THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Who says the government needs to break the bank improving city infrastructure?
Making Toronto a better city need not cost billions; there are many small projects that offer huge potential to improve the city without bankrupting it. Here are five proposals:
The squares and playgrounds on the Esplanade: The St. Lawrence neighbourhood ranks among the great success stories of 1970s Toronto. The mixedincome enclave is organized along an east-west public space that extends from Jarvis St. to Parliament St. on the south side of The Esplanade. It is busy all the time and serves its purpose brilliantly.
This is Toronto at its most European, but decades later, the spaces have deteriorated badly. Now, they are starting to look shabby and rundown. The time has come to invest in a more attractive design and materials. This neighbourhood is a powerful reminder of what Toronto is capable of; but it sure doesn’t look it.
The corner of Bay and Front Sts.: Every morning and every evening this busy intersection is inundated by a torrent of commuters. The problem is that there’s no room for them; though pedestrians outnumber cars by a large margin, drivers get most of the roadway. There’s even a left-turn lane for northbound vehicles.
Meanwhile, commuters streaming out of and into Union Station (Canada’s busiest transportation hub), the GO bus terminal and the main subway line, are relegated to sidewalks that are dangerously narrow and exposed to traffic. It’s not unusual to see pedestrians spill out into road for the simple reason there’s nowhere else for them to go.
More scrambles: After a brief flurry of activity in 2007-08, Toronto has scaled back plans to make its streets more pedestrian friendly. Originally, there were three scrambles, but now we’re down to two — Yonge and Bloor Sts. and Yonge and Dundas Sts.
This is not just the height of hypocrisy for a city that talks endlessly about how much it loves pedestrians, but a step back into an imagined past where our leaders remain stuck, not just pathetic and cowardly but rather sad for a city that has faced the future and run from it screaming. We need scrambles at Dundas and Bay Sts., Bay and Front Sts. and at Yonge St. at Eglinton and St. Clair Aves.
The square in front of the Toronto-Dominion Centre: As much as one may admire the desire for architectural perfection exemplified by this now compromised complex, its public spaces are not so great. Indeed, the area between King St. and the actual buildings is windswept and inhospitable. It’s one of the main reasons the underground city below attracts so many visitors, especially in bad weather.
The time has come to consider some sort of use for this mostly empty precinct. Just a couple of blocks south at Union Station, the opening of an outdoor food court last year transformed another unused stretch of real estate, drawing thousands of people in the process.
The walls of the Leslie Barns: Though this TTC streetcar facility just opened last year and isn’t entirely complete, it looks like a prisoner-of-war camp. What it’s doing on the waterfront, where billions have been spent on bringing the area back to life, is one of the city’s big unanswered questions.
The TTC, a city-building institution, has difficulty grasping the notion that its purview goes beyond tracks and rolling stock. This grim structure reminds us of what happens when content and context are separated and treated as isolated elements.
Certainly landscaping will help, but it’s too late to rescue this dreary addition. The neighbours, of course, worried about noise, will be thrilled. By comparison, the TTC Wychwood Barns, built a century ago, have been transformed into a community hub. No such fate awaits this place. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca