Tag: gardiner east

• What would you do if you were Mayor?

  

  Let’s assume that you’re Mayor of your city and that, for whatever reason, you have no need to pander to voters. You’re a benevolent dictator. You can do whatever you think is best overall for the city and it will just happen. What would you do? This is more or less the question I asked on Twitter this morning, and I think it’s only fair that I answer my own question. So here is a non-exhaustive list of items that came to mind while thinking of Toronto:

  • Substantially increase the pay of public sector workers throughout the city and bonus them based on measurable outcomes. Forget things like time limits on development applications; instead align incentives. For example, if we’re trying to get more shovels in the ground on affordable housing, incentivize people based on building permits issued. I’ll never forget what Roger Martin told me while I was at Rotman. When he became Dean of the school, Rotman was a whatever business school that wasn’t faring all that competitively in the rankings. One of the problems he discovered was that the school’s professors were getting paid far less than those at Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and so on. So if you were a star, why would you ever want to teach at Rotman? He immediately matched the salaries of those top-tier schools and then, not surprisingly, the top-tier talent arrived. You get what you pay for.
  • Immediately price roads and congestion, and direct, to the fullest extent possible, the funds toward transit and cycling infrastructure. At the same time, the planning and building of transit would be depoliticized. There would be a reccurring funding stream and a plan that we’re continually building out. Minimize protracted debates. Never stop building. There’s a lot of talk this mayor election about solving traffic congestion. I have yet to see a plan that will actually work. Accurately pricing congestion likely won’t be popular, but I can guarantee you that it will be highly effective.
  • Ensure that property taxes are sustainably covering the costs of operating the city and then, at a minimum, peg all future increases to CPI.
  • Make any new housing development less than 12 storeys as-of-right. That would mean, no rezoning process and no site plan approval; just straight to building permit.
  • Empower the private sector to build affordable housing through incentives and subsidies. Affordable housing isn’t feasible to build on its own, which is why nobody is doing it. Inclusionary zoning also won’t get us there. Make developers want to build it and they’ll do it.
  • Liberalize licensing and cut red tape to empower small entrepreneurs across the city in various industries. A perfect example in my mind is street food. Toronto is the most diverse city in the world with some of the best restaurants, and yet the only thing you can buy on the street is a stupid hot dog. If we empowered small entrepreneurs to setup shop on our streets, we would easily have the best street food scene in the world. And I am positive that there are countless other latent opportunities in this city that are being held back by dumb and archaic rules.
  • Make dramatic improvements to our public realm with an eye toward becoming the most beautiful and livable city in the world. Finally pedestrianize Kensington Market, remove the elevated Gardiner Expressway, make it so that we can swim in the Lake, build beautiful public washrooms all across the city that are actually open and aren’t gross, and the list goes on. And yes, “beauty” should be requirement so that we don’t end up with shit like this.
  • Focus on art, design, culture, and innovation as central pillars of Toronto’s brand. Miami is a good example of what this approach — along with favourable taxes and nice weather — can do for a city. I’ve said this before, but here’s just one example: Toronto is in many ways the birthplace of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Why is nobody talking about this? Why are we not celebrating and leveraging this? It’s a missed opportunity. Broadly speaking though, I think just having and doing three things can be effective in promoting new ideas for these pillars: have reasonably affordable housing, be a city that young people want to live in, and remain open and tolerant to immigrants.
  • Stop thinking of the night-time economy as a nuisance and instead think of it as a powerful economic development tool. I recently responded to this “night economy survey” that the City of Toronto released and the obvious bias is that nighttime things are seen as a terrible nuisance. In other words, “tell us how do we make all of this less annoying for grouchy voters.” My response was to extend last call to 4am and to start thinking of it as an opportunity to draw in young people, tourists, and whoever else. This complements my previous point.

  This is, again, a completely non-exhaustive list. But if I had to summarize the overall ambition, it would be to make Toronto a truly exceptional and remarkable city. We should never be happy with mediocrity.

  What else would you do? Leave a comment below.

  Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

  2023.04.09

• How to spend city money

  This is an intriguing idea:

  Many cities around the world practice some form of participatory budgeting, but even among those that do, Cascais [Portugal] is an outlier. It spends prodigiously through the system: in Paris, five per cent of the city’s annual investment budget has been allocated to participatory projects in recent years, but in Cascais, more than fifteen per cent of the budget flows through the program, and the percentage can float higher if voter turnout rises. Cascais is surprising in another way: its mayor, Carlos Carreiras, is both a champion of participatory budgeting and a member of a center-right political party. Participatory budgeting is often considered a tool of the left, but its role in Cascais suggests that it could have a broader appeal; part of the theory behind it is that citizens can be better than officials at knowing how money should be spent.

  Of course, it won’t solve all of our problems:

  Even in the best of circumstances, participatory budgeting faces some structural limitations. Citizens can’t use it to raise the minimum wage, for instance, or to reconfigure affordable-housing policy, or to ban single-use plastics. As it stands, the approach “will never change the destiny of a poor neighborhood,” Giovanni Allegretti, a senior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, told me. Allegretti noted that participatory budgeting is mainly a competitive process involving limited resources with no long-term strategy; it doesn’t eliminate the need for other policy interventions. But when it functions effectively, participatory budgeting can give direct political power to those who might otherwise have very little of it.

  There is something very compelling about empowering people to come up with new ideas, compete with others for the best ones, and then participate in public decisions. It also strikes me as a possibly efficient way to force: “We only have this much money to spend. What should we spend it on? Spending on this means not spending on that. Time to make a decision.”

  And now it has me wondering: If we asked Toronto whether it wanted to spend over $1 billion to rebuild the Gardiner Expressway east or spend it on other things, what do you think it would say?

  For the rest of the above article, click here.

  2023.03.28

• It’s not too late for the Gardiner Expressway East

  Boy, time sure does melt away when you’re writing a daily blog and trying to build buildings. It’s hard to believe that it has already been 7-8 years since I was writing incessantly about the merits of Toronto removing the eastern portion of its elevated Gardiner Expressway.

  For those of you who may not be familiar, Toronto has an elevated highway that runs along the waterfront. It is old. Pieces sometimes fall off. Lots of water will drip on you. And so remediation works are underway. Several years ago, there was also a great debate that took place in the city about what should happen with its eastern leg. I even spoke at a Jane’s Walk where I was, for the most part, not very popular.

  The two options under consideration ended up being: 1) remove it and replace it with a grand surface boulevard or 2) remove it and rebuild it with a slightly different alignment. This second option was dubbed the “hybrid” option, but that was mostly political speak so that it sounded like some sort of generous compromise. You can think of it as the more expensive rebuild option.

  What should Toronto do with the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway? #TOpoli

  — Brandon Donnelly 🇨🇦 (@donnelly_b) October 21, 2022

  City Council voted on these two options as one would expect. Councillors in the core of the city did not want an elevated highway running through their neighorhoods, and the Councillors and people in the inner suburbs — who might use it for commuting — were by and large more accommodating. Apparently there are somewhere around 15,000 commuters who use it each rush hour.

  But here’s the thing.

  This vote took place in June 2015 and the thing still hasn’t yet been rebuilt. So maybe it’s not too late! Maybe there’s an opportunity to save a few hundred million dollars between us friends. Also, if anyone is interested, I’m still available for controversial Jane’s Walk presentations. One new idea I have is an elevated highway that runs through the inner suburbs and connects the best weekend brunch spots.

  2022.10.21

• Toronto should light the underside of the elevated Gardiner Expressway

  Back when Toronto was debating the future of the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, I was an annoying and vocal supporter of tearing it down and replacing it with an at-grade boulevard. I was blogging about it ad nauseam. I participated in Jane’s Walks where I spoke about the merits of removal. And I even created a petition that went to City Council the day the decision was being made.

  But throughout all of this, I felt like I was in the minority. Most people said I was crazy (though former mayor John Sewell agreed with me). How will people and services get to downtown Toronto? This is critical infrastructure, they said. And indeed, Toronto voted not to remove it.

  Whatever you feel was the right decision at the time, that ship has sailed. We tore down a leg of the Gardiner east of the Don River, at that was positive; but the rest of it is either staying intact or being relocated. In both cases, it will be elevated.

  But I believe in looking forward, not backwards. And so with that, I think we should be doing everything we can urbanistically to make the Gardiner as nice as it can be. It is for this reason that I think The Bentway is an extraordinarily important project. And it is for this reason that I wish we would light the underside of the Gardiner so that when you’re driving on Lake Shore it makes you feel happy.

  We should light the underside of the Gardiner so that when you’re on Lake Shore it’s less depressing. pic.twitter.com/qT6xVUOw2q

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) March 19, 2022

  A good example of this in action is the Yan’an Elevated Highway in Shanghai (greenery, of course, also helps):

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Luca Fugazza (@lucafugazza)

  https://www.instagram.com/p/BzvTmo3nN2J/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

  Relevant scene from Skyfall (James Bond):

  But let me be clear before my inbox lights on fire: I am not suggesting that this is an approach to urbanism that is in any way desirable or worth emulating. I am not advocating for elevated highways running through the middle of dense downtowns and walkable city centers. All I am saying is that if we are stuck with something as dreary and as utilitarian as the Gardiner Expressway, the least we can do is make it kind of cool. And lighting can be a relatively cost effective way of doing that.

  2022.03.19

• My approach to blogging

  In yesterday’s post about the city as an egg, I received a comment basically saying that I use this blog to carefully curate my own image and that I would never argue against “dumb Toronto planning” because, after all, I’m a developer. I am going to do what breads my own butter.

  I welcome intelligent debate on this blog. That’s why it is open to anyone who would like to comment. But since I’ve received similar comments in the past, I thought I would use the opportunity to talk broadly about my approach to blogging.

  Firstly, there will always be some level of curation involved. That’s inevitable. We see it all over social media. But I’m a big believer in transparency and I try to do exactly that on this blog. I am keen to push the boundaries in this regard.

  At the same time, part of what makes blogs unique is that they’re often personal. That is the origin of blogging. Some of my favorite blogs to read are the ones that have figured out how to combine a particular niche topic with personal stories. And since ATC is ultimately my personal blog, I am going to continue taking that exact same approach.

  Secondly, I only write about things that I’m passionate about. I get asked all the time to write about and promote specific projects, causes, and events. But almost all of them do not get written about it. Because if I don’t care about it, then I’m not going to write about. It’s as simple as that.

  Thirdly, I believe in positivity over negativity. I believe that optimists, not pessimists, change the world. President Obama won his first term with a message of hope, not despair. To me, that is a stronger motivator.

  I’ve been told before that I’m overly optimistic and that my youthful exuberance will one day wear off. Boy, I sure hope it doesn’t. Because would you rather have a beer with someone who is optimistic or someone who is pessimistic? I will always take the former.

  However, this is not to say that I want to be blind to the realities of the world. Last summer I disagreed with Toronto’s decision to rebuild the elevated Gardiner Expressway East along the waterfront, and I continue to disagree with that decision. 

  When I believe something is a mistake, I am happy to make it public and put it in writing on this blog. But as a developer, I suppose I have certain biases working against me. That’s just the way it is.

  In any event, this is my rough and ever-evolving approach to blogging. As usual, I welcome any and all comments.

  2016.02.12

• Hybrid 1-2-3

  For those of you who have been reading this blog since last summer, you’ll know that I’m particularly passionate about the Gardiner Expressway East here in Toronto.

  Last night a public meeting was held to discuss the 3 alternative designs for what has become known as the “hybrid” option. If you’d like a visual summary of the options, click here.

  But essentially as you go from hybrid 1 to hybrid 3, the elevated Gardiner Expressway just gets pushed further north, away from the water. So as you go from 1 to 3, the hybrid option becomes less offensive to the waterfront and its associated public realm, and it opens up more land for development. However, it also becomes more expensive.

  Here’s a graphical summary of the costs, which my friend Gil Meslin tweeted out last night:

  Evolution of the #GardinerEast options, and their associated costs, in one graphic. #topoli #urbto pic.twitter.com/s8W36UrqtR

  — Gil Meslin (@g_meslin) January 20, 2016

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Notice that the boulevard (remove) option, which City Council rejected last summer, remains by far the most cost effective option. At a time when the city is searching for cash, I am surprised that nobody is looking here.

  I am also surprised to read that some are commenting on which of the above hybrid options will be the easiest to tear down should we want to remove the Gardiner East in the future. If that’s the lens we are applying, why rebuild it in the first place?

  But enough from me. What do you think? Here’s a Twitter poll I created this morning:

  What would you like to see happen with the elevated #GardinerEast on Toronto’s waterfront? https://t.co/33XgNY4J33

  — Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b) January 20, 2016

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  2016.01.20

• Interview with urbanist Richard Florida

  UrbanToronto.ca recently published an extended interview / discussion with urbanist Richard Florida about cities and, in particular, the future of Toronto. What it’s doing wrong. What it’s doing right. And what it should be doing to properly position itself for the future.

  What became clear to me after reading the interview is that Toronto is really at an inflection point. We are transitioning into a much bigger global city and we have yet to fully embrace the city that we are quickly becoming:

  “…the city was—and is—still too dominated by a NIMBYist, faux-progressive left that refuses to engage with having to build a dense, transit-oriented, and inclusive city.”

  The interview is packed with information and it’s definitely worth a read this morning. There’s a lot I agree with, including his views on transit and his positions on the Island Airport and the Gardiner East – which is a topic that is near and dear to me.

  In case you don’t have time to read the full interview, below are 3 excerpts.

  First, on the Gardiner East:

  “There’s also a learning curve to Mayors, and I think they tend to get a better understanding of urbanism over the course of their tenures,” Florida adds, hoping that Tory, self-described as an “ideologue on very few issues,” will make pro-urban decisions as his time in office continues. “For one thing, I really hope that he reverses his decision on the Gardiner,” Florida continues, highlighting Tory’s controversial support for renovating—as opposed to demolishing—the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway as an example of especially poor urban policy.

  Second, on the need for a true urban agenda at all levels of government:

  Offering prescriptions for the future, Florida calls for a “virtual moratorium on road-building,” arguing that the perpetuation of an automobile culture hinders a city’s creative capacity, with little exchange of ideas and culture occurring when people are sitting in their cars, and not engaging with life on the street. “The city also needs a more committed Federal partner,” Florida adds, calling for a ’ministry of cities’ to help provide a vision for growth and fund urban infrastructure projects. 

  And third, on the value of Toronto’s openness:

  “A huge reason for the city’s continued success—as we trudge along despite our lack of urban vision and reactionary tendencies—is the fact that we continued to be so open to newcomers, allowing a great deal of global creative energy to be harnessed. It means we can fuck up a lot, but as long as we continue to remain open, we’ll have an important edge.”

  There’s a lot of great discussion fodder here. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

  2015.12.08

• Project: Under Gardiner — Re-imagining Toronto’s urban infrastructure

  

  If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, you might remember that there was a period of time where I wrote incessantly about the removal of the eastern portion of Toronto’s elevated Gardiner Expressway.

  Ultimately City Council didn’t vote the way I believe we should have. But I remain hopeful that somehow we will manage to do the right thing and replace it with a surface boulevard. Now – before the east waterfront gets developed – is the right time to make that happen.

  However, the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway is a different story. The adjacent area is already developed and it is unlikely that this highway is going anywhere any time soon. So for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with it.

  And if we are stuck with it then we should make the absolute best of it – even celebrate it. Which is why Toronto is buzzing right now with the news that a 1.75 km stretch under the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway will be remade into a vibrant public space by 2017. This is thanks to a generous $25 million private donation. (Is that enough money?)

  Here’s the overall programming strategy, going from west to east (via undergardiner.com):

  

  And here are two renderings:

  

  The first phase is expected to run from Strachan Avenue in the west all the way to Spadina Avenue in the east. That is what is shown above.

  Two key elements include a grand stair at Strachan Avenue, which looks like this today (via Google Streetview):

  

  And a pedestrian bridge over Fort York Boulevard, which looks like this today:

  

  All of this doesn’t change my opinion of the Gardiner East, but I do believe that this is an incredibly exciting opportunity for the city. Today the space under the Gardiner is a void in our public realm.

  I also think it could be quite interesting to have these two opposing urban conditions along the central waterfront. A linear underpass park in the west and an open air boulevard in the east.

  It’s also exciting to see private money step up. It goes to show you that there is no shortage of passionate city builders in this town.

  Top image courtesy of Harry Choi Photography.

  2015.11.17

• How to save 8 minutes on Toronto’s highways

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  Three months ago when Toronto City Council voted
  not to remove the Gardiner Expressway
  East (which in
  my view was a mistake), it did so with a commitment to look at tolling
  options for both the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway (which in
  my view is a positive thing).

  Last week a preliminary report was released
  discussing some of those tolling options. If reading dry city reports is your thing,
  you can do that here.

  The Coles Notes version (CliffNotes for you
  Americans) is that a $3 flat toll on both the Gardiner and the DVP – the same
  cost as riding transit in this city – would be expected to reduce vehicles on the highways by 9% and 12%, as well reduce end-to-end travel times by 3 minutes and 5
  minutes, respectively. There’s obviously a lot more in the report, but these
  figures stood out for me.

  Given how monumental the
  3 minute delay was in the Gardiner East debates, it will be interesting to
  see whether people treat a 3 minute time savings in a similar way. I suspect
  they won’t. The cost will be the larger issue.

  I’ve been a
  vocal supporter of tolls and road pricing on this blog. One of the main reasons
  for that is because I view the demand for highways as being largely inelastic
  and therefore a potentially great source of transit funding.

  The discouraging part of the above report is
  that its primary goal is to explore tolls for the purpose of “offsetting
  capital, operating, and maintenance costs.” The primary goal is not to come up
  with sustainable sources of transit funding.

  Having these costs paid for by user-fees as
  opposed to general taxes is still a good thing in my view. But an even better thing
  would be to help fund mobility solutions that we know will be far more
  effective at getting people around this region as millions more people move here
  in the coming decades.

  The other discouraging part of the report is
  that near the end it explains that while the City of Toronto Act of 2006 allows
  for toll highways, they cannot be implemented without the Province passing
  regulation.

  It’s a reminder that our governance structures do
  not reflect the current urban reality of this country.

  2015.09.15

• Those troublemakers

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  Jennifer Keesmaat is the Chief Planner of Toronto. She was hired for this job in 2012.

  She has a Masters in Environmental Studies (Politics and Planning). She is a Registered Professional Planner with the Canadian Institute of Planners. And she was also the founder of 2 (city) planning firms prior to taking the position of Chief Planner for Toronto.

  So presumably, she was hired for this job because she possesses some sort of expertise in the realm of planning. I also presume that she is expected to make her opinions known to other people so that informed planning discussions can occur and decisions can be made.

  So I find it curious that in some circles, and in the media, Jennifer Keesmaat is being branded as a “troublemaker.”

  A lot of the recent chatter stems from the fact that Keesmaat was at odds with Mayor Tory during the Gardiner Expressway East debate (quote via Toronto Life):

  Eventually Tory had enough and pulled Keesmaat into a meeting where he basically told her to zip it. “The mayor has said it is perfectly appropriate for staff to make their opinions public, as Ms. Keesmaat has done,” wrote his communications chief, Amanda Galbraith, in a statement. “It is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms.” Keesmaat counters that she never campaigned. “I stated an opinion,” she says simply.

  But the “troublemaking” didn’t just start with the Gardiner East. Pretty much since the moment she took the position of Chief Planner and launched her own blog (ownyourcity.ca), she was dubbed a shit disturber. (Those bloggers!)

  But if you ask me, these criticisms stem from an old and outdated way of thinking.

  The last thing we need from government is less transparency and more politicking. We should be working towards more, not less, information. Even if that information doesn’t butter our metaphorical bread.

  What do you think?

  I think this will make for a great discussion in the comment section below.

  2015.08.06