{"id":20113,"date":"2011-05-24T09:09:45","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T13:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=20113"},"modified":"2011-05-24T12:50:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T16:50:55","slug":"on-the-waterfront-and-what-we-can-learn-from-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/05\/24\/on-the-waterfront-and-what-we-can-learn-from-philadelphia\/","title":{"rendered":"On the waterfront, and what we can learn from Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

It’s been a bad month for those of us who care about urban design, or the big picture about city-builidng, in Toronto. Forget New York run by the Swiss. This month, it seems like we’re Philadelphia run by the Republicans.<\/p>\n

Which is to say, a small, industrial-age city – but unlike the actual Philly, we are now a city that’s thinking small, too.<\/p>\n

The news of the past weeks has been disheartening. First, cavalier musings<\/a> by Toronto’s quasi-mayor about disrupting waterfront redevelopment plans, and then the likely death of the Fort York Bridge<\/a>. Apparently our civic leadership wants to be remembered as the guys who shut stuff down and sold off historic city lands in fast-developing areas.<\/p>\n

\"\"As for the bridge, I think Shawn Micallef really nailed the issue<\/a> at Spacing. Building well-designed infrastructure is what cities do. In some cities, such things even get to look good. This costs money. Building parks, likewise, is not free. But it pays economic benefits, and anyone who’s been to Liberty Village ought to agree: that area desperately needs more green space and more pedestrian connections.\u00a0 City staff sure think so.<\/a> What it does not need is more isolated, quasi-suburban highrises.<\/a> Likewise, Fort York’s excellent renewal plans <\/a>make it a good candidate for a lift.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I worry more about the future of Waterfront Toronto. Its work is long-term, and so far it’s a bit hard to see what the agency is up to – though it helps (!) to go and look, as I did many times last year, enjoying the Sugar Beach park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Great stuff. But it’s the complex work of environmental remediation and large-scale park-building that will be most important in the long term. The planned Lake Ontario Park<\/a>, for instance, is the sort of broad and subtle intervention that will really make the lakefront a pleasant place to walk. It will be unimpressive until it is complete, and then it will be essential.<\/p>\n

And who is designing it? James Corner Field Operations<\/a>, the pioneering landscape designers who are now among the world’s best.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Corner’s firm helped conceive The High Line in New York, which is now one of that city’s landmarks and about to expand. It’s incredible<\/a>. Its second phase, opening this week, looks something like that, above.<\/p>\n

And they just finished a small, ambitious new waterfront park <\/a>in… Philadelphia. Race Street Pier, just one acre, is being warmly received by the public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Race<\/p>\n

It’s a sign that this city, small, handsome and often very poorly governed, is managing to make a turn for the better with its waterfront planning.<\/p>\n

How? Through common sense.<\/p>\n

Local architecture critic Inga Saffron writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“In a sense, the pier owes its existence to the failure of the large-scale development model used at Penn’s Landing since its creation in 1968. When the developer of a proposed entertainment mall pulled out in 2002 – the sixth subsidized project to fizzle there – it set off a public conversation about the future of the Delaware waterfront.<\/p>\n

A new set of values emerged and were articulated in a report by Penn Praxis, a nonprofit consultant. Rather than throw more money at developers, infrastructure improvements, like parks or transit, are the true building blocks of cities, not mega-developments, the group argued.”<\/p>\n

I hope these arguments can win here. They should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a bad month for those of us who care about urban design, or the big picture about city-builidng, in Toronto. Forget New York run by the Swiss. This month, it seems like we’re Philadelphia run by the Republicans. Which is to say, a small, industrial-age city – but unlike the actual Philly, weContinue reading “On the waterfront, and what we can learn from Philadelphia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4088,"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":[5],"tags":[401,17498,17608,17605,17604,469,17607,21,17609,2941,17606,17610,310,8088,19,496],"class_list":["post-20113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-waterfront","tag-delaware","tag-fort-york-bridge","tag-inga-saffron","tag-large-scale-development-model","tag-local-architecture-critic","tag-new-york","tag-nonprofit-consultant","tag-other-cities","tag-penn-praxis","tag-philadelphia","tag-quasi-mayor","tag-race-street-pier","tag-shawn-micallef","tag-sugar-beach","tag-toronto","tag-york"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the waterfront, and what we can learn from Philadelphia - 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\/2011\/05\/24\/on-the-waterfront-and-what-we-can-learn-from-philadelphia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the waterfront, and what we can learn from Philadelphia - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It’s been a bad month for those of us who care about urban design, or the big picture about city-builidng, in Toronto. 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