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AlvinofDiaspar
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From the Globe:
Cherry bomb
Residents are making noise about the city's next grand avenue
IVOR TOSSELL
Special to The Globe and Mail
In a theatre in the Distillery District today, a few dozen community members and pen-wielding planners are knocking heads over an unusual problem: how to get a big street down to size.
Down the road from them, in an industrial wasteland east of downtown, backhoes are already at work on Toronto's newest neighbourhood.
The West Don Lands, which will take shape over the next few years, is planned to house 11,000 residents. But first, they have to sort out Cherry Street.
The road -- where the traffic these days consists mostly of cement trucks -- runs through the heart of the West Don Lands, and it will be rebuilt as a major corridor. Planners set aside room for traffic and parking, bike lanes, and wide, tree-lined sidewalks for pedestrians. And the Toronto Transit Commission had plans for a streetcar right-of-way. In the end, the would-be neighbourhood street had grown to the width of Spadina Avenue. And that didn't sit well with the neighbours. "It's important to have a certain level of intimacy to the street," says Cindy Wilkey, president of the West Don Lands Committee, a coalition of community groups from adjacent neighbourhoods.
"If you stand on one side of Spadina, and see your neighbour walking by, you can't tear across the street mid-block to say hi."
So, with prompting from Ms. Wilkey's committee, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation is tackling the problem with a design workshop, called a charette. The premise is simple: If the community wants the road narrowed, it has to decide what its priorities are. What on the wish list should stay, and what should go?
On Feb. 1, community members, planners and city staff jammed into a room for an introductory session. Joe Lobko, one of the architects leading the charette, called it "Streetscape 101." Armed with this background information, the community will reconvene today for a bit of old-school group work.
At today's day-long exercise, participants will break into five groups, each of which will be asked to pitch a design option for the street. (These include running streetcars along the curbsides instead of down the middle, and banning cars from the road entirely in favour of pedestrians and transit.)
City staff will patrol the room, answering questions and nipping technically unfeasible suggestions in the bud. Each group will have its own urban planner, who can sketch up their ideas on the fly. At the end of the day, participants will vote for their favourite proposals, and the charette's results will be sent on to transit planners.
Organizers say they hope that having city staff on hand will keep community proposals from being rejected on technical grounds later on. And while the charette's conclusions aren't binding, the authors of the resulting transit study "will have to consider this quite seriously," Mr. Lobko says.
Today, the group will be facing a familiar sticking point: the proposed streetcar right-of-way, much like the one now under construction on St. Clair West despite some local opposition. Community leaders say they doubt the effectiveness of expansive streetcar-only lanes.
But the mood going into the charette is a long way from the acrimony uptown. City Councillor Pam McConnell, one of the workshop's organizers, says charettes are a way of tackling a complicated problem like neighbourhood design, where small pieces make up a big picture.
"It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle; if you don't get all the pieces in the right place, then the picture doesn't come forward," she says. "The charette is a chance to get the picture right."
AoD
Cherry bomb
Residents are making noise about the city's next grand avenue
IVOR TOSSELL
Special to The Globe and Mail
In a theatre in the Distillery District today, a few dozen community members and pen-wielding planners are knocking heads over an unusual problem: how to get a big street down to size.
Down the road from them, in an industrial wasteland east of downtown, backhoes are already at work on Toronto's newest neighbourhood.
The West Don Lands, which will take shape over the next few years, is planned to house 11,000 residents. But first, they have to sort out Cherry Street.
The road -- where the traffic these days consists mostly of cement trucks -- runs through the heart of the West Don Lands, and it will be rebuilt as a major corridor. Planners set aside room for traffic and parking, bike lanes, and wide, tree-lined sidewalks for pedestrians. And the Toronto Transit Commission had plans for a streetcar right-of-way. In the end, the would-be neighbourhood street had grown to the width of Spadina Avenue. And that didn't sit well with the neighbours. "It's important to have a certain level of intimacy to the street," says Cindy Wilkey, president of the West Don Lands Committee, a coalition of community groups from adjacent neighbourhoods.
"If you stand on one side of Spadina, and see your neighbour walking by, you can't tear across the street mid-block to say hi."
So, with prompting from Ms. Wilkey's committee, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation is tackling the problem with a design workshop, called a charette. The premise is simple: If the community wants the road narrowed, it has to decide what its priorities are. What on the wish list should stay, and what should go?
On Feb. 1, community members, planners and city staff jammed into a room for an introductory session. Joe Lobko, one of the architects leading the charette, called it "Streetscape 101." Armed with this background information, the community will reconvene today for a bit of old-school group work.
At today's day-long exercise, participants will break into five groups, each of which will be asked to pitch a design option for the street. (These include running streetcars along the curbsides instead of down the middle, and banning cars from the road entirely in favour of pedestrians and transit.)
City staff will patrol the room, answering questions and nipping technically unfeasible suggestions in the bud. Each group will have its own urban planner, who can sketch up their ideas on the fly. At the end of the day, participants will vote for their favourite proposals, and the charette's results will be sent on to transit planners.
Organizers say they hope that having city staff on hand will keep community proposals from being rejected on technical grounds later on. And while the charette's conclusions aren't binding, the authors of the resulting transit study "will have to consider this quite seriously," Mr. Lobko says.
Today, the group will be facing a familiar sticking point: the proposed streetcar right-of-way, much like the one now under construction on St. Clair West despite some local opposition. Community leaders say they doubt the effectiveness of expansive streetcar-only lanes.
But the mood going into the charette is a long way from the acrimony uptown. City Councillor Pam McConnell, one of the workshop's organizers, says charettes are a way of tackling a complicated problem like neighbourhood design, where small pieces make up a big picture.
"It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle; if you don't get all the pieces in the right place, then the picture doesn't come forward," she says. "The charette is a chance to get the picture right."
AoD
