Hot Docs 2010 begins tonight and runs until May 9. Over the next week we’ll be posting reviews of some of our favourite Spacing-relevant film. For now, here are some of the urbanist-themed docs we’re excited to see:
A Different Path “A handful of activists, sick of living in a car culture, decide to mobilize against automobiles…”
Architecture of Home “Residents of the People’s Housing Society Co-op in Reykjavik take us on a quirky tour of their digs…”
Our House “An alternative to the impersonal, bureaucratic shelter system, Our House provides a safe space for ex-cons, former drug addicts, and punk squatters to live a communal, spiritual, and vegan lifestyle…”
The Mirror “The sun doesn’t shine in the winter on the remote village of Viganella nestled deep in a valley in the Italian Alps. The villagers stay home, tourists don’t visit, and the normal bust
7 comments
Re. Richmond and Adelaide (New tack for Richmond & Adelaide?)
I think that for all the talk about congestion in the city, Adam’s observation sheds some truth on the subject;
” Everyone fears that the cars will go crazy because they won’t be able to get into the city quickly,” Mr. Vaughan (Trinity Spadina) said yesterday. “The reality is, if you go down there at rush hour, there are no cars on Adelaide whatsoever, so you’ve got this massive wide street in the downtown that nobody is using. And then when you go to Richmond Street, there are flocks of 20 cars at a time every five minutes but in between … you can’t see a car for 30 or 40 blocks in either direction.”
Gridlock is not a downtown issue. It is hardly a Toronto issue. So long as Toronto has tax policies in place that literally prevent the development of non residential space, this trend will continue. As Adam should know, making Adelaide and Richmond two way streets will not address this. All the money spent on the ‘Avenues’ plans and promoting mixed use neighborhoods (like the lake front) are a waste of money. It is like planning an English garden for the desert. Toronto needs to get serious about addressing this issue. Otherwise the city will come to resemble Queens Quay. A bunch of condos with half occupied ground floor retail.
Glen, avenue studies aren’t a waste of money. They coordinate streetscaping improvements and development for a cohesive main street. Development is happening today and it needs to be guided, because in the future it won’t be viable to just clear all the buildings along an avenue and start over again. The tax structure can be changed at any time in favour of the mixed use planning ideals, but if its changed 5 years from now when the avenues are already developed in an undesirable manner, then we’ve missed the boat.
In terms of Adelaide, I’d just like to say that making it a two way street would allow you to drive or cycle in the direction of St. Mary’s at Portugal Square. What a grand view terminus that is! It’s in a rarefied group of grand old view termini such as Knox College on Spadina, and Old City Hall on Bay Street. But despite the landmark view terminus, the area seems forgotten. There are empty lots and lots of overhead wires. It’s quite sad. It could be beautiful again, and just allowing people to drive or cycle towards Bathurst is crucial.
It is very good of the city and vendors to memorialise the site of Darcy
Allen Sheppard’s murder with granite paving. However it would be much more
appropriate if the city saw fit to include bicycling infrastructure in the
rebuilding including proper 2.5 m separated bike lanes and bike parking.
That said I can’t help wondering the affect of a few years freeze/thaw
cycles combined with city sidewalk plows on that same granite. Will the
pavement heave and be subsequently chipped by the plows? Will the vendors
pick up the tab on the potentially increased maintenance cost? How will
these look striped with asphalt following utility cuts and how long will
pedestrians be stuck with tripping over the aftermath as the city, vendors
and utilities fight over who picks up the tab?
On another note, when will the province step up and begin educating
motorists using their vehicles for violence can’t and won’t be tolerated?
Or is the real message here that the well healed can and do get away with
maiming and murdering those less so?
A.R.,
The development that is happening today is not mixed use as proposed in the Avenue studies. The job density created falls way short of what is envisioned in the studies and the official plans (PTG and CoTOP). I agree with the streetscaping part. Changing the tax policies after development is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. What we are getting, or going to get, is more condos with ground floor retail. The non residential portion will not be there out of choice though.
re: Hamilton: Finally, a plan to use Toronto’s biogas
Ummm .. combusting fuels STILL contributes to the problem. Why not pass biogas through a fuel cell to generate electricity directly. Isn’t this exactly what the ballard cell is all about? Releasing gases into the atmosphere is the problem.
So why not bike lanes on Richmond and Adelaide? It seems to be like that would be a good use for all the extra space that Vaughan says isn’t being used, and would provide a great continuous route through downtown that doesn’t involve navigating around parked cars and streetcars.
“Why not pass biogas through a fuel cell to generate electricity directly. Isn’t this exactly what the ballard cell is all about?”
Ballard Fuel cells generate electricity from hydrogen, not biogas. Biogas, like regular gas, is an organic compound that will always produce carbon dioxide when it broken down to release its energy.