Author Archives: acaphlegmic

The Politics Of Parking

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So I ducked out from my studies for a late lunch last week, squeezing the last hint of surprising warmth from the day’s winter sunshine on a downtown restaurant patio. With me is a scholarly friend of mine, employed at a much more august institution of higher learning than I am presently but I don’t hold it against him. We talked city politics over pitchers of beer and stodgy Italian food.

Covering a wide range of topics, we eventually arrived at the inevitable subject of cars and traffic, situated as we were at a busy-ish corner, chock full of private vehicles, streetcars, bikes and pedestrians. While both occasional drivers, we share a preference for other modes of transport to get around the city. “An evil necessity,” I said in terms of our car usage. “How about a largely unnecessary indulgence?” my drinking-and-dining companion countered.

A few days later, he sent me this from the Toronto Star. It’s worth taking a moment to read through it but for our purposes here, it introduced me to one Dr. Donald Shoup, “America’s parking guru”. A professor at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning, Prof. Shoup is also a bestselling author of the 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking. In a nutshell, he believes cities set aside too much land use for parking and that the price to park a car does not accurately reflect fair market value. This simply causes unnecessary congestion as cars that do find spots, tend to stay for long periods because it is cheap to do so. Other prospective parkers are then forced to spend inordinate amounts of time, circling, looking for an open spot or they throw out the anchors and illegally double park, adding further to life draining congestion.

Hear it directly (and much more thoroughly) from the horse’s mouth here.  While at the Streetfilms.org site, take some time to browse and check out their other films especially Fixing the Great Mistake: Autocentric Development. There are viable solutions being discussed to combat urban gridlock and our unhealthy car dependency. Unfortunately, not here in Toronto. Certainly not during this election campaign.

In fact, what’s being spewed forth from our major (and some minor) mayoral candidates is little more than knuckle-dragging, backward looking, boned tired rhetoric. Despite articles like this in seemingly car friendly sites like Parking Today (who knew?), all we hear about is some alleged War on Cars. But if we’re truly want to usher Toronto into a prosperous, life affirming 21st-century, the debate really needs to be reframed as The Car’s War on Livability.

— pastaly submitted by Acaphelgmic

Germanically Speaking

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Zwischenstadt. One of those malleable German word/phrases that can be both laser-like in its specificity and so hopelessly ambiguous as to be utterly meaningless when translated into English. Like gestalt. Or fahrvergnügen.

Coined by German architect and urban planner Thomas Sieverts, zwischenstadt originally referred to the newer outlying sections of European cities that were built around the old historic centres, largely after the Second World War. The places where urban and rural meet; the ‘sprawl’ on the margins of a city. Adopted and then adapted for a wider non-European meaning, zwischenstadt came to mean the Edge City to Joel Garreau and a Technoburb for Robert Fishman. Ed Soja’s zwischenstadt was Exopolis.

For our purposes here, let us think of zwischenstadt as what is called an ‘in-between city’. These are the largely residential post-war suburbs that sprung up around the inner downtown core of Toronto and once were on the edges where urban met rural but are now sandwiched between the downtown core and the newer, more prosperous suburbs that make up the 905 region. Places like Scarborough and North York that, to borrow a phrase from Julie-Anne Boudreau, Roger Keil and Douglas Young in their book Changing Toronto, operate “in the shadows of Toronto’s glamour zones…”

What’s that? Markham, Pickering and Vaughan? Glamourous?! Yes 416ers, for a good many people, you are not the only game in town as much as that may bruise your collective egos. The in-between city possesses neither the allure of downtown gentrification nor the shiny newness of big houses on big lots in the exurbs.

While both the outer ring and inner core of what is now termed the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have generally flourished overall during the era of globalization and neoliberal economic policy rule, large sections of the in-between city have fared less well. We now talk of the frayed suburbs and their high priority neighbourhoods that are underprovided with both resources and organization. These are the parts of the city hit hardest when the economy nosedives and the last to reap any benefits that trickle down when times are good. When talk turns to the in-between city, it usually involves crime (Summer of the Gun) or economic insecurity.

A school of urban thought believes that the in-between city suffers from the consequences of our adherence to “… the myth of the ideal compact city…” as Boudreau, Keil and Young refer to it in their book. The suburbs seen as mere satellites of the central core, providing space and more affordable living to those who serviced the needs of downtown. Now with the phenomenal growth of the regions even further on the periphery, the in-between city is neither here nor there. It just is. Its needs and issues, as usual, subservient to those of the core or lost in the tug of war between powerful 416 interests and those in the 905.

Certainly the inner-ring suburbs are receiving little attention so far in the municipal election campaign. The battle lines have been drawn between the wealthier enclaves of midtown Toronto, Etobicoke and North York versus those living between St. Clair and the lake. In the increasingly vigorous move to the right by the leading candidates for mayor and their calls for cuts and freezes at City Hall, the needs of the in-between city like public transit and affordable housing are, in fact, coming under threat.

Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi has touted his City Builders Fund where he would direct 50% of additional fees that the city receives whenever a development goes beyond existing zoning laws into community projects in high priority neighbourhoods through the Toronto Community Foundation. This is fine as far as it goes but it is simply more of the same approach; public financing dependant on private money and will. It’s highly discretionary and often times a one shot deal that undercuts the notion of an overall plan. There’s no vision.

Without vision, Toronto will continue to stumble along with the increasingly familiar widening gap between the haves and have-nots. There will be those living in the city and those who live in the in-between city. Such an imbalance can only adversely affect our ability to contribute to the region’s growth as a vital economic and social centre. Moreover, by giving into the fiscal pressures of naked self-interest, we are undermining the system as a whole and threaten the very, as I think the Germans might say, gestalt of our city.

— Teutonically submitted by Acaphlegmic

Scenes From An All Fired Up In The Big Smoke’s Oscar Evening

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The doorbell rings, interrupting our weekly All Fired Up in the Big Smoke’s Sunday story meeting over roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. (The meat, it’s slightly overdone. The Yorkipud? Perfection.)

At the door stands an all decked out and bee-jouxed Nancy, ready for Oscar Party 2K10©®™. Our surprise at it being Oscar night is matched by her surprise at our surprise. “How could all 3 of you not remember?” Nancy asked. “What the hell have you been doing?” Cityslikr remains unconvinced, absolutely positive that the Oscars happen in April and on Monday nights. “Yeah well, it ain’t the 20th-century anymore, grandpa,” Nancy points out. “Johnny Carson and Bob Hope are dead. Time’s have changed.”

A flurry of activity gets us in front of the TV, ballots filled out with time to spare to even catch the last of the red carpet ceremonies. There is much talk of dresses and hairdos. Cityslikr is already livid at the sheer vapidity on parade. This happens every year but it seems much earlier than usual.

Before the actual show starts, Nancy explains to us that the Oscars are looking to draw in a younger viewing crowd who have long since tuned out, not really seeing it as a Must See event. So it’s all going to be very fast paced and hip with no big dud musical numbers and briefcase toting accountants from Price Waterhouse. “It’s all about the zazz factor tonight, boys!” Nancy promises. We have no idea what that means but don’t really care enough to ask for clarification.

For most of us in the room, the only movie we’ve seen all year is Avatar. Some of us have seen it many, many times. “How many times is too many?” I ask Nancy who seems almost antagonistic to my devotion to the film. She provides no satisfactory answer.

Urban Sophisticat claims to have also taken in many foreign language films including 4 or the 5 Oscar nominated films. “It’s a travesty Broken Embraces was overlooked,” he opines but his authority is seriously undermined after a lengthy explanation about why the Israeli film, Ajami, will win the foreign language category only to see El Secreto de Sus Ojos from Argentina scoop up the award. Apparently it’s the one foreign language film he didn’t see. I guessed it correctly with a simple eenie-meenie-minie-moe choice.

While we find the opening of the show fairly amusing, Cityslikr wonders how co-host Steve Martin brings in the youngsters. Martin seems to concur, joking how the young presenters don’t even know who he is. “Not only is he old,” Cityslikr figures, “but the guy hasn’t made a decent movie since…” No one can figure out the last Steve Martin film they saw which seems to prove Cityslikr’s point.

“They want the young kids, Dane Cook should be hosting this crap.” After explaining to everyone who Dane Cook was (“A hugely unfunny standup comic who mystifyingly fills up Madison Square Gardens for HBO specials.”), Cityslikr thinks that it would be a train wreck he would gleefully sit through.

Urban Sophisticat notices that the shaded Jack Nicholson is not in his usual place front row centre. “Maybe they gave his seat to Robert Pattinson.” Nancy suggests. She then has to explain to everyone present who Robert Pattinson is and all about the Twilight phenomenon.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Half of the room is now asleep. Nancy is desperately texting to find out if there’s another Oscar party in the vicinity. I am sensing an Avatar backlash amidst a groundswell for The Hurt Locker. This is why everyone hates the Academy Awards. They punish success.

Eyes are opened and interest rises when Jeff Bridges wins for Best Actor. It’s pointed out that while he acts like his character in the Big Lebowski, he is looking more and more like Sam Elliott’s The Stranger in the movie. There’s a letdown in the room when he doesn’t end his acceptance speech with “The Dude abides.” Everyone in the room except Cityslikr agrees that the Coen Brothers haven’t made another truly great film since The Big Lebowski. He loves No Country For Old Men. I don’t see it, frankly.

Urban Sophisticat goes on a long, Courvoisier fueled rant about the problems with the Oscars these days. “We already know too much about the movie stars. They’re ubiquitous with all the infotainment shows and channels on TV, supermarket check out aisle magazines. Back in the day,” he (actually) says, “the Oscars were one of the few times we got to see these legends of the silver screen with the guards down, out of their roles. There’s no magic or mystery in the pictures anymore. It all started to go down hill when People magazine came into existence.” No one’s really listening at this point.

Sandra Bullock’s acceptance speech for Best Actress elicits much chatter about plastic surgery and growing old in Hollywood. “She’s 45!” screams Cityslikr. “When did that become old?” Nancy shakes her head, amazed at his ignorance about the real world.

Show concludes. The Hurt Locker is the big winner. I guess I’ll have to see it when it comes out on DVD. “It’s already out on DVD,” Nancy informs me as I walk her to the door. Cityslikr and Urban Sophisticat are curled up together on the couch. We pause for a moment, enjoying the silence. Sensing her general disappointment in the evening, I suggest that Nancy find some other, more movie friendly types to watch the show with next year. She shrugs. “There’s no surprises anymore,” she tells me. “Everybody won who was predicted to win. That’s just the way it goes these days. It’s stage managed to death.”

With that, Nancy wanders off into the night. Once more Hollywood has disappointed her. But how couldn’t it? She didn’t even like Avatar. In this reporter’s humble opinion, if you didn’t like Avatar, you don’t like movies. The childlike magic has gone inside you. As Ally Sheedy’s Allison Reynolds said in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club: When you grow up, your heart dies.

— wistfully submitted by Acaphlegmic