Blog Entry: Mary Soderstrom’s The Walkable City – Nick Crampton

Caught somewhere between an exhaustive historical chronicle of urban development and a conversational journal, Soderstrom’s The Walkable City offers a comparison of urban planning successes and pitfalls of North-American cities like Toronto and New York and of the ancient European city of Paris. The book’s chapters alternate between in-depth academic chronicles of urban history and conversational anecdotes. While this does hurt the flow of the novel, making it feel more like a collection of short stories or vignettes, an enlightened perspective on the development of car-based cities is communicated. Disjointedness (and a dire need for a thorough review for grammatical and typographical errors) aside, Soderstrom’s book offers a comprehensive perspective on the impact urban planning principles have on the types of neighbourhoods that develop within our cities.
One chapter of particular interest is the sixth chapter, which re-tells the creation of the Don Mills neighbourhood in the North York region of Toronto. Particularly timely given the location of Flemingdon Park – the topic of our year long project at the Institute without Boundaries, I was surprised to learn of the good intentions with which the neighbourhood was built. Even more so, I was surprised to read of Soderstrom’s affection for the suburban neighbourhood. Having visited the area in recent months – admittedly a rather small, and disadvantaged area of the neighbourhood – I found it jarring to hear of the pedestrian-friendly ethics on which the neighbourhood was founded. The design of Don Mills followed Ebeneezer Howard’s ‘Garden City’ model, with houses built within walking distance of shops, schools and businesses so that residents could live, work and play in the same walkable area. However the design was watered-down somewhat and this ideal was not completely realised. While the author rosily points out in one of her anecdotes that a few people can be seen out walking on a clear winter’s day, it is clear that the neighbourhood’s lack of sidewalks prevents many people from circulating on foot, favouring their cars instead. I was puzzled by the author’s optimistic perception of this area. Understandibly the verdant and bucolic setting could be pleasing to the senses, though I would hardly classify the area as walkable. With the major thoroughfares of Don Mills Road, Lawrence Avenue and Eglinton Avenue bisecting the neighbourhood, and stores and amenities spaced accordingly, the area is clearly geared towards the automobile not the pedestrian. As this chapter is preceded by an in-depth retelling of the development of a particular street (La Rue Mouffetard in Paris), chronicling how the street overcame its industrial heritage to be a hub of pedestrian activity for the neighbourhood, it was odd to follow this with such incongruous praise of a neighbourhood that far from embodies the walkable nature of the Parisian street.
While this book was certainly a more accessible discussion of urban history and development than Mumford’s The City in History, the disjointed jumps between historical re-enactments, history lessons and personal anecdotes made it a difficult piece to appraise on the whole. It was, however, intriguing to compare the often praised street system of Paris with cities such as New York and Toronto, which Jane Jacobs championed in the twentieth century to save from being diced up and ruined by highways, expressways and Haussmannian Boulevards. It will be interesting to see if Jacob’s efforts are respected in the Toronto of tomorrow.

On Public Art (and Invisible Sculptures) by Angélica Ramos

In our Design Issues class at the IwB we have had the chance to immerse ourselves in the difficult but almost poetic task of understanding the concept of city and its components. With the help of our professors, a series of guest speakers and an ongoing attempt to reading Lewis Mumford’s History of Cities it has become clear that cities are not easy to understand, there are probably as many visions as there are citizens. “The city is a verb.” was one of the first ideas that our professor Donald Brackett told us on the first day that we met him.

The course was similar to one big puzzle. Each lecture, each reading, each assignment added a piece in trying to understand a little bit more about the city.

The last piece of the course was a lecture by Rina Greer, a Toronto based art consultant who talked to us about public art.

What is public art? What purpose does it serve? Rina talked about how public art is often underestimated and brought to the table at the last minute when designing public space. She even suspected that she was the last lecturer of the series.

Her lecture made me remember something I had already thought of regarding art in the public realm. In Mexico City there is a series of sculptures that were built for the 1968 Olympics called “La ruta de la Amistad” in English “Friendship road”. The project is a 17 km long corridor running parallel to one of the main arteries of the city. It features 19 concrete sculptures by artists from all around the world, some of them as high as 22 meters (72 feet). What I find intriguing about them is that despite the fact that thousands of people drive right beside the sculptures every day in their cars they are ignored usually to the point of becoming invisible. What I wonder is how does a series of colossal sculptures suddenly become invisible to the public eye?

In her lecture, Rina talked about many issues around public art in Toronto and how artists were often considered at the last minute or were not properly involved on the conception of project resulting in pieces of art being totally misplaced or totally out of scale. However these reasons don’t seem to apply to the mystery around the invisible statues in la Ruta de la Amistad, which were conceived by visionaries like Matías Goeritz and Pedro Ramirez Vazquez.

Perhaps one of the most significant examples that Rina showed in her lecture was the Millennium Park in Chicago. Sculptures like Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor or the Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa have certainly become landmarks of the city of Chicago and are everything but invisible. What is what really makes them so noticeable? They are definitely brilliant pieces of art, they are strategically positioned in very engaging vibrant public spaces and they were created less than 5 years ago. But what really called my attention is the fact that there is also a solid communication strategy supporting them. People know about them and therefore people are willing to see them. These opened my eyes to a new possibility.

What if the problem with public art is the fact that people don’t have the intention to see it? People go to museums with the conscious intention to see art and therefore it becomes visible to them but public art just happens to be on the street on your way to work.

To me one possible solution to make public arte visible would be publicizing it. Museums advertise their new exhibitions and their new collections. What if the city had the function of a huge museum that brings attention to its public pieces? Maybe then, people would walk through city streets with that interest that visitors have when they walk through the hallways of a museum and maybe then those invisible sculptures in the public space could be visible again.

Thoughts on the Walkable City

Hello folks — Chriz here. Here’s a some of my thoughts and reflections while reading The Walkable City by Mary Soderstrom. Looking through the feet. I’ve been listening to a podcast about Biological Anthropology, so I knew much of the talk about homo sapiens long path into bipedal transportation. However, born into the age where trans-continental flight are common, I haven’t ever thought that much about what distances were like before technology and cheap fossil fuels made living beyond walking distances possible.

I also didn’t know that much about the history of Paris. What an interesting way to view a city! I have travelled some around the UK, though, so I have some idea of how Roman roads work – ancient paths that curve where a tree-to-large-to-cut once stood. It is a gradual, organic thing dramatically different than the rigid grid system North America imposes on the landscape it takes over.

It is interesting to think of Paris as a fortress that kept expanding beyond its walls. No central planning, and no (or next-to-no) building code. It feels like something much more organic, complex, with history built into the cobblestone streets. I can’t wait to explore it for real.

It shocked me that anyone once had power like Napoleon III to reshape Paris. I can hardly imagine any politician having that kind of power in Canada, especially as someone raised in the constant compromise of democracy. It makes me frustrated by how little gets done here, but also how the rights of the individual (and shall I say, the property owner) are respected. Democracy is a slowing force, and seemingly a more rational one.

After our time studying TCHC and Flemingdon Park, it’s also interesting to read Haussmann and Napoleon seemed to have a genuine interest in social housing, albeit with a plan (or an unintended consequence?) to remove the poor plebeians far from the beautiful ‘public’ developments they created. What irony to know your old neighbourhood had been transformed into something beautiful without being able to afford transportation there to see it.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the book so far has been a bit on Jane Jacob’s take on how communities are built – that they are not a creation of parks and buildings, but of sidewalks. There is something that really resonates with me. I can appreciate that a park is not always a safe place, and that life is largely lived on the streets. I can appreciate all the different type of streets there are in Toronto.

I think of the narrow strip of College between Bathurst and Ossington, or my neighbourhood, Kensington  Market. The streets are alive here. There are pubs, bakeries, retails shops, and residences tucked in above and behind everything. Residents know each other – we can’t possibly avoid it. There are confrontations, and friendships, communities, lovers all sprung up from the close proximity. Dealing with the cacophony of life is a very different thing from the distance and social alienation that Soderstrom describes as the suburbs evolved.

Soderstron’s last comment is about the price of gas, and its influence on cities. Yes, gas prices are likely to keep rising, especially as the commodities market shakes off the global recession. We may one day actually have to face cold facts about what the most efficient way to build a city is, and the answer (as it was for thousands of years) be a remarkably in favour for dense, walkable cities.  And Soderstron (and Jane Jacobs) is right about needing to make those dense cities viable and livable.

Mid-reading, I put down my book and walked out to do my shopping in Kensington Market. I chatted with the shop owners about how school was going, ran into a friend, and managed to buy everything I needed within 2 blocks. I looked out to Spadina with its streetcar lane and not an expressway. I am glad Jane Jacobs was there to defend our streets, and can only hope for more walkable, bikable city streets in the future.

Process and Public Art: A lecture by Rina Greer

Rina Greer, a Toronto-based art consultant and administrator, doesn’t ask art to be simple.

“There is a question,” she says “of what art really is. We’re not going to define it.”

She does however go into what public art is – something recursive, and non-repeatable. It is a definable object. It is something that everyone (and therefore no one) takes ownership of. And, in the best-case scenario, public art is something that shapes your experience of the public sphere.

Historically, it was pedestal-based, statues of generals on horse, and politicians left to the attention of loitering pigeons. It was largely separate from buildings – architects largely thought of their buildings as a piece of work in itself.

Since the 1980s, public art has become progressively more interdisciplinary, blending visual art, landscape, and building architecture brought together.

That means public art needs to serve many masters – it must be functional, it must fit with urban design, it must work with infrastructure, or be infrastructure itself. It must be non-controversial, be accessible, have texture, lighting, have seating, and above all, require no maintenance at all. Public art does, as Rina puts it, try to transcend these challenges.

That doesn’t mean it always succeeds. As Greer states, there are many variables to creating good art that works in the public realm. There are factors that make it what is it. One is the placement – how does the public move around it? What is the context its in? Does the setting make it seems smaller, or larger? Should it be part of its environment, or be placed where it can grab the viewer’s attention form first approach?

According to Greer, one of the most important factors is when the artist is included in the process.

She sites two examples of Toronto-based project she was involved in. The first was on the Spadina Streecar improvement, including the redevelopment of the Spadina and Bloor parkette. Here, many things went wrong. Neighbourhood consultations took place about what kind of art the public, yet the process moved ahead without ever bringing an artist to the table. Sidewalks were poured, and still there was no artistic leadership. It was only at the last moment when public art was brought to the table, as an afterthought.

Greer also cites the danger of public consultation – for whatever reason, the public was polled, and gave their opinion, but their suggestions were either impossible (custom-made TTC shelters that the TTC refused to maintain) or difficult to incorporate into the rest of the project (art on poles). And after suffering through a broken process, the art was roundly criticized, much to her frustration.

She went on to describe her involvement in developing art into architecture in another transit project, helping the TTC build art into a host of subway stations built in the 1990s. Here, she was able to facilitate a process that matched artists with architects before the project had even started, matching them and bringing them together in a working session to see who could work well with who.

The outcome seems to be roundly considered a success, and brought the best results that public art could offer – it gives the community something to remember. It generates a sense of shared pride, becomes known as a cultural artifact, defining the times it was made in, and the community that surrounds it.

Making the space something to remember is perhaps the most important reason to have public art. There are other, more local economic reasons – in a small way there are jobs in the industry, both the manufacture, and the response (local critics, etc.). But the most important is to bring make your city something that people want to see, giving citizens civic pride, and boosting the local hospitality industry.

She cites the Millennium Park in Chicago, which by her account is the most-visited tourist attraction in the world. Here, public art succeeds in redefining the city as something inventive and amazing, a cosmopolitan gem.

I think she’s right. I haven’t visited Chicago since Millennium Park was completed, but still I know it from both popular culture and photos of friends. The art is iconic, and memorable.

That up-beat image helps usurps the old icons of Chicago – corrupt politics, mobsters, high-rises, industrialists, wind.

Instead, a new collective association links to a well-placed Geary building arching like a frozen wave and a million-dollar gigantic jellybean that reflects throngs of common public snapping pictures amused and inspired by public art.

When she finished I had two points about public art that I wondered about. The first was about my own pleasure it renegade art – Banksy and the Toronto-based Blade, who use stencils and wheat-pasted cut-outs to lay their own artistic fingerprints on the public realm. I think she underestimates the need for public art at a micro-scale. It can go places that are harder to get approval for. It must work with its surroundings, since it has no official mandate to interact with them. Since there is rarely a funding or approval process, it can respond to social challenges.

I think Greer underestimates it, and what public art could be if that process could go forward with the assistance of someone like herself to help facilitate it going bigger and higher budget. Rina, if you’re reading this, would you consider borrowing my copy of Banksy’s Wall and Piece? Or perhaps I could try to arrange an art tour with Toronto-based Blade to see his public art pieces, pasted on buildings through Kensington Market?

My second musing was on the idea of how to bring artists to the table early in the process. One idea would be for Greer to become certified in the principals of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. Known by its acronym CPTED, it is becoming an important evaluation criteria for creating safe public spaces. It would better inform Greer to how to use public art to better serve that master. More importantly CPTED is becoming an part of the initial process of recreating public space. As the CPTED consultant, her services would be in demand from day one of a project, and so would give her a better place to bargain for integrating art with CPTED principals from the beginning, instead of fighting against them at the end.

I admired Greer’s contribution, and appreciated her frustration. I enjoy public art, and I agree that public art can and should shape the experience of a city. I wish it were doing more to define Toronto as the diverse, culture-filled city it is. Art is worth investing in. I can only hope that Chicago’s Millennium Park convinces the City of Toronto to make public art a bigger part of the public sphere, and that public art can help the city to finally fall in love with itself.

Robert Ouellette’s Talk: What is Design in the 21st Century?

By Belal Al Sibai, student, IWB

 

Within a time frame of two hours, Robert Ouellette attempted to answer from his own perspective a major question: what is design in the 21^st century?  It was a very intriguing talk, clearly answering an open-ended question, and one with millions of possible answers.

“Design is the future of competitive advantage”, Ouellette said. A powerful statement, yet very true I believe, as it has become most evident in the consumer market sector, in which more and more companies are emphasizing their product designs as the hallmark of their corporate identities.

In addition, the Business Education sector is also heading towards understanding and integrating the design perspective to a higher degree. One example is Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto. The school’s Dean, Roger Martin, has said, “In a global economy, elegant design is becoming a critical competitive advantage. Trouble is, most business folks don’t think like designers.” So it is very promising to see that this collaborative and creative mentality is being more deeply implemented in MBA programs here and elsewhere.

During this current period of time, the role of a designer has increasingly become a superior and more high profile position. The result is that design is no longer what it used to be in the past, merely a beautiful object that came last in the sequence. Design has become an integral part of everything, and especially everyday thinking. It is the inspiration and the driver to every project. And as Ouellette said, “Design should break the tension between the old and the new. It has become the connecting point between different industries as well as the different departments within an organization.”

This mentality, I believe, can be applied in the development of a new toothbrush, a chair, an aircraft, a museum, a building, or an entire city. We as designers today play a major role in our society, and we have a responsibility to manage the change-process properly  and thus help to  lead our societies toward a better future for both our cities and our environment. In the 21rst Century, design is the primary agent of change itself.

- The challenges of Public Space – Lecture by Kim Storey, Architect

by Belal Al Sibai, student, IWB.

The presentation touched upon a vital issue that is an integral part of our city systems, that of public spaces. The two main components were the following:

Sidewalks and Pathways:

These, I feel, are the veins of a city system that carry the source of life for each city, the basis of which is us, the human community. When I was listening to the presentation, I was absolutely able to relate to everything she said on a highly personal level, because this is something I use everyday in cities. I tried to compare these projects and systems between different cities I have been to around the world, such as Hamburg, Shanghai, Jeddah and Dubai. And I must say, the comparison results are very different from Toronto. I felt that Storey’s projects in Toronto are trying to achieve what Hamburg already has achieved in terms of walkable cities and lively public areas. In contrast, when looking at Jeddah and Dubai, I do not feel the same concepts could be directly applied to them, due mainly to their harsh environments. Therefore, as a result, such cities cannot function easily as outdoor public areas, and rather, their public interaction is focused upon the indoor domains.

I very much loved and do strongly support the idea of having sidewalks that not only act as a form of transportation and navigation through the city, but also as a public interaction space, which supports a more lively lifestyle and active interaction between people. In addition, the proposed design concepts Storey presented, such as creating more interesting pathways, beautiful landscaping throughout the sidewalks, and inviting seating areas, are absolutely brilliant in the way they address our social needs.

Public Spaces: (Dundas Square)

I was totally thrilled to discover that this Square did not exist a few years back in Toronto, because it seemed to me so logical and such a hugely important part of a large city to have an actual public square (an agora) at its center. I really enjoyed listening to how this idea was proposed, about all the struggles that the design firm had to go through, and to see exactly why they designed it as it has been realized.

After the presentation that day, I actually walked up to Dundas Square and had my dinner in that space for the first time. I tried to observe all the details she mentioned about in the presentation. For me, it was great to physically experience what she was telling us about, because I can better understand it through looking at it in person. Surely this must be the essence of what public spaces are all about, or should be.

The wondering streets touched by Jane Jacobs

A review of Mary Soderstrom’s The Walkable City: From Haussmann’s Boulevards to Jane Jacobs’ Streets and Beyond, Chapter 4: Jane Jacbobs in New York and Toronto, by Robyn Polan, Student at the Institute without Boundaries.

 

One is able to live in a place for quite some time without understanding its history; and not knowing the people whom shaped that history. As a child one might travel up and down the Allen Expressway, in Toronto, a gazillion times and be unaware that it is incomplete, and why it is that way.

Soderstorm takes us on Jane Jacobs’ journey from New York to Toronto. Reliving her adventures of transforming and shaping both cities and recapping the various books she has written in her lifetime.

The Walkable City has given me a little peak into my past, as Jacobs’ has played a small role in fashioning my life and all Torontonians lives. It didn’t surprise me that Jacobs’ and her family were drawn to Toronto, from New York during the draft. Toronto, after New York, is the second tallest city in North America. In the 60s and 70s many large apartment buildings were built surrounding the city, when many people were moving away from the city. As a result the the outskirts of the City of Toronto has developed more up than out. This type of development left a lot of open space, which has now become underused. Today, these buildings have surpassed their predicted 30-year life and are in great need of repair. The Mayor’s Tower Renewal Project is dedicated to upgrading these buildings to become more energy efficient and to use the underused open space for new developments for residential and commercial purposes creating mixed-use and mixed-income neighbourhoods. Unaware or not, the City is encapsulating Jacobs’ visions as she “pointed out that a mix of old and new buildings allows for people of different incomes to live together, and for businesses to start up with relatively little capital. Like Richard Florida, who was strongly influenced by her thought, she understood the low rents – particularly mixed among more upscale buildings – fostered new ventures among the young and the edgy” (Soderstorm, 2008, p.65).

I can now understand why my family, along with our neighbours, protested when the City was repaving our street. The red cobblestone, which was identified as a heritage item was carefully removed and replaced to create the new street. If it were up to the city planners Glenayr Road would be no wondering place today. This is modern evidence of what Jacobs’ stated so long ago:

“It soon became obvious to me, as I looked at what was being built and what was working, that city planning had nothing to do with how cities worked successfully in real life” (Soderstorm, 2008, p.64).

Dundas Square – Anna Milan

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Kim Storey from Brown + Storey Architects speak about her past and current projects. The majority of her projects focused on streetscape and open space development. A large focus of her presentation was on the development of Dundas Square, a public square in Toronto located on the southeast corner of Yonge Street and Dundas Street. In the 1990s the square’s site was occupied by independent retail stores and considered to be a dangerous area. Starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the retail stores were demolished and the development of the square was started. Being one of the busiest intersections in Canada, exiting to a large linear subway station and adjacent to the longest street in Ontario (Yonge Street) the square was meant to be a showcase where people could gather, relax and enjoy the area.

Storey talked about the development of the square from start to finish. The square was made up of four main elements; a sitting area covered by a canopy, a stage, large open area to gather and a linear set of water features.

After the presentation I walked over to Dundas Square. On a sunny, Saturday afternoon there were families sitting and eating food, young adults chatting on the stone benches, a group of adults playing checkers at the tables and a series of vendors selling merchandise. There was a mixture of ages, cultures and activities within the square.

The square was very welcoming and even though the square was fully made up of infrastructure and no green space, it had a sense of being a peaceful place. But as I looked past the square’s perimeter I was reminded of the City of Toronto’s choice of advertising and building architecture which made me want to retreat back into the square. I was comforted to know that Storey had no input into the bright advertising or adjacent bold buildings. The canopy along the north-side acts as a clean division from the square and the commercial elements across the street. In Storey’s talk it was refreshing to hear how she tried to develop a space that worked for the residents of the city, while having to deal with elements out of her control. It was obvious that Dundas Square had achieved this.

Sharing of public space – Nick Crampton

Kim Storey, Architect and Urban Planner
Having come to Toronto for the first time in 2007, I have only ever known the space at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas as an overtly commercialised attempt at appearing like some sort of ‘Time Square Junior’. I have never known the discount stores, arcades and fast-food joints that once populated the area. In my Toronto, Yonge and Dundas has always been associated with crass shrines to American commercialism. On a subsequent visit to the city, I finally noticed the open public space beneath, which basked in a neon glow on a humid summer evening. Now, a resident of Toronto, that same halo of lights helps me quickly identify the location of this “heart of the city” from my bedroom window. So I was indeed interested, when I heard that we would be hosting the architect of this square at the IwB, to hear what the architect of the space had to say about the surrounding area.
It turns out I had passed judgement prematurely. Kim Storey, of Brown+Storey architects, designed Dundas Square which has absolutely no connection (she made a point of noting) to the garish structures surrounding it. With this correction made, I began to think back to my first experience of the square. I suddenly remembered the fountains that sprang forth from the slabs of granite like geysers, providing relief from the summer humidity to playing children. I also remembered relaxing with a friend, amongst hundreds of people sharing this space of repose while life continued around us at a feverous pace. This space actually offered a place for the city to converge and to seek respite from the neon barrage that surrounded it. This square is but one project in Kim Storey’s portfolio and I was intrigued to learn of her work and her worldview during her lecture.
Kim Storey has been a partner in the architectural firm B+SA with James Brown since 1981. The firm seems to be most recognised for their work in public space and recreation landscape design. She opened her lecture by discussing her ethic of how public space should be shared. She, like Enrique Peñalosa whom I coincidentally heard speak the previous week, sees the street as the public space that connects the countless private spaces in our cities. She advocates for a balance of power in this space, stating that if one user has more power than others, then these other users invariably suffer. Taking her firm’s project on St. George Street as an example, we can see how this ethic was exemplified. A busy, car-dominated street was narrowed, allowing for more pedestrian and bicycle space as well as space for trees and greenery. Fully-pedestrian zones and the narrowing of vast intersections further pushed the balance of power in the public space towards equality. What is ironic about this development is that it is essentially (in terms of road width) returning to the street’s original plan, before the automobile age changed it to serve cars rather than humans. This begs the question of whether this return to past notions of design will in fact push us forward towards better future designs. It was unfortunate to learn that her firm’s bid for the redevelopment of Bloor Street several years ago was not approved, as it would have brought similar improvements to that stretch of road which is just now being re-designed.
It was interesting to draw parallels between Storey’s work and beliefs and those of Peñalosa. In fact her firm recently completed work on the West Toronto Railpath, which immediately made me think of the bicycle and pedestrian path, many hundreds of kilometres long, that Peñalosa built in Bogota to connect marginalised neighbourhoods to the city. Will this path have the same effect on the communities to the west of Downtown Toronto? It was particularly inspiring to see how an architect can infuse political and social beliefs into designs in the way Kim Storey has. The ethics of equality and the need for places for large groups to congregate – and protest in particular – are strongly rooted in the designs she produces.

Storey speaks of the street.

A review of a lecture by Kim Storey, Brown + Storey Architects Inc., by Robyn Polan, Student at the Institute without Boundaries.

Though I have never had the luxury of hearing Jane Jacobs speak, I can imagine that Kim Storey would be much like her. Kim Storey is a successful Toronto based architect, who uses her unique poise to articulate design concepts she is trying to convey to her audience. During her lecture at the IwB she focused on various redevelopments in Toronto that her Architecture firm either designed for a competition or by contract. Such as: St. George St., College St., Bloor St., Dundas Square and the West Toronto Rail Path.

Within architectural design, her main focus is on the street and other types of paths and spaces that can be transformed for pedestrian use. Storey heavily focuses on the balance between systems within a city and expressed that if one foundation is overriding, than you have a bad street.

The various redevelopment and design projects that her firm has worked on are very much driven by research of the natural environment. For example, when they underwent an extensive mapping exercise of underground streams to form public space. Once the information was collected they were able to chart street grids against this to form schoolyards, houses and main streets, focusing on density and infrastructure. Their justification of the project was to create an open space system of parks over the stream to create revenue. I agree with Storey that it is important to begin to understand these connections of systems and bring them into the realm of design to start reconnecting with nature and the natural world. Storey has found that it is hard for people to understand the purpose of these rigorous studies and is trying to educate more people into understanding how, for example, a typology study of open space can create important tools for understanding a city.

Storey has worked on many successful and innovative projects throughout Toronto. I found the West Toronto Rail Path the most inspiring project that she presented, as it utilizes human factors design. This design utilizes unused space beside a rail line and transforms it into biking and walking path. Beginning at Dupont and Dundas and heading southeast, connecting to the Junction Neighbourhood and then the Wellington bike lane to downtown. The sustainable path and linear park system is proposed to be 6.5km long and service 250,000 people.

Moreover, the most intriguing aspect of her lecture that I will be able to utilize within the projects being conducted at the IwB, is Storey’s design process. All of Storey’s designs are driven by an intensive research phase, where information of the site is highly scrutinized to support the implementation of her designs. It is important for designs to be driven by research and the work done at Brown + Storey Architects Inc. is a grand example of that.