December 13th, 2007
Outside perspective: Toronto grows tall
By Shawn Micallef // 12 Comments
Back in October we published James Rojas's mini-essay "Toronto's Messy Urbanism from the perspective of an Angeleno," his interesting outsider's take on the Toronto he saw during the Walk 21 conference. Over at The Real Deal, a New York real estate blog, Dorn Townsend recently published his thoughts on what he calls the "Toronto transformation under way" after a visit to the city. Read the rest here:
For years, Toronto developers, shaping one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the West, have fostered sprawl, cookie-cutterness and sheer man-made ugliness, according to some observers.
An everyday complaint is encapsulated in this recent observation in Toronto's National Post by a native returning home after exposure to civilities abroad: "The gleaming new towers appeared banal ... it was depressing to attempt to find reasons to stay married to my urban partner of 33 years."
Still, for all the native's deprecations of their city's ungainliness, something transformative is happening in Toronto. Sprawl is getting checked. Downtown, in particular, is building upward -- and in a big way. While New Yorkers tend to think that theirs is the Skyscraper City, recently Toronto homebuilders have surpassed Gotham in their ratio of multi-unit to single-unit construction.
Townsend also notes that largest (legal) international population in New York City is the Canadian one -- a quarter-million of them.
Photo by Metrix X.
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That guy has no idea what he is talking about, Toronto has way more parks and squares than Manhattan. They just aren't the same style of urban square that you see in New York. Plus There are 3 to 4 times the people in a smaller area in NYC compared to Toronto, that will make things look a lot more lively.
I lived in Soho for a year, and open spaces were few and far between, Washington Square, Sarah Roosevelt, Manhattan Square, Union Square and Tompkins Park are basically the only open spaces in a 40 block north south stretch of New York. Not to mention they close at night.
This article was published more than two months ago and discussed ad nauseum at both Urbantoronto.ca and SkyScraperCity's Toronto page.
The observation was a bit hasty but fair. The most central part of downtown Toronto lacks grandly-scaled spaces that are common in American cities.
Well, to the casual observer, we don't. Most of the greenspace in midtown is in ravines, and we are sadly deficient in plazas and actual park space, especially in mid-town. I think we need many more public spaces that allow us to enjoy company in places where we aren't pressured to buy things.
Toronto could use more green space and public squares, but it isn't as bleak as stated. There is still huge potential for new great parks in the downtown core (such of chunks of the Island airport) and we should start getting our acts together in developing and promoting our ravines into great places to get away from the daily grind. What I agree with the author is that infrastructure is not keeping up with development, especially when it comes to transit. But things seem to be improving, especially with yesterday's transit funding announcement by Queen's Park, hopefully this will be the trickle of a coming flood for the TTC and GO.
Yes, balmoral, 20 replies including pictures of Worf from Star Trek constitutes "discussion" ad nauseam.
Why snidely try and strike down even more discussion here?
Well, if we want more public space downtown, there still a few parking lots that can be bought up and turned into parks rather than condos.
balmoral's snideness and "pictures of Worf" (and other sausage-party fun) is why I stopped going to those forums "ad nauseum."
Carry on!
I would still recommend the Urban Toronto forum though.
Parks, parking lots and condos have to exist side by side and the one shouldn't be sacrified for the other. Urban planners simply have to find a way to build public spaces. Parking lots can be obtained by building underground parking houses, parks can be grown even on the top of parking houses and condos, and condo developments are finding their way anyway.
Wasn't trying to be snide at all - just a personal annoyance when blogs highlight articles published months ago. To each their own - won't point it out in the future.
The article claims that Toronto doesn't have green space or public squares:
"Unlike New York's core, Toronto's midtown and downtown have to get by without busy public squares, plentiful green space or lengthy bicycle paths"
Which is interesting because there are small parks, Queen's Park provides green space, the Toronto islands contribute as well. Nathan Philips square and Dundas Square are busy. Progress is still necessary in all the above areas, but there are things to enjoy.
And not all the developments are ugly. But these perspectives are interesting.
Comment by A.R.
December 13, 2007 | 11:58 pm