Toronto Seaton House Redevelopment | 36.88m | 9s | City of Toronto | Montgomery Sisam

I think most major American cities have areas like that. I've had similarly uncomfortable experiences in Washington DC and in some of the surrounding suburbs. And then there's the classic example of Detroit

What's interesting to me tho is that with the exception of that piece of George St Toronto's "bad" areas are nowhere near as uninviting. Even Jane/Finch or Malvern aren't that bad. Regent Park and parts of south Parkdale have a bit of that urban decay feel, but we're redeveloping the former and the latter still has a thriving community in spite of the degraded condition of some buildings.
 
whatever said:
What's interesting to me tho is that with the exception of that piece of George St Toronto's "bad" areas are nowhere near as uninviting. Even Jane/Finch or Malvern aren't that bad. Regent Park and parts of south Parkdale have a bit of that urban decay feel, but we're redeveloping the former and the latter still has a thriving community in spite of the degraded condition of some buildings.
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Direct comparisons are almost impossible. Toronto is a singing, playing, laughing paradise compared to most American urban centres, both because we've been in a vastly different sociopolitical atmosphere for centuries and because we've dodged about fifty bullets that American cities couldn't avoid. I wish Modernist architecture and planning could've been one of those dodged bullets as well, but I'll be content that we don't have a stifling ring of downtown freeways choking the downtown.
 
tapesonthefloor said:
Direct comparisons are almost impossible. Toronto is a singing, playing, laughing paradise compared to most American urban centres, both because we've been in a vastly different sociopolitical atmosphere for centuries and because we've dodged about fifty bullets that American cities couldn't avoid. I wish Modernist architecture and planning could've been one of those dodged bullets as well, but I'll be content that we don't have a stifling ring of downtown freeways choking the downtown.
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You wish we could have dodged the likes of City Hall, the CN Tower, and the T-D Centre? You might as well wish you lived in another city because that architecture has helped to define Toronto's greatness.
 
junctionist said:
You wish we could have dodged the likes of City Hall, the CN Tower, and the T-D Centre? You might as well wish you lived in another city because that architecture has helped to define Toronto's greatness.
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It would be off-topic to pursue this, and since my personal tastes are generally indefensible I'm not going to outline them here. I will say, though, that trotting out the few icons of an era isn't going to convince me that for every NPS there isn't a Sheraton Centre glowering at it from across the street.

Ugh.
 
nstuch said:
my apologies, i was playing around in streetview looking for what looked to be a bad part of town and that looked pretty bad.. i welcome someone showing me the worst part of the south side!

I used to travel to Baltimore all the time and rarely left the inner harbour until once i went to a company sponsored course a few miles outside of downtown.. i went through some neighbourhoods where buildings had burnt down like 7 years before and never been touched
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I made a little video of pics of South Side Chicago, that I also got from streetview. I don't have a program to save pics from streetview, so I just took a picture of my computer screen, using my camera. The quality is not good but you can get the gist of it. I can't say this is the worst part of South Chicago, I just searched quickly and I couldn't find any of the streets I drove on but this was the general area. (around Racine, Martin Luther King Drive & 60th to 100th streets, I think)

You might not be able to see it clearly but almost all of the buildings in the video are abandoned, boarded up and just left to rot. Also look at how many empty lots there are, with weeds growing and garbage laying around. (It's hard to see details in the pics) I saw one pic where all 4 corners on a major road had empty lots. The condition of the sidewalks, curbs and roads is just terrible. It's obvious that very little money is spent for their upkeep.

I didn't get many main streets because I couldn't find many. On Google, many roads on the South Side were not on streetview, surprisingly. It's the more main streets where you see most of the graffiti, garbage and boarded up storefronts. (from what I remember)

As you can see, there are few people on the streets and I noticed the same thing when I was there around 1pm. We drove back our last day in Chicago before leaving town, (for one great store we found) and got lost. When the sun went down and darkness descended, it got a whole lot scarier. (Trust me, this was not our plan, we just couldn't find a damned highway to get out) The streets are pretty much empty. You only see people in groups of 10 or 20 huddled in one area and it's quite intimidating. Few people walk alone at night in this area. We stuck out like a sore thumb too, as we were the only non-black people for miles around.

The neighbourhood in this video is all black. Just west of here is the all Latino area and it is just about the same except the main streets are probably a bit more run down. All the stores were in really bad shape.

Anyway, like I said, this isn't the best quality or examples but it's the best I could do quickly. Watch it and compare it to Toronto's worst areas. You can kind of see how it looks a bit like George Street but on a much bigger scale.

http://torontovibe.ning.com/video/south-chicago-pics
 
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tapesonthefloor said:
It would be off-topic to pursue this, and since my personal tastes are generally indefensible I'm not going to outline them here. I will say, though, that trotting out the few icons of an era isn't going to convince me that for every NPS there isn't a Sheraton Centre glowering at it from across the street.

Ugh.
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All in all, it's not that "ugh". And other cities have something like it. Above all, it's hardly "Seaton House" slummy, if we want to get back on topic...
 
Not much new info, but things are moving forward:

Abandoned George Street homes to become part of Seaton House

...Now eight houses on George Street stand derelict and abandoned, windows boarded up, litter scattered across fenced-in yards. In July, the city green lit plans to revive the homes as part of a redevelopment of the neighbouring men’s shelter. But some neighbours question if the plans will fix the area’s problems.

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Seven of the eight homes along the stretch of George Street between Gerrard and Dundas have been designated as heritage properties under the Ontario Heritage Act. The move was meant to give the city authority to enforce heritage property standards and maintenance, and refuse demolition. But the houses are all now in various states of disrepair.

In July, the city approved plans to redevelop Seaton House, including buying the eight derelict homes, because more real estate is needed to carry out the plans. “If the properties are not purchased at this time, secured and stabilized, the risk of losing them altogether through demolition by neglect is significant,” a report to city council read.

Negotiations over the properties are still ongoing, and details won’t be made public until they’re complete, Patricia Anderson, a manager with the city’s Shelter, Support & Housing Administration Division, said in an email.

Preserving the houses’ history through the redevelopment is crucial, said Kristyn Wong-Tam, councillor for the area.

“We will do everything we can to preserve the heritage.”

...

The report approved by city council recommended that redevelopment include an emergency shelter with about 100 beds, a long-term care home with about 162 beds, community space where clients can access services, and possibly private development. A final proposal will be presented to council in 2015, and work won’t begin until at least 2017.

...

For Wong-Tam, the redevelopment is an opportunity to revitalize a neighbourhood that hasn’t had a lot of good news in the past.
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Oh God - I live near Allan Gardens, and this is about the worst possible news for the area.

Seaton House needs to be broken up and turned into small, manageable unobtrusive shelter homes across the city. As ist stands now, having five hundred homeless men next to the park has been a depressant on the area for some time.
It depresses the area with mental illness, with drug dealing, with gross poverty and with loiterers. I might sound arch-conservative here, but believe me I'm not. I do see, however, an area overburdened beyond any fair capacity to properly assimilate, treat or deal with the poverty it has come to be a default location for.

The city needs desperately needs more housing and shelters, but it does not need more bulky out-sized depots like Seaton House. I for one will be protesting this expansion - in the hopes the city will begin to deal with models for homelessness that are less heavy handed, better for those involved, and for the neighbourhoods surrounding them.
 
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