It’s often touted among cycling advocates in our city that there was a time when Toronto ranked as North America’s #1 cycling city. One could say it all started with the installation of the City's first bike lane on Poplar Plains in 1979 (photo above). In more recent years, progress on this front has been slow, and in some cases we’ve even seen regression. Though a lot of progress was made in the past decade or so, a lot of what you see on Toronto’s streets was implemented prior to the city’s amalgamation. An article in the Toronto Star last week got me thinking about what path Toronto could be on had we not amalgamated. In Montreal, the borough of Le Plateau-Mont Royal is facing some backlash to the Mayor’s recent changes to the area’s streets. New bike routes and traffic calming are funneling through-traffic off of local streets and onto major thoroughfares. According to some shop owners, the increase in traffic congestion along these routes is bad for business. I personally extol the livability as well as financial benefits of street planning that caters more to patrons who arrive by foot, bike and public transit, rather than private car (see my research here and recent developments in Portland). However, some Plateau merchants claim that these street changes have so strongly impacted their businesses’ bottom line that many shops have already had to close.

Yes, they are small portholes into a normally mysterious underworld. But no, that’s not human flesh on the other side of those walls. Instead, what one can see are the naked beginnings of what’s billed as Canada’s tallest condominium project, Aura, at Yonge and Gerrard. Judge as you may the planning rationale, design qualities and architectural merits of the project, but one thing this development definitely does right is inviting the public to experience this behemoth’s growth. For months now, office workers on breaks, commuters on foot and wandering tourists can be found glued to one of the many chain-link windows dotting this passageway on the southeast corner of College Park.

AMSTERDAM - If you regularly walk or bike around Toronto the scene in the photo above is probably familiar to you. Construction work forces you to cross the street (if you're a pedestrian) or share a narrower lane with traffic (if you're a cyclist). It can be annoying, but I think for the most part we accept these detours and slight inconveniences as fair payment for the necessary work of building our city. But are there other options; better ways of temporarily closing bits of public space? In Amsterdam - and presumably the whole of ...

MALMO - On a recent trip to Denmark, I crossed the bridge from Copenhagen and spent a few hours in Malmo, Sweden. This small city of 270,000 is impressive in its creation of lively public spaces, likely taking cues from its Danish neighbour across the Baltic Sea. Beyond its attractive city centre park, countless public squares and pedestrian streets, the city's formerly industrial waterfront is alive with activity. The waterfront is a mix of mid-rise apartments, commercial and office space, parkland, recreational trails, and ample boardwalk and docks for sunbathing and even taking a dip in the sea. The one iconic landmark is the modern Turning Torso, which resembles the Marilyn building envisaged for Mississauga. Note that it's just one 57-storey skyscraper on the Malmo waterfront, as opposed to a wall of condo towers on another unnamed waterfront.

BRUSSELS - I was in Brussels last week to attend Velo-City 2009. This is the international bicycle policy conference, which takes place every two years (annually starting next year in Copenhagen), and I was invited to present a study of Bloor Street I worked on last summer. Among cycling advocates - at least the European ones I was exposed to at the conference - there is a lot of interest in studying and quantifying the economic benefits of cycling investments. The Bloor Street study showed that removing on-street parking and installing a bike lane or widening the sidewalk would be better for retail businesses on Bloor, rather than maintaining all the existing parking spaces for the relatively few number of customers who drive to the area. Brussels has a population of 1 million and is considered to be the centre of Europe with the European Union, NATO and a host of other international organizations based here. While in Brussels I got to see quite a bit of the city, including while on a Critical Mass ride. However, it was surprising - despite all the conference presentations proclaiming the opposite - to experience a city that still very much feels like it is prioritized for the car. Yes, it has a well-developed tram, metro and inter-city train system, but considering the historic street network it's "blessed" with, it can be tough to be a pedestrian or cyclist in Brussels. As you can see in the photo above, this is a city where cyclists don vibrant clothing to stand out - probably not a sign of a great cycling city. In this post I'll highlight a few of the other things I noticed in Brussels - both useful and disappointing - relating to transport and public space. Sidewalk parking: On Avenue Louise, a busy shopping strip, street parking is up on the curb, mixed with pedestrians. While there may be some traffic flow logic to this, it squeezes pedestrians and makes for tricky situations when drivers are entering or leaving a spot. Needless to say, we should not be considering this in Toronto.

AMSTERDAM - Though I've now been through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport a few times, I only just recently noticed this sign. As you're waiting for your luggage to appear on the conveyor belt, you can use that time to figure out how you're going to get into the city centre (your most likely destination). The sign tells you how much the trip will cost for various modes of transportation and also how long the trip will take, as well as the service frequency. The only thing missing from the sign at Schiphol is information on cycling ...

AMSTERDAM - Last summer an interesting debate got underway in Toronto. Electric scooters started appearing in the bike lane and some cyclists weren't too happy about that (Note: I may have to recant my quote in this NOW Magazine article). In fact, the discussion came up at recent meetings of the Toronto Cycling Advisory and Pedestrian Committees. There are a variety of reasons why some cyclists don't want to share their already-scarce dedicated space, but a lot of the discussion last year focused on the distinction between electric scooters (which are currently classified as ...

Editor's Note: Fred Sztabinski is a Spacing contributor and former project coordinator of TCAT who recently relocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands. He will write occasional blog posts for Spacing comparing Toronto and European urban landscape issues. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AMSTERDAM — Riding your bike around the streets of Toronto, who else do you see on their bikes? Other people like you? Probably. While Toronto does have some bike lanes and a growing bicycling population (as ...

Editor's Note: Fred Sztabinski is a Spacing contributor and former project coordinator of TCAT who recently relocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands. He will write occasional blog posts for Spacing comparing Toronto and European urban landscape issues. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AMSTERDAM -- Working from home, it's often nice to go out and do a bit of work "off-site," just to mix things up and, at the very least, remind yourself that there are other people out there. For me in Toronto, a café was the go-to place for this. But in Amsterdam it's not as easy to find a place where you can order a latté and just sit for a while reading or on your laptop. Those types of places do exist here, but they're not as common as in North America or other European countries, and en route to finding one you probably want to avoid what's actually called a café (a restaurant/bar) and a coffeeshop. I've recently discovered Amsterdam's new Central Library (or Openbare Bibliotheek) and it truly is a great place to visit, for work or otherwise. The building is architecturally striking and the spaces very creative. This got me thinking that, as the Toronto Reference Library (or possibly the future Jane Jacobs Reference Library) is set to undergo a major revitalization, I really hope we might see some of what Amsterdam's got in its showpiece library. Opened in 2007 and touted as the largest public library in Europe, it is centrally located within a short walking distance of Central Station. The building was designed by famed Dutch architect Jo Coenen and is just one of a number of modern buildings filling up reclaimed land along the former docklands of Amsterdam's waterfront. Coenen is also responsible for the master plan of KNSM Island (look out for a future post on this fully planned modern island development).