 |
| photo by sillygwailo from Flickr (cc) |
 |
| 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! |
 |
| Recommendations from Adam Vaughan's motion to be debated at City Council this week |
 |
| Newly installed InfoToGo pillar at Bloor and Spadina |
 |
| Posters scraped off light pole on Bloor and Walmer |
 |
| Same light pole, but with new anti-poster sleeve and fresh Annex Public Space poster |
 |
(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.
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.
