Street Improvement Project
“No matter how many exemplary pieces of architecture we put up, you still need 200 hours of Photoshop to remove the overhead wires from the picture.”
Toronto needs A Design Campaign to improve the physical quality of the spaces between buildings. The world cities that compete for tourist and investment dollars have all mounted civic improvement programs. Toronto needs to get on board and improve its streets.
As an Architect, I have often noticed that the beauty/ugliness of a City is usually attributed to the architecture of it. Architecture and buildings have of course something to do with it, however, the spaces and the surfaces in between these buildings are equally influential. The city of Paris, for example, does not have any overhead wires, has strict laws for posting notices, has beautiful decorative fixtures, has a uniform sidewalk detailing with granite edges, etc, etc. In the City of Toronto we have removed the overhead wires from the four banks’ corners and we have granite pavers throughout the center of the financial precinct. This standard of streetscape should be applied to other areas of the city.
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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES – City of Toronto
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