Tag: freeway

• The third Los Angeles

  

  I just stumbled upon an interview with Christopher Hawthorne (architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times) talking about a “third Los Angeles.” 

  His argument is that the first Los Angeles ran from about 1880 to World War II, and was characterized by a form of urbanism that most of, today, do not associate with LA. It was a city of streetcars, innovative multi-family housing, and local landscapes.

  The second Los Angeles was the second half of the 20th century. And it is the LA that probably comes to mind for most people when they think of LA. It is the city of freeways, single-family homes, and sprawl.

  The third Los Angeles is the city’s most recent iteration and started sometime around 2000. Like many things in life, it is in some ways a return to the past: namely the first LA. It is about urban intensification, transit, and more drought resistant landscapes. It is a city that senses its geographic limits.

  I like how he talks about some of the challenges associated with intensification and this third LA:

  “People in very good conscience who live in Santa Monica or San Francisco think of a moratorium on development as a progressive thing to support rather than reactionary or conservative or just in their own political self-interest. I don’t have a problem with somebody who bought a house at a certain point saying, “I bought into a certain place, you know, I want it to stay this way, and I’m going to use whatever resources I can to keep it that way.” They have every right to say that, even if I disagree. I have a problem with people saying that’s consistent with a progressive agenda about cities or a forward-looking attitude about the environment or about resources. It’s not.”

  2017.01.03

• On boulevards vs. freeways

  Toronto’s Director of Urban Design, Harold Madi, recently did a 20 tweet series on boulevards. And since today is Gardiner East day, it seems appropriate to share it with you all. Thanks to Shawn Micallef for using Storify to put it all together neatly. If you can’t see all the tweets below, click here.

  //storify.com/shawnmicallef/grand-boulevard-vs-freeway/embed?border=false//storify.com/shawnmicallef/grand-boulevard-vs-freeway.js?border=false[View the story “Grand Boulevard vs Freeway — the details matter” on Storify]

  2015.06.10

• A petition to Toronto City Council to remove the Gardiner Expressway East

  

  “If the decision ultimately of the council is to support the hybrid I think frankly it’ll be a major step backwards and you’re going to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll be very frank, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.” 

  -Paul Bedford, former chief planner of Toronto

  As many of you I’m sure know, I have been a vocal and passionate supporter of removing the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto. I have written about it so many times that a lot of you are probably sick of hearing about it.

  I’m sorry if that’s the case. But it’s a hot and important topic in Toronto right now. We’re just over 3 weeks away from City Council finally making a decision. That is scheduled to happen on June 9th and/or 10th. 

  For the most part though, I was pretty confident that we would ultimately make what many of us believe is the right decision. But then this past week Mayor John Tory went public in his support for the “hybrid” option, which is basically to rebuild the elevated expressway in a slightly different configuration. And that really upset me.

  Here’s what that looks like (versus the remove option shown at the top of this post):

  

  Have we learned nothing from our past city building mistakes?

  Since that announcement, I went on Twitter every night this week to check out the discussions that were happening around #GardinerEast. And every night it got me so worked up that I then had trouble falling asleep. I have since stopped reading about the Gardiner East before bed.

  But rather than just get frustrated, my friend (a fellow city builder named Stephen Job) and I decided to do something about it and create a petition using Change.org.

  It is a petition that we will ultimately be sending to Toronto’s entire City Council prior to their June 9 meeting and we hope that you will consider signing it and sharing it with your network – regardless of whether or not you happen to live in Toronto. (Although it’ll certainly help if you’re a taxpayer and voter in the City of Toronto.)

  We just finished getting it up and you can check it out and sign it by clicking here.

  Images: Toronto Star

  2015.05.16

• A Jane’s Walk about the Gardiner Expressway

  

  This May 2nd at 1:00pm I’m going to be participating and speaking at a Jane’s Walk here in Toronto called, Gardiner Expressway: To be or not to be? 

  The other “walk leaders” include Andrew Hilton, City Councillor Jaye Robinson, Ed Levy, Kyle Baptista, and architect Les Klein (Quadrangle Architects).

  This will be my first time going to a Jane’s Walk, but it’s clearly a topic that I’m interested in. For over a year I have been arguing that we should remove the Gardiner East (the portion east of Jarvis Street).

  This has proved to be a contentious position and topic. One critic said that I only want to remove the Gardiner East so that – as a real estate developer – I can make it harder for people to get into the city, which in turn will force them into buying more condos in the city. 

  That was not my thinking.

  Instead, I view it as an opportunity to truly unlock the eastern portion of Toronto’s waterfront and the Portlands area. Take a look at the Keating Channel (shown above) and tell me whether or not you could imagine a better and more urban kind of waterfront. I get excited when I think of the potential.

  And, if we’re going to do this, I believe now is the time, before the area gets developed. Because once it gets developed around the Gardiner, things will never be quite the same – even if we do eventually remove or bury it.

  Click here for more information on the Jane’s Walk. Please also keep in mind that there will be many other viewpoints expressed at the Walk. This is just mine.

  Image: Gardiner Expressway and Don River, Flickr

  2015.04.19

• The war on the car

  

  In today’s post I’d like to focus on the second tweet I embedded in yesterday’s piece about downtown Toronto. Specifically, the fact that almost 75% of downtown residents walk, cycle, or take transit to work, leaving drivers firmly in the minority.

  For me, this then makes me question whether or not we’re optimizing well enough for the majority. However, it’s often not that simple. And that’s because the downtown core is clearly regional in its draw, and the further you move out from the downtown core, the more the modal split flips. In the suburbs, driving is obviously the majority.

  And herein lies the tension and the reason for all this “war on the car” rhetoric: We have a downtown core with completely different mobility preferences than the rest of the region.

  But as Toronto continues to intensify and grow (the population of the Greater Toronto Area is projected to reach almost 9 million by 2036), I truthfully don’t know how we could reasonably expect to (efficiently) move that number of people in private cars. I’ve just never seen it done before.

  Some people think that if we simply got rid of all those damn streetcars on our city streets, that we’d be doing a lot to eliminate traffic congestion. But it’s not that simple. The Highway 401 here in the city is already 18-lanes and one of the widest in the world. And yet it’s perpetually clogged. No streetcars there.

  So I look at this tension as a growing pain. Sooner or later I think we’re going to realize that this war should really be a war on inefficiency. How do we move lots of people around big cities while minimizing waste, maximizing economic output, and enhancing quality of life?

  Now that’s a war worth fighting.

  Image: Helibacon

  2014.09.04

• Revisiting the Gardiner East debate

  Last week I argued that the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway (Jarvis Street over to the Don Valley Expressway) should be torn down and replaced by an enlarged Lake Shore Boulevard.

  To quickly summarize, here’s why I support removing the Gardiner East:

  • Now is the time to do it (before we develop the surrounding area and it becomes both more expensive and more difficult to do it).
  • It would go a long way to stitching our disconnected downtown back to the lake and realizing our ambitions for the revitalization of the waterfront.
  • Unlocking the full potential of our waterfront is hugely important.
  • In my opinion, the only way to build a big, well functioning city, is on the backbone of public transportation. And this—the tearing down of the Gardiner East—could represent that paradigm shift.
  • It is a portion of the Expressway that has relatively low traffic volumes.
  • It’s the cheapest option on the table.

  Somewhat surprisingly though, a lot of people disagreed with me. They told me that adding anything to our already long commutes would be simply unconscionable and that they would not support it, no matter how much it improved our waterfront.

  So in the spirit of avoiding confirmation bias (that is, only seeking out things that reinforce an already established belief), I thought I would share the following article: “Like It or Not, Most Urban Freeways Are Here to Stay.” It’s from Atlantic Cities and there are 3 key take-aways that I’d like to point out.

  First, I thought it was interesting that the interstate system in the United States was, from the onset, always conceived of as a solution to urban congestion. I always thought it was about connecting the country, but that, apparently, was a secondary goal.

  Second, cities all across North America are engaging in the same debate about what to do with their aging highways. Detroit is debating. New Orleans is debating. And so is Syracuse. Toronto is not alone. But we could be alone in taking the lead on this issue.

  Third, the author basically acknowledges that, while not ideal, we’re stuck for the time being with all these freeways and that the better solution is going to be a really tough slog:

  “This is not an easy assignment, seeing as how cars are purchases we make with our hearts, more than our heads. Logic won’t convince Americans to change their ways. What will? Maybe, over time, prohibitive fuel prices and withering tolls, and, most importantly, investment in useful and convenient public transit. Only when the carrot is irresistible, and the stick stings too sharply to bear, will the shift begin, and it will take years to play out.”

  And while I would agree that it’s not going to be easy, that’s par for the course with anything truly worthwhile. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But they’re not. And that’s why there are leaders and there are followers.

  People in Toronto like to talk about how our City sometimes lacks vision. Well, here’s our chance. I’m not worrying about what the commute is going to be like tomorrow, because I know there’s an even better solution for that problem. I’m worried about something even bigger. I’m worried about the kind of city we’re all going to leave behind to our children.

  2014.02.20