Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1211

Everybody in Toronto is talking about one thing right now.

This:

When I got into the office this morning, someone asked what I thought about Rail Deck Park and whether or not I thought it would happen.

When I went for lunch this afternoon, someone asked what I thought about Rail Deck Park and whether or not I thought it would happen.

And I’m fully expecting that somebody else will ask me these same questions before the day is done.

For those of you who haven’t been following or aren’t from Toronto, it is a 21-acre park that is proposed to be built by decking over the rail corridor that runs from Bathurst Street in the west to the Rogers Centre in the east. See top image.

Of course, the reason everyone is asking me these questions is because it’s a wonderful idea and everyone wants it to happen. But we’re all thinking the same thing: will it and who is going to pay for it?

Here are my thoughts.

Section 42 of the Ontario Planning Act stipulates that cities may ask developers for either land or cash in order to create new parkland. 

To give you an example of how significant this can be, Spacing reported that 1 Bloor East alone – which is a single tower under construction right now – contributed $10 million into the city’s parkland reserves.

Zooming out, between 2011 and 2014 alone, developers paid almost  $300 million in park levies across the city . It’s worth noting that most of the funds collected were from development projects in the core of the city. During this same time period, wards 20, 27, and 28 alone produced  over $140 million .

Here is a chart from a  Spacing investigation  published last year that corresponds to the above stats:

The problem with all of this is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to actually deploy this capital. I mean, think about how difficult it is to buy a single family home or find a development site in this city. Now go out and try and find a piece of land in which to build a park. And do it as a cash-starved public entity that can’t engage in a bidding war.

As of September 30, 2013, the city’s  uncommitted  parkland reserve fund balance was  $234,995,348 . This includes Parkland Acquisition, Parkland Development, Alternative Parkland Dedication, and Other Reserve Funds. If anyone has a more recent figure, please share it in the comments below.

Also, the irony of this situation is that the neighborhoods producing all of the parkland funds (i.e. downtown) are precisely the areas where it’s exceptionally difficult to actually create new parks. So what I think is happening is that Mayor Tory and the rest of the city see Rail Deck Park as a perfect opportunity to turn this reserve fund money into a meaningful urban park in the core of the city.

We don’t yet know how much this park will cost and I don’t know what’s sitting in the reserve funds today. But this is my read on the situation. I doubt the reserve funds will be able to pay for it all, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. It’s worth getting creative and fighting for something as significant as Rail Deck Park. 

This is an opportunity to reinforce Toronto’s status as one of the most liveable global cities in the world. This is an opportunity I believe we are going to take.

Earlier this year, architect Rem Koolhaas of OMA spoke with Mohsen Mostafavi (dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design) to close out the 2016 AIA convention . 

I still remember my first architectural theory class where the professor told us all that Koolhaas was the most important living architect of our time. And today, if you think about all of the stars that have grown out from his firm – such as Bjarke Ingels and Joshua Prince-Ramus – it is certainly a defensible argument.

Koolhaas is generally very critical of globalization and the market economy when it comes to creating good architecture. His view is that “ pure profit motives ” are leading to cities that are basically not designed.

This is a fairly common belief within architectural circles, which is why many celebrated names would rather work on a museum over a residential condo project. The latter is too motivated by profit. It’s not architecturally interesting.

I, on the other hand, have always believed in working within the confines of the market to try and promote great architecture and city building. I’m not saying that the market is perfect, but profitability is a constraint that every industry deals with. Architecture is no exception.

That said, there are other things that I agree with Koolhaas on. Below are 3 verbatim highlights taken from a Fast Company article summarizing his talk with Mostafavi: 

Communication needs an overhaul.

“Architecture has a serious problem today in that people who are not alike don’t communicate. I’m actually more interested in communicating with people I disagree with than people I agree with.”

"To have a certain virtuosity of interpretation of every phenomenon is crucial. We’re working in a world where so many different cultures are operating at the same time, each with their own value system. If you want to be relevant, you need to be open to an enormous multiplicity of values, interpretations, and readings. The old-fashioned Western ‘this is’ ‘that is’ is no longer tenable. We need to be intellectual and rigorous, but at the same time relativist.”

Architecture’s greatest value in the future might not even be architecture.

“Architecture and the language of architecture—platform, blueprint, structure—became almost the preferred language for indicating a lot of phenomenon that we’re facing from Silicon Valley. They took over our metaphors, and it made me think that regardless of our speed, which is too slow for Silicon Valley, we can perhaps think of the modern world maybe not always in the form of buildings but in the form of knowledge or organization and structure and society that we can offer and provide.”

Preservation is a path forward.

"We’ve tried to discover domains and areas in architecture which are not a simple vulgar multiplication of uninspired global projects. Recently, we have looked at preservation. The beautiful thing about preservation is you begin with something that already exists and therefore is already local. By definition, a preservation project is an homage to earlier cultures and mentalities to which you can add a new dimension, a new function, a new beauty or appeal. Almost every impulse signals that globalization needs rethinking or adjustment.”

Arup, the global consulting firm, has an interesting publication out called Cities Alive: Towards a walking world . The report highlights 50 benefits of walking and then 40 actions that city leaders can take today to transform their cities. The entire study was informed by examining 80 international case studies.

As I was going through the report, the following diagram caught my attention. It compares journeys on foot vs. journeys by car for a collection of global cities.

The turquoise circles represent % of journeys by walking. On the left is Los Angeles at 4%. And on the right is Istanbul at 48%.

The red circles represent % of journeys by car. On the left is Miami at 79% (with Los Angeles right beside it). And on the right is Kolkata at 2%.

The map in the middle of the circles represents pedestrians killed in traffic crashes per 100,000 people.

I’m not sure where the data was drawn from, but it’s not all that surprising to see a few North American cities clustered towards the left (less walking; more driving). Still, I wonder how “journey” is defined.

To view the full report, click here . Arup also produces a lot of other great content that you can download for free, here .