I agree with some of the points in the article, in particular about the wide sidewalks thought of as parks in their own right rather than strips along the sides of roads. However, I disagree with the criticism against the new street furniture itself.
Financially, it was an amazing deal for the city. Not only do we not have to pay for it, we don't have to pay to maintain it, Astral is under obligation to keep the furniture in a good state of repair and we'll end up getting nearly $100M in ad revenue over the course of the contract. Now THAT's a deal!
Furthermore, these new bins are more friendly to the street than the mega bins that have occupied our sidewalks for a decade. Those were designed as an ad space first, a litter receptacle second. The new ones don't have ads at all. They're designed to be efficient garbage and recycling receptacles first and foremost, and they're engineered so that their shell can be easily replaced.
That last item is the one I like the most. The look of the bin can change with time as they're replaced due to vandalism or simply wearing out. They're grey and green now. They can be switched to a darker colour or a metallic shell to better deal with the tagging and grime that I've been seeing on many of them lately.
In addition, there seem to be a lot more garbage bins now. I've been emailing and calling Kyle Rae for years about putting a bin at the bus stop on Queen + University. There was always litter on the ground and along the Osgoode Hall fence simply because there was no garbage bin in such a high traffic area. There are now two.
The shelters are an incremental improvement over what we had before, which I already liked anyway.
The community postering boards? I agree that they don't work. It was clear that they'd get cluttered by the regular hydro pole postering people. That's fine. Take them down or keep them up and create a bylaw against postering on hydro poles with the defence that the city isn't impeding free speech because they're providing for places to poster.
I love the new benches which are appearing in places where no benches were seen before.
The InfoToGo posts? They do no harm and are positioned in places where tourists will usually appear. They're not really meant for us, but that doesn't mean they're not important.
The newspaper corrals and multipublication boxes are awesome. The multi colour, misaligned, chained, rusting and vandalized newspaper boxes cluttered sidewalks in major pedestrian areas. These new items will remediate that problem.
Finally, we have a consistent design for our street furniture city wide and each can be customized to suit the look of a particular area.
There is still work to be done on the city's appearance but the street furniture can be checked off that list. Now let the next mayor deal with coordinating construction on sidewalks so they never stay asphalted over, the trees so they can grow into maturity, the bicycle lanes so they don't have to worry about parked cars, the hydro poles (bury the wires) and so on.