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Last night at the Art Gallery of Ontario, four of Toronto's finest thinkers on urbanism went head-to-head in an exciting debate to once and for all settle the matter: will Toronto ever be a truly beautiful place to live?
The debate, which was organized by The Walrus Foundation with The Toronto Project and sponsored by TD Canada Trust, played host to an audience peopled by some of the city's most celebrated leading lights, including former Mayors Barbara Hall, David Crombie and Art Eggleton, Waterfront Toronto CEO John Campbell, Mitchell Cohen of The Daniels Corporation, Bruce Kuwabara of KPMG, and many others.
Arguing that this city is not now, nor ever will be beautiful, was internationally-renowned architect Jack Diamond of Diamond + Schmitt Architects and his debate partner, the Globe and Mail's Toronto columnist John Barber. Opposing them were Nick Mount, U of T professor, writer and fiction editor for The Walrus Magazine, who joined contemporary commentator and author Stephen Marche in arguing for the case of beauty's presence in Toronto. CBC's Amanda Lang acted as referee debate moderator.
Despite the debate's title - Be It Resolved That Toronto Will Never Be Beautiful - the event was as much a discussion of aesthetics and urban design as it was forum for the role of city building, culture and the many other forces which shape Toronto. As Jack Diamond pointed out early-on, for a city to be beautiful it must have control over its developmental forces including its governance structure. Rightly, Diamond calls Toronto a supplicant to the Province of Ontario and to Canada. Toronto cannot define or qualify what makes it beautiful, nor can it completely direct beautification efforts, because it does not have total jurisdiction over the decision-making process which impacts it. As Diamond quipped, "the likelihood of provincial politicians giving up fiscal power to the city is as likely as our opponents winning the debate."
But it is a long-shot to suggest that this will never change. Stephen Marche was eager to point out that Toronto produces one fifth of Canada's GDP - it is Canada's single largest economic hub - and sooner or later the stars must align and Toronto will have the authority it deserves to make its own decisions as to how it grows. If we allow Toronto infinite time to grow, eventually it will be beautiful. "It is already more beautiful than it was five years ago."
For teammate Nick Mount artistic ideals of beauty are mutable: "After the first World War... art would no longer be beautiful. Beauty is not the point. Ugly is the new beauty. Where art led, cities followed." His message is that there is nothing inevitable or definitive about our aesthetic tastes as a society. But here, the gulf between the two teams was widest: while Mount and Marche maintained the opinion that beauty was a fluid concept in urban design - Marche described it best saying "the most beautiful cities are palimpsests" - while opponents Diamond and Barber held more absolute perspectives. For Diamond, who considers cities such as Paris and Venice to be some of the world's most beautiful, Toronto suffers from an "architectural cacophony". Meanwhile, John Barber earned some derisory laughter when mischievously stating that, in his opinion, the world's most beautiful recently built city is Pyongyang, North Korea, making the point that it takes a dictatorial hand to shape urban spaces in grand ways.
Barber presented some unflaterring images of Toronto to illustrate our ugly side: strip malls, auto repair shops, empty parking lots with fly-by-night vendors of flags to put on your windows during the World Cup, polluted culverts near some train tracks now overtaken by flora, Rob Ford. But these scenes exist everywhere, from East St. Louis to London, England. "Even Paris," Marche says, has its "horrible sites." Speaking annecdotally, I have seen Parisian suburbs and industrial lands that made me yearn for New Jersey.
Certain audience members acted as provacteurs, and engaged the debating panel with questions. Albert Schultz of Soulpepper Theatre, Yvonne Bambrick of the Kensington Market and Forest Hill Viallage BIAs, Matt Galloway of CBC's Metro Morning, journalist Denise Balkissoon, and journalist John Lorinc all pushed the panelists to consider specific issues left unexamined during the broadly ranging debate. Schultz wanted to know how individual Torontonians could become invvolved in making the city beautiful. Bambrick challenged the room to consider how a better cycling infrastructure could improve the city. Galloway asked if we weren't missing beauty hidden in unexpected places and in the city's people. Balkissoon wanted to know where our fashion sense is. Lorinc wondered how the ravines could be left out of a debate on the city's beauty.
Lorinc is also the author of an extensive piece concerning Toronto's current well-being or lack thereof in the November 2011 Walrus magazine (on newstands now!). The article merits the attention of those who love this city and who are concerned for its future. That's all of us, right? We heartily recommend you grab a copy of the provocative 'Where Toronto Went Wrong - And Why the Rest of Canada Shouldn't Gloat'.
UrbanToronto was thrilled to be invited to such an exceptional evening, and looks forward to The Walrus's 2012 debate. We will bring you news of it as it approaches.
