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Sometimes I am an advocate for big, bold urban change. This is where I tend to be closely aligned with urbanists like Joe Berridge, co-founder of Urban Strategies. (We sat on a panel together this past October at the Council for Canadian Urbanism Forum, and I found myself agreeing with him on this point.)
For example, last week I tweeted that the edges of High Park would be better off looking like Central Park in New York. By this I meant that High Park is an urban park with a major subway line running on top of it — we should not be shy about embracing a more urban future.
This stretch of Bloor Street, at the north edge of the park, has got to be one of the dullest stretches of street along the entire line. It's hardly fitting for Toronto's most famous urban park.
Some of you didn't like this tweet. Serendipitously, it also happened to align with a heated community meeting for a major two-tower rental development in High Park North. But this project is one block from a subway station, and it should be approved. The unfortunate reality is that we have underdeveloped much of the land around our transit infrastructure.
At the very same time, I am a strong advocate for small-scale, incremental change. We've spoken a lot about this topic over the years, particularly in the context of Tokyo. Japan is renowned for its flexible approach to zoning and for the way that it allows small, ground-up interventions. The result is an approach to urbanism that is often referred to as emergent.
A good example of this approach is the work of Japanese developer Staple. Staple calls itself a "soft developer" and what that translates into is a bottom-up model that is focused on regenerating local economies. (This is arguably even more important in the context of Japan, where a shrinking population is creating urban decline in many communities.)
To achieve this, they rely on "soft infrastructure" such as local shops and grocers, hotels, housing, workspaces, restaurants, regenerative agriculture, lifelong learning centers, and more. In other words, they are focused on the nuts and bolts that make for thriving local communities and that can be easily missed if you're too focused on the bigger picture.
One recently completed project is Soil Nihonbashi in Tokyo's Nihonbashi-Kabutocho neighborhood. Designed by architect Kiyoaki Takeda, the project opened in September and includes a coffee shop, cocktail bar, dim sum spot (and other dining options), co-working space, parklet (bakery), rooftop agricultural garden, and 14-room hotel.
It's the kind of hotel that global brands tend to avoid like the plague. It's too small. Too many diseconomies of scale. But it's exactly the kind of hotel and mix of uses that is wonderful for local communities. Think of what the Drake Hotel here in Toronto did for West Queen West when it opened back in the day.
All of this brings me back to something I have said before. A good recipe for city building is to be stubborn on vision, but flexible on the details. Cities are at their best when you allow and empower bottom-up change. Get out of the way. There's no way that top-down planning will get it all right. So if you can combine bold vision with flexible implementation, well then, you've got the secret sauce.
Cover photo from architect Kiyoaki Takeda
Joe Berridge's recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail is a good reminder -- in the face of a whole lot of uncertainty -- about the resiliency of our cities.
Those previous decades saw a surge of people and jobs locating downtown, with consequent escalation in rents and prices of offices and housing. Why? Partly demographic, as the well-educated children of the baby boom reached adulthood, and partly lifestyle and work style. Young people go to big cities not just to work and live, but for sex, style, money and power. For ambition and anonymity. And for risk. All in the petri dish of downtown density. These drives have always been as powerful as their subsequent search for suburban security and community.
The structure of the modern megalopolis is not an accident – the dramatic rise of tech employment, two-earner families, the decline of manufacturing, the later date of marriage, smaller households, lifestyle consumerism, teamwork cultures, serial re-education and training – none of these societal trends looks to be diminished by COVID-19. All of them seem to prefer high-density, high-interaction environments.
For those of us in Toronto, it's also important to remember just how quickly this city region was growing pre-COVID-19. That is unlikely to change on the other side of this.
Sometimes I am an advocate for big, bold urban change. This is where I tend to be closely aligned with urbanists like Joe Berridge, co-founder of Urban Strategies. (We sat on a panel together this past October at the Council for Canadian Urbanism Forum, and I found myself agreeing with him on this point.)
For example, last week I tweeted that the edges of High Park would be better off looking like Central Park in New York. By this I meant that High Park is an urban park with a major subway line running on top of it — we should not be shy about embracing a more urban future.
This stretch of Bloor Street, at the north edge of the park, has got to be one of the dullest stretches of street along the entire line. It's hardly fitting for Toronto's most famous urban park.
Some of you didn't like this tweet. Serendipitously, it also happened to align with a heated community meeting for a major two-tower rental development in High Park North. But this project is one block from a subway station, and it should be approved. The unfortunate reality is that we have underdeveloped much of the land around our transit infrastructure.
At the very same time, I am a strong advocate for small-scale, incremental change. We've spoken a lot about this topic over the years, particularly in the context of Tokyo. Japan is renowned for its flexible approach to zoning and for the way that it allows small, ground-up interventions. The result is an approach to urbanism that is often referred to as emergent.
A good example of this approach is the work of Japanese developer Staple. Staple calls itself a "soft developer" and what that translates into is a bottom-up model that is focused on regenerating local economies. (This is arguably even more important in the context of Japan, where a shrinking population is creating urban decline in many communities.)
To achieve this, they rely on "soft infrastructure" such as local shops and grocers, hotels, housing, workspaces, restaurants, regenerative agriculture, lifelong learning centers, and more. In other words, they are focused on the nuts and bolts that make for thriving local communities and that can be easily missed if you're too focused on the bigger picture.
One recently completed project is Soil Nihonbashi in Tokyo's Nihonbashi-Kabutocho neighborhood. Designed by architect Kiyoaki Takeda, the project opened in September and includes a coffee shop, cocktail bar, dim sum spot (and other dining options), co-working space, parklet (bakery), rooftop agricultural garden, and 14-room hotel.
It's the kind of hotel that global brands tend to avoid like the plague. It's too small. Too many diseconomies of scale. But it's exactly the kind of hotel and mix of uses that is wonderful for local communities. Think of what the Drake Hotel here in Toronto did for West Queen West when it opened back in the day.
All of this brings me back to something I have said before. A good recipe for city building is to be stubborn on vision, but flexible on the details. Cities are at their best when you allow and empower bottom-up change. Get out of the way. There's no way that top-down planning will get it all right. So if you can combine bold vision with flexible implementation, well then, you've got the secret sauce.
Cover photo from architect Kiyoaki Takeda
Joe Berridge's recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail is a good reminder -- in the face of a whole lot of uncertainty -- about the resiliency of our cities.
Those previous decades saw a surge of people and jobs locating downtown, with consequent escalation in rents and prices of offices and housing. Why? Partly demographic, as the well-educated children of the baby boom reached adulthood, and partly lifestyle and work style. Young people go to big cities not just to work and live, but for sex, style, money and power. For ambition and anonymity. And for risk. All in the petri dish of downtown density. These drives have always been as powerful as their subsequent search for suburban security and community.
The structure of the modern megalopolis is not an accident – the dramatic rise of tech employment, two-earner families, the decline of manufacturing, the later date of marriage, smaller households, lifestyle consumerism, teamwork cultures, serial re-education and training – none of these societal trends looks to be diminished by COVID-19. All of them seem to prefer high-density, high-interaction environments.
For those of us in Toronto, it's also important to remember just how quickly this city region was growing pre-COVID-19. That is unlikely to change on the other side of this.
But Berridge does also point out some of the potential fallouts from this pandemic. The economics of urban transit, for example, could remain a problem for quite some time. This will strain public purses. (Car usage rebounded quickly, but transit ridership has not.)
We are also likely to see increased traffic congestion as a result of people eschewing transit (and probably a bunch of other factors). Like Berridge, I am a supporter of road/congestion pricing, and have been writing about that on this blog for many years.
The best things to tax/price are things that are generally viewed as bad and where demand is largely inelastic. That is, even if you increase the price, many or most people will probably still do it anyway. Think of things like smoking.
Up until now, Toronto hasn't had the moxie to make difficult (political) decisions like this one. Perhaps this pandemic will leave us no other choice.
I was in Montreal for the long weekend and I decided to take the time off from writing. I don't do that very often, but it was the right thing to do this past weekend.
Montreal is one of my favorite cities. I spent quite a bit of time there when I was in my early 20s and I almost ended up at McGill for my undergraduate degree. So I have a soft spot for the place.
One of my friends once described Montreal to me (and contrasted it against Toronto) by saying that it has grandeur. And I think that is exactly the right word.
There are so many moments throughout the city where you just feel its impressiveness. It's almost as if, from the very beginning, the city knew what it was destined to become.
In contrast to this, urban planner Joe Berridge has, in the past, referred to Toronto as an accidental metropolis. And I think that is a similarly accurate way of describing our city.
Sometimes in Toronto (or perhaps oftentimes, depending on who you ask), you have to scratch a little beneath the surface to find what makes Toronto a truly great city.
It's as if the city didn't know what it was destined to become, and built accordingly. Things just happened -- accidentally.
Grandeur isn't usually something that is discussed today in city planning circles. We instead talk about things like angular planes, context and, of course, building height.
But maybe it's time we rethink our list of requirements. Maybe it's time we ask ourselves: "Are we creating a city with grandeur?"
Image: Drone photo from the top of Mount Royal
But Berridge does also point out some of the potential fallouts from this pandemic. The economics of urban transit, for example, could remain a problem for quite some time. This will strain public purses. (Car usage rebounded quickly, but transit ridership has not.)
We are also likely to see increased traffic congestion as a result of people eschewing transit (and probably a bunch of other factors). Like Berridge, I am a supporter of road/congestion pricing, and have been writing about that on this blog for many years.
The best things to tax/price are things that are generally viewed as bad and where demand is largely inelastic. That is, even if you increase the price, many or most people will probably still do it anyway. Think of things like smoking.
Up until now, Toronto hasn't had the moxie to make difficult (political) decisions like this one. Perhaps this pandemic will leave us no other choice.
I was in Montreal for the long weekend and I decided to take the time off from writing. I don't do that very often, but it was the right thing to do this past weekend.
Montreal is one of my favorite cities. I spent quite a bit of time there when I was in my early 20s and I almost ended up at McGill for my undergraduate degree. So I have a soft spot for the place.
One of my friends once described Montreal to me (and contrasted it against Toronto) by saying that it has grandeur. And I think that is exactly the right word.
There are so many moments throughout the city where you just feel its impressiveness. It's almost as if, from the very beginning, the city knew what it was destined to become.
In contrast to this, urban planner Joe Berridge has, in the past, referred to Toronto as an accidental metropolis. And I think that is a similarly accurate way of describing our city.
Sometimes in Toronto (or perhaps oftentimes, depending on who you ask), you have to scratch a little beneath the surface to find what makes Toronto a truly great city.
It's as if the city didn't know what it was destined to become, and built accordingly. Things just happened -- accidentally.
Grandeur isn't usually something that is discussed today in city planning circles. We instead talk about things like angular planes, context and, of course, building height.
But maybe it's time we rethink our list of requirements. Maybe it's time we ask ourselves: "Are we creating a city with grandeur?"
Image: Drone photo from the top of Mount Royal
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