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N.Y. group flunks T.O. waterfront
Adds it to 'Hall of Shame'
Condo towers cut off Toronto's waterfront, a N.Y.-based group says.
Dave McGinn, National Post
Published: Friday, August 04, 2006
Toronto's waterfront has just been put in the same class as Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., Exchange Square in Manchester, England, and the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
But Torontonians and the urban planners who have had a hand in designing the waterfront may want to hold off on boasting -- like these public spaces around the world, a New York-based organization yesterday added Toronto's waterfront to its "Hall of Shame."
"Toronto is a city of great diversity, great civic pride and social life, but that's not apparent when you look at the waterfront," says Ethan Kent, vice-president of Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit urban planning and design organization.
Mr. Kent, who runs the organization's Great Cities Initiative, criticized the "narrow approach to planning and the commercial development that has not taken the opportunity to create special public spaces" on Toronto's waterfront.
Election to the group's Hall of Shame is based on access, comfort, usage and activities and sociability.
"Once you start to look at it through that lens, you start to see where its strengths and weaknesses are," Mr. Kent said.
The waterfront's main weakness, according to the organization, is that it is dominated by privately owned commercial space.
"Private development has resulted in a barrier of condo high-rises, which blocks the view of the water from the rest of Toronto and creates a psychological barrier for the general public," reads a description of the waterfront on the organization's Web site.
"The best waterfronts are the places that bring out all aspects of a city," said Mr. Kent, who cited Vancouver's Granville Island as his organization's favourite waterfront in the world. "It works for locals and for tourists; it has a lot of income-generating things but at the same time those things are part of a larger public vision for that space," he said.
The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation agrees that some of the Project for Public Space's criticisms are valid, but says its plans for the waterfront are based on balancing commercial and recreational interests, as the New York organization recommends.
"The condominium buildings in the Harbourfront area and the central waterfront aren't what we want to replicate," said Kristin Jenkins, vice-president of communications for the corporation, a group established by the federal government, the province of Ontario and the city in 2001 to oversee the waterfront's renewal.
"One of our key objectives is to open up the waterfront and give it back to the people of Toronto, and the way to do that is to create a significant and spectacular public realm," Ms. Jenkins said.
"The public needs to be able to get down to the water and enjoy it and be able to walk across it and experience it. Right now, it's quite constrained," she added.
Plans to build parks and a promenade that will connect the central waterfront from one end to the other will help make the waterfront accessible, she said.
Still, with completion of the waterfront revitalization not expected for another 25 to 30 years, the Project for Public Spaces fears planning may be outpaced by private development.
"Condos are being thrown up every week it seems," said Project for Public Spaces vice-president Cynthia Nikitin. "You'll have all these buildings and then when you want public space all the decisions will have been made and it'll be too late."
N.Y. group flunks T.O. waterfront
Adds it to 'Hall of Shame'
Condo towers cut off Toronto's waterfront, a N.Y.-based group says.
Dave McGinn, National Post
Published: Friday, August 04, 2006
Toronto's waterfront has just been put in the same class as Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., Exchange Square in Manchester, England, and the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
But Torontonians and the urban planners who have had a hand in designing the waterfront may want to hold off on boasting -- like these public spaces around the world, a New York-based organization yesterday added Toronto's waterfront to its "Hall of Shame."
"Toronto is a city of great diversity, great civic pride and social life, but that's not apparent when you look at the waterfront," says Ethan Kent, vice-president of Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit urban planning and design organization.
Mr. Kent, who runs the organization's Great Cities Initiative, criticized the "narrow approach to planning and the commercial development that has not taken the opportunity to create special public spaces" on Toronto's waterfront.
Election to the group's Hall of Shame is based on access, comfort, usage and activities and sociability.
"Once you start to look at it through that lens, you start to see where its strengths and weaknesses are," Mr. Kent said.
The waterfront's main weakness, according to the organization, is that it is dominated by privately owned commercial space.
"Private development has resulted in a barrier of condo high-rises, which blocks the view of the water from the rest of Toronto and creates a psychological barrier for the general public," reads a description of the waterfront on the organization's Web site.
"The best waterfronts are the places that bring out all aspects of a city," said Mr. Kent, who cited Vancouver's Granville Island as his organization's favourite waterfront in the world. "It works for locals and for tourists; it has a lot of income-generating things but at the same time those things are part of a larger public vision for that space," he said.
The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation agrees that some of the Project for Public Space's criticisms are valid, but says its plans for the waterfront are based on balancing commercial and recreational interests, as the New York organization recommends.
"The condominium buildings in the Harbourfront area and the central waterfront aren't what we want to replicate," said Kristin Jenkins, vice-president of communications for the corporation, a group established by the federal government, the province of Ontario and the city in 2001 to oversee the waterfront's renewal.
"One of our key objectives is to open up the waterfront and give it back to the people of Toronto, and the way to do that is to create a significant and spectacular public realm," Ms. Jenkins said.
"The public needs to be able to get down to the water and enjoy it and be able to walk across it and experience it. Right now, it's quite constrained," she added.
Plans to build parks and a promenade that will connect the central waterfront from one end to the other will help make the waterfront accessible, she said.
Still, with completion of the waterfront revitalization not expected for another 25 to 30 years, the Project for Public Spaces fears planning may be outpaced by private development.
"Condos are being thrown up every week it seems," said Project for Public Spaces vice-president Cynthia Nikitin. "You'll have all these buildings and then when you want public space all the decisions will have been made and it'll be too late."