Toronto's planners favour developers over citizens, says urban affairs guru Jane Jacobs.Full story here.
Called to give the Canadian Urban Institute award that bears her name, Jacobs stood before a room full of urban planners and policy-makers and harshly criticized Toronto's planning process.
"If citizens don't like it, you call them names (and say) that they're selfish and ignorant and that they're NIMBY — not in my backyard," Jacobs told planners.
"It's true that people don't want certain things in their backyard," she said. "But they're usually right.
And guess what?? We're going to see the Port Credit house tomorrow night! Yippee!
We've been making arrangements all morning and now I must get to work. Have a great day, everyone.
15 comments:
On an unrelated note, and nothing particularly new, O'Reilly once again says torture is the right thing to do:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,157608,00.html
I mean, that's like saying well, if we're nicer to the people who want to kill us, then the other people who want to kill us will like us more.
As usually, O'Reilly fails to even grasp the argument. Setting aside, for the moment, questions of the morality and usefulness of torture (although both are compelling arguments themselves), the point is not to improve the opinion of the US in the eyes of Al Qaeda members. Those people are committed to harming US interests regardless of what America does. The point is to make sure that US actions don't swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups with people who might otherwise have been at least neutral before. When you resort to torture, you make new enemies and the last thing America needs is more enemies.
Another unrelated note: please, please check my newest post: Is America Becoming a Theorcracy. I think you will LOVE to weigh in on this one.
Hope you are doing well and not working too very hard.
All best,
Barbara
On a related note, a close relative of mine was an urban planner in Toroto. I'll have to rush over and read this, then see what he has to say.
That is, Toronto. Gosh, Toroto? Sassypants? What's happening with me and your comments?
Hey everyone, thanks for these!
Sassypantscats, I'd love to hear what your urban planner relative says about Toroto. :) Seriously, I would.
(It must be that my blog is so exciting, that you are typing your comment so furiously, you have no time to re-read.)
(Yeah, right.)
Of course Toronto is not New York.
I didn't say she was my favorite person, just someone whose life work I admire. It's also not The Truth, it's just one person's perspective.
Why are you so angry? (Or seem so, at least.)
Yes, why so angry?
And please, tell me what is so wrong with a small-town mentality in the city. You got in a huff over it, but failed to explain adequately the actual problem with it.
Hey, it's a great city in its own right. Most importantly, it's a generally safe place. Has its own rough areas, and its own gang issues, but nothing really all that extreme on a comparative level. Most people should be so fortunate. And driving really isn't so bad as you make it. It's like any city - learn the back ways around the city and the sidestreets within it and you're fine. Still don't like driving? The subway system is terrific, as are the city bus lines.
What, do you think it's supposed to be some kind of Utopia? Where the hell do you get that idea from? Sheesh, you're starting to sound like the NY Times article in one of L-Girl's other recent posts - upset that it ain't utopia here after all. Get over it.
Let's just say "I dun the highways." :) And yes, I do feel it's the NIMBY syndrome. The city is bigger than what's in a given neighbourhood, and it's all too common for people to lose sight of that. The building of a highway was a problem. Now the surface street gridlock (that results from the failure to do so) is a problem. People can't really seem to get past the prejudice that SOMETHING WILL CHANGE. Funny how it works... the disruption to ten-to-twenty-year-old suburbia caused by building the Spadina was "bad" in the 60s, but an awful lot of Yonge Street, some of it a century old or more, had to be torn down in the 50s to build the subway, but I don't hear anyone lamenting what was lost then... folks are just grateful to have the facility. The double standard drives me crazy.
The problem for me is the quarters in which Jane Jacobs is essentially sainted for what I perceive to be vastly shortsighted pocket theories that time has largely disproven, but that's ignored among a certain class of intelligentia because it doesn't fit in with the model they're promoting. Jane Jacobs's theory of how cities work -- and I have read it, and John Sewell's as well -- strikes me as one-size-fits-all. But there are dozens of ways to live "in Toronto" alone, nevermind elsewhere. In effect, these people want to shove Dolly Parton into a training bra, and then chastise her when she says it doesn't fit. I'm tired, really tired, of people who want human beings to fit a model, instead of creating models that address human needs and local realities. Jane Jacobs's theories are based on the singular, unique experience of New York. I'm prepared to admit that in some circumstances, that experience is going to prove valuable and instructive to Chicago, Toronto, London, Tokyo... but not all the time, in all things. Cities aren't pressed out of dough out of one cookie cutter... they're almost as different as individual human beings. It's been a bugbear of mine for a long time that what might be indicative is instead accepted with Old Testament devotion that can't be challenged, adapted, or even abandoned when it doesn't suit local conditions. Christians get to eat pork, but there's no new covenant for Toronto where the experience of New York, or older American cities in general, is concerned. The administration of the city's been hijacked by an orthodoxy, and I can see the price on the way to work every day.
And please, tell me what is so wrong with a small-town mentality in the city. You got in a huff over it, but failed to explain adequately the actual problem with it.
Well, in short, a small town is a small town. A city's a city. A small town can have a singular character, but a city really can't. The problem arises when people put the local identity before the needs of the larger geographic one. It's great that there's an Annex, and a Leaside, and a Willowdale and all that. But these are, after all, conventions of the mind. They present people with different choices about how to live, but they should not distract people from the reality that they're living in what is a unified whole that has to work efficiently together. It's great to be the liver, but if you cut yourself off from the heart and the pancreas and shut down blood vessels in glory of your 'livery-ness', you're not doing yourself or anyone else a favour.
I'm not saying we need to pave paradise, put up a parking lot. But the reality of this city is people live far apart, and need to get around. We import goods and export services within the GTA and beyond, and it's getting more difficult to move labour and product every day. Meanwhile, an eighth of a million people move to the GTA every year. Pretending that's not the case, or that transit systems that are quick and responsive will magically appear, is a disservice. There needs to be transit, but there also needs... or needed... to be a balance for automobile traffic. Cars aren't evil; they're a means to get around. That's it. Alternatives were expensive and largely ignored when the highway programs were axed, so we ended up with neither. The city is still fragmented into five regions and God knows how many cities and towns, all with their own transit systems with their own feudal rules, jealousies, and fees. Remember the nonsense a few years ago about bridging Morningstar Drive over the 427 to Humberside? Oh, no, that would let Mississaugans drive in Etobicokean neighbourhoods! Or the foolishness about letting Mississauga Transit run the Burnhamthorpe line down the last quarter mile of Burnhamthorpe Road, which happened to be in Etobicoke? This is the kind of narrow parochialism that plagues Toronto. This is not a small town. If people want to live in small towns, where there's no need for expressways or long commutes to work or even transit systems, there are hundreds of them in Ontario. But to force that role on Toronto is a bad idea. A very bad idea, that's going to cost us in the long run.
"The problem for me is the quarters in which Jane Jacobs is essentially sainted for what I perceive to be vastly shortsighted pocket theories that time has largely disproven"
This is just plain false. Her theories are not pockets, but overarching, they have not been disproven, and they are extremely far-sighted, where what passes for most urban planning - non-planning, really - is very shortsighted.
"Jane Jacobs's theory of how cities work -- and I have read it, and John Sewell's as well -- strikes me as one-size-fits-all."
They are anything but. Exactly the opposite.
"Jane Jacobs's theories are based on the singular, unique experience of New York."
Absolutely false. It sounds like you have read a snippet of what she wrote about one city and generalized from there.
"Cities aren't pressed out of dough out of one cookie cutter... they're almost as different as individual human beings."
That's part of her central philosophy, and the central tenet of all good city planning: talk to lots of people, see what they really need, and go from there.
You say you have read her, but it doesn't sound like you have. You sound like you're thinking more of Robert Moses, Jacobs's nemesis.
I have to leave for the airport, so I can't continue this discussion.
In general though, Loneprimate, I wonder if your lengthy comments would be more fitting on your own blog.
I'm not asking you not to post here, you are most welcome to, and I value your ideas. But when you write a whole treatise (sp?) full of bold ideas or copy in an entire article into comments as you have done elsewhere, perhaps you would be better served by posting in your own blog, then leaving a comment directing interested readers there.
I was going to say this during the election debate, but held my tongue.
And I thank you in advance. Forgot to say that. Please don't disappear.
I suppose you have a point there. That's not a bad idea. Less spontaneous, but probably more sensible.
Well, you make a good point on the small town thing. I do give you that.
But - having also lived and driven in Toronto before - not there now but drive to and within the city extensively for parts of my current job and much of a past position - I have to say it's really not that bad. Drive through Montreal sometime (try to leave once you're there) - really not much fun. Vancouver? Not too fun either - spent half a year on a contract out there once - really not cool to drive there at all. Compared to these, TO already is paradise. Sometimes gridlock will be part of the equation, sure - it's called rush hour, happens everywhere. But it's not this extraordinary mess you make it out to be in your posts - far from it.
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