Beauty is only skin deep
If I had a dollar for every time I heard the term “architectural excellence†referring to development along the waterfront, I’d have enough money to buy a condo with a view of the lake. But since no one’s handing out loonies, I’m starting to find those two words grating. It’s not that excellent architecture shouldn’t be part of our water’s edge; it’s just that it takes much more than eye-popping design to create a great waterfront.
Take CityPlace, the 18-hectare site to the west of the Roger’s Centre (née SkyDome), which will be home to 20 towers with 7,000 units. The condo towers themselves could be a work of architectural genius, but with fewer than 100 units containing three or more bedrooms suitable for family housing, they are bound to be a failure. As Adam Vaughan has pointed out, a school has been proposed for the site, but there are few places for the children who are supposed to fill it to live. Any development that’s going to inject the population equivalent of a small village into downtown Toronto should include housing for a variety of tenants, not just the young, transient and upwardly mobile.
Project Symphony will be one of the first new buildings constructed as part of Waterfront Toronto’s grand plan. Architect Jack Diamond should create an exceptional building here. If Waterfront Toronto (née Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation) hopes to attract others to build according to its near-utopic vision of large, vibrant, environmentally sustainable communities where people can work, live, play, have families and grow old, they’ll have to be creative.
As with CityPlace, what happens inside the building and how it relates to the greater community it sits in is just as important. The other goal of Project Symphony is to bring jobs to the waterfront so that when residents eventually move into the area, places to work will already exist. “To have jobs where people live is the most green thing you can do,†said Mayor David Miller when council debated the development last month. Whether or not it’s the greenest thing may be debatable, but the goal is a commendable one — almost as great as excellent architecture.
Sex sells, but only if you’re sexy
David Whitaker, the new CEO of Tourism Toronto, isn’t afraid to tell it like it is — or like he thinks it is. As the Toronto Star recently reported, he’s referred to Summerhill (where he lives) as “Springhill†and Yorkville as “Yorktown.†Known for his successful campaign to revive tourism in Miami with the aid of ad campaigns depicting scantily clad women posing with palm trees and golf clubs, Whitaker told the Star that he’s not planning to take the same approach to selling life in T.O. “We’ll never be successful marketing a Toronto that doesn’t exist,†he said. Tell that to the glamour hounds chilling under the palm trees in Yorktown.
14 comments
I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be more diligent attention paid to including park creation and other amenities in condo planning, but I have to question the inference that only 3 bedrooms or more are “suitable” for family living. Vaughan’s own riding has plenty of kids and their parents living in apartments with fewer than three bedrooms. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Do couples with a small baby need three bedrooms? Does a single parent family need three bedrooms? If there is a school, a park, and some other amenities around, then maybe… no.
I’d also question the assumption that a neighbourhood with a young, transient population is a “failure.” There have always been neighbourhoods of starter homes — and as the name implies, homes that people move on from after establishing themselves. The only new thing about developments like CityPlace is that these starter home communities are vertical rather than horizontal. Couple the newer waterfront condos with the the existing condos along Queen’s Quay that have a large number of older residents and the population already runs from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Molly>
I agree with you about the 3 bedroom thing. Families, of course, can be quite happy with two bedrooms as well. But while there are a lot of families who may find two bedrooms sufficient, there are also a lot that need/want more than that. It’d be nice to see a bit more variety. Also, look at who most new condos (everywhere) are advertised to. Not families.
Starter homes are one thing; starter communities are another. The problem is that you have hundreds of people buying a home in a community (a gated community nonetheless) that they have no intention of staying in very long, therefore the incentive to see yourself as part of that community and get involved in it is lower. We’re not just talking about transient people here, we’re talking about transient communities. Also, if you don’t see yourself as living in a unit long, you’ll do what you need to do to be able to resell it at a good price when you later move out, but beyond that, you may not put as much care into the place. Many people have questioned what these shiny new condos are going to look like over time. Will they last?
The last point you make is that while a bunch of young people live in the new waterfront condos, a bunch of older people live in some of the older condos nearby, so “the population already runs from one end of the spectrum to the other.” But the middle of the spectrum is missing. Again, what about families? There needs to be a better balance downtown.
I agree with Molly, it’s really disappointing that Councillor Vaughan has such an antiquated notion of what constitutes a family. As a queer guy, politicians who “focus on the family” make me nervous.
rocket> Comparing Vaughan to Focus on the Family in the U.S. is as over-the-top extreme as people who say something is “as bad as Hitler”. You’re bringing in all kinds of baggage with FOF that take away from your point.
Your opinion is duly noted but it’s not over the top to recognize that “family” is a heavily loaded term in politics. There’s no way Vaughan isn’t aware of the multiple connotations of what he’s saying – he’s not stupid, and people have been critiquing it since the election – but he’s made no effort to make his statements more inclusive.
redrocket > Vaughan has addressed it numerous times in public comments or if you ask him yourself. He is a queer-postive, and had numerous LGBT supporters back him in the election. Your assertion that “family” doesn’t also includes gay couples is worrisome and a very similar tactic that Helen Kennedy’s campaign used to try and discredit Vaughan during the 2006 election.
If you have a problem with his stance, just email his office and they’ll gladly respond. councillor_vaughan@toronto.ca
Darling, as a gay man who’s been active in the community for a long time, I’ll decide for myself who is queer-positive, thanks. None of the queer families I know are agitating for 3-bedroom condos. It’s his statements that are worrisome, not mine, and it’s his job as a politician to make sure that his policy statements recognize and reflect the diversity of his constituency. In any case, I’m not entirely sure how this issue relates to public space.
So families can include “gay couples”. Looks like poor, pathetic singles, gay or straight, can go to the back of the line.
It is tiresome to hear pols use “families” like a mantra, sort of like the everpopular “diversity”.
Guess I’ll go out to the Pride parade now and see if I can get in the family way.
How is Vaughan’s use of the word “family” worrisome? Its not a dirty word. Neighbourhoods are made of up of families for the most part — sometimes in fully-detatched homes, other times in a one-bedroom crammed full of people.
If you want to recreate St. Jamestown then develop condos for only singles and couples so they can be transient and never set-up roots in a neighbourhood. If you want a a cohesive community, then have mixed housing as a pre-requisite so singles, couples, families, and lower-income folks can live together. Or, sit there and make a mountain out of a mole-hill because a councillor used the word family and a fickle few of you somehow think that’s a bad thing. Councillors represent us all, not just the ones that bitch the loudest.
I’m about to head out to catch the post parade activity, but how on earth does advocating for families in condos become non-inclusive OR put singles at the back of the line?
Get a grip!
Families with a lot of kids don’t want to live downtown. The space right by the business district is desired by those who work there (those “young professionals”) and is marketed accordingly. What’s the big surprise? Why the desire to have a “quota” for the number of “families” anywhere? It’s like trying to increase the number of women in, say, the Canadian Army even if few women express the desire to join its ranks.
Also, it’s a rather strange idea that a family needs “three or more bedrooms”. You know, not a whole lot of families can afford to own a place right downtown with three+ bedrooms. The great majority of families with kids that I’ve known in Toronto over the years lived in places with two bedrooms or fewer, especially if we’re talking about condos and apartment buildings. And the families who insist they need three+ bedrooms are usually the variety who also claim the need for a manicured lawn, a big fenced backyard, and a car for each family member over 16. In other words, they want the ‘burbs and you probably won’t interest those people in a condo life anyhow.
Chephy —
Lots of families would like to live downtown but having a three bedroom (one for the parents, one each for a kid) is what people like me would want if I was about to start (or started a family). Vaughan’s ward also extends north to Dupont and west to Bathurst, so there are a lot of condos being built in that ward that are not right beside the biz district, so a three bedroom can be affordable to some.
Look at St Lawrence area. Wide variety of sizes of places *right beside the biz district* but somehow its affordable. That’s because the city mandated it and you have a pretty cohesive, mixed community there. Discounting the need for a larger size condos that are affordable only helps contributre to sprawl. If I start i a family downtown, and want to stay downtown, I shouldn’t be forced to move out of the core because the city has done a poor job of legislating a mixed number of types of housing available. They have the power to do it but they are just afraid to do it.
Indeed. St. Lawrence area, closer to the business district centre than even Cityplace is full of families.
Ideally there would be a greater mix of condo sizes in CityPlace but there are only so many ways you can manipulate a developer. Instead of insisting on more three bedroom units, Olivia Chow got the developer to provide affordable housing and a daycare center. Both of those things aren’t something I’m about to argue with.
Also, though it’s potentially a chicken/egg type of thing, developers build according to what their reading of the housing market says will sell. If that’s the number of three bedroom units that were built, they must be of the impression there isn’t much of an interest. So maybe another question that needs to be posed is: “how will families be convinced to live in the heart of downtown?”
Regarding “family”: Although I don’t find Adam Vaughan’s “family” talk particularly offensive (granted I don’t identify with the LGBTQ community), what frustrates me is that he was presumably familiar with the development through its approval stages and neglected to get involved in the planning/consultation process at that time. It’s only now that he’s a politician that he has no trouble railing against something that he could have shown some community-based leadership on back when decisions were being made.