Sunday afternoon I decided to walk uptown Toronto on Yonge St. to reach the Kinkos shop so I could mass print a few documents. The weather was stable enough and it felt just right a stroll after lunch.
The whole corridor between Finch Ave. and Sheppard Ave. on Yonge has been a constant crescendo of high rise activities since 2000, between the realization of the purple subway line and the many Asian restaurants that replaced the old pubs and burger joints.
The apartment complexes running along the street are coasted by two large low-density residential areas to the west and to the east side, virtually shielding them from sight. Plenty of food from sushi to Korean bbq, from pharmacies to bubble tea shops, it’s a vibrant and young portion of town that will keep you busy if you are a foodie.
Mel Lastman’s Square is great for public events, but its positioning doesn’t attract people.
However, if you slow down and pay attention you will notice the lack of public spaces with the exception of Mel Lastman’s Square; the rest is sidewalks and a series of missed opportunities that would have given a better look and functionality to this part of town.
The square especially has a problem in terms of accessibility since it doesn’t generate pedestrian flow. People have their major entrance and exit point only from the Yonge St. side, leaving the back unattended for lack of opening. The place feels rushed in terms of design development, and the facts it has limited entry and sight doesn’t help.
Squeezed between two towers, an attempt at public space suddenly appears.
I took a picture of a portion of space between two buildings that allegedly should work as public dominion, unfortunately it’s always empty and leads to nowhere but private property access. Indented areas don’t really work if there’s no accessibility from either side when built this way, pedestrian activity doesn’t happen because there’s no source of foot traffic transiting through.
This spot would have worked better if it featured a more welcoming sitting configuration and some flowers too, unfortunately it wasn’t well kept and weeds grew out of the large green container. The overwhelming use of metal elements to create this space make it feel cold and unwelcoming.
The Bauhaus nostalgia is strong with this one.
Close to the sitting area the North York Centre functions as shopping area for thousands of residents and visitors. Inside it hosts a cinema, a large grocery store, restaurants, health clinics, electronic shops, subway stop, and formerly a two-story Staples point which is now no more leaving a huge retail vacancy that removed the only bit of colour from its facade.
From outside the industrial look minimizes its appeal removing any human element form it. The lack of distinctive patterns and vegetation alienates the pedestrian from having a pleasant interaction with the place, also the absence of alternative space arrangement emphasizes the frenetic flow of people along the sidewalk: nowhere to stop, nowhere to sit, it’s not meant to have anyone gazing around or stopping to contemplate.
What punishes this urban setting is the verticality of Yong St. which left no options for an alternative design to happen; intersections are at right angles and leave no room for the public realm to properly exists. This pushes these areas to become sad enclaves of private spaces that oust the public from enjoying their towns.
Diagonal, a missing term in the urban design manual of North America.
Alternatively, the design would have improved if roads took a different angle than crossing at 90 degrees with each other. The Spanish city of Barcelona is characterized by the Avinguda Diagonal, a large and important street which goes through the whole city without running parallel with other roads. Paris is another example of alternatives to the repetitive pattern of road grids that characterizes Canada and the US.
Diagonal street design has the ability to make cities feel more organic and less artificial, they allow for more sidewalk space to exist and therefore to grant access to more pedestrian traffic and business activity which can expand outdoor.
Above the aerial view of the portion of Yong St. and Mel Lastman’s square with an alternative design: purple lines represent additional roads that help relieving traffic directions, red is the focal point that connects all the streets, the dashed yellow line represents a much bigger possible public space pedestrians can enjoy and business to thrive.
The current setting of designing roads doesn’t allow for a natural flow of pedestrians, but rather a parallel dynamic dictated by the car traffic directions. This is one of the reasons these areas don’t collect as much people as they should. At random times through the day you can see the lack of people, the only instant they have activity is during lunch hour when office workers eat their meals in the square.
A cafe in Paris where outdoor seating is a must, even in the winter.
Intersections that meet at different angles have the ability to generate more sidewalk space for people to experience. Cafes in Paris flourished because of this road design which allows commercial activities to extend their seating capacities just outside their doors, becoming a staple reference point for citizens and for cities to become alive.
Bars and outdoor seating areas are greatly cherished and respected in Europe as they represent the quintessential experience of claiming the public space which rightfully belongs to the people. On the contrary, in North America, the systematic absence of the public realm has favored the car-culture to bloom uninterrupted, creating more harm than anything else to cities, pedestrians, and the environment.
The pleasant sight of people filling the streets and enjoying the public realm, a rarity in North America.
Why does this happen less frequently in Canada and the US?- It’s understandable how the weather of certain portions these two country experience has its own impact; however, the good season allows for metropolitan areas to have their share of pedestrians activity to fill the streets.
The current design of cities in these two countries developed around the Industrial Revolution period, where the need for mechanized transportation was already in place, so roads had to be able to host a large flow of private transportation which later transformed society with the advent of the car and the birth of the suburbs, thus more road lanes and less space for pedestrians.
All in all, cities never stop to change especially when we talk about Toronto, now the 4th largest metropolis in North America; so there are big shoes to fill from this perspective. Tourism can greatly benefit from extended pedestrian areas that concentrate people granting more time to be spent around business activity.
In the end we should rethink the way we perceive the public realm. Public as for pedestrian to use, not for cars to generate more traffic that already exists, so it’s essential for citizens to demand from their local and national political representatives to broaden their views in terms of environmental issues. It’s not just a matter of how many trees you plant, but how much space families and tourists can benefit from a better developed city.
“Black pleasure is a political act in the era of anti-black (& poor) state sanctioned violence. It is more important than ever to secure healing spaces that revive spirits as they uplift souls. As I’ve learned, calls to embrace black joy become revolutionary in the wake of the dehumanization of the militarized carceral state.” - Jallicia Jolly
It goes by many names: hostile, defensive, disciplinary. This style of architecture, which makes use of spikes, barricades, protrusions and checkpoints to prevent society’s unwanted from inhabiting public spaces, is not new. But its forms are proliferating, and it can now be found in urban centers across the globe, from Tokyo to Copenhagen.
As Alex Andreou put it in a recent Guardian article, “Urban spaces are aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.” Andreou first noticed these examples of “anti-bum” architecture after a lost job and crumbling relationship left him out on the London streets, forced to seek shelter where he could find it. This proved more difficult than expected. From surveillance cameras that detect the presence of loiterers to window ledges ridged with spikes, Andreou encountered a built environment that was specifically designed to keep people like him out of public view. “It reveals how corporate hygiene has overridden human considerations, especially in retail districts,” Andreou writes.
The ostensible purpose of defensive architecture is security, and in some areas, particularly around major government buildings or high-density shopping malls, this may well be appropriate. But this style of design cannot be untethered from broader anti-vagrancy efforts, particularly in the United States.
AlterNet’s activism editor Alyssa Figueroa recently wrote about the many examples of municipal legislation used to restrict the movements and behaviors of the homeless; in California alone, there are 500 such laws on the books. They criminalize behaviors such as resting, begging, food-sharing or public urination, not taking into account how difficult it is for homeless people to find open beds in shelters, afford access to public restrooms, or pay fines. Hostile architecture facilitates the work of law enforcement by making it physically impossible for the homeless to inhabit public spaces. Neither approach actually addresses the root causes of homelessness, but instead shoves it out of sight.
Though defensive architecture primarily targets the homeless, it has profound and far-reaching social consequences. Teenagers, skateboarders, the elderly, pregnant, and infirm are all affected by spiked benches that don’t allow them a place to rest or by aggressive music designed to drive them away. “By making the city less accepting of the human frame,” Andreou writes, “we make it less welcoming to all humans. By making our environment more hostile, we become more hostile within it.”
Here are five examples of how disciplinary architecture is transforming the built environment of our cities.
1. Spikes, Cones and Pig’s Ears
These are one of the most ubiquitous examples of defensive architecture. Tiny metal spikes along fences, in doorways and on highway underpasses make it impossible for people to sleep or sit on these surfaces. Typically smooth surfaces like sidewalks become riddled with spikes, cement cones and protrusions. Pig’s ears, or small metal flanges, are inserted along low dividing walls and benches to deter skateboarders from riding on them. In Barcelona, a city with an enduring history of street prostitution, corrugated metal strips are attached to pull-down security grates in order to prevent prostitutes from congregating in shop doorways. And in China’s Shangdong province, city officials have installed coin-operated park benches that briefly retract their metal spikes only after the sitter feeds the meter.
2. Pavement Sprinklers
The convenient thing about defensive architecture is that it’s easy to come up with alternate explanations for its existence. Instead of admitting it’s a punitive measure, city officials and storeowners can explain it away as a means of shooing away pigeons, protecting sensitive locations like banks, or in this example, cleaning the streets.
In 2013, the Strand Bookstore in lower Manhattan, long a landmark for book-loving bargain hunters—and a refuge for the local homeless population—took a drastic measure. Managers noticed that people would camp out overnight under the store’s famous wide red awning, making it difficult for employees to set up the outdoor book carts in the morning and deterring potential customers. In response, they installed overnight pavement sprinklers that doused the sleepers and their possessions with periodic blasts of water.
The store manager insisted the sprinklers’ sole purpose was to keep the sidewalks clean and free of refuse. This would be much easier to believe or to write off as a coincidence if similar measures hadn’t been implemented in other cities, such as HamburgandGuangzhou.
3. Unpleasant Noises
Not all aspects of defensive architectural are structural. Some rely on aural and visual cues to disperse unwanted individuals. In 2012, managers at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco resorted to unusual extremes to prevent people from sleeping on the auditorium steps. Using large outdoor speakers, management blasted the iTunes “industrial” soundtrack, a cacophony of motorcycle, jackhammer and chainsaw noises, from 11pm to 7am. The Vice President of Another Planet Entertainment, the company that manages the auditorium, called the soundtrack a “tremendously effective deterrent.”
Similar techniques have been used to target teenagers and prevent them from congregating in public parks and major downtown areas. So-called “mosquito” devices emit high-pitched tones that are only audible to young people—the human equivalent of a dog whistle.
4. Checkpoints and Privatized Public Space
By claiming sidewalks, public parks and city squares as private space, architects and store chains radically decrease the number of areas where the homeless can rest or sit. These areas are delineated with signs, barricades and in some downtown areas, militaristic checkpoints.
ArtistNils Norman has spent the last two decades documenting examples of disciplinary architecture from around the world. He has found countless incidents of the private reclamation of areas that were once communal, from checkpoints that block off streets in Manhattan’s Financial District to signs warning passersby that London’s Paternoster Square is private land and cannot be entered without permission. As proof of how access to communal spaces is selectively enforced, these signs were only erected after Occupy London protesters attempted to camp out in the square.
5. Benches and Seating
In California, legislators recently introduced the Right to Rest Act, a law that would protect all citizens’ right to occupy public spaces without fear of harassment or arrest. This legislation seems particularly critical given that cities are intentionally designing benches, seating and public squares to be off limits for homeless people looking for a place to sit or sleep. Nils Norman has chronicled hundreds such examples, from curved subway station perches that are fit only for leaning against to bus stop seats separated by dividers, preventing people from lying down. The curved design of benches in public parks also renders them unfit for sleeping.These design tweaks are so subtle ordinary people probably wouldn’t notice them, but to homeless people, they speak volumes. Ocean Howell, a University of Oregon professor quoted in Andreou’s Guardian article, says, “When you’re designed against, you know it…. The message is clear: you are not a member of the public, at least not of the public that is welcome here.”
Editor’s note: Nils Norman graciously gave AlterNet permission to use his photographs for this article.
I’ve seen multiple people genuinely asking whats wrong with playing their music on a speaker/their phone in public rather than through headphones. While it baffles me that you can’t reason it out I’m taking it in good faith that you genuinely don’t know - so here’s a list of reasons you shouldn’t:
- It sounds bad. It doesnt matter if people like the song, you might be close enough to your phone speaker for it to sound largely as intended, but everyone else is getting a distorted mess.
- Unwanted noise is extra stimulation in the already overpowering public space. Yes this is particularly bad for neurodivergent people but I actually want to acknowledge that this effects Everyone. Everyone has a stimulation threshold and unwanted music easily pushes people closer to it.
- Its distracting/disruptive. People want to focus on their own conversations, listen to their own music through their earbuds, or just be alone with their thoughts. Your music is intruding.
- Differing taste. This one is less significant but people around you just dont always like the same music you do. In extreme cases they might actively hate a song you’re playing.
- People have the right to as close to silence as they can get. If they’re in a shop playing obnoxious music they can leave, they can change the radio in their car, they can skip the song on their playlist. They have no control over what you are putting on and in bus situations they can’t get away from you.
- Any other number of reasons; Maybe your music is offensive, maybe its uncensored and there are children about, maybe someone just got horrible news and your perky feelgood song feels like salt in the wound, maybe someone’s sick or hungover or in pain and your music feels like a drill to the skull.
You might think your music is good, it might make you smile after a hard day. Nobody is saying dont listen at all, just put in earphones. To everyone around you its the equivilent of a drunk guy singing loudly and off key at the back of the bus. Maybe it makes some people smile to think he’s having a good time, maybe some people are scared his lack of boundaries will mean he could act out, maybe some people wish he would just shut up.
you are controlling an aspect of a public space which affects everyone in that space. That’s the jist of it. By playing music in public, you’re saying “my desired sound and its volume are all that matters, and nobody else’s”. That’s why quiet, beyond a reasonable speaking volume, should be the default in public. If quietness is unsettling to you, you can fix it by listening to something through earbuds without affecting anyone else, but if too much/the wrong kind of noise is unsettling to others, it’s much harder for them to block it out.
Shared spaces should be kept at conditions tolerable to everyone, where reasonable. That’s almost the definition of a shared space. If you dominate that space in some way, eg by playing music out loud, you are making it your space. You are making it unwelcoming for others. That is rude and anti-social behavior.
“At the beginning, when this was the seat of power between the election and the inauguration, it felt subversive to stand here and hold a book. (…) It still feels like contested space. But now, instead of protesters, it’s occupied by Secret Service and law enforcement.”
Koreatown is the most densely populated section of Los Angeles. Guess how many parks it has…
Exactly zero. No parks in all of K-Town.
In this booming urban corridor increasingly smothered in concrete and glass, A public outdoor space for respite would be welcome.
People need parks. That’s what psychologists and urban planners say, anyway.
And the residents of Koreatown were about to get one at Wilshire and Hobart back in 2011. The requisite millions had been allocated and earmarked. But, as reporter Victoria Kim writes, five years later, a 346-unit luxury apartment building dubbed the Pearl on Wilshire is taking root where Koreatown Central Park was slated to go.
Will it have even a park bench for the public to sit on? Nope. But, it will have a dog wash, yoga room, putting green and spa – for residents.
“Where people do not have much political power, they don’t have a strong voice to demand parks.”
— Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, professor of urban planning at UCLA
What went wrong? Council President Herb Wesson’s spokeswoman blames bad timing and the recession. Wesson’s district includes most of Koreatown.
So what now? The councilman has proposed turning part of the local library branch’s parking lot into a pocket park, with parking underground.
I’ve seen multiple people genuinely asking whats wrong with playing their music on a speaker/their phone in public rather than through headphones. While it baffles me that you can’t reason it out I’m taking it in good faith that you genuinely don’t know - so here’s a list of reasons you shouldn’t:
- It sounds bad. It doesnt matter if people like the song, you might be close enough to your phone speaker for it to sound largely as intended, but everyone else is getting a distorted mess.
- Unwanted noise is extra stimulation in the already overpowering public space. Yes this is particularly bad for neurodivergent people but I actually want to acknowledge that this effects Everyone. Everyone has a stimulation threshold and unwanted music easily pushes people closer to it.
- Its distracting/disruptive. People want to focus on their own conversations, listen to their own music through their earbuds, or just be alone with their thoughts. Your music is intruding.
- Differing taste. This one is less significant but people around you just dont always like the same music you do. In extreme cases they might actively hate a song you’re playing.
- People have the right to as close to silence as they can get. If they’re in a shop playing obnoxious music they can leave, they can change the radio in their car, they can skip the song on their playlist. They have no control over what you are putting on and in bus situations they can’t get away from you.
- Any other number of reasons; Maybe your music is offensive, maybe its uncensored and there are children about, maybe someone just got horrible news and your perky feelgood song feels like salt in the wound, maybe someone’s sick or hungover or in pain and your music feels like a drill to the skull.
You might think your music is good, it might make you smile after a hard day. Nobody is saying dont listen at all, just put in earphones. To everyone around you its the equivilent of a drunk guy singing loudly and off key at the back of the bus. Maybe it makes some people smile to think he’s having a good time, maybe some people are scared his lack of boundaries will mean he could act out, maybe some people wish he would just shut up.
you are controlling an aspect of a public space which affects everyone in that space. That’s the jist of it. By playing music in public, you’re saying “my desired sound and its volume are all that matters, and nobody else’s”. That’s why quiet, beyond a reasonable speaking volume, should be the default in public. If quietness is unsettling to you, you can fix it by listening to something through earbuds without affecting anyone else, but if too much/the wrong kind of noise is unsettling to others, it’s much harder for them to block it out.
Shared spaces should be kept at conditions tolerable to everyone, where reasonable. That’s almost the definition of a shared space. If you dominate that space in some way, eg by playing music out loud, you are making it your space. You are making it unwelcoming for others. That is rude and anti-social behavior.
I’ve seen multiple people genuinely asking whats wrong with playing their music on a speaker/their phone in public rather than through headphones. While it baffles me that you can’t reason it out I’m taking it in good faith that you genuinely don’t know - so here’s a list of reasons you shouldn’t:
- It sounds bad. It doesnt matter if people like the song, you might be close enough to your phone speaker for it to sound largely as intended, but everyone else is getting a distorted mess.
- Unwanted noise is extra stimulation in the already overpowering public space. Yes this is particularly bad for neurodivergent people but I actually want to acknowledge that this effects Everyone. Everyone has a stimulation threshold and unwanted music easily pushes people closer to it.
- Its distracting/disruptive. People want to focus on their own conversations, listen to their own music through their earbuds, or just be alone with their thoughts. Your music is intruding.
- Differing taste. This one is less significant but people around you just dont always like the same music you do. In extreme cases they might actively hate a song you’re playing.
- People have the right to as close to silence as they can get. If they’re in a shop playing obnoxious music they can leave, they can change the radio in their car, they can skip the song on their playlist. They have no control over what you are putting on and in bus situations they can’t get away from you.
- Any other number of reasons; Maybe your music is offensive, maybe its uncensored and there are children about, maybe someone just got horrible news and your perky feelgood song feels like salt in the wound, maybe someone’s sick or hungover or in pain and your music feels like a drill to the skull.
You might think your music is good, it might make you smile after a hard day. Nobody is saying dont listen at all, just put in earphones. To everyone around you its the equivilent of a drunk guy singing loudly and off key at the back of the bus. Maybe it makes some people smile to think he’s having a good time, maybe some people are scared his lack of boundaries will mean he could act out, maybe some people wish he would just shut up.
you are controlling an aspect of a public space which affects everyone in that space. That’s the jist of it. By playing music in public, you’re saying “my desired sound and its volume are all that matters, and nobody else’s”. That’s why quiet, beyond a reasonable speaking volume, should be the default in public. If quietness is unsettling to you, you can fix it by listening to something through earbuds without affecting anyone else, but if too much/the wrong kind of noise is unsettling to others, it’s much harder for them to block it out.
Shared spaces should be kept at conditions tolerable to everyone, where reasonable. That’s almost the definition of a shared space. If you dominate that space in some way, eg by playing music out loud, you are making it your space. You are making it unwelcoming for others. That is rude and anti-social behavior.
Jesus Christ, when was the last time a swede did anything useful?
What the fuck those streets were before cars, fucking playgrounds and parks with waterslides?
Or did people commute on them, on the level of whatever technology they were on, the vere purpose they were built for since the first city?
I’m trying my best not to automatically dislike artists, I really do, but sometimes I just wish I could send them milking cows or shoveling gravel.
@santaclausdeadindian “What the fuck were those streets before cars, fucking playgrounds?”
Yes, actually.
[description: a black-and-white photo from the 1900s of a group of girls in pinafores standing in the middle of the street; according to the website I found it on, this is a ‘street dance’. The girls are talking to each other in small groups. end description.]
Children used to play in the street all the time. And for most of recorded history, that was relatively safe. Running into someone on foot is not going to kill a child, and horses - let alone carriages- were relatively rare.
Streets used to be public spaces. People would hang out and talk in the middle of the road, or set up shop with a little cart at the side of the road. “Right of way” used to mean “your right to take up space on the street, because you are a free citizen and free citizens get to use the road.”
[description: a black-and-white historical photo of two children in the middle of a mostly empty street. One child is sitting in a wagon, and the other child is standing, ready to pull it. End description.]
It wasn’t until the 19th century that it became common enough for your average joe to own horses that it was unsafe for kids to play in the street (and they still did anyway!). And it wasn’t until the early 20th century that people got cleared off of the street in favour of cars- before then, people and horses and carriages had to share the road, and carriages had to go at the same pace as whatever was around them.
We laugh at the insanely low speed limits of the 1910s and 1920s - really, cars can only go at 3 mph?- but they were there for a reason, and that reason was “to keep the roads safe for horses and pedestrians”. If cars could go at top speeds on city roads, they’d only be safe for cars, and people couldn’t use their public spaces anymore. But thanks to lobbying by the auto industry and a whoooole lot of PR spin, that’s exactly what happened.
I’m going to leave you with two pictures. The first is Mulberry Street in NYC, according to wikipedia, in 1900. The second is Mulberry Street today.
[Description: two photos of city streets. The first photo is sepia-toned, from the 1900s. It shows a city street full of people and carriages. The foreground of the photo is taken up by a group of vegetable sellers, and a group of men and young children standing beside them looking at the camera. The second photo is a modern photo of the same street. It is a heavily decorated tourist district, but most of the street is taken up by cars. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians, but they’re shoved off to the side. End description.]
Little Italy is a touristdistrict. It is meantto be walkable so that tourists can browse and look at all the little restaurants and window-shop. And yet 75% of this picture is taken up by a fucking car canal, and people- the people this street was built for - are shoved off to the side, so as not to get in the way.
People got forced off the road in favour of cars. People got forced out of public space in favour of cars.
Did you see the little featureinNew York magazine about the plans for Time Square? I am timidly hopeful, although I still don’t see myself going there willingly.
Winners of the 2014 Jane Jacobs prize: Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali. Watch this short film on their efforts to transform Toronto’s now aging suburban high-rise clusters into livable communities that work.
Starting from the observation of people’s behaviors inside public spaces and their multiple ways to have a break, Studio Bernstrand designed special pieces of furniture for the renovated Stortorget in the town of Gävle (Sweden).
The Centipede Cinema is an urban intervention that demonstrates how easily new cultural programs can be developed with minimal costs. Located in Guimarães, Portugal, this project by the Bartlett School of Architecture demonstrates how cork can be used in architecture.
The outside of the freestanding cinema is clad in a lighter colored cork while the interior is clad in dark cork to create a blackout effect.
Yellow nozzles protrude from the bottom of the cinema. These allow up to 16 people to pop in and watch a film.
Pulse of the City - literally transforming heartbeats into music
This interactive public art installation helps pedestrians playfully reconnect with the rhythm of their bodies.
Installed in five locations in Boston,the solar-powered device immediately detects a pulse when someone grabs onto it. An algorithm chooses complementary music that synchronizes with their heart rate and continues to adapt in real time for one minute, so someone jogging by will have a very different experience than someone who has been walking slowly. Pretty neat huh?
