Shabby Public Realm

[Tewder]

I love NY (and agree, NYers were not, in my experience, any heavier than Torontonians -- maybe the opposite). I wasn't criticizing the public/private aspect of Bryant Park or other things in NY. I think it's great that the large number of very wealthy NYers put money in the city. NY beats Toronto and every other city in North America, including Chicago, hands down on great buildings and public spaces. This is as a result of history, money and the tremendous vision of a relatively small number of people over the past 200-300 years.

Can you understand for a moment how your statement above (highlighted by me) not only undermines and trivializes the massive efforts of NYC or Paris and the pride people take in those places but justifies and enables the complete opposite here? If you can't then I say there is little point in continuing this discussion, if you can then I think you would understand our frustration with the defeatist point of view you represent. All cities have their challenges and hurdles! Toronto's situation is not appreciably worse than other places... in fact much better, quite honestly.

It is not because either (1) the City of New York, as a municipality, is TODAY better at maintaining the public realm or (2) because the average New Yorker is more concerned about the public realm.

Yes, in fact I would argue those things are true! There is a collective, abiding understanding there that certain levels of streetscaping, maintenace and even at times excellence (if only in flourishes here and there) are demanded and provided... and in Paris there would literally be a mob lynching if the glory of that city wasn't spit-polished to perfection.

... but in the end it's not even about NYC and Paris. There are far smaller cities that demonstrate a basic and fundamental belief in the public realm in a way that we don't in Toronto.

The only two points I have really been trying to present in this thread are (1) improvements to the public realm cost money and if the City is to spend more on public realm I'm not convinced it should come from REDUCING the amount we spend on social services; and (2) overhead wires aside, I don't think we compare badly to most North American cities if you are talking about actual maintenance by the City of the public realm that it maintains. I am not talking about beaux arts museums and Central Parks and bridges. NY, Chicago and San Fran got us beat on those. But the portions of NY actually maintained by the City of New York are not maintained better than comparable spaces in Toronto.

In response to your first point we have to 'pay' ourselves first, meaning the collective 'we' by keeping our own house in order. Clearly the level to which we are doing this isn't enough given the dispiriting condition of our shabby public realm... and is this any different than what you would do on a personal level at home? You pay your bills, make your investments for your future, and maintain and beautify your own space - take personal responsibility for it - before you go out and help others with what's left? The degree to which you do this may vary from one individual to another but this is the basic responsible order of things. It should be no different at the collective level.

As to your second point, I would again simply disagree. I would encourage you to check out the web site of New York City Parks and Rec and take some virtual tours... or travel around in Google Streetview, looking at some of the smaller corners in Manhattan like Abingdon Square or Bowling Green. They are both public spaces, and what's more they are both small urban gestures that demonstrate somewhat randomly how much better they are at these things in NYC than we are in Toronto.

 

[pman]

What is wrong with this picture?

Tewder, in my eyes the Esplanade is close to as good as it gets in Toronto regarding aesthetics! feast your eyes on the recently completed traffic island at Bathurst and Lake Shore, complete with metal railing of the calibre that they install in sewage plants (already bent and broken by the way), compared to a random equivalent in London

what an embarrassment this city is

The second picture is a pretty typical example of a London streetscape - and I can say that because for the better part of a decade I commuted to London about a week a month for work. What is wrong with this picture you ask? I mean aside from how bad the comparison makes Toronto look (and by Toronto standards, the scene in the photo actually looks pretty good). What is wrong is that Ladies Mile in a previous post asserted that most of London looks like it was "dropped" (the ditto comment). No, LM, most of London looks like the photo posted by ntsuch. What is so frustrating about this subject is that most Torontonians, like LM, appear to incorrectly believe that other cities look the same as Toronto. And in the few cases where they acknowledge that maybe Toronto looks just a teeny-tiny bit more shabby than the global norm, that's OK because the proper role of municipal government is after all income redistribution and social services, not keeping the streets and sidewalks in good repair.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Some initial observations based on those two photos:

- Posters on the pole on the south side of Lakeshore at Bathurst
- crumbling concrete curb on the pedestrian island
- incomplete pedestrian line markings (notice the yellow lines don't go all the way to the pedestrian island itself) as well as the absence of pedestrian markings from the island to south side of Lakeshore
- three differing light standards: traditional "acorn" lights along Lakeshore, newish light standards on the south side of fleet, and residual early 1990s concrete light standards on the north side of Fleet (even the "y" light poles have two different light coverings for the same structure)
- excessive signage and differing colours of traffic light covers at the intersection

In sum, Toronto's image is one of incompleteness, mish-mash, and poorly maintained and ad-hoc streetscape treatments, whereas London's looks much more coherent and better maintained.

 

[Tewder]

Yes, to put it simply the Toronto picture shows the result of neglect and lack of funding, over time.

They have social programs in London too, right? I guess London's been around long enough to understand that it's important to give generously, but to not give away the house!

 

[Tza]

I don't know if I'm imagineing this, but Hydro does seem to be gradually undergrounding in a few places, eg along Queen, Gerrard, Carlaw and Dundas in the east end. Has anyone else noticed this? Of course in true TH style they simply saw the top half off of wooden poles off when they're done, rather than install attractive new ones, but at least it clears some of the clutter.

As for the poles being chopped half way, these are joint-use poles owned by Hydro. They install a new pole because the current has met its useful life. They re-lash onto the new pole and cut off the old pole where the hydro was connected. Then Bell / Rogers needs to come re-lash their cables onto the new pole. The problem being is they take forever to do this and then do not notify Hydro that the work is completed and it sits until someone reports it. My company had the task of going out for Hydro and cutting the poles down with a chainsaw, lots of fun!!

Someone else also made a comment about a pole not being right on the edge of the sidewalk. You cannot always put it there since the poles are going 2m below grade which means you need to change the offset if there is a water / gas main, bell structure, cable chamber, etc.

Hydro is actually burying lots of overhead cables but are doing it more in residential areas especially if the pole line runs across the rear property line due to access and maintenance issues.

 

[Dan416]

What I find amazing is that some people seem to glorify the shoddy public realm as some kind of "messy urbanism". I think we're just learning to love it and accept it because otherwise we'd go bonkers. It's clearly another aspect of Toronto Syndrome.

 

[Hipster Duck]

In response to your first point we have to 'pay' ourselves first, meaning the collective 'we' by keeping our own house in order. Clearly the level to which we are doing this isn't enough given the dispiriting condition of our shabby public realm...

Tewder, while I agree with what you have said up to this point in the thread, I would actually go further and say that Toronto often does pay a lot of money to beautify its realm, it's just that the end result is compromised by the absence of tiny, crucial details.

My favourite example is the recent Bloor street streetscaping project. It was beautiful and expensive, with its sophisticated interlocking granite sidewalks and curbs, wonderful flower arrangements and huge, imported plane trees. The effect, however, is compromised by the fact that the most crucial ingredient in streetscaping - the light standards and poles - were generic, highway off-ramp lights, with the usual cheap yellow traffic lights and giant, reflective blue street signs bolted onto them.

One has to really wonder why, after spending many millions on a painstaking reconstruction of the street, they would cheap out by a few hundred thousand dollars and not buy decorative light standards.

The whole outcome is like serving your dinner party guests Chateau Lafite in styrofoam dixie cups.

 

[adma]

What I find amazing is that some people seem to glorify the shoddy public realm as some kind of "messy urbanism". I think we're just learning to love it and accept it because otherwise we'd go bonkers. It's clearly another aspect of Toronto Syndrome.

Yet there's an inverse, not-all-that-negative consequence to such glorification: Torontonians probably being better able to appreciate the unlovely, workaday "non-tourist" areas of London, Paris et al. Real, organic urbanism, rather than coffee-table urbanism...

 

[pman]

Yet there's an inverse, not-all-that-negative consequence to such glorification: Torontonians probably being better able to appreciate the unlovely, workaday "non-tourist" areas of London, Paris et al. Real, organic urbanism, rather than coffee-table urbanism...

Adma has a point. As a Torontonian, I'm always floored by how much better the public realm is in other major cities I visit. But I'm not entirely sure that living in a city whose public realm sets a global standard for shabby, ugly and hostile to pedestrians is necessarily a good thing.

 

[Grimace]

As to your second point, I would again simply disagree. I would encourage you to check out the web site of New York City Parks and Rec and take some virtual tours... or travel around in Google Streetview, looking at some of the smaller corners in Manhattan like Abingdon Square or Bowling Green. They are both public spaces, and what's more they are both small urban gestures that demonstrate somewhat randomly how much better they are at these things in NYC than we are in Toronto.

I dropped off because this was going nowhere. But I lived in Manhattan for almost 4 years. I don't need to look at it on streetview. I probably have 20 pictures of the bull in Bowling Green from everytime someone came to visit. Both the spaces you mention were built in the 1800s. Again, I don't dispute that Manhattan is a better place to walk around because of the design and architecture. But you are also far more likely in NY to encounter torn up sidewalks, ridiculously encumbered traffic signs, entire blocks of graffiti covered garage doors (after a certain time of night) and garbage covered streets. I'm not complaining about this, it's life in the big city. But having lived there for an extended period of time, I simply disagree that the City itself is better at maintaining what it has. As just an example, the arch in Washington Square was surrounded by an ugly, poorly installed wire fence for the entire time I lived there. Washington Square generally was poorly kept, as was Battery Park. The great parks like Central Park, Bryant Park and Gramercy Park rely heavily or entirely on private funds. I'm not saying we're better, but I disagree that we're worse. You will not convince me otherwise, nor will google streetview.

 

[freshcutgrass]

These lovely, so-called meticulously well-maintained highly gentrified tourist areas in Paris, London, Manhattan, etc you speak of, come at a price. Try buying or renting an apartment, or running a business in these places, and you will find out. If you think taxes are high here...you have no idea. The old buildings in Paris are expensive to maintain, and there are minimum standards imposed. There are two property taxes (owner and occupant), and if you are an owner/occupant...you pay both. There are street cleaning taxes with rates differing per street. That's why you will not only pay an absurd amount of money for a coffee, there are two prices for take-out or sitting in the cafe.

So while these gentrified areas are lovely to visit, the odds are you could never afford to live or operate a business there.

So yes, while there are areas of the public realm in Toronto that needs better attention, remember too much of a good thing has its downside.

 

[pman]

We could make the same comparison between Toronto and global beta cities too. While it's a totally subjective comparison, I've found the public realm in Melbourne, Sydney, Boston and Lyon a lot better than in Toronto. And while Montreal has its problems with decaying infrastructure, it does try a lot harder to create and maintain a decent public realm than we do. For that matter, even South Beach manages a Lincoln Road, which would be completely beyond us.

 

[Tewder]

I would agree with pman. We don't have to aspire to be Paris or NYC to be better than what we currently are, clearly.

This doesn't let us off the hook though! We should still maintain some basic standards, and we should still have some public spaces that aren't a complete embarrassment. Heck, it'd be a coup just to get the University Ave. fountain running again! Sad, but true.

 

[freshcutgrass]

We should still maintain some basic standards, and we should still have some public spaces that aren't a complete embarrassment. Heck, it'd be a coup just to get the University Ave. fountain running again! Sad, but true.

Implying Toronto doesn't have a single public space that isn't a complete embarrassment implies you are blindly ranting, rather than making any statements worthy of debate. Honestly...you sound like an out of control SAL opinion piece.

And little anecdotal excuses like how they haven't gotten around to repairing a street fountain yet is not evidence to support your argument (not that you really have one). If it were true that Toronto does absolutely nothing, including not even able to repair a street fountain, how do you explain what has been done (Ireland Park, HTO, Sugar Beach, Sherbourne Common, St Clair, Brickworks, Underpass Park, Don River Park, NPS, etc, etc, etc).



The public realm includes many things....some of which you are obviously not aware of. There's a healthy medium between striving to improve and just being plain misanthropic. You are in a predicament, as clearly nothing will ever be good enough for you, and as usual....the grass is always greener....

 

[RC8]

Can we ban back-lit ads and store names in the city? I've never been to a city that uses them quite as heavily as Toronto, and frankly they are a crime to public realm.

W Queen W and King E are the areas where I've seen them used the least, and they are in my opinion the most charming parts of the city as a result. The Annex, Yonge, and Danforth on the other hand, look incredibly shabby.