Recent Architecture in Toronto compared to other cities

[Archivist]

One thing that makes Toronto feel "messier" than a lot of great world cities, regardless of the architecture of individual buildings, is the total inconsistency of size and style. - I tend to agree with this, though I also appreciate our mixed-up kind of juxtapositioning. I'd actually argue that a mixed up approach is more common than not. London, for instance, definitely has contrasting areas, whereas Paris and Amsterdam tend to be more consistently planned. Again, I think once you get outside of the old cities of Europe, it's all pretty much mixed.

 

[billy corgan]

Archivist,
Would you say that European and Asian cities in general have better sidewalk maintenance compared to Toronto? I find the asphalt patchwork over concrete and stone walkways to be a major eyesore in this city. In my travels, I have encountered this in other cities but it is not as rampant as it is in Toronto.

 

[MisterF]

What I usually find lacking in these discussions are actual comparisons with other cities. Two problems here: identifying problems in Toronto and assuming it is better elsewhere, or basing comparisons on only the best examples from other cities, often based on web browsing than an actual visit.

Here's a few things I observed from actual visits to other cities:

Tokyo is absolutely cluttered with overhead wires all over the place, so much so that I noticed it, when this is not generally something that usually bothers me. Public space in Tokyo is really badly designed - if you aren't shopping, you aren't doing anything. Their subway stops are blander than the Bloor-Danforth Line.

Paris has a tent city in the Place de la Republique and graffiti scratched into every available surface, as does apparently every European city and New York. Homelessness seemed rife in Paris, all over, including in tourist areas.

New York has tons of unbelievably bland and horrific recent architecture, and has far greater problems than Toronto does in getting projects off the ground. Where is New York's Gehry? Planned, and forgotten.

Amsterdam's waterfront redevelopment, which I have walked through twice in different weather, has some lovely features but is sterile in the extreme, and I actually came to the conclusion that the guiding principle of the whole project is to ensure that tourists never go there. The main circle where one waits for the tram to arrive has one bunker-like underground bar, and the ugly rear ends of several buildings, including dumpsters. As public space, it's a grotesque failure.

And by the way, I love all these cities and would go back to any of them in a millisecond. I can overlook some blandness / dirtiness / ugliness in light of the overall experience of being there. But I offer the same generosity to Toronto, even as I hope and agitate for better.

Nice post. I'll add another city to the list:

Prague (and other Czech cities): Almost every sidewalk in the city centre is either cobblestone or brick. In Toronto almost every sidewalk is concrete, even the really wide ones, and even ones in tourist areas. Small towns and cities all over Canada have figured out how to incorporate brick into sidewalks, on at least main downtown streets, but the most you tend to see in Toronto is a few brick accents here and there on huge expanses of concrete. The flip side to that is that in Prague's suburban areas asphalt sidewalks dominate, and you even see a few asphalt sidewalks downtown. One thing that surprised me there was that some surprisingly prominent squares have been turned into parking lots.

The examples given at the start of this thread deal with the architecture of individual buildings. In that department, we are probably okay, but I've found that what gives a city a good, urban feel is consistency of some sort *across* different buildings, in size, massing, style, etc.

One thing that makes Toronto feel "messier" than a lot of great world cities, regardless of the architecture of individual buildings, is the total inconsistency of size and style. We have 30 storey glass condos next to 2 storey 19th century shops, next to 10 storey office buildings from the 50s. I personally have grown to enjoy this aspect of the city, but it does preclude the sort of grand feel that you get from Parisian boulevards and Manhattan canyons, due to their consistency. Even in Tokyo, where most individual buildings are forgettable, some areas achieve that grand feeling solely due to consistency of scale.

If Toronto started to move away from its fairly laissez-faire approach to scale to the extreme of designating certain boulevards to be exactly, say, 7 storeys, no more and no less, it might achieve that grand feel in places. Would that be make sense, or be worth it, I'm not sure.

You see it in Toronto too but it's mixed - the podium on the new RBC tower matches the streetwall on Wellington perfectly, but the Ritz's podium doesn't measure up.

Toronto doesn't have the history of a lot of cities but it's perfectly possible to build a great pedestrian street from scratch. Wellington St between John and Clarence Square is a good example. It's almost all new buildings and it feels like a real neighbourhood. Most of the new buildings meet the street really well.

 

[ganjavih]

That's one of my beefs with Toronto. Buildings are one issue, what about the stuff in between? Sidewalks, street furniture, parks, lamps posts, hydro lines, etc. I've seen a fair number of major cities in North America and Europe and as much as I love Toronto, it is one of the shabbier-looking cities.... unrefined and rough around the edges. Every city has its rougher areas but our major central strips such as Yonge, Bloor West, University, etc. should be in much better shape.

 

[Hydrogen]

I agree, the streetscape of this city leaves something to be desired in too many instances.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Much of the visual clutter on our streets consists of redundant and repetitive signage. Letting BIA's create their own signs and furniture undermines what little streetscape design coherence exists in the city as a whole. And a City government that sees street furniture largely as a vehicle for revenue-generating advertising threatens to layer more visual chaos on top of that.

Mustapha's Then and Now photo series shows how out of hand things can get when retailers put up large storefront signs that often obscure attractive architectural features of buildings, seem to be part of some sort of screaming war for our attention, and don't conform to any design guidelines.

 

[Archivist]

I would have to agree that we are wanting on the 'stuff in between' front - the sidewalks, "decorative" pots etc. It's an area where we could improve.

To be honest (and it does hurt me to say this) we should look to Vancouver for an example of a city whose ability to make their sidewalks, walkways, and street furniture coherent and pleasant. Little things like making leaf imprints in concrete, and having pleasant coverings for the roots of trees embedded in the sidewalks. And in Vancouver, in the west end, where they have built blockages to traffic by artificially cutting off a through street, it's like a garden with trees and shrubs and is gorgeous to walk through. In Toronto, where they do the same (I'm thinking Earl Street off Jarvis) - it's a couple of concrete pillars without even a means for a bicycle to get through - extremely thoughtless.

I believe one of the differences, but I could be wrong, is that in Vancouver the Parks Department is responsible for all of this kind of stuff (not just parks, but essentially any level surface where things may be planted) - whereas in Toronto it is the Transportation guys who are involved in it. Perhaps someone knows this.