Sidewalk sale

BY D. LAXMIDAS MAKWANA

Toronto is holding a sidewalk sale and transit shelters, waste receptacles and multi-publication boxes are first up for bidders.

The Vibrant Streets project, part of Toronto’s Clean and Beautiful City initiative, opened its request for proposals process. The result will determine which service provider will manufacture and maintain new public furniture on the city’s pedestrian right-of-ways. The city’s contract for shelters with CBS Outdoor expires in 2007, while the city will replace litterbins in two years.

The criteria set out by the city call for private sector funding to design and create new elements to replace many of Toronto’s dilapidated furniture installations. Ultimately, all of Toronto’s neighbourhoods will feature similarly styled furniture, adding a cohesion that has been absent from community-based projects.

Coun. Janet Davis spoke against the dangers of outsourcing the Vibrant Streets project during a Works Committee meeting in June. She warned those in favour of the ad-covered furntiure.

“Wait ‘til you have children,” she said, “and your children are bombarded, daily, everywhere, in every media, to buy buy buy.”

Coun. Davis’s scathing assessment, along with input from other community stakeholders, such as business improvement areas and local activist groups, helped shape the project that will close bidding in January 2007.

Co-ordinator Andy Koropeski credits public consultations for ensuring Vibrant Streets offers a co-ordinated street furniture program that isn’t billboards disguised as benches. He challenges Davis’s suggestion of publicly funding the capital project, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

“It’s a lot of money in a very constrained budgetary environment,” Koropeski said. “What program would you increase, your revenue or taxes? Or would you cutback on another program to fund something like this?”

The city looks to install 2,900 benches with complimentary waste receptacles in East York, North York and Etobicoke. Half of the benches will display advertising. The number of new transit shelters that will be ordered is still being determined.

Early estimates indicate purchasing the furniture, including shelters, would cost $120 million amortized over 20 years. Over the same 20 years $140 million is necessary for maintenance and repairs.

With a mandate from city council to maintain or reduce the 18,000-square-metres (roughly one third of the Rogers Centre site) of street furniture advertising, Koropeski said designs need to be streamlined.

“You won’t see what you see now, a garbage can with advertising, next to a bus shelter with advertising, next to a bench with advertising,” he said. “There will be one ad permitted per location.”

In Vancouver a program similar to Vibrant Streets is in its fifth year of application. Of 900 bus shelters ordered by the city, 675 have advertisements. Additional benches, waste receptacles and bicycle racks ordered through the contract are advertisement free.

Grant Woff, a civil engineer working for Vancouver’s Streets Department advises Toronto’s planners to negotiate flexibility into the offer the city accepts after Vancouver’s program encountered difficulties.

He said that even with potential to expand the public furniture program in Vancouver, the contract does not account for contingencies that may arise. Woff’s main concern is that the furniture styles will be dated as communities’ aesthetic tastes evolve.

“The challenge is that it’s a 20-year contract and as time goes by the city changes,” he said.

Koropeski expects similar bids that cover a 20-year span because investors will begin to see a profit in the latter half of the contract.

Toronto’s community-business leaders are anxious for Vibrant Streets to remove clutter from their sidewalks. Briar de Lang, general manager for the Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Area, has already installed a multi-publication box on the corner of Bay and Bloor streets.

“You had Astral, Eucan, newspaper boxes, you had so many companies that had a state in public space,” she said. “Now with Vibrant Streets we are looking forward to cleaning up spaces in front of our retailers.”

Grass roots take hold in downtown square

BY D. LAXMIDAS MAKWANA

Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington finds enjoying the finer things helps his creative process: Coffee with friends punctuated with a first-rate cigar in Yonge-Dundas Square.

On another occasion Warmington spotted Mayor David Miller mingling with passersby among the granite slabs dotted by water fountains. At that moment he realized the potential for the location to bring people together.

“I looked at Nathan Phillips Square and it certainly has its own history and importance to the city,” he said. “It just isn’t what Dundas Square’s become which is a real grass roots place.”

His vision of seeing the square filled with a sea of red-clad Canadians showing support for Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan would come to be over the next seven days. For Warmington using Yonge-Dundas Square as the site of a rally was an organic conclusion.

In its infancy Yonge-Dundas Square has become the anchor point of the Yonge Street corridor that runs through Toronto’s downtown core. Three years after it was officially opened, Yonge-Dundas Square continues to define its identity as a meeting place within Toronto and against world-renowned public spaces such Times Square in New York City.

Taylor Raths, general manager of Yonge-Dundas Square, believes the space can live up to more than its moniker.

“We call ourselves the heart of the city and I really want us to be that,” he said. “Not just geographically, I want us to feel like it’s a spot that belongs to the people. And it does belong to them.”

To accomplish his goal Raths spearheads a number of events sponsored by the public and private sector. On weekends Yonge-Dundas Square is filled with vendors and shoppers active in the city’s artisan market. On weekday afternoons a concert series shares the space with corporate-sponsored events promoting new products or services. Raths hopes to find the right mix of event planning so the square becomes a meeting point in the city.

Still his efforts have yet to sway the public. With the plot of land surrounded by billboards and other advertisements, pedestrians pass by and see the square as another place to shop instead of stopping to enjoy its features.

“I think the general public doesn’t really understand the one acre of land (of) the square is the only public portion,” Raths said. “The billboards that surround us make us look like downtown Tokyo, but there really isn’t any association of the billboards that surround the square and the land itself.”

While Raths feels signage detracts from Yonge-Dundas Square, Times Square in New York City has built its identity around its bright lights.

Over 102 years Times Square has defined itself as a meeting place for citizens of the world. During the 1990s the square went through an intense regeneration evicting massage parlours, strip clubs and an unwanted criminal element. In turn multinational corporations moved in and lit up the sidewalk with billboards creating an environment advantageous to commerce and tourism.

Ellen Goldstein, vice-president of policy, planning and design for the Times Square Alliance, says the billboards are just a part of the experience.

“It such a unique visual experience when you come here,” Goldstein said. “We have a sense of constant entertainment, whether that means you’re coming here to go to the theatre or you’re here to see something on the street. It’s active 24 hours a day. There’s always something going on.”

Because of the activity Times Square has become a natural meeting place for New Yorkers.

“We had a wonderful thing happen during the World Cup,” Goldstein said. “It was Ghana versus Italy and there was a gathering of Ghanaians in the middle of Times Square watching on the big screen … When Ghana won people were hysterical. It was a completely organic gathering of people.”

Organic appeal is what Yonge-Dundas Square is attempting to provide to Torontonians.
When Joe Warmington filled Yonge-Dundas Square with his sea of red the spot took another step towards becoming a meeting place for the city.

“I think our rally was one of that place’s finest hours,” Warmington said. “I think it will be remembered as that.”

My home has no walls

BY D. LAXMIDAS MAKWANA

Waking up to the sounds of morning rush hour traffic on the Don Valley Parkway isn’t something Lester Labradore expected when he moved from his rent-controlled apartment in Ottawa to find work in Toronto.

Today, Labradore sleeps between two waterproof sleeping bags in a tent on the edge of the bustling roadway. He starts his day with a drink and then begins his daily trek to a liquor store near Broadview and Danforth Avenues where he panhandles in hopes of saving enough money to rent an apartment.

Labradore considers the square metre of sidewalk cement to the left of the store’s entrance his office. On a sunny day he’ll spend over 10 hours sitting on a weathered cushion while keeping a close eye on a maroon baseball cap for spare change passersby.

For Labradore, living and working in public areas north of Toronto’s heavily policed downtown core is his right as a citizen of the city.

“It’s a public sidewalk,” Labradore said. “If I’m not going out of my way to cause someone grief and make their day bad, then I have a right to a sidewalk just as much as they do.”

But Labradore knows the law says otherwise. Toronto’s six-year-old-Safe Streets Act requires police to arrest individuals panhandling near bank machines, bus shelters and other public areas. Critics of the bylaw say it is only enforced in the downtown core to maintain an appearance of prosperity without addressing homelessness.

John Clarke, director of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty see these clashing rights as the unresolved argument over accessibility to Toronto’s public space.

“There is an overwhelming argument of necessity,” he said. “If you find yourself homeless then you may need to sleep in a park, you may need to sleep in an intersection, you may need to sleep on a heating grate, you may need to stand on a street corner and ask for money.

Clarke believes when this happens when society has to accommodate the people who it has forced onto the street.

Toronto’s Advisory Committee On Homeless And Socially Isolated People attempts to find a balance between maintaining the city’s overall aesthetics while resolving the economic needs of panhandlers. Former city councillor Jane Pitfield is on record saying city council is supporting initiatives that do little to find homes for the homeless and clean up public spaces.

“There has been a complacency making the problem an industry when there needs to be change,” she said. “Panhandling has become far too common and people who normally come into Toronto complain about how aggressive panhandlers can be. So now our neighbours in the 905 area won’t travel into the downtown core.”

Labradore knows that he can’t work downtown so he avoids the area and its politics entirely.

“If you go downtown you can’t even sit there for five seconds and the cops are right on you,” he said. “You’ve got bicycle cops, you got cars and you’ve got foot. Up here on the Danforth they don’t bother you unless you bother someone else.”

Clarke said that focusing on the downtown core separates claims to public space economically rather than ethically.

“In practice that claim (to public space) is stratified according to people’s economic situation,” he said.

Clarke points out that a movie production filming downtown paralyzes the city’s main traffic arteries, which in turn negatively affects area businesses and pedestrians. Clarke says because the city stands to make a profit the production is portrayed as a benefit rather than a problem.

Meanwhile Labradore maintains his claim to the spot in front of the liquor store but tries not to bother people. He is mindful of the bylaw so he tolerates pedestrians crowding his panhandling space on a busy Saturday afternoon.

“Sometimes you get snotty remarks and sometimes you get something. Then sometimes you get nothing,” he said.

Who is Dave Meslin?

BY D. LAXMIDAS MAKWANA

Dave Meslin isn’t camera shy. He just refuses to be the only person in the picture.

For Meslin not a week goes when he isn’t contacted by a reporter asking for an opinion public space, or a photograph portraying him as the leader of one of Toronto’s most popular grassroots organizations.

Since founding the Toronto Public Space Committee, in 2001, Meslin has become the de facto poster boy for the public space movement. He is regularly quoted in both mainstream and alternative media.

Still he dodges analogies to predecessors such as urban planning icon Jane Jacobs.

“It’s better to have a multiplicity of voices,” Meslin said. “I feel it’s actually problematic when someone like Jane Jacobs is seen as the voice on an issue. (TPSC) has actually fought to prevent the media from picking who the voice is.”

He believes the public space movement is much like space itself, for everyone.
Boasting a staff of over 20 people, TPSC has nurtured a new set of public space advocates that continues to grow since the lobby group’s inception.

Meslin sees his role as an instigator not a leader. Once Meslin’s movements gain enough momentum to sustain themselves he’s quick to move on.

“My strength is starting things from scratch,” Meslin said. “It just seems like a better use of my skills and time to start something new rather than staying with a project that other people can carry on just as well, if not better.”

Toronto Star columnist Royson James is a self-described Meslin fan. Even after applauding Meslin’s City Idol project, which took average Torontonians and shaped them into municipal candidates for the 2006 election, James said the legitimacy of the public space movement goes beyond any individual.

“If it’s a real grassroots movement all it needs is the right catalyst to get it going,” James said. “The catalyst … is someone who can galvanize. It’s somebody who can touch the right chords, who can organize people, who can present their vision in a way that they can understand.”

Glenn Miller, chair of the Canadian Urban Institute leadership series, sees Meslin’s model of organization as set of traits being applied by other lobbyists around the city.

“It’s a willingness to invest in something you believe in for the greater good,” Miller said. “So there might be some short term rewards … but really (results are) seen where organizations can move things forward and leverage their assets.”

Meslin believes it’s the media that prefer to have a single voice for an issue. He thinks that mindset spreads lazy thinking, forcing people to rely on a sole source for information.

“What we try to do … is to say that it’s really bad when you can have 2.5 million people living in a city and everything you see visually in public space is coming from four or five marketing agencies,” he said.

Now Meslin focuses on empowering others to take action. Through his City Idol initiative he hoped to raise a new generation of leaders while sidestepping the spotlight himself.

“As an organizer it’s not for me to run for office or for me to become a spokesperson,” he said. “It’s for me to bring in other people. The real victory for the movement would be if 20 or 30 people are quoted on a regular basis.”