Reading Toronto

Will The Great Lakes Be Another Aral Sea?

The Aral Sea, 2006. Now one-half its original size and hopelessly polluted.

Given that Canada is the land of glacier-fed streams, and (relatively) clean water, it is hard to imagine the Great Lakes being great no more—but it is possible. Just take a look at the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for an example of what havoc exploitative policies can cause on a seemingly robust ecosystem. We tend to think such savage exploitation will never happen here, but we also thought the Cod Fishery would go on forever, and Passenger pigeons were so plentiful that we could kill them at our pleasure.

The truth is, we are opportunistic creatures who can rationalize just about any travesty as long as there is a short-term dollar to be had, or an economic advantage to be gained. To compound a bad situation, when it comes to the environment time is our enemy, and not for the obvious reasons. No, time lets us forget what once was. Like the proverbial frog in a slowly warming pan of water, our condition is always relative to what we remember with accuracy. SInce most of us seem to suffer from advanced Alzheimer's when it comes to remembering the natural environment, will that be frog's legs anyone?

That's why when the Great Lakes Compact was made between provinces and states bordering the Great Lakes it seemed that rational thought and long-term preservation of natural resources might actually win the day. But wait:

Vegetation was faring worst along the Missouri River through North and South Dakota, but below-average vegetation conditions stretch across parts of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, northwestern Nebraska, and Minnesota as well. The plains of Canada’s Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces were suffering drought, too.

The drought of 2006 swept across North America's Great Plains sucking water from the soil and threatening to bring back the "dirty thirties" or worse to the world's supposed bread basket (or is that now the world's ethanol tank). Just take a look at the map above. Turns out the Wisconsin borders Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Guess what state was unable to ratify the Great Lakes Compact. You guessed it. With all that water just sitting there, why should neighbouring farmlands have to go without?

You can hear the trumpeting now. "This is a national emergency." "We must have the water for short-term relief." "The have states must share with the have nots." I have no doubt that's what the bureaucrats managing the Aral Sea once said. But since they are all dead now, who is to know—or care? It is history, just like the Cod.

Albany Club Protest

I'm not sure what this group is protesting, but this morning just before eight there they were out in front of the Conservative Albany Club on King Street East. The Colombian flag on the left suggests it is related to that country. Why choose the Albany Club? Perhaps it is because:

The Albany Club is one of Canada’s oldest private clubs. Founded in 1882 and named after the Duke of Albany, the Club has occupied its current location for more than 125 years. The Club’s history is reflected not just in its building and archives, but in many events. The contributions of past and current members starting with founding member Sir John A. Macdonald and including each subsequent Conservative Prime Minister are celebrated within the walls of the Club.

The club's building has faded into the aging fabric that is the legacy of 19th Century Toronto. I doubt if many people even notice it when walking or driving by. The structure was built in 1840 by local architect John G. Howard. Over time it has changed from its original Georgian Style to the Empire Style it now exhibits.

Why the protest?

More Illegal SIgn Nonsense

The casual observer would assume by now that Toronto's illegal sign wars should be behind us now—the good guys won, right? Wrong. In spite of what you might have heard the signs are still with us. Here is the latest news from Rami Tabello:

NORTH YORK AND ETOBICOKE ENFORCEMENTS NOW UNDER ATTACK AS CITY SOLICITOR CUTS SECRET DEAL WITH AD COMPANY

Media Release, Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Strategic Media Inc., a billboard company that is operating about 30 illegal large-format vinyl wall signs in Toronto, has become the second media company to sue the City of Toronto over billboard enforcements.

Strategic Media's signs are familiar to Torontonians as it is the only company that operates third party signs without a company nameplate below the sign.

The latest lawsuit, filed on April 18, challenges the Etobicoke, North York and Toronto by-laws. Earlier this year, Titan Outdoor filed suit to quash Toronto's by-law. The new suit comes after the City Solicitor entered into an agreement with Titan Outdoor that will likely allow Titan to maintain 39 illegal billboards in the downtown core for at least three years.

"This new lawsuit is in fact a subterfuge. The Company's goal is not to win in court but to obtain the same sweetheart deal that Titan Outdoor obtained out of court," explains Rami Tabello, coordinator of IllegalSigns.ca who notes that Community Council rejected Titan Outdoor's variances only to have the City Solicitor allow Titan to maintain the signs. "Companies are obtaining de-facto variances from the City Solicitor that they can't obtain from City Council."

IllegalSigns.ca notes that since a 1983 amendment to the Municipal Act, the City has had authority under law to remove illegal billboards without recourse to the courts. In September 2005, City Council directed staff to remove all illegal billboards in the City "as soon as possible," and in June 2007, Council directed staff to remove Strategic Media's illegal billboard at the DVP and Highway 401.

"City Staff have refused to comply with City Council direction and entered into an agreement with Titan Outdoor without the advice or consent of City Council. They have also decided on a strategy to obtain $1,000 fines against illegal billboards instead of removing them," says Mr. Tabello who notes that the advertising companies have never obtained an injunction preventing the City from removing their illegal billboards.

The complaints against Titan and Strategic Media's signs were filed by IllegalSigns.ca.

A copy of the Strategic Media lawsuit is available on http://www.IllegalSigns.ca this morning, along with photos of Strategic Media's portfolio of illegal billboards.

Media Contact: Rami Tabello, Coordinator, IllegalSigns.ca
Phone: 416.822.3696
359 Palmerston Boulevard
Toronto, Ontario M6G 2N5

Have The Pugs Saved Toronto?

There are buildings in this city that have not earned the right to grace the public realm and It doesn't take an architecture critic to point out the obvious culprits.

That's why when the Pug Awards came to life four year ago, the inner design critic inside many of us found a forum to express its displeasure—very publicly. After all, if a developer is going to blight a neighbourhood for the next fifty years then they at least have to face the Internet equivalent of being tarred, feathered, and run out of town.

The Pugs are back with a new website and a new list of buildings to rank. It is time once again to tell local architects and developers if you think their creations are good or bad. Here’s some advice: don’t hold back.

Why? It is probably a coincidence, but the level of attention to architecture and urban design in the city has inched its way upward over the last few years. Shining a critical, popular light into the world of the developer may just be paying off.

When the good people at Cecconi Simone and Tricon Capital Group launched the Pugs in 2004, they were motivated by a passionate commitment to making Toronto a better place to live. Thankfully, they are succeeding.

This year’s list of 21 nominated buildings includes some favourites. There is, of course, the ROM Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Love it or hate, Libeskind’s complex vision of a 21st Century museum deserves to be on everyone’s list.

There are some buildings noted—I won’t try to influence your vote by naming them—that never should have been built. In form, detail, and sensitivity to their urban context they fail miserably.
If you have walked anywhere near the railway lands development you know one or two of them.

On the other hand, there are some gems (and since well-designed buildings are obvious, I’ll mention one). The Broadview Lofts project by Turner Fleischer Architects has managed to take a marginalized stretch of the city’s eastern industrial lands and make it pleasurable to visit again.

I often go by this cluster of new and old buildings, and the reaction I have rarely varies. I look at the expanse of glazed walls thinking of how light must play in the loft units behind them. The town homes to the west of the main structure fit well with the old warehouse buildings, and the way they edge the street is workmanlike, but in a considered way.

Why aren’t all developments in the city so well thought through?

Ask yourself that question, then go online and vote LOVE IT OR HATE IT. This year there is even more reason to get involved.

The Pug Awards is launching the Pug Cup, a trophy that will reside at City Hall. Standing 35 inches high, the cup will be engraved with the names of the winning buildings.

To qualify for this year’s awards a building must have been completed in 2007, reside in the old City of Toronto, and be larger than 50,000 square feet in floor area.
Go to the website at http://www.pugawards.com for an interactive tour of all the nominated buildings. Online voting runs from May 1st to the 31st. Winners will be announced on June 4th at last year’s Pug Winner, the Gardiner Museum by KPMB Architects.

If you are a developer who thought design didn’t matter to Torontonians, you still have time before the winners and losers are announced to take that long holiday to South America your accountant told you about.

This story was first published in yesterday's National Post

Is Ontario A “Have Not” Province?

Let's face it. We were all a little bit shocked when the Toronto Star announced yesterday that Ontario was now a bit player in the Canadian provincial hierarchy.

"Ontario is not the mighty king of the economy any more," said TD's chief economist, Don Drummond, predicting the province could get $400 million in 2010 and $1.3 billion the following year.

"It's one of the weaker partners, but again it's not so much Ontario's being weak as the other provinces are really roaring along."

The report noted that one traditional "have-not" province, Newfoundland and Labrador, is about to join the "have" club, thanks to revenues from offshore oil and gas production.

There is the argument neatly summed up by one of the Country's more respected economists. Unless we are either pumping oil or making cars for some other country's automobile sector, we are nothing. Well, I don't buy it. Rather than wail that the sky is falling, in a quarterly driven profit and loss blinkered vision of reality, why not use this obvious sign that industry is changing as a reason to revamp our economy and prepare to take on the real big "NEXT" markets?

We all know what they are. I wasn't surprised to read a few short weeks ago that the German industrial sector has made a few good deals buying up Canadian environmental technology companies and relocating them to Europe. Some European countries are literally changing their landscapes because of an economic shift to sustainable, knowledge-driven industries.

What about this picture don't our policy makers understand? Big cars pollute, cause global warming, and use too much of a non-renewable commodity. Plus, no one in their right mind wants them now except as a symbol of conspicuous consumption that would make Thorstein Veblen blush.

Still, here we are bemoaning the fact that people aren't buying enough obsolete car designs, and our smokestack industries are failing. Come on! We've predicted this failure for a generation and a half. That it seems to surprise government should be a warning sign to the electorate: Why can't our elected representatives think outside of the short term and plan for the future?

Change is good. Change usually involves short to mid term pain. If we are going to experience that pain anyway—as a have-not province—let's make something out of it. Let's build an economy for tomorrow's markets using the best of today's ideas—you know, the ones that far-seeing countries are buying up from under us. Then when residents of other provinces can't breath because they've burned up so much fossil fuel to convert sand to oil, we'll have clean air, livable cities, and an economy with a future.

Turns Out We Didn’t Dodge The Strike Bullet After All

WInnipeg general strikers tip streetcar over—1919—a scene that stranded Toronto TTC users might have replicated if they could of early Saturday morning

Our collective relief over the announced TTC strike settlement wasn't enough to actually prevent a walkout by TTC workers who voted to reject the agreement their leadership accepted. In spite of the union promise to provide 48 hours notice of a strike action, they walked off at 12:00 AM Saturday morning with 90 minutes notice—stranding thousands of commuters. Right now the Ontario Legislature is about to meet to issue a back-to-work order.

Why did the initial agreement fail? Ron Nurwisah at the National Post has been live-blogging the strike, its causes, and its repercussions. The Toronto Star is all over this story with continuous updates on its web site including person on the street interviews that are worth reading.

My favourite take so far? Well, that's got to be poet Philip Quinn's TTC poetry site with the latest addition, "Strike me dead." Here it is:

Woke up at my girlfriend’s to the news, that the TTC is on strike

Drivers, trains, buses, nothing’s moving

Woke up to the news

How am I going to??????
And then do that?

Fucking walking?

I might as well stay here, stay in bed until this thing is settled.
It’s going to put the entire city to sleep

But I join the other sleep walkers at Bloor Street, in small clusters, drinking coffee and muttering about the TTC strike that seized the city at midnight

in small clusters
drinking coffee, the paper cup clenched strongly in a working man’s grip

the needs of many should outweigh the needs of the few, the man beside me said. It’s turning the city into a cripple.

this old man made up of tall buildings and decayed roads hobbling along with a bad limp, that's our city alright

in small clusters we debate the strike
in small enraged clusters, we feel the anger
solidarity with all brothers and sisters who ride the underground

every possible swear word, doesn’t even begin to describe the TTC, said another man

But now I’m walking the backbone of the city, Yonge Street, the hump past the cemetery
Breaking my back, carrying a sports bag with all my worldlies

Who said the world could stop?
Who said that they could say no to the contract?

I’m walking my way back home
Thumb ready to pop out like a flick knife
At the first chance of a ride in a car

(from The SubWay, a collection of poetry)

AGO Awards First $50k Grange Prize For Photography

Sarah Anne Johnson, a Winnipeg based artist, has won the AGO's first Grange Prize for Photography. In keeping with the AGO's new strategy of increasingly involving the community in its programming choices, Johnson won a people's choice selection driven by online voting. Almost 3,000 votes were tallied in the process.

Last night's announcement took place at the Drake Hotel. The Grange Prize is sponsored by the AGO, the Globe and Mail, and Aeroplan.

Here are two samples of Johnson's work:

Nadine

Ben

ERA To Green China’s Towers

Every once in a while Reading Toronto reposts a previous entry because history catches up with the topic. CBC radio announced this morning that ERA Architects will be advising a city in China on how to reduce the energy use of its residential towers. This success is the evolution of a thesis project by Graeme Stewart that was first published in Reading Toronto about two year ago. Here is the original:

By Graeme Stewart

There has been much talk in recent months of Toronto’s strategies for a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emission. Incredibly welcome news, there seems to be a flood gate of creative strategies for seriously combating climate change. Not yet part of the discussion however is the opportunity inherent within Toronto’s extensive stock of hundreds of bulky concrete residential slabs. Typically viewed with scepticism as ‘mistakes’ from the 60’s and 70’s, they may in fact be one of our greatest opportunities for creating a sustainable region.

These buildings are energy pigs. Counterintuitive to the accepted theory that density aids sustainability, our stock of again modern slab apartments demands more energy per square meter than any other housing type; a full thirty percent more than a contemporary single detached house. Though certain efficiencies are gained from reduced land coverage, transit use and the like, exposed slab edges, minimal insulation, single glazing and aging mechanical systems give these buildings a huge environmental impact.

As a result, a typical twenty five-storey slab building contributes more than one thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide alone. These buildings demand environmental consideration, and due to their relatively straight forward structure and boxy facades, environmental upgrade can be achieved with relative ease. This has not been lost of two members of U of T’s Faculty of Architecture, Dr. Ted Kesik and Ivan Saleff. After running numerous simulations, they have concluded that this building type may be the most cost effective candidate for retrofit in the City.

While glass window walls are the cladding fad of the day, the bulky masonry walls of these older slabs offer an ideal surface to support over-cladding systems. This approach extensively insulates the exterior of the buildings, encloses balconies and covers slab edges, which is predicted to halve energy requirements. Additionally, these buildings provide an economy of scale that makes geothermal heating, solar electric/water heating (locating panels on generous blank end walls), and green roof technology highly effective investments. These strategies would give the opportunity for carbon reductions of over two thirds the current output. In other words, a hundred and eighty unit apartment building would require less green house gas production than fifty traditional bungalows. Suddenly density begins to make sense.

These aging buildings offer endless opportunities for green modification. Containing the structural capacity to handle the addition of new floors, the buildings themselves could be the launching pad for (appropriate) intensification. By design, the concrete walls create the necessary fire separations to allow for mixed use, anything from at-grade retail, office conversion, to light industry.

And opportunities abound beyond the building walls. Sited on hectares of underutilized land, largely relegated to surface parking, this adjacent open space offers the potential for the development of commercial and social amenities lacking in most of these apartment neighbourhoods. Where further development is inappropriate, the possibility of food production and waste management is a viable alternative. We have inherited a very versatile urban resource in the tower in the park.

Due to its unique planning history, Toronto is home to more slab blocks than any other city on the continent. Typically describing itself as a mini Manhattan, perhaps Toronto is more correctly characterized as a North American Moscow. This gives us an opportunity other cities don’t have. The one thousand or so apartment towers in the region account for over twenty percent of the residential carbon output. Upgrades that result in carbon and energy reductions, when multiplied across the City’s entire slab apartment stock, would cut greenhouse gas production by hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year. Far less daunting than squeezing efficiencies out of 200 000 bungalows, retrofitting of theses aging high-rises is a policy alternative that could assist in achieving Toronto’s environmental goals.

In the European Union, tower block restoration has become a key component of their environmental strategy. From London to Warsaw, the carbon saving potential of aging welfare state and Soviet era towers has been exploited to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets. In Bratislava, Slovakia for instance, the entire Petržalka, a district of hundreds of blocks built in the 1970’s, is undergoing extensive environmental upgrades to meet new EU standards. Paid for in equal shares by the EU commission of the environment, the municipality and private investors (who gain development rights on adjacent properties), the project is breathing new life into this deteriorating district. It is now the Bratislava’s single largest environmental initiative.

In other parts of the EU and the former Soviet states, building upgrades are accompanied by new infill developments. These include cultural facilities, markets and even urban agriculture, turning former wastelands into desirable urban destinations. Of particular note are the Bijlmermeer (Amsterdam), Marzhan (Berlin ) and Topli Stan (Moscow).

Marzhan, Berlin. (Photo By Graeme Stewart)

Given the wide scale implementation of retrofitting elsewhere it should be no surprise that investigations into remaking Toronto’s towers and their environs has gone on for decades. Examples include George Baird’s St. Jamestown Studio of the 1970’s, Jack Diamond’s revisionings of the 1980’s, and today’s research on sustainability. Tackling the tower in the park has been a healthy architectural preoccupation. Recent financial support for ‘greening’ of the city, such as the Federal Government’s commitment to infuse hundreds of millions into sustainable growth, are welcome news. Yet tower restoration is not part of these plans, nor is it in the City’s official green strategy.

Overlooked for their enormous potential, these buildings are currently underutilized, blighted, and extremely inefficient. Creative programmes are needed to encourage public and private investment that will allow these buildings to reach their potential. With wide spread international precedent, broad awareness of the climate crisis and a growing number of ‘at risk’ neighbourhoods associated with apartment towers, greening and investing in these projects has moved beyond an interesting design exercise to an issue fundamental to the ecological and social sustainability of the GTA. It’s time to get on with it.

Dodging The TTC Strike Bullet

If you forgot to breath a deep sigh of relief that the TTC union chose not to go on strike, here is a Reading Toronto exclusive from their last work stoppage that may generate one:

Just in case you wondered what Toronto would be like without its transit system, the TTC union gave us a reminder yesterday. Watch a seven minute cell phone cam view of stalled traffic on Gerrard Street between River and Yonge, at 10 Monday morning.

Why I Support a TTC Strike

Have you ever walked a picket line? If you have, then you know the camaraderie that can emerge, the rare sense of standing for a common principle. You also know the tedium that develops after days or weeks, broken occasionally by violence or news from the bargaining table. If you've walked a picket line you're also familiar with the costs: physical and emotional exhaustion, the often irrecoverable hit to your income, the impact on labour relations, and perhaps above all, the costs to the people affected by the strike -- coworkers, the public, and all the other institutions and individuals whose activities are derailed as the result of a strike.

If the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), representing nine thousand TTC workers, acts on the strike mandate given to it by its members, then tomorrow morning at 4:00 am the TTC will cease to operate. No subways or buses will run. The stations will be shuttered. The 1.5 million people who rely on the TTC to get to work or school will be forced to find other ways of commuting on roads choked with cars, bicycles and pedestrians.

Media reports have focused on the inconvenience a strike will cause for commuters. This morning's Toronto Star headline blares, provocatively, "Is TTC an Essential Service?" Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has muttered obliquely that the Province may introduce legislation to make it so, and indicated more coherently that back-to-work legislation would likely bring a quick end -- although perhaps not within a week or two -- to any strike action. Mayor David Miller, being feted all week in China, is staying -- at least publicly -- out of the fray. That's not a surprise: in the coming months he's got even bigger negotiations looming with the two huge CUPE locals representing tens of thousands of city staff, and isn't likely to show his hand unless forced to do so.

I don't buy any of these claims. I don't find "inconvenience" a legitimate reason to oppose a strike, nor do I consider it adequate justification have a service declared essential. I find the Mayor's self-imposed absence from the bargaining table reprehensible, especially at a time when he should be doing everything possible to broker a settlement. I am ambivalent about back-to-work legislation, but acknowledge its value if (and only if) a strike or lockout goes on so long that the public interest becomes genuinely compromised.

The right to strike is one of the most fundamental labour rights. It is -- like the right to join a union and bargain collectively -- enshrined in the Ontario Labour Relations Act. A strike is a legally protected course of action when, after the term of a collective agreement has expired, properly conducted negotiations do not produce a new one. Unions may go on strike only if a strike vote is held and only if the majority of those voting support a strike.

In the case of the TTC workers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, the collective agreement has expired. The union has been in negotiations for months. In a strike vote, over 99% of those voting supported a strike, and the ATU has been in a legal strike position since April first. The union has indicated it would give the public advance notice of any strike action, and it has done so, announcing several days ago that if a settlement is not reached by 4:00 this afternoon, the union will commence strike action at 4:00 tomorrow morning. Both parties acknowledge that, despite prolonged talks and the presence of provincial mediators, progress at the bargaining table has stalled. Under these circumstances it would be difficult to describe the ATU's action as precipitous or premature.

I will support the TTC workers in the event of a strike. I will do so even though, like 1.5 million other Torontonians, I depend on the TTC to get around the city. I don't drive, and am rapidly becoming too pregnant to be able to depend on my bike as a mode of transportation. My ability to do my job, attend important medical appointments, shop and socialize will be compromised. In short, a strike will inconvenience me.

But it seems to me that an inability to strike would be a far greater inconvenience. Unions are largely responsible for the job security, wages and working conditions that employees -- and not just those in unions -- enjoy. The benefits unions win for their members tend to spill out across the non-unionized workforce as well, through legislation such as the Employment Standards Act as well as through pure labour economics -- wages and benefits across a sector tend to improve for all employees when they go up for unionized workers.

Moreover, declaring the TTC workers an essential service -- and thus depriving them of the right to strike in exchange for arbitrated contracts -- would ultimately involve a trade-off that might be more inconvenient to taxpayers' wallets than negotiated settlements punctuated by the occasional strike, given that most essential workers command higher wage premiums by virtue of being so designated.

I'll also support TTC workers because one of them is my neighbour, a bus driver with three kids under the age of ten, who contributes to local soccer programs and does his own renovations on the weekends. Who navigates Toronto's clotted streets every day on the job, dodging angry drivers and challenging riders who put dimes instead of tokens into the fare box; who risks getting spit upon or shot at or blamed for a late bus stuck in traffic; and who will walk the picket line acutely aware of what it will cost to do so.

Above all, though, I'll support TTC workers in the event of a strike because I believe in their fundamental right to do so.

[Amy Lavender Harris is the daughter of a Teamster. She has also been a union president and chief negotiator, and once spent 78 days captaining a picket line. She holds a master's degree in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto.]

[2007 TTC strike image by David Topping and used here under the aegis of a Creative Commons license.]