[URBAN NOTE] "Avenue of change: Meet the new kind of street coming to Toronto"
Oliver Moore's article in The Globe and Mail explores some exciting changes in the designs of Toronto streets.
There’s a new kind of road coming to Toronto. A road that uses the space differently, recognizing that it has to do more than just move cars. One that is “beautiful and vibrant” and puts safety first - a crucial move in a city struggling with a rising tide of pedestrian deaths.
They’re called “complete streets,” and while elements of their planning philosophy have already shown up in Toronto, they have never been formalized into an urban design goal. Next week, city staffers plan to pick a handful of streets to redesign under the new guidelines as pilot projects that they hope will be the start of a decades-long remaking of the city.
“We know designing our streets differently saves lives,” chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat says. “The question is: Are we prepared to tolerate, are we prepared to live in a city where preventable deaths are not prevented?”
The scale of this change would be difficult to overstate. In North America, cars have enjoyed primacy for decades, while pedestrians and cyclists were left with crumbs. But the tide is turning.
In New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., among other places, there’s a growing sense that the public right-of-way - the space from building front across to building front - is among a city’s most valuable assets. And sharing that space in new ways can bring big benefits to the city. When New York turned Times Square into a pedestrian plaza, climbing commercial rents showed the growing desirability of the area. The Square also made its first appearance on a ranking of the world’s top-10 retail districts.
A draft internal copy of Toronto’s new complete-streets guidelines lays out dozens of ways to make changes to this city’s roadways. They specify that the safety of vulnerable road users has to be considered “at every stage.” Noting that people hit by faster vehicles are much more likely to be killed, the guidelines call for speeds to be rethought with safety in mind.
There’s a new kind of road coming to Toronto. A road that uses the space differently, recognizing that it has to do more than just move cars. One that is “beautiful and vibrant” and puts safety first - a crucial move in a city struggling with a rising tide of pedestrian deaths.
They’re called “complete streets,” and while elements of their planning philosophy have already shown up in Toronto, they have never been formalized into an urban design goal. Next week, city staffers plan to pick a handful of streets to redesign under the new guidelines as pilot projects that they hope will be the start of a decades-long remaking of the city.
“We know designing our streets differently saves lives,” chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat says. “The question is: Are we prepared to tolerate, are we prepared to live in a city where preventable deaths are not prevented?”
The scale of this change would be difficult to overstate. In North America, cars have enjoyed primacy for decades, while pedestrians and cyclists were left with crumbs. But the tide is turning.
In New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., among other places, there’s a growing sense that the public right-of-way - the space from building front across to building front - is among a city’s most valuable assets. And sharing that space in new ways can bring big benefits to the city. When New York turned Times Square into a pedestrian plaza, climbing commercial rents showed the growing desirability of the area. The Square also made its first appearance on a ranking of the world’s top-10 retail districts.
A draft internal copy of Toronto’s new complete-streets guidelines lays out dozens of ways to make changes to this city’s roadways. They specify that the safety of vulnerable road users has to be considered “at every stage.” Noting that people hit by faster vehicles are much more likely to be killed, the guidelines call for speeds to be rethought with safety in mind.