Deconstructed City

Event: Populating the New Transit Corridors

2012-02-09T10:05:00.000-05:00

photo by sillygwailo from Flickr (cc)

A potentially interesting free event up at York University on February 22 from 5:30 - 7:30pm that looks at the planning of transit corridors in the future, with a focus on Vancouver's experience with the relatively new Canada Line and the Cambie corridor along which it runs. This is even more relevant to Toronto considering yesterday's decisive council decision to redeploy a network of light rails a la Transit City.

From the event info page:

For the Toronto metropolitan region, Metrolinx’s Big Move is an historically ambitious program for the investment of tens of billions of dollars in new transit over the next 25 years. Development along the transit corridors is expected to shape the future of our region, yet public discussion to date has focused almost entirely on transit line locations, technologies and costs. We should not be beguiled by the notion that development will automatically locate to the corridors.

It’s time to steer the discussion towards how future development will be deliberately induced to locate around the new transit corridors. Neglecting to do so is to invite the necessity of enormous long-term subsidies for building, maintaining, and operating new transit lines whose ridership is too low to cover the costs. For a region aspiring to be globally competitive, the stakes are high.

Metrolinx has taken initiatives in land use and design, in particular with its Mobility Hub Guidelines. A public discussion on systematic approaches to populating all of the transit corridors is required to avoid mistakes of the past.

As a living example of big picture planning along transit corridors, Vancouver’s Cambie Corridor Plan has timely relevance. Bailey and Kellett have collaborated on innovative processes and methods of integrating transportation, land use, and energy efficiencies. They will speak to plan outcomes to date, engagement processes, research methods, and diverse types of visualization.

Instagram and the City

2012-01-28T16:22:00.002-05:00

Vancouver: Robson Square

Vancouver: Sea Wall

Vancouver: Sea wall

Vancouver: Rezoning application near GM Place

Vancouver: Olympic Village

Toronto: Pink arrow

Toronto: View from the 13th floor of Robarts Library

Vancouver: Vancouver Public Library

Vancouver: North False Creek sea wall

Toronto: or, Oronto!

Video: Mapping Toronto's Streetcars

2012-01-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

TTC Streetcars from James Fisher on Vimeo.

Check out this amazing video of Toronto's streetcars moving around the city in all its cosmic awesomeness.

Vancouver's Cathedral Square

2012-01-15T09:51:00.000-05:00

Cathedral Square in the eastern portion of Vancouver's downtown, right at the edge of Gastown, is one of those spaces that I've walked by a dozen times but never stopped to go inside and explore. Mostly it was because, despite the dramatic design of this public space, there was never any real draw to check it out. The square usually draws a cursory glance as people walk by to other things. It exists as one of those public spaces that were designed with the best intention, and then left to rot, untended.

Cathedral Square consists of a grassy expanse dotted by wooden benches on concrete platforms and a zig-zagged pathway. In the centre is a pool, the colour of the which makes it look less like a reflecting pond than your neighbours over-chlorinated and neglected backyard swimming pool, leafy detritus and cigarette butts magnified from their sunken spot at the bottom. This blue is "complemented" by Expo 86-style steel girders that make an open-air cage propped up on thick, concrete turrets. There is even a 'pier' should someone want to sit out and suntan.

This cage sits atop a stepped plaza of sorts that is littered with trash, and mostly hidden from the street beside it. The site's architecture is imposing and unfriendly and almost prison-like in the huge concrete barriers and metal cage. Some of the benches are even missing, so all that remains is the concrete block on which they are supposed to sit.

Part of the reason for the site's lack of people, no doubt, is that the space is located in a inconvenient spot. As time passes in Vancouver the city's 'centre' has moved ever westward, from the pioneer days when the hot spot was what is now called the Downtown Eastside to contemporary times where most people are found along the commercialized spine of Robson Street in the West End.

However, it's undeniable that the design of this square is not a welcoming one. I found some pictures from the Vancouver Archives of what the square looked like when it first opened in 1986 to find out if it was as unwelcoming looking back then as it is now.

Vancouver Archives, CVA 7840-098

In these photos the concrete pillars are fresh and have not yet succumbed to the rusty discolourations from years of rain, and there are flowers and small trees.

Vancouver Archives, CVA 784-099

The cage overhead is revealed to have once been the frame for a covering that shielded the space from rain, but they obviously found it too difficult to maintain so removed it. You can also see in the below picture how the southern edge of the square is cut off from the adjacent street due to a change in grade, making this part of the space feel closed off and private.

Vancouver Archives, CVA 784-101

It's unfortunate that this space gets so little play. Vancouver's downtown peninsula has a real dearth of public squares and plazas larger than those occupying a ceded corner of real estate on a busy downtown block (the small plaza at the corner of Georgia and Granville outside of the Sears building was such a corner until the city built an oversized entrance to the Vancouver City Centre Canada Line station there). For now Cathedral Square remains mostly discarded.

As it stands, however, Cathedral Square does seem to serve a function of providing shelter and privacy to those who may be living on the street. I came across two people sleeping in separate sections of the plaza behind the giant concrete pillars. So a "rediscovering" of this space by the City would likely result in inequities in terms of who is able to use this space and for what.

Toronto Info Pillars Back to the Drawing Board?

2012-01-10T12:07:00.000-05:00

Text of the motion passed at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee

Two motions put forward, one by Councillor Gord Perks and one by Councillor David Shiner, have effectively halted the installation of Astral Media's "info" pillars around Toronto after being carried at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. Councillor Shiner's motion aimed at providing local ward Councillors with more say in the approval of the location and placement of the info pillars, after concerns raised by Councillor Adam Vaughan were raised earlier about how the pillars blocked sidewalks and impeded accessibility and safety.

Councillor Perks' motion aimed more directly at the design-issues of the pillar themselves, specifically the fact that the majority of the space on the pillars are devoted to advertising rather than way-finding, causing many to raise an eyebrow over the moniker "info pillar". The decision goes to council on February 6th.

In a media release, Toronto Public Space Initiative called the motion a "step in the right direction", saying:

The pillars have fallen short of their promise by prioritizing advertising instead of providing residents with a strong way-finding platform. In addition, the pillars violate basic tenets of accessibility, traffic and pedestrian safety, and functionality, as well as public consultation standards, many of which are contained in the City’s own Vibrant Streets Guidelines. Plans to install 120 ‘other’ pillars in addition to these, to do what the original pillars were meant to do, raises concerns about cost efficiency.

Perhaps the study will come back with a design that is more in line with what Vancouver has rolled out in their info pillar program. The pillars have minimal impact on visibility and accessibility and contain no advertisements, except for info pillars located on downtown retail streets such as Robson.

Toronto Needs More Bike Parking in Parks

2011-12-18T12:50:00.003-05:00

Recently, the City revamped Sally Bird Park, this little parkette on Brunswick near Harbord. They landscaped the park, added bench, and also three strange work-out machines. But what they forgot, and what the City frequently seems to forget in parks, is a place to lock your bike.

There are clear spots for four ring-and-posts in the space where the park's fence is set back from the sidewalk. As usual, when there is no infrastructure provided, people make-do; this time by locking their bikes to the fence. I've seen as many as six bikes locked up here before.

While there is a decent amount of ring-and-posts on commercial streets in Toronto, there is a dearth of bicycle parking along the residential streets in small parks like this one. This means that when people are at a park, or visiting friends on a residential street, they either have to walk awhile to find actual bike parking, or lock up to a fence or pole, which doesn't provide the same amount of security and, I'm sure, is annoying to residents and the City.

Book: The Vancouver Achievement by John Punter

2011-12-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Ah, Vancouver. That gleaming, sparkling, oasis of a planners wet dream. At least, that's what, at first glance, this book appears to say.

But if you look past the cringe-inducing boosterish title of John Punter's book you'll find a great documentation of Vancouver planning history and policies since the 1970s, up until about 2001, when the book was published. Punter, a professor of urban design in the UK at Cardiff University, has exhaustively catalogued the development of the city. While the title may give away just how Punter feels about Vancouver, he doesn't shy away from criticisms of affordability, architectural monotony, and exclusivity.

Particularly interesting was the chapter on Vancouver's single-family neighbourhoods and the infiltration of discretionary zoning and development controls sought by neighbourhood associations (usually wealthy ones) to preserve the "character" of their area. Punter describes how City Council and planners bent to the demands of these neighbourhoods, instituting zoning that restricted intensification and secondary suites. This obviously has had a severe impact on the affordability of Vancouver as a whole, confirming the power of these neighbourhoods in the political and planning process. It's hard not to see that the rhetoric of preserving a neighbourhood's character is often a guise for social exclusion.

There were a few things the book left out. There was no real mention of Metro Vancouver, or regional planning, which I think is a mistake. Many things are decided at the regional level and it would have been interesting to see how these interacted at the city level in Vancouver. Similarly, there was no real discussion of transit planning, except for a few paragraphs near the end. This, too, is an oversight. While SkyTrain is mentioned a few times, I would have liked a discussion of the planning and development around the stations and how it changed the city. Finally, Vancouver's elected Park Board only got a few brief mentions, even though there was much discussion of the provision of park space.

It's difficult to talk about planning in Vancouver without talking about affordability. The obvious question that runs through the book, and one that Punter does address (though not nearly enough, I think) is that, sure, Vancouver is shiny and mostly well-designed, but who gets to enjoy in this when the city is so utterly unaffordable? What does "livability" really mean if you find it hard to live there?

LEAF Brings Gardens to TTC Stations

2011-12-16T17:30:00.001-05:00

Just outside of the Walmer St entrance to the Spadina Subway there is a sparse, wood-chip strewn space where a median of muddy grass used to be. This is part of a LEAF (Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests) driven project in association with the City of Toronto, among others, that sees volunteers take care of what is called an Urban Forest Demonstration Garden. The volunteer gardeners are from LEAF's volunteer Tree Tending Trainer Program, and they oversee a total of five different gardens outside TTC stations, including the Walmer one.

It looks a bit sad right now, but I'm sure come spring this will prove to be a nice addition to the streetscape. Someone has even gotten a little festive and planted a small evergreen tree with a red Christmas bow on it.

Adam Vaughan Puts Forward Motion On Info Pillars

2011-11-29T10:09:00.001-05:00

Recommendations from Adam Vaughan's motion to be debated at City Council this week

A few weeks ago, after the installation the hideous Astral Media info pillar on Bloor and Spadina (and various other locations around the city), I wrote a post about how they impeded pedestrian flow by taking up sometimes more than 1/3 of the sidewalk. I also wrote an email to Adam Vaughan, the councillor in my ward, expressing my concern.

It seems I wasn't the only one worried about the placement of these ad pillars. Vaughan has put forth a motion for debate at City Council this week, seconded by Janet Davis, that aims to look at the placement of the pillars, asking for relocation of pillars that take up more than 1/3 of the sidewalk. The motion also asks for pillars to be removed where they obstruct site lines, and that Astral Media be required to restore decorative paving where the installation of the pillar has left a giant concrete block in the middle of the street.

Vaughan included several photographs that showed where pillars blocked too much sidewalk space, obstructed site lines, and ruined decorative street paving.

What surprised me most, however, was the recommendation that "City Council direct the appropriate City staff to create a system that notifies local Councillors and local BIAs of placement before installation so that conflicts with existing sidewalk uses are avoided."

I find it incredible that councillors were not aware of the location of the pillars before they were installed. This leads to the obvious question of who got to decide where these info pillars were placed? Astral Media? City staff? Regardless of whether it was the company or the City, councillors should definitely get a heads-up before these things are rooted into the ground and cause problems.

You can read up on some of the other motions being put forward at City Council this week, including naming rights, backyard chickens, and side guards on trucks, on Torontoist.

Map Breaks Down Vancouver Voting Patterns

2011-11-23T08:24:00.000-05:00

The glorious map of voting patterns by divsion

Frances Bula, journalist for the Globe and Mail, pointed out this amazing interactive Google map that breaks down Vancouver voter patterns by division, giving you the numbers for mayor and party. Knock yourselves out. Bula has some interesting number crunching on her own blog from these stats. What's most interesting about this breakdown is what this reveals about the city if Vancouver were ever to approve a ward-based system, where councillors run in specific ridings or wards, instead of the current at-large, where councillors are elected city-wide.

Dear Voter: It Doesn't Stop After the Election

2011-11-22T08:58:00.000-05:00

Vancouver City Hall. Photo by Foxtongue from Flickr

Elections have always given me a rush. I remember the first time I got to vote, standing in a long line outside of an elementary school, waiting to mark an X on a piece of paper that somehow, amazingly, was going to contribute to determining the future of my community. It's like doing a giant puzzle with a whole bunch of strangers, except you don't know what the final image will be.

City politics may not always consist of grand, fiery debates over health care reform or foreign policy or that ever-elusive beast the economy. But each decision at council, be it a rezoning, a development approval, a new by-law, a decision to spend money on this instead of that, affects your day-to-day life as an urbanite greatly. That sidewalk you walk on, that road you drive on, that bus you take, that water you drink, that poop you flush--all of it belongs to the realm of your city government. And you should pay attention to what they do in between elections.

You can attend meetings and council sessions. You can even watch online in your own home with no pants on if that's your thing (it's often my thing). Some of it may be mind-numbingly boring. I won't lie. You may not understand everything at first. And no one will fault you for zoning out for a minute to play Angry Birds on your phone.

You can write emails to your councillors. You can even tweet at some of them or be their friend on Facebook. Sometimes they even write back. The good ones, anyway. You're their boss, after all. Why give them a performance evaluation only once every few years? Tell them what you think of what they're doing. Give them suggestions. Help them do a better job.

Only 34% of people in Vancouver managed to get out and vote in the November 19th election. And that pitiful number is actual an increase over the 2008 election when it was 31%. That means that 66% of people in Vancouver decided they didn't really care about who ran their city for the next three years.

You may not think you care, but you do. If you care about your roads, transit, water, sewage, electricity, arts, libraries, parks, recreation, police, bikes, street festivals, affordable housing, and homelessness, then you care what your councillors are doing in between those election dates. If we didn't have a city government we would all be floating in a void, like in The Matrix before they program stuff in.

If you want to keep up to date on Vancouver City Council, watch meetings online and read agendas, click here.

If you're in Toronto (or like me and have a toe in both cities) and want to do the same for Toronto City Council then check out the calendar which has links to meetings and agendas. You can also watch council sessions online at RogersTV.

A Twitter Guide to the New City of Vancouver

2011-11-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

"Tweet tweet, rezoning, tweet tweet" photo by Porfirio on Flickr (cc)

Twitter's not all about what you ate for breakfast or how cute your cat can be (although mine is frequently about the latter). It's also a good place to follow your local politicians and get the scoop about what's going on in the city. Here's a list of the Twitter accounts for the new City Council, Park Board, and School Board in Vancouver. I've also included a few candidates that weren't elected that are good to follow. Please add freely in the comments section.

Vision Vancouver - @visionvancouver
NPA - @npavancouver
COPE - @copevancouver

Greenest City - @greenestcity
Vancouver Park Board - @parkboard
Vancouver Archives - @vanarchives
City of Vancouver - @cityofvancouver

Council

Vision Vancouver
Gregor Robertson - @mayorgregor
Heather Deal - @vanrealdeal
Geoff Meggs - @geoffmeggs
Andrea Reimer - @andreareimer
Tim Stevenson - None
Tony Tang - None
Kerry Jang - None
Raymond Louie - None

NPA
George Affleck - @george_affleck
Elizabeth Ball - @elizabeth_ball

Green
Adriane Carr - @adrianecarr

School Board

Vision Vancouver
Patti Bacchus - @pattibacchus
Mike Lombardi - @lombardimike
Ken Clement - None
Cherie Payne - @cheriepayne
Rob Wynen - @robwynen

NPA
Ken Denike - @ubcken
Sophia Woo - @woo_sophia
Fraser Ballantyne - @frasergb

COPE
Allan Wong - None

Park Board

Vision Vancouver
Constance Barnes - @constancebarnes
Sarah Blyth - @sarahblyth
Aaron Jasper - @aaron_jasper
Niki Sharma - @nikisharma2
Trevor Loke - @trevorloke

NPA
Melissa De Genova - @melissadegenova (hasn't tweet yet)
John Coupar - @johnccoupar

Unelected

Sandy Garossino (Independent) - @garossino
RJ Aquino (COPE) - @ayoslang
Ellen Woodsworth (COPE) - @ellenwoodsworth
Mike Klassan (NPA) - @mikeklassen
Brent Granby (COPE) - @brentgranby
Sean Bickerton (NPA) - @seanbickerton

[edit: I've just been alerted by Andrea Reimer (via Twitter! See? It works!) that you can find the full list of City agencies and their respective Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts up on the City's website, so be sure to check it out]

Vancouver Election a Lesson in Every Vote Counts

2011-11-20T11:22:00.001-05:00

Election results by division from Vancouver.ca

Last night I had some friends over for dinner, but as 11pm rolled around my thoughts were elsewhere. That's because all the way over on the other side of the country in my former city of Vancouver, where the time was just 8pm, the polls had just closed on what had become a pretty heated municipal election.

It was hard to gauge what the real feeling was like in Vancouver from my perch over here in Toronto where all I had to go on was Twitter, blogs, and newspapers. As polls rolled in that showed Suzanne Anton's NPA closing in on Gregor Robertson's Vision Vancouver--a trend attributed by the media mostly to the Occupy Vancouver protests--I started to wonder if Robertson could really lose a campaign that seemed like such a sure shot only a few weeks ago.

Well, wonder did not turn to reality. Vision has swept back in with a majority on council, taking the top seven spots, with the NPA taking spots eight and nine and, amazingly, Adriane Carr of the Greens squeaking into spot number ten. Sadly, COPE saw themselves shut out, which is a disappointment.

But as the night went on, it was the bottom spot on council where the action really was. As each wave of polls were reported (I think I almost broke the refresh button on my browser), the results for the bottom seat changed. It was the NPA's Bill Yuen, then it was the NPA's Mike Klassen, then COPE's Ellen Woodsworth began bubbling upwards, then it was Green's Adriane Carr, then Yuen again.

With all the polls reporting except one in the West End, even with Yuen still sitting in spot number ten, it was pretty clear that Carr was going to get that last council seat. The West End is her territory after all. I remember in past Provincial elections when I used to live in the West End, seeing Carr standing on street corners with BC Green Party volunteers back when she was the leader of that party.

At the end of the night, Carr won the seat over COPE's Ellen Woodsworth by a mere 91 votes. Let me say that again. 91 votes. You could squish that many people onto a bus if you really wanted to. If there was ever a lesson in every vote counts, that was it.

I'm sad to see Woodsworth lose the spot as I think she is a great, capable and down-to-earth councillor. I remember her showing up briefly to the magazine launch of OCW Magazine with bicycle helmet under arm to say hello, back when I was Managing Editor there. Out of all the councillors we invited, she was the only one who showed up.

The next time you hear someone say their vote doesn't count, you can point to that result. 91 people. That's all it took.

Photo: Concrete Annex planter boxes get festive

2011-11-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

These festive Martha Stewartesque arrangements of evergreen, coloured sticks, and pinecones have appeared in the hideously ugly concrete planter boxes outside of my apartment on Bloor Street. I am happy for them, one, because I love all things wintry and Christmasy, and, two, because perhaps they will thwart those heathens who decide that planter boxes are a good place to stash spent cigarettes and beer cans. Last year, when the snow finally melted, it revealed a gag-inducing pile of soggy, yellow butts.

Toronto's new info pillars block sidewalk with ads

2011-11-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

Newly installed InfoToGo pillar at Bloor and Spadina

Yesterday, I mentioned AstralMedia's street furniture contract with the City of Toronto in relation to community message boards, but they also are responsible for installing what are called InfoToGo pillars around the city. These pillars are supposed to help with wayfinding, allowing tourists to orient themselves. The new design, however, contains very little info. And by little info, I mean it has no info. Nada. Unless of course you count learning about FibeTV from Bell information.

The two largest sides of the pillar contain spots for advertising, while the skinny spine on the side is the part that is going to eventually contain some sort of map (right now it just says: Welcome to Toronto).

The advertisements encroaching into public space is one thing, but the awful and inconsiderate placement of these new pillars is another thing entirely. I first noticed this after a pillar was installed on Bloor and Spadina just outside of Fresh restaurant. The pillar takes up about one third of the sidewalk for no other purpose than to advertise. This is in a busy intersection that sees a lot of pedestrian traffic in the city, which could potentially create problems for people using assistive-mobility devices or those with strollers.

Street furniture placed in the public right of way, like benches, bus shelters, and bike racks, at least have a purpose. About 80% of the purpose of the info pillar is to display advertising, which makes this a poor use of the public right of way. If we have to have these things in Toronto, more thought and care needs to go into their placement and orientation on sidewalks to make sure they don't impede on pedestrian flow.

Compare this to Vancouver's info pillars, which the city began installing before the 2010 Olympics and continued afterward. As I wrote a few months ago, the vast majority of the pillars contain no advertising (ads are placed on one side of larger info pillars on some downtown commercial streets). The pillars are also skinny and oriented in such a way so they don't take up a lot of sidewalk space. Score one for Vancouver.

You can read more about these in this article by Steve Kupferman over at Torontoist.

Annex BIA installs anti-poster sleeves on light posts

2011-11-15T19:42:00.001-05:00

Posters scraped off light pole on Bloor and Walmer

I noticed a few days ago that all of the posters had been scraped off the light poles on Bloor Street and thought it was just routine cleaning. That is until the next morning I stumbled upon workers who were wrapping the light poles with a tape-repellent sleeve that is supposed to keep posters off of them.

I first wrote about this back in February of 2011 for Torontoist, so it has taken the BIA quite some time to get things going. These sleeves are already in use just a few blocks west on Bloor in Koreatown. And, if you've ever walked down there, you'll notice that there are still lots of posters up on the light poles. All it takes is wrapping the tape securely all the way around the pole to keep your poster up.

Indeed, shortly after the sleeves were installed, I came across blank pieces of paper that had been taped to the poles in exactly that manner. In the bottom of each read: Annex Public Space.

Same light pole, but with new anti-poster sleeve and fresh Annex Public Space poster

As I wrote in that initial article, posters are an integral part of community expression. Many of the posters found on lamp poles are for lost cats, garage sales, and community services like guitar lessons. AstralMedia, through a 20 year street furniture contract with the City of Toronto, is supposed to be installing community message boards where people are allowed to put up posters. These official poster boards, while more are being installed, are few and far between.

Vancouver's Capital Plan 2012-2014: A Love Story

2011-10-09T09:14:00.002-04:00

photo by GoodnCrazy from Flickr (cc)

Ok, so it's not really a love story, but I figured no one would read this if I didn't grab their interest somehow. A Vancouver civic election looms, which also means that, yeehaw!, it's capital budget time! Over the summer Vancouver City Council consulted with Vancouverites on the upcoming capital budget plan, which coincides with civic elections so you can vote on whether to approve borrowing for the stated projects.

As boring as something called the Capital Plan might sound, it's mighty important in setting the agenda for the next three years of, well, building stuff. Important stuff. Like water mains and sewers and community centres.

So, here's the skinny on the final plan (the whole of which you can find here). This is the stuff you'll be voting on when you head to the polls on November 19th to elect a new city government.
Total costs are pegged at $702 million, with $391 million that of coming from borrowing and capital from revenue, and $311 million of that coming from other sources of funding like development cost levies (the money the city gets from developers when they build), community amenity charges (the money the city gets from developers in exchange for rezonings), user fees, and a bunch of others that, if you are so inclined, you can look up in the report. It's worth noting that the City is decreasing the amount of money they are relying on in borrowing, and increasing the amount coming from these other funding sources.

Part of doing the capital plan involves looking at all the City's current capital assets. Basically, things they own. It's a pretty geeky and interesting read. For example, did you know Vancouver has 3,600km of underground pipes or 4,700km of sidewalks? Well, now you do.

OK, now onto some of the most notable plans:

$24 million for libraries, including construction of a new Downtown Eastside-Stratchona library on Hastings Street. Above this library will be low-income housing for single mothers with children (that part will be built with external funding).

$7 million is going toward acquiring more park land, with $1.9 million of that going toward more street-to-park conversions (think Parallel Park).

$1.5 million for new street trees (double the last capital plan), which will see 5,000 trees replaced and 4,200 new trees planted.

Only $650,000 for public art, although they note that most of the money for public art comes through Community Amenity Charges ($7.5 million in the last 12 months). Basically, developers can provide the art or provide cash to purchase art as a condition for getting a rezoning by the City.

Vision says it's big thing is affordable housing, so this capital plan has $60 million for that. $18 million of which goes to upgrades to existing stock, and $42 million of which goes to the creation of new affordable housing. The details of how this will be carried out are not spelled out in the capital plan, however. So I would want to look up more information on that one.

$154 million is set aside for transportation, but they note that spending will be figured out more concretely after the consultation on the Transportation Plan draws to a close, so go and tell them what you want them to spend the money on.

The money spent on cycling infrastructure has obviously been a sore point to some, so they might want to take a close look at the capital plan. $16 million is set to go towards new walking and cycling assets. It's also worth noting that the City says it will be shifting its focus on cycling infrastructure towards making cycling safer and "exploring options that involve lower cost changes to the road system." This might be in response to the separated lanes and some of the opposition stirred up by them. Looks like the City will be laying off high-profile cycling infrastructure for a little while. This is something I'll be particularly watchful for, as the city continues with its Comox Greenway. I think It would be a shame to stop the forward momentum on cycling infrastructure. This council has shown they can take bold steps. Obviously others have their own opinions on this.

Say goodbye to some of the free parking around town, as the plan calls for the installation of pay parking in commercial districts out of the downtown where it's currently free. A total of 1,650 new pay parking spots over the next three years are planned. This will obviously act as a future source of revenue as well, but I'm unsure of how much they're expecting it to bring in.

So, there you have a few highlights from the plan. Obviously, I didn't go into every single expenditure plan. For example, I left out the $228 million in utilities and public works. If you're interested in how those are going to be spent then I encourage you to check out the report yourself.

Bloor Street Gets New Benches

2011-09-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

Sitting down is kind of awesome. So it is with great happiness that I noticed new benches popping up on the stretch of Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst a few weeks ago. These new benches replace the previous benches on the street, which, to put it nicely, were showing their age.

The new benches are love-seat size, with wooden slats joined up with a curving metal armrests that look almost floral, like out-turned petals. It's not the most beautiful of designs, but it is functional and, I'm glad to see, doesn't contain the middle armrest that is used to discourage those who would want to lie down on a bench (although the short length means lying down would be a bit uncomfortable).

The benches are also backless, which usually I don't like, but makes sense here on a busy street where people are unlikely to sit and read for hours and more likely to sit and wait for their friend to get out of Book City. It also means you can choose to face traffic or the street. Benches with backs make that decision for you.

It's great to see these included on a stretch of street that sees lots of people milling around outside of various establishments and using the incredibly bulky planters as impromptu seating.

[edit: Further investigation reveals that these benches are part of Astral Media's street furniture contract with the City of Toronto. Think Toronto's hideously ugly and functionally terrible garbage cans. At least there is no advertising on these benches.]

Photo: Layers

2011-08-30T09:36:00.000-04:00

A heavily postered wall on Harbord Street in Toronto reveals a layered history.

Four Days in Montreal

2011-08-27T09:28:00.005-04:00

I got back last night from four days (well, three and a half if you subtract bus travel time) in Montreal. This was not the first time I had been to the city, but I noticed a lot of new stuff since I was last there for two weeks in the summer of 2007. Namely, more and better public spaces, changes to the street system, and perhaps most drastically, the addition of the Bixi bike share program and a slew of amazing separated bike lanes.

Streets

The above picture is Rue St. Catherine, which is one of the main drags in downtown Montreal, spanning the gay village, the Place des Arts, and the major shopping street. The city is undertaking a massive change in tone to the streetscape along certain stretches by taking out the curbs that separated cars from pedestrians and laying the whole road in the same material. Although only parts were open, it's already obvious that this changes how the street feels entirely. Given that when I was there in 2007 for the jazz festival this street was the one closed off for the largest outdoor stage, it only makes sense to be able to create a space that converts easily between road and pedestrian plaza.

This is another section of Rue St. Catherine in the gay village. For multiple blocks beginning at Rue Berri the street has been shut to car traffic from May until September in order to create a pedestrian street where the many bars and restaurants in the area are able to extend their patios. The result is an amazingly vibrant area filled with all sorts of people. We drank many a beer and people-watched along this strip, as it was busy even late into weekday nights.

Montrealers seem to love their patios (who doesn't, actually?) and examples abound all over the downtown. Sometimes it's just a few tables and chairs out on the street and sometimes it's more formal, like in the above picture. While it makes walking the crowded streets sometimes difficult, it definitely adds to the atmosphere and makes for a more interesting walking experience. Plus, you get to see what everyone is eating.

Public Space

Montreal's waterfront, while still littered with industrial remnants, has some really great spots with wide walking and biking promenades and plenty of green space to sit. However, it didn't really feel all that coherent to me, meaning that as I walked along the waterfront there wasn't a sense of unity between all the different pieces. There were a few gems, though, like the small pond/canal featured above.

The area around Place des Arts, where much of the jazz festival takes place, has really bloomed with public spaces since I was there last. There are a lot of plazas, including the one above with some cool water spurts that glow different colours at night. The area consists of a bunch of medium to large-sized public spaces, some with grass, but most with hard surfaces, that all connect up to each other. My other favourite, which I didn't manage to get a picture of, was a grassy field with a strip of sidewalk down the middle that oozed water vapour that was lit up different colours at night. Biking through the fog was a good way to cool down on a hot day.

Here's a strange piece of public art on Rue St. Catherine. The letters looked randomly placed until you stood in the right spot and they coalesced into a sentence. If only I knew French.

And of course there is the square at the Berri-UQAM subway station that turns up in many a tourist photo of Montreal. This square has a sloping grassy hill complete with water features and a hard surface plaza on which you can play oversized chess. At night they moved in a giant movie screen and played Persepolis while a truck nearby handed out free food to those who needed it.

Bikes

I only took the (bouncy--it has tires!) subway system once in Montreal. The rest of the time I was on a Bixi bike or walking. Twelve dollars bought a three-day subscription to the system, and, with the amazing and connected separated lane network, I could get virtually anywhere I wanted in the city without feeling squeezed by traffic. There was a Bixi station on almost every block, so we didn't have to worry when we went somewhere about where to park. It seemed like every third bike that road by (and a lot of people ride bikes in Montreal) was a Bixi bike.

It's All in the Details for Vancouver's Sea Wall

2011-08-20T12:04:00.004-04:00

(This article originally appeared on OpenCity on August 17, 2011)

Vancouver has always been good at paying attention to the smaller design details that work to make up the larger picture. A walk along the lengthy, winding and continuous seawall that envelopes the downtown core and parts of False Creek is a lesson in details, with well-designed street furniture, beautifully landscaped parks, scatterings of public art, and a thoughtfully integrated system for both pedestrians and cyclists. It’s often said that Vancouver is a city that lives on its edges, and the seawall definitely helps propagate that.

On this particular trip, I was interested in checking out the new portion of the seawall at the site of the Olympic Village neighbourhood (now just called The Village). The area had been under construction for several years and then cordoned off during the Olympics, so I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to wander around the completed site. The stretch of the seawall along the neighbourhood is some of the best in the city, and, with the proximity to the mid-rise buildings that make up the Village, one that exudes the most urban feeling.

The thing that makes this portion of the seawall so charming is the attention to different details and how they all creatively fit together. Several different materials are used from wooden planks to grass to interlocking brick to sand to granite. The combinations create an interesting and ever-changing texture as you move from one portion to another, allowing also for different levels and separations between uses (lounging, cycling, walking).

The street furniture is comfortable and also ingeniously playful. For example, the metal chairs positioned on the board walk itself are rooted to a pole that allows the chair to spin in circles, so you can face whichever direction you want (or, if you’re me, spin around so fast you make yourself sick). And the street furniture ranges from single chairs, to benches with backs, to benches without backs, to stone blocks. The true accomplishment is how much variety is found without the space feeling disorganized or cluttered.

My favourite example of creativity is found in the long, wooden wave decks about one metre across that dipped every so often to create the perfect spot to fit a reclining body. We’re so accustomed these days to seeing street furniture that seems like it was designed so that no one would want to sit or lie down on it for very long, so it’s refreshing to come across something obviously made for people to be comfortable and enjoy themselves. Imagine that.

Summer Streets Gets New York Moving

2011-08-18T10:43:00.005-04:00

(This article originally appeared on Spacing Toronto, August 15, 2011)

On my recent trip to New York I found myself walking Broadway on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, negotiating the sidewalk amidst hordes of people and attempting to stay out of the way of what I have come to think fondly of as the dance between New York’s homicidal drivers and its suicidal pedestrians and cyclists.

So it was with much relief that my travelling partner and I stumbled upon the fourth annual Summer Streets, a Saturday shut down of Park Avenue and connecting streets between Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park (roughly the equivalent distance of shutting down Yonge St from Front St all the way to Eglinton Ave). As a Streetsblog NYC video shows, shutting cars from the street allows for cyclists, pedestrians, joggers, rollerbladers, and parents with children from all over the city and the surrounding area to flood out into the normally hectic street and enjoy themselves.

We rented—if you can call a free rental a rental—bikes and suddenly the open road was ours for the next hour (if we didn’t bring back the bikes in an hour they charged our credit card one dollar per minute. Ouch).

There are five rest stops along the route where, if you are so inclined, you can partake in activities like the “Belly, Butt, and Thigh Workout” or “Barefoot Running” or “Salsa Lessons”. Since we only had an hour before we began to lose our lunch money with each late minute, we zoomed past these rest stops, which were packed with people and music.

Many cross streets were also shut down, but since the stretch of closed roadway cut through so much of lower Manhatten, a few remained open to allow traffic through. There were volunteers at each of these crossings holding Stop/Go signs as well as traffic police posted to make sure cyclists and pedestrian didn’t accidentally coast through. It might have been the only time in New York that I saw cyclists stop for red lights. Or drivers and pedestrians, actually. The only thing crazier than New York cyclists are New York drivers and New York pedestrians.

After the experience of New York’s famously clogged streets, it was amazing to fly down this wide road with thousands of other cyclists. This was a great way to see a large swath of New York and experience the city in a way that is impossible on a regular basis. As we made our way through the elevated roadway around Grand Central Station, we were treated to a view of the normally busy New York streets.

Could we do this in Toronto? When I moved to Toronto, I was immediately impressed with the amount of street shut downs in the summer for street festivals, but would the city be so keen on shutting down multiple kilometres of central roadway so people could ride their bikes and walk?

Spurred on by Bogotá's Ciclovía, these car-free events have been popping up all over the world. Vancouver is attempting their version of this with LiveStreets, which sees eight kilometres of roadway shut down to cars from Kitsilano to Commercial Drive through the downtown core. Not only does this encourage people who may be too timid to get on their bike and ride, but it shows a different kind of possible city, one that gives space back to people.

I went back to Park Avenue a few days later. It was filled with cars, the pedestrians all crammed onto the sidewalks. I saw few cyclists. The air was filled with the sounds of honking.

Walking New York's High Line Park

2011-08-14T09:34:00.011-04:00

I know, I know. The High Line, right? So sick of hearing about it. Or, maybe you're not. Maybe you're like that one person I met on my recent trip to New York that had never heard of it. A New Yorker that hadn't heard of the High Line. Kind of like a Torontonian that hadn't heard of the CN Tower. I kind of wanted to slap him.

However, I'm going to assume you've heard of it and don't want to read something else that talks about its innovative reuse of old infrastructure and blah blah blah. I'm just going to show you some pretty pictures.

I walked the High Line twice on my trip, and, if it were legal, I would live there. I wanted to fold it all up, accordion-style, and bring it back to Toronto with me. But then I realized that once unfolded here in Toronto, Rob Ford would probably pave over all the grass and turn it into an elevated highway. Best it stays in New York for now.

As 30 Rock's Liz Lemon so aptly puts it: "I want to go to there."

Photo: TTC Completion Date Accountability Tagger

2011-08-13T09:35:00.003-04:00

Just a friendly reminder from an apparently disgruntled Spadina Station TTC rider.

Sherbourne Common, Nightclub Edition

2011-08-03T16:42:00.004-04:00

It's official. I love Sherbourne Common.

While the park is sure a beaut' of a public space during the day--with its whimsical play equipment, water canals, splash pad, and groundhog sitings--it turns into a whole other beast at night when coloured lights play off the falling water of Jill Anholt's sculptures. Some of the lights even change from blue to green when you walk past them. For a full review of the new waterfront park, check out my article on Torontoist.

Here's a few pictures I took when I was there last night to wet your whistle.

The Executive Committee's Game

2011-08-01T12:10:00.003-04:00

(this post originally appeared on Torontoist. July 30, 2011)

Remember back in elementary school, when a group of kids would invite you to come play a game with them, explain all the rules, but then, as the game went on, continuously change the rules so the outcome would inevitably be that they won? It was an exercise in frustration and futility. No matter what you did or how much you tried to play by their rules, the outcome was always the same.

This was what came to mind yesterday, watching the Executive Committee as they held their marathon meeting that lasted almost 24 hours as Mayor Ford & Co. heard from, according to the Toronto Star’s count, 169 out of the 344 citizens who had signed up to speak about the core service review done by KPMG. The narrative that Ford & Co. attempted to construct—that the people coming to speak were all from labour and special interest groups—was refuted time and time again as people from all backgrounds and wards came to speak (including the now famous yelly granny from North York).

That the meeting lasted continuously until there were no more people left to speak was no accident, nor was it necessary. The meeting could have been capped at a certain time of night and then reconvened again Friday morning. This would have allowed more people, many of whom were probably unable to spend their wee hours of the night sitting and waiting to be called upon, to participate. This was an intentional move to limit the amount of engagement and discourage those wanting to speak from actually doing so.

There was also the motion Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) put forward to limit speaking times from the usual five minutes down to three minutes. This motion passed easily, with Ford voting in favour, even though he had earlier said that everyone would get five minutes to speak. Hours later, a motion to cut speaking time for councillors from two minutes to one minute failed in a tie, but then Councillor David Shiner (Ward 24, Willowdale), who had been absent during the vote, walked back in and was allowed to vote late, thus allowing the motion to pass. Presto, change-o.

Then there was the one-minute chant of “save our libraries” during head of library workers' union Maureen O’Reilly's deputation, after which Mammoliti exclaimed that if this happened again he would move a motion to end the meeting and hear no more deputations. Ford agreed, saying: "If a councillor moves a motion to end this meeting, it's over. I am being very democratic. I'm being more than fair." You expected him afterwards to look around the table at all the committee members, saying: Anyone? Anyone want to move that motion? No? Damn.

Or there was Ford, pressing the button to start a speaker's time before they got to the table, or moving down the list so quickly that speakers who were seated in overflow rooms couldn’t get there fast enough.

This kind of dirty game–playing behavior is not limited, however, to just this one Executive Committee meeting — it has permeated Ford & Co.'s entire term so far. (Think the behind-the-back motion to kill the Jarvis bike lanes that sprung out of nowhere and without consultation with the councillor in whose ward that bike lane is located.)

But let’s just remember for a moment why it was that those kids we knew, way back when, changed all the rules during the game. The reason was to give themselves an advantage. And the reason that someone would want to give themselves an advantage was because they were afraid of losing.

What usually happens with children who continuously change the rules to allow themselves to win in a game is that, eventually, no one wants to play with them anymore. Or, in more political terms, they’re voted out of office.

Six City of Vancouver Reports Just in Time For the Long Weekend

2011-07-30T10:03:00.008-04:00

The City of Vancouver has been a busy bee. Six reports were released in the last few days on subjects ranging from the separated bike lanes to sustainable neighbourhoods projects to homelessness to pedestrian safety. I have yet to read all the reports, but here they are linked in all their multi-page glory for those of you who have some time during this long weekend to sit down with a cold beer and some good ol' fashioned municipal publications (note: these are all links to PDFs).

Improving Pedestrian Safety and Accessibility

Viaducts and False Creek Flats Planning: Eastern Core Strategy

Sustainable City of Sustainable Neighbourhoods Project

Vancouver's Next Community Plans

Downtown Separated Bicycle Lanes Status Report, Summer 2011

Housing and Homelessness Strategy 2011 - 2021

Happy reading!

photo of the Dunsmuir separated bike lane taken by the author

Photo: Duck Duck Goose

2011-07-28T19:54:00.002-04:00

A game of "Duck Duck Goose" on University Blvd.

Vancouver's Parkades Under Parks

2011-07-23T10:12:00.005-04:00

If you're going to have a car parkade, best to put a real park on top of it like this one here in Vancouver's Coal Harbour.

Minneapolis' Green Sharrow Bike Lane

2011-07-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd share a few pictures of one of the more interesting pieces of bicycle infrastructure I came across on my recent trip to Minneapolis. They are green sharrow lanes in the downtown core of the city. They're not quite just sharrows, but they're also not quite bike lanes. What they do provide, however, is added visibility and space for bikers on roads where, for whatever reason, the city has decided they don't have space for an actual dedicated bike-only painted lane. This gives bikers a clearly denoted shared space on the road with cars, alerting drivers to expect and give room to bikers riding in the green lane.

I took a few pictures of how I saw it working from my perch on top of the Minneapolis Public Library.

Here's the stretch of sharrow lane as it sits empty. Sharrows are painted at the beginning and end of the lane with the middle stretch painted green. This is not coloured asphalt, but just green paint. Pretty easy and cheap to apply, I'd imagine.

Here's a biker using the lane, while a car sits up ahead waiting to turn. They're both using the same space.

And here is a bus using the lane:

And what it looks like when the road gets busy:

As with all sharrows, the lane pretty much disappears when there are too many cars, forcing bikers to the gutter and virtually obliterating their space. I think there are some positives and negatives to the painted lane approach for sharrows. On the one hand, if you're going to put in sharrows only, then adding a different colour on the road is a good way to visually alert drivers to expect bikers and give them their space. On the negative, this lane in no way replaces a dedicated bike lane and could be actually less safe in that bikers might have a false sense of security riding in this lane, forgetting it is shared with cars and busses. It would be interesting to see some collision statistics for before and after.

Could these work on College where the bike lanes disappears on the west portion? How about on Spadina Ave?

Toronto Vs. Vancouver: Garbage Can Edition

2011-07-19T10:13:00.011-04:00

photo by JBcurio from Flickr Creative Commons

I'm not sure what it says about me that I take pictures of garbage cans when I'm on vacation, but I couldn't help snapping a few photos of some of Vancouver's newest additions to the trash scene when I was there last week. I never really gave garbage cans much thought before I moved to Toronto and encountered the ugly, non-functional and corporate-branded AstralMedia garbage cans that dominate the Toronto streetscape (see above photo).

These hulking, plastic bins feature a step-bar that is meant to open a flap so you don't have to soil your hand while throwing something away. Great idea. Except that 99% of the time it's broken. The company that provided them, AstralMedia, recently admitted that their garbage cans are, well, garbage.

I'm not sure when these were put up, but Vancouver's new all metal compost/recycling/garbage receptacles, which I found down near the Vancouver Convention Centre are great. Best part about these that I can see? They're easy to clean. No curving lines, weird plastic or hinges. Just hose these suckers off and they're shiny as new.

I also found some new receptacles near the Olympic Village that featured a similar functional design with multiple compartments for different recyclables, and also a solar-powered trash compactor. I have my doubts that people are going to be using the compartments exactly as labeled. Most times people just chuck their junk into the nearest opening without checking to make sure whether it's for newspapers or banana peels. However, the thin slot for the newspapers bin discourages people who would ignorantly toss in the remains of their Bic Mac.

These two designs are much better than the often over-flowing garbage cans that Vancouver began installing en masse several years ago. Those garbage cans allowed no place for recyclables or compost (granted, at the time the City didn't collect compost). They did however, contain a spot that was meant for cans and bottles so that "binners"--people that collect cans and bottles for their refund--didn't have to reach into the garbage can to collect them. Unfortunately, these trays simply filled with garbage most times.

photo by Carolyn Coles from Flickr Creative Commons

Of course, we could just get rid of garbage cans altogether and install a system of trash-sucking pneumatic tubes like those found on New York's Roosevelt Island or Stockholm's Hammarby Sjostad neighbourhood. Just don't fall in.

photos my own, except where noted.

Wayfinding Signage Without the Ads

2011-07-18T10:26:00.006-04:00

So while I was away on vacation it seems a newly designed Info-To-Go pillar was presented to City Council here in Toronto. I think wayfinding signage around town is completely essential, but am disappointed to see that the ratio of city information to advertising on these pillars is pretty terrible--even more terrible than the previous design (you can read Torontoist's article on the previous pillar design here). Apparently if you want to find your way, you only get a sliver of spot to look at, but if you're interested in new diamond rings, well, look no further.

One of the places I went on my vacation was back to Vancouver to visit some friends and family. Vancouver began installing info pillars before the Olympics in 2010, but the program has seen a lot of expansion since I left just over a year ago. They were all over the place. A typical pillar was a skinny strip with a map, directions to things nearby, and a listing of local business. The opposite side of the pillar contained the same information. There was a giant 'i' on top. There are no ads (unless you consider the local business listing an ad). Here is one for Coal Harbour:

Now, to be fair, Vancouver's info pillars on busy downtown streets like Robson contain an ad on one side and information on the other, but the vast majority of the pillars are like the ones pictured above. No ads, just info.

Why can't Toronto do something like this?

Vacation

2011-06-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

Vacation June 25 - July 15th

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

2011-06-14T09:14:00.006-04:00

(This article was originally published June 7, 2011 on Torontoist)
"This is why we can’t have nice things." That was a comment left on an article Torontoist published on the spectacular and sudden demise of the Fort York Bridge: a bridge that several weeks ago many Torontonians didn’t even know about but, when it was up for debate, suddenly couldn’t live without. Of course, the bridge, as many pointed out, was not the heart of the issue being debated. What was being debated was the sentiment expressed by the commenter on the article: that we can’t have nice things.

Why can’t we? Well, that depends on who you ask. Some believe we have long been spending money we didn't earn—which is to say, we probably could never have afforded the nice things we already have—and someone is finally telling us the truth about that. Others think it's because so many of our elected officials are short-sighted missiles ideologically programmed to seek out anything that gives off the heat of aspiration.

An architecturally beautiful bridge to a neglected historical site that may prove popular to tourism and residents of the city? Don’t need it. Reconnecting the city to the waterfront with well-designed public spaces? How about a monorail instead? Getting rid of the five-cent bag tax? Now there’s a project that can really do something.

City-building is more than physical construction—it encompasses a style of governing. As former director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, Ken Greenberg writes in his freshly published book,Walking Home: "In undertaking transformative projects, staff need encouragement and permission from their elected bosses to be proactive in making change, to become creative problem solvers, and not just prudent regulators, and to accomplish new things, not just ensure that no harm is done."

Think here of Metrolinx’s Big Move, or Waterfront Toronto’s ambitious plans for a revitalized waterfront, or the Tower Renewal program we don't hear about any more, or the largely defunct Transit City.

These are the types of creative solutions and proactive projects that John van Nostrand of the planningAlliance spoke about at the Centre for City Ecology last week, in a talk on the importance of planning—and unplanning—Toronto. What he meant was that, instead of overarching Official Plans that work to crystallize development, we need to embrace a network of innovative projects that move us forward as a city.

Toronto is a living, breathing organism, and like an organism it will grow and evolve over time. It can be easy to mistake a city for something mostly static: after all, change seems to happen so slowly that, like watching the hour hand of a clock, it becomes difficult to perceive it as change at all. But then one day we look up and realize a new building has gone up just down the road and that everything looks different in light of it.

Rob Ford and many on city council do not yet seem to have a grasp on this concept of the living city. It was Ford, after all, who proposed during his mayoral campaign that we discourage immigration of new people into Toronto until we figured out how to deal with the population we have. Despite what Mayor Ford may believe, however, we cannot just hit the pause button while we figure things out. Any attempt at planning or governing a city through the pause button is like building a box around a growing plant: the plant will still grow, but it will become distorted—and eventually it will burst through, whether you want it to or not.

In cancelling, modifying, or delaying projects—some already funded and ready to go—Ford has begun to pick at this city, pulling the ends of what he deems to be small, useless threads. The thing about the city, though, is that what may seem like small, expendable threads turn out to be woven and connected to so many other things, that when you tug on them hard enough something you didn’t expect begins to unravel too.

The greatest mistake of this administration, and the one that will leave the most lasting legacy of harm, is the simplistic view of the city as something to be managed and not something to be built, or fed, or nurtured. The view that aspirational projects are elitist and thus not worthy of consideration. The view that public spaces suck money and offer nothing back. The view that if we just squeeze our public services tight enough a few pennies will pop out.

We already have a city manager—his name is Joseph Pennachetti. What we need is a leader.

Video: The Perils of Biking in the Bike Lane

2011-06-09T09:02:00.000-04:00

This New Yorker got a ticket for not riding in the bike lane, so he decided to make a video about what happens when you always ride in the bike lane no matter what.

The Queen's Park Sidewalk to Nowhere

2011-06-05T11:42:00.011-04:00

Pictured above is a sidewalk that extends out from the south grounds of Queen's Park, dumping pedestrians out onto the busy University Avenue. After I ventured across--craning my neck down the bend of University to make sure I wouldn't become roadkill--I stood and watched as several people, a family, and a woman with a stroller did the same--each one darting across like deers.

There is a crosswalk just a short walk south of here by College, but there is nowhere to really get there safely from the south end of Queen's Park, short of walking back north until you find a crosswalk, crossing over, and walking back down again on either side of University. And the structure of the two forking sidewalks makes it seem as though you are supposed to cross University Avenue there, but without providing any infrastructure to help you cross. In other words, the city will help you get to the edge of the road, but once you step off the curb you're on your own.

At the very least they should install some zebra-stripes, or perhaps a button pedestrians could push which would flash lights up ahead of the curve to let drivers know that someone was crossing. I have no idea if anyone has ever been hit here, but it seems like a possibility considering how many people scurry across.

That Time I Went To Sherbourne Common and Saw a Groundhog

2011-06-04T07:45:00.001-04:00

After receiving a copy of Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront from University of Toronto Press, I thought the perfect place to begin reading this would be none other than the waterfront park pictured on the front cover of the book--Sugar Beach. I've written about Sugar Beach previously, so I won't say much about it now save for the fact that there was a hulking ship docked at the Redpath Sugar Refinery that was sending metallic reverberations out into the air as it unloaded its haul of yellowy unrefined sugar.

The waterfront is a strange place to be right now. There are completed projects like Sugar Beach and the Corus building, which sit amidst an otherwise vast expanse of either industrial lands or construction sites at various stages of completion.

After a particularly muscular wind caused me to eat too much white sand at Sugar Beach, I packed up my belongings and decided to head over to check out Sherbourne Common--or the completed part at least--since I hadn't yet taken a look.

The first half of the park opened September 24, 2010, and, while the second half is still under construction, you can start to begin to see how it will take shape. There were several constructions workers there on the day I visited working to install some weird public art.

The completed part of the park is a very alluring combination of bridges, shallow canals, hard surface, and a grassy expanse. There is also a funky building that houses, amongst other things, washrooms.

Right now the completed Sherbourne Common is a bit of an orphaned space. Eventually it will be sandwiched between development, creating a closed in feeling that will hopefully give the park a more cohesive feel. It's a bit difficult at this point to envision how all the new waterfront spaces are going to stitch together, but if the whole is anything like the parts then it's going to be pretty dazzling. However, Sherbourne Common, set further east of Sugar Beach (which was quite full on a mid-week day afternoon), was virtually empty except for me...and some creature underneath one of the bridges.

My curious gaze frightened whatever it was out of the safety of the bridge and out it came, furry and looking like a beaver with a bushy tale.

Being the sensitive animal lover I am, I proceeded to chase, what I later determined to be a groundhog, across the concrete expanse of the Common until it disappeared into the bushes on the other side.

So you see? Waterfront Toronto's ambition to reconnect Toronto to its waterfront, and thus to nature, has already seen success.

Video: Learning to Ride a Bike? Listen to This Kid.

2011-06-03T09:27:00.003-04:00

This kid may have watched too many movies, but he definitely kicks ass.

The Richmond St West Sidewalk is Awesome. Except For One Thing.

2011-06-01T09:07:00.004-04:00

A few months ago, I wrote about how the south side of Richmond St West between Spadina and Peter got a much needed sidewalk. I work in 401 Richmond, the huge, converted tin factory-turned artist studio building which sits on the corner of Spadina and Richmond and every time I wanted to walk east to get a delicious burrito I had to cross over to the north side, use the thin strip of a sidewalk there, and then cross back over.

So when it was announced a sidewalk would finally be constructed, everyone in the building awaited its completion with much anticipation. The building management, Urbanspace Property Group, even started a blog that chronicled the construction process. People were really excited about this sidewalk.

However, now that the weather is warm and thousands more cyclists are out on the streets, bicycle parking in the area has become scarce. The City had a really great opportunity along this new sidewalk to put in a whole bunch of much needed bike parking. The space between the trees is perfect for a post-and-ring, but instead they sit empty, forcing bikers to lock up to the cages that protect the trees they've planted.

Why wasn't bicycle parking incorporated into the design from the beginning? It's not like the addition of the post-and-rings will inhibit pedestrian flow. It seems like only a matter of time before they are added, especially if the street is actually going to contain a separated bike lane. These seem like the types of design elements that should be included in every streetscape redesign, so it's all done at one time.

Video: Rear Window, Canucks Edition

2011-05-26T20:17:00.006-04:00

Here's what part of downtown Vancouver sounded like when the Canucks scored a tying goal with seconds left.

video uploaded by chloejohns

Ken Greenberg Talks Flexible Urbanism in New Book

2011-05-25T12:36:00.004-04:00

(this article originally appeared on Spacing Toronto on May 24, 2011)

Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder by Ken Greenberg, Random House Canada, 400 pages, $29.95

After the election of Rob Ford, it seemed as though many urban-minded people in the city wanted to Rip Van Winkle-themselves through the next four years. And, as we hear about the collapse of the Fort York Bridge and rumblings of a potential waterfront shake-up, it’s difficult not to read Ken Greenberg’s new book on city building, Walking Home, without a bittersweet tinge.

Walking Home is, as the subtitle says, the life and lessons of a city builder. In this case, one Ken Greenberg, born a New Yorker, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, and current principal at Greenberg Consultants.

Anyone paying attention to recent debates in urban planning and design won’t be surprised to see discussions around walkability, sustainable neighbourhoods, bikes, density, and active streetscapes. What makes Walking Home interesting, however, is Greenberg’s pitch for a flexible, adaptable urbanism.

In Greenberg’s view, a static city is a dead city. Instead, he argues, the city should be recognized as ever-evolving, fluid, and responsive. “I began to grasp,” he writes, “that building places where people lived was not a matter of determinism through design but a matter of creating ‘platforms’—open-ended frameworks that people could build upon as they wished, with the underlying design as enabler or inhibitor.”

Think of cities as open-source software, a kind of urban Wikipedia in which we are all constantly adding, deleting, and modifying. The truly dynamic places in our city need to have that flexibility built into them. This doesn’t mean we should leave our cities to chaos, though. Coherence and flexibility must both be balanced, Greenberg says.

The point is that true city builders are aware that the reason places become places rather than just spaces is because of the people that use them. If no one wants to use them, they sit dead and empty. The difference, Greenberg suggests, is flexibility. Don't overdesign. "Less is often more," he writes. Kensington Market is a perfect example of a place that has grown and evolved over time, where old houses are reused for other means.

And what worked then might not work now, Greenberg says, cautioning against mimicry and nostalgia. This reminded me of Cornell, a community in Markham built following the New Urbanist credo of harkening back to a small town design. Houses are close together with driveways in the back, trees abound, and there is even a main street with small retail spaces and residential units above. While it sounds like the Annex—and the planning philosophy of creating a walkable, green neighbourhood is commendable—the result feels eerily like a set for The Truman Show. What makes the Annex the Annex is how it has evolved over the years into a neighbourhood of architectural diversity, spontaneity, and a comforting messiness. Maybe, given enough time, Cornell can do the same, but we can’t expect places to cohere just because we are following a formula.

He also expresses wariness toward what he refers to as the “Big Bang Theory” of city building. The idea that we can just plunk a casino or a starchitect-designed building or—ahem—a waterfront stadium somewhere and, just as if we were sprinkling fairy dust, watch our city grow into an exciting place. What he advocates for instead is the incremental approach, which doesn't treat the urban realm as a giant game of Sim City, but allows for change and growth over time in a more organic way. Finding intelligent ways in which to graft and insert density into our cities, like infill projects, are ways to do this, he writes.

There are many negative books, ones that gleefully detail the downward spiral of our urban spaces, our rapacious hunger for energy, our sprawling suburbs, our deteriorating infrastructure. (For a good urban tongue-lashing, read James Howard Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere). It's far more difficult, however, to write a book that recognizes the challenges we face in our cities, while starting a constructive dialogue about how we might be able to get there. Greenberg manages to keep his head above water, and the end result is a book that feels hopeful and invigorating.

Although the book follows the path of Greenberg’s own life and work in placemaking, it avoids the danger of becoming simply a listing of his credentials and past accomplishments by weaving each project into a larger fabric.

Physical designs and theoretical concepts are written with the same fluidity and engagement, keeping the book smart, but accessible. And those that know little about planning history have nothing to fear, as Greenberg does the sweep through history picking up the usual suspects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Jane Jacobs on the way.

One thing, however, that kept nagging me throughout the book was the fact that our cities are growing increasingly unaffordable, pushing low-income people out of the very areas that are the beneficiaries of this kind of exciting city building. Although Greenberg touches on the issue of affordability throughout the book, it was never explored in depth. Many of the places mentioned, such as Vancouver's Yaletown are not exactly known for their affordability, and affordable housing units are usually the first on the chopping block when projects inevitably nudge over budget.

As we work our way towards the future, not only must we heed Greenberg’s call in creating these open-ended frameworks that build the kind of vibrant city we enjoy, but we must make sure that they are equitable places as well.

Photo: Euclid Street's New Racing Stripe

2011-05-11T09:36:00.001-04:00

This lovely blacktop racing stripe is the newest edition to Euclid street and is part of the City's new beautification program in which construction work is combined with aesthetic upgrades.

Video: Goodbye Water, Goodbye Life

2011-05-08T11:20:00.008-04:00

Check out this video made for the Stop the Quarry campaign by Dyson Forbes, which aims to educate people on the deleterious effects of a 2,400 acre limestone quarry proposed for the Town of Melancthon.

For more information on the proposed Ontario quarry, read this excellent Torontoist article from November 2009 by now Torontoist editor Hamutal Dotan. Torontoist also covered the more recent Stop the Quarry protest march that happened on April 26, 2011.

Pit Stop from Dyson Forbes on Vimeo.

Photo: A Kensington Market Whodunnit

2011-05-07T09:26:00.002-04:00

The case of the Kensington Market jogger.

Walkability Exhibit at Urban Space Gallery

2011-05-06T08:20:00.023-04:00

Yesterday, I noticed a Walkability exhibition in the Urban Space Gallery at 401 Richmond that celebrates Jane's Walk--the series of free walking tours around the city in the memory of Jane Jacobs. There are dozens of walks in Toronto to choose from and even a handy iPhone app that helps you organize, search, and remind yourself about walks you're interested in.

The exhibit, draws on the work of Paul Hess, a Professor in the University of Toronto's Urban Planning and Design Program, and Jane Farrow, executive director of Jane's Walk. It showcases large poster-boards, each expressing a different tenet of walkability, from crosswalks needing to be properly spaced to creating paths where people actually walk to trying to avoid blind or narrow lanes.

One of the things not in the exhibit (but I can't remember all the poster-boards, so I could be wrong) was the fact that diversity in visual style can affect an area's walkability. I live on Bloor St West in the Annex, for example, right near where Spadina Ave cleaves Bloor in two--essentially acting as a dividing line between two very different streets. On the west side, you have small three-storey buildings with retail along the bottom, while on the east side you have increasing larger (and longer) buildings that all tend to look the same.

What I quickly found out living here is that walking west down Bloor is much more interesting and feels like it takes a shorter amount of time than walking east down Bloor, even if I'm actually walking the same distance. There's something about the shorter, older buildings and the fact that the stores change every ten feet that makes it much more interesting to walk west down Bloor, going so far as to even affect my sense of distance and time.

This happened, too, when I lived in White Rock, British Columbia and had to walk to high school every morning. We didn't live very far away (it was only about a ten minute walk), but it felt so long to me because it took me along boring suburban roads with no sidewalks, through a park with a hole cut into a fence, and then finally across two defunct asphalt tennis courts. It was boring, and therefore seemed much longer than the ten minutes it actually was, which meant that when it was offered I would often choose to hitch a ride in my mom's car.

All images were taken by me at the Walkability Exhibit at Urban Space Gallery, which features photographs by Katherine Child and graphic design by Mia Hunt. The exhibition was designed by Adam Zinzan-Harris.

Video: Silent 1940s Film of Vancouver's Parks

2011-05-05T09:24:00.003-04:00

Have you ever walked around Stanley Park and wished you could watch a 45 minute silent documentary film from 1940 on Vancouver's parks? Well, look no further than this video from the Vancouver Archives. The video features footage of Memorial West Park, Grandview Park, Trout Lake, Queen Elizabeth Park, and many more. Of particularly interest are shots of Victory Square in the Downtown Eastside, which captures Vancouver's old streetcars going by in the background.

Also, check out the Vancouver Archives' new blog, AuthentiCity.

Photo: OK or Not?

2011-05-04T22:17:00.007-04:00

A 1928 Plan for the City of Vancouver & Others

2011-04-27T12:50:00.012-04:00

The last month, and particularly the last few days, has seen a slew of reports and plans released. I thought it would be good to compile them all in once place for those interested and with lots of free time. And I mean a lot of free time. This probably adds up to more than 500 pages in total. Have fun!

There's the Cambie Corridor Plan in Vancouver, which lays out the future of Cambie street now that the Canada Line has strung it all together.

City of Vancouver Archives has released this digitized version of a 1928 plan for the City of Vancouver. The whole things can be downloaded as a 332-page PDF file that includes an exhaustive city plan along with maps, charts, and street cross-sections. BT Architects held an event surrounding the plan on April 26, 2011. Historical nerds, unite!

The Martin Prosperity Institute released their report, Who Cares About 15 Million Urban Voters, which quantifies Canada's urbanization and the place of cities in the federal election. This was also the subject of a panel discussion held a few weeks ago, which I covered for Torontoist.

For more electiony-type stuff, here's the election platform for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities [PDF], which among many other things calls for broader funding tools for cities as well as national strategies for transit and infrastructure.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released their Transportation Transformation document a few days ago, which looks to build "complete communities and a zero-emission transportation system in B.C."

Beers & Bikes, Street Food Hold the Red Tape, Mayor Ford vs. Graffiti Round One, and a 19th Century Online Newspaper

2011-04-10T07:36:00.002-04:00

Beer, bikes, and parks. The three just go together like salt and pepper...and, um, a third kind of, but still complimentary seasoning. But how to transport your drinks to the park? And how, once you arrive and claim your space under a big shady tree, do you open said drinks? Fear no more, for now you can purchase a handy bicycle beer holder as well as a seat clamp with a built in bottle opener. Just don't park your bike on this crazy thing in Seoul, as it might be a bit hard to get down tipsy. And please don't drink and try to do this:

Toronto is looking to provide tastier, streets eats without the red tape, after the disastrous Toronto a la Carte program. Perhaps we should look towards Vancouver for help, as that city has implemented a successful and diverse street food program that has seen itself expanded. Personally, I'm still waiting for the cart that just sells jars of peanut butter and spoons.

See Mayor Rob Ford. See as he gets his hands dirty, power-washing graffiti. See as he scuttles reporters because, like a petulant child, he just wants to talk about what he wants to talk about and nah-nah-nah-boo-boo. Why do these pesky reporters keep bothering him about expense accounts, campaign funding, and the selling of TCHC houses? Can't they see that once we get the city clean, brick by brick, all those other problems will go away too? These people don't think so.

The Toronto online mediascape just got a bit more crowded with the addition of Toronto Standard. Be sure to check out two great articles by Ivor Tossell re: Transit City and Alex Bozikovic re: TCHC housing. Toronto Standard was originally established in 1848, back when the internet was candle-powered and servers were housed in barns.

And in other news, the sky apparently seems to be falling.

Toronto's Missed Transit Opportunity

2011-04-05T08:30:00.009-04:00

The transportation talk the last week or so in Toronto has been mainly focussed on Rob Ford's deal with the Dalton McGuinty to reallocate the money set aside for Transit City to pay for an entirely underground Eglinton Crosstown LRT and an upgraded Scarborough line, with Ford's plans for a privately financed Sheppard subway extension still in the works. Thus, instead of multiple lines of LRT threading their way through Toronto's inner suburbs, Toronto will get one new line, an upgraded one, and one made mostly out of dreams.

In fact, Ford himself doesn't seem to fully understand what privately financing something actually means, leading to what would be a jaw-dropping exchange between Ford and reporters if this kind of exchange hadn't proved itself par for the course. When a reporter pressed Ford about the fact that the City would in fact be borrowing money to pay for the Sheppard extension, this exchange happened (read the full National Post article):

Mayor: I’m not quite sure where taxpayers money is coming in, when we’re using private money.

Q: Because you have to repay those private financiers with taxes and development charges that you would collect later. That’s called borrowing.

Yeesh.

But it seems the debate has zoomed in even closer, focussing on the nixing of the Finch West LRT, which has angered a lot of residents along the busy corridor, currently served by over-crowded busses. When asked to comment on this, Ford said he could see a subway on Finch in ten years. And a thousand gold bricks for everyone!

Above is a video of The Star's Christopher Hume as he takes us on a quick tour of the Finch corridor, explaining why this is a missed opportunity for the city. What's difficult about Transit City fading away is that it has the whiff of one of those historic turning points, where Torontonians will look back in ten years with thoughts of "if only." LRT would have completely transformed not only the look of those avenues, but the feel of the entire city.

As Hume says, "Transit's not just about moving people from A to B, but about building the city." And Transit City, with its ability to stitch Toronto together, would have excellent city building.

NFB Documentary: Radiant City

2011-04-02T07:50:00.005-04:00

Radiant City is a strange documentary, but I can't tell you why because it would ruin it. It picks up on one family in Calgary's outer suburbs and follows them as they attempt to adjust to their new life in the still under-construction "community" of Evergreen. I put community in quotation marks because the idea of this type of development being a community in anything other than the most basic way is challenged again and again in this film.

We hear from such thinkers as Mark Kingwell and Joseph Heath, both authors as well as professors at the University of Toronto; James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere; as well as many urban planners, designers, and architects on what exactly makes the suburbs tick and why.

The film is interesting, but the critique of the suburbs is one we have heard and is hammered home over and over again by the different interviewees. James Howard Kunstler is particularly poetic in his anti-suburban diatribe, calling the suburban wasteland tragic and cartoonish. We're told the suburbs are dehumanizing, isolating, fat-inducing, energy-hungry, and far too big. We're told we need our cities to have walkability, main streets, mixed-use, mixed-income and dense, neighbourhoods. But we don't really get anywhere deeper than that.

Still, anyone that grew up in the suburbs will likely have some flashbacks as we watch the family attempt to coordinate their lives around their two cars--necessary for their new life in the far-flung 'burbs.

A Tale of Two Transit Companies: TTC vs. TransLink

2011-04-01T08:56:00.016-04:00

TransLink is an entirely different beast from the TTC.

The TTC is run by a board of nine Toronto city councillors, while TransLink is a regional transportation authority of Metro Vancouver, encompassing several municipalities in the region (much like pre-amalgamated Toronto's regional governance structure). TransLink is constructed of a mayors council (made up of twenty-two mayors of communities around and including Vancouver), an appointed board of directors, and a regional transportation commissioner that is supposed to oversee the process.

Also, unlike the TTC, TransLink is responsible for much more than busses and SkyTrain, and has its hand in bikes and roads as well, meaning that it is well-suited for more comprehensive planning strategies that encompass different forms of travel.

While Toronto gets jerked around by politicians who enjoy sticking their finger in the transportation pot and stirring it around, Metro Vancouver's regional structure means there is less opportunity for a single mayor's whim to vastly derail plans. TransLink is far from perfect, however, and there is always concern about funding and delays in project timing (the Evergreen Line has been on the books for quite some time and still seems hazy), but the regional structure means that decisions are negotiated between many mayors. However, that same regional structure leaves some municipalities feeling as though they're not getting an equal piece of the transit pie, causing squabbles to break out about what transit lines should have priority and which municipalities they serve.

But it's not just the structure, scope and governance of the two transit companies that makes them so different, it's the approach to public consultation. My impression with the TTC and transit planning in Toronto, is that Torontonians are told what kind of transit they are getting instead of being involved in the conversation. David Miller says Toronto is getting a light-rail network, so Toronto is getting a light-rail network. Then Rob Ford says everything has to be underground, so everything has to be underground. Presto, change-o.

This week, TransLink released their UBC-Broadway corridor alternatives study, which is the second phase in a public consultation and planning process that seeks to find the best solution to rapid transit for the busy Broadway corridor. The website, which includes seven alternatives complete with easily understood graphics and comparisons, seeks public input on which one speaks to Vancouverite's needs the most. After the disastrous public relations fiasco that was the Canada Line, which saw law-suits as construction ripped up Cambie for far longer than TransLink originally said, it seems TransLink has learned that the way to a more successful project is to get people on board early and make them feel they have a say it the outcome.

It's a stark difference from the way transit planning takes place within the TTC, where public consultation seems to be more about disseminating information on already made decisions. Small concessions over station entrances/exits might be made, but all the major planning decisions have already been carved in stone--that is, until a new mayor says never mind.

It's been frustrating the last few weeks watching Rob Ford sweep away years of transit planning in Toronto with seemingly little official opposition, and then propose a privately-financed scheme that is shockingly fiscally irresponsible for a politician so focussed on fiscal responsibility. Transit planning and construction usually takes more than one political term in office, so if each successive mayor decided to rejig the transportation system to his or her personal preferences, Toronto would end up with an abundance of transit dreams and little else.

I like drawing transit lines on paper too, but eventually someone needs to actually build them.

The Myth of the Cyclist as Urban Warrior

2011-03-30T09:04:00.008-04:00

(this article was originally posted on Spacing Toronto's website on March 25, 2011)

Hell hath no fury like a biker scorned. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy learned this the hard way after his blog post, "Battle of the Bike Lanes", criticized the recent proliferation of New York bike lanes under the city’s current Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Kahn. This initial post sparked a flurry of comments and rebuttals from such heavy weights as The Economist, and prompted Cassidy to follow-up with a second and then a third post.

Of course, hell hath no fury like a motorist scorned, too. Here in Toronto we've witnessed Rob Ford proclaim that streets are for cars, trucks, and buses, while Don Cherry gleefully gave the verbal middle-finger to all those bike riding pinkos. In Vancouver, the construction of the Hornby Street separated bike lane in October 2010 prompted a flurry of media that opined the state of the beleaguered driver, which continues even as the City releases information stating that traffic remains unchanged along Hornby except for a one-minute delay during rush hour. In New York, the bike lane debate has even concerned the courts.

The rhetoric around the bike has reached untenable heights. Not only is it completely unproductive, but it works to make both motorists and bicyclists unsafe by stoking anger and fear. By positioning it as a war between two clear sides, we reduce our ability to compromise, to work together. Spittle flies from both sides of the debate, as cyclists rush to label car drivers as gas-guzzling, suburban, earth-pigs and motorists respond by calling cyclists pretentious, militant, holier-than-thous (albeit with great calf muscles). Just reading the comments on blog posts and newspaper articles on the subject is enough to turn my hair white.

How did we get to this point? But, more importantly, how do we get away from it?

First, let's ditch the war metaphors. Between Cassidy’s bike lane “battles” and the omnipresent “war on the car”, I feel like we might have lost some important perspective. A recent letter sent by Councillor Adam Vaughan to BIAs and resident associations in his ward, used the word “barricaded” in place of “curbed” to describe Denzil Minnan-Wong’s separated bike lane proposal, going on to say a bike path would “carve” through Grange Park. While respecting Councillor Vaughan’s work to increase bicycle infrastructure in the city, it’s this kind of unnecessarily value-laden language that contributes to an antagonistic atmosphere through positioning the cyclist as the urban warrior vs. the rest of the city. We would hardly refer to the curb on the sidewalk as a barricade for pedestrians.

And let’s also remember that if we insist on calling this a war, then most of us are constantly switching sides. An interesting thing happens when we walk, bike, or drive around the city. We seem to forget that we ever use any other form of transportation other than the one we are currently using. I've been in cars with people who impatiently drum their fingers at pedestrians taking too long to cross the street, while witnessing those same people deplore the lack of patience drivers have while they are crossing the street themselves. Drivers are bikers are pedestrians are transit users. We do not exist in easily separated categories, pitted against each other in travel statistics. Most of us use at least more than one way to get around, even if it’s just walking from the car to the restaurant. Splitting the debate into an Us vs. Them dichotomy is too coarse, a point which Dave Meslin picks up on in his Toronto Star editorial where he argues that Rob Ford may not be the be the harbinger of the bicyclepocalypse as originally thought.

Cyclists, let’s tone down the environmental angle. Arguments about the environmental and economic benefits of cycling are all well and good, but by over-focusing on these elements we run the risk of alienating a lot of people while missing out on the greater point. Increased bicycle infrastructure should ultimately be about safety and allowing everyone to feel comfortable riding their bike, including the timid. This is, after all, mostly who bike lanes are for. There are plenty of us out there now, with the bicycle network as pitiful as it is, pedaling away everyday. While I would love to ride in a bike lane along Spadina, the absence of one is not enough to keep me off the street. As do many others in this city, I feel confident enough to — as Rob Ford says — swim with the sharks. The important point, however, is that you shouldn’t have to possess nerves of steel just to get to work. Cassidy writes about how in the 1980s when he biked around New York he would frequently arrive shaking with fear — if that’s not a good argument for increased bicycle infrastructure, I’m not sure what is.

Let’s stop demonizing everyone based on the actions of a few. There are certainly bad cyclists out there, and I’ve almost been hit on the sidewalk several times by a few of them. But I’ve also almost been hit crossing the street by terrible drivers talking on cell phones and running stop signs. This doesn’t mean that every motorist is a negligent jerk, just as every cyclist isn’t a law-breaking hooligan. Taking every opportunity to point an indignant finger and proclaim “Aha! See?” gets us nowhere fast.

As StreetsblogNYC pointed out in a handy pie chart, even in a city that has taken a very proactive stance toward bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, the allocation of road space in New York has barely budged. I’m sure a similar pie chart of Toronto or Vancouver road space allocation would show a similar trend.

It's time both sides put away their swords and focused their energy on implementing "complete streets" that provide space for cars, transit, pedestrian and bikes. Let's tell a different story.

I Don't Believe in Earth Hour

2011-03-27T09:02:00.014-04:00

Last night for Earth Hour I did nothing.

The event began in 2007 in Australia and now spans the globe, urging everyone to turn off the lights for one hour in an effort to get people thinking about energy conservation. If it had the whiff of a symbolic gesture in 2007 it certainly reeks of it now.

The Toronto Star published a story lamenting that Toronto only saw 5 per cent power drop for Earth Hour, noting that people gathering in Yonge-Dundas Square were disappointed to see retail stores in the area still brightly lit. Have these same people been to Yonge-Dundas Square any other hour of the year? You can practically read after dark by the light of the jumbotrons. Flying in to Toronto Island at night, the square looks like the dance floor to some wild urban nightclub--one that never closes.

Once for Earth Hour I went to a bar in downtown Vancouver. The entire place was dark and we drank beer by candlelight. Despite being a surprisingly romantic moment in what is normally a semi-dingy sports bar, it seemed nothing beyond that. As soon as the hour ended, the bartender flipped a switched and on zapped six giant plasma screen TVs all playing the same thing just from slightly different angles so you could practically be lying on your back in the corner of the bar and still manage to see the game.

Then there is everyone deciding what Twitter hashtag to use to tweet their Earth Hour experiences, which just shows how completely divorced we have become from how much electricity all our devices truly use. If it's not plugged in we're not really using power, right? Or is it just OK because it is power borrowed from another hour? All our Earth Hour tweets drain the power on our iPhones or Blackberrys, which we will inevitably be recharging later that night at home. You can't participate in Earth Hour and tweet it, too.

And Skype got in on Earth Hour by using twitter to advertise their group video calling feature, so you can share that great Earth Hour moment with your friends and family all around the world. Except that you need your computer to do it. And your internet plugged in. Oh, well.

I would say Earth Hour has been hi-jacked by companies and people who want to show they are environmentally friendly by doing something once a year, but then I never thought it was anything more than that in the beginning. I know there are those that make the argument that even though it is obviously a symbolic gesture, it gets people to think about their energy use the rest of the year. Maybe it does. But my suspicion is that the people most affected and legitimately interested in Earth Hour are those that were already thinking about their environmental impact.

The question is: does Earth Hour do anything to reach those that don't normally care and don't do anything to reduce their energy consumption? Unfortunately, I think it gives people, and especially businesses and corporations, a chance to participate in a big global greenwashing event, then go back to their regularly scheduled programming.

It's easy to think about our energy use one hour a year. The problem is all those other hours.

photo taken from the top of the CN Tower

Think You Love Vancouver?

2011-03-16T11:26:00.004-04:00

Chances are this woman loves it more.

A Guide to the Recent Flurry of Bicycle Articles

2011-03-14T10:45:00.009-04:00

You can thank John Cassidy for starting it all.

His blog post, "Battle of the Bike Lanes" went up on the New Yorker website on March 8 2011 and sparked an immediate flurry of counter-arguments and fist-shaking from the pro-bike lane crowd. The next day, Adam Sternbergh, over at the New York Times Magazine, responded by comparing Cassidy line-by-line to Tea Partiers in his article "'I Was a Teenage Cyclist,' or, How Anti-Bike Lane Arguments Echo the Tea Party".

The Economist responded with an article titled "The World is His Parking Lot", in which the idea of the tragedy of the commons is invoked to explain how motorists are getting a free ride while off-loading the externalities of driving onto the environment.

Felix Salmon attempted his Cassidy take-down by fixating on his use of the word 'bipeds' in his article "John Cassidy vs. Bipeds", something Cassidy himself addressed in a follow-up article he published on the New Yorker titled "The Condemned Motorist Speaks". Ezra Klein at The Washington Post attempted to turn Cassidy's argument on its head when he argued that New York's proliferation of bike lanes can be seen as pro-car in his article "Love Driving? Buy Your Neighbor a Bike."

Olaf Storbeck, a self-professed admirer of John Cassidy, performed an erudite economic oh-snap in his blog post "The Economics of Bike Lanes - How Can John Cassidy Get it So Wrong?" in which he explained the problems with free parking written about by Donald Shoup.

John Cassidy felt the need to respond a third time in his own defence in "A Closing Word", which spurred Felix Salmon at Reuters to write another post, which then spurred John Cassidy to write an addendum to his closing word, reminding me of kids who vow to stop speaking staaaaarrrttting now....OK now......OK now.

It is now, by the way, only two days later at this point.

Finally, not necessarily part of this dialogue, Dave Meslin wrote a piece in the Toronto Star called "Rob Ford: Cycling Advocate" where he made the case for getting rid of the "Ford Nation Vs. Left-Wing Pinko framework" in an effort to actually work together.

What a novel idea.

Toronto City Council Channels Harry Potter, Graffiti Blitz, Tree House Cities, and Facebookville

2011-03-13T11:34:00.002-04:00

In a long, torturous special meeting of council scheduled to decide whether to fire the rest of the Toronto Community Housing Corporations board members, it was ruled that speaking of the auditor general's report that had caused this whole snafu was out of order. This led to what can only be described as the Harry Potterfication of council as The-Document-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named became the preferred way of alluding to the forbidden report. Not allowing council to reference a report that was being used to fire board members is almost as ridiculous as not allowing them to talk about 2012 impacts of the 2011 budget at the 2011 budget meeting. If this keeps up, by the end of the year council will only be able to communicate in a combination of increasingly vague hand gestures and blinking.

Steve Kupferman over at OpenFileTO has done some investimagating and found out the incredible numbers of graffiti violations that have been issued under Rob Ford's reign. In fact, in a little over three months there have been almost the same number of violations issued as in the previous twenty months under David Miller, leading some to wonder about the clean-up costs associated with this for small businesses. But Shawn Micallef, over at Spacing, has found some graffiti that even Rob Ford may not want to scrub off.

Have you ever found yourself wandering the streets with a pen and notebook and way too much time on your hands? At least two people in New York City have, and they've decided to do something about it dammit. One is drawing every building in NYC while the other is drawing every person in NYC. Too bad by the time they finish, pen and paper will be a thing of the past and they'll have to complete their project by digitally downloading their drawings into their iPad 58 through Apple's new-fangled mind-reading app.

A Vancouver architecture firm is experimenting with the idea of wooden skyscrapers as the way to a sustainable future, sparking a furious debate over the gender equality of a future city possibly overtaken by No Girls Allowed boy's clubs.

Facebook as Urban Planning? A bunch of architecture students are rounded up to try to make Facebook's new digs feel more like a neighbourhood, with one student saying that they wanted to make the "edge of the campus more permeable and remove the line between public and private land". No word yet on how much control Facebook employees would have over these privacy settings.

And, the non-sequitur: a Chilean man who has 82 tattoos of Julia Roberts on his body, proving that, yes, you can have too much of a good thing.

Dance Like Everyone is Watching

2011-03-08T21:13:00.013-05:00

If you're like most people, when you're in a public place you'll do almost anything not to stand out too much. You certainly wouldn't dance around crazily to music only you could hear while someone filmed you and then post that video on the internet. So I guess that makes Phil Villeneuve not like most people.

I was first exposed to the antics of Villeneuve when a friend showed me the video of him whirling and twirling to the Scissor Sisters in a No Frills grocery store. I was slightly horrified as I watched the video, the same kind of stomach-cringe I get when I watch people on American Idol or when a certain beauty pageant contestant stumbled through an answer. I'm embarrassed for them. I literally sweat watching.

But I feel there is something important about dancing and being silly and spontaneous in public. There can be a tedium to the day-in day-out rhythm of urban life that causes us to switch to autopilot. We've all seen that glazed over look as people push their shopping carts down an aisle or stare straight ahead on the subway. You feel as though you could bounce a tennis ball off their forehead and they wouldn't blink.

The reason things like flash mobs and crazy dancing people are so compelling is because of the way they play with the tedium of that urban routine. They force people to snap back into reality, because suddenly reality has become, well, surreality. This is shown best in the New York Grand Central Station freeze, where a group of people all froze at a predetermined time to the amazement of everyone else. It's hilarious to watch everyone's reaction as their boring commute is suddenly hi-jacked and turned into a Twilight Zone episode. It turned a completely forgettable act into something impossible to forget, which I'm sure is the goal of Improv Everywhere, the group that organized it.

Flash mobs, however, have become almost tedious in themselves. They all seem to have official websites and predetermined dates and times. There's the No Pants Subway Ride and the Zombie Walk, and the Pillow Fight and on and on it goes in countless cities around the world. I feel like, by reducing it to virtually one person, Villeneuve sheds all the weight built up by these mass events and gets back at the core of what it's all about--the delight of the unusual.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Villeneuve video is that everyone around him is trying so hard not to care. But it's clearly impossible to deny a grown man swinging around the pole of your subway car like a stripper. There's a few turned heads, some smirks, but mostly people are just attempting to ignore him like you would ignore that crazy man who corners you on the bus and won't stop ranting about U.S. foreign policy. He knows this too, which is why he grabs people's hats or puts his arm around them.

This is a total adaptation of city space for something other than what we've all decided is appropriate for that space. Subway cars are for commuting. Grocery stores are for buying food. Dancing is something you do when you've had that third drink and your favourite song comes on and the dance floor is just crowded enough that no one will see you jerk about. But it's good to challenge what we can do in different areas of the city and push people's comfort zones, if just for the simple fact that it keeps things interesting.

I often think about what I would do if I encountered Villeneuve dancing in my subway car or grocery store or bank. Maybe I would laugh, engage with him, and give him a twirl. But most likely I would avert my eyes and pray he picked on someone else.

Oh well. I can always watch him on YouTube.

Ford Nation, Jane Jacobs Dissed, Vancouver's Modern Treehuggers, and a Concert Hall that Doubles a Bomb Shelter

2011-03-06T08:49:00.015-05:00

"It took a while, but for Mayor Rob Ford the reality check is no longer in the mail: It has arrived." I wish I could take credit, but leave it to The Star's Christopher Hume to come up with that zinger in discussing Rob Ford's plea for money from McGuinty. But if Ford has indeed received his reality check, he certainly hasn't cashed it in as it emerged last week that Ford has threatened to unleash Ford Nation on McGuinty in the next election, causing people all around the city to throw up a little in their mouths. But, as it turns out, Ford Nation is a real thing. Only it won't be called Ford Nation. It will be called the Respect for Tax Payers Against Gravy Trains Above Ground And Also Those Wasteful Spending Pinkos Action Group.

There must be some megalomania in the water, as the Conservatives have also decided to create their own moniker and rebrand the Government of Canada as the Harper Government. In keeping, I have decided to rename my neighbourhood Jaketown. I mean, the Annex, who thought that one up?

Speaking of the Annex--I mean, Jaketown--Edward Glaeser, author of the book Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier had the nerve to come to Toronto and diss Jane Jacobs. Oh, no you didn't! He says that tall buildings are good for cities and that Jacobs had it wrong when she said that old, low-rise buildings were important to keep in the housing stock to ensure affordability and street activity. He also said she was wrong about books with shorter titles conveying their meaning in a more concise way. Like, really, The Economy of Cities, what's that even about?

Just don't ask a Canadian about the economy. A recent Globe and Mail article mapped the huge disparities in Canada's math skills--but don't worry, the report uses pretty pictures and colours so we can all understand the information. Like, for instance, did you know that twelve out of every seven Torontonians can't do basic addition or subtraction? It's scandalous!

In other scandalalous news, Toronto has recently been focussed on the fall of the Urban Affairs Library and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, but for resident's of Vancouver's Sixth Avenue it's been all about the proposed removal of thirty giant Elm trees from their street. The Park Board decided to hold off for the time being, but look unlikely to budge on the issue. Yeah, I bet those tree-hugging Vancouverites are gonna channel their inner hippie and chain themselves to those Elms, just like old times! But it looks like they've decided to go the more modern route and form a Facebook protest group instead.

Vancouver architect Bing Thom has proposed an idea that buries a concert hall underground in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, which sounds like a great idea! What could possibly go wrong with building a giant theatre deep in the earth in a city holding its collective breath waiting for The Big One? No word yet on whether the concession stand would also stock a variety of canned goods, flashlights, blankets, and a wind-up radio.

Lastly, someone has been giving out $5 bills to cyclists in Toronto as a thank-you for riding. But what about the car drivers? Who's going to give them money for driving?

Mess is in the Eye of the Beholder

2011-03-01T12:57:00.002-05:00

[This article was originally posted on the Torontoist, February 24, 2011]

On February 22, 2011, the Annex Gleaner reported that the Bloor Annex Business Improvement Area intended to end the prolific postering of the stretch between Bathurst Street and Spadina Avenue with specially made light pole covers that are supposed to repel both tape and staples.

Just like digital locks on CDs could never stop determined pirates, it’s almost certain that some street hacker will figure out a way to affix a poster to these supposedly poster-proof sheathes. It’s almost as if the BIA is challenging them to find a way.

Still, coming on the heels of the ongoing debate surrounding Rob Ford’s plans to expunge all traces of spray paint and sharpie marker from Toronto, the announcement by the Bloor Annex BIA raises concerns over the sterilization of the city’s surfaces. Not only is a certain amount of messiness and visual clutter to be expected in any city of a certain size, but it should be welcomed as a sign of vibrancy—to a point, of course.

Dylan Reid, in a piece from the Summer 2010 issue of Spacing titled “Bless this Mess,” wrote about Toronto’s messy urbanism, noting that it is the city’s hodge-podge of architectural styles and general visual disorderliness that makes it so appealing. Posters and flyers contribute to this messy urbanism by cluttering our visual landscape. As Reid says, “The instinct for order and beauty has its place; the problem comes when it is dominant. It needs to be constantly challenged and questioned by the push for vibrant messiness.”

Consider this ideal against a city like Vancouver, where posters are corralled into specially designed poles and removed every Tuesday afternoon. Vancouver’s manicured streetscapes lose some of that explosive spontaneity that can be found in Toronto.

Designated postering spots are coming to Toronto too, albeit slowly. The City drafted a bylaw restricting posters and flyers in 2006, but enforcement has been lax and will continue to be so until enough official posters boards and columns, provided by Astral Media, are installed around the city. A June 2010 report by the City [PDF], requested by Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) noted that 261 posters boards and thirty-four columns have been rolled out, but they are insufficient for the bylaw to be fairly enacted. Eventually, Astral Media will roll-out two thousand posters boards and five hundred columns across the city.

Postering and flyering have long been used not just by businesses, but also by citizens to advertise services, support political causes, or simply make announcements to their community. Today, when much of the community message board's function has moved online to sites like Craigslist and Kijiji, it’s refreshing to walk down the street and see someone advertising their ugly, thirty-year-old couch, or their services as a piano teacher. If these anti-poster sheathes are put up all over the Annex—and if they spread elsewhere in the city— how will certain notorious gay porn websites, without the lure of those hot pink posters, entice men aged nineteen to twenty-six to audition? Won’t someone think of the porn?

No, not all posters are works of art. In fact, many are poorly designed, grammatically incorrect, written in Comic Sans bold, and rife with incorrectly used quotation marks and italics—but they are part of the neighbourhood. Posters are not just a form of community expression, but a sign of a lively, exciting place to live, of a city that has stuff going on and things to do and people with opinions to share. This city’s posters are like weeds: you can keep removing them one at a time, but they will sprout back if you don’t get at the root. And if the root is a community’s desire to express itself, do we really want to destroy that?

Posters and flyers can be found at varying degrees all across the city, but perhaps the best case is on St. George Street on the University of Toronto campus, where the posters cause light poles to bulge out in the middle, giving them the appearance of snakes who have only half-digested their meals. When was the last time these poles were stripped of their wheat-pasted second skins? One has to wonder at the layers of cultural history plastered to them. Peeling them back, one by one, would be an archeological dig uncovering concerts, roommates needed, and political rallies of days-gone-by. Imagine those same poles sans posters, empty and exposed and naked in their slimness.

There are worse things than a little mess.

Ford's I-Told-You-So Moment, a Provincial Oh-Snap, and Vancouver's Casino Conundrum

2011-03-01T09:30:00.006-05:00

It looks as though spring has finally stuck her cute little button nose out between the heavy drapes of winter as temperatures rise above freezing and the skating rink that was my back alley now resembles a very nice, gray swamp.

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation is on similarly thin ice after an auditor general's report about inappropriate spending, which has the Brothers Ford barely able to contain their glee as details emerge about expensive chocolates, massages, and lavish Christmas parties (however, there have been no reports of actual, non-metaphorical gravy). Rob Ford seems to be basking in his I-told-you-so moment, biting his lip in the effort effort to stop himself from jumping up and down chanting: nah nah nah nah.

In a well-timed oh-snap moment from the Province, it emerged that Dalton McGuinty has shot down Ford's request for $350 million in funding. But don't expect Ford to be out taking too many questions from media about this, or any issue at city hall, as it seems his ability to answers questions runs to an average of, oh, say three minutes and twenty-three seconds. Maybe that's because when he does speak for longer than this it unravels into a confusing, cringe-inducing mess. leading everyone to wonder if we have, in fact, elected a mayor who's taken his public speaking advice from an Abbott and Costello routine.

But Toronto's not the only city with spending woes. Vancouver's much criticized construction of a new 680,000-square-foot waterfront casino to replace the current Edgewater Casino that will see, among other things, the number of slot machines rise from 493 to 1,500, will be before council on March 7, 2011 at 7:30pm. This is after council pushed back the hearing not once, but twice. The official line was that it was because so many people had signed up to speak in opposition, probably due to Vancouver Not Vegas, a vocal non-partisan group in opposing the project. The Vancouver Sun reported a few days ago that if the casino didn't get approved, funding for the new retractable roof/crown on BC Place stadium could fall through. Keep in mind that this roof is already nearing completion, which brings up the question: didn't they possibly maybe kind of see this problem coming?

And if all that has left you in a steaming pile, here's a video of a cat who steals things to cheer you up. Look at the klepto kitty!

Photo: No Pie

2011-02-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Forget about gravy, we gotta ban that pie!

When 0.155% is Deemed Too Big a Tax Increase

2011-02-23T16:58:00.014-05:00

(Feb 25, 2011 edit: portions of this post appear in altered form in my article on the Torontoist)

This morning something unexpected happened to me. I began to watch the live stream of Toronto city council debating budgetary matters and was suddenly hooked. I don't know if it was Speaker Nunziata's saucy schoolmaster attitude or the overly sensitive councillors offended by such things as pointing and smiling, but I almost missed an appointment for a haircut.

Of course, I wouldn't have been so riveted if the debate hadn't been about something that seemed kind of important--like, oh I don't know, the money the city needs to operate.

Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14 - Parkdale/High Park) introduced a motion to raise the property tax rate by 0.155%. As Perks pointed out this would raise enough money to avoid the proposed service cuts to TTC bus routes, save the urban affairs library from closing, with a chunk of change left over that could be used for other things. He also pointed out that this would be an incredibly small tax increase, costing taxpayers between $4 and $9 for the entire year.

Sounds reasonable, no?

27 councillors didn't think so, as the motion was defeated 18-27, causing sane people all around the city to grab a fistful of their hair and rip it out.

But there were some good points raised in the debate about the motion (by debate I mean of course that everyone got to speak and no one listened to each other). Josh Matlow (Ward 22 - St. Pauls) made the observation that service cuts are all relative: while Rob Ford may deem some service cuts to be minor, the citizens affected by such cuts may deem them major.

Karen Stintz spoke about how she believed that it would be better to let the citizen's of Toronto figure out how to spend their $4 to $9 since the City has proven unable to do so in the past. I guess some of those people could pool their $4 to $9 together, invest it, and maybe in a hundred years they'd have enough money to buy their own bus. That's reasonable.

What was really on the table though was blind ideology against common sense city budgeting. Rob Ford was bent on freezing the property tax no matter what, so they were going to freeze the property tax no matter what. How else could councillors really justify cutting services as opposed to approving a tax increase so small that most citizens wouldn't even notice if no one told them? I mean, really, most people probably lose that much change in their couch each year.

Budget talks continue. Tune in.