Yesterday:


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isaidso said:
I'd like to focus on the building but I can't get past the crude, depressing public realm. And it's not just this block, but practically every block in our city.

After watching a walking tour of Melbourne (link below), it hammered home how awful our public realm is. Stop using concrete on your sidewalks Toronto! It's primitive and cheap looking. We also need to cut in half (at the minimum) the amount of space we devote to car lanes.. We can spend billions on buildings but till we learn how to build a quality public realm and city built for people instead of cars we'll NEVER have an attractive city. I've been waiting for 25+ years for Toronto to fix this but running out of patience.

Melbourne makes Toronto look like a provincial backwater. You'd never know we're the bigger city with the bigger economy/tax base. Their sidewalks are triple the width of ours. Black pavers instead of concrete. Trees/quality planters. Canopies. Cars banished completely from major streets. The kicker is that our built form is very similar.

We could have the exact same thing but it's not even on the radar of most Torontonians. Most see no issue with 4-6 lanes of asphalt and argue it looks fine. That said, you can't desire/demand more, if a crappy public realm is all you've ever known.


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Couple of reasons for this.
1 - We are besides the United States so our cities do resemble US ones especially in the realm of car culture vs Melbourne which is near Asia and Asian influence of public transportation, pedestrian shopping lanes seep in.
2 - The harsh winter weather makes increases the odds that we drive everywhere instead of walking which puts emphasis on car lanes rather than pedestrian lanes vs Melbourne which is a warm climate region.
 
Mercenary said:
Couple of reasons for this.
1 - We are besides the United States so our cities do resemble US ones especially in the realm of car culture vs Melbourne which is near Asia and Asian influence of public transportation, pedestrian shopping lanes seep in.
2 - The harsh winter weather makes increases the odds that we drive everywhere instead of walking which puts emphasis on car lanes rather than pedestrian lanes vs Melbourne which is a warm climate region.
Click to expand...
Always remember, winter ruins everything.
 
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