The Places Between (Toronto)
In every art there must be a whole made up of connected parts modified by the artist so as to manifest some character; but it is not necessary in every act that this whole correspond to real objects; it is enough for it to exist.
-Denis Hollier, “Against Architecture”
I recently came upon an article on the Globe & Mail website (a national Canadian newspaper), discussing the positive aspects of the walkability of Toronto (link). I absolutely loved the description of Toronto by an individual who has taken it upon himself to organize walking tours which illustrate Toronto’s areas of beauty:
Toronto, he concedes, may not be the world's most beautiful city. It may not have the skyscraper canyons of New York or the charming quartiers of Paris, but it has an urban style of its own: "A messy kind of urbanism, a jumble of styles, old and new, slammed up against each other."
I lived in Toronto for seven years, the first professional years of my career as an architect. Before this, I had spent very little time in the city. I never found it to be very walkable (on the same level as London, perhaps, like it asserts in the article, but not like Paris, or New York). I should qualify why I think it is on the same level as London, first. Both are cities that are very expansive. Everything feels far away. I have been to London three times, and each time stayed in a different area. I could formulate no concept of the relationship they have to each other (morphologically, not geographically). While I admire London, for me it is like a big Toronto: a bit of everything, but missing a certain consistency. This is not a negative quality, of course. “A bit of everything” was the greatest thing about Toronto.
For walkability, and wanderability, I have often said that a city must have two main things: somewhere to go, and something to see along the way. Toronto offers an almost unending list of places to go, and places to be. What it lacks, for me, however, is the consistent interest between those places. For example, the train yard developments between the financial district, and the waterfront, were developed more like tall suburbs than urban centres. They come across often as unfriendly to both pedestrians and vehicles, with non-continuous streets, cold streetscapes and a non-human scale. However, within what I think of as an experiential separation between the city and its waterfront, is the entrance to the Air Canada Centre arena. This cul-de-sac, with sports bars, people showing off their sports cars, and the sports arena itself with the masses of sports fans, is such a spectacular place to be, on game night, that I have rarely had a greater feeling at any sports venue, in the world. It’s not a stadium surrounded by nothing or parking lots. It’s an urban collective of excitement and city pride. N.b. I have almost zero interest in professional sports, but I love the feeling of being surrounded by the excitement that groups of people exert at events.
Other places, like the Distillery District, Yorkville, High Park area, Kensington Market, and Trinity Bellwoods (to offer a list much too short) are wonderful, world class places to be. These do not have the linear feeling of some of the most social parts of Ottawa as mentioned in the last post. Whole areas are wonderful places to be, and wander. And the diversity of social classes, cultures and ideologies that intertwine effortlessly in the best parts of central Toronto, I would suggest may be unmatched in the world. Toronto is definitely a place of all places. Through this, it has never needed its own identity or urban language, in the way that Paris, Venice, Barcelona or Vienna have distinct characters. Toronto is the world’s languages, and it works because all languages speak equally loud.
However, despite the interest that certain areas provide, for me Toronto was always an urban form with so much lacking of the “something to see along the way.” This is why, as described in the article mentioned at the beginning of this entry, along with other great admirers of parts of the city (example, Jane Jacobs’ love of the Annex area), Toronto is a more appropriate city for defined or guided tours, than for personal wandering. I’ve walked large distances in the city, but always with a destination in mind. Any free wandering, and I would quickly fall out of the area of interest. Without knowing where the next area is, the feeling can be disorienting. The places between places in Toronto, for me, never maintained the level of engagement as those in other cities. The beautiful waterfront is almost cut off from the city by the elevated highway (Gardiner Expressway) and the sea of suburban-style condominium development and planning just north of it. Toronto is a place like a series of puddles, shining and full of life. But like puddles, the road between them is not so vibrant, not so exciting to jump in. If a city to walk in requires both somewhere to go and something to see along the way, Toronto easily has an abundance of the former. As for the latter, maybe this is where a distinct urban language for the city would come in handy. Yes, the city is a “jumble of styles, old and new, slammed up against each other”, but when they don’t quite meet, what happens in the space between should be equally interesting, equally of quality and equally for the people who live there and those who wander through.
