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Shabby Public Realm

Northern Light said:
A portion of your idea already exists as the Western Waterfront Masterplan........

The thread for that is here: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/western-waterfront-master-plan.8554/

Its a pretty good plan, with pretty much zero funding attached, last I checked.

Maybe we should work on getting that part delivered!
Click to expand...

Those plans were certainly good, but they're far from great or visionary. I think our city deserves a grand and visionary park. We should be looking to great urban parks, like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Grant Park in Chicago and, yes, Central Park in NYC for inspiration on what we can do with this space. We could turn this space into something that's not just a great park for Torontonians, but a destination for tourists around the world.

Totally shooting ideas off the top of my head here, but we could:
- Downsize or eliminate a lot of the oversized and under-utilized buildings in Exhibition Place. The Enercare Centre, Food Building and Better Living Centre are all prime targets, along with any other non-historical building (BMO Field will stay, obviously)
- Introduce museums and exhibits into Exhibition Place to animate the park year round
- Revitalize and restore Ontario Place as a theme park (Exhibition place would have a lot of green space, making the public park that was planned for Ontario Place redundant)
- Introduce retail, markets and other private sector elements to help fund the project and animate the space
- Properly integrate Exhibition Place with the waterfront, Ontario Place and surrounding network of disjoined parks (see map above), such travelling between the parks will feel seamless,
- Move Lakeshore Avenue north and/or infill the lakeshore to widen the beach

You get the idea...

In this era where every last surface parking lot and under-utilized property in Downtown Toronto is being redeveloped and intensified, I pray that we'll see Exhibition Place get the same treatment sooner than later. Exhibition Place was fine for 1970s Toronto but it really has no place in Toronto of the 2020s. Toronto deserves far better than this.

And I'll emphasize again that with or without private funding, this is certain to be a much better investment than Rail Deck Park (not that I'm necessarily opposed to the idea). I don't know what a generally pragmatic guy like John Tory was thinking when he proposed a $1.7 Billion Rail Deck Park as his legacy project, when we have an enormous, tragically under-utilized sea of concrete immediately west of the Downtown Core :rolleyes:
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Those plans were certainly good, but they're far from great or visionary. I think our city deserves a grand and visionary park. We should be looking to great urban parks, like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Grant Park in Chicago and, yes, Central Park in NYC for inspiration on what we can do with this space. We could turn this space into something that's not just a great park for Torontonians, but a destination for tourists around the world.

Totally shooting ideas off the top of my head here, but we could:
- Downsize or eliminate a lot of the oversized and under-utilized buildings in Exhibition Place. The Enercare Centre, Food Building and Better Living Centre are all prime targets, along with any other non-historical building (BMO Field will stay, obviously)
- Introduce museums and exhibits into Exhibition Place to animate the park year round
- Revitalize and restore Ontario Place as a theme park (Exhibition place would have a lot of green space, making the public park that was planned for Ontario Place redundant)
- Introduce retail, markets and other private sector elements to help fund the project and animate the space
- Properly integrate Exhibition Place with the waterfront, Ontario Place and surrounding network of disjoined parks (see map above), such travelling between the parks will feel seamless,
- Move Lakeshore Avenue north and/or infill the lakeshore to widen the beach

You get the idea...

In this era where every last surface parking lot and under-utilized property in Downtown Toronto is being redeveloped and intensified, I pray that we'll see Exhibition Place get the same treatment sooner than later. Exhibition Place was fine for 1970s Toronto but it really has no place in Toronto of the 2020s. Toronto deserves far better than this.

And I'll emphasize again that with or without private funding, this is certain to be a much better investment than Rail Deck Park (not that I'm necessarily opposed to the idea). I don't know what a generally pragmatic guy like John Tory was thinking when he proposed a $1.7 Billion Rail Deck Park as his legacy project, when we have an enormous, tragically under-utilized sea of concrete immediately west of the Downtown Core :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

There is certainly room for greater ambition. No dispute there. But we have to get rid of the ugly trashcans first!

LOL

Seriously, the Western Waterfront Plan creates something like 11 acres more park space, would do a lot to improve that area and better connect it to areas to the north.

If we were lucky enough to get that far, I would spend extra $$ 3 ways.

First, The connection from the Queen/King/Roncy corner to the western waterfront is undersized and underwhelming.

While we could just build a bigger, nicer, bridge.........I had a slightly different thought.

What if we did a small deck over the rail corridor and the Gardiner at this location, say 50M wide, laid out w/elegant railings, elegant lights, granite stone finishes, a 4-seasons flower display, enough room to support one large row of trees all the way across, and then elegant steps cascading down to the parkspace on one side and a ramp on the other?

Second, I'd like to fix the connection for pedestrians on Parkside. Its way undersized and unpleasant. Widen it to all 4x sidewalks, back lit art in-laid into the underside of the bridges, elegant lights, granite sidewalks and native wildflowers on all the embankments with a few low junipers to keep visual interest in the winter.

Finally, better connect High Park to the Western Beaches, by picking one of the two creeks (Wendigo/Grenadier Pond) or Spring Creek, and daylight the connection all the way to the Lake (creeks are piped currently) creating a new opening in all the embankments which would support a wildlife corridor and bike trail connecting High Park to the Beaches.

Then we can move on to 'fixing' High Park, which I'm thinking will run another 40M or so.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
Those plans were certainly good, but they're far from great or visionary. I think our city deserves a grand and visionary park. We should be looking to great urban parks, like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Grant Park in Chicago and, yes, Central Park in NYC for inspiration on what we can do with this space. We could turn this space into something that's not just a great park for Torontonians, but a destination for tourists around the world.

Totally shooting ideas off the top of my head here, but we could:
- Downsize or eliminate a lot of the oversized and under-utilized buildings in Exhibition Place. The Enercare Centre, Food Building and Better Living Centre are all prime targets, along with any other non-historical building (BMO Field will stay, obviously)
- Introduce museums and exhibits into Exhibition Place to animate the park year round
- Revitalize and restore Ontario Place as a theme park (Exhibition place would have a lot of green space, making the public park that was planned for Ontario Place redundant)
- Introduce retail, markets and other private sector elements to help fund the project and animate the space
- Properly integrate Exhibition Place with the waterfront, Ontario Place and surrounding network of disjoined parks (see map above), such travelling between the parks will feel seamless,
- Move Lakeshore Avenue north and/or infill the lakeshore to widen the beach

You get the idea...

In this era where every last surface parking lot and under-utilized property in Downtown Toronto is being redeveloped and intensified, I pray that we'll see Exhibition Place get the same treatment sooner than later. Exhibition Place was fine for 1970s Toronto but it really has no place in Toronto of the 2020s. Toronto deserves far better than this.

And I'll emphasize again that with or without private funding, this is certain to be a much better investment than Rail Deck Park (not that I'm necessarily opposed to the idea). I don't know what a generally pragmatic guy like John Tory was thinking when he proposed a $1.7 Billion Rail Deck Park as his legacy project, when we have an enormous, tragically under-utilized sea of concrete immediately west of the Downtown Core :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
What to do with the Fort Rouillé site, Scadding Cabin, and the wind turbine?
 
CherryStreet.jpg


Cherry Street. I get that the fenced-in lot will eventually be developed, but in the meantime, the public space around it should be maintained.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Those plans were certainly good, but they're far from great or visionary. I think our city deserves a grand and visionary park. We should be looking to great urban parks, like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Grant Park in Chicago and, yes, Central Park in NYC for inspiration on what we can do with this space. We could turn this space into something that's not just a great park for Torontonians, but a destination for tourists around the world.
Click to expand...

All of your examples are parks located right in the heart of downtown. Exhibition Place is in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking. It requires more of a reason for people to travel to it.
 
Great transit links won’t matter if it’s not interesting enough to be a destination for the day. No one is going to take a subway to hang out at a park for an hour.

Our equivalent of those great urban parks are the Islands (nope, not High Park). And yes they are a bit harder to get there but at least the trip is part of the fun.
 
Toronto is a shabby place. Last year I was in Singapore and I was amazed at what a city could look like. No graffiti, no litter, roads and sidewalks in excellent condition, no homeless encampments or beggars outside banks, etc., all in a city where I saw thousands enjoying the day, pedestrians everywhere.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Toronto is a shabby place. Last year I was in Singapore and I was amazed at what a city could look like. No graffiti, no litter, roads and sidewalks in excellent condition, no homeless encampments or beggars outside banks, etc., all in a city where I saw thousands enjoying the day, pedestrians everywhere.
Click to expand...
Apples & Oranges: So you want to move there? It is a great city to visit but they have very strict laws about lots of things and the cost of living is amazingly high. This from a blog: "On the high cost of living: Singapore is often ranked as the most expensive country in the world to live in. I have no idea what metrics they use to determine that, but I do know I’ve paid $16 for a zucchini before. And the rent on our apartment for one month is almost as much as our mortgage was in Tennessee for the whole year. Between the cost of a car (over $100,000 for something like a Toyota Corolla), the taxes and fees, and the petrol, you’d practically need to be a millionaire to drive in Singapore as well. " From: https://www.ashleyabroad.com/2018/03/05/living-in-singapore/ or look at: https://www.nst.com.my/world/2017/1...ngapore-worlds-richest-city-not-what-it-seems
 
I took Grab or transit everywhere I went and found it not too expensive. I asked my contact there how the average person affords to live there, and apparently salaries for regular jobs are high, and most folks take the excellent public transit there. Reading that blog above I get the sense they ate out a lot, whilst the average person would be buying groceries. They also have very strict foreign worker rules, so if an employer wants to hire non Singaporeans he pays a massive foreign worker tax, thus nearly eliminating any advantages of hiring cheaper labour and thus keeping salaries high for Singaporeans. Of course you can do that when you’re a country, not just a city, so I understand your point on apples to oranges. But it was just nice to see a working, highly populated city that wasn’t shabby whilst not being a fake or made up city like you see in the Middle East.
 
While I agree that parts of Toronto ARE shabby the answer is (almost all) connected to $$$. We live in a City where politicians have persuaded citizens and citizens have persuaded politicians that taxes are too high. A scientific comparison of taxes here shows they are actually low compared to other cities and then we undoubtedly waste what $$ we have in planning things (transit projects mainly) that are never built because someone has had a better idea and we must start from the beginning again. If you want to make money here don't start a construction company, start a transit planning partnership!
 
@DSC I already pay more than 40% of my net income to municipal, provincial and federal taxes. If I was a farmer and the overseer in one annual go seized more than a third of my crop as tribute I suppose I’d notice it more the thousand cuts of taxes and levies Canadians pay.

nationalpost.com

Canadians pay 42% of income in tax — more than they spend on food, shelter, clothing combined

Since 1961, the average family’s tax bill has rose by 1,832%, dwarfing increases in the costs of housing, clothing and food, according to a Fraser Institute report
nationalpost.com nationalpost.com

How much more do I have to pay before I can live in a city that’s not so shabby?
 
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