Tag: high park

• Paris may have the busiest bike route in the world

  

  In my opinion, we need far better urban data if we’re actually going to make evidence-based decisions. Thankfully, there are lots of great companies that are focused on this space. One of them is Eco-Counter, which makes devices to count pedestrians and cyclists, among other things. This is an important job, because as Peter Drucker used to say, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

  Let’s look at their bike counters. According to their global map, they have 464 of them installed around the world. Montreal has 58 of them, which we’ve spoken about before, and is an impressive install base. And Toronto looks to have only one, which is located on Bloor Street on the north side of High Park.

  The busiest route/counter in Montreal is at St-Denis Street and Rue des Carriéres. So far this year — up to November 17, 2024 — this counter has seen an average of just under 5,000 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 1,600,468 trips. Both of these metrics are notably up compared to 2023 when I last looked at the data.

  The busiest route in Eco-Counter’s entire network is on Boulevard de Sébastopol in Paris (an important main roadway, not a side street). It has seen an average of 13,667 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 4,386,996 trips. Not surprisingly, the Paris counter exhibits less seasonality. People still cycle in the winter in Montreal, but it’s less than in the warmer months.

  Finally, our lone Toronto counter adjacent to High Park has seen an average of 1,186 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 380,813 trips. Not quite Paris or Montreal (the latter of which has a colder climate), but I would argue that this really isn’t an indicative location for Toronto given how underdeveloped the area is. Plus, you need to see each route as part of a network.

  If you look at Montreal’s top 5 bike counters, all of them have a year-to-date total that exceeds 1 million trips. This is important information if you’re trying to make mobility decisions and these are significant figures. Imagine if these millions of people got off their bikes and instead decided to take transit or drive a car. That would change things.

  Photo by Celine Ylmz on Unsplash

  2024.11.17

• Pink glow

  Here’s a potentially hypothetical question.

  If you were in the market for a 3-bedroom penthouse, and its 1,100 sf wraparound terrace with skyline views just so happened to have an enormous neon-like sign above it, would you consider this to be a feature or a bug?

  

  The sign does turn off at 11PM, but before then, it creates this awesome/lovely pink glow on the terrace. My sense is that this will be fairly divisive. You’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it. Which side are you on?

  Let me know in the comment section below.

  2023.12.20

• That cool coffee shop in the bottom of your building

  As an add-on to yesterday’s post about ground floor retail in mixed-use developments, I thought I would provide a few illustrative and real-world examples to demonstrate some of the challenges that I was trying to describe.

  Note that this post is not meant to be critical of any specific projects; instead, it’s intended to further explain some of the challenges facing developers, architects, policy makers, and everyone else involved in the built environment.

  Let’s start in Toronto. Below is an aerial photo of Ossington Avenue. For those of you who aren’t familiar, this is one of the most desirable and coolest main streets in city. I mean, check out this recently completed office/retail building at 12 Ossington by Hullmark.

  

  However, when the above townhouse complex was built (circa 2005), Ossington was not the street that it is today. In fact, it used to be pretty scuzzy. When I moved to the US for grad school in 2006, I don’t recall anyone going out on Ossington. Then when I returned in 2009, suddenly, everyone was going to restaurants and bars on Ossington.

  So when this project was being planned, residential directly on the street, was probably the highest-and-best use, which is why that’s what was built. But looking at it today, it feels like a suboptimal outcome for one of the most desirable retail streets in the city. And now that it has been built, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Should retail have been mandated?

  Here is another example from Toronto. This is the north side of High Park. In this case, the street (Bloor Street) is not a great retail street. It’s single-sided because of the park. There’s only a scattering of restaurants and small businesses. There are a lot of single-use buildings. And even some of the newish developments don’t have any ground floor retail.

  

  In this particular instance, it’s certainly more of a stretch to force retail. But at the same time, I think there’s an argument to be made that the edges of Toronto’s primary urban park should do more. The buildings should be taller. The street walls should be more defined. And yes, maybe there should be more retail.

  Now here’s a counter example from Paris:

  

  This is the 7th and there’s absolutely no ground floor retail in sight and pretty much only blank and non-active facades. It’s hard to imagine retail opening up here today or anytime in the future — and that’s okay. The streets are still narrow and walkable. And the buildings are just what you’d expect from the capital. The point here: ground floor retail can’t and doesn’t need to go everywhere.

  Finally, let’s return to Salt Lake City:

  

  This is maybe the antithesis of our Paris example. 300 W is a wide street clearly designed for Toyota 4Runners. It’s hard to imagine a lot of people walking around here. Even though it’s relatively close to the central business district and it’s on the edge of the emerging and very cool Granary District. (This is The Post District.) But you know what, retail seems to work just fine here:

  

  You just need to think about it in the right way. SLC’s wide streets and large blocks may not make for a broadly walkable environment. But they do give you the room to create your own internal street network and, of course, build a bunch of parking. And that’s what was done and needed here.

  I also find it interesting to think at this sub-block level and consider how it might become a new network and layer to the city over time. Maybe Salt Lake needs its own version of Barcelona’s superblocks. And maybe this has already been considered.

  So once again, ground floor retail is good. Everyone wants that cool coffee shop in the bottom of their building. But sometimes we miss the boat. Sometimes it’s unclear what we should do. Sometimes it’s not necessary or viable. And sometimes we get it just right. That’s, I guess, retail.

  If you find yourself on 300 W, check out Urban Sailor Coffee.

  Site Plan: Post District

  2023.10.07

• High Park vs. Central Park

  In Toronto, we often like to set height/density back away from our main streets. Here is High Park vs. Central Park. pic.twitter.com/DMOfbsXY1b

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) February 7, 2023

  This compare-and-contrast tweet between Toronto’s High Park and New York’s Central Park was not meant to suggest that New York is a perfect comparable to appropriate (Toronto is not New York), or that foliage isn’t important in our urban environments. Instead, it was meant to highlight that:

  • The towers north of High Park (and north of Bloor Street) could almost certainly never be built in today’s planning environment. The recently built point towers exist because the slab towers were already there.
  • This condition of height/density tucked and setback off of main streets is something that you will find across Toronto, as well as in a number of other cities.
  • Sometimes it can be rightly argued that this is being done in order to preserve a fine-grained and pedestrian-scaled public realm, which is important. But in other cases, like the one above, it feels like a clear reluctance to accept big-city status and any sort of urban grandeur. Are we still trying to be a Victorian city?
  • Equally important in the design of public spaces are the edges and “walls” that frame it. And High Park’s edges need work. Why is there almost nowhere to go and hang out on the main edge of Toronto’s principal urban park? You have to go up to the Junction for that.
  • In general, the land around many of our higher-order transit stations is grossly underutilized. And this is a perfect example of that. What should happen here are some large-scale upzonings.

  2023.02.08

• Cycling to the office

  Right now my typical morning commute consists of a 15 minute walk and a quick stop off for a coffee. I must admit that I’m spoiled. But next year I’ll be moving to the Junction and so that means I’m going to need to make some minor adjustments to my routine.

  I fully expect that on warm summer nights I’ll probably still walk home on occasion. But broadly speaking, my loose plan is a combination of cycling, e-scootering, and taking the Union Pearson Express train.

  Then this evening I was out for drinks with one of our partners and two of the guys were talking about how they cycle to work each morning and compete on Strava to make sure everything gets properly logged. One of them actually lives near the Junction and his regular route is down through High Park and then across along the lake.

  Naturally I got inspired and decided — after two beers — that I too should join this competition. So I have now obligated myself to cycling to the office starting next year. That said, I could probably use a new bike, and I’m hoping that some of you will have recommendations.

  My criteria is as follows: it should look impossibly cool, it should work for a daily commute, and it should be at least somewhat suitable for tight-fitting clothes and long rides through the French countryside (even though I currently have no concrete plans of doing such a thing).

  Any thoughts?

  2022.10.28

• Casey Neistat needs to make a YouTube video about cycling in High Park

  I love High Park. It’s the second largest green space in the City of Toronto and right beside the Junction neighborhood. But there are some problems. Despite having a subway line on its northern boundary, we’ve gotten the built form along its edges all wrong.

  There’s very little functioning retail. The densities and heights are not nearly high enough. The streets aren’t great walking streets. And we’ve even gone and created undignified bus stops like this one here.

  On top of all this, we’re now doing this silly thing where police are ticketing cyclists for riding around the park with too much vigor and enthusiasm. I’m sure somebody called to complain and this is all reactionary politics, but an even bigger reaction has now been set off.

  For those of you who haven’t been following or aren’t from Toronto, hundreds of cyclists took to the streets this week to peacefully protest what has been going on in High Park.

  The Globe & Mail then followed it up with this important piece calling for an end to cars inside the park. The boundaries currently house about 5 km of roads and almost 600 parking spots.

  We ride. pic.twitter.com/2Fjw8P0jR8

  — James McLeod (@jamespmcleod) August 11, 2022

  Given all this, I figured now is probably a good time to revive one of Casey Neistat’s original YouTube videos called “bike lanes.” The story is that he gets a ticket for not riding in a bike lane. And so he films a video of himself only riding in bike lanes — even if there are obstacles in his way.

  It’s an awesome video with nearly 30 million views. And I’m sure that many of you have felt like doing exactly what he does when faced with this same situation. I know I have.

  2022.08.12

• Looking south toward High Park

  

  What a beautiful day in Toronto. I love the heat.

  I took the above photo this morning from the 7th floor of Junction House. It is a view south toward High Park. More specifically though, it is the view from the second and upper floor of what will ultimately become suite 607 (a suite that happens to be still available for sale).

  Now that the building is almost topped out, I’m planning to run through a bunch of the suites with my camera and photograph all of the different views. I don’t think I’ve seen something like this done before and I think it could be a pretty cool little photography project.

  2022.06.16

• An undignified bus stop in Toronto

  I was driving to the office from the Junction last week, and I passed a brave individual waiting at this bus stop on Parkside Drive:

  

  I immediately thought to myself, “what an undignified and silly bus stop.” There’s a little bit of paving so you have a place to stand while you’re waiting, but how do you even get there?

  There are no sidewalks actually leading to said bus stop, and so you really only have two options: 1) jaywalk or 2) cross at some far away intersection and then walk unceremoniously on a narrow strip of grass and dirt on the side of a busy street.

  Not surprisingly, this was the first time I had ever seen anyone waiting at this stop even though I take this route all the time on my way to and from Junction House.

  I recognize that I was operating a motor vehicle when I saw this guy waiting for the bus. But I also took transit last week. And I know that we have it in us to do much better than what you’re seeing in the above street view photo.

  It’s also a reminder that while High Park is really great, we need to work on its edges. Both the urban edge that I’m describing above, and the built form that surrounds our magnificent park. High Park is an urban park, but we seem to be a little uncomfortable with that idea.

  2022.04.10

• To stepback or not to stepback

  I was riding my bike on Bloor Street along the north edge of High Park over the weekend. And in between cyclists in spandex yelling at me for seemingly riding the wrong way in the bike lanes, I managed to safely snap this picture:

  

  It was a reminder of that thing we like to do in Toronto where we want lower-rise along our main streets and then we tuck the taller parts somewhere in the back so that we can pretend they are maybe not there. Here’s an aerial shot of the situation from Google Maps:

  

  It’s a very different condition from what you will find in New York along virtually all edges of Central Park:

  

  Now, New York and Toronto are not the same city. This much is obvious.

  But there is a grandeur and degree of urbanity that is present along Central Park that is not present along High Park. And I would argue that this feature isn’t exclusive to New York. It can be found in many other cities, including places like Montreal.

  I am sure that part of the rationale here on Bloor Street had to do with matching the lower-rise existing context. But we shouldn’t forget that the edges of public spaces are oftentimes just as important as the spaces themselves. Sometimes they can be even more important.

  So I thought I would put it out to all of you. To stepback or not to stepback. What do you think would be the most appropriate built form along this north edge of High Park? Leave a comment below.

  2021.08.19

• Junction House ground breaking

  

  The Junction House team is excited to announce that construction will start this fall and that our ground breaking ceremony will be held at 11AM on Saturday, October, 19th. Mark your calendars.

  It will take place at our Sales Gallery — 2720 Dundas St W. This will be one of the last opportunities to see the award-winning Junction House Sales Gallery before it is demolished in preparation for construction.

  There will be photo opportunities for everyone in attendance, and so we encourage you to bring your phones/cameras. You’re welcome to extend this invitation to family and friends, but kindly RSVP by sending an email to info@junctionhouse.ca.

  We look forward to seeing you there.

  2019.09.29