Resources
February 18th, 2009
Proposals to install bike lanes and/or widen sidewalks on main streets in Toronto almost always require the removal of parking spaces along the street. Such proposals have often triggered loud opposition from some local businesses, who …
January 6th, 2009
I’ve been doing a New Year’s file clearing, and I came across various articles that I had set aside because I thought they might be of interest to our readers.
• The Toronto Star recently had a wild story from London, England, where the health service created a drunk tent at a subway station in the financial district, where doctors and nurses could deal with people incapacitated by drinking too much at Christmas office parties and getting sick or passing out in the subway system.
• The Star’s “Wheels” section recently had a story about “demotorization” in Japan. It seems increasing numbers of Japanese no longer see cars as a status symbol, and the rate of car ownership in Japan is beginning to decrease. Since the article is in the “Wheels” section, this is portrayed as a problem, but really it’s a process that needs to happen everywhere. As I wrote in Spacing earlier this year, cars can be useful, but we can’t sustain the number that we currently consume. Rather than trying to find ways to keep the industry at its present rate of production, governments need to find ways to help companies convert part of this production to other uses.
• A report earlier this year found that India’s roads are the most dangerous in the world, especially for cyclists and pedestrians. In an interesting counterpoint to the popular idea of “shared streets” where boundaries between modes of transport are reduced in order to calm traffic, some Indian commentators believe that one of the causes of this danger is in fact the lack of separation between cars and more vulnerable modes of transportation in India.
Rohit Baluja of Delhi’s Institute of Road Traffic Education said: “The real issue is not car design but road design. About 85% of all deaths on the roads are pedestrians and cyclists, not drivers. We do not design traffic management systems to separate different streams of traffic. In America this began in 1932.”
May 1st, 2008
The Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation has released a brief report benchmarking the City of Toronto’s cycling programs against other cities (such as New York, London, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Vancouver, Montreal). Toronto, as expected, is …
April 22nd, 2008
I polished off a bag of store-bought chocolate chip cookies before I sat down to write this, but it was hard to enjoy that last bite. The packaging the cookies came in (a combination of a …
April 4th, 2008
This morning there was a pigeon the back yard, as there sometimes are, so not much notice was taken of it. A bit later it was still there, arousing concern. On …
March 16th, 2008
On Saturday March 1, the City of Toronto, with TCAT and Spacing, held the “Walk 21 Community Conference,” where eight local experts who had presented at the international Walk21 conference held in Toronto in October repeated their talks for free for the general public.
The community conference was an amazing success — almost 100 people showed up to hear the presentations, many of them staying for the whole day. It was great to see so much interest in walking issues from Toronto’s citizens.
Some of the presenters have kindly agreed to post their presentations on the community conference website. There are four so far, and a few more may be added.
As well, for those who are interested, all of the papers (dozens of them) from the international Walk21 conference in October are now available on the Walk21 website. Many of these papers are really interesting, and I encourage people to check them out.
Here are a few interesting notes I took from the first set of presentations at the March 1 community conference, to whet people’s appetites.
December 7th, 2007
The Brookings Institution in the US has recently published a study, “Footloose and Fancy Free: A Field Survey of Walkable Urban Places in the Top 30 U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” which shows that walkable communities are …
November 5th, 2007
Toronto-based think tank the Wellesley Institute has published a landmark report on the administrative burden felt by community organizations that rely on government, private and third sector grants to …
November 1st, 2007
Toronto’s greatest indoor public space is celebrating its 30th Anniversary tomorrow (Friday Nov. 2) with a day long program of events. Two years ago in a Stroll column I wrote, in part, “If the city had a brain, the Toronto Reference Library would be it. It’s big, public and one of the few places where all types can bump into each other. Men in suits read statistics near the guy who waves his arms and reads to himself aloud, consumed by madness and Heidegger.”
The upcoming issue of Spacing will also include an article by regular contributor Ryan Bigge on how this building seems to get better as it ages, and how important it is to Toronto. This big giant room is open and free — architecturally, intellectually and monetarily — and is one of the best non-university-affiliated research libraries in the world. For others, it’s simply a good place to read the paper or even take nap.
We will also be launching four new [murmur] sites tomorrow that will let you hear longtime users of this library talk about why this place is important to them. The locations are: the main entrance, the picture collection, the Baldwin Room and the Arthur Conan Doyle Room. Over the last few months I’ve met writers, artists, scholars, librarians and local historians and listened them speak passionately about this place, reinforcing my feeling that this is my favorite place in Toronto.
If it was only possible to measure the value this building has added to Toronto we might be able to appreciate it in more tangible terms. The city would be a lesser place without it, no doubt.
From the TRL:
The celebration begins at 10:30 a.m., when Breakfast Television host Kevin Frankish, Mayor David Miller and architects Raymond and Ajon Moriyama will kick off a full day of events, including a performance by author Paul Quarrington’s band the Porkbelly Futures, readings by former writers-in-residence Austin Clarke, Russell Smith and Ken McGoogan, poetry readings, music, artist demonstrations, library tours, workshops and more (see below for a full schedule).
At the event, the library will also launch Your Stories, a collection of first-person narratives about the library’s role in the lives of Torontonians. From musicians composing on the pianos in the library’s practice room to authors finding inspiration in the picture collections to newcomers studying and socializing in the language labs, Your Stories showcases the diversity of the library’s services, and of the people who use them. For more information, visit here and click on Your Stories.
October 4th, 2007
I have a particular interest in the idea of pedestrian maps, and co-created one for the now-finished Walking Life exhibition (I hope to post an electronic version soon). So I was very interested in a Walk21 session this morning about pedestrian maps and wayfinding.
The presentation about walking maps was given by Liz Thomas from the New Zealand branch of the Living Streets organization, Living Streets Aotearoa. Most maps, she pointed out, are designed for cars, and leave out walking routes where cars can’t go but pedestrians can. To remedy the situation, LSA decided to start a project to create pedestrian maps, experimenting with several different ideas to see which ones worked.
Two projects revolved around schools, showing different walking routes to that particular destination. They involved the schoolchildren heavily, and incorporated the map-making into the curriculum. Although the schools and the children were very pleased with the result, the effort took a significant investment in time, and Thomas suspected the concept would not be picked up by other schools.
Another project worked on a specific, well-defined district of the city of Wellington. They began a process of consultation with local community groups, collected data from the City, such as GIS data and bus stop locations. They then walked the routes themselves, correcting various small errors in the official information. They created a cute little map that will fit in the pocket if folded, which includes not only all roads and pedestrian-only routes, but also, in faint outline, all buildings, with key destinations such as the central shopping district highlighted. A particularly brilliant idea was a sub-map on the other side which shows all the street lighting, so that people know the safest routes to walk at night.
They’ve had a hard time assessing the success of the map, but several people have told them that it opened their eyes to new routes they had not taken before. The map is available in PDF format on their website (front and back) . (The same site has a great idea — a complete list of Wellington’s public toilets. Now there’s something to add to a walking map.) They also created “map toolbox” handbooks as guides to other communities who want to create local pedestrian maps.
The second presentation was given by Adrian Bell of Transport for London (TfL). I earlier described his discussion of the economics of walking; in this presentation, he talked about the wayfinding system currently being developed for London (the economics were a way of demonstrating the benefits of spending the money required to implement the system, to those who control budgets).
London is in desperate need of a good wayfinding system. At the moment, Bell told us, there are apparently something like 32 separate signage systems in central London, pointing to all kinds of different destinations (streets, tourist destinations, various transit systems). A full 25% of Londoners worry about getting lost in its maze-like streets — but they are reluctant to use maps because they don’t want to look like tourists. It’s estimated that 23,000 people get lost in London each day. The most popular source of walking route information is the famous London A-Z map book, which is really meant for drivers, while the least used system of walking directions is signage, even though it is often specifically aimed at walkers.
The result is a sense of disconnect from the local environment — even when people do walk, they tend to use fixed routes, rather than exploring, so that people may not even know parts of their local neighbourhoods. And in terms of “mental mapping”, London ends up feeling like a series of disconnected pockets around subway stations or destinations, rather than a continuous, evolving community (I remember it seemed like that to me the first few times I went there).
