four operating spas, all of them in central Europe, where spa-going is a long-standing tradition. Two in the U.K. — in Manchester and Glasgow — are in the development pipeline, although both appear to be behind schedule. Demolition on the Manchester site has only just begun, and a company spokesperson said the firm is still negotiating approvals with Glasgow planning authorities. Therme wants to build several spas in the U.S., including one in New York, and recently revealed a proposal to develop another in Korea.
It’s by no means clear to me that the company will be able to generate traffic to its Ontario Place facility throughout the year. Given the huge amount of public investment in the site, and the fact that the spa is a single-use building, taxpayers have a right to know what the contingency plans look like if the project goes sideways. Who is on the hook? And will Therme or its as yet unnamed investors retain the right to retrofit the venue as, for example, a casino, if the spa project fails?
- Is the city prepared to use its site plan approval and design review processes to ensure that the project doesn’t pose a threat to migratory birds and the site’s other natural and heritage features?In order to hasten the development of new housing, the newly enacted Bill 23 watered down many of the provisions in the Planning Act that enabled municipalities to compel developers to pay attention to elements like bird-friendly glazing, energy efficiency, urban design, heritage and landscaping — although planners can still push for these features.
A spa, needless to say, won’t solve our housing problems. Therme has promised that its project will bring a range of benefits, including LEED certification, shoreline restoration, and something called a “wetland innovation zone” (really). I hope the city will do its due diligence and make sure this giant structure actually delivers on these candy-in-the-window promises.
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Will the City or the Ontario government take steps to make these facilities broadly accessible, i.e., beyond those who can afford the entrance fees?Therme has curated a collection of local worthy organizations to demonstrate its commitment to the city. And the company is not shy about making claims about the broad societal benefits of spa-going — from reduced public health care costs to improved nutrition, mental health and access to culture. Yet the reality is that what it is selling is a luxury wellness experience delivered in one of Toronto’s pre-eminent public spaces — a park! My question is whether Therme or Ontario Place will do anything at all to make this amenity available to individuals and families that can’t dole out several hundred dollars for an afternoon at the spa.
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Is the City prepared to invest parkland reserve funds to transform some or all of the Ontario Place parking lots into public spaces to reduce what it has described as “the barrier effect”?The Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel pointed out, correctly, that the two vast parking lots that separate Ontario Place from Lakeshore Boulevard and the CNE are not just barriers but missed opportunities. One way of mitigating the loss of most of the West Island to an exclusive private spa is to re-think those parking lots and transform them into park space that connects with what remains of the public spaces at Ontario Place.
The Trillium Park/William G. Davis trail, which opened in 2017, transformed a service zone on the east end of the site into an outstanding public space, and surely the parking lots should evolve in a similar way, especially given that the CNE is destined to become one of the best served transit nodes in the entire GTA.
- Will Mayor John Tory use his veto powers to win approval for the zoning bylaw, the OPA and the development application, even if a majority of council members oppose the project?The question begs.
The post LORINC: 10 questions about the Ontario Place redevelopment appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Toronto historian Richard White has recently completed an original new history of the Beaches neighbourhood that should be out and available sometime next year (U of T Press). As a pre-publication spin-off, he has just launched a novel website he calls “‘History in the Everyday Landscape” in which he identifies ten historical “sights” (not sites) that, as he reads them, have all sorts of neighbourhood history to tell us. Here we cross-post his Sight #2, which will be of particular interest to anyone who has wondered why the Beaches boardwalk stops abruptly at Silver Birch Avenue.
When Eastern Beaches Waterfront Park was conceived in the early 1920s, it was to run the full length of the neighbourhood, from Woodbine Avenue to the city limit at Victoria Park Avenue, and the City began expropriating beach and water lots accordingly, from one end of the neighbourhood to the other. Then when the City decided, in 1930, to widen the park with a strip of inshore land it acted with the same intention – parkland all the way to the city limit (See Sights #3 and #5). But expropriating this additional land turned out to be more troublesome because, unlike the beach, it was occupied by scores of structures – cottages, boathouses, small hotels, and substantial homes – that its owners, understandably, did not want to give up.
Detail from “Looking Up Silver Birch,” 7 March 1924 [CTA, Series 372, Sub-series 3, Item 508]. This view, from the frozen lake, shows lakefront houses both west and east of the street.
One of these structures was the clubhouse of the Balmy Beach Club, by this time a venerable neighbourhood institution. The Club had been established in 1905, and upon its formation had secured permission to build and operate its private clubhouse within Balmy Beach Park, a public park as of 1903. This arrangement had been made under the auspices of the town of East Toronto, a short-lived municipality that was dissolved upon being annexed by the City of Toronto in 1908, but the arrangement survived the town’s dissolution because town council had managed to make its survival, with no “sunset clause,” one of the terms of annexation. Toronto did not normally permit private claims on property within its public parks, but in this case it explicitly agreed to do so.So as the City, in 1930, moved forward on expanding the public park it had to reckon with the fact that the privately owned clubhouse seemed to have a right, perhaps in perpetuity, to occupy the public property on which it stood. Faced with this curious, and not entirely understood, situation, the City backed off, leaving the clubhouse as it was. It did expropriate and demolish the block of lakefront houses east of the clubhouse, from Willow to Silver Birch, and this property it included in the park, but it went no further east.
‘Silverbirch Avenue ….’ 7 Feb. 1934 [CTA, Series 372, Sub-series 52, Item 1650]. Looking east, from parkland at foot of Willow Avenue, to un-expropriated houses east of Silver Birch.
Two years later, with the new waterfront park already being heavily used, the City considered expropriating what remained of the lakefront housing, from Silver Birch east to the city limit. But upon learning the estimated cost of this expropriation – $750,000 – city council balked again, and the matter seems never to have been revisited. The consequence of this decision, for better or worse, is with us still, for it left intact one the of the few places in Toronto with private housing on the beach.
Detail from “Plan Showing Additional Lands …,” 5 Feb. 1932 [CTA, Series 724, Item 219]. Southwest corner – less than half – of area the City considered for expropriation, showing (illegible in this reduction) the owners and assessed values of all buildings.
The beach itself, of course, was (and still is) entirely public, having been expropriated in the 1920s before the acquisition of inshore property was even considered, so by leaving the beachfront houses in private hands the City created an unusually stark border between public and private domains. Over the years the owners of these properties have asserted their ownership with various fences and walls, and, in front of the westernmost properties – all with the same owner at the time – a now nearly buried thick concrete retaining wall. Humans walking on the beach have learned to respect the private property signs; canine visitors – this being their leash-free zone – maybe not as much.
The owners of one beachfront property have cultivated a menacing patch of hawthorn in front of the glass wall demarcating the property line, likely deterring even the most curious dog.
By far the largest private structure left standing by this decision, and likely one of the main reasons for the decision, was a substantial apartment building – assessed at $42,000 in 1932 (see blueprint above) – that had been erected a few years earlier by local builder George S. Gardiner (sometimes spelled Gardener). It stands to this day, highly visible – and anomalous – to anyone walking along the beach.
Lakefront east of Silver Birch, April 2022.
The large lot on which it was built had been created in one of the area’s earliest acts of subdivision, in 1887. Still intact as a single property in 1924, the lot was large enough for Gardiner – who had owned it for some time – to propose demolishing its old wooden structures and erecting a brick twenty-suite apartment house with an automobile garage at back and ample beachfront space in front. A City of Toronto bylaw, in place since 1912, prohibited the construction of apartment buildings on residential streets, so anyone wanting to build one had to first obtain permission from the City to transgress the bylaw. This was not as hard as one might think; other neighbourhood property owners in these years had requested and been granted such permission. Gardiner applied to the City, along with a sketch of what he planned to build.
Detail from Goad’s Atlas, 1924 (colour denotes exterior wall material: orange=brick, yellow=wood). Gardiner owned Lot 2, lower centre of image.
The Building Commissioner’s customary practice upon receiving such as request was to write nearby property owners asking whether they would agree to the bylaw transgression and permit the proposed building. For this proposal the Commissioner sent letters of inquiry to thirty-five nearby owners. Only two approved while fifteen opposed. But eighteen did not reply, and with just fifteen of thirty-five (not a majority) explicitly opposed, the Commissioner felt compelled to approve it – without the garage.
What we are seeing when we look east of Silver Birch is, primarily, a parsimonious city council – something that has shaped Toronto more than we realize – but in this one anomalous lakefront building we are seeing something else: citizen consultation 1920s style, in which indifference was a vote in favour.
photos by Richard White unless otherwise specified
SOURCES (in addition to those cited under the images): “Plan Showing Lakefront from Woodbine Av. to East City Limit,” 19 Aug. 1920, CTA, Series 726, Item 275; “Conditions and Soundings – Woodbine Avenue East to City Limits,” 17 July 1929, CTA, Series 724, Item 205; “Proposed Improvements – Eastern Beaches,” 1 June 1931, CTA, Series 724, Item 291; City of Toronto Bylaw #8601 (20 Dec.1920); CTA, Toronto Assessment Rolls, 1928, 1929, and 1930; “History of Balmy Beach Park,” CTA, Series 487, File 495; “Beach Boardwalk Extension Delayed,” The Globe, 16 April 1932, p.2; Kevin McConnell, The History of the Balmy Beach Club (privately published, n.d.); Report 17 of the Cttee on Property, City of Toronto Council Minutes, 1925, pp. 1531-32; Goad’s Atlas accessed at website ‘oldtorontomaps’; contemporary photographs by author.
The post Beaches historical sight: East of Silver Birch appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
We’ve had some time to make sense of the Toronto election, and what it might mean for the next four years in this city. Is there a silver lining to be found? Is Toronto due for another urbanist renaissance? We talk to Spacing co-founder and Star columnist Shawn Micallef.
And we talk to the co-editor of the new book “The Signs that Define Toronto” Kurt Kraler about how the project came together, and what signs mean to the look, feel, and culture of a city.
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Spacing Radio · Episode 068: Looking for the bright side of Toronto’s electionThe post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 068, Looking for the bright side of Toronto’s election appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
As the battle over Bill-23 — a.k.a. the “More Housing Bigger Profits Act” — rumbled towards its inevitable conclusion yesterday, the central point of contention finally came into sharp focus. It wasn’t the looming destruction of rental apartments or the dubious paving over of the Greenbelt, or even the democratic gutting of City Hall.
Rather, this fight degenerated into a Manichean contest about development charges (DCs), pitting the forces of evil (Queen’s Park, Big Housing) versus the forces of good (local government, municipal infrastructure).
The bill’s cuts to DCs, a growing chorus of mayors have said, will gut municipal finances to a degree once considered unthinkable — as much as $5 billion, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. City of Markham officials last week predicted property taxes could rise by 50 to 80% to make up the shortfall. In Monday’s Toronto Star, veteran Mississauaga councillor Carolyn Parrish said that she and her colleagues are all essentially dead politicians walking, given what they’ll be forced to do to halt the bleeding.
Toronto City Council, for its part, passed a nearly unanimous motion decrying the scale of the destruction (University Rosedale councillor Dianne Saxe, who seems to not know the old adage about only having one opportunity to make a first impression, was the single contra vote).
The Ford government’s point person on Bill-23, municipal affairs and housing minister Steve Clark, has responded by stating that skyrocketing DCs have driven up the price of housing. Exhibit A: Toronto’s new development charge schedule, which takes effect in 2023, adds anywhere from $44,000 to $115,000 to the cost of a dwelling.
As Clark wrote in an op-ed yesterday, “Development charges are meant to fund infrastructure and services which the whole community uses. Under the current system, however, the bill is ultimately picked up by young people and newcomers who are already struggling to break into the housing market.”
Here’s the thing: Clark’s not wrong. Of course — of course! — developers regard these charges as a pass-through, and the never-ending demand allows them to do just that.
I don’t want to argue here that development charges are unnecessary. Nor should we wantonly abandon the principle that growth should pay for growth, although there’s definitely some room for more nuanced thinking about this equation.
But it’s super important to acknowledge that the escalation of DC rates, and the knock-on effect on housing prices, is symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the way municipalities, and the City of Toronto in particular, think about their revenues, and the ways in which we apportion the financial burden of operating local government.
As happened previously, this debate set up, mistakenly and disingenuously, a false dichotomy: ruinous development charges or ruinous property tax hikes. Pick your poison.
We all know which side municipal councils come down on, but this black-and-white depiction of the decisions they face conveniently distracts from years of irresponsible political management.
I’m not talking here about bureaucratic feather-bedding, that beloved and mostly fictitious whipping boy of the political right. Rather, the Bill 23 showdown revealed the craven choices that Toronto council has long made when setting residential property tax rates, as well as its lamentably inept approach to risk management.
Any self-respecting entrepreneur knows that over-exposure to one large client may be tempting in the short term, but potentially ruinous if that customer vanishes.
Yet Toronto council — under the leadership of two right-of-centre mayors who have endlessly boasted about their business acumen — has been making precisely this mistake for a dozen years, with no indication that anything will change. And now we’re all paying the price.
Let’s begin with council’s unwillingness to raise residential property taxes so they generate sufficient revenue. According to the city’s audited 2021 financial statements (which are way more accurate than budget documents), Toronto’s property taxes accounted for 31.3% of total revenue ($15.15 billion), but we’ve been steadily falling further and further behind the rate of property tax growth in the rest of the GTA for 20 years now.
Meanwhile, transfers from the feds and the province account for almost the same proportion of overall revenue as property taxes, but are obviously highly exposed to political risk in the form of regime change, recessionary cutbacks, legislative upheaval, etc.
User fees, in turn, make up about 20%. The municipal land transfer tax (MLTT), which brought in over $1.1 billion last year, is the fourth major source of income — a total well above what was forecast. Despite all the sound and fury, DCs produced only about 3.6%, or $550 million, in 2021.
The most glaring point about the City’s revenue base is that more than 80% of the income derives from just three sources: property taxes, government transfers and user fees. Most of our eggs, in other words, are in one basket, and so there’s little in the way of fiscal padding, besides the reserve funds that city officials are loathe to spend.
Setting aside the politics of property taxes for a moment, the fiscal squeeze created by the province’s DC crackdown is entirely self-inflicted.
Since 2007, Toronto council has had broad discretion to diversify its revenues under the provisions of the City of Toronto Act (CoTA). David Miller, in his second term, persuaded council to enact the MLTT and a $60 vehicle registration tax, which Rob Ford promptly repealed in 2011. The VRT would have netted $64 million in its first year. If you do the math, it would have brought in almost $1 billion (2022 dollars) or so in the past decade — not chump change, for sure.
Should John Tory bring back the VRT? Absolutely. Will he? Don’t wait up. Would it soften the DC roll-backs? You bet.
In fact, council, without begging the province for permission, could also use CoTA to enact a range of other revenue streams — a cigarette tax, an alcoholic beverage tax, a park space levy, an entertainment and amusement fee, and cordon pricing. According to a 2016 report to Tory’s executive committee, those additional revenues would have brought the city anywhere from $300 to $1.2 billion more per year. Even if you take out the cordon pricing, which is politically inconceivable, the additional annual revenue could reach $900 million annually.
Those estimates are now six years old, so the total foregone amount is, well, a lot.
Tory had a term-and-a-half to build a political consensus behind diversifying the city’s revenues, not as some kind of profligate punishment to its citizens, but rather as a prudent form of risk mitigation — a resilience-based approach understood by small business owners and investment fund managers alike.
Instead, Tory and the conservatives on council pandered, blamed and deflected, and now the fiscal chicken has come home to roost. If I had to bet, the Ford government, Tory and AMO will work out some kind of deal in the next few months to soften the financial and political impact of the new DC rules. But I almost want that effort to flounder because a deal will only serve to perpetuate the real problem, which is Toronto council’s long-standing refusal to insulate the city from the kinds of pressures we’re seeing right now.
For 12 long years, council’s conservatives have indulged in a corrosive form of moral hazard — one that’s served the needs of wealthy homeowners at the expense of not just everybody else, but the city as a physical, social and creative whole. It’s time that practice stops. And if Steve Clark ends up being the guy who calls BS on their game, I’m okay with that, too.
photo by Wylie Poon (cc)
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With an essay by Orly Linovski.
A documentary project focused exclusively on the architecture of suburban strip malls: this idea occurred to me while I was researching archival photos for my 2020 project on Weston Road (Weston Road as my main street, Spacing, December 9, 2020). I came to realize that the photographic record of this enduring form of vernacular architecture was sketchy, and in need of an update.
At the City of Toronto Archives, I was able to find some 1971 commercial views by Alexandra Studios showing the new Weston Plaza, a strip mall in the former town of Weston.
Alexandra Studios: Weston Plaza, Weston Road at Church Street, 1971
City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257_Series 1057_Item 0551
Peter MacCallum: Weston Plaza, 2020
During the 1960s this same firm had repeatedly photographed the Diamond Plaza on nearby Jane Street, where its own storefront studio could be visited from 1964 to 1978.
Alexandra Studios: Diamond Plaza, northwest corner, Jane and Lawrence, ca. 1965
City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257_Series 1057_Item 9394
Peter MacCallum: Diamond Plaza, 2022
Further research in the Alexandra Studios collection turned up a 1959 view of the mini-mall at the northwest corner of Keele and Wilson. Dating from 1952 or 1953, this mall is a candidate for the title of Toronto’s oldest active strip mall.
In 1959, it still housed the grocery store my father had owned and managed earlier in that decade.
Alexandra Studios: Mini-mall, northwest corner, Keele and Wilson, 1959
City of Toronto Archives, Series 0065_File 0064_Item 0029
Peter MacCallum: Mini-mall, Keele and Wilson, 2022
For reasons explained in Orly Linovski’s accompanying essay (below), it’s likely that many of the city’s suburban strip malls will survive into the electric vehicle era.
In addition to their commercial importance, they have a range of social functions which can be the key to their transformation into pedestrian-friendly spaces.
During the summer of 2022, I completed Part 1 of my Toronto Strip Malls project, which comprises exterior views of more than 80 individual malls (see the photogallery below). Most are located along major streets in the city’s inner suburbs, which allowed me to reach them by public transit.
Part 2 of the project, scheduled for 2023, will add interior photos of businesses at these same sites.
Alexandra Studios: 930-912 Wilson Avenue, October, 1965
City of Toronto Archives, Series 0065_File 0509_Item 0014
Peter MacCallum: Looking west from 912 Wilson Avenue, 2022
The story of Toronto strip mallsBy Orly Linovski
Orly Linovski is an associate professor in the Department of City Planning, University of Manitoba. Her research focuses on equity in professional practices.
Our urban form is shaped by transportation infrastructure, reflecting policy decisions and investments that may date from decades ago. While Toronto’s central core developed around streetcars, the inner suburbs, such as North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough, were developed in response to the rise of mass automobility in the inter- and post-war periods. Lining arterial roads in these suburbs, strip malls became a common built form: typically two-story buildings, set back from the street to allow for parking, with interior sidewalks providing access to the units. With narrow sidewalks as the only safe pedestrian zones between busy parking lots and traffic-heavy arterials, strip malls are often seen as not complying with contemporary planning and urban design practices that advocate for safer and more welcoming pedestrian environments. Although most strip malls share the same built form, there is remarkable diversity in their uses, accommodating storefront churches and synagogues, specialty small businesses, offices, and social services, a mix that is difficult to replicate in other types of retail developments.
Built form and ownership structure are two factors that facilitate the diversity of uses often found in strip malls. The storefronts in a block may appear cohesive, but units are often sold individually, so that many different owners can occupy a single strip. This can be a barrier to redevelopment, as it makes land assembly more difficult, but it also means a lack of central control over tenants and uses. With no central control over leasable space, each owner can rent their spaces to whomever they choose, including to smaller businesses that may struggle to lease other types of retail space.
Strip malls often host a mixture of owner-occupied and rented retail units, a combination that makes for flexibility and long-term stability. They typically offer more affordable rents because of their age (in Toronto’s suburbs, up to 70 years), perceived lower quality of retail space, and smaller unit sizes typical of their era of development.
While strip malls are often maligned, for their appearance among other things, they can improve quality of life in the inner suburbs by providing affordable rents, space for small businesses, and opportunities for new entrepreneurs. It is difficult to replicate the diversity of strip malls in newer retail spaces. The commercial space in mid-rise, mixed-use buildings is often overseen by a condominium board or a management company, which may discourage uses that impact parking and noise controls or create other perceived nuisances. Floor spaces in newly constructed building are often larger than strip mall units, which, combined with the significantly higher rental rates associated with new construction, make them inaccessible to many small business owners.
When I started researching strip malls ten years ago, few of them had experienced any significant change since they were first developed. While the widespread adoption of personal automobiles had supported the growth of inner suburbs such as North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough, there has been relatively little new infrastructure investment since then in many of these areas. As Peter MacCallum’s photos show, transit projects like the Eglinton Crosstown LRT are actively re-shaping the physical form that has largely remained unchanged since the Second World War.
Toronto’s strip malls have the potential to evolve, through strategies focused on strengthening their role as community spaces. An example is plazaPOPS, which creates temporary installations designed in collaboration with community members. How these new activities will impact strip mall small businesses, tenants, and surrounding communities, as well as the broader affordability and diversity of the city, remains to be seen.
Click on any photo below to open the slideshow.
All photos © P. MacCallum, 2022 (petermaccallum.com) unless otherwise noted.
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David A. Balfour Park, midtown Toronto’s largest public green space, has finally re-opened after being closed for infrastructure repairs and upgrades since April 2018, shutting off residents from 20 hectares of walking trails, a playground, community garden, and sports field during the height of the Covid pandemic. The park was slated to re-open in April 2021, but as of November 2022, work continues on fixing construction deficiencies. The official opening is planned for Spring 2023.
“It was horrible that it was closed for long,” said Fabienne Thuet, a resident of the Yonge-St. Clair area for 27 years. “This is our neighbourhood park. I walk here almost every day.”
“We call this our Central Park,” said Jaffa Charney, who has lived for 25 years in a condo facing the park. “I walk in the park every day, and always meet a neighbour to chat with. It’s a very social place.”
David A. Balfour Park — named after a Toronto politician (1939-1955) perhaps best known for his unsuccessful campaigns to ban “salacious books,” including The Grapes of Wrath, Double Indemnity, and The Decameron — has long been cherished by midtown residents. Many of the trees and benches in the park were donated in memory of loved ones. The community raised $80,000 for a garden in 2008, which is still tended by volunteers.
In late afternoon, condos and apartment buildings cast long shadows over the top of the Rosehill Reservoir, looking towards the Vale of Avoca Ravine.
David A. Balfour Park is surrounded on the west and north sides by high-rise condos and apartment buildings. The park is an oasis of green amid a growing forest of condo towers – more than 15 more condos are in the planning stages in midtown Toronto. This will put even more pressure on David A. Balfour Park since many condos seem to have as many canine residents as humans, and these dogs need somewhere to run and do their business.
Workers lay new sod over the newly waterproofed roof of Rosehill Reservoir on Oct. 29, 2020, while the new washroom is under construction on the eastern edge of the park.
Much of the park sits atop Rosehill Reservoir, Toronto’s oldest and largest in-ground drinking water basin. Constructed in 1873-74, it stores 270 million litres and is the source of drinking water for 675,000 Torontonians. The site of the reservoir was chosen because it sits on a flat terrace above the escarpment that was the shoreline of glacial Lake Iroquois – an enlargement of what is now Lake Ontario that existed until 13,000 years ago, at a time when most of what is now downtown Toronto was underwater. This means that water from the reservoir flows via gravity to households and businesses to the south. The reservoir was last upgraded and covered 1966. The rehabilitation that began in 2018 was a complicated infrastructure project: trees and shrubs on the top and sides of the reservoir had to be removed and all the soil and sod had to be trucked away and stored —nearly 32,000 cubic metres, more than 2,000 dump-truck loads. Like an iceberg, most of the Rosehill Reservoir rehab project was out of sight. The bulk of the contract ($30.6 million) was allocated to upgrading pumps, valves, pipes, and electrical systems inside the reservoir and connecting to the city water system; and to repairing, cleaning and waterproofing inside the reservoir and its roof. What we now see above ground, the park amenities and upgrades, cost $4.8 million.
A sculpture symbolizing a molecule of water was preserved from the 1966 centennial project to install a roof over Rosehill Reservoir. The sculpture was relocated to the northern edge of the park, and a fountain with benches creates a quiet spot for chatting with neighbours and contemplation.
The peeling open of the reservoir created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-imagine David A. Balfour Park. Toronto Parks literally had a clean slate of concrete to work with. My apartment is half a block from the park, and from my kitchen window I’ve had a pigeon’s eye view of construction over the past four years. I attended public consultations before the hoarding went up around the park in April 2018, so can report on citizen input into the park design, the new park’s hidden gems, and lost opportunities to create a more people-friendly green oasis in mid-Toronto.
Since it unofficially opened in August 2022, I’ve spoken to many neighbours about what they like and don’t like about the redesigned park. One of the most striking additions is two huge cast-iron water valves mounted at the Avoca Avenue and Summerhill entrances to the park. These are striking symbols of Rosehill Reservoir’s role in supplying clean drinking water. The 2.5-metre valves were replaced by Bennett Mechanical Installations Ltd. when the interior of the reservoir was rehabilitated. (Bennett, the principal contractor for the reservoir rehabilitation, did not respond to a request for an interview.) I’m often asked what these “industrial sculptures” of cast iron are. Unfortunately, as of November 2022 there were no plaques identifying them, though amateur detectives can see, stamped in metal on the side of each valve, the date and place of manufacture: Lasalle, Quebec, 1964.
Heritage Toronto has installed five new plaques telling the history of Rosehill Reservoir and how the city’s water treatment system reduced typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, and other water-borne diseases.
Many folks I spoke to in the park were under the impression that the water in Rosehill Reservoir comes from Yellow Creek in the nearby ravine, or from the Oak Ridges Moraine. In fact, the water is pumped from the city’s treatment plants on Lake Ontario. The drinking water in Rosehill Reservoir is an emergency back-up if one of the treatment plants breaks down, or there is a break in the intake pipe in Lake Ontario.
Cleaning Rosehill Reservoir, May 14, 1934. Note the path and benches, part of an extensive park that included the ravine to the east. (City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 72, Item 1145.)
Fish caught in Rosehill Reservoir, April 1922. Before the reservoir was covered in 1966, it had to be regularly drained to clean intake and outtake pipes and remove weeds, fish, and leaves. (City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 1711.)
The Heritage Toronto plaques have photos of when David A. Balfour Park included gardens, paths, and ponds in the Vale of Avoca Ravine on the park’s eastern boundary. The park includes Yellow Creek and the ravine it flows through, bounded to the east by Mount Pleasant Road. Two trails still connect David A. Balfour Park to the Vale of Avoca Ravine. But despite the city’s ravine strategy, there is no signage at park entrances showing where the ravine access trails are. And only one trail has a weathered sign labelled “Nature Trail,” with no indication that you can follow the trail through the ravines either south to the Brick Works or north to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The ravine access trails have not been maintained, and as of November 2022, there was still the remains of a construction fence used to block the trail when the park was closed.
One of the biggest improvements to David A. Balfour Park is that it is now more accessible. A long ramp leads from the Rosehill Avenue entrance to the top of the reservoir.
The path around the top of the reservoir used to be a dirt track principally used by joggers. Now it has been paved, enabling folks using wheelchairs or walkers to make a tour around the top of the reservoir. Deborah Briggs, president of the Summerhill Residents Association, identified this new accessible path and the improved lighting along the lower path around the reservoir as her top two improvements to the park’s amenities. The lower path is gently curved in places, and most of the walkway is shaded by mature trees, making it a pleasant walk even in the heat of mid-day during summer. Additional picnic tables and benches have been added throughout the park, including benches under trellises on the east and west sides of the top of the reservoir.
The trellises were supposed to provide shade, but they have proven to be as useless as screen doors in a submarine. The slats in the roofs of the trellises are vertical, and the roofs are narrow. I had a picnic under the eastern trellis in November, and even with the slanting late Fall sun, the trellis provided no shade. Many folks complained that the trellises do not provide any shelter from rain either. So if you get caught in a downpour, the only place to find refuge are the two benches under an overhang outside the new washroom building.
The most contentious issue facing David A. Balfour Park divides the neighbourhood into three distinct camps. All entrances to the park are posted with signs citing a bylaw that dogs must be leashed. Gleefully ignoring this are folks (and professional dog walkers) who bring their four-footed companions to run loose on top of the reservoir, starting before dawn. There is a smaller contingent of dog owners who keep their pooches on leashes, and then there are the folks who are dog-less. One long-time community volunteer pleaded with me not to quote her views about dogs in the park — “I’ll have everyone mad at me!”
Dogs off-leash and the city’s failure to enforce bylaws have divided the community into three camps.
Some of the dogs running free on top of the reservoir get overly excited and out of control. I saw a large standard poodle jump up and snatch a slice of pizza out of the hand of a fellow enjoying his lunch on one of the new park benches. I’ve had a Bichon Frisé help herself to the picnic I was enjoying on a sunny, warm November afternoon. I’ve seen dogs (off-leash) enter the washroom with their masters and slip under the fence surrounding the community garden, which has several “No dogs allowed” signs posted. Since the park opened unofficially in August 2022, the City of Toronto says bylaw officers have patrolled the park once, but no tickets have been issued for violating the no dogs off-leash bylaw. So it’s a canine free-for-all on top of the reservoir every day.
“There should have been an off-leash dog area included in the park design,” Jaffa Charney told me as we sat on a bench watching dogs chasing each other back and forth on top of the reservoir. “A lot of the people who use the park are elderly, and I’m worried about dogs off-leash charging them.”
During public consultations, many folks suggested adding an off-leash dog enclosure, but this suggestion was not included in the final plan.
Tucked below the eastern edge of the reservoir, the children’s playground is not visible from the park entrances, and there is no signage, so it’s not easy to find if you are visiting for the first time.
Another suggestion made during the community consultation was to have a splash pad play area for children. The 1966 park design included a fountain in the centre of the reservoir roof, and pools and a stream led to a waterfall on Rosehill Avenue. There was also a splash pad for kids near the community garden. Given that David A. Balfour Park sits atop millions of litres of water, many citizens argued that a water play feature for kids would symbolically reflect the nature of the waterworks below. But city engineers determined that a splash pad could cause leaks in the membrane covering the reservoir roof, and nixed suggestions to locate a water play area elsewhere. Instead, the city decided to install a small playground in a flat area on the eastern edge of the park near the ravine escarpment, replacing a similar playground situated there before the renovation.
New light-filled public washroom designed by Brown + Storey Architects features a ski-jump roof that echoes the previous building on the site; and columns and soffits are clad with natural cedar. Included are washrooms labelled “Men,” “Women,” and “Family” (but no gender-neutral washroom), and a storage room for gardening tools and supplies for volunteers.
The City of Toronto webpage on the Rosehill Reservoir Rehab project stated that the new washroom at David A. Balfour Park was an all-season facility. But when I asked the city to confirm this, I was informed this was an error; the new washroom will only be open from May to October. The city could not confirm if any porta-potties will be provided from November to April. Given motions at Toronto City Council requesting that more municipal washrooms be operational in winter, it was a major missed opportunity not to design the new washroom at David A. Balfour Park to be operational year-round.
The initial re-design for the top of Rosehill Reservoir called for earth berms to be installed. This proposal was rejected during community consultations when residents pointed out that the top of the reservoir is used for soccer and ultimate Frisbee, and a private school uses the field for physical education classes. City engineers did not want soccer goal posts installed on top of the reservoir, since they feared that the footings could damage the waterproofing. So after the top of the reservoir was re-waterproofed, new sod was laid over the entire top of the reservoir in late October and November of 2020. Although the park was closed for 21 months after the sod was laid down, as of November 2022 much of the turf is in poor shape.
Large swathes of grass on top of the reservoir have died and weeds have taken hold.
The turf on top of the reservoir is now in much worse shape than before the Rosehill Rehab project started in 2018. I asked the city whether the contractor would be responsible fixing this deficiency, and was informed that this issue will be evaluated in Spring 2023.
While residents are delighted to have their cherished David A. Balfour Park open again, there are many lessons to be learned from this project. Given that the re-opening of the park was 15 months late, and work is still on-going, our governments and agencies need to do a better job of delivering infrastructure projects on time (see the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail project). With David A. Balfour Park, it was a lost opportunity not to winterize the new washrooms. And to support the Toronto’s ravine strategy, the trails into the Vale of Avoca Ravine need to be upgraded and signage installed. This oversight could easily be fixed before the official re-opening of the park in Spring 2023.
Ian Darragh was editor-in-chief of Canadian Geographic magazine and has published features in National Geographic magazine. He led ravine walks for Heritage Toronto and has volunteered to clean-up and remove invasive species from Toronto’s ravines.
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While Toronto had the largest streetcar fleet in North America in the late 1960s, TTC planners and management were focused on abandoning the remainder of the network, as was happening in big cities across North America. There were proposals for a subway under Queen Street, replacing what became the busiest streetcar line after the Bloor-Danforth subway opened. In 1969, the TTC released a plan to convert the rest of the network to buses and trolleybuses by the early 1980s, with the vehicles transferred to new lines in the inner suburbs (which never got built). St Clair was the first route scheduled to be abandoned.
However, in the early 1970s, a group of community activists formed “Streetcars for Toronto” in order to lobby the TTC and City Council to retain and modernize streetcars. The group was led by Andrew Biemiller, a professor of child psychology at the University of Toronto. Other members included Steve Munro, Mike Filey, Howard Levine and John F Bromley. The group had support on council from aldermen William Kilbourn and Paul Pickett.
Rather than protesting, they focused their efforts on producing a report highlighting the economic, social, engineering and planning benefits of streetcars, particularly on busy lines. The report argued that because of high ridership on most lines, and the relatively low capacity of buses compared to streetcars, it would be far costlier in the long run to operate buses on most routes, as more buses (and therefore more drivers) would be required.
Rogers Road in 1974 shortly before the streetcar line was abandoned. The extra overhead wire is for the trolleybuses that replaced the streetcars. Photographer: Robert D McMann, Rob Lubinski collection
Streetcars for Toronto released its report called ‘a Brief for the Retention of Streetcar Service in Toronto’ three weeks before the TTC’s meeting on 7 November 1972. This gave plenty of time for the media to cover the report in great detail. The 18 page report also included a short overview of facts for media engagement. At the 7 November session, the board voted unanimously to retain streetcars. It is important to stress, especially in today’s political climate, that the impetus to retain streetcars originated not from the TTC or city council, but from a dedicated group of engaged citizens who conducted their own research and wrote their own report.
Citizen activism to save Toronto’s streetcars was but one of many movements at the time that was led by local residents. Others included the Stop Spadina movement, a city-wide network of resident associations opposed to the demolition of their neighbourhoods, and groups who successfully fought against the demolition of Old City Hall and Union Station. It is also worth noting that one month after the report was released, Toronto voters elected a reform council, led by mayor David Crombie.
PCC 4347 was one of 173 cars rebuilt in the mid-1970s after the TTC decided to retain streetcars in 1972. It is shown in 1981 heading east about to merge on to Queen St. E. to cross the Don River. Photographer: Ted Wickson, Brian and Michael Doucet collection
After the TTC decided to retain streetcars, two peripheral lines – Rogers Road and Mount Pleasant – were abandoned. The TTC’s attention turned to the streetcars themselves, which were all more than 20 years old. As a temporary measure, 173 PCCs (for Presidents’ Conference Committee) were rebuilt in the mid-1970s.
Compounding the rolling stock problem was the fact that no new streetcars had been constructed in North America since the early 1950s. The TTC looked at some European examples and also the new LRVs built by Boeing for Boston and San Francisco. However, these were rejected by TTC due to their poor running quality and a design that did not meet the city’s needs.
Ultimately, the TTC worked with the UTDC (Urban Transportation Development Corporation), a provincial crown corporation, to develop a new streetcar for Toronto. Known as the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle (CLRV), these entered service between 1979 and 1981. Within less than a decade, Toronto went from being on the cusp of abandoning its streetcars to possessing a brand new fleet of 196 vehicles.
The TTC added to its fleet of CLRVs in the late 1980s acquiring a further 52 ALRVs, articulated versions that predominantly ran on Queen and Bathurst. The network also expanded, with the introduction of the Harbourfront line in 1990 and the Spadina line in 1997, both of which now form the 510 route and operate in their own rights of way.
Toronto’s streetcar network has its share of problems, much of it due to the fact that streetcars have very little priority on the roads and still run in mixed traffic with cars and truck. However, the network’s nine routes form the backbone of transit within the urban core. In 2022, the network has carried over 180,000 riders per day. Remarkably, the 504 King route, which does enjoy priority along its busiest stretches, carries more riders than the five trolley lines in Philadelphia, entire LRT networks in Houston, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and St. Louis, as well as the metros of Baltimore and Miami.
While ridership is still lower than before the pandemic, Toronto’s streetcars remain one of North America’s busiest and most important urban rail systems. The role they play in Toronto today is due in no small part to a dedicated group of advocates and activists who, 50 years ago this month, saw the value of streetcars as an integral part of a growing and dynamic city.
Brian Doucet (on Twitter at @bmdoucet) is the co-author, with Michael Doucet, of Streetcars and the Shifting Geography of Toronto: A Visual Analysis of Change (UTP, 2022). Both Doucets will be discussing the book at the Spacing Store this Thursday, 6:30pm.
The post How activists saved Toronto’s streetcars 50 years ago this month appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In the lead-up to last month’s municipal election, news reporters, columnists, and popular local websites called the mayoral race “dull,” “boring,” or “quiet.” In some regards, it was, and that is how front-runner John Tory — who spent most of his time campaigning for his preferred council candidates, while making no policy announcements and few public appearances — liked it. Though urbanist Gil Penalosa brought big ideas to the table, and though Chloe Brown (who spent less than $2,000 on her campaign) masterfully called out Tory’s inaction on housing, poverty, and opportunities for younger people, not enough people were paying attention.
Mayor Tory came in first place with 62% of the vote, followed by Penalosa with 17.8%, and Brown with 6.3%. At the local voting subdivision level, Tory came in first place in all but 92 of 1433 areas, while Penalosa placed first in 82. (Brown placed first in one poll, at a new condo apartment building at Dundas and Jarvis, while nine subdivisions were ties). Penalosa’s support was concentrated in the west end of the old City of Toronto, in neighbourhoods like Bloorcourt, Harbord Village, Dovercourt, and parts of The Junction and Parkdale, and on the Toronto Islands. In the map below (an interactive map is available here), election subdivisions that voted for Tory are shaded in blue (with darker shades indicating higher margins of win in each poll), while areas that voted for Penalosa are shaded in purple.
Far more interesting were some of the council races.
As part of his electoral strategy, John Tory spent much of his time and resources supporting 12 candidates for council, including veterans such as Mark Grimes (Ward 3) and Frances Nunziata (Ward 5), and challengers such as Siri Agrell (Ward 4) and Grant Gonzales (Ward 9). Progress Toronto, a left-leaning advocacy group, supported nine “champions.” In addition, seven wards had no incumbent councillor running for re-election. In the end, one incumbent councillor went down in defeat, the sudden and untimely death of first-term councillor Cynthia Lai led to the election of one of her challengers, and two former councillors returned to office. And although most of Tory’s picks won council seats, not all were chosen by the electorate. Just because the mayor himself is popular enough, it remains clear that City residents are able to make up their own minds on the composition of council. A warning, perhaps, as Tory is about to take on greater powers courtesy of the provincial government led by Doug Ford.
Spacing selected six wards to examine more closely, as these wards had the tightest races and some of the most interesting geographical divides.
Ward 3 – Etobicoke-LakeshoreIn 2014, facing a challenge from community activist Russ Ford, then Ward 6 councillor Mark Grimes secured the support from former Rogers executive, Progressive Conservative leader, and talk show host John Tory, who was making his second run for Mayor of Toronto. Tory’s robocalling in favour of Grimes helped secure the latter’s re-election, while quashing the hopes of Russ Ford. In 2018, again facing a new progressive challenger — Amber Morley — Grimes was able to count on the support of Mayor Tory’s re-election campaign. This was despite Grimes being under provincial police investigation for election campaign violations.
In 2022, Mark Grimes’ luck ran out. Though he was — for the third time — endorsed by John Tory — voters had a different idea. Though Tory placed first in every electoral subdivision in Ward 3 in 2022, Amber Morley, running for a second time and with the support of Progress Toronto, placed first with 46% of the vote to Grimes’ 40%. Though voters in the Humber Bay Shores condo cluster were split, Morley placed first in nearly every poll in Mimico, New Toronto, Long Branch, and Stonegate, as well as many of the condo and rental towers near Kipling and Islington Stations. Grimes did best in the affluent Kingsway neighbourhood and in Aldershot.
Morley’s strong showing in 2018 and her win in 2022 should be an inspiration to young, progressive challengers to established politicians, even those with deep institutional support.
In the map below, electoral subdivisions where Grimes placed first are shaded in Tory blue, while polls where Morley won are shaded in purple.(Click here for the interactive version.)
Ward 4 – Parkdale-High ParkWhen Siri Agrell announced her candidacy for Toronto City Council in Ward 4, observers expected a showdown between longtime incumbent Gord Perks, an outspoken progressive councillor and critic of Mayor John Tory, and Agrell, a former Globe and Mail urban affairs reporter and advisor to former premier Kathleen Wynne and current mayor John Tory. It was thought that Agrell could beat Perks and be a reliable ally to the mayor, who was already plotting his own re-election.
Perks, who has been in municipal office since 2006, drew the ire of constituents in 2021 and 2022, partly for failing to address dangerous driving on Parkside Drive, while being unresponsive when the Toronto Police set up speed traps in neighbouring High Park to ticket cyclists — and only cyclists — for not stopping at stop signs and for going over the 20 km/h limit. As it turned out, it was a fellow progressive, and not Agrell, who posed the biggest threat to Perks’ incumbency.
Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan-Canadian urbanist and neighbourhood activist in Parkdale, placed second in Ward 4, netting 31.6% of the total vote. She drew support from across the ward, not just in Parkdale, where she placed first in most polls. Lhamo did very well in the Junction, the High Park neighbourhood, and even in south Swansea’s rental and condominium buildings. Agrell came in third place, with just 25.7% of the vote, placing first in only a few polls in the affluent Swansea, and Baby Point neighbourhoods, and a few other scattered places. Perks was able to win 35.4% of Ward 4’s vote with the support of the Runnymede Road area, the area immediately to the north of High Park, some of the rental building clusters, and by placing second in every subdivision where he didn’t place first. (Click here for the interactive version.)
Morley’s example in neighbouring Ward 3 should be inspiring should Chemi Lhamo choose to run again.
Ward 5 – York South-WestonWard 5 was another showdown between a Tory-endorsed veteran councillor and a progressive challenger running for their second time. Frances Nunziata, first elected to the City of York Council in 1988, faced off against Chiara Padovani, who previously ran in the ward in a crowded field in 2018. Unlike in Ward 3, where the young champion defeated the establishment councillor, Nunziata prevailed, but only by 94 votes.
The map below shows the vote split between Nunziata (whose margins of win per electoral district are shaded in Tory blue) and Padovani (shaded in Progress Toronto purple). Padovani placed first in much of Weston, most of Mount Dennis, and the Stockyards area, as well as two polls along Lawrence Avenue that are largely made up of older rental apartment buildings. Nunziata placed first in the north and northeastern parts of the ward, areas with large Italian-Canadian populations that have been loyal to the Nunziata Family. The incumbent candidate also did very well in the Lambton Square condominium cluster on Scarlett Road (where Nunizata herself lives) and in senior housing voting locations. (Click here for the interactive version.)
Ward 11 – University-RosedaleWith the announcement that three-term councillor Mike Layton was not going to run for re-election in 2022, Ward 11 became one of four downtown wards where someone new was guaranteed to get election. But of the those four wards, Ward 11 was the only one to result in a divided, close race.
In Ward 9 – Davenport, Ana Bailão stepped down after three terms on council, a centrist who generally supported John Tory’s agenda. Though Tory supported Grant Gonzales — a former lobbyist and Pride Toronto board member — Progress Toronto-backed candidate Alejandra Bravo took 71% of the vote there.
In Ward 10, Joe Cressy stepped down after two terms — his work chairing the Toronto Board of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive workload representing a high-growth ward taking their toll. Though there were 12 candidates vying for that open spot, TDSB trustee Asuma Malik won with a decisive 36.6% of the vote, with second-place April Engelberg netting 21.3%. Malik ran for council in 2018, before withdrawing after Doug Ford’s newly elected Conservatives cut council from 47 to 25 wards in the middle of the election campaign.
Ward 13, represented by now-NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam, was won by TDSB trustee Chris Moise, who also ran for council in 2018 and later withdrew due to the cut in the number of wards. In a field of nine candidates, Moise got 48.5% of the vote.
Unlike the other three open downtown seats, only Ward 11 featured a tight race, with clear geographic patterns.
Norm Di Pasquale, like Bravo, Malik, and Moise, was backed by Progress Toronto. A Toronto Catholic school board trustee, Di Pasquale ran for the federal NDP in Spadina-Fort York in the 2021 federal election, only to lose by a tight margin to disgraced Liberal candidate Kevin Vuong. Robin Buxton Potts, the executive assistant to Councillor Wong-Tam, was appointed councillor for Ward 13, though she decided to run in Ward 11 after Mike Layton announced his retirement from public office. Dianne Saxe, Green Party candidate for University-Rosedale in the 2022 provincial election, also put her name forward.
On election day, Saxe placed first with 35.4% of the vote — just 123 votes ahead of Di Pasquale (who got 34.9%). Buxton Potts lost her gamble, coming in a distant third and netting under 9% of the vote. The map below, which shows how each candidate did at each polling station, really shows the dichotomy between the University part of University-Rosedale and the Rosedale part.
The most affluent parts of the ward — Rosedale, Moore Park, Governor’s Bridge, and the eastern Annex — supported Saxe (areas shaded in green), while the western Annex, Palmerston, Seaton Village, and north Chinatown supported Di Pasquale (areas shaded in purple). Condo towers along Charles, Bay, and Bloor Streets split the vote between the two. (Click here for the interactive version.)
Ward 18 – WillowdaleEarly in 2018, Councillor John Filion announced his retirement, while endorsing two candidates for the new 47-ward model, his executive assistant Markus O’Brien Fehr, and Lily Cheng, a local community activist. After Doug Ford’s sudden decree that Toronto should have just 25 wards, Filion made an about-face, put his name back into the ring, and O’Brien Fehr stepped back in deference to his boss. Cheng remained in the race, however, coming in second place in 2018.
With Filion once again resigning in 2022, O’Brien Fehr put his name forward, and so did Cheng. O’Brien Fehr secured John Tory’s endorsement, as well as the support of More Neighbours Toronto, an advocacy group promoting increased residential densities across the city. In Willowdale, a plan for a modular housing project to house formerly homeless people, supported by Tory, Filion, and O’Brien Fehr, was opposed by neighbouring homeowners; the “Voices of Willowdale” opposition group also had the support of Cheng. Meanwhile, the provincial government (represented in Willowdale by PC MPP Stan Cho) stalled on fast-tracking the approval of the modular home development. Daniel Lee, past federal Conservative candidate, ran on a platform opposing cycling infrastructure on Yonge Street in North York Centre.
In her second bid for council, Lily Cheng came first, with 41.7% of the vote, while O’Brien Fehr got 33.6%. Lee came in third, with 23.1%. O’Brien Fehr only placed first in a handful of constituencies, all but one located west of Yonge Street, and none near the Cummer Avenue housing site (in all electoral subdivisions within 750 metres of the site, he placed third).
The map below shows the vote by electoral subdivision. Polls where Cheng placed first are in green, areas where O’Brien Fehr placed first are shaded blue, and areas where Lee came first are shaded in orange. (Click here for the interactive version.)
Ward 20 – Scarborough-SouthwestPrior to 2018, Southwest Scarborough was represented by two right-leaning councillors: Gary Crawford and Michelle Holland-Berardinetti. When the 25 wards were imposed, Crawford and Holland-Berardinetti — both reliable Tory allies — duked it out, with the poll-by-poll result closely matching each councillor’s former ward boundaries. Crawford easily placed first in polls south of the Lakeshore East GO Line, while Holland-Berardinetti taking the north half, though Crawford eked out a win in the end.
In 2022, Gary Crawford was seeking yet another term, and he had the support of Mayor Tory. Councillor Crawford’s challengers included past Scarborough councillor and former Liberal MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti (and spouse of Michelle Holland-Berardinetti), TDSB Trustee Parthi Kandavel, and Cycle Toronto campaigns manager Kevin Rupasinghe. Rupasinghe had the endorsement of Progress Toronto.
Though Crawford won a fourth term in Toronto City Council with 35% of the vote, his key challenger was Kandavel, who netted 29.6% and had a very strong showing in the south side of the ward, in areas closest to the Lake Ontario shoreline and the ward’s most affluent neighbourhoods. Crawford placed first throughout the rest in the ward, particularly areas that he placed second to Holland-Berardinetti in 2018. For his part, Lorenzo Berardinetti came in fourth (with just 11.8% of the vote), and placed first in only one poll — Providence House Long Term Care home. Meanwhile Rupasinghe placed third with the support of 13.7% of Ward 20 voters.
In the map below, the electoral subdivisions where Crawford placed first are shaded in Tory blue, while polls where Kandavel placed first are in red. The lone subidivison where Breardinetti placed first is highlighted in yellow. (Click here for the interactive version.)
With the defeat of Mark Grimes and the death of Cynthia Lai, Mayor Tory is down two reliable votes at City Council. Though conservative councillors Vincent Crisanti (Ward 1 Etobicoke North) and Jon Burnside (Ward 16 Don Valley East) returned in 2022, they themselves took over seats left vacant by Michael Ford and Denzil Minnan-Wong respectively. But Tory still has plenty of allies to work with, and with new mayoral powers granted by the province, that may not even matter.
But Willowdale may prove to be a test for John Tory. Does he put his pro-housing rhetoric into action, using new “strong mayor” powers to build the modular housing on Cummer Avenue and affordable housing projects elsewhere over local objections, or does he find allies in new councilors like Lily Cheng?
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Late last week, after the Ontario government revealed that it was bulking up mayoral veto powers for the cities of Toronto and Ottawa, John Tory disclosed that he’d asked for the additional muscle — the ability to win council motions with only a third of the votes — before the municipal election, and then promised, earnestly, that he’d only use these powers sparingly. “Very, very limited,” as he said in response to a question from The Toronto Star’s David Rider.
As a statement from Tory’s office further noted, “The Mayor has been consistent in his support of Strong Mayor powers and he will use these additional measures only when they are necessary to move forward housing and other key priorities.”
Emphasis, needless to say, added.
Ever since the Ford government announced it was giving the mayor power to over-ride council majorities, both the premier and Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark have insisted that these measures were about accelerating the housing file or advancing other “provincial priorities.” Tory’s statement acknowledges that those powers will be used beyond housing.
My working hypothesis about Tory’s bid for the power to veto a majority is that he’ll use it to secure approval of the final and most important piece of the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods (EHON) planning reforms, which will make it legal to build duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and small apartments in Yellowbelt neighbourhoods zoned for detached dwellings.
Tory’s comments from last week pretty much confirms this theory: “If you said to me, for example, on making available more options for housing, which include triplex, duplexes, fourplexes, rooming houses, which I think are of crucial importance not only to consistent regulation across the city but also to unlocking a greater supply of housing, if you said, Would I, if necessary, use these enhanced authorities to move those through, but only after I made a significant attempt [to gain council approval], I would say there’s every possibility I would.”
So what changed between election day and last week? Seems pretty clear: he canvassed the 26 members of the new council and found that well under half — most of them in the old City — were prepared to up-zone neighbourhoods and poke the beast of homeowner outrage. In short, the Tories’ original “strong mayor” powers — that council could only override a mayoral veto with a two-thirds vote — wasn’t, well, strong enough.
Does the end justify the means? This is a tricky question with a subtle answer.
The neighbourhood up-zoning provisions (three as-of-right units per residential lot) in Bill-23, aka the More Homes Built Faster Act, will apply in every municipality in Ontario. But those changes only get the rest of the province to where the City of Toronto already is. The EHON proposal actually goes beyond Bill-23, and it’s by no means clear what would happen if council balked at approving even more gentle density, as per the planning department’s recommendation from last May. (Council hasn’t voted on it yet.)
Would Clark reject a council decision to enact a city-wide neighbourhood up-zoning bylaw that doesn’t exceed Bill-23 and instead imposes the higher density as-of-right allowances set out in EHON’s draft OPA? No one knows for sure, but one point is certain: that Clark has punted numerous council approved OPAs in recent years, ordering the planning department to come up with revised plans that provide more density, fewer public space amenities, and so on.
In other words, there’s good reason to think Queen’s Park would order the city to approve planning bylaws allowing fourplexes, small apartments and rooming houses in the Yellowbelt. Still, the business of informing suburban homeowners that they don’t, in fact, have a god-given right to low density is the hottest of hot potatoes, and no one really wants to end up holding it.
If you’ve followed along so far, you’d be right to conclude that the ends don’t justify the means.
Now let’s explore council dynamics in a future with one-third victories.
Marcus Gee, in the weekend Globe and Mail, sketched out this entirely plausible scenario: “The speaker calls for a vote. The councillors decide, “yes” or “no”. The clerk announces the result. Eight councillors, plus the mayor, in favour; 17 against. The motion carries! Even a visiting school kid watching from the gallery would ask, “wait what? Why does the losing side get what it wants?”
Why indeed?
Here’s what we do know: that the Ford government’s pronouncements, and Tory’s own statements, provide plenty of wiggle room to allow these, um, exceptional measures to be applied to decisions that aren’t just about housing.
Take, for example, the Ontario Place redevelopment proposal, which requires council to pass a zoning bylaw and an official plan amendment, both of which will be vetted over the course of the year. This scheme is absolutely a provincial priority at the moment. Now, I doubt Tory under normal circumstances would find himself on the losing side of this file. But if he does, those superman-like powers could be used to shield the provincial Tories from having to ram through this mega-privatization of waterfront public space with a ministerial zoning order, which, I’m told, they’d prefer not to use. (Tory’s spokesperson Don Peat declined to comment on how Tory might handle the situation.)
The problem with powers that you promise not to use is that eventually someone ends up using them, as many commentators have noted about Section 33, or the notwithstanding clause, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After all, once you’ve run roughshod over a political or democratic norm, it’s way easier to do it a second, third and fourth time.
What’s more, democratic societies, as we’ve seen in recent years in the U.S., are exceptionally vulnerable to accusations — both fair and bogus — about unfair democratic processes and outcomes.
To my eye, however, the most problematic aspect of the legislating of a 1/3 override in a council of equals is that it sets in motion a potentially chaotic political dynamic that could include the formation of vengeful voting blocks on council whose sole objective is to obstruct. After all, as soon as Tory weaponizes a 1/3 victory, and we can all see who voted on the, uh, winning side, he’s created a roadmap for how to block motions or plans that can’t be framed as having provincial significance, even if they make sense.
Why would councillors make common cause in this way? See above quote from Gee: 1/3 victories aren’t victories by any consensus definition of what counts as a victory in our society.
You can’t win a soccer or hockey game by scoring fewer goals than your opponent. Supreme Court rulings are determined by which side got the most votes. Most corporate boards make decisions based on which set of shareholders control the majority of votes. Indeed, the ones that are rigged, with special dual class voting shares, rightly generate static among investors who are concerned that their interests will be over-ridden.
One could argue — and indeed many have — that Canada’s parliamentary system has long tolerated a version of this kind of unfairness with first-past-the-post voting. But provincial and federal legislatures still need to adhere to a long-standing democratic convention, that legislation only passes if it receives a majority of votes from members of parliament.
Because majoritarianism has plenty of risks, legislatures in our society must pay attention to the checks and balances provided by judicial reviews, upper chambers, constitutions, etc. What’s the public’s recourse if an autocratic mayor corrals a clique of council supplicants and proceeds to misuse his bulked-up council powers? Nothing ’til election day.
Consequently, I’d predict this system, whether or not it’s used routinely or rarely, creates new forms of friction, mistrust and antagonism among councillors, and between members of council and the mayor’s office. I can’t think of a single good reason as to why fostering that kind of toxic environment would be a desirable outcome.
In a future in which the mayor doesn’t need to score the most goals in order to win the game, we’ll see an even steeper decline in residents’ trust of their municipal institutions, collaborative decision-making among council members and, perhaps most vitally, the importance of articulating winning arguments in the service of building a better city.
photo by Benson Kua (cc)
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The Ontario government has proposed new legislation called the More Homes, Built Faster Act (Bill 23). But I’d prefer an act called More Affordable Homes, Built Faster and Better. The legislation provokes many questions. Is building faster a good idea? Will the City of Toronto lose its ability to protect rental housing? Is building faster even possible?
Indeed, when you consider that the construction labour force in Ontario is currently working full out on existing projects, is it realistic to consider that we can meet the Ford government’s targets? Where will the trained construction workers come from?
In its details, Bill 23 tends to raise more questions than it answers, including the impact on how we plan our cities.
One aspect of Bill 23 that hasn’t garnered much attention is its proposal to change the Ontario Heritage Act, which isa sleepy bit of legislation. Everyone loves heritage. Why would it even be considered as a part of an effort to cut red tape? Here, however, the issue gets more complex.
What is at stake is a broad rewrite of how we recognize heritage in the Province of Ontario, and it greatly curtails the powers of municipalities and threatens our ability to protect.
Smaller municipalities throughout Ontario have used heritage laws to identify, celebrate and conserve their landmark buildings. But in Toronto in the 1960s, many heritage buildings were under development pressure.
In the 1970s, the City created an inventory of those buildings. When the Bill Davis government passed the Ontario Heritage Act in 1975, some of those inventoried buildings were “designated,” but many also simply stayed on the old City list as flagged for potential heritage value. Designation meant a formal recognition and an obligation to protect. The flagged buildings were simply of potential interest and were referred to as “listed”.
This idea of having some flagged buildings of interest was a Toronto initiative meant to deal with the large variety and number of buildings in the city. At the time, there was also a cost for each designation, which the city was reluctant to pay. As the inventory of heritage properties grew, the city notified owners that their building had been added to the list. It was regarded as an honorary category: how wonderful it is that you could own part of Toronto’s history.
In 2005, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals amended the Ontario Heritage Act to allow municipalities to refuse demolitions on heritage grounds. This was an improvement overall, as the earlier law had only provided for a postponement of demolition. Any building in Ontario could be demolished, no matter how historic it was, if the owner would wait out the brief delay.
The new demolition control mechanism added strength to the inventory. The 2005 amendment formally acknowledged “listing” as a part of the Ontario Heritage Act, but a “listed” property didn’t lead to the more complicated notifications or appeals processes that came with designation.
Municipalities jumped on this distinction and started to propose something called “batch listings”. To speed up their process of expanding their heritage registers, municipalities were adding large numbers of “listed” properties in groups. But the game changed when municipalities said that all the “listed” properties met the same criteria as designated properties. These “batch listings” could in fact appear as “batch designations” without notifications or appeal rights. Whether these liberally sprinkled “batch listings” were intended to block intensification or not is unclear, but it certainly helped start the pendulum swing represented by this legislation.
The City had quickly recognized that demolition control could be used to fight development – which had apparently become the raison d’être for having a planning department. Quickly, heritage staff were recognized as “regulators” of the Heritage Act, which meant scrupulously stepping into planning applications to designate existing structures.
The City’s original practice of initially flagging, or listing, potential heritage properties had allowed for some leeway and the potential for discussion. It was a good approach to conservation. Yet debate over the merits of a particular heritage property was not necessarily a desirable thing in the fraught battle over development. Listing quickly became synonymous with designation.
If managed well, such moves could be very effective approaches to conservation, but it could also be misused. The Ontario Heritage Act still operated as a binary, black and white system. Building A is deemed to be of heritage value and must be designated, and Building B is not.
Bill 23’s heritage provisions have now formalized the process and state that any listed property included on the City’s register of heritage properties must now meet the exact same criteria as designated properties. It also requires that listed buildings must be designated within two years or be removed from the register.
There are two further constraints: The criteria for designation have been made more difficult and de-listed properties cannot be reentered into the register for another five years. This new legislation effectively eliminates any real distinction between listing and designation.
Toronto’s heritage register currently has over 11,000 properties, which is a reasonable number, and possibly lower than other comparable cities. Of that number, nearly 4,000 are listed but not designated. The notion that the City could process the designation of 4,000 properties in a two-year period is simply impossible. So the unintended (or possibly intended) consequence of Bill 23 is that many listed properties will simply be thrown off the register, without any potential protection for a period of five years.
This development is frankly disastrous — akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The bottleneck could be easy to solve if the legislation simply recognized the need for a transition period, providing municipalities with time to make the change.
But there is a greater need to be considered when we look at how the province is manipulating the Ontario Heritage Act. The law is a dinosaur when it comes to considering what heritage means to the culture of Ontario. From the 1970s to the present, the idea of what might be considered heritage has expanded. No longer is it simply significant landmark buildings. Heritage is now environmental — a streetscape, an open space, a neon sign, or the ramshackle shops in Kensington Market.
In contemporary Canadian culture, many things can be understood to have cultural or heritage value. Heritage is no longer as simple as the Ontario Heritage Act would like it to be. In fact, with consideration of Indigenous Reconciliation and Black Lives Matter, as well as many new immigrant communities, even newer aspects of heritage are being revealed.
We need to supplement the limited resources of the Ontario Heritage Act with a stronger recognition and respect for the diversity that exists in our culture, and the need for dialogue on heritage values. The changes proposed in the More Homes, Built Faster Act are a backward step.
photo by Billy Wilson (cc)
Michael McClelland is a registered architect and founding principal of ERA Architects
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Prior to this September’s return to school, Mayor John Tory announced that the City of Toronto will be doubling down on its construction-related road closure audits to ensure contractors abide by the province’s safety guidelines. While encouraging, this news comes in response to mounting criticism towards a seeming lack of accountability and oversight surrounding the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, and other active road users in construction zones. Many, myself included, question whether this compliance blitz will suffice. To verify, I decided to conduct my own audit and assess the extent to which contractors abide by the province’s safety guidelines.
Pedestrians and cyclists remain among the most vulnerable road users in Toronto. And this is especially true amidst the City’s many construction sites and related road closures, which often do not provide an adequate safe travel alternative. Indeed, traffic signs such as Caution: construction ahead or Sidewalk closed have become ubiquitous in Toronto and their presence does not appear to be receding any time soon, as the city continues to voraciously encourage new development. “Construction growth is a sign of a vital and flourishing city,” says Mayor John Tory, and his sentiment is perhaps best encapsulated by observing the number of cranes that tower over Toronto’s skyline. Toronto continues to boast the most cranes of any city in North America, 252 in the first quarter of 2022, up from 208 in the first quarter of last year and far ahead of its closest rival, Los Angeles (51 in Q1 of 2022).
While to be expected in large cities like Toronto, construction-related road closures are often difficult to navigate and dangerous, particularly for active road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. Upon combing through the sparse available data collected by the Ministry of Labour in 2018 one can see that there have been many reported civilian injuries at or near construction sites in Toronto. The prominence of such incidents has prompted the provincial government to enact a set of guiding principles to ensure the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, and other active road users in construction zones across the province. Such considerations are clearly stated in the most recent Ontario Traffic Manual, although the extent to which they are followed by construction crews remains ambiguous.
Anecdotally, many cyclists complain that the temporary cycling infrastructures installed in construction zones have fallen short of their safety requirements, and activists have even created social media accounts to alert cyclists and document unsafe practices. In hopes of providing a more rigorous account of things on the ground, myself and a research assistant, Rosine Toutsop Dongmo, set out to visit construction-related road closures in Toronto. Using data available on the City of Toronto website, we were able to locate and visit every construction-related road closure within the old City of Toronto limits during the months of August and September 2022, and establish the extent to which construction firms were abiding by the Province’s regulatory guidelines. A total of 93 construction sites were visited during this two-month period, 59 of which included some form of road closure and 26 of which included some form of cycling infrastructure such as a cycle track, bike lane, or sharrow.
Results from this investigation demonstrate a widespread disregard for the safety of active road users in construction zones. This includes a lack of mandatory signalisation, a dismissal of minimal pedestrian and cycling infrastructure width requirements, and an overall prioritization of automobiles over active road users.
According to the Ontario Traffic Manual, pedestrians must be “provided with a safe, convenient, and clearly delineated travel path” through work zones that “minimize detours and eliminates backtracking.” This includes providing a parallel diversion route, such as a temporary sidewalk or detour, when sidewalks must be closed. Regrettably, of the 49 construction sites visited with at least one sidewalk closure, only 21 (43%) offered such diversion routes. Even more disheartening is that of the 21 sites offering diversion routes, only 13 complied with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requirements.
The Ontario Traffic Manual further requires a 1.2 metres minimum sidewalk width to accommodate vulnerable pedestrians, which it defines as seniors, people with disabilities, families with strollers, and small children. Unfortunately, this guideline is also often disregarded, as only half of the sites offering a parallel diversion route abided by the 1.2 meters width minimum, in some instances reducing the sidewalk width to as little as 0.6 meters – half of the required minimum, and much too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair or stroller.
A similar picture emerges when considering cyclists, and although the Ontario Traffic Manual states that “every effort should be made to minimize disruption to the [cycling] facility,” our analysis reveals that closing cycling infrastructure during construction has become the norm. Indeed, of the 26 construction sites located on streets with cycling infrastructure, 23 (88%) had rendered these facilities unusable and forced cyclists – often without appropriate signage – to merge into car traffic. Despite this practice being dangerous, the conversion to shared roadway is permitted within the Ontario Traffic Manual when cyclist traffic cannot be accommodated otherwise, but the narrowing of motor vehicle lanes (including parking lanes) should always be prioritized. Yet, given that 88% of construction sites with cycling infrastructure opted to remove it and that the narrowing or removal of parking lanes on these very same sites only occurred in 30% of cases, it appears that such guidelines were not always followed.
Moreover, our research shows that even in the handful of cases where cycling infrastructure was left open, rarely did they respect the minimal width imposed by the Ontario Traffic Manual. Throughout our investigation, only once did we find temporary cycling infrastructure in a construction zone that abided by the province’s 1.2 meters minimal operating space requirement.
The City of Toronto has recently pledged to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries by enacting a Vision Zero road safety plan, which it believes will help address safety concerns for the most vulnerable users of our streets, including pedestrians and cyclists. However, in a city growing as rapidly as Toronto and with apparently very little oversight as to whether safety guidelines are abided in its numerous construction zones, one is increasingly led to question whether the City’s voracious appetite for development is impeding its ability to meet its Vision Zero targets.
Note:
Several attempts to contact Toronto 311 were made during this study to discuss the matter at hand and inquire about the status of active construction zones missing from their dataset. To date, these inquiries have gone unanswered.
Mischa Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Environments at the Université de l’Ontario Français. His research focuses on urban transportation and innovative solutions to render cities more liveable and sustainable.
All photos by Mischa Young
The post Measuring Toronto’s unsafe construction zones appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Spacing is happy to announce the release of our eleventh book, The Signs That Define Toronto. Published in partnership with ERA Architects, Spacing’s Matthew Blackett teams up with ERA partner Philip Evans, architect Kurt Kraler, and 20 other contributors to reveal the history, culture, and stories of the city through its unique signage. The book is packed full of gorgeous historic and vintage photography that is accompanied by thoughtful essays on the social and cultural value of the city’s signage.
BOOK LAUNCH
When: Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, 7pm
Where: El Mocambo, 464 Spadina Ave., just south of College St.
Cost: event is free, book is $35
PRE-ORDER: Copies sent out starting Dec. 1st, 2022 / purchase via the Spacing Store ($35)
“Introduction” from The Signs That Define Toronto
by Kurt Kraler
In the span of a decade, Toronto lost two of its most iconic signs, sparking outrage and questions about how quickly the city was changing before our very eyes. It started in 2008, with the removal of the infamous neon rotating vinyl discs that had marked the entrance to the flagship Sam the Record Man store on Yonge Street for almost 40 years. Then again, in 2017, the glittering and ginormous Honest Ed’s marquee was dismantled to make way for a new residential development at the southwest corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets. Petitions were signed, op-eds were penned, and Facebook groups were formed to protest their removal and share stories of what these signs meant to residents. The conversation turned to heritage preservation and how signage contributes to the visual identity of the city. In both of these instances, what became apparent was the significance of the signs themselves and how they often define otherwise unremarkable building facades.
The Signs That Define Toronto is an attempt to document the culture of the city through its signs. Cities are shaped by their signage, from the iconic signs that dominate the streetscape to the more modest signs of small businesses. Signs offer a glimpse of the occupants who live and work within the buildings they adorn and are accessible to a broad range of commercial tenants. This accessibility is due in large part to innovations in illumination technology that keep the costs of making signs relatively affordable. As a result, signs produce a more accurate record of the life of the city than buildings and architectural styles ever could.
We’ll explore the advances in the signage technology of commercial businesses over the years in chronological order, beginning with the fascia and projecting signs of the 19th century, followed by the sprawling hand-painted billboards of the E.L. Ruddy Company that covered blank side walls across the city. Next came the proliferation of electric signs like movie-theatre marquees and neon signs, which peaked in popularity by the 1950s, and then the more ubiquitous backlit signs that line the streets today. With the evolving nature of signage, we’ll speculate on the future of signs and what the city may look like in the coming decades. Looking at the patchwork of signs that define Toronto, we see the many languages, flags, colours, and symbols that broadcast to various demographics and customers, contributing to the collective visual identity of the city.
Looking south on Yonge St. from Gerrard St., mid-1970s
Downtown Yonge Street is the locus for much of Toronto’s signage history, a commercial strip with retail stores like Sam the Record Man, music venues like Le Coq d’Or, and strip joints like Zanzibar all competing for eyeballs. This display paved the way for the ultimate saturation of signs that is known as Yonge-Dundas Square, with billboards covering wide swaths of building façades and projecting from rooftops. Michael McClelland interviews one of the square’s designers, James D. Brown (of Brown+Storey), and former city councillor Kyle Rae about the origins of Yonge-Dundas Square. Co-editor Matthew Blackett, a long-time Toronto public space advocate and publisher of Spacing, shares his view of the square’s evolution over the past 20 years.
Beyond downtown Yonge Street, we document the cultures that are represented through signage in three distinct Toronto commercial corridors of Little Jamaica on Eglinton Avenue West, the Iranian community colloquially known as Tehranto on Yonge Street between Sheppard Avenue and Elgin Mills, and the historic downtown Chinatown on Spadina Avenue. There is also a series of case studies, iconic sign features, and photo spreads that delve into the stories behind the signs that populate the city’s streets. We’ve also included interviews with several individuals who have documented or directly contributed to Toronto’s signage landscape, including sign maker Dizzy Minott, painter Chris Rouleau, scholar Linda Zhang, and photographer Tanja Tiziana.
My personal interest in signage began with my graduate thesis research into the history of development in Las Vegas, a city known for its dazzling array of signs that are constantly evolving in a bid to attract tourists. This rich history is on display at the Las Vegas Neon Museum, which features a collection of signs salvaged from various establishments both on and off the strip. Visitors are guided through the collection by tour guides who tell stories about the businesses behind each sign and their contribution to the history of the area. What became clear was the critical role of conservation and how buildings and their signs convey a historical sense of place.
In the 1960s, architects and educators Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour led an ambitious survey of the new American commercial strip that had emerged in Las Vegas. They documented the often-disregarded building typology, a result of the widespread adoption of the automobile as a primary means of travel. These studies were later published in Learning from Las Vegas (1972), which positioned the strip’s “lowbrow” populist buildings as a subject worthy of study amongst architects, just as the Pop Art movement had embraced crass commercialism. More importantly, the book identified the prominence of the sign within commercial architecture, relegating the building to its basic functions of providing air-conditioned space and shelter from the elements.
Interestingly enough, Toronto shares some similarities with Las Vegas in its growth and signage evolution. The opening of the Hoover Dam in 1936 supplied Las Vegas with an abundant supply of cheap electricity, similar to how the Niagara hydroelectric dam had transformed the streets of Toronto decades earlier. Access to an affordable and reliable source of electricity provided business owners with the opportunity to expand their approach to advertising and utilize electric signs to stand out in an increasingly cluttered urban landscape. This led to elaborate signs that would forever transform the visual identity of the city.
Electric mural at City Hall, 1911
The city launched the Toronto Hydro-Electric System in 1911 with an opulent display designed to catch the public’s attention. Mounted above the front steps of Old City Hall was a hand-painted mural of the Niagara Falls, with several strings of electric lights cascading outwards over the gathering of curious onlookers below. When the opening of the electric system was officially announced, water poured out of a slit at the top of the mural, drenching the jubilant crowd under the makeshift waterfall. This display would be the harbinger of decadent electric signs to come and launched a new era in commercial signage that was largely driven by movie palaces and automobile showrooms.
Soon-to-be removed over-hanging signs on Yonge St., during subway construction, 1950.
By the end of the 19th century, signs had taken over every square inch of building surface in urban centres, with businesses resorting to a variety of sign types, styles, placement, and colours in a bid to stand out from each other. At the same time, the City Beautiful movement emerged as an effort to clean up city streets and reduce urban blight. The social reform movement was started by a group of concerned citizens in the United States, advocating for fewer signs and more trees, quickly gained traction north of the border with policy makers and residents alike. Tatum Taylor Chaubal delves into the campaign to remove projecting signs along Yonge Street in the 1950s in an attempt to beautify the street, a philosophy that continues to influence signage policy in the City of Toronto to this day.
Signage is a reflection of the society it advertises to. While we remember the most vibrant and colourful displays, we can forget how signage has been used to impose discriminatory laws and business practices that segregated people on the basis of gender or race. While there were no official segregation laws implemented in Canada, the influence of American Jim Crow laws were apparent north of the border. For instance, some theatres would only allow Black patrons to sit in cordoned-off areas demarcated by signs, or restaurants and hotels would refuse service altogether. Up until the 1970s, drinking establishments had separate sections for men and women, with exterior signs that would mark the entrances for each. During my research as a heritage architect, I have come across countless historic photographs of large billboards that depict images or words that portray racist stereotypes of Black and Indigenous people, as well as others from a variety of backgrounds.
Parkside Tavern (middle) and Charles St. Tavern (clock tower) were institutions of the city’s gay community in the 1960s and ‘70s.
It’s critical to note which communities may be underrepresented through signage. Until recently, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S+) establishments remained largely unseen in the public realm, often relying on coded names, double entendres, and discreet signs to reach the community. Prolific queer historian Ed Jackson, chronicles the evolution of signs in and around the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood and how business owners have creatively reached their target demographic. Over the years, Indigenous businesses have also forged a presence in their respective neighbourhoods with distinctive signs, including Nish Dish, Pow Wow Cafe, and Tea-N-Bannock. While businesses only form one aspect of a community, they powerfully claim space on city streets and their signs render visible cultural values and symbols.
Lightbulbs salvaged from the Honest Ed’s marquee sign.
There are ongoing discussions about where and how to properly display salvaged signs, including the famed Honest Ed’s sign. Toronto has its own neon museum initiative, which has been collecting signs over the past several years, spearheaded by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (DYBIA). There is hope for an eventual physical location to display these signs, but no immediate plans have been made available. However, a neon museum should be a last resort; heritage restoration efforts should always seek to retain signs in situ. Often, the reason a sign is considered significant is a result of its surroundings and the unique placement of the sign on a building façade. For instance, the iconic Filmores sign — captured on the cover of this book — is distinctive for its location on Dundas Street, just east of Yonge, where the road curves north a block away from the Jarvis Street intersection. The sign is purposefully mounted on the prow of the building and extends the full height of the façade, attracting attention in several directions. It would be difficult to recreate its historic prominence and site-specific configuration in the context of a neon museum.
Restoring historically significant signs in place should be a priority as it lends historical weight and significance to a building and its surrounding neighbourhood. Signs should also be restored with their original technology if possible. The recent practice of replacing neon signs with LED strips may not offer as many advantages as initially thought. Vancouver sign historian John Atkin notes that plastic LED strips do not last nearly as long as glass neon tubes, are too intense in colour, and do not emit ambient light onto the sidewalk below. Colour LEDs also consume an amount of energy comparable to neon signs, challenging the notion that they’re more energy-efficient. Lastly, LED lights don’t photograph very well, with film productions often resorting to neon since the LED bulbs produce less-than-desirable white hotspots when captured on camera.
While it would be impossible to include every memorable Toronto sign in this book, we hope this is the beginning of a conversation around the importance of conserving signs and preserving their stories. This preservation can take on many forms beyond restoration of the physical object itself and can include photo documentation, artistic drawing and painting, capturing the stories of sign makers and business owners, sharing nostalgic memories with friends, and so on and so forth. To look at the signs that define Toronto is to see a reflection of the city’s inhabitants, one that reveals the rich layering of cultures through the languages displayed, colours used, and types of businesses and services provided.
Cover photo by Sam Javanrouh; Honest Ed’s bulbs by Matthew Blackett; other photos courtesy of Toronto Archives
The post “The Signs That Define Toronto”, a new book from Spacing and ERA Architects appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Amidst widespread housing instability, many feel that we may never again be able to dream of a home to call our own.
There’s a deep, unsatiated sense of longing for a space to hang up one’s hat, kick back, own houseplants, and make art to adorn the walls. A place to be yourself and never have it taken away from you.
Daring to Dream of Home in Bleak TimesLocal artist Keely O’Brien’s ‘Dream Home Hotline’ project was inspired by a conversation with a friend, who has struggled to find affordable housing and art studio space in Vancouver.
“She told me that she didn’t even want to dream about her dream home anymore, as it seems so impossible to attain, so that thinking about it made her feel hopeless,” O’Brien shared.
The project invited the public to call in and leave a voicemail to manifest their dream home. They were asked to describe it in detail, the sky was the limit.
The ‘Dream Home Hotline’ project is in tune with those that dare to dream, reshaping their vision of what a home looks like. This type of creative reimagining has fueled a social and architectural rebellion, similar to the tiny house movement and off-grid lifestyles where people simplify and downsize their lifestyles to live with less and decrease their ecological footprint.
The Blue Cabin: Past and PresentO’Brien recently wrapped up an artist residency in the Blue Cabin, a mobile art studio currently situated on a floating platform in Steveston Village.
Image courtesy of Henri Robideau.
While most passersby might easily dismiss the cabin as another floating home—a common sight in the waterways of False Creek or Mosquito Creek Marina—the Blue Cabin is an almost century-old structure with many stories to tell.
The cabin is the last existing structure of its kind from an important time in Vancouver’s history, representing a lifestyle that has all but disappeared due to gentrification.
Built in 1927 by a Norwegian carpenter and shipbuilder, it was towed to the Cates Park area in 1937 and was hoisted up onto posts above the foreshore in a tiny cove. There it stayed for the next 83 years in a community of cabins that dotted the foreshore that was mostly without electricity, running water, or plumbing.
One community, in particular, called Lazy Bay, was home to more than 90 structures during that period. Among them, lived English novelist and poet Malcolm Lowry, and it was where he wrote his most famed novel ‘Under the Volcano.’
As the cabins were built right in the tidal zones, it was considered a legal gray area, which neither the city nor the federal government had jurisdiction over.
Anthony Meza-Wilson, the Blue Cabin’s managing director, explained how legal gray areas work in the context of the squatter dwellings. “Municipalities usually have asserted jurisdiction over the shore, while the federal government over the waterways. Cities reach to the high tide mark, and the federal government around the waterways only have it to the low tide mark. So the foreshore is an in-between zone,” he explained.
“All jurisdiction is incomplete in a way, and authorities hadn’t really considered what was going to happen in this area. They figured that people weren’t going to live on it because it was the tidal zone. But then, people started living on it.”
Image courtesy of John Ward.
Among these people, laborers, seniors, artists, and counter-cultural creatives, was a spirit of a rebellion for those seeking to connect with nature and slip the bonds of social convention.
The idea of living a life unfettered by societal constraints can be easily glamorized, and Meza-Wilson reminds us that those living in the squatter shacks were likely doing so out of necessity.
“People can sometimes romanticize the lifestyle of those who lived in the squatter shacks on the mudflats, but in reality, it’s important to remember that it was a mixed community where there could be a lot of precarity, poverty, and hard times,” he said.
Al Neil and Carole ItterThe artist Al Neil, image courtesy of Jim Jardine.
In 1966, the artist Al Neil joined the community after receiving a tip that the Blue Cabin was available. He rented it from shipbuilders McKenzie Barge & Derrick for $15 a month, and the company provided electricity for the cabin. After some time as a tenant, Neil became the “unofficial beach watchman” for McKenzie Barge, and began living in the cabin rent-free.
A free jazz pianist, collage artist, poet, and assemblage artist, Neil was an “electric and interesting character from Vancouver’s art scene beginning in the 1960’s and 70’s,” according to Meza-Wilson. He was later joined in the Blue Cabin by his partner Carole Itter—a performance artist and assemblage sculptor, who made musical, large-scale wind and water chimes.
“The two of them lived and worked in the cabin up until 2015,” shared Meza-Wilson. “They’re the ones that created this patina paint interior and this is how it was when they were living in it. They were just a pair of bohemian artists living on the beach, making assemblages in and around the cabin and doing other creative work.”
Image courtesy of Henri Robideau.
After decades of living on the Dollarton Foreshores, their time on the beach had come to an end. The land next to the cabin was bought by Polygon Homes in November 2014. Neil and Itter were served with an eviction notice, and the cabin was ordered to be removed in just two months’ time in January 2015.
Neil was almost 91 years old at the time, and the pair packed up their lives and relocated to Itter’s Strathcona home that she luckily maintained throughout her time at the Blue Cabin.
Sadly, some of the other homes in the area met an untimely fate, as the community was displaced to make way for where Cates Park is today. The Blue Cabin, though, was spared due to its connection to Mckenzie Barge and Neil’s role as an informal watchman.
Reflecting on the Blue Cabin’s StoryThe past is a reflection of the present, and O’Brien has witnessed the old being bulldozed to make way for the new.
“The cabin’s visible connections to the past starkly contrast my own current home: I live in a condo where there isn’t very much indication of the deeper past at all remaining in the landscape. Everything is new, concrete, and even the last few old trees in my neighborhood are coming down to make way for development,” she lamented.
Many of us can relate, at varying levels, to the traumatic feelings that swirl around neighborhood loss. All the while, cities have the arduous task of balancing the negative impact of social change to communities with accommodating the growing population.
These social issues increase the importance of projects like the Blue Cabin artist residency, living on as a nomadic beacon of resilience for those who long for a home to call their own.
Image courtesy of Colin Griffiths.
O’Brien feels that the cabin represents a dream home for many of those who are faced with shrinking opportunities for affordable, creative living. “The cabin has felt like a dream home to me, a place I could only dream about inhabiting, with qualities of history, personal expression, and closeness to natural landscapes that are not in reach in my current home,” she said.
Her time with the cabin seemed to be a reminder that amidst tough times, we should still allow ourselves to dream. O’Brien wondered: “What would happen if we allowed ourselves to dream of a joyful and secure sense of home, even in bleak circumstances?”
Iris Leung is a freelance journalist based in Steveston Village, interested in writing about urbanism and gardening.
The post The Blue Cabin: A Dream of Home in Uncertain Times appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
WHAT: Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto book launch WHERE: Spacing Store, 401 Richmond St. W. WHEN: Thursday, November 24th at 6:30pm Join Dr. Brian Doucet, author of Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion, for a discussion about Toronto’s transit evolution with Spacing […]
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In the days immediately following the municipal election, the second round of public consultations on the revitalization, so-called, of Ontario Place. A provincial website, Engage Ontario Place, seems to be the point of contact, and there has been an online consultation session, facilitated by Bespoke Collective. The process is moving ahead rapidly, including class environmental […]
The post LORINC: Paul Bedford on what happens next with the Ontario Place redevelopment appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In the late 1990s, then St. Paul’s West councillor Joe Mihevc took up the cause of several hundred tenants, many of them seniors, living in two apartment buildings on Tweedsmuir Ave., overlooking the St. Clair West subway station. The buildings, 12-storey slab towers designed by Peter Dickinson with a total of 246 units (146 of […]
The post LORINC: Will Toronto defend its rental replacement law from Doug Ford? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
For some years, I worked for an organization that practiced what I came to think of as the Jenga school of management. The organization loved to hire prestigious new employees, set up impressive-sounding new management positions, and embark on ambitious, glamorous new initiatives. Unfortunately, it was also tight on resources. So to help cover the […]
The post REID: The Jenga school of civic management appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Registration closes November 15th Cost: FREE. Register at Eventbrite! It’s time to explore a more coordinated approach to gentle-density housing in BC neighbourhoods. On November 22, Small Housing will gather municipal planners and elected officials from around the province to Vancouver for the Gentle Density Local Leaders’ Summit to build momentum for more housing options […]
The post EVENT: Gentle Density Local Leaders’ Summit, Nov 22-23 appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Digital Placemaking Data and technology allow placemakers to experiment with new ways of measuring, designing, and most importantly engaging with the people they are designing public space for. Ideally, digital placemaking empowers everyone to shape the spaces they […]
The post The Future Fix: Digital Placemaking appeared first on Spacing National.
When Sidewalk Labs rolled into Toronto in 2017, there was no ambiguity about the corporate family tree. Sidewalk officials repeatedly said the smart city start-up venture was a kind of mash-up: Google/Alphabet’s money and some of its tech people in a shotgun marriage with an assortment of New York planners, real estate types, lobbyists and […]
The post LORINC: Who is behind the Therme Group, the spa company redeveloping Ontario Place? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The outcome, at least on the mayoral vote, was not ambiguous: Mayor John Tory, campaigning — if that’s how his performance in the past month or so could be described — on a more-of-the-same platform, soundly defeated his closest rival, urbanist Gil Penalosa, although it will be a four-year victory lap that comes burdened with […]
The post ELECTION: Beware of what you wished for appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. Lorraine Lam is community organizer who works with unhoused people, John Lorinc is a Spacing senior editor, together, we […]
The post PODCAST: Election Panel with Lorraine Lam and John Lorinc appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Last week, Spacing contributor Anthony McMahon argued that it is time for Toronto City Hall to have political parties, similar to those established in Montreal and Vancouver. McMahon argued that parties bring real, obvious options to voters, who are simply presented with a list of names on a ballot. Though there are arguments to be […]
The post ELECTION MAP: Duelling campaign endorsements appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. This is a special, French-language edition. Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre. CET ÉPISODE: Trois-Rivières : un virage intelligent Face au futur est presenté en collaboration avec le magasin Spacing et Evergreen dans le cadre du programme Réseau […]
The post The Future Fix: a smart shift for Trois-Rivières appeared first on Spacing National.
The Book Award was presented to: Indigenous Toronto: Stories That Carry This Place, an anthology examining both our deep foundation of Indigenous history and the contrasting narratives of Indigenous cultural continuity and settler colonialism that have defined Toronto. Editors: Denise Bolduc, Mnawaate Gordon-Corbiere, Rebeka Tabobondung and Brian Wright-McLeod Publisher: Coach House Books The Public History Award […]
The post 2022 Toronto Heritage Award winners appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Author: Eva Hagberg (Princeton University Press, 2022) Today, I think about Aline’s contributions to the field, and to the practice and publicity of architecture. I see traces of her work everywhere, in the way in which I email with my colleagues, in the way in which my colleagues email with me. Perhaps there is something […]
The post Book Review – When Eero Met His Match: Aline Loucheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect appeared first on Spacing National.
Let’s face it: there was never meant to be a ballot question, besides some kind of fuzzy re-validation of Mayor John Tory’s claim of experienced, don’t-scare-the-horses leadership, yada, yada, yada. By early 2022, the most widely rumoured mayoral aspirants, Joe Cressey and Josh Matlow, had either exited or let it be known that they were […]
The post LORINC: We finally have a ballot question for the ages appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
People are buying and using more things than they ever have before and, with this, creating more garbage than a city can sustainably dispose of. Overflowing black and clear bags line the grid streets of New York City two to three times a week for pickup. Some cities are able to hide this disposal display […]
The post Movie Review — Trash Day: a dumpster diving documentary appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. But the Big Smoke isn’t the only municipality going to the polls October 24th. All across Ontario, people are […]
The post Election Panel: the 905 Edition appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
WHAT: Spacing’s Election Night Watch Party! WHEN: Monday, Oct. 24, 6pm-10pm WHERE: Pauper’s Pub, 539 Bloor St. W., 1 block east of Bathurst St. COST: Free! (plus free copy of magazine & giveaways) LINK: RSVP on Facebook if you wish Come join fellow Spacing readers at Pauper’s Pub for a casual Election Night Party where […]
The post ELECTION NIGHT PARTY! Come watch the results with Spacing appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Recently, the PC government proposed giving Toronto and Ottawa “strong mayor” powers, claiming major cities need strong mayors to deliver priorities. And they might be right. Toronto and Ottawa may need stronger mayors. But what these cities – strong mayor or no – really need are political parties. Political parties ideologically sort voters and candidates, […]
The post OP-ED: City Council is Dull — It Needs Parties appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
I am struggling to distinguish between most of the parties vying for our vote on election day this Saturday. Those that have been around awhile (The NPA, Vision and The Greens), and the newbies (ABC, Forward Together, One City and Progress Vancouver), are cut (more or less) from the same cloth. Voters are already seeing […]
The post Towards a More Compassionate, Productive Civic Governance for Vancouver appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
As far as Toronto mayoral elections go, 1982 was a snoozer. With no prominent competition, Art Eggleton was assured a second term. Utilizing his dull, amiable, centrist image, he campaigned on a platform of vague promises regarding affordable housing, keeping taxes low, job creation, maintaining social services, and reducing crime. Somebody had to inject colour […]
The post ELECTION: ART vs Art — when artists enlivened a walkover campaign by a bland establishment mayoral incumbent appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. In this episode, it’s a classic transit panel with Matt Elliott (Toronto Star columnist and City Hall Watcher proprietor) […]
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Public Salon, Think Tank Series DATE: Wednesday, October 26th TIME: 7:30 – 9:00 pm LOCATION: Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street TICKETS: Vary in price, starting at $29.66. Available via Eventbrite On October 26th, the 36th Public Salon will feature speakers on topics related to the themes of the new Global Civic Think Tank. These include […]
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Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Experiments in Mobility It can be hard to convince governments at any level to invest in a new idea. This is especially true with transportation, where breaking away from the status quo can sometimes seem an impossible dream. […]
The post The Future Fix: Experiments in Mobility appeared first on Spacing National.
Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, Toronto’s local politicians had ambitions for local transit. The topic was debated, often intensively and at length. Plans were bruited, consultants were consulted, arms were twisted, and deals got done, or (often) not, as the case may be. Those halcyon days, however, are long […]
The post ELECTION: The incredible shrinking transit debate appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Author: Ralph Segal With the City’s current Zoning Map as an initial regulatory reference, Vancouver’s contemporary approach to planning, urban design & sustainability, ever-evolving since the 2000s, has pursued comprehensively planned and designed neighbourhoods, districts and precincts to achieve complete communities while addressing an array of city-wide planning objectives. This approach to city building, responding […]
The post Broadway & Vancouver Plans: A Rejection of Core Vancouver Planning Principles? appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Yesterday was sign day in Toronto’s municipal election. Campaign workers spread out over the city to hammer signs onto lawns and leave signs for posting in apartment windows. Signs supporting candidates are a time-honoured tradition in Canadian elections. But what is their role? Do they really make a difference? I remember visiting England a few […]
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As Toronto gets ready to vote, we’ll be bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. In this episode, we talk to Spacing senior editor Shawn Micallef and Spacing contributor and West End Phoenix associate […]
The post PODCAST: Election Panel with Shawn Micallef and Kunal Chaudhary appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. This is a special, French-language edition. Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre. CET ÉPISODE: La culture de la bicyclette est-elle inclusive? Si vous vivez à Montréal ou que vous y êtes déjà allé, vous avez certainement […]
The post The Future Fix: Is bike culture inclusive? appeared first on Spacing National.
City council has spent the past few years chipping away at the walls surrounding that seemingly impregnable fortress otherwise known as Toronto’s Stable Neighbourhoods, with incremental moves such as allowing rental laneway suites and, just recently, an official plan amendment allowing small-scale retail in neighbourhoods. These moves are part of the Expanding Housing Options in […]
The post LORINC: What’s missing from the missing middle debate appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Last week, Statistics Canada released the latest set of data from the 2021 Census, which included information on housing type and tenure. According to the census, more Torontonians rent, and even more live in mid-rise and high-rise apartment buildings, compared to the previous 2016 census. Last year 48.1% of all households in the City of […]
The post ELECTION: Toronto is a highrise, rental city – unlike City Council appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Once upon a time, Toronto had ambition. While it was much mocked for wanting to be a “world-class city,” at least it had a goal. Now, with more cranes dotting the skyline than any other city in North America, Toronto might be said to have achieved that goal. But rather than trying to reach even […]
The post NEW ISSUE: 2022 City Election Issue(s) appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
In 1972, Leslie Martin and Lionel March published Urban Space and Structure—an influential book featuring a series of essays written in the late 60s exploring the question of what building forms make the best use of land. Attempting to be as ‘objective’ as possible, it used the measurable criteria of daylight access and the ratio […]
The post The Tower Default – Pt 2 appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
On a gusty warm Sunday in September, I enjoyed a bit of paradise at the edge of Toronto. I know: Toronto and paradise, not exactly synonymous, right? Perhaps that’s because not enough people know about how gorgeous — and threatened — Ontario Place is. Lake Ontario is frisky, and my friend and I bob in […]
The post RENZETTI: What we lose when we lose Ontario Place appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The Stone Distillery, which anchors the southwest corner of the Distillery Historic District, is a noble backdrop for thousands of photos and videos every year. But probably only a handful of visitors to the site realize that this massive building, formerly the operations centre for distillers Gooderham and Worts, was once one of this city’s […]
The post Monumental success: Toronto’s Stone Distillery has stood the test of time appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Edited by Ana Tostões, Docomomo International & Birkhäuser Publishers, 2022 Modernism was the defining architectural expression of the 20th century – a movement that transformed built environments around the world in an unprecedented way. Today, the original function of many of these buildings is no longer required, or they are in urgent need of repair. […]
The post Book Review: Modern Heritage – Reuse, Renovation, Restoration appeared first on Spacing National.
In July 2018, in the middle of Toronto’s last municipal election, the newly elected Progressive Conservative provincial government, headed by former Toronto city councillor and mayoral candidate Doug Ford, unexpectedly and unilaterally upended local politics. The new 47-ward council that was to be elected that October, using new ward boundaries designed to reflect the city’s […]
The post An imbalance of power: population disparities between Toronto’s 25 wards appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
How widespread are evictions? How bad are waitlists? And who’s struggling with housing the most? Statistics Canada’s latest survey goes into detail about what Canadians are experiencing when it comes to their homes. There’s an “obsession” with home prices as a marker of the housing crisis, says Andy Yan, director of the City Program at […]
The post Breaking Down the Big New Batch of Housing Data appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
As part of Spacing Toronto’s coverage of the 2022 municipal election, cartographer Sean Marshall is creating maps revealing some of the underlying patterns shaping the election. On Friday, August 19 at 2:00 PM, the last nominations were accepted at City Hall for mayoral, council, and school board candidates for the municipal election to be held […]
The post ELECTION: Open wards and the power of incumbency appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Another election, another surprise announcement from Premier Doug Ford that throws it all into disarray. Ford’s proposal for “Strong Mayor” powers for Toronto and Ottawa’s next mayors have left many wondering why the Premier is intervening in local-level governance. One of these people is former Toronto Mayor David Miller. We speak to Miller — currently […]
The post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 067, Toronto Election: the case against a strong mayor system appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
For decades, about half of Torontonians have lived in rented dwellings, and despite this rather amazing statistic, they are systematically un- or at best under-represented when it comes to the policy issue that most directly pertains to their lives: housing affordability. Landlords now have virtual impunity to evict and can charge eye-watering amounts for crappy […]
The post LORINC: Who will solve the rental crisis? Not John Tory appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Kensington Market is one of Toronto’s most charismatic and iconic neighbourhoods, distinguished for its cultural impact. Putting your finger on what makes Kensington special is tricky – it’s chaotic and it’s messy, a quality emphasized when contrasted with the order and logic you’ll find elsewhere in Toronto. Kensington’s chaos takes a lot of forms, such […]
The post Kensington is funky and non-conventional. Its streets should be too appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Spacing and the Balanced Supply of Housing research node proudly present The Overhead: Understanding Canada’s Affordable Housing Crisis, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Breaking the addiction to high home values We’re all used to headlines about impossibly soaring housing prices in Canadian cities: prices that leave many out of the market, and out in the cold. […]
The post The Overhead: Breaking the addiction to high home values appeared first on Spacing National.
After the dock collision on the weekend that injured more than a dozen people and has reduced ferry service to the Toronto Islands for the rest of the summer, I found myself thinking about which other major cities would tolerate, year after year after year, the use of such antiquated transportation equipment. Our reality is […]
The post LORINC: The slow boats to Centre Island appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
On July 22, 2022, Vancouver City Council approved the Vancouver Plan, a citywide land use strategy to create a more livable, affordable and sustainable city for everyone. The Vancouver Plan is now the strategic framework for the city, proposing to add more housing options in complete and connected neighbourhoods, address the climate crisis, and support […]
The post VIDEO: Why does the Vancouver Plan matter to you? appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
This weekend, starting at King St. and Church St. in front of St. James Cathedral, the Hungry for Comfort Neighborhood Tour will highlight Toronto’s Afro-Caribbean food culture. The free but registration-only event, hosted by Toronto History Museums, will end at Mackenzie House at 82 Bond St. The tour is the first installment of the Hungry […]
The post Neighbourhood tour: the beginnings of Afro-Caribbean food culture in Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
As Toronto’s fall elections begin to take form in the mid-summer heat, the message from a chorus of departing councillors couldn’t be clearer: take this job because we don’t love it. Nearly a third of the current term of council is not seeking re-election, with some leaving for greener pastures and some, well, just leaving. […]
The post ELECTION: The next term of council is a time to mobilize appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
What was your mall? Mine was Oakridge Centre in Vancouver. It wasn’t particularly glamorous with its exterior of boring brown brick, but it was the town square for our pocket of the city. Anytime we went to Oakridge, we ran into somebody we knew. I knew it intimately as a kid, visiting the family doctor […]
The post Book Review – Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of The Mall appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Downtown Toronto’s only beaches adjoin Ontario Place, where we swim year-round, even in winter. The most magical of these is Teachbeach, a sandless (sandfree) pebble beach with crystal-clear waters where we swim, conduct scientific research, and make underwater music videos that celebrate the water clarity. No other beach in Toronto has that degree of water […]
The post Protecting Ontario Place’s pebble beaches appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
It continues to get hotter in Toronto, with summer temperatures in the high 30s becoming common. We must make immediate changes to our city if we want to combat this scorching trend. A place that is having real success on this front is Montreal. Here are eight simple ideas Toronto can borrow from Montreal to […]
The post Eight simple ways to cool a city appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
The only thing worse than the design proposed for Ontario Place’s indoor spa mega-project is the fact that a firm with such a storied history in Toronto urbanism would be willing to put its name to this terrible idea. Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. (DSAI), the local partner retained by Austria’s Therme Group, which last year […]
The post LORINC: The future of Ontario Place must become an election issue appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Architecture, cities, and economics have always had an intimate relationship. The last century has seen the largest explosion of buildings and settlements in history, and this will be continuing into the foreseeable future. With the increasing complexity of global systems, understanding the larger context that affects—and is affected by—architecture is critical. Spacing Vancouver Editor-in-Chief Erick […]
The post Architecture and Capital in the 21st Century: An Interview with Matthew Soules appeared first on Spacing Vancouver.
Cycling along Barrie’s waterfront trail, on a cloudless day with the sun burnishing the sky, the trees quiet in the still air, I came across a heritage plaque that stopped me in my tracts. It was in honour of Hewitt Bernard, who was born in Jamaica in 1825. The plaque said he immigrated to Canada […]
The post Biking through Barrie’s Black history appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
Over the 16 years prior to the news last week that Premier Doug Ford’s Tories are planning to impose so-called strong mayor powers on Toronto council, the Ontario government has enacted two sets of consequential governance reforms on the city. The first — the 2006 City of Toronto Act (CoTA) — was an exercise in […]
The post LORINC: Does Toronto need strong mayor powers or just a strong mayor? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.
With Edison Gao and Anika Munir In this “Transit Transformation” series, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) City Studies students lead an investigation into the Scarborough subway extension. Zachary Hyde is a professor in the City Studies Program at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Edison Gao and Anika Munir are students in the City Studies Program […]
The post Transit transformation, part 1: confronting Scarborough’s housing challenges appeared first on Spacing Toronto.