{"id":30276,"date":"2012-05-24T15:12:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T19:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=30276"},"modified":"2012-05-24T15:12:30","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T19:12:30","slug":"remove-the-bubble-wrap-from-our-public-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/05\/24\/remove-the-bubble-wrap-from-our-public-spaces\/","title":{"rendered":"Remove the bubble wrap from our public spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been said to me that City Hall is run by engineers and lawyers. The engineers determine whether a given idea is technically feasible. The lawyers, on the other hand, dictate whether the City has legal authority to take a decision and assess whether the liability of a particular decision is manageable or not.<\/p>\n

This last piece \u2014 the determination of how to manage liability \u2014 is what can often make our public spaces and interactions feel like they\u2019ve been suffocated.<\/p>\n

Take street hockey.\u00a0 As someone who grew up playing one of the best manifestations of Canada\u2019s national pastime, it didn\u2019t strike me for a moment that I was breaking a by-law. Yet, according to the rules, I was a scofflaw by the age of eight.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Criminalizing street hockey is an absurd idea to most of us but as Councillor Josh Matlow recently found out, to legalize the game means getting through the City of Toronto\u2019s lawyers. As his recent comments suggest, Matlow\u2019s reasonable proposal to legalize a favourite sport of kids across Toronto turned into a bureaucratic nightmare once the lawyers sunk their teeth into Matlow\u2019s ideas. The lawyer-approved process for legalizing street hockey on your block includes petitions, traffic studies and community council approval, a process that is more imposing than the presently unenforced ban.<\/p>\n

Though council is not obligated to listen to its lawyers, for fear of exposing the City to liability, council often sides with its legal staff\u2019s recommendations. \u00a0But the question that continually goes unanswered is whether city council is getting reasonable advice from its lawyers. Is the risk of the City being sued in the event of an accident involving street hockey really so great that it\u2019s worth making the game illegal? As a lay person, I have a hard time believing that the answer to that question could possibly be \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not allergic to government regulation but whether it\u2019s street hockey, street food, reasonable cycling laws, or any number of other things, the City of Toronto\u2019s lawyers appear ready to throw a wet blanket on Torontonians at every turn under the guise that even common uses of public space expose the City of Toronto to legal liability. So I think it\u2019s time that, instead of continuing to spend millions on consultants to conduct fruitless \u201ccore service reviews,\u201d City Hall hire a team of outside lawyers to comb over the by-laws that govern Toronto\u2019s public spaces to find out which of these bubble wrapped regulations are truly necessary, and which ones keep us from the reasonable enjoyment of our city.<\/p>\n

photo by Doug Caribb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been said to me that City Hall is run by engineers and lawyers. The engineers determine whether a given idea is technically feasible. The lawyers, on the other hand, dictate whether the City has legal authority to take a decision and assess whether the liability of a particular decision is manageable or not. ThisContinue reading “Remove the bubble wrap from our public spaces”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4037,"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":[2],"tags":[457,408,20127,14860,22085,659,19],"class_list":["post-30276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-canada","tag-councillor","tag-doug-caribb","tag-josh-matlow","tag-politics","tag-street-food","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRemove the bubble wrap from our public spaces - 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\/2012\/05\/24\/remove-the-bubble-wrap-from-our-public-spaces\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remove the bubble wrap from our public spaces - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s been said to me that City Hall is run by engineers and lawyers. 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