Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex’s personal blog on architecture
Recently I met with an American magazine editor who was in town for a conference, and she was shocked by what she saw. In New York, where she lives and works, the economy is sputtering. Stores sit empty in Midtown Manhattan. Nobody’s building. So the chaos of construction in downtown Toronto came as a big surprise.
Because she’s a smart editor, that insight turned into a story – which she asked me to write, for Architectural Record, about what’s bringing all those tall buildings and big design ideas to town. I was surprised myself when I took stock of what’s going on here and what is coming: 150 more towers now under way. Norman Foster, KPMB and architectsAlliance building on the watefront. $5-million condos next to the Blinds To Go on Davenport. And on and on. (I didn’t even mention the suburban subway line that we are getting, or the Pan Am Games, or, even CityPlace – which any city in North America would love to have right now, with all its faults.)
This is an amazingly positive story – especially when you contrast it to the very dark discussions we’re having here about governance, poverty, bubbly real estate, gridlock and infrastructure. (As in John Lorinc’s brilliant piece here.)
So how do we bring those narratives together? One answer is that the positive factors of a stable and (relatively) welcoming society, a (relatively) solid economy, (relatively) generous social services and public institutions, (relatively) good city planning and architecture – are outweighing the bad. By many billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of people, every year. We are heading in a grim direction. But perhaps some of our problems will be conquered by the ingenuity and schlep of our growing city.
I talked with Meg Graham of Superkul Architect about the City of Toronto’s planning process, and she said something that applies equally well to the region overall. “We’ve got a city that isn’t proactively planned – and hasn’t been for years now,” she said. “But we have a system that makes things work.”
..Hurray?
9 comments
It’s really quite simple. The real estate bubble burst in the US, but not in Canada. Because bubbles are driven by irrationality, there is no rational trigger for them to burst.
Congratulations, it is certainly a different point of view than I wrote for them for Greenbuild, but then I was writing in the middle of the ferris wheel debacle. I am also not certain that the 150 towers are not on the other side of the bursting of a speculative bubble. I guess Jan prefers your positivity!
Toronto is a game of Jenga. We keep taking the blocks from the bottom to build on top, all the while weakening the foundation. That tower’s got to fall over eventually.
Don’t worry. Be happy.
This is an interesting topic. I have been thinking about this a lot lately: It gives me hope that despite the Fordian steamroller there is still much good development happening here. City building may cease (if not regress) in the public realm, but Ford can’t stop the progress of private development.
Could it be that Toronto succeeds despite itself…and despite the cannibalizing city building culture that refuses to be proactively planned? The proactive plans that we do make always end up being moderated, and the big visions that are purported are truly small visions, that can never really manifest. Did the jacobian city that everyone loves and wants is actually being made in the image of ourselves? How exciting!
Here is my take.
As a nation, Canada is a moderate place relative to the US. Most Canadians would make more money if they lived in the free wheeling mess to the south; however, they could also potentially make a lot less money, with less of a safety net. Canadian universities lack the sheer dollars and selectivity of the Ivy League, but they are also generally superior to Cardinal Direction State and a better value. Canadian highways are a shell of what the Americans get with their Interstates, but they also suck up less of the budget, freeing it for other uses. The most popular car in Canada is always a Corolla, never a Camry (look it up) because of a lack of money and modest needs. It’s just a moderate place.
And so on and so on. So, the fact that Toronto is in moderate Canada certainly helps it when times are bad elsewhere.
But the single biggest factor is INERTIA. Toronto has been more or less dysfunctional ever since it became a big league city. The political will has been lacking, the money has been lacking and the populace has been stubborn about pretty much every idea that has come along for the past century. But as it turns out, inertia was a good thing since most of the ideas for cities of the last 50 years were pretty much a mistake. Toronto lacks the urban renewal clearance, the highways, the cheap but third-class citizen public transit, etc. of most US cities and in the long run that turned out to be a good thing. Yes, the public transit system is creaky and underdeveloped but that has forced a reliance on the old streetcar system, which actually is one of the best city-building devices ever invented. The highway system is underdeveloped in the city, which might frustrate commuters but lends enormous strength to downtown neighbourhoods and kept the bank offices downtown during the 80s.
Yes, the biggest factor driving Toronto’s success is that is has been unable to do almost anything substantial to itself (Ford will not be any different, just a blip on the radar), which for the most part has kept the city functioning just as all cities in, say, 1912, functioned better than they do today. Well done, non-doers. Keep it up.
ISKYSCRAPER: Great post.
The title of the article from Architectural Record: “Rapid population growth and a stable economy are fueling a construction boom in this Canadian metropolis.”
Alex, since when the middle-class disappearing ( disappearing: http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/researchbulletins/RB41Media_Release2.pdf) result in claiming a “stable economy”?