Let freedom ring: A bold new vision for the city
Urban designers imagine a car-free road network in post-pandemic Toronto
Trains ruled the 19th century. The automobile cut across the 20th century fast and hard. But this century belongs to the open-air, healthy movement of people. COVID-19 is making sure of that.
What if Toronto could join the progressive ranks of Paris, Milan and Bogota and shift a century-old culture of cars? Do something bold, Toronto. Embrace your citizens and the way they need to move.
Traffic engineers should be replaced by designers for urban life. Honouring people first (cars and trucks after) should be the new prescription for city leaders and planners post-COVID.
This is not something to be achieved by half measures and baby steps. Toronto needs a big idea. Here’s one: a 28-kilometre car-free road that invites all people to walk, cycle, wheel and hop around the city. The Freedom Ring Road — that’s what my Citylab design team calls it — encircles a big swath of the metropolis to present a necklace of destinations for people on foot, in wheelchairs, pushing baby carriages and cycling. Right away, the Freedom Ring Road could be fully opened to people every Sunday, from 7 a.m to 3 p.m. After testing — the way King Street Pilot Project was tried on for size — the city could permanently create the network of car-free roads.
Citylab has imagined the Freedom Ring Road to run along Bayview Avenue in the east, along Queens Quay and Lake Shore to the south, on After cataclysm often comes change. The pandemic has overturned our lives and our assumptions. In this occasional series, the Star looks at what lessons we might take and what future we might build.
Parkside Drive on the west and along St. Clair for the northern frontier.
Ambitious cyclists and runners can complete the full 28 kilometres, or jump on to access their workplace or culture. Maybe it’s to visit the forests of the Don Valley and the Evergreen Brickworks or to try an open-air yoga class in the middle of Queen’s Quay. Perhaps it’s for grandparents to cycle with their grandchildren at a safe, gentle pace experiencing the glories of High Park, or, further up, the charming storefronts of the Junction. Those joining the Freedom Ring Road from the north will be able to ride, walk or wheel beside the St. Clair streetcar. All of this without fear of being hit by a car.
Bruce Springsteen has devoted many of his lyrics to the car, romanticizing the barefoot girl on the hood of a Dodge, or cruising in a pink Cadillac. But the car — and its many infrastructure appendages — its highways, its overpasses, its parking lots, its wide roadways bluntly traffic engineered to allow for speedy movement of single-occupancy vehicles — has wreaked havoc on our urban landscapes. We get into our cars, lock the doors, and seal ourselves away from the city and from each other.
And now we pause. Pausing has been called the silver lining of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
For those of us lucky enough to be working remotely and comfortably from home, there are advantages, we have discovered, to stepping away from the frantic pace of urban life. Pausing has meant leaving our cars at home. No longer having to commute to work.
Inspired by health officers who advise that the virus does not easily spread outdoors, and because we’re going stir crazy indoors, people in Toronto are taking to the streets as urban explorers, without cars. We’re tasting fresher air, amazed by brighter stars and delighted by birdsong no longer drowned out by overhead planes or by the deafening roar of traffic on our inner and outer city roads during rush hour.
The global pandemic has accelerated the need for a dramatic rethink of our city going forward. To do otherwise is to applaud old orthodoxies of the modern post-war city where the car was king, suburbs were revered and expressways like the Gardiner were celebrated monsters.
Roads have often been described as the arteries of a city. The roads in Toronto and New York City represent about 70 per cent of the city’s precious public space. For too long, cars have been allowed to throw their lethal weight around — injuring or killing six pedestrians every day in Toronto. Clogged with cars, bumper to bumper traffic: it’s a far cry from liberation on the wide, open roads imagined by Henry Ford more than a century ago.
Wanting to provide greater health for its citizens in a city once plagued by pollution preCOVID, Milan’s Mayor Giuseppe Sala recently launched an ambitious plan called Strade Aperte (Open Roads), pushing aside cars to widen sidewalks and privileging generous new space for pedestrians and cyclists. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced a city and regional plan for a 650-kilometre bike network so that Parisians can commute above ground along major metro routes in decent fresh air while also safely remaining two metres apart. “It is out of the question that we allow ourselves to be invaded by cars and by pollution,” Hidalgo has said, warning, “It will make the health crisis worse.”
Bogota leaders are encouraging people to cycle rather than using cars or public transport; over 300 kilometres of temporary cycle lanes for front-line workers have been created to facilitate those needing to commute to work.
London’s public transport system is projecting drastic cuts post-COVID. New temporary cycling lanes are being planned along major routes in and around the city to encourage people to bicycle rather than take public transport post-coronavirus. Toronto Mayor John Tory has announced some road closures and expansion of bicycle lanes but, so far, details are sketchy.
Combined with the Freedom Ring Road, we should be reducing or eliminating cars and car parking on our main boulevards, as is the case throughout Europe, converting parking lots into public parks and democratizing movement for all.
Once the car meant a ticket for individual freedom. But now the romance has faded away. Because of COVID-19, urbanites have experienced what it is to slow down and take in the textures of the city. Turns out, below the open sky, the roads are public space waiting to be unfurled.