Shabby Toronto

[unimaginative2]

I was just in the Beach today, and the place was absolutely beautiful and packed with people. Unfortunately, the ambiance is somewhat ruined by the ghastly overhead power lines. Some of the overloaded wooden poles are tottering so much that they look unsafe. Unfortunately, they just redid the streetcar tracks so they missed a magnificent opportunity to just go out and bury them.

I was also walking along the magnificent Kew Beach. It really looks spectacular, and is a real asset to the city. That being said, it's in pretty rough shape, even considering the season. Areas are enclosed with chicken wire, the single snack bar building looks pretty badly run down, and the sand has an unfortunate amount of litter. The latter eis a much more severe problem on my summer vists. Tropical beaches see vastly greater numbers of people, and yet they still manage to keep the beaches clean and tidy. I'm guessing it's because of the priority placed on maintaining and grooming the beach. They know that people come down there and spend fortunes because of their beautiful beaches, and they take care of them. I wish Toronto would show the same consideration on its own magnificent beaches. I really think that it's the litter that makes people think that the water is too gross to swim in. I did appreciate the (now-dry) skating rink that was built down there to make the park area well-used even in winter months.

I couldn't care less about the state of various shops. The last thing I would want is a monoculture of chain and high-end shops. It's kind of sad, though, that people think that lower-end shops must inherently be located on a poorly-maintained street.

The Clean and Beautiful City project is one of the best things the mayor has done, and it's even been surprisingly well executed. The plantings on University are gorgeous. It just needs to be expanded a hundredfold and spread across the city.

 

[adma]

I'm such a Torontonian. I'd rather wander the streets of Paris looking like Harry Stinson than wander the streets of Toronto looking like Jean-Paul Belmondo

 

[TKTKTK]

I *gulp* really like the powerlines

When I'm at the Beach I feel like I'm in a small town, or village. The wooden poles, the power lines, the worn in feeling of it all :S It feels comfortable and endearing?

We should be taking care of our beaches better, but that's not why people think the water's polluted. Torontonians who haven't gone near a city beach in decades, or ever, think that. It's just part of our city's folklore: have you heard about Lower Bay? Did you know you can develop film in parts of Lake Ontario? Robarts is sinking! etc, etc.

The cleanest beaches in the world won't be enough to convince some Torontonians that the water isn't corrosive acid

 

[Mystery White Boy]

That photo at College and Bathurst illustrates the completely ruinous effect out-of-control nightclub and other postering has on the look of the city. Postering, on that scale, by definition cheapens and degrades the city by commercializing it to a ridiculous degree. I think this culture is so ingrained now that, whereas in the downtown it's slapping up ads on poles and other street furniture, I've noticed in parts of Scarborough and North York that there are now many bus shelters that are wallpapered in ads for driving schools and other businesses such that you literally cannot see out them anymore. It's analogous to piles of junk mail and spam slapped up onto street furniture, and is a perfect illustration of what I said earlier, that this city has absolutely no pride, no restraint, no interest in maintaining a public realm that, even if slightly shopworn, at least isn't further assaulted by endless and opportunistic commercialism. It sucks away any dignity that the already-shabby look of the city south of Bloor has, and in my opinion is one the chief reasons, if not *the* chief reason, why the city looks as bad as it does. I'm almost certain that many of the metal poles that are rusted out haven't been painted over or replaced because I can see someone in the city bureaucracy saying, why bother when as soon as we do it, the "think in spanish" people or some nightclub or an essay mill is going to plaster them with ads the second the paint dries or the pole is replaced. I can't blame the city for that, but it doesn't make it right. It only reflects upon the timidity and cowardice of the city to tackle this problem.

I've seen archival photos of similar stretches of Queen, Bloor, King, etc. from 30-40 years ago (even 15) that have pretty much the same street furniture they have now with regards to poles and light standards (the poles along that stretch of College, for example, are in some cases fifty years old), and things look, at a minimum, more dignified and clutter-free, if not exactly cutting edge. But add thousands upon thousands of obnoxious, ratty, peeling and fading ads slapped up everywhere, and what was shopworn, if tidy, descends into utter squalor and neglect.

But again, this seems to be what so many people in this city want. And I think this is so ingrained now that yes, we can have a new AGO built upon a streetscape of tired, postered-over, rusted-out, scratched-out light poles and street furniture whose function seems to be chiefly as a place to put up ads for nightclubs, language schools, essay mills, etc and no one bats an eye, really, because we're so inured to seeing these ads glued up everywhere that I don't think many people living in this city now remember a time when you didn't see an ad put up somewhere every few feet. The shock of seeing old pictures without these ads everywhere is like watching a hockey game circa 1980, when the boards and ice surfaces were clean and free of sales pitches. It's depressing, but what can you do? Gotta protect "public space", right? *sarcasm level: high*

I don't know of any other city that allows this rampant, relentless and gratuitous advertising to happen unchecked across such a wide swath of its core areas, financial and cultural. I have *never* seen this anywhere else, and it's an embarrassment and a disgrace and I have no idea why this city tolerates it. (I have distinct memories of walking around NYU, which bleeds into the city the same way U of T does, and not seeing a *single* ad taped or glued up anywhere, and thinking how much more dignified and worth of respect the campus is in comparison to what the area around U of T looks like, which is wallpapered in junk and spam, which makes the dignified architecture of the campus that much more...I don't know, sad in some way, certainly diminished in comparison). So what other conclusion *can* I draw other than the people who run this city, and a large chunk of the people who live in it (at least downtown), just don't give a shit? I think now it seems that Toronto is now in a permanent state of half-assedness, with some attractive buildings here and there operating as tiny islands of dignity and aesthetic aspiration in a sea of messy clutter and spam. So add this to an already pervasive air of neglect and there you are. I've given up on the city doing any better, and so this thread, unfortunately, is just so much farting in the wind.

That was awesome. Send that to David f'n Miller.

 

[TKTKTK]

Toronto, King Street East and Don Esplanade (now Bayview?), 1903:

Toronto, King Street from Bay, 1912:

Toronto, 1919:

 

[Mystery White Boy]

Maybe all our tax dollars are going towards making the city look as run down as possible? The city has probably hired people or dispatched city hall counsellors to go out late at night and tip over trash cans. I could have sworn I saw Denzil Minnan Wongshinton cracking a tree planter with Peter Gabriel's sledgehammer one night.

 

[TO City of Light]

While posters and broken planters can be an eye sore, the various types of poles sticking up all over the place carrying sagging wires running every which way seem to be challenge number one. Without addressing this eye sore, the rest will help very little.

If this problem can be addressed, I suspect that even Torontonians might even start to take a bit of pride in the way their city looks.

Although taken for a different purpose, the following photos from NYC show (quality) street posters as well as a pretty chaotic China Town streetscape and the almost most noticeable aspect is - no wires, well designed poles.

The posters show an interesting campaign promoting tourism to Montreal. I don't know how effective it was but it is part of the recent approach of promoting hip products among potential trendsetters - Malcolm Gladwell and all that. The Montreal ads were very thick on the ground in Chelsea, the Village, LES, etc. with none that I could see in the more staid mid-town, Upper East Side areas.

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[lordmandeep]

I went to Midtown Toronto today and they place looks much better then downtown right now.

It would likely look ten times better in the summer.

 

[BobBob]

What's Midtown Toronto?


Sort of related to this discussion, I saw some workers replacing a rotting antique wooden hydro pole on King St. with...




...an identical, but brand new, wooden pole.

 

[Mystery White Boy]

What's Midtown Toronto?


Sort of related to this discussion, I saw some workers replacing a rotting antique wooden hydro pole on King St. with...




...an identical, but brand new, wooden pole.

Ahh, progress.

 

[lordmandeep]

Area between Bathurst and Bayview north of Bloor.

 

[ssk]

Bah, people are overly critical of Toronto. Overhead wires exist in European cities as well. Wood is a great material for hydro poles. It looks better than concrete as well. However, it could be made to look better.

I think that Hipster_Duck hit the nail on the head with his aesthetic consideration being considered a frill in Toronto. Give it some time, we were considered to be pretty boring city not too long ago.

 

[junctionist]

What do you call the areas around Bloor which are west of Bathurst but east of Jane Street? It's obviously not downtown, but it's generally not very suburban either.

 

[lordmandeep]

yeah they become more westward and not really part of midtown....

 

[Redroom Studios]

Maybe all our tax dollars are going towards making the city look as run down as possible? The city has probably hired people or dispatched city hall counsellors to go out late at night and tip over trash cans. I could have sworn I saw Denzil Minnan Wongshinton cracking a tree planter with Peter Gabriel's sledgehammer one night.

damn - that was funny!

What do you call the areas around Bloor which are west of Bathurst but east of Jane Street? It's obviously not downtown, but it's generally not very suburban either.

well, starting at Bathurst its the Annex, then near Dundas its The Junction... and so on. More generally it can just be called the old City of Toronto