Next weekend a good friend of mine from architecture school will be visiting Toronto from Philadelphia. And I’m really excited to show him the city. (Next month it’s my turn to go to Philadelphia.)
He’s a fellow city geek. He hasn’t been to Toronto in a number of years. And I haven’t seen him since our trip to Detroit 2 years ago.
For those of us living and working in Toronto, there’s a lot to celebrate. Sure the Gardiner Expressway East decision didn’t go as I – as well as many other urbanists, including our Chief City Planner – had hoped. But there’s no shortage of other things to brag about.
So here are 10 reasons to visit Toronto right now:
1. We’ve created an entirely new business district south of Union Station called
a terrific report on Toronto’s Great Streets
. It profiles five streets in the city that have been “redesigned for greatness.” They are:
Harbord Street (continuous bike lanes)
Roncesvalles Avenue (placemaking and people)
St. Clair Avenue West (dedicated streetcar lane)
Queens Quay West (public waterfront promenade)
Market Street (prioritized for people and patios)
But what exactly makes a street a great one? The report describes it in this way: “They all play a key role in making the surrounding neighborhood a great place to live, work, and visit.”
This relates closely to what the City of Toronto calls a “complete street”, which is an approach to accommodating multiple kinds of users, enhancing the local context, and determining which trade-offs to make.
And there will always be trade-offs. I am fairly certain that all of these street redesigns were contentious at the time when they were proposed. Because at the end of the day they will never be all things to everyone.
I remember the St. Clair West fight vividly because I moved to the neighborhood in 2009 and the dedicated streetcar lane didn’t fully open until 2010. From 2005 to 2017, streetcar ridership grew 23%. But drivers have remained grouchy.
I now walk Market Street every single day and I agree that it’s one of the most beautiful and functional streets in the city. But the bollards are constantly getting beat up by drivers attempting to parallel park and the retail vacancy rate has not been 0% like is suggested in the report.
Queens Quay West is also a magnificent street. It was a giant step forward in terms of the quality of the public realm in this region and I spend a lot of time there. But it’s of course not perfect. All of us have seen the reports of cars ending up in odd locations, including underground, along the waterfront.
Riding your bike there can also feel like a challenging game of Frogger with all of the pedestrians that now obliviously meander back and forth across the cycling trail. I suggest riding with a good blow horn. The report rightly mentions the lack of delineation between these users.
But cities are a living laboratory and none of these streets should now be considered static. We are fortunate to be in a position to critique levels of greatness. If anything, the map at the top of this post tells me that we need to create more greatness across the other areas of this city.
of the country’s most important business district, as opposed to on the
edge
of it. It’s a better use of infrastructure.
2. We now have a dedicated train (the Union Pearson Express) that takes you from the country’s busiest airport directly to downtown in 25 minutes. You’ll find local retailers at the stations and a brand created by the brain behind Monocle Magazine. You can even use a smart card to ride it and our local transit system.
3. We didn’t shut down Uber. Instead our mayor wants to create new policy that will allow these services to coexist with conventional taxi services. We don’t yet know how this will turn out, but I believe it’s a step in the right direction. It’s Toronto taking a leadership approach to innovation as opposed to trying to stomp it out.
4. We are about to host the largest sporting event in Canadian history. The 17th Pan American Games will have double the number of athletes competing as the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
5. We created an entire neighborhood from scratch in order to house all of these athletes (Canary District). And I think it’s destined to become one of Toronto’s great neighborhoods. I’m saving my first visit for next weekend, so expect a follow-up post on this.
6. We are dramatically rethinking this city’s public realm. From the plaza out front of Union Station to the new Queens Quay Boulevard along the waterfront, we are prioritizing people and creating more complete streets. It has given Toronto an entirely new urban feel.
7. We are slowly starting to embrace our forgotten laneways and alleys through the help of organizations like The Laneway Project. And this is going to eventually lead to a further rethink of our pubic spaces and urban fabric.
10. The ATC community is in the process of identifying a new, quintessentially Toronto food dish. But since we have every type of imaginable cuisine here, we’re struggling to pick just one. When you visit, you can help us identify the best and most Toronto dish.
So there’s a lot to be excited about. I for one can’t wait for us to host the Pan Am Games, starting tomorrow. It’s a chance to show off this great city.
So if you’re also in town next weekend and want to geek out about cities, drop me a line.
Before & After: Queens Quay Boulevard
Yesterday I spent the evening walking Toronto’s new Queens Quay Boulevard, which fully reopened this past Friday after a number of years of construction.
But first, let’s take a look at what Queens Quay Boulevard used to be like. Here’s a Google Streetview image from 2009:
The streetcars ran in the middle of the street. Cars drove on the north and south side on both sides of the tracks. And the sidewalks were fairly small and usually at capacity during the busy summer months. It wasn’t a great street.
Now here’s a photo that I took yesterday from that same vantage point (2015):
The street has been completely reorganized. On the north side of the streetcar tracks is where the cars now drive in both directions. On the south side of the tracks the lanes of traffic have been replaced with a 2-way bike trail (part of the Martin Goodman Trail). And on both sides the pedestrian areas have been greatly expanded. It’s now a magnificent street.
If you haven’t yet been down to the new Queens Quay, I would encourage you to check it out on either foot or bicycle. (If you go on bicycle, let me know and I’ll join you.)
