Sugar Beach, the waterfront park whose pink umbrellas, white sand and lush willows launched tourism ads and a thousand Instagram posts.Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press
Almost 60 years ago, Toronto opened a new City Hall that looked to the future. The product of an international design competition, the “clamshell” embodied the city’s new ambition. “What we are building,” mayor Nathan Phillips boasted in a radio broadcast, “has been called one of the great architectural achievements of our time.”
What great places has Toronto built since then?
Surprisingly few. Toronto Councillor Josh Matlow thinks the city needs more, and that a city designer and architect will help. In June, city council adopted Mr. Matlow’s motion for the city to explore such a role as well as citywide standards for public places.
He is right: Toronto needs to work harder, and smarter, at being more beautiful.
The first step is to admit the public sector has a problem. Mr. Matlow does. “Toronto has seemingly strived to meet the height of mediocrity when it comes to design,” he said in a recent interview. He is particularly concerned with the state of parks and streets, including street furniture. “Toronto doesn’t often enough make the effort to be its best.”
He is right. As I have argued, Toronto’s government has no culture of design.
The lack of rigour and ambition is palpable. Why do Toronto parks have so little seating, so little shade, ugly garbage bins and no cafés? Why, in an expensive new downtown community centre, is there almost nowhere to sit and hang out?
And where are the public places, such as City Hall, that express the city’s aspirations?
Nobody at city hall is asking. The planning department has no design vision at all. Elsewhere in City Hall, mid-level staff quietly deliver “capital projects” such as streets, parks, libraries, subway stations, recreation centres and housing.
The city spends a lot of money at these projects. The 10-year capital budget for the parks, forestry and recreation department is $2.7-billion. The library adds another $565-million by 2033. Don’t even ask about the roads budget.
Yet while Toronto’s Official Plan calls for “interesting architecture and urban design,” the reality is often dull and sloppy. The main problem is not a lack of resources. It is culture. The city makes capital plans, then hires the same architecture and landscape firms over and over. In this insular world, no one has an incentive to ask whether a building could be a bit smaller or more efficient – or more interesting.
Change is possible. If Mr. Matlow’s efforts are successful, he said, the new city architect and designer will start with reforming procurement. That is an easy win; the best designers in the country, and beyond, would be eager to design public projects here. Let them.
Mr. Matlow also argues that the city designer and architect should “work with the existing bureaucracy.” This is right, at least for now. Toronto does not need more process. It needs an in-house advocate, with real power from the mayor’s office, to focus on specific places and improve them.
In the long term, there are many models for public design. Design Montréal and numerous European offices, including the “master builder” of Flanders in Belgium, use design competitions to create fine public projects. New York City’s Design and Construction Excellence Program and Edmonton’s city architect’s office use other tools toward the same ends. London’s Good Growth By Design, under Mayor Sadiq Khan, emphasizes “the value of high quality and accessible buildings and public spaces to resilience and well-being.”
And Toronto? “I know we can do better,” Mr. Matlow told me. “I challenge the city to do so.”
Waterfront Toronto brought landscape architect Claude Cormier to town with the Sugar Beach design competition in 2008. That was a gift to Toronto.1--Sarah Dea/The Globe and Mail
As he pointed out, the city sometimes builds well. He cited Sugar Beach, the waterfront park whose pink umbrellas, white sand and lush willows launched tourism ads and a thousand Instagram posts.
That, however, was not City Hall’s work. As with the successes of The Bentway and Evergreen Brick Works, it was led by an outside organization. Waterfront Toronto brought landscape architect Claude Cormier to town with the Sugar Beach design competition in 2008. That was a gift to Toronto. Mr. Cormier had a huge impact on the city before his untimely death last year.
Not every project is a new City Hall. But every one is an opportunity for creativity, and it only takes a few people to light the flame. Give Mr. Matlow credit for trying to strike a match.