How to be a great city; pedestrianizing Toronto; homeless survey

The Star on Sunday has some more good articles on city building.

1. From “How to be a great city”: What are the forces that shape the urban landscape and culture into something recognizably wonderful and inspiring? And what can we learn as Toronto, the most culturally diverse city on the planet, at last begins to accept and maybe embrace its own potential greatness? We don’t lack for ideas about transforming Toronto, taking it to the next level. Magazines like Spacing and the book uTOpia: Towards a new Toronto attest to that, as does the outpouring of response to the “What If?” package in last Sunday’s Star. But other cities, from Detroit to St. Louis, have similarly had dreamy ideas about achieving or regaining greatness, with mostly disheartening results.So what does it take and where is the spark?

2. Christopher Hume ruminates on how to pedestrianize Toronto. A link does not seem to exist for it on the Star’s website, so you’ll have to find the actual paper to read it (please forward us a link if you find one). But here’s an excerpt: “For the past half-century, civic politicians and their bureaucratic enablers have done enormous damage to Toronto in their efforts to hand it over to the automobile. Streets have been widened, pavements narrowed, traffic lights installed on sidewalks…The list of injuries and indignities goes on and on.”

3. Homeless survey. In the Globe yesterday, two writers took part in the homeless survey and profiled some of the struggles of the city’s homeless (Again, there is no web component to this article, so you’ll have to check out the paper). The Star has this opinion piece by city councillor and mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield saying, “On a recent visit to New York, I was impressed by the fact that there was nobody living on the street or panhandling. In 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg devised a plan to reduce chronic street homelessness by two-thirds within five years. They are ahead of schedule.” I think Pitfield may have overlooked that NYC recently bought one-way tickets for the homeless to take to other cities and states. And the CBC reports that many of the homeless did not want to participate, while the Star reports others had a positive experience.