Yesterday morning I went for a swim at the new Regent Park Aquatic Centre. I used to swim regularly when I was in grad school in the US, but it fell off when I moved back to Toronto and there wasn’t a convenient place for me to walk to. Having to drive to a gym or to a pool can really cut hurt how often you’re able to go.
In any case, the pool was fantastic. On the west side of it are glass sliding doors that face the park. And since yesterday was such a beautiful day, they were all open while everyone was swimming lanes. The wooden ceiling also gives the space a nice, warm feel.
The biggest surprise for me though was the universal change rooms. I had never been in a co-ed change room before – or one that was completely open and visible to the pool (there are small private rooms so you can actually change). For families, it makes a lot of sense. Everyone can go in together and it’s easy to watch your kids in the pool from within the change room.
After my swim, I rode my bike around Regent Park and tweeted this out:
Posterity will say: Did you know that Regent Park used to be shitty? No way. Way. #athiscity #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/VSgFwLc8NI
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
What’s happening in Regent Park is incredibly exciting. To me, it feels like a return to the fundamentals of city building. They’ve reconnected the old street grid – which had previously been removed to create the old “towers in a park” scheme – and they’re clearly working towards a proper urban neighborhood with retail at grade and buildings pushed right up against the street.
A big measure of success, though, will be how animated the streets become and how well the retail does. Because all of that isn’t quite there yet. But we’re on our way. And already I feel like we’re about to forget what the old Regent Park used to be like. Toronto may have lived with that neighborhood for over 60 years, but future generations will barely know it existed.
Image: Shaigil
The New York Times published an interesting and popular article last Friday called The Post-Post-Apocalyptic Detroit. It of course talks all about the efforts of billionaire Dan Gilbert, but it also talks about the initiatives of many small and local entrepreneurs who are doing their part to help revive the city – while at the same time making a profit.
One thing that I found interesting about the article is the extent to which the private sector has taken over the responsibilities of the public sector. With only 35,000 of the city’s 88,000 streetlights actually working, the city simply doesn’t have the money to pay its bills. When I visited the city last fall, I was told that the city couldn’t even afford batteries for its parking meters.
So the private sector has stepped up.
In downtown, Dan Gilbert pays for his own security force to patrol the area 24 hours a day both on the ground and through 300 surveillance cameras. And in the Jefferson East corridor, John Stroh III – of the Stroh Brewery Company – is paying for 3,500 hours of private security in order to help transform the area into a walkable retail strip.
It’s a model that relies on the funding and vision of rich people to catalyze change. And it strikes me as a quintessentially American way of going about it. In Canada, I’m not so sure it would be approached in quite the same way, which I think is both good and bad. I think in Canada there would be more government involvement.
If the rich people are there and willing to step up (like they are right now in Detroit), then I would assume the capital would be deployed more efficiently and that change would happen more quickly. But if the rich people aren’t willing to step up, then nothing happens and the place declines.
That might be an oversimplification, but I think there are differences.
To end, I’m going to leave you with this Bloomberg video about Steve Case’s (former AOL founder) “Rise of the Rest” road trip to Detroit. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUG0H4VThM?rel=0]
In reading a recent Financial Times article called, Are creative people the key to city regeneration?, I was reminded of a famous line from the late urbanist Jane Jacobs: “New ideas need old buildings.” What she meant by that is the following:
Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them…. for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
And what she was effectively getting at is that we live in a world obsessed with historical data and precedence. To use the words of business thinker Roger Martin: “The enemy of innovation is the phrase ‘prove it.’” Because, if it’s never been done before, how can you prove it? You can certainly imagine it. But you can’t prove it.
If you’re in the business of building buildings, convincing your lender to give you the money to build something that’s never been done before, is an almost impossible sell. That’s not the way it works. Which is why Jane Jacobs famously said that “new ideas need old buildings.”
We’ve seen this story play out in countless cities around the world. The creatives move into an scuzzy neighborhood, make it cool and then investment follows. The neighborhood has been proven. But for this cycle to continue, we need a continuous stock of derelict buildings and undesirable neighborhoods, or at least areas that offer the same kind of affordability and flexibility to creative entrepreneurs.
Often these circumstances have been the result of failure. The proven ideas that got the buildings built in the first place became no longer relevant. And so the buildings were left to expire. But in many global cities, these kinds of areas are an endangered specifies. However, it’s in our best interest to make sure that we don’t lose our creativity alongside them.