Toronto One Bedford | ?m | 32s | Lanterra | KPMB

Re: One Bedford

Hey, if do you do not like lively, you can always move to the suburbs or to a rural area.

A month after Jane Jacob dies, do we really need an argument about the benefits of a 'lively' neighbourhood? Do we need to to point out the benefits on a board that celebrates the 'urban'? Or to point out that people are social creatures?
 
Re: One Bedford

Again, I never said I don't like lively neighbourhoods. I said I don't like monotonous stretches of street. The most interesting streets have a mix of uses along the sidewalk. This is why Harbord is infinitely better than Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst at ground-level. Bloor has nothing but retail/restaurants, besides the one church. Harbord has a better balance of uses. Bathurst is a pretty good street too because it has some retail mixed in with lots of homes, a theatre, a school, etc., especially between College and Bloor.

I'm not arguing with anyone. I'm expressing what I find more interesting, and what I find monotonous. To have nothing but retail along the sidewalk is montonous and often tacky (like Yonge Street). The best streets mix a variety of uses at ground level.
 
Re: One Bedford

Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst is one of the best strips in the entire city.
 
Re: One Bedford

It's alright, but gets repetitive due to the lack of variety of uses at street-level. It's probably more interesting to people who visit once in a while than to those of us who live there. Habord between Bathurst and Spadina is far better because it has a more varied mix of uses, including some houses and a school.
 
Re: One Bedford

It appears, based upon just the number of people, that retail strips like the Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst, Queen St. West, Yonge, etc, are liked by more people than streets like Bay south of Bloor or University Avenue (people vote with their feet). That is all I am saying. If you want a strip of Bloor to be more like Bay Street, and thus less popular, all the power to you. I personally would love it to be more popular.
 
Re: One Bedford

I don't want any strip to be "less popular". I'm saying that streets with a VARIETY OF USES at ground-level are better and more interesting than single-use streets. Not once did I say I want Bloor to be less popular.
 
Re: One Bedford

Better *for you* and more interesting *to you*, perhaps.
 
Re: One Bedford

"Not once did I say I want Bloor to be less popular."

You never said it, but mixed use will result in less popular. That is the argument.
 
Re: One Bedford

So you find a street with only one type of use at street-level to be more interesting than a mixed-use street? Most urban advocates are in favour of mixed-uses. I find mixed-use neighbourhoods to be better, and so did Jane Jacobs. She was a major proponent of mixing uses.
 
Re: One Bedford

No but I find statements like "Harbord between Bathurst and Spadina is far better because it has a more varied mix of uses, including some houses and a school." easy to disagree with.

You shouldn't try to wrap your own particular value judgements into the safety of generalized theories.
 
Re: One Bedford

That strip of Bloor has retail, restaurants, cinema, night clubs, residential and institutional. All its missing is industrial. How is it not mixed-use?
 
Re: One Bedford

Ontarian:

So you find a street with only one type of use at street-level to be more interesting than a mixed-use street? Most urban advocates are in favour of mixed-uses. I find mixed-use neighbourhoods to be better, and so did Jane Jacobs. She was a major proponent of mixing uses.
Click to expand...

Let's not be facetious here - comparing Harbord Street with the "mixed uses" along University Avenue and using it as a "superior" example on the basis of Jane Jacob's arguments is a deliberate misreading of her work. In fact, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she argued pointedly against the large institutional districts of the sort that made up University Avenue (she cited the example of SF Civic Centre, for example).

AoD
 
Re: One Bedford

Mixed use neighbourhoods are great and I was just talking about streets, not entire neighbourhoods (the Annex has a great a retail strip, houses and institutional uses, all within walking distance - that is great. Nobody is advocating a whole neighbourhood of retail. I am just talking about a particular stretch of Bloor).

As for 'interesting', what I think is irrelevant as that is just personal taste.
 
Re: One Bedford

I would agree that University Ave. is (and even moreso, was) dull - which is why I never used it in my argument. I used Harbord because it is an example of a true mixed-use street. I don't recall anyone even mentioning University Ave.
 
Re: One Bedford

alklay: Does the movement to make every part of town equally "lively" and "popular", with a mix of residential, commercial and office, not include the eventual colonization of the suburbs with the same approach?

What on earth is wrong with having large areas of the city given over to single uses? I live on one of those long east-west streets in Riverdale that are uninterrupted by cross streets. It lies within a large block bounded by Danforth, Gerrard, Pape and Broadview, and there are very few commercial ventures such as corner stores within that super block, and no office buildings or factories. House prices are soaring. And during the day, when parents are at work and the kids are at school, I'll bet it is as dead as any suburban neighbourhood in Markham. So what? If there's nobody there then there is nobody there to get upset by the dreaded quiet. People come home from work, kids get back from school, the character of the place changes in the evening. King and Bay is thronged with crowds at midday on a Wednesday and dead as a doornail at the same time on a Sunday. So what? This, too, is as equally valid a characteristic of urban living as the contrived "lively" popularity contest approach that has been fetishized to death.
 
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