Are hospitals the new freeways?

[Hipster Duck]

In terms of their impact on neighbourhood life, vitality, etc.

I was thinking about how one of the biggest impediments to Toronto's downtown vitality is, ironically, one of the biggest assets to Toronto's economy and downtown job growth: the giant "Discovery District" of hospitals and healthcare research facilities. Let's face it: the area bounded by Edward, College, Bay and McCaul is an urban write-off. Hospitals are monumental in size and put up rather blank facades; good architecture is almost never demanded. Despite the thousands of workers in these places, they seemingly can't support the retail and services of the financial district so even with all that employment the surrounding streets feel deserted at the best of times. Other cities have hospitals in their downtowns, but shove them away to a corner: Montreal's hospitals and healthcare facilities all seem to hug the mountain; New York's are along the Hudson river on the edge of Manhattan; Vancouver puts it all in the VGH campus south of Broadway. Toronto is unfortunate in that the more exciting office and shopping areas of downtown grew around the hospital district, such that, were it not for Yonge street, Yorkville would be severed from the rest of downton by a square kilometer of institutional dullness.

Well, the hospitals aren't going anywhere, and they actually were there first when Yorkville was just another sleepy residential neighbourhood. Still, what can we do to enliven the hospital area? It kind of just sits there like a tumour.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Hipster:

I have doubt to the ability to enliven the hospital district, just as we would have trouble enlivening say the U of T campus (and in many ways, that's ok). Perhaps we should focus on a) enlivening the edge of these highly intensely used areas; b) ensure high quality public realm - esp. streetscaping and quasi-public open space so that it encourages casual uses and c) encourage hospitals look at street level frontage as an asset to be publicized or cashed in. There are no reasons why the myriad of non-sensitive uses (e.g. hospital cafeteria/eateries/cafes, retail, public outreach/education, etc) need to be buried in the middle of the building when they could be provided in a visible, engaging way.
AoD

 

[ShonTron]

I could say similar things about educational institutions, though at least there's more street life even if at street level, the buildings are often as void. St. George Street is hardly a happenin' street despite thousands of students and hundreds of employees around there. At least Ryerson was tucked in out-of-sight, though it's coming out of its shell especially with the Yonge/Gould building. Most of the buildings at U of T do not animate the street whatsoever. Bloor Street is pretty dead between Spadina and Bedford. Spadina suddenly gets quiet north of the old Knox College building.

 

[rpeters]

I work in mt. sinai, the ugliest building of them all lol. But at least U of T, Queens Park and the hospitals are close together so the whole deadzone can kind of merge and contain itself.

for researchers it is very convenient to have them all close together (gov. buildings, hospitals, and the university) as there's thousands of potential research subjects willing to contribute to studies, all within a very close radius.

No offense to any of the elderly, but maybe they should build nursing homes next to the hospitals so that if anything happens they`re right next door. it would cut down on ambulance costs and possibly save lives.

 

[M.R.Victor]

I find the Discovery District to be a welcome moment of respite from the hustle and bustle of downtown, and I welcome it's visual conformity as an alternative to the cacophony of Yonge Street. The Discovery District, alongside Queen's Park and the University of Toronto, constitute a more sober, institutional segment of downtown which provides a welcome sense of variety. Speaking from my own experience, when travelling to any major city, I tend to seek out not only the fun, vibrant commercial districts, but also the civic minded, sober, institutional ones as well. Instead, I feel that the problem with this area is the general lack of quality landscaping and visual beauty. The north corners of University Ave. and College, as well as the southern portion of Queen's Park, would benefit immensely from a creative landscaping solution. Likewise, I feel that Bloor Street should get the same treatment West of University Ave as it has East of University, ideally paid for by the University of Toronto. These two measures would begin to give Toronto those grand civic moment that most of Urban Toronto seems to be pining for.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Hipster:

I have doubt to the ability to enliven the hospital district, just as we would have trouble enlivening say the U of T campus (and in many ways, that's ok). Perhaps we should focus on a) enlivening the edge of these highly intensely used areas; b) ensure high quality public realm - esp. streetscaping and quasi-public open space so that it encourages casual uses and c) encourage hospitals look at street level frontage as an asset to be publicized or cashed in. There are no reasons why the myriad of non-sensitive uses (e.g. hospital cafeteria/eateries/cafes, retail, public outreach/education, etc) need to be buried in the middle of the building when they could be provided in a visible, engaging way.
AoD

AoD, I wouldn't compare U of T with the hospitals. For one, the architecture at U of T is quite stunning, and the overall design of the campus stresses the importance of view corridors, green space and other things that make monumentality work. The campus is also not quite so relentless. You can always escape down Philosopher's Walk for a more close-knit urban experience, and some of the new buildings, like Woodsworth, support healthy retail.

The second thing is that university buildings, except the very biggest ones, are a magnitude smaller than hospitals in size. Hospitals are really gigantic, eclisped only by stadia and convention centres in size and, by extension, in how dull and inert they present a face to their urban surroundings.

Softening the landscape will definitely help. I think trees along Elm street would go a long way to making the stretch from Elizabeth and University less miserable. On a grander scale, I sometimes wish that University Ave was reconfigured so that the island in the centre was removed and the sidewalks on either side considerably widened (that's where we'd move the statues to, too) to support cafes and public seating. Ah, to dream!

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Hipster:

I agree and disagree with your assessment - U of T campus overall is probably finer grained and more heterogeneous in scale but individual blocks can be just as mind-numbing as the hospital row (think Harbord between Spadina and St. George). In fact one can argue the campus holds less opportunity for improvement in some ways given the lower intensity of uses. The setting between the U of T campus (which is for all intents and surrounded by healthy urban fabric) and the hospital row (institutional to the North, degraded lots to the South and East, separation by distance to the West) is also a bit different, with less opportunity for escape and tie-ins. And unlike U of T, I am not aware of any serious attempt to have a coherent landscape plan for the area. Pretty much most of the hospital buildings are architectural missteps, and where there is landscaping it is usually a poorly maintained front for something else (like driveways, loading docks, etc). I think if they took the time and resources to soften all the edges, it would have worked wonders (even without tackling the bigger issue that is the University Avenue overall).

An interesting healthcare project to follow would be the CAMH redo - though the needs of that institution is very different and may not be replicable in this setting (besides umpteen billion was sunk into the existing infrastructure).

AoD

 

[TrickyRicky]

I see your point Hipster but I would make two points:

-First, if you speak to the people who use these facilities as a place of employment, discovery or as patients / clients I think you would find that they feel Toronto's concentration of facilities and their position in the city is an asset

-I'm reminded of one of my criticisms of Ken Greenberg's opinions on these subjects. It's not a philosphical disagreement but a critic of an omission. That omission is that cities should not be homogeneous, even if homogeneous means successful, vibrant, mixed use communities. Sometime a port should be a port and be optimized as a port

Maybe the hospital or Discovery district or whatever they call it should be itself first. We may encourage the surrounding areas to be so bursting with life that they encrouch the district but I don't think we need to apply force

Also, as an addition what I thought this thread was going to be about was is the big hospital model of healthcare provision the new freeway highway system? That answer I don't know but I feel that it may be. I feel that the future of medical service provision looks more like small private specialty clinics, not big box hospital castles presided over by their own feudal lords.