An article from yesterday’s National Post has been cross-posted on Reading Toronto’s website. It focuses on how Toronto’s planning department is starting to see the light on the multiple problems caused by selling off street furniture in public realm. This is encouraging news. I have been part of two City-sanctioned committees that are dealing with beauty and design standards of our streetscapes, and I can confirm that city officials have become very wary of Megabin and Info Pillar -style intrusions. Our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee are not nearly as confident as I am, and rightly so. The streets speak for themselves: the overt commercialization of our sidewalks and visual landscape over the last decade is nothing short of an abomination. But through all of the conversations and presentations I’ve been a part of in the last year and a half, I’m sensing that there is a new, and suspicious, attitude towards ad creep from our planners and city officials, and not a minute too late.
