海角社区官网

City staff came up with several ways of doing so, including by making “design excellence” a priority, by better maintaining its existing spaces, by revamping guidelines for how construction zones are set up and by re-evaluating how the city contracts out design work.

“Toronto, shamefully, has often reached for the height of mediocrity,” said Coun. Josh Matlow, whose sparked the new report.

“I’m not suggesting 海角社区官网hasn鈥檛 gotten it right here and there 鈥� just not enough.”

With that in mind, the Star reached out to urban planning experts, design gurus, politicians and pundits to find out what they would do to make 海角社区官网a more beautiful place to live.

Taking care of business

Making an urban space prettier doesn’t always mean adding more colourful murals or street furniture. In fact, it can start with something simple, like looking after the parks, squares and other public areas we already have.

Coun. Amber Morley pointed at executive committee to neighbourhoods in and around her Etobicoke ward where the “most beautiful parts” are the natural spaces, waterways and the waterfront 鈥� prime examples of public spaces that just need to be maintained properly to be attractive.

“The thing I think about when I move into a new space is not how I’m going to decorate, but first how I’m going to clean it,” Morley said.

The committee also touched on the overflowing garbage bins in Toronto鈥檚 public parks, which are one of the biggest sources of complaints from residents about the parks, according to city staff.

“That’s pretty grungy and disgusting, no matter how well you designed that street and how beautiful the trees are,” Coun. Paula Fletcher said of Riverdale Park East.

If the city doesn鈥檛 do proper upkeep, even places that are well designed can easily lose their attractiveness.

Grange Park鈥檚 public washrooms are an outstanding example of this, according to Alex Beheshti, an urban planner and land economist.

“They’re large bathrooms, they have space for changing diapers, for people with disabilities 鈥� but the inside is disgusting,鈥� said Beheshti. 鈥淭hat’s 海角社区官网as a whole: on the outside it looks nice, but if you squint too closely you see things are atrocious.”

Beheshti also noted some street furniture that went up during the pandemic along downtown roads such as King Street West would be much more appealing if the chipped paint was redone, the graffiti was removed or if the Muskoka chairs that feel almost dropped onto the sidewalk at random served a larger purpose.

“It’s esthetically a pleasing thing, maybe a novelty, but functionally it’s confusing,鈥� said Beheshti. 鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty useless street furniture.”

To properly maintain public spaces requires much better budgetary planning than the city 鈥� or any government for that matter 鈥� is used to doing.

Beheshti said if some street furniture and elements of public spaces are better designed to begin with, they are less likely to severely deteriorate over a short time and cost more money to keep in good condition.

“Do you know how expensive it is to look this poor?” said Beheshti, referring to the cost of聽海角社区官网not聽taking design nor quality into account.

Making a fair square

City staff note in the report that one way to “ensure design excellence” of large capital projects is through design competitions, citing the Spirit Garden at Nathan Phillips Square as an example.

However, elected city officials have pointed out that the main areas of Toronto’s public squares are still largely bland and starved of animation.

Speaking to reporters at an unrelated press conference Thursday, Mayor Olivia Chow quipped about the amount of time it would take her to list the areas of the city she wants to see beautified 鈥� before she narrowed in on City Hall鈥檚 civic square.

“Every day I look down (from my office) to Nathan Phillips Square, I see couples that are really beautifully dressed and so excited because they just got married,” said Chow. “They’re coming out and they love to take a photo, right? Can we please make the garbage cans look a bit better?”

Experts and tourists have previously pointed out that aside from the broken fountains and garbage bins, the square’s main area is just a place to walk across 鈥� a sentiment Matlow said extends to the likes of Sankofa Square, which is defined by its concrete slabs facing away from the grey, mostly empty middle square.

More spots for respite

There is “something really beautiful” about the city’s roughly 300 parkettes, and 海角社区官网needs more of these small-scale green spaces for respite, wherever it can wedge them in, said Naomi Adiv, an assistant professor at the University of 海角社区官网Mississauga, whose research includes public spaces.

“I think that scale of intervention could be really powerful,” said Adiv.

Christopher De Sousa, a professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at 海角社区官网Metropolitan University, agreed, pointing to the Bloor-Annex neighbourhood’s parkettes as good examples of “micro-interventions” by local Business Improvement Areas that should be replicated elsewhere.

Any maintenances issues could be solved if the city is willing to work with and educate local communities, he added.

“It might be getting the communities themselves to be allowed to raise funds, engage, clean up and that type of thing,” said De Sousa. “Kind of like a ‘Community Adopt A Park.’”

Beautiful by design

One of the main things that can make or break the beauty of any place, according to the staff report, is procurement聽鈥� the way the city acquires goods and services from companies, including design work.

Typically, the city puts out a request for proposal and whatever company tenders the lowest bid wins the contract. But Jason Thorne, the city’s new chief planner, started the job this year with a personal mandate to make 海角社区官网more enjoyable, and said he wants to see how the cash-strapped municipality can reasonably change its criteria to place greater emphasis on beautiful and interesting designs as one of the determining factors 鈥� instead of simply defaulting to the lowest cost.

There are times where conventional procurements work, said Thorne, but a design competition or “a quality-based procurement approach” can be more effective in certain cases.

“It can save you time and costs through the procurement process and through the long-term maintenance of the space 鈥� by thinking upfront and investing upfront in a good quality design,” he said.

Mona El Khafif, an architect and urban designer who teaches at the U of T’s School of Cities, said the city should start opening its design competitions to young professionals or community stakeholders, and move away from defaulting to the same reoccurring group of people or organizations.

“海角社区官网is a city that’s extremely diverse, vibrant and it could take on a much stronger leadership role in new (ideas or) models of public spaces,” said El Khafif.

Fields of dreams?

Another way 海角社区官网could play a leadership role in beautifying its public realm is in the way it uses desolate spaces within its borders聽鈥� brown fields, left over spaces of pavement and parking lots, for example.

El Khafif’s research includes this topic and she points to The Bentway as an example of what can be done聽with underutilized spaces. Once a grey expanse underneath the Gardiner Expressway, it鈥檚 now been “rejuvenated” into a shared public space for year-round events and activities.

“Public spaces are our living rooms 鈥� but as population and density grows, the city is running out of space to accommodate them,鈥� she said.

The city has had to get creative to accommodate a booming population in some cases, especially in the downtown core. Other areas of the city can learn from those, she said.

She pointed to the plazaPops project, which turns parts of strip mall parking lots into pop-up community gathering places, and the STACKT market, which features food, retail and entertainment outlets in shipping containers, as successful ways 海角社区官网can learn from its own success to liven up open grey fields and brown fields outside of downtown.

Another way is to co-ordinate with local communities to use some city-owned parking lots in a hybrid way where, for example, on Sundays there is a farmers鈥� or flea market. Since the pandemic, community members in Little Jamaica have hosted an Afro-Caribbean farmers鈥� market almost every summer at the public parking lot adjacent to Reggae Lane, a small commercial laneway in Oakwood Village, against the backdrop of the lot’s Reggae music-inspired murals.

“But the city needs to look at its inventory first,” added El Khafif.

Construction cleanup

It鈥檚 hardly surprising that in a city with as many cranes in the sky as 海角社区官网that the staff report also points to construction sites as one area as being ripe for beautification 鈥� or at least being more careful about how they encroach on public space in the city, as anyone who鈥檚 driven or biked past a condo site can confirm.

TMU鈥檚 De Sousa said it comes down to creating guidelines on how companies can make construction zones tidier and making the temporary barriers around the sites more interesting such as incorporating art.

鈥淎 lot of it is just making things neat,鈥� said De Sousa. 鈥淟ike asking someone undergoing a construction project, instead of a basic fence or a boring construction hoarding to make that more interesting or boxed in.”

In Tokyo, where its road construction setup is also a reflection of its transit-oriented communities and stricter zoning regulations, the city’s construction tends to use space more efficiently than Toronto, Matlow said.

鈥淒uring a road construction, the way even that they put their cones and the way that they stage that work is more attractive,” he said, pointing to the fact they tend to be more compact 鈥� with one road site even having twinkly lights on their cones.