“Toronto the Ordinary” by Jack Diamond

Toronto the Ordinary

The author’s opening statement from The Walrus Toronto Project Debate at the AGO

By Jack Diamond • October 13, 2011 • 2 Comments

In supporting the motion “Be it resolved that Toronto will never be beautiful,” I want to make clear that we are not talking about its livability, but its beauty, or rather, its lack thereof. An old pair of worn slippers may be comfortable, but hardly beautiful. In many respects Toronto is a wonderful city in which to live, but it cannot be called beautiful.

So, let’s begin by defining “beautiful” as it applies to cities. There is, I believe, general consensus that Paris, Venice, St. Petersburg, and perhaps Dublin are among the most beautiful cities in the world. What characterizes their beauty is:

First, their man-made forms. Streets and avenues, parks and squares, that are planned and designed together with the buildings that define them; that terminate or provide gateways to attractive, sometimes dramatic vistas; that enhance the monuments contained by them; and that are embellished by the landscapes that are an intrinsic part of the whole.

Second, they not only have a relationship to their major geographical features, but they celebrate them, whether canals, rivers or oceans.

Third, most of all they were lucky enough to be built at times when an architecture of human scale and refined detail was prevalent. Above all there is a consistency of sufficient magnitude to impart a strong character to the place. When one lifts one’s eyes and looks in any direction in those cities, one’s heart is also lifted.

Fourth, they have the fiscal and constitutional powers to spend as they choose.

The resolution we are to debate is that Toronto will never, in those terms, be beautiful. So now let us compare Toronto to that which, by definition, constitutes a beautiful city.

First, Toronto’s configuration is one of relentless grids, unless it’s the confusing maze of the suburb; streets, squares, and buildings are not planned, designed, and built as part and parcel of one another; parks are separate entities and squares few and far between; the landscape is an afterthought.

Second, we can hardly claim to have celebrated our relationship to our greatest geographical asset, the lake. The way we build our public spaces makes no accommodation for our severe winter, which would indeed give authentic character to our city — unless, of course, you consider our downtown pedestrian sewers beautiful.

Third, Toronto was built in a series of building booms, all at the wrong time, in terms of the then-prevailing architectural style: either that of Presbyterian narrowness and architectural mediocrity, or the architecture of real estate aggressiveness, or, lately, of so-called iconic architecture, whose iconography is only that of extreme individualism, profligate waste, and exceptionally poor form, baubles for the amusement of provincial taste. Taken together, an architectural cacophony.

Worst of all are the suburbs. They ensure socio-economic segregation (not a pretty thing), and are made up of endlessly banal architecture. We have to remember that by far the preponderant area of the city is the low-density residential sprawl that surrounds the core and the inner city neighbourhoods.

Fourth and finally, constitutionally the city is a supplicant, begging for crumbs at the provincial and federal tables, where those governments dine scrumptiously off the proceeds of its urban vassals. This constitutional arrangement is not about to change any time soon. As a consequence we have not even enough of the wherewithal for essential infrastructure and basic services, let alone for a planning and restructuring of the city to render it beautiful. The likelihood of provincial and federal politicians giving up fiscal power to the city is about as likely as those opposing this resolution tonight of winning an unwinnable debate.

These physical, geographical, attitudinal, and constitutional constraints make it impossible to shape what is a very ordinary place into a thing of beauty.

Jack Diamond, of Diamond and Schmitt Architects, is one of Canada’s premier architects. He delivered these remarks on October 12, 2011 at The Walrus Toronto Project Debate at the AGO.