Monday’s headlines

17 comments

1. Am I reading this correctly: Christopher Hume likes Yonge-Dundas Square? Bizarre. This seems incongruent with all his other writings and opinions.

2. Not so bizarre — in the piece he is talking about the square itself, rather than the buildings and ads and etc surrounding it. A couple weeks ago he called the Toronto Life Square building “horrortecture.”

3. It is a bit unlike Hume, though, to mention the Toronto Life building without taking another swipe at it. For a while, it seemed like his disappointment in the new opera house got mentioned in every column.

4. Times Square is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. The Toys R Us has a freakin’ ferris wheel in it, everything is bright and colourful, there are thousands of people crawling everywhere in a big, organic, psychedelic waltz, while lights flash and pulse with the changing adverts.

   It’s really quite a trip, even for native New Yorkers who’ve been seeing the transformation of Times Square since the peak of NYC homicide in 1992 to Disneyfied 2008.

   So yeah, I suppose it does make sense to want a similar experience in Toronto, but I think an important element of Times Square is its massive size: there are so many neat little places to go inside, from flagship retail stores to Broadway plays to four-story video arcades with laser tag in the basement.

   If some part of Toronto actually did want to be Times Square, they would need all those things too. Right now all we have is the Hard Rock Café, that tiny arcade with the crappy pizza in front, and some ads.

5. Hard Rock, tiny arcade… you forogt something Kevin: the Eaton’s Centre! Jeez — it has the flagship stores, there’s a theatre being built acrosss the street. It has all that Times Square has to offer except a natural growth into the glitz. T.O. just put up billboards and screens and expects people to just flock there. Its always a shame when they build something to replicate another city’s experience. Dundas Square is a sorry excuse and sadly embarrassing.

6. “Dundas Square is a sorry excuse and sadly embarrassing.”

   Are you talking about the Square itself, or the billboards? They are connected, but different things.

   However, if it is such a sorry excuse, why do people indeed flock there? Why is it crowded on summer days and nights? Do you know something they don’t? Are they stupid?

   In cases like these, I tend to trust people. If it was so awful, it wouldn’t be consistently full of people.

7. Tonnes of people go to Mel Lastman Square too but that doesn’t make it a good square. Just becuase people show up doesn’t necessarily mean success. At Dundas Square, even bfore it was there, the intersection was the most heavily trafficed by pedestrians. So its not so much the square as its the location that draws people. Its the perfect space for a square, no doubt, but it surely won’t be found on the top 10 or 100 square in the world. It just seems like a giant Future Shop or Best Buy.

   Dundas Square itself is okay but it wasn’t designed to be a square as much as a selling opportunity. Its alomost impossible to separate the square itself from its surroundings. The City approves the visual environment around the square, and manages the square so its almost silly to discuss them in isolation. if they were concerned about the square’s integrity they would have different rules than currently exist. Instead they tried for Times Square-lite. I can understand that but I don’t like it. Even Brown + Storey say they were handcuffed on specific designs aspects (like the stage/parking garage entrance).

   I think the debate on the square is more or less dead. We have a project that could have separated us from other cities yet we decided to go the easy route and simply comodify the square. It is not a unique experience to Toronto since I can see these ads in London, Sydeny and NYC. Give me something authentic and you will give people a much more fulfilling experience. If those screens were full of some other than JUST ads — I can take some ads but not 15 screens screaming at me — you could start to see something special. But when you get a building like Metropolis that is meant to house TV screens and not function like a iconic building (that it could have been) we all end up losing out on what could’ve been.

   As a final shot at the square, Metropolis was giving lots of breaks on zoning codes and STILL built it higher than approved, more signs than were approved. If you give outdoor advertisers an inch they will take a mile. And then a marathon.

8. I get confused about it (is it a square, a building) but to keep it simple, the whole area is a logo wasteland that calls into question what’s more important, a public space that lets one imagine or a a sky blocked out by shilling.

   I have accepted that there are people who love malls and want to make the outside into one as well. Apparently there is not already enough ads in public space as it is. I always find it boggling that at Spacing, where without exception every other corporate invasion of space is denounced , there seems to be this contradictory love of it. I don’t expect every body to agree with me but I do have trouble reconciling it as I always figured that Spacing attracted people who were against corporate mono culture.

   And in terms of Times Square, a place I sadly have to visit for business, it was supposedly “cleaned up” but remains a seedy commercialized focal point for mall lovers. There is no local scale, no local vibe, just giant Disney characters and over-sized Hershy Kisses.

   There are many great city spaces all over the world but I don’t include these 2 on my list.

9. Sean>” However, if it is such a sorry excuse, why do people indeed flock there? Why is it crowded on summer days and nights? Do you know something they don’t? Are they stupid?”

   Do they really flock there? My wife has worked around there for 15 years and sadly the great secret of the area: the piece of simple green at Dundas and Bay is now more stores and a school. If she wants to stretch her legs and not be in a mall she has to go to the square. There is nowhere else to go. Do I think that thousands flock there ? Yes, but not for the reasons you think. People go there because its a crowded area and it provides some space.

   How about this: Thousands “flock” in their cars downtown. Are they “stupid” too ? Is it OK to drive downtown because lots of people do it? I always thought that part of the rational of Spacing was that people do dumb things because they don’t know better, or they don’t have better alternatives. That Spacing was about exploring and promoting those alternatives not just accepting the given corporate path that the masses take because it offers the path of least resistance. That Spacing was about doing the hard work so that others would benefit. So now corporate invasion of public space is ok because people congregate there. People congregate in prison too but that doesn’t mean they like being locked up. If the fact that lots of people do something is the new touchstone here then I am visiting the wrong place.

   Why dont you have the guts to put Coke and Gap ads in your post every time you go on about how great all the ads at Dundas are? Honestly why don’t you post on the Coke website instead? Show your true corporate colours.

10. Scott > Shawn likes Dundas Sq. while some of us at Spacing don’t. What we like about our editorial team is that we do not share all the same opinions. Its makes for dynamic meetings and allows us to shre different voices.

    Case in point: Ian wrote about Sugar Beach saying he dislikes the choice, while Robin Chibb wrote a lengthy explanation why he likes it. Both are Spacing Toronto blog contributors and we value both of their opinions. It makes for good editorial.

    In regards to Dundas Square, we have a variety of opinions about it and not a steadfast stance on it. Personally, I abhor the square and agree with Jami’s post above, but I like that Shawn is willing to go there, experience it and tell us the good things about the space. I don’t go there for my own reasons, but I don’t discredit Shawn’s perspective. I don’t think there is a WRONG or RIGHT answer to the square, just differing takes on its successes and failures.

11. Matthew> Fair enough. Then Shawn can resist getting snarky when somebody like Jami says they have a different take. How about starting there?

    Personally I think that Dundas Square runs counter to what I think the spirit of Spacing is about. As I said, some want the world to look like a mall and some don’t. Diverse views is a great concept but I hardly think that the corporate side needs any more help.

    And I humbly suggest that Shawn (TM) can fund all of his urban dreams and ideas with ads and live happily ever after.

12. “Go post on the coke website” et al.

    Well, no, but I also won’t reduce Dundas Square into a simple “all bad” black-and-white argument, which I have never done. I also don’t say DSq is perfect in all ways. And I won’t compare car drivers with people going to Dundas Square — not sure what that has to do with people being in the square.

    I do see thousands of people flock there, and they look happy. “Look happy” because they sometimes look restful, some play in the fountains, or watch their kids play, some sit on those chairs and chat, some look at the lights, some in the winter pose with the LED christmas tree. I’ve passed through a lot, or sat there and watched, and this is what I’ve seen and experienced.

    I’m not willing to assume much more about people than that, and certainly not willing to think they’re sheep, heading there because there is no where else to go. Perhaps you’ve got an inside view of what is going on in their individual brains down there. However, I’m inclined to default to trusting people rather than being cynical about their motivations/intelligence/etc. If they don’t like it, they won’t stay. There are lots of examples of public spaces that have a lot of crowded foot traffic around, but very few people lingering.

    As for what’s easy and hard — the easy way out is to think about people as “the masses” and that one can always know better than them. It’s also easy to dislike the square for idealogical reasons that obscure what actually happens in that place and lead to unreasonable arguments about “putting coke ads in each post.”

    —

    As for green space near by, there is the Cloud Garden to the south of the Bay, the huge Ryerson Quad a block north and various cathedral church grounds (Metropolitian, St.Michaels) a block or two east. Tucked in behind the Eaton Centre is the labyrinth/Trinity church space, some of which is shady and green. There are options for people if they want greenspace nearby, but many choose to linger in the square. Not all public space needs to be green. Toronto’s got a lot of it (ravines and beaches and high parks full of it). It’s ok if a few of them are paved.

    EDIT> Just saw your last post. There was no snark in my first post — Jami made some rather big assumptions about people that needed to be interrogated more. Snark would be me responding to your over-the-top “Shawn TM” stuff with “Go back to Russia” or something equally ridiculous (and amusing).

13. Shawn TM> When you start going “are they stupid” you by default are saying that the post that you don’t agree with IS stupid. How is that for snarky ?

    And it makes me snarky. As does your use of the word “interrogated”. Nobody expects the Michallef Inquisition!

14. Sorry, I didn’t mean in the George W. Bush sense, I meant simply to ask questions about something in the academic sense.

    There is often a cynical knee-jerk assumption that “the people” are “stupid,” which I sensed in Jami’s post. When you actually say (write) the word though, it’s powerful, and I think cools down the rhetoric (by, uh, heating it up) because (I hope) people don’t really think the people are sheep.

    At any rate, I’m going to go for a Pepsi now.

15. Sorry for assuming you were a Coke man. And I take back that extra H I gave your name!

16. Dundas Square is actually more like Herald Square in New York than Times Square. Herald Square is at 34th and Broadway, next to the big Macy’s. Unlike Times Square, Herald Square has seating. In fact, it has a similar relationship, spatially, to Macy’s and some other large stores, including Manhattan’s only enclosed shopping mall of any size, that Dundas Square has to Eaton Centre.

    Herald Square is too small to host events like Dundas, but it always strikes me as a place the locals actually use. Whereas nobody who lives in New York ever goes to Times Square if they can avoid it.

    Maybe Dundas Square is still too new to have a clear identity yet. But, speaking as a newcomer, I can’t imagine that part of town without it.

17. Dundas Square is great! However, the new Toronto Life Building reminds me of a battleship. People seem to having some difficulty separating the square in their mind from the surrounding billboards and screens.

    Suggestion: allow video artists to use the screens part of the time, preferably all screens in a co-ordinated way, i.e. vid of some pod of whales swimming along from screen to screen. Or let people play YouTube on it. Or have like CityTV’s old speaker’s corner so people could propose marriage, do giant karaoke, etc. Oh-oh! Just remembered – CityTV is moving there. Hope they won’t be allowed to monopolize the screens.