Tag Archives: Roger Keil

Sometimes We All Need To Be A Little Aspirational

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rodneydangerfield

(There’s an old Rodney Dangerfield joke that goes something like this:

Rodney’s talking to his agent who’s suggesting the comic change his name, to be a little more acceptable to the mainstream. “What’s in a name?” Dangerfield counters. “William Shakespeare.” His agent, looking puzzled, replies: “Who are you gonna listen to? Me or your friend?”

Who are we going to listen to when it comes to deciding on a major piece of infrastructure like the eastern 1.7 kilometre portion of the Gardiner expressway? A mayor who is, for reasons still obscure, determined to maintain (with only slight but highly damaging modifications) the status quo by ignoring an… a-hem, a-hem… elevated mountain of expert evidence or those very expert voices that are trained to make planning and design decisions that best adapt to the city’s future needs?

Here is one of those voices, Roger Keil, Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies at York University. He’s kindly given us permission to re-post an excerpt from his fantastic weekend Facebook piece. Read it. Link to to it. Share it. Contact your city councillor to let them know that following Mayor Tory down his misguided Gardiner east path is a nothing less than redoing past mistakes. Honest mistakes then. A willful one now because we should know better.)

*  *  *

“The same machines that built this place, can take it down again!”*

Every few years Toronto, in its search for a sustainable future, is confronted with another planning decision that will stall – or propel – its ambition to become a true city of the 21st century. This was the case with the famed Spadina Expressway that was stopped before it could slice Toronto’s civility into pieces. At the end of the era of the downtown bypass, almost half a century later, we are now confronted with a similar conundrum: To tear down, or not to tear down the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway. The current administration has expressed its support for the so-called “hybrid” solution, a tepid compromise between the untenable status quo with the crumbling concrete coming crashing down and the possible future of a street-level boulevard to replace the aging, sorry monster that bears the honoured Commissioner’s name.

Fear of taking down the eastern expressway is easy to understand, yet even easier to dispel. Who wants to restart “the war against the car” in Toronto? Nobody. Who wants to unnecessarily upset the auto-mobile suburbanites when they are already alienated? Nobody. Who wants to live with years of unfathomable construction on their doorstep that will surely disaffect even more people? Nobody. Who wants to risk the cost overruns any project of this scale certainly might entail? Nobody.

But let’s assure the wavering members of Toronto’s city council ahead of the decision they will have to make that those fears are unwarranted. The war against the car will most certainly escalate when the Gardiner remains standing. Why? Because traffic on it (and underneath it) certainly will, too. We will create an illusion among the citizens of the entire city, suburban or central, that it is okay to use your car for every mobility need that might arise. We will squander our emerging ingenuity to seek better solutions for all of us in all parts of this transit city to connect everyone to a more equitable share of the Toronto’s opportunities. If we don’t rebuild now, we will see decades of tinkering and summer closures ahead. The writing is already on the cracking wall of the existing structure. And lastly, the immense cost of the existing roadway is already known – and that of the “hybrid,” too. We have unaccounted overruns as we try to fix the irreparable.

The decision on the future of the Gardiner is a case in concrete politics: it is about the removal of a real barricade to the city’s future. But it is both less and more than that, as it has become a symbol more than a concreted roadway, a barrier in our minds more than a barrier at the lakeshore. In some ways, as a symbol, the eastern Gardiner is vastly overrated. The world will not end if it remains in place. The city will live around it. It has become the tail that wags the dog: the little extension on stilts that is sticking out from the downtown towards the eastern beaches. It is hardly important in the grand scheme of things as the city pours concrete into residential and commercial infrastructure everywhere. But in other ways, as a symbol, it will stand as a blockade in our minds for future decisions we make. If we keep it up, if the “hybrid” succeeds, it will stand as a point of reference for our timidity and failure to do the right thing when it counted. As a community, we would slump once again with drooping shoulders when we were asked to be decisive and to point towards a better future. We will be forever losing each battle that lies ahead before it has begun. The “hybrid” Gardiner will be our curse.

Fred Gardiner would ultimately agree. He smiles from somewhere at Toronto planners for their ability to imagine something radically different. That’s what he did, although we might not like the outcomes much anymore as we are seeking urban livability in the 21st century.

As Mayor John Tory expresses his preference for the “hybrid” at this critical juncture in Toronto’s history, he needs to understand this: hardly anybody who has any professional capacity to judge is with him on the issue. Why, we must ask him, would he risk speaking against the wisdom of the planners and urbanists who spend their lives making sense of this city, which he says he loves? Why can’t he trust the planners, urban experts and public health specialists near and far? The “hybrid” is the worst compromise we can imagine. It kills all spirit of reasonable change in Toronto.

(*Credit for the title goes to Winnipeg’s The Details from their song Lost Art.)

— hopefully reposted by Cityslikr

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