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Toronto seeks a new chief planner; what it needs is a visionary

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Toronto seeks a new chief planner; what it needs is a visionary


Apr 20 2012

By Christopher Hume

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Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/article...ew-chief-planner-what-it-needs-is-a-visionary


How curious that a city such as Toronto, one growing so fast its skyline changes weekly, would have no chief planner. Since March, when the last man to hold that position, Gary Wright, retired, Toronto has made do with an acting chief planner, Gregg Lintern, a respected department veteran who has worked downtown and in Etobicoke. But a search is underway, and the city is casting as wide a net as possible. “We’re looking across North America,†explains deputy city manager, John Livey. “We’ve had a good response. It’s a great job.†That’s all excellent, of course, but we’ve gone through this before, had our hopes raised only to be dashed.

- Even without Rob Ford in the mayor’s chair, the chances of attracting the brightest and best are slim. Keep in mind that the chief planner reports to a deputy city manager, not the mayor, an indication that the process isn’t one we value particularly. Still, what’s unfolding now on the waterfront and in Regent Park represents planning as thoughtful and intelligent as any seen here in recent years. Both are projects in which the city can take pride. But then one drives up to Eglinton and Laird, where SmartCentres has turned an old industrial wasteland into a tarted-up suburban shopping mall. The results are depressing and predictable in equal measure, not to mention wildly inappropriate for a city in need of density.

- When the same developer tried to bring Walmart to Eastern Ave. several years ago, all hell broke loose. When the Ontario Municipal Board finally killed the scheme, people cheered. But outside the downtown core it seems no one gives a damn. Let the sprawl continue. Let the malls go up. Bring on the parking lots. With a few exceptions, mostly cosmetic, what’s going up at Eglinton and Laird now could have been built a generation ago. The east side of Laird and the south side of Eglinton are obvious casualties, but so is the larger neighbourhood. This sort of thinking never added up, but today it’s more than half-a-century out of date. Knowing what we know, not only does it not make sense, it’s needlessly self-destructive. Yet few seem to care.

- The debate about putting the LRT underground in this part of the city couldn’t have been more misguided. What would be the point? When new transit does arrive, above-grade or below, it will connect with a parking lot. Meanwhile, an unfortunate 75-storey tower Tridel and Build Toronto want to put on a tiny sliver of land downtown at York and Harbour Sts. has been excoriated by the Waterfront Design Review Panel for the banality of its architecture and how little it would bring to the public realm. The potential for any sort of public realm at Eglinton and Laird has been all but destroyed. Its fate, in a city the most ignominious of all, is to have ended up a parking lot. Meanwhile, developers can still count on zoning approved 30, even 40, years ago. Though everything else might have changed, rules from a different era still apply. In 21st-century Toronto, there’s no room for such sloppiness.

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Well, the former chief planner of Vancouver is now job hunting after getting sacked by the mayor there.

Being a chief planner is kind of a thankless job. You either sacrifice your principles and fall in line with politicians or you end up falling on your sword. While this is true of all high civil service positions, planning is particularly susceptible to political interference.
 
There is a very good reason why former chief urban planner Paul Bedford is unwilling to work with the Ford administration. Bedford taught urban planning to students in the University of Toronto and in Ryerson University. I was his student and I admired him so much for his vision and willingness to compromise. Bedford told me personally that the Ford administration is unwilling to compromise and unwilling to take expert advice (except from a dentist).
 
We need a visionary planner as much as we need a bureaucratic structure that can resist political interference and let the best and brightest achieve their ideas. High civil servants like Toronto's chief planner should have a high degree of authority and resources to shape Canada's leading metropolitan city in a way that's exemplary. The chief planner of Toronto's goal should be to create a city that's the pinnacle of function and beauty. There should always be opportunities for democratic input in planning, but not political interference.
 
What if we had a city without a planner? I think the results may be more interesting.
A city without a planner would lead to a city without much coherent or logical plans. Planning a city the size of Toronto is more than just playing SimCity (even the upcoming one). There is a very good reason why SimCity does not replace urban planning courses. You do not need to be a chief urban planner to create the most livable city in SimCity. Being a chief urban planner requires understanding the conditions and knowing what the people want as well. A chief urban planner does extensive research, not plopping subways in the middle of suburbia, expecting people to use them.

If you want a city without a chief urban planner, play SimCity. It will have very interesting results.
 
The chief planner can direct development to take a particular form but there have to be developers willing to take on the task, quality businesses willing to occupy the spaces and a residential base in the area willing to walk to and employ the services offered. What the original article fails to question is whether, at Laird and Eglinton, there was demand for the type of project that was produced and whether or not the developer had interest in developing something different for this location.

I have visited this Centre and it appeared to be well populated with customers at the time. Had the developer chosen to build a residential condo, above neighbourhood retail at grade, built to the sidewalk, I wonder how successful this project would have been?

I agree it is desirable to recreate walkable neighbourhoods within the sparsely populated suburban neighbourhoods which ring our city but not every development will fit that model. As much as we need a planner that has a vision for the city, we also need an individual who can make compromises and look for solutions.

The inner suburbs need to develop in a different way from the urban core. A chief planner needs to have a vision which incorporates all of the city and the divergent opportunities which exist.

I think Hume's expectation that this development would have been more urban is not misplaced but the developers have to be allowed to create a project they expect to be successful if it is ever to be developed.
 
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A city without a planner would lead to a city without much coherent or logical plans. Planning a city the size of Toronto is more than just playing SimCity (even the upcoming one). There is a very good reason why SimCity does not replace urban planning courses. You do not need to be a chief urban planner to create the most livable city in SimCity. Being a chief urban planner requires understanding the conditions and knowing what the people want as well. A chief urban planner does extensive research, not plopping subways in the middle of suburbia, expecting people to use them.

If you want a city without a chief urban planner, play SimCity. It will have very interesting results.

A chief planner serves more as a communicator of the department's high level ideas, (such as official plans and strategic visions) to a wider public than somebody who actually is involved in "making plans" at the site level.

While chief planners are certainly smart people who are well informed about how cities work and what makes great spaces, they don't actually do any research, per se.

We need a visionary planner as much as we need a bureaucratic structure that can resist political interference and let the best and brightest achieve their ideas. High civil servants like Toronto's chief planner should have a high degree of authority and resources to shape Canada's leading metropolitan city in a way that's exemplary. The chief planner of Toronto's goal should be to create a city that's the pinnacle of function and beauty. There should always be opportunities for democratic input in planning, but not political interference.

We certainly need a bureaucratic structure that resists political interference. The problem is - and I would place some blame at people who have misinterpreted Jane Jacobs - that everyone feels that:

a) we don't need formal "planners"; that the best cities are the ones that are unplanned and spontaneous. This sounds appealing, at first, but an "unplanned" city is kind of like a "free market"; even if it existed at one point in time, it hasn't existed in any modern society with expectations of a certain standard of living.

b) that planning is best left to the people who live in those neighbourhoods, and not some detached state apparatus. This old yarn, again a shoddy reading of ideas espoused in DLGC, has been dismantled by the whole NIMBY movement, and their complete disregard for the idea of societal benefit. Planners are not saints, but they tend to have a better understanding of societal benefit - due to their impartiality to specific sites - than NIMBY groups.
 

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