Last week the Ryerson City Building Institute published 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.

This evening Slate Asset Management hosted the community meeting that I’ve been writing about on the blog over the last little while. 

And at this open house Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang introduced a new block plan and mixed-use building at the southwest corner of Yonge Street and Delisle Avenue in midtown Toronto.

I think it went really well. We had over 200 people RSVP, but based on my imprecise head count, over 300 people actually showed up. 

I would tell you more right now, but it’s very late. So I’m going to instead leave you with this article by Alex Bozikovic, titled, Studio Gang’s new Toronto tower follows the right recipe: tall, innovative and excellent.

One of the biggest pieces of infrastructure currently under construction in Toronto is the Crosstown LRT line, which will run on and under Eglinton Avenue right through the heart of midtown. The total length of the line is 19 km, and 10 km of it will be underground along with 12 of its stations.

Here’s a map:

But as the Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, rightly pointed out in this blog post earlier this year, it’s important to think of this line, not just as a piece of transit infrastructure, but as a broader city building initiative. With this line comes a tremendous opportunity to rethink and rebuild one of Toronto’s most important avenues.

I have no doubt that this will happen over the coming years and decades. I mean, just look at the development activity taking place on St. Clair Avenue West right now, which you could argue is the result of its right-of-way streetcar line. But in this instance, what I’m specifically curious about is what will happen at each of the stations along Eglinton Avenue.

If you take a look at the Stations and Stops page on the Crosstown website, you can see where all of the primary and secondary entrances will be and how each station will generally function. But what is not clear is whether we will be using this opportunity to build additional density on top of them.

Here’s how they have “blocked out” the primary entrance for Avenue station:

I have no idea what it’ll become. But if it ends up as single-storey and single-purpose building, then I think we will have missed an opportunity. And the same goes for many, if not all, of the other stations along the Eglinton Crosstown line. Fixed rail is such a massive driver of real estate value, and so it seems silly not to take advantage of that in some way.

If anyone has any insights into how these stations will or will not be developed, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Last week the Ryerson City Building Institute published 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.

This evening Slate Asset Management hosted the community meeting that I’ve been writing about on the blog over the last little while. 

And at this open house Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang introduced a new block plan and mixed-use building at the southwest corner of Yonge Street and Delisle Avenue in midtown Toronto.

I think it went really well. We had over 200 people RSVP, but based on my imprecise head count, over 300 people actually showed up. 

I would tell you more right now, but it’s very late. So I’m going to instead leave you with this article by Alex Bozikovic, titled, Studio Gang’s new Toronto tower follows the right recipe: tall, innovative and excellent.

One of the biggest pieces of infrastructure currently under construction in Toronto is the Crosstown LRT line, which will run on and under Eglinton Avenue right through the heart of midtown. The total length of the line is 19 km, and 10 km of it will be underground along with 12 of its stations.

Here’s a map:

But as the Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, rightly pointed out in this blog post earlier this year, it’s important to think of this line, not just as a piece of transit infrastructure, but as a broader city building initiative. With this line comes a tremendous opportunity to rethink and rebuild one of Toronto’s most important avenues.

I have no doubt that this will happen over the coming years and decades. I mean, just look at the development activity taking place on St. Clair Avenue West right now, which you could argue is the result of its right-of-way streetcar line. But in this instance, what I’m specifically curious about is what will happen at each of the stations along Eglinton Avenue.

If you take a look at the Stations and Stops page on the Crosstown website, you can see where all of the primary and secondary entrances will be and how each station will generally function. But what is not clear is whether we will be using this opportunity to build additional density on top of them.

Here’s how they have “blocked out” the primary entrance for Avenue station:

I have no idea what it’ll become. But if it ends up as single-storey and single-purpose building, then I think we will have missed an opportunity. And the same goes for many, if not all, of the other stations along the Eglinton Crosstown line. Fixed rail is such a massive driver of real estate value, and so it seems silly not to take advantage of that in some way.

If anyone has any insights into how these stations will or will not be developed, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.