{"id":1832,"date":"2007-04-30T21:34:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1832"},"modified":"2007-05-01T09:40:17","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T13:40:17","slug":"a-couple-of-pedestrian-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/30\/a-couple-of-pedestrian-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"A couple of pedestrian ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/31\/58436432_57118a0039.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There were a lot of good ideas floating around at the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=1784\">Visions for a Walkable Toronto<\/a>&#8221; workshop hosted by the City of Toronto and <em>Spacing<\/em> magazine last Wednesday. I wrote down two that I found particularly intriguing.<\/p>\n<p>The first came from the speakers, Jim Walker, Chair of the <a href=\"http:\/\/walk21.com\/\">Walk21 International Conference Series<\/a>,  and Gil Penalosa of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.walkandbikeforlife.com\/\">Walk &#038; Bike for Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, when Copenhagen embarked on a strategy to increase walking, one of the things they measured at the outset was the number of sidewalk cafe seats in the city. They considered it a key measure of success when the number of people sitting outside was increased by 60% as the strategy was implemented over the years. It&#8217;s an interesting idea, because counting people sitting in public measures being on the street as it becomes a way of life, in addition to being a practical way of getting around. So one of the ideas put forward for a walking strategy in Toronto is to do the same &#8212; measure the number of sidewalk cafe seats in the city, and set a goal of increasing this number by 50%, or even doubling it. It&#8217;s worth noting that when Copenhagen started its strategy, people said it would never develop a street culture because it&#8217;s a cold city and people were reserved, unlike somewhere like Italy that had good weather and an existing street culture. But as spaces were opened to pedestrians in Copenhagen, people occupied them.<\/p>\n<p>The second idea was inspired by the work Gil Penalosa did in Bogota, Colombia, where as the commissioner of parks and recreation he opened 91 km of roads every Sunday from 9 am to 2 pm to pedestrians, cyclists and rollerbladers, closing them off to cars. Well over a million people came out every week (in a city of about 7 million). So the participants in the workshop proposed something similar for Toronto. Why not dedicate the downtown subway loop &#8212; Yonge to Front then up University and across Bloor &#8212; every Sunday morning during the summer to pedestrians, bladers and cyclists, closing them off to cars? We could also stretch the Yonge closure down to Queen&#8217;s Quay, which would also be closed, so that people can get to the waterfront easily and the east and west sections of the waterfront Martin Goodman trail become truly connected. Many of these roads are closed in part regularly anyway for various weekend events during the summer, and traffic isn&#8217;t that heavy on Sunday mornings. I remember, when I was a kid growing up in Ottawa, that  the road alongside the Rideau Canal was closed this way during summer Sunday mornings, and our family would go cycling there every week, along with what seemed like half of the city.<\/p>\n<p><em>photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/solsken\/\">Solsken<\/a> on Flickr <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There were a lot of good ideas floating around at the &#8220;Visions for a Walkable Toronto&#8221; workshop hosted by the City of Toronto and Spacing magazine last Wednesday. I wrote down two that I found particularly intriguing. The first came from the speakers, Jim Walker, Chair of the Walk21 International Conference Series, and Gil Penalosa<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/30\/a-couple-of-pedestrian-ideas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;A couple of pedestrian ideas&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3701,976,3807,888,522,5572,4018,764,5402,1813,21,346,316,5571,22092,19,5407],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-walking","tag-bogota","tag-chair","tag-colombia","tag-commissioner","tag-copenhagen","tag-forward-for-a-walking-strategy","tag-gil-penalosa","tag-italy","tag-jim-walker","tag-martin-goodman-trail","tag-other-cities","tag-ottawa","tag-queen","tag-rideau-canal","tag-spacing","tag-toronto","tag-walk21-international"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A couple of pedestrian ideas - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/30\/a-couple-of-pedestrian-ideas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A couple of pedestrian ideas - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There were a lot of good ideas floating around at the &#8220;Visions for a Walkable Toronto&#8221; workshop hosted by the City of Toronto and Spacing magazine last Wednesday. 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He has also written articles for NOW magazine and the uTOpia books. He was co-chair of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee 2007-2010, was one of the founders of the Toronto Coalition (now Centre) for Active Transportation, and is a co-founder of Walk Toronto. 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