Key word: "old". Look, by that standard, there's no hope that Toronto, or *any* contemporary North American city, can *ever* live up to "old" Paris. It's like expecting classical operettas from a universe of hip-hoppers. And it encases the Parisian experience in a tourist/elitist plastic bubble.
My argument is that with its tensions and counterpoints and imperfections, the "full" Paris is more first-rate than the "first-rate" Paris; indeed, it can reveal the mere tourist/urbanist-magnetic latter to have feet of clay. (Perfect feet-of-clay moment was the suburban riots of a couple of years ago, showing how the Ville de Paris is a bit of a cultural gated community.)
Sure, tourist/elitists may ooh, aah at Fauchon's wares; but they're cheating themselves of the "full" Paris by ignoring the likes of Ed L'Epicier. (And I'm leaving neighbourhood markets out of this for the moment.) Now, by the same caliber, Ed's got superior fare to, say, No Frills (hey, it's the geography)--but still, there's an argument to be made that once you've experienced "full" Paris, you're more prepared to accept "full" Toronto or "full" anyplace, even with all imperfections accounted for.
A generation ago, I might have returned to Toronto from some far off place of Euro-sophistication thinking that, geez, this is a tank town by comparison. Now, I just think we're all warty lovely satellites of each other, and it's nothing to do with Toronto climbing the "sophistication" ladder, either. (It's a tributary of the "psychogeographic" reflex which, as we all know, was itself born in Paris.)
Put it this way, unimaginative2: if, as a Torontonian, you never go to No Frills/Food Basics/Price Chopper because it's not even up to Ed L'Epicier standards, you're part of the problem. IMO anyway.
But anyway, back to Project Symphony: even if it's mundane, it isn't a really low level of mundane--if anything, this Miller/Diamond house style might be more our equivalent to Berlin urbanism under
Hans Stimmann, and even the tone of debate about it is (ideally) similar.
“His greatest accomplishment was to develop a strategic vision,†said Harald Kegler, a city planning expert at the Laboratory for Regional Planning in Saxony-Anhalt. “The most important thing he did was keep a cool head.â€
That levelheaded approach maximized results and minimized risk. At a recent party overlooking Potsdamer Platz, the German journalist and author Ulf Poschardt declared, “He saved us from the worst.â€
The arts editor of The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Claudius Seidl, then chimed in. “Yes,†he agreed. “But he also saved us from the best.â€