A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Post:
Reducing the city to a charity
Miller's focus is on how to fund vision, not find it
KELVIN BROWNE, National Post
Published: Friday, January 26, 2007
When you want answers, go to the top. For a sense of what's in store for Toronto from an urban design perspective in 2007, I headed to Mayor David Miller's office: through the lobby of Viljo Revel's iconic 1965 City Hall, up to the second floor and into the Mayor's office overlooking the slightly tacky but apparently soon to be improved Nathan Phillips Square. While the conversation lasted only 15 minutes, I learned a lot.
The people who say Mayor Miller is vague about Toronto's urban design priorities just haven't been listening. He's very clear -- what gets done in the public realm depends on others paying, not the City. The priority is finding the "others."
"It's impossible to rejuvenate Toronto with a civic government that is structurally and financially set up to fail," he says. What he means, I believe, is Toronto is paying for other stuff (social support programs or posters in the subway that teach us how to sneeze) so the things most of us assume the City does, such as renovate its most important public space -- Nathan Phillips Square -- or keep its parks and streets clean and beautiful, have become nice extras. I don't assume he means that basics such as police, fire and garbage service are uncontrollable cost centres and leave nothing in the budget for civic amenities.
What can the City do? The Mayor says Toronto can create plans (at least this keeps City bureaucrats in their jobs), and then, well, the rest is going to be fundraising. Everyone wishes it were otherwise, including the
Mayor, but there it is, the City has become a charity.
The buzzword is "partnerships." The Mayor says, "We're going to be asking Torontonians to contribute explicitly to the City." This is a nice way of saying it's voluntary contributions versus our implicit contributions, a.k.a., taxes that will create a sybaritic or at least tidier Toronto. "People are good with things like supporting hospitals, now we're calling for a partnership in city building. And I think we all care enough to do this because we all want good urban design."
But what about vision? "The reason I push back on a vision statement is because you build a city neighourhood by neighbourhood."(I didn't quite understand why this precludes a vision for how all these places knit up, but ?) He continued: "Design becomes incredibly important to this because design is about how your public spaces feel, about how you live together, about the opportunities for people to experience uplifting moments, certainly positive moments. Excellence in design fits with how I think a city should be and should grow. In the overall sense, this has been a priority of mine sense I was first elected."
It's cruel to quote verbatim, we all meander, but after you listen to the Mayor for awhile it's obvious how we pay for urbanity, not what urbanity we strive to have, is his focus. In other words, the only imperative shining through the political rhetoric is to get more money.
The projects he notes as key, the renovation to Nathan Phillips Square, the new street furniture project, and the continuation of the City Beautiful campaign, are all essentially pilots for a nascent new citizens-pay-twice-for-theirpublic- realm approach.
The Mayor also notes the new design review panels as a priority. They're now legally possible. He says, "We have the opportunity to push the development community on design issues. I think the development industry well embrace it because if you push everyone to do it, no one will be able to get away with cheap design." Legislating design standards is a tricky business. Look at how moribund Vancouver has become. And while it might produce better individual buildings, the City's involvement is more urgently needed in all those other spaces developers don't and shouldn't build, the small and grand gestures that define a sophisticated metropolis.
In fact, there's trepidation about anything as elitist as an urban vision unless it's linked to unassailable social benefits. The Mayor says, "We're a city of newcomers. Between 2001 and 2005, an average of 69,000 immigrants arrived in the City each year. Where do you become a Torontonian? In our public spaces. Design is incredibly important so that our public spheres ensure we feel like Torontonians. They have to be spaces that bring us together and inspire us."
It's a slippery slope. First, you acknowledge the importance of urban design but don't have a vision, or big idea, or a singular goal. Instead, you focus on multiple, relatively small projects and create moving political targets. Perhaps mini-visions are OK, but they're hardly Baron Hausmann's Paris in their breathtaking audacity.
Second, stress that others are making it impossible to deliver even a mini-project; nothing is solely your responsibility.
And third, subtly blame lacklustre urbanity on citizens -- it's our fault the city is boring or that we don't have concrete dreams like Chicago, New York, London, Barcelona or Berlin that we can all rally behind. If we'd just get with it and contribute explicitly, the City will help us make it nice.
© National Post 2007
_________________________________________________
We don't lack urbanity; one'd argue we do very well in that regards within the core. What we lack is good urban design and focus on the aesthetic qualities of the urban realm.
AoD
Reducing the city to a charity
Miller's focus is on how to fund vision, not find it
KELVIN BROWNE, National Post
Published: Friday, January 26, 2007
When you want answers, go to the top. For a sense of what's in store for Toronto from an urban design perspective in 2007, I headed to Mayor David Miller's office: through the lobby of Viljo Revel's iconic 1965 City Hall, up to the second floor and into the Mayor's office overlooking the slightly tacky but apparently soon to be improved Nathan Phillips Square. While the conversation lasted only 15 minutes, I learned a lot.
The people who say Mayor Miller is vague about Toronto's urban design priorities just haven't been listening. He's very clear -- what gets done in the public realm depends on others paying, not the City. The priority is finding the "others."
"It's impossible to rejuvenate Toronto with a civic government that is structurally and financially set up to fail," he says. What he means, I believe, is Toronto is paying for other stuff (social support programs or posters in the subway that teach us how to sneeze) so the things most of us assume the City does, such as renovate its most important public space -- Nathan Phillips Square -- or keep its parks and streets clean and beautiful, have become nice extras. I don't assume he means that basics such as police, fire and garbage service are uncontrollable cost centres and leave nothing in the budget for civic amenities.
What can the City do? The Mayor says Toronto can create plans (at least this keeps City bureaucrats in their jobs), and then, well, the rest is going to be fundraising. Everyone wishes it were otherwise, including the
Mayor, but there it is, the City has become a charity.
The buzzword is "partnerships." The Mayor says, "We're going to be asking Torontonians to contribute explicitly to the City." This is a nice way of saying it's voluntary contributions versus our implicit contributions, a.k.a., taxes that will create a sybaritic or at least tidier Toronto. "People are good with things like supporting hospitals, now we're calling for a partnership in city building. And I think we all care enough to do this because we all want good urban design."
But what about vision? "The reason I push back on a vision statement is because you build a city neighourhood by neighbourhood."(I didn't quite understand why this precludes a vision for how all these places knit up, but ?) He continued: "Design becomes incredibly important to this because design is about how your public spaces feel, about how you live together, about the opportunities for people to experience uplifting moments, certainly positive moments. Excellence in design fits with how I think a city should be and should grow. In the overall sense, this has been a priority of mine sense I was first elected."
It's cruel to quote verbatim, we all meander, but after you listen to the Mayor for awhile it's obvious how we pay for urbanity, not what urbanity we strive to have, is his focus. In other words, the only imperative shining through the political rhetoric is to get more money.
The projects he notes as key, the renovation to Nathan Phillips Square, the new street furniture project, and the continuation of the City Beautiful campaign, are all essentially pilots for a nascent new citizens-pay-twice-for-theirpublic- realm approach.
The Mayor also notes the new design review panels as a priority. They're now legally possible. He says, "We have the opportunity to push the development community on design issues. I think the development industry well embrace it because if you push everyone to do it, no one will be able to get away with cheap design." Legislating design standards is a tricky business. Look at how moribund Vancouver has become. And while it might produce better individual buildings, the City's involvement is more urgently needed in all those other spaces developers don't and shouldn't build, the small and grand gestures that define a sophisticated metropolis.
In fact, there's trepidation about anything as elitist as an urban vision unless it's linked to unassailable social benefits. The Mayor says, "We're a city of newcomers. Between 2001 and 2005, an average of 69,000 immigrants arrived in the City each year. Where do you become a Torontonian? In our public spaces. Design is incredibly important so that our public spheres ensure we feel like Torontonians. They have to be spaces that bring us together and inspire us."
It's a slippery slope. First, you acknowledge the importance of urban design but don't have a vision, or big idea, or a singular goal. Instead, you focus on multiple, relatively small projects and create moving political targets. Perhaps mini-visions are OK, but they're hardly Baron Hausmann's Paris in their breathtaking audacity.
Second, stress that others are making it impossible to deliver even a mini-project; nothing is solely your responsibility.
And third, subtly blame lacklustre urbanity on citizens -- it's our fault the city is boring or that we don't have concrete dreams like Chicago, New York, London, Barcelona or Berlin that we can all rally behind. If we'd just get with it and contribute explicitly, the City will help us make it nice.
© National Post 2007
_________________________________________________
We don't lack urbanity; one'd argue we do very well in that regards within the core. What we lack is good urban design and focus on the aesthetic qualities of the urban realm.
AoD