Light/Power poles being wrapped to stop them being flyered

[Lenser]

I don't find it sad at all. Hey, it's just an opinion, as is yours. I just don't see all those posters as being litter - vertical or otherwise. And I would rather see the hydro poles covered in flyers than see the streets themselves covered in empty wrappers, cigarette butts and smashed bottles. And I also think a city can have too much of a good thing - a fetish for perceived cleanliness or order.

And those "few billboards" it ain't. It's actually quite the concentration along the Gardiner. The ad companies would certainly agree with you in downplaying the numbers, though - it's in their best interests. But clearly we have many different ideas about what constitutes "pollution" or "clutter."

Tell you what though - I would rather we kept the billboards along the Gardiner if it meant we could get rid of those gigantic new signs along the sidewalks of our fair town. Not that they're linked, mind you. I just see urban life as a series of intricate compromises. None of us are ever going to get the city we truly think we deserve.

 

[Torontovibe]

It's not just the hydro poles that get covered in posters, glue, dirt and pieces of paper. They also put that gunk on newspaper boxes, mail boxes, phone booths, utility boxes and almost any object that doesn't move, including buildings. What's left behind is dirty bits of paper and glue. The glue turns black and dirty. Do you actually find dirt, paper and glue all over everything attractive? Lenser, I bet you'd be the first one to freak out if someone tried to put that shit on your place of residence or even on your street.

Very few people find that attractive except for the oh so cool types on urban Toronto. Tourists, for the most part, don't like it and neither do most Torontonians. We don't make a big fuss about it because we are used to living in our degraded public realm. Rusty poles, ugly over-head wires and glue splattered on everything is just our normal state of affairs. After a while people stop noticing it but out of towners definitely do. I know almost everybody I've shown around town mentions the poles, electrical wires and postering/dirt.

It's not something to be proud of, which is why I called Ford and asked for a solution. I was told over a year ago they would clean it up and start regular cleaning patrols along Queen West, Spadina and Bloor Street. (by both Rob Ford and the head of the city's cleaning department)
When I spoke to Ford he was adamant that he was going to clean up (and stop) graffiti, postering and garbage/dirt on the street. I was told to give them 6 months to clean up the postering and put those guys out of commission. It's been over a year, do you guys see a difference? I do not! Maybe I need to give Ford another call and ask him what happened to that promise he made me. If somebody makes me a promise, I expect them to keep their word, and yes, that does include politicians.

 

[Lenser]

I understand that you don't appreciate what I do. And I sure hope you don't think I consider myself some kind of cool hipster downtowner. I suspect I'm about as uncool as it gets... trendy I'm not. And I'm certainly not going to ask you to appreciate my own aesthetic sensibility. We don't have to like each other's tastes. Life's too short to bicker over that stuff anyway. In a broader sense, as long as the city is a civil place I'm happy. Should it get too filthy or rundown for me, I always have the option to split. Should it get too antiseptic, squeaky-clean and Disneyesque, same deal.

Anyhoo, about Ford and his promises. The fellow's in a bit of a bind. The army he'd like to "patrol" Toronto's streets to remove grafitti and other unsightly outrage from public areas would cost a boatload. Since's he's all about not "taxing the taxpayers," that means he can't find the money to hire that army of cleaners. Perhaps he's vainly hoping for the private sector to come to the rescue, much like his precious subway plans that don't call for any public funding. Or perhaps he imagines some kind of hard-core volunteerism will kick in and Toronto will become a self-cleaning paradise. In any case, he's been talking out of both sides of his mouth. It's not a promise he could ever afford to keep. What else to do? Hire more police to fine the individuals and companies doing all the postering? Fine them to within an inch of their lives? Same dilemma. He's all about finding "efficiencies" but he's not about hiring more people in order to fulfil his promises.

 

[hawc]

Can we shoot them?

 

[Lenser]

Might work! Then again, might not. You'll need a cleaning crew for all the blood and bullet-riddled corpses.

 

[Torontovibe]

Well, from what Ford told me, they already have the people to remove the posters, they just need to focus their energy on certain streets. (Bloor, Spadina and Queen W) Ford also said that the companies who poster the poles are doing it illegally and the city can charge the people who do it and the company advertised on the poster. That would put a stop to it real quick, once the profit motive is taken out of it. Obviously they haven't been doing it but he said they can. I'm gonna get back to him and ask why that wasn't followed through. I don't want the city to turn into a Disneyfied New York City but I would like to live in a city that looks like its citizens actually value it and care what it looks like. I obviously do.

If the guys who did the postering were reasonable, restricting it to those poster poles and construction hoarding, I wouldn't mind but those guys have no respect for the city. They will poster right on stores and mailboxes. It's just way overboard and we shouldn't have to put up with it. I'm tired of seeing white paste and the dirty, black guck it turns into over time. The downtown core needs a serious clean up. The least those postering guys could do is use tape, instead of that paste, which is very difficult to remove and looks nasty after it attracts dirt. I know it costs a bit more but it's much easier to remove.

I like graffiti but that tagging bullshit has to go. There is NOTHING redeeming in random tagging on private (or public) property.

 

[Lenser]

The question then becomes why the mayor is not pushing for busting these companies on their illegal activities. My guess is that he fears political fallout for making them the enemy and that any aggressive actions he takes might dramatically backfire on the mayor. After all his recent difficulties in getting things his way, this mayor may be getting just a little gun-shy.

It's certainly worth asking the mayor about it and I hope you get a satisfactory answer from him. But about his claim that he already has people to remove the posters - I find that suspect. It suggests to me that he merely intends to spring additional duties on existing city staff without paying them extra money. I can see that being another problem for him. I know his has no love for unions, and that his many supporters feel the same way. But he still has to deal with them regardless.

 

[Torontovibe]

So a few billboards in select locations far above the street downtown is more of a blight upon Toronto's urban landscape than every single hydro pole, lamp post, phone booth, utility box. etc. at street level being covered literally by thousands of posters. This is sad.[/QUOTE]

EXACTLY! I had to shake my head after hearing that argument. lol

[video=youtube;lryLy_0wFDw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lryLy_0wFDw[/video]

 

[Lenser]

Great youtube clip. I especially dug the green skull-faced dewd, and the posters advertising posters. Clearly it's a big business.

I await Ford delivering on his mighty promises.

The thing about postering is it's the poor man's advertising. If we're going to take that away (presuming that you'll get the vast majority of people agreeing that postering sucks) then by extension will we be equally aggressive about more ambitious and equally in your face advertising - billboards, "information pillars," and entire city facades given over to ads? Otherwise, the move against postering itself just looks hypocritical.

 

[Torontovibe]

Great youtube clip. I especially dug the green skull-faced dewd, and the posters advertising posters. Clearly it's a big business.

I await Ford delivering on his mighty promises.

The thing about postering is it's the poor man's advertising. If we're going to take that away (presuming that you'll get the vast majority of people agreeing that postering sucks) then by extension will we be equally aggressive about more ambitious and equally in your face advertising - billboards, "information pillars," and entire city facades given over to ads? Otherwise, the move against postering itself just looks hypocritical.

You seem to not be getting something. It's not the advertising that's the problem. Advertising can be fun, creative and beautiful. I like neon art and some of the advertising in Dundas Square. It's the dirt, bits of paper and glue that are the problem, along with the disregard for private property. If these guys were a little bit more reasonable, it wouldn't be a problem. I'm not saying ALL postering has to stop. I'm just saying we can do it in reasonable way, which includes using tape instead of the paste, that sticks to everything. We can put up more postering boards that provide space for fliers and posters but we shouldn't have to have it on every single light pole and in some places, 10 deep. There is room for reasonable compromise.

Slowly but surely Toronto is starting to improve our public realm. Who knows, one day we might even be considered a beautiful city. I'd welcome that day!

 

[Lenser]

It's not so much as me not 'getting something' as it is a question of my not sharing your vision of what constitutes intolerable visuals or clutter. But that's OK. Your exasperation with me has been noted.

I'm not waiting for others to consider Toronto beautiful. I'm over that. Best to embrace it now. We spend far too much time agonizing over how the rest of the world sees us. It's almost pathological. I think it's better to see our city as something moving steadily along a curve, encountering cycles both good and bad. It's not ever going to 'arrive' and be finally, universally, seen as the cat's ass. Someone, somewhere, is always going to dis the city.

Again, without hiring a lot more people (heck, a whole separate bureaucracy) to police the postering, we're not going to see much more than cheap talk. The glue won't be replaced by tape. The bands won't stop postering because some people on Urban Toronto think the whole thing is sordid and disgusting. All the other companies which routinely plaster the street with posters won't either... they'll do it only if they're forced to, or if there's a suitable sizeable public backlash. Which may come, or may not; I don't know and I don't care to make a prediction. But I will note that other cities have gone through their own cycles and they too are in a state of constant flux.

 

[Mississauga Slim]

Whatever the esthetics of it, the truly absurd thing is that most street postering doesn't even work. The posters seem to labor under the delusion that the more posters they put up, the more people will notice their message. In fact, the opposite is true. The more postering you see, the more you just block it out. It's the street equivalent of spam.

And they don't seem to understand how advertising works. If you are advertising something of specific interest, then you need to target your advertising to people who are likely to be interested in that thing, And not just random passersby in the street. How many thousands of times, for example, have you been invited to "Think in Spanish?" Have you signed up for your Spanish lessons yet?

 

[Lenser]

Nope, no Spanish lessons yet. Funny, that.

Totally see your point. And I too wonder about the efficacy of postering at all in the internet age. Yet it's being done all the same. Either the poster people haven't woke up to the fact that it's 2012, or they know something we don't - or they just don't care. Posters are immediate, that's for sure - you don't need the internet to get the message.

But that noted, I agree with you that the more posters covering a given chunk of space, the less I'm reading any of it, the more it resembles indiscriminate, annoying spam.

 

[Lenser]

Further to the point about multiple posterings of the same item; probably what happens is that your conscious brain stops seeing them anymore, yet it's still being absorbed. I believe several scientific studies have been done pointing to our unconscious absorption of messages embedded in advertising. Which is why you see so many construction hoardings plastered with the same one or two posters. That blanketing is done for a reason - because it's an effective way of jamming them into our brains. We might not realize we're even being "seeded" with messages but that's beside the point. As long as there's a good chance we might eventually act on those triggers, then many advertisers feel their campaign has been worthwhile. Of course, that seeding is less effective the more variety of messages you get competing for space on any given surface. Then it just becomes visual chaos. But if you can generate a sufficiently large pattern of the same image then you've got a real chance at lodging the message in the noggins of passers-by.

Note that I am not excusing posters for indiscriminately slapping their stuff up on every surface - mailboxes, hydro boxes, poles and the like. I agree that it would be much better to have designated walls for public, 'small commercial' messaging, and to leave other surfaces unmolested - no glue, no zillions of staples, no confetti-like shreds of paper. Might actually be a good compromise. But in order for it to work there must be a strong, mutually agreed upon respect for the urban environment - on the part of every strata of society living within it.

 

[MisterF]

I have no problem with the layered look of successive layers of posters. I consider it part of the urban aesthetic.

Have you ever been to another major city? As an urban planner I would assume you have. Posters are definitely not part of the "urban aesthetic" in most of the cities I've been to. I don't get the argument that posters and urban clutter somehow contribute to urban vitality or make an area less sterile. Cities like Chicago, Madrid, and London aren't plagued with ugly public realm that Toronto puts up with - would you say those cities are more sterile or less vital because of it?