Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1171

How often do you see it around town? 

Here in Toronto, I can’t say that I see ours all that often outside of city hall. Am I missing it? Here’s what it looks like:

In other cities, such as Chicago, the city flag seems to be far more ubiquitous. Here’s what Chicago’s looks like:

In the case of Toronto’s flag, the two white bands are meant to represent the architecture of Toronto City Hall . The maple leaf is the Council Chamber at the bottom. And there is some suggestion of a letter “T” for Toronto. Wikipedia says the “T” is supposed to be found in the blue space between and above the two towers of city hall, but I’ve always seen the two white bands as being the “T.”

In the case of Chicago’s flag, the blue bands represent the lake and river (I like that) and the four six-sided stars represent significant events in the history of the city (positioned between the two bodies of water to mimic its actual geography).

Roman Mars of 99% Invisible has a great podcast and TED talk on this topic . (The study of flags is known as vexillology.) In both instances, he outlines what he believes to be the 5 rules of great flag design. They are:

1. Keep it simple
   

2. Use meaningful symbolism
   

3. Use 2-3 basic colors
   

4. No lettering or seals
   

5. Be distinctive
   

Toronto’s flag generally conforms to these rules. But there’s something about the positioning of the maple leaf that makes the flag feel a bit arbitrary to me. I want to rationalize it.

In any event, I think it could be really interesting if all of us shared our city’s flag in the comment section below and made a comment about how ubiquitous it is within the urban landscape.

Roman makes the argument that a great flag gives people something to rally behind. And with cities only becoming more important on the global stage, there’s something to be said about having a well-designed flag today.

I wonder if there will be a correlation between good flag design and ubiquity. My guess: probably.

Art Basel Miami Beach is going on right now so a few of us were talking about it in the office this week. If I had the time, I would have loved to go back this year.

I think it’s great how Miami (Beach) seems to be infusing art, design, and culture into seemingly everything it does.

Here is a really well done video tour of Miami’s Faena District (via Wallpaper*). It’s definitely worth a watch. Screenshot below.

If you don’t know the story behind Alan Faena, you should also  read up . He’s an Argentinian fashion designer turned real estate developer.

I came across an interesting discussion on Twitter last night about tunnels, bridges, elevated walkways, and Toronto’s elaborate (mostly) underground shopping complex known as the PATH . It’s the largest of its kind in the world.

Here’s the thing: the idea of pulling people off the street and into an underground shopping mall, runs counter to what many urbanists believe is the optimal outcome.

Below is a footnote I found in a 2006 research paper by Pierre Bélanger called, Underground landscape: The urbanism and infrastructure of Toronto’s downtown pedestrian network .

“The reluctance of urban designers and academics to engage the dynamics of the underground is stunning. For almost 50 years, urban designers, landscape architects and planners have longed for car-free pedestrian environments that are safe, secure and accessible. From a planning perspective, the Toronto underground may be the ultimate form of attrition of the automobile on the urban landscape: there are no parking lots, no asphalt, and no congestion. With its mass-transit accessibility, it is an ideal pedestrian network. This reluctance may in part be attributable to a prevailing attitude that privately-controlled underground shopping is undesirable, at best dismissible. As self-contained environments, they are perceived as lying outside the so-called public domain and that they kill off street life. As a more legitimate form of collective space, street-level activity located within municipal right-of-ways therefore receives much more advocacy.”

Of course, there is truth to the notion that activity gets concentrated below grade. When people visit Toronto’s Financial District for the first time, they’ll often ask: Where is the retail? And then you have to explain that it’s all underground and that we live like mole people from 9-5.

But despite this reluctance on the part of urbanists, people do seem to like it. When you’re marketing a building in the CBD, being PATH-connected is a feature, not a bug. I always joke that in the summer, I hate the PATH. But in the winter, I love it. 

There’s also a feeling of hyper-connectivity during business hours in the PATH – particularly at lunch. You have everyone leaving their desks, descending from their towers, and mixing all about in a dense pedestrian-only network. It’s unusual not to run into someone you know.

So love it or hate it, perhaps we should appreciate it for what it is: thriving city life.