Architecture of Change by Hammett Jerilou; Wrigley Maggie; & Maggie Wrigley

Author:Hammett, Jerilou; Wrigley, Maggie; & Maggie Wrigley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2013-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

DESIGNER/BUILDER: What is your critique of Toronto as a new global city?

DOUG YOUNG: While Toronto is going after new-economy knowledge workers, what is it doing about the old-economy factory workers, of whom there still are tens of thousands? Aren’t they important to the city of Toronto? Do we really think all we need to do is create some glamour zones downtown, and that’s doing a good job of making a good city? What about the neighborhoods where most people live? Don’t they deserve good planning? Don’t they deserve investment in public resources? Don’t they deserve good public transit? Don’t they deserve beautiful parks, libraries, and schools?

In terms of the new kind of approach to planning, I think it goes back several decades and tries to de-democratize the planning process. It now is virtually impossible for an ordinary person to participate meaningfully in a public planning debate. The new discourse is all about the idea of beauty and creating beautiful places. Gone are such things as density or height limits. The idea is all we should care about is design and whether or not a building “fits.” If a world-famous architect stands up at a public meeting and says, “I believe that my proposal for a seventy-five-story condominium is a beautiful one that fits perfectly with this neighborhood,” how does an ordinary non-expert resident of that neighborhood challenge the opinion of the expert architect? It’s impossible. It becomes “he said, she said,” or “in my opinion and in your opinion,” and the whole discourse is geared to being globally attractive and globally successful. It’s geared toward, “We need buildings by Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry and any of these internationally famous architects.” How can an ordinary person, living in a very ordinary house, stand up and challenge Daniel Libeskind and say, “I think your building is ugly?” Who is going to be believed? I think this has just completely gutted any kind of democratic process.

I tried to get involved in a development proposal in the neighborhood where I was living until about six months ago. I spoke against it at the public meeting and realized as I was speaking that I couldn’t actually make an argument that would be recognized as a solid planning argument against this building. Under earlier rules I could have. I could have said, “There is a neighborhood plan that was produced twenty years ago, after extensive consultation with the neighborhood that determined that a building shouldn’t be taller than six stories or have a density higher than three times lot area. And this proposal is for a twenty-two-story building with a density of nine.” And I asked, “What is the planning rationale for quadrupling the height and tripling the density?” But at the same time I was asking those questions I realized under the new rules it doesn’t matter anymore. You do not have to justify the density or the height. You just have to make, as the architect and developer made, an aesthetic argument about

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