A friend of mine recently told me about a documentary that he thought I’d like. It’s called Highrise. And it’s an exploration of vertical living around the world.
But it’s not your typical documentary. It’s a multi-year, multi-media documentary that I’m still in the midst of exploring. There’s videos, interactive web documentaries, blog posts and other stuff planned.
If you’re interested in highrise buildings and cities, you can start here and here on the New York Times’ website.
Transit planning is absolutely and utterly broken in Toronto. Over the past few years, it has become abundantly clear that our current methods are completely ineffectual. We’re entirely useless at delivering transit infrastructure to the most important economic region in Canada.
The process is deeply political, and with all three levels of government involved, as well as countless agencies, we’re getting absolutely nothing done. And when we do manage to achieve some level of progress, such as provincial funding for the Scarborough subway line, it turns out that fact and evidence would suggest we’re actually headed in the wrong direction.
It’s an unfortunate situation that we’ve gotten ourselves into, because transit and infrastructure have such a profound impact on productivity levels and our economy as a whole. And yet we’re just sitting back while our politicians fight over transit investment according to what best suits their voter bases.
Politicians should not be making these decisions. At this point they’ve proven their inability to make effective progress and so I believe we need to strip them of this responsibility. Part of the problem is that we have a mismatch of time horizons: politicians need quick wins, while transit investment is a long term game.
What we need is an entity - ideally one entity - that isn’t reliant on ad hoc funding hand outs. It needs a sustainable funding source and the power to make decisions about where infrastructure investments will be made in our region. We can’t continue to screw this up. Transit is far too important.
It’s no secret that TAS is working on a project in the Kingston Rd & Victoria Park area, technically known as Birch Cliff. As a result of this, I’ve been spending time getting to know this neighbourhood as well as the adjacent Upper Beaches area, which I truthfully didn’t know very well before.
As someone who grew up in the west end of Toronto and never lived east of the DVP before, my sense of the place was limited. But I have to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what a lot of people would simply call Scarborough.
Kingston Road is a thriving main street with lots of great local businesses, as well as a spattering of the usual chains - such as Starbucks - that arguably legitimize the arrival of a neighbourhood. On top of this, the next major block south is Queen Street East and the Beaches neighbourhood.
So to all of my downtown friends, go hop on your bike and check it out.