Waiting for the Mayor to unveil FILMPORT

Dateline 3:29 PM Wednesday afternoon, August 8. I went to the FILMPORT site to watch Mayor David Miller announce the next phase of development there. The usual crush of media types came to cover the much publicized announcement (or they were looking for something to do to get them out of the newsroom for an hour or two). I signed in, got handed the media package, took some photos, looked at the media package, and left before Mayor Miller could tell the assembled throngs how great this new building is. Maybe he would have hedged his bets and just said that FILMPORT is an essential part of the city's planned economy. Whatever his take, I did not want to be there to suffer through it.

The reason for my early departure? The proposed Alsop & Quadrangle Architects "iconic landmark" is perhaps one of the most poorly considered designs I've seen since leaving the first year architecture studio at university. Don't believe me? Take a look...





The extruded section design punched with either horizontal slots or wormy windows is reminiscent of a bad piece of "plop" sculpture - a phase many Torontonians once had to live through when art first became a required component of any development budget. Back then you could hear the collective sound of head scratching as local developers tried to figure out what public art was anyway. The plops of vaguely formed metal we still occasionally run into on major downtown streets provides a history of those awkward times. Fortunately, everyone involved got the hang of it and soon a lot of good work became part of the public realm.

In this case - FILMPORT that is - we are seeing Toronto's early struggles with architecture as art, or at least architecture as something more than utilitarian box. Certainly the bureaucrats can't be expected to know what's good and what's bad. They are too worried about the economic disaster this development looks like it will be because of the increasingly strong Canadian dollar. Does anyone else remember the financial bath Ataratiri turned out to be for the city? The timing was not right for that much hyped development just as the timing appears bad for FILMPORT. Will film production companies flock to Toronto when the Canadian dollar is on par with the U.S. dollar? One wonders. $0.65, definitely, $0.75 all right, $0.85 Saskatchewan is looking good, $0.95?

This is not a general condemnation of all Alsop's work. Far from it. But my guess is that he had something else entirely in mind until the budget was slashed.

In any case, who decided this was the building needed to showcase Toronto's film district? I predict there will be a lot of denials heard from City Hall and the Waterfront in the coming months and years. "But look at OCAD" they'll say, "how were we to know?" The good news is that we'll probably get better at using architecture to promote the city. (...read more...)

An image of Bogota's protected bicycle lanes.

The former mayor of Bogota, Colombia explains how the once crime-ridden city is now a model for effective transit and urban design. How'd they do it? City planners recognized that the great battle over public space in cities is between two main forces: the needs of people and the needs of cars. In Bogota people are winning that fight. In our so-called world class city, our car-centric city administration is unable to make the hard choices required to elevate the majority's needs over the needs of the minority of car users. Adding one kilometer of bike lanes when hundreds are required is such an affront that in a civilized city the politicians behind such a policy would soon be without jobs.

My recent trip to Sweden, Denmark, France, and England revealed how much European cities are doing to promote efficient transit policies. In Gothenberg and in Copenhagen, for example, road designers seem to pay as much attention to building cycle roadways as they do building roads for cars. They are integrated and to some degree symbiotic. These are northern cities remember, they get snow just like Toronto does, yet people there cycle all year round. Still, we expect first-world, high-tech countries to embrace urban design best practices. However, when a problem plagued city like Bogota - I visited and worked there in the mid-eighties - can reinvent itself in less than fifteen years we have to ask why Toronto continues to lag so far behind.

My favourite quote from the former mayor?

"A protected bicycle path is a symbol that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as one in a $30,000 car."

That is the philosophical difference between the two cities. In Toronto we acknowledge that cars and their drivers remain the focus of our policies.

Take a few minutes to listen to Mr. Peñalosa. It is worth your time. I can't guarantee, however, that you won't dash off a scathing letter to city hall when you are finished watching.

Are cities the answer to the world's population crisis? I hope so given that now more than 50% of the earth's population is living in them.

While in London last week, I visited the Tate Modern Museum to see the "Global Cities" show. Curated by Ricky Burdett and Sheena Wagstaff, the exhibit explores what happens when rapidly expanding cities, the need for social justice, and our increasingly fragile environment intersect.

The theme is powerful and the show does well at illustrating the opportunities and threats created by massive cities. The curators were able to stitch together an array of notable contributors including Zaha Hadid, Nigel Coates, and Rem Koolhaas. Their work here is strong - we expect that from these practitioners - but it is the geographer's statictics that are the conceptual centre of the show.

Did you know that there are now 20 mega-city regions with more than 10 million people each? How about that there are 450 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants? Tokyo is the world's largest city with more than 34 million citizens but is also the best-practices model for how massive cities can remain livable. How about this stat: Six million cars operate on Sao Paulo Brazil's streets and a thousand new cars are registered there every day.

Toronto's problems seem insignificant by comparison.

Yet, the city is suffering through yet another funding crisis. The latest subway extension scheme is threatened with cancellation as a result. We don't know how to build bike lanes as one way to reduce the need for cars (this is an embarrassment given the strides European cities have made to promote cycling that on this point alone we don't deserve the title of world-class city).

For all its promise, Toronto is losing its place as a best-practices model for the contemporary city. We still, however, can claim to offer a degree of social justice and civility that is enviable. How long wil that last without investment in our overall infrastructure?

Modern cities will either liberate us or enslave us, save the environment or help destroy it. Toronto still has the potential to show the world how a city can be a positive force but we have to invest in that positive future or risk being swept aside by the forces of rapid urban change.

Matt Blackett may have taken a little flack recently for a map he created for the TTC (needlessly, in my opinion. Print maps and print collateral in general cannot be held to the same visibility guidelines as signage). Yet, at least he could say his design didn't cause public harm. Unlike the new and quickly hated logo unveiled for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which apparently, when animated triggers epileptic seizures. Wow. I mean really. A design so ugly, it becomes a health concern.

The logo in question, is obviously part of a larger brand, and typically I would defend a design knowing full well the kinds of pressures designs for public use are under (political, bureaucratic, and so on), yet, this particular logo is pretty poor (the colour choices alone won't stand up for another year never mind until 2012). It's obvious the organizers thought there would be some resistance to the look of this tangram -paper cutout-figure-date thing given their efforts to explain it.

I suppose, my real point in discussing this is simply schadenfreude...creating a brand for a public event can be very difficult. Some have done it really well (games in Lillehammer, Barcelona and Calgary all come to mind) and some have done it very poorly (ohhh Atlanta, who can wipe your mascot from their mind's eye?) And so, as the ROM Crystal opens to a cooler than expected reaction, I think it's not so bad, if Toronto still has its share of growing pains. If a design capital like London can't get a logo right, then maybe we're expecting too much of Toronto to suddenly expect several gem-like buildings to help us shed our gray reputation. With Luminato upon us, the last of Toronto's architecture glories in construction (the AGO, the Royal Conservatory of Music) what will we be left with when the dust settles? A logo that causes epileptic seizures? Thankfully, no. A quick ride downtown on Sunday brought me past some recent highlights, the OCAD Sharp Centre, the ROM, the AGO, the Four Seasons Centre - all loved and criticized in equal measure, but all worth doing. It's at least worth trying. Still, I can't help but think we should keep reaching for the stars - that's right, couldn't Toronto use a new Planetarium? OKay, I know this isn't like shoe shopping, but I missed the original Planetarium (shut down by Conservative budget cuts) and there's probably no hope of it ever re-opening (or maybe we do need another new condo tower more than a planetarium anyway). Here's my hope. A new planetarium, in the downtown, designed by a local, hardly-heard-of firm. Perhaps it's asking for too much, but now that Torontonians are getting a taste of "big name" architecture, maybe they'll want a bite of something a little more home grown.