How does a city remember?

My first time at Honest Ed’s, I got lost. I had just moved to Toronto and walked down the street to check out the monstrous, garish store on the corner near my new apartment. It beckoned me at night with its flashing circus lights and stupid joke signs. How does a place like this even exist? I walked through housewares and continued up and down stairs, only starting to panic when it seemed as though I was going in circles. Hadn’t I seen that display of Lady’s Fashion Leggings before?

But it may be Honest Ed’s turn to be lost—at least, its physical presence now that owner David Mirvish has announced he has sold the property to Westbank, a Vancouver-based developer (which, interestingly, is responsible for the redevelopment of another iconic department store, Woodward's, in Vancouver). 

I’ve learned in my three and a half years in Toronto that if you mention Honest Ed’s you should be prepared for a story. Whether it’s someone’s first encounter with the store, the way their mother used to eat fries and gravy in the basement, or how they furnished their new apartment with its cheap products, every Torontonian seems to have a little nook carved out in their brain filled with hand-painted signs, light bulbs and weird Elvis busts.

But in the face of inevitable urban change, how does the city itself remember?

Is it enough to preserve the iconic sign? Does it need to be the whole sign or just a bit of it? Any preservation of a part of the former store or sign would certainly only serve a metaphorical purpose, an evocation of the something larger that was once there. A fragment like that may simply collapse under its own weight.

Should we just march blindly forward with a clean slate and post a bronze plaque out front with a few words like some sort of gravestone? How do you fashion something to hold all those memories in place and do you even need to?

No doubt all these and more will be discussed, debated, shouted and written about to death over the next few years. For some, preserving just a part of the whole is worse than doing nothing, while others may hold on to whatever fragment they can get with dear life. There are people who scrapbook and there are people who don’t.

What I do know is that when I walk by the corner 30 years from now, dodging the hover cars and walking my genetically-modified meowl, I will be able to point to whatever building lies on the corner and say that’s where I got lost by the Lady’s Fashion Leggings.

St. George gets its bike lanes back

The construction on St. George Street over the pass few months means that cyclists have missed out on their bike lanes, but I walked by today and the road is not only freshly paved, but freshly painted with some nice new glistening bike lanes to ride in. Since the roads in Toronto can get so crummy (I'm lookin' at you Sherbourne) it's nice to have some smooth surfaces to sail across.

Why Vancouver's viaducts cannot be the High Line

Though City staff are set to release their report this summer, all signs are pointing to the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts getting the old heave-ho. Anyone paying a smidgen of attention to the talk at city hall, and specifically Cllr Geoff Meggs who has taken the viaducts on for awhile, would know that the preferred option is to see the viaducts removed in favour of more parkland, room for development, and a generally better stitched together neighbourhood. While careful traffic impact studies need to be done before the viaducts can be removed, car traffic into downtown has been decreasing steadily in the past decade and will probably continue to do so. The viaducts right now only handle a fraction of the car traffic they were originally designed to handle.

A design competition a few months ago sparked interest in alternative plans for the area and the viaducts themselves, and, given the success of New York's High Line park (which, unless you have been living under a rock, you'll know is an elevated rail trestle converted into an uber-design linear park), it's no surprise that some people are pushing for Vancouver to copy New York and turn the viaducts into something similar.

This is a bad idea.

While cities should look to other cities for design and planning ideas that they can incorporate, we've seen time and time again that many ideas--be they a pedestrian street or a casino or a Ferris wheel--are context specific and not necessarily transferable. You can't just take the idea for the High Line, transplant it onto Vancouver's viaducts and get the same result. It's tempting to think this way, but dangerous and costly.

They're expensive

The viaducts are expensive to maintain. Meggs estimates that the City will need to spend around $10 million over the next 15 years just to maintain the structures. I'm sure that price would be much higher if we were to load them full of dirt and plants and trees. At Toronto's annual Park Summit a few weekends ago, I heard Richard Hammond, one of the co-founders of the High Line, speak about how the High Line is an incredibly expensive park to maintain because of its high usage, but also because of the nature of its design. No doubt a park on the viaducts would be extremely expensive to maintain, more so than a traditional park, not only because of the aging infrastructure, but the landscape of the park as well.

photo by jmv from Flickr (cc)

They're ugly

The viaducts are hideous pieces of urban infrastructure. Originally supposed to be the on ramps to an urban highway that never materialized, they were never meant to be anything but utilitarian. From underneath they're about as inviting as an underground parking garage in a horror film. The High Line, while still a large and intimidating piece of infrastructure with its iron beams, doesn't have the same look as a concrete highway. Plus, its historic background as the route for goods being shipped into that part of the city gives it a kind of romantic tinge as a piece of New York history. Arguably, the viaducts are also a piece of Vancouver's history, but one that represents a short-lived moment and, ultimately, a mistake.

Additionally, the sheer bulk of the viaducts acts as much more of a neighbourhood killer than the High Line. The picture below typifies what the High Line looks like from the side. The infrastructure itself is less imposing and more elegant. It's also lower to the ground, and is already surrounded by significant development abutting it in many places.

photo by erikorama from Flickr (cc)

They're too short 

The High Line winds its way through a pretty long stretch of Manhattan, passing by many interesting areas of the city. The viaducts are simply too short to really offer what the High Line does--namely, a strollable stretch of carefully designed landscape. Park of the magic of walking the High Line is not only taking in how the design changes from block to block to block, but about how the city around it changes. The High Line offers an always evolving landscape and accompanying cityscape, something the viaducts do not. While the viaducts would offer a beautiful view of False Creek and probably some mountain views, this is not really something too hard to come by in Vancouver already. The city has more beautiful vistas than some countries.

So, what then?

The plan put forward by Dialog/Beasley/PWL/Green, which is featured in the City's slideshow about the viaducts and was one of the winners of its re:Connect contest, is an intelligent, beautiful, and, most of all, Vancouver-specific, solution to the problem of the viaducts. It would combine Pacific and Expo into one road, increase parkland in the area, introduce a winding stream leading out of False Creek into the urban fabric, and, most importantly, work to knit together Strathcona, Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside, to a waterfront they have been disconnected from for years.

The plan put forward by Dialog/Beasley/PWL/Green

This plan represents far more parkland than could be obtained from greening the tops of the viaducts, and, while the plan is not without its own expenses, would likely represent less of a maintenance burden on the city. No doubt a new urban stream, a new urban beach, and significant amounts of parkland would spur interest from developers--all this and without unsightly water-stained concrete slabs nearby.

While the High Line is a great park for New York and works wonderfully there, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that our viaducts represent the same opportunity. What we do have though, is an opportunity to create a new amazing part of Vancouver's waterfront and connect the rest of the city to it. Yes, I think Vancouver should be bold and creative, but being bold and creative shouldn't mean copy-pasting something from New York just because it worked there.

Event: Populating the New Transit Corridors

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

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

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

 

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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.