[Urban Shocker]

Based on the evidence of what smuncky has selected to show us in his photographs, though, I think you'd have to conclude that King has avoided the worst of the sort of commercialization and visual blight that has afflicted other major streets.

Those three storey buildings at 457 to 463 King East, for instance, haven't seen their fronts defaced by the sort of stucco/commissioned graffiti "art"/screaming match of signage/garish colour schemes that has blighted other similar rows of old commercial buildings top-to-toe, as they struggle to stand out from - rather than fit in with - their neighbours. The nice old buildings themselves are quite legible, the signage is modest, and there's a reasonably adhered to and unifying colour scheme to them.

 

[Towered]

Having visited Chicago earlier this month, I became almost physically ill when I returned home, and saw the gaping contrast between Chicago's mastery of that "package", to the spammed, degraded, and cheapened mess this city has allowed itself to become.

I'll gladly take our "messy urbanism" over their 500 murders every year.