1. With very few exceptions Toronto has no real understanding of the public realm. Why do you think so many people go north on weekends?

   Posted by Ted Zehn  on  05/11  at  01:42 PM

2. Alsop’s take on the city was typical of any informed visitor. Grey streets, developer lead architecture and uncontrolled sprawl have conspired to create something entirely uninspiring. Simply saying that this city is world-class does not make it so. Changing the building permit application process in favour of innovative, “out-of-the-box” projects, charging developers the true cost of developing green field sites while subsidising infill projects and those on brown fields, and creating a less car dependant city would go a long way to changing Will’s opinion.

   Posted by  on  05/11  at  01:42 PM

3. Re: Will Alsop’s observations on Toronto –
   He’s totally right, or totally wrong, depending on the season. Go to the top of the CN Tower in June / July / August, and the dominant colour is GREEN, not GREY, (except if you are looking south).

   Among others, Arthur Erickson (one of Canada’s most talented contemporary architects, and a knowledgeable world traveler), has commented on the counter-intuitive pattern of the use of WHITE and STRONG COLOURS in countries with lots of natural sunlight, and the predominance of more muted colour schemes in cultures further north (more sunlight-challenged), like ours.

   Something’s going on . . .

   Some people say that we should accentuate the visual effect – that the right place to build a tall building is on a hill, not in a valley.

   Posted by  on  05/14  at  10:23 PM

4. I’d say that Toronto hasn’t ENTIRELY ignored our public realm. We have lots of lovely urban parkettes in the downtown area. Some new like the Music Garden and the Bay-Adelaide Park and some legacy parks such as Trinity Bellwoods and The Grange. These provide wonderful oases from the parts of the public realm that Toronto really has ignored; our streets. The streetscapes of Toronto have been shaped for cars, not people. They are not the public amenities they could be if we were to focus on creating delightful pedestrian environments with generous allocations of space for strolling and cafes, thoughtful accommodation of elements that help create vibrant streetscapes such as neighbourhood identification, special event signage and postering, and of course nurturing environments for lots of street scaled trees. Instead of creating streetscapes that are green, vibrant, social spaces Toronto seems content to have allowed our streets to become not much more that traffic sewers. Grey traffic sewers. So, I’d say that Mr. Alsop is not entirely right about his opinion of Toronto’s public realm, but unfortunately for us, he’s mostly right.

   Posted by Ken Brooks  on  05/17  at  10:17 PM

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