unimaginative2
Senior Member
Virtually every successful neighbourhood was developed piecemeal. Jane Jacobs was right.
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Eglinton-Crosstown Corridor Debate
- Thread starter Dan416
- Start date
Virtually every successful neighbourhood was developed piecemeal. Jane Jacobs was right.
Except for St. Lawerence, the Distillery District Redevelopment, Cornell, CityPlace, St. Jamestown, the Regent Park Revitalization, Thornecliffe Park, Don Mills, etc... Who needs a Secondary Plan anyway?
I do agree with Jane Jacobs on a lot of her principles, but her principles do not preclude Secondary plans for an area that, in order to be truly successful and maximize cost-effectiveness (why dig a hole, fill overtop of it, and then dig another hole right beside it 5 years later?), a comprehensive secondary plan needs to be developed. I'm not saying the whole thing needs to be built right off the bat, just have it planned out a little bit. Begin with the end in mind, and then take the necessary steps to ge there.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
Well you might notice that many of the most successful parts of St. Lawrence have a heavy admixture of old buildings. The Distillery District is effectively an outdoor mall with a single owner. I'd hardly call Regent Park, Thorncliffe Park, and St. Jamestown (or, in different ways, Cityplace and Don Mills) the most successful neighbourhoods. In fact, I might go so far as to say that they're some of Toronto's least successful neighbourhoods.
Actually her principles preclude exactly that. She strongly believes that the most successful neighbourhoods develop organically over time without planning intervention. The very thing that got her active in urban issues was her opposition to master planned megaproject "neighbourhoods."
junctionist
Senior Member
And yet large areas of masterplanned suburban Toronto like Don Mills are safe and comfortable places to live with different housing options and employment opportunities. Jane Jacobs made significant points in challenging the notion that masterplanning could build inherently better communities, and brilliantly fought to defend the neighbourhoods which had developed organically and to assert their strengths. But I don't think we should discount masterplanning, because all around the world and in our backyards there are examples of it working fine.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Well, it depends on what you call 'success', junctionist. JJ was probably talking about urban vibrancy, street life, a mixture of incomes and a diversity of services within a walkable distance. Don Mills is successful insofar as the area has high property values and the people who live there generally like it, but according to the JJ definition, it probably doesn't cut the mustard.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
There's places where master-planning works good enough, but there aren't many places where it has a direct hand in creating thriving neighbourhoods.
One can actually argue that typical suburbia, which is subdivided and built somewhat 'organically' by a slew of developers and builders, often fails because it is underplanned compared to a place like Don Mills. Almost invariably, neighbourhood units and other sorts of development models are carelessly applied to the suburbs when applied in large doses. Toronto was incredibly fortunate to have received the suburbs it did, with apartment clusters and plazas in walking distance and good bus service and compact houses and few gated communities and so on, and all of this viable out on the fringe even as the fringe creeps into cornfields. There's a few south/east American-style subdivisions with acre-sized lots and forests in between each house/street, but they tend to be wealthy 'executive home' ghettos like parts of Caledon and Aurora.
Of course, this does not disprove Jane Jacobs.
As for Eglinton...
For one thing, a significant chunk of the Richview land will be consumed by road widenings to accommodate the LRT, bike lanes, sidewalks, trees, Michigan Lefts, etc., and there won't be a heck of a lot of land left to develop, particularly where Eglinton runs in the middle of the corridor.
A trench can be covered or left open (and we wouldn't even want a trench fully covered). There won't be a solid block of towers built over it - even downtown Toronto is not entirely covered by towers. Parking lots and tennis courts and fountains and Tim Hortons will cover much of it. You can't develop over LRT running in the middle of the road, or the sidewalks or anything else.
Perhaps in some theoretical situations it would be preferable to have transit running under Eglinton, but we're talking about what's practical, not what's ideal. It'd be silly to run in the middle of Eglinton when a huge empty corridor sits a few metres away. A trench isn't the only option and people that bring up the 'continuum' of grade-separation are correct - trenches are a perfectly feasible and affordable and desirable option in some places, particularly if built so that the platforms are extremely close in elevation to the sidewalk.
One can actually argue that typical suburbia, which is subdivided and built somewhat 'organically' by a slew of developers and builders, often fails because it is underplanned compared to a place like Don Mills. Almost invariably, neighbourhood units and other sorts of development models are carelessly applied to the suburbs when applied in large doses. Toronto was incredibly fortunate to have received the suburbs it did, with apartment clusters and plazas in walking distance and good bus service and compact houses and few gated communities and so on, and all of this viable out on the fringe even as the fringe creeps into cornfields. There's a few south/east American-style subdivisions with acre-sized lots and forests in between each house/street, but they tend to be wealthy 'executive home' ghettos like parts of Caledon and Aurora.
Of course, this does not disprove Jane Jacobs.
As for Eglinton...
For one thing, a significant chunk of the Richview land will be consumed by road widenings to accommodate the LRT, bike lanes, sidewalks, trees, Michigan Lefts, etc., and there won't be a heck of a lot of land left to develop, particularly where Eglinton runs in the middle of the corridor.
A trench can be covered or left open (and we wouldn't even want a trench fully covered). There won't be a solid block of towers built over it - even downtown Toronto is not entirely covered by towers. Parking lots and tennis courts and fountains and Tim Hortons will cover much of it. You can't develop over LRT running in the middle of the road, or the sidewalks or anything else.
Perhaps in some theoretical situations it would be preferable to have transit running under Eglinton, but we're talking about what's practical, not what's ideal. It'd be silly to run in the middle of Eglinton when a huge empty corridor sits a few metres away. A trench isn't the only option and people that bring up the 'continuum' of grade-separation are correct - trenches are a perfectly feasible and affordable and desirable option in some places, particularly if built so that the platforms are extremely close in elevation to the sidewalk.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
You are mistaken. The subway doesn't run under the roadway between Eglinton and a point between Wellesley and College.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
Developers don't build on top of existing decking. Developers would put in their own supports designed to specifically hold the weight of whatever they are building. The cost of the TTC building a trench or cut and cover with decking to support whatever a developer could possibly put on top of it would be similar to boring a tunnel. The point being made is that having to work around a subway on a property to create a development prevents developments from being created on all but the most valuable properties. Putting the subway under the street opens up more properties to developments that would not occur otherwise.
nfitz
Superstar
Though he is correct though, from Bloor to Union the Yonge line is cut-and-cover where it is under Yonge street. Which is most of the way from Wellesley to Front. I thought the parts that weren't under Yonge for this stretch were also cut-and-cover ... but I may be wrong on that.
The entire thing from Bloor to Union was cut and cover. From Bloor to just south of Wellesley was cut and cover east of Yonge, and from just north of College to Union was directly under Yonge (aside from the little bit going into Union). I've seen the historical photos. Yonge south of College was dug out, and decked over with a temporary surface while work continued underneath.
kettal
Banned
I guess that makes everyone who calls for nothing less than a subway on Eglinton a loony.
Fresh Start
Banned
It's loony to spend $5 billion on LRT for 30 kilometres of 66% surface, road-median ROW when 24 kms of subways from PIA to the DVP can be built along the same corridor for around $4 billion. What's so special about the Golden Mille car-oriented country- the only neglected area - that road-median LRT is the only mode suitable?
Destinations like the airport, ACC, Mount Dennis/Weston, York, Yonge-Eglinton, Leaside and Wynford Hts cannot make do with trams that'll only show up every five minutes and lack the capacity to handle the eventual ridership demands that'll come with linking intravenously these urban growth and employment centres. Furthermore, as a subway we can interline train services with the DRL into the downtown core- doing away with the need for TARL, disrupting the Community of Weston, the need for a future Lawrence West-Dixon LRT, etc. Plus it alleviates B-D from the north because riders will have greater incentive to transfer onto a train meeting it within a weatherproof fare-paid zone than a streetcar with minimal methods of fare payment and awaiting arrivals standing in an exposed bus shelter. It's just common sense.
Eglinton subway expansion fixes so many problems, it's amazing just how far things have deteriorated in the wrong direction since the days when construction actually began on an Eglinton West subway line.
GraphicMatt
Looking forward to a FRESH START for Toronto
Stop saying this. It undermines your argument. Unless you can come up with an in-depth study by experts that analyzes the route, your "$4 billion" is just a fantasy number.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
Uh, no. Not really. While you may believe that anyone who disagrees with your assessment of a situation is "loony," most people do not.
kettal
Banned
It's not my assessment. It was the professional, detailed and thorough study conducted for the 2011 plan, the last good plan to be made for metro, and it considered all options without bias!