Celebrating

In Toronto, they recently celebrated 35 Years Without the Spadina Expressway! This may seem like a bizzare thing to celebrate but given how many large scale bad projects cities have had to learn to live with this comes as a refreshing surprise.
Marshall McLuhan and Jane Jacobs were among the notables
who were opposed to the construction of the expressway.
Said McLuhan “Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into its heart… our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In an age of software Metro planners treat people like hardware — they haven’t the faintest interest in the values of neighbourhoods or community. Their failure to learn from the mistakes of American cities will be ours too.”
Here is a rendering on the proposed expressway.

And in Montreal we know from our own Decarie Expressway that the drawing is probably an idyllic version of a certain urban nightmare.

(ok, that only happened once, heh heh)

Wouldn’t it be great if in 35 years we are celebrating that the development of Turcot Yards was NOT a series of light industrial boxes the access of which would make life miserable for anyone who needs to go near the place?

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