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How to be a great city: The Star

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How to be a great city
Apr. 23, 2006. 08:38 AM
KENNETH KIDD
TORONTO STAR

"Don't you see? The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, Jewish, homosexual pornographers. I think of us that way sometimes, and I live here."
"Max, if we lived in California, we could play outdoors every day in the sun."
Annie Hall, 1977
"Boy, this is really a great city. I don't care what anybody says. It's really a knockout."
Manhattan, 1979
The world may boast a wealth of great cities, but we don't always think of them as such. Even the greatest struggle from time to time. They fret about seemingly insoluble problems and unachievable goals, about history passing them by.
The New York of Woody Allen's Annie Hall came at the end of a disastrous decade for Gotham, one filled with urban decay, civic bankruptcy, crime and despair. The sun was shining elsewhere.
But the city rallied, with the defiant pride of Manhattan, to become the metropolis we recognize (once again) as one of the planet's urban masterpieces.
So what makes cities great? Or rather, what makes Great Cities?
What are the forces that shape the urban landscape and culture into something recognizably wonderful and inspiring? And what can we learn as Toronto, the most culturally diverse city on the planet, at last begins to accept and maybe embrace its own potential greatness?
We don't lack for ideas about transforming Toronto, taking it to the next level. Magazines like spacing and the book uTOpia: Towards a new Toronto attest to that, as does the outpouring of response to the "What If?" package in last Sunday's Star.
But other cities, from Detroit to St. Louis, have similarly had dreamy ideas about achieving or regaining greatness, with mostly disheartening results.
So what does it take and where is the spark?
In the past, you could make a city great by sheer, often bloody, willpower if you happened to be a visionary despot, which is how kings and popes transformed the likes of Paris and Rome, beginning in the 17th century. But those cities, like their early counterparts in North America, were much smaller at the time.
And there has always been the phoenix effect  tragic natural disasters like floods or fires that have, in the end, transformed cities into something ultimately more magnificent.
"Historically, one of the things that has driven change to make city life better has been really bad problems, like pollution or disease or fire," says architect Witold Rybczynski, who has written extensively about the development of cities.
So you end up with everything from better fire codes and sewers to new building methods and the remaking, from scratch, of vast areas affected by fire  like the 1871 blaze in Chicago that destroyed 18,000 buildings and left 90,000 homeless.
Not long afterward, steel-frame construction was pioneered in Chicago, heralding the modern skyscraper.
But no one then commanded people to live in downtown apartment buildings, providing the population density to support the restaurants, theatres and galleries that help define the modern great city. That was simply a futuristic idea launched on the world by a Swiss architect, Le Corbusier, which gradually gained traction among those who could choose where they wanted to live.
"It's what people want," says Rybczynski. "If people want to live downtown, or if certain kinds of people want to live downtown, then the downtown becomes full of those people and the system reacts to it. It's really driven by demand."
Or consider an additional attribute of many great cities, itself another (then-futuristic) endowment from the 19th century: massive, public green spaces. Think of Central Park in New York or High Park in Toronto.
With rare exception  Downsview National Park being one  opportunities for those kinds of transforming flourishes don't happen very often these days.
"As the city gets bigger and occupies more space, it becomes harder and harder to make large-scale interventions," says Rybczynski, now a professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
That's why so many cities, eying rebirth and potential greatness, now clamour to host the Olympic Games or a World's Fair, Toronto included of late. It's a rare chance to imagine on a larger scale, to start from what amounts to a blank slate.
"They can be very successful tickets to ride, if they're done right," says urban planner Joe Berridge, a partner with Urban Strategies Inc. in Toronto.
But note the "if."
Barcelona, for instance, used the Summer Olympics to transform itself into one of Europe's premier cities. The Spanish port is now a huge draw, not just for tourists but also for a host of investments by IT companies.
Yet there's no certainty in such gamesmanship. For every city that has used the Olympics to raise itself to greatness, there are as many regrettable disasters  Montreal, Atlanta, Athens. "There is an Olympics of having an Olympics," says Berridge.
So how do you fall on the happy side of that "if"?
You need vision and leadership, certainly, but those alone aren't necessarily enough.
"The trick for great city leadership is to figure out what the directions of the times are, and to channel them to some sort of greater public success," says Berridge.
He likes to cite Manchester, a decaying industrial city whose inner core was destroyed by an IRA bomb 10 years ago this summer. That catastrophe has led, not to despair, but to a shimmering rebirth.
"That was done by a fantastic combination of very strong political leadership and very strong civil service within the city," says Berridge. "They reckoned that there was going to be room for another great city in England, and they decided they were going to be it."
Manchester rebuilt its downtown core, hosted the Commonwealth Games and emphasized civic infrastructure. Says Berridge: "They have created an environment in which the European banks are flooding in and 20,000 people have come to live in their downtown in the past 10 years. All kinds of new cultural attractions have opened up, new public spaces have opened up."
Does Toronto have that kind of leadership?
"Wait and see," says Berridge. "We've certainly got the political leadership. The mayor understands these issues absolutely. Whether the mayor has the team to deliver, I think, is the big question."
Rybczynski isn't quite so sanguine about the central role of planning and visionary leadership. "There have been a lot of visions that have had negative consequences, and `visionary' implies a kind of top-down process, which really only works in highly authoritarian societies," he says.
"In democracies, cities tend to evolve much more organically, because it's the result of many small decisions but on a very large scale."
If, for instance, you had stood up 60 years ago and said your goal was to make Toronto the most multicultural city in the world, the laughter would have been deafening.
"Nobody planned it," says Rybczynski. "It's a very good example of how a city changes and handles that change, but it was more about handling change than about planning, certainly visionary planning."
But this accommodation of the city's changing size and nature was certainly wilful. And for urban planner John Bousfield of the Toronto firm Bousfields Inc., that takes you to one of the key facets of Toronto's earlier growth, and what it may now be lacking: massive public investment in infrastructure.
To Bousfield, the "sinews of the city" were nearly all laid out between the launch of the old Metropolitan Toronto, in 1953, and the early 1970s.
Much of the city's modern infrastructure dates from that era, and not just the newer sewage plants and water treatment facilities, or highways like the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway.
There was also the subway system, the ravine parks, the Leslie Street Spit and things like the 1967 Waterfront Plan, which laid the groundwork for Ashbridge's Bay, Bluffer's Park and the marina and park at Mimico Creek, among a host of others.
Bousfield likes to hand most of the laurels to Metro's first chairman, Fred Gardiner.
"Gardiner wasn't a visionary," says Bousfield. "But he was a great general and he surrounded himself with really top-flight engineers. Gardiner ran Metro like a vast construction company, the results of which we're still living off.
"All of those things were done, and without them, how could Toronto achieve anything like its stature? Wonderful things happened and it changed from being a provincial town to a metropolis. There just seemed to be money for those kinds of things, and then in the 1970s it stopped."
Well, perhaps not stopped, but certainly diminished in scale.
Is this important? Bousfield thinks it might be, certainly over the longer term. "I'm wondering if you can just stop the infrastructure and nevertheless keep going."
But here's the thing about great cities: They don't always develop along logical, linear lines. There are spurts and setbacks, more than a little chaos at times, and much that is unanticipated.
That unpredictability, says Rybczynski, is the heart of any city's charm.
"It seems to me that what makes cities so wonderful is precisely that they're not predictable, but they do react to what people want. Then they produce things which are quite unexpected, like Toronto itself."
This isn't always welcomed. There is, inevitably, resistance  not just to visionary ideas but also to the actual fact of change. And this is scarcely new. When the grid system of streets was being laid out for what would become mid-town Manhattan, for instance, the surveyors were pelted with rocks by local farmers and villagers. That was in 1811.
Some changes, and some ideas, ought to be resisted. The proposed Spadina Expressway, for instance, might well have done lasting damage to Toronto had it not been halted in the early 1970s.
But resistance to change, to progress, can also become generalized. You can see a species of that whenever Toronto residents' associations or community councils meet to consider any kind of development proposal.
"The normal spokespeople for the community, the residents' associations, are holding a terribly conservative view of what they want," says Berridge. "They want the place to stay as it is.
"While they've been wanting it to stay as it is, something like 120,000 people have come to live in the downtown. The city is voting with its feet about what it really wants to be, but that hasn't somehow got into the political consciousness of the city."
Or consider the massive cultural projects now under way, with a tab of roughly $1 billion: the expansions of the Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario; the new home for National Ballet School; renovations to the Royal Conservatory of Music and Gardiner Museum; and, at long last, a new opera house.
In other words, precisely the type of developments that characterize today's great cities for urban futurist Richard Florida, who rates Toronto among the top three or four creative cities on the planet.
And yet, and yet.
In giving the William Kilbourn Lecture last fall, John Honderich  former publisher of the Star and now a special adviser to Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty on the future of the GTA  touched on another aspect of civic consciousness that lags reality.
He harkened back to the raucous debate, nearly 40 years ago, about whether Toronto should purchase a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore for the then-new City Hall. It even spawned an election in which the winning slogan was "Sewers not Moores." (Private citizens ended up buying the sculpture anyway.)
There is, Honderich lamented, still an unhappy legacy from those days, what he called "the deeply ingrained inferiority complex that continues to grip this city in its view of itself and its place in the world."
For Larry Richards, a professor of architecture at the University of Toronto, that's why all of the new cultural projects need to be a resounding success, as "proofs of excellence."
Will that be enough? Maybe.
"Toronto has to come out of its pessimism and just be more confident and believe that things are possible," says Richards. "If you start believing, then people want to make things happen."
But great cities also have more than a strutting confidence: They combine that with a keen, almost visceral sense of themselves.
"(The writer) Jane Jacobs uses the word `style' in an interesting way," says Richards. "A city and people, no matter what kind of socio-economic status, need to have this identity by way of style.
"What's the Toronto style, the same way you might say Amsterdam has a style or Barcelona has a style? I think we're getting close to knowing that we have that."
Richards  and he's not alone  now finds himself keenly awaiting a movie called The Sentinel, just opening in theatres around the world, and starring Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland.
Like countless other movies, it was filmed in Hollywood North  but with one, portentous difference:
Instead of playing cinematic stand-in for New York, Chicago or London, Toronto will finally be playing itself.
We want to hear your ideas on how to improve Toronto. Please send them to whatif@thestar.ca.
great
city
 
The Star has been running some excellant articles on Toronto and it's development. They have some really good ideas and have gotten people talking and thinking. It's good to see articles focusing on developments and ways to improve Toronto. I think the next few years might be a turning point for Toronto. It just seems like something BIG is happening in this city right now, transforming all areas. Peoples attitudes about Toronto are slowly changing, from having a major inferiority complex, to believing in Toronto, realizing that we can can be something more then a 2nd rate, nice city. My prediction, this will be Toronto's decade.
 
Hey all you brainiacks and pseudo intellectuals. Let's hear some of your bright ideas or "wish list" to improve Toronto. Maybe with all the brain power on this site (Let's not waste it all, correcting peoples grammar and spelling) we can come up with some brilliant ideas of our own, or at least put in our 2 cents worth. What woyld you do if you were Mayor or head city planner? I definatly, am no intellectual, but I have my opinions and ideas, which I will think about for a bit, then post. Anybody else care to share their ideas? How about getting rid of the Gardiner for starters. That's not an original idea but it's needed. The less cars downtown, the better. Like the Toronto Star writes, we need more pedestrian friendly areas.
 
Sexual repression breeds agression. LOL What agression, I was just having fun. :)
 
But this accommodation of the city's changing size and nature was certainly wilful. And for urban planner John Bousfield of the Toronto firm Bousfields Inc., that takes you to one of the key facets of Toronto's earlier growth, and what it may now be lacking: massive public investment in infrastructure.
Couldn't agree more. Until we figure this one out (particularly WRT transit), Toronto's "greatness" will be stifled. Not to say we won't figure it out sooner or later either.
 
I still say Toronto's greatest challenge wrt greatness is improving its visual appeal... the streets, streetsigns, sidewalks, street furniture, parks and buildings...
 
I still say Toronto's greatest challenge wrt greatness is improving its visual appeal... the streets, streetsigns, sidewalks, street furniture, parks and buildings...

Agreed. We'll fix transit long before this even if it does seem to be going at a glacial pace. Tons of work to be done in this area, though to be completely honest, I have a soft spot in my heart for the gritty eastern North American industrial aesthetic. I wouldn't want Toronto to become *too* clean :)
 
I still say Toronto's greatest challenge wrt greatness is improving its visual appeal... the streets, streetsigns, sidewalks, street furniture, parks and buildings...

I like a dose of industrial gritiness myself, but I totally agree with the above quote. All too often, it is the small details that can make a bland streetscape into one that has a degree of appeal. An endless line of crap-covered poles, crumbling sidewalks splattered with senseless ashphalt repairs, trees cut down at mid trunk, unkept building fronts and long lines of bulky telephone and hydro lines all make for a rather harsh streetscape that is a little too common in Toronto.
 
Build the worlds tallest free standing structure, and then beside it build the worlds first retractable roof stadium..oh wait..

I think its gotta be the re-development of the West Don Lands(especially along the waterfront). It would be huge for the city.

Also, having a fixed rail link to the airport would serve residents of the city and visitors well.
 
It's great that there is a renaissance of sorts occuring in peoples contemplation of the small things but as a natural contrarian I must say that in my opinion these small issues will work there course now and we really need to start focusing in the coming decade on megalomania. Large infrastructure projects, white elephants and public follies are the way to go. Decades of budget cuts have lead to a bean counting navel gazing culture prevailing. Great cities are built with equal parts rational navel gazing and brash egotistical folly, you can never count yourself great without both. My list of such ventures include subways to anywhere and everywhere the political will allows, some sort of man made natural feature (how about creating a mountain in downsview park formed by each newcomer to the City ceremonially adding one rock to a pile), an incredibly gaudy train shed over union station, some sort of white elephant building in or just off the shore of the central waterfront, some sort of observation fortress turret sculpture at the western end of cherry beach guarding the eastern gap between the portlands and the islands etc.
 
The greater city: A National Post panel has a few complaints, but much hope, about Toronto today

Kelvin Browne, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 29, 2006

Toronto is in the midst of a building boom: Combine the high-profile cultural institution projects -- The Opera House, Royal Ontario Museum, AGO, OCAD, Gardiner Museum, National Ballet School and Royal Conservatory of Music -- with the forest of new condominiums under construction, and Toronto gives every appearance of renewing its urban fabric and creating an enviable 21st-century metropolis.

But despite this evident prosperity, there's a disquieting sense something isn't quite right, that a plethora of building projects don't make a city a better place to live on a day-to-day basis or, for that matter, more remarkable.

For instance, some wonder where the great civic building projects are that mirror this institutional and private sector resurgence. Others suggest the missing ingredient, the one whose absence worries us, is ''vision.'' Lack of vision is a good guess. Pause and ask yourself if you know what the planning goals for Toronto are: A nicer waterfront, a better subway system, more trees ... it's vague and most of us have no idea where the city is headed from an urban-design perspective. This is unsettling.

Mayor David Miller or the city's head honcho of planning, Gary Wright, are most often held responsible for a lack of a concrete civic vision and for not articulating an image -- or at least a memorable one -- of what we collectively aspire our pubic realm to be. There are volumes of feel-good banalities and few specifics about 21st-century Toronto.

To determine whether we lack vision, and what we should be doing if we haven't got or don't need it, we've consulted three people who've made their reputations by doing good things for Toronto: urban planner Joe Berridge, landscape designer Janet Rosenberg and developer Howard Cohen.

Kelvin Browne: How imperative is a vision, the mayor's or anyone's, to shaping a city? Cities grow organically; is an overarching vision an antiquated idea, one we don't need to prosper?

Joe Berridge: The most important thing for Toronto's future is that we become a global city. The more you travel, see other cities, and understand what makes them successful, the more you know this. Toronto's economic viability and quality of life is not a given, but rather dependent on us having something to sell that the rest of the world wants. Cities like Chicago understand this; Chicago, Barcelona, Manchester and others position themselves as global cities, albeit each one with a slightly different marketing stance.

A few weeks ago, Tony Blair said he intends to make ''London the greatest city in the world in the next 10 years.'' He knows he has to say this. And in our own way, so do we.

I believe the source of frustration here is that despite the fact we all acknowledge (or at least people who have travelled anywhere) Toronto must unequivocally position itself as a global city, no one in government will say it, or champion what we have to do to achieve it. Part of expressing this, and of great relevance to everyone who lives in Toronto, is knowing how this new global reality for Toronto translates to our built spaces. Articulating this is key. This is the vision we're not hearing.
Janet Rosenberg: I don't disagree but, and perhaps it's because landscape architects see the impact of smaller-scale initiatives and how they create places and string together the city, I'm more positive about what's going on in the city than I have been in a long time.

I think we are positioning ourselves well. This positive direction relates to Mayor Miller. Even though he's only been in office a short period of time (and most things take so much time to be realized), I believe he has a new way of engaging the public and expressing the role it can play in contributing to important opportunities for the city. He's doing it with neighbourhoods, with businesses and with professionals, including those in the development business. I don't think we see the results of his vision yet because we're still catching our breath after amalgamation; the impact of this, and downloading, has been major and we're just getting through it now.

KB: But why does the Mayor get criticized for not having a vision?

JR: Unless you're working in the development projects or following what's happening in Toronto closely, as we all are here, you miss much that's positive. I get involved in these issues through my volunteer efforts on the Waterfront Design Review Panel, the Mayor's Roundtable on a Beautiful City and Toronto Parks and Trees foundation. The confidence level may have dropped because results, especially on larger projects, take time, and a broader public isn't aware of them yet or aware of their consequences. There are many smaller projects whose success is laying the groundwork for bigger things or promoting new relationships that will generate reinvestment in the city.

KB: We're laying the groundwork for a vision, it's an incremental approach?

JR: You might say that. I think we're building our confidence and finding our way. However, I believe that the public realm is key and continues to be forgotten with our major explosion of construction.

Howard Cohen: I agree, there's so much going on in Toronto. Many, many great things. And there are a tremendous number of people involved that haven't been involved in shaping the city before. But this is also the root of why there's a perception of little vision: Toronto's renaissance is taking place without much involvement from city hall, some might even say despite city hall. They're not leading it and certainly not able to communicate it. It's even happening often in spite of residents' associations. It's not just the face of Toronto that's changing, but also the nature of Toronto.

For instance, the downtown is booming with lots of new people. These are people who celebrate and clearly want to live in an intense urban environment. These people typically aren't heard and not represented. Go to a city council meeting and ask how many councillors live in a condo or live downtown. Most live in low-rise, single-family homes and don't choose an urban environment. Most can't understand what's happening downtown, let alone articulate a vision that comprehends it. How can council or the Mayor, in particular, express a vision that's credible or representative of today's dynamism when they've had little to do with it?
KB: It sounds like even if the city had a vision, it wouldn't likely be in sync with reality.

HC: Well, I heard people say that city hall is making itself irrelevant.

KB: Aside from the vision question, what should the city do differently that would convince people Toronto is heading, from an urban-design perspective, in the right direction?

JB: The excuse that the city of Toronto doesn't have the money to do what it should to create an outstanding public realm is an issue. As long as the city views itself as a pauper, nothing will happen. In a $7-billion budget, why can't we find $30-million to fix Nathan Phillips Square or $40-million for University Avenue? We must do these things or it will continue to appear the city is doing nothing.

I also believe you can't expect the private sector to make significant investments unless the public sector makes them too, and these investments have to be in more than the sewage system or fixing water fountains. Right now, we're not a city that invests in itself. We're consumption based; we sell services, often at less than they cost, and taxes barely keep up. In the 21st-century city, 10% of the operating budget should be invested in strategic capital improvements to the urban environment.

JR: I think some city departments have too much influence. This means that a narrow range of priorities dominate. For example, with the new St. Clair Avenue streetcar line, much more can be done with the landscaping.

After all, this is an important corridor and has more significance than just as a transportation route. For the time and energy that has been put into this project, the city and TTC should set this as an example to everyone of what Toronto is capable of doing and this requires money and a shift of priorities around city hall. You do not do a major project like St. Clair without spending adequate funds in the public realm.

KB: But I've seen what can happen with exemplary urban spaces, such as Courthouse Square (near Church and Adelaide) you designed. The city builds it, but then allows it to degrade.

JR: It was a developer that paid for that park and the city built it. Now we're working with the city to restore it, eight years after it was installed. We are also in the process of working with the parks department to initiate maintenance strategies for all new parks in the city.

HC: The city isn't just a supplier of services. I think its focus for many that work there is to be a regulator. There are more levels of regulation all the time. The process is getting worse because when you don't have a strong vision, or little sense of an end goal, and more and more process, it quickly becomes apparent that it's more difficult for anything remarkable to happen. The process just wears everyone out.
KB: But don't developers always want less regulation?

HC: The city has every right to demand more, but they must be leaders, not just regulators. They have to have ideas not just rules; there's a difference. The best thing that could happen now is to see a demonstration by the city of what they want Toronto to look like.

KB: What can citizens like me do to support a better public realm for Toronto?

JB: Relax and enjoy the city. Now that we've stopped calling ourselves a world-class city, I think we're accidentally becoming one. There are many young people in the city now and considerable energy. There's a whole new generation of people that love city living. We're doing well and soon city hall might get a handle on it. If they don't, it's certainly a missed opportunity to channel this vitality.

JR: Everyone can get involved in a project at the neighourhood level; this is often the scale where you can really make a difference. We don't insist on high standards, and this is critical and we must. And I don't think we should forget about the opportunity the city has to lift our spirits -- too often the focus is on the functional and mundane. For instance, people are more aware of the importance of the urban landscape to do this, to add something positive to our day.

HC: I agree with relaxing and enjoying the city, but if you want to become involved, you can have a big impact on city politics. So few people vote, so few are involved; it doesn't take much to change the way things are. Just vote. With change can come some great new ideas.

THE PANELISTS:

Joe Berridge is a partner at Urban Strategies Inc., a Toronto-based planning and design company. His recent projects include a concept plan for Governors Island in New York Harbor, the regeneration of central Manchester, a strategy plan for the Royal Docks in London and program management for the Toronto waterfront.

Janet Rosenberg, principal of Janet Rosenberg + Associates, Landscape Architects + Urban Design, heads a Toronto-based firm that has earned an international reputation for innovative projects such as 18 Yorkville (known as Town Hall Square), Waterfront Park and the Franklin's Childrens Garden on Centre Island.

Howard Cohen is president of Context Development, developers of award-winning projects including District Lofts, Radio City, Tip Top Lofts and Spire. Prior to this, Cohen was a chief planner for neighbourhoods for the City of Toronto in the 1970s, president of Harbourfront Corporation from 1978-87 and president of the Design Exchange for its 1994 opening.

© National Post 2006
 

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