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Toronto: patios, buskers and an animated downtown
30 May 2010
I just returned from a few days in Toronto, attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) annual convention. Picked up a lot of good ideas (especially around open government and open data) and information, which I'll post at a later point. What I wanted to write about here is how the host city handles its downtown and its patios, buskers and sidewalk merchants.
Friday night we went to dinner with a friend and drove along Church Street from Queen to Maitland. Saturday afternoon after my last conference business was done, I went walkabout through a large part of downtown Toronto that includes Queen Street West, Spadina Avenue, Kensington Market, Carleton Street, Dundas Street, McCaul Street, Bay Street and a few side streets in between.
These streets were alive: busy with shoppers, merchants, buskers and visitors. Stores pushed their displays onto the sidewalks. Transient merchants set up tents beside parking lots and drew crowds. There was colourful street art on sidewalks and buildings. And restaurant patios hugged the building facades and were crammed with people enjoying lunch or a beverage in the beautiful weekend weather.
In Kensington Market and Chinatown, the amount of walkable space on the sidewalk was barely a single person wide in some areas as merchants set up stalls and displays. On Spadina, half the sidewalk was eaten up by displays. Yet no one was complaining. Instead, the stores were bustling, the displays crowded by shoppers and just browsers. Buskers made music on many corners, music that enlivened the atmosphere. Everyone seemed to be shopping, eating or laughing.
It was wonderful, a sense of activity, a vibrant economy and a thriving downtown. Funny thing, too, Kensington, Spadina, Queen Street West, Church Street Village all show great pride of place and pride of heritage without having overly restrictive laws about heritage colours, awnings, railings, benches, seating, signs or hats*
I've seen similar blooms of life and business in Ottawa, where the Byward Market explodes with activity and business. And where patios are also building-side, and in some places sidewalks are cramped, where outdoor displays and vendors are daily draws and buskers entertain on every street corner.
Both Ottawa and Toronto even host highly successful, annual busker festivals, by the way. Both cities recognize that buskers provide free entertainment and turn a sterile walkway into an interactive activity zone.
The point is that in Toronto, the streets belong to the people, not to the bureaucrats, and not to the politicians. And therefore they are alive and welcoming.
Why can't Collingwood look to these cities for our model instead of the authoritarian, restrictive and dull-as-dirt proposals we have made for our downtown (including the recent flout-the-Charter-of-Rights licensing bylaw)? Why can't we find ways to encourage visitors and residents to come downtown, stay and spend money, or ways to animate and enliven the core, ways to make people feel like it's a fun, enjoyable place to be? No, we'd rather have a picture postcard downtown without the clutter of untidy shoppers...
Saturday night, we ventured out to Queen Street West for dinner. Even at 9 p.m., stores were open late, people thronged the sidewalks, music came from open windows and doors from pubs and restaurants. Some restaurants had waiting lines even late in the evening, and patios were bustling in the summer heat.
Wouldn't we rather see that sort of activity in Collingwood's downtown, instead of our sidewalks rolled up at 5. But with no patios to keep diners out and active, there's seldom a soul on the main street after 6 p.m. Our motto is a place to "live, work and play" but we're squeezing the play out of our downtown, and once that's gone, the "work" will leave, too.
People travel great distances to visit the Village at Blue, Wasaga Beach, Ottawa, Toronto and a hundred other places in Ontario. Why? Because they feel welcomed, entertained and excited. If our downtown doesn't do all of those things, no one will come here. We have to compete, not cocoon.
Why not develop incentives for restaurant owners to have patios - tax breaks or reductions in the already-hefty BIA fees? Or pay for their costs to allow them to open where some of council thinks - despite all advice and public protest - they should be? Why not provide incentives for retailers to stay open past 5 or 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday? Why not allow buskers to perform anywhere and everywhere they choose downtown? Why not have patios beside the buildings instead of exiled to the curbs side where no one wants them? Put an incentive package in place for a whole summer and see if it improves traffic and business downtown.
Why not make a pedestrian mall downtown every Saturday and encourage vendors and buskers to set up there? Right now we have a small farmers' market that half or more of council will grumble about when it wants to expand over a handful more parking spaces -spaces we don't even charge for right now!
I don't know. We could have them all, we could have a great downtown, an active, appealling, welcoming and lively downtown, not just a pretty one. Maybe if some of our councillors spent more time looking at how other municipalities handle these things - and how they are successful at them - instead of looking at themselves in the mirror, we might come up with some better options for the downtown than we've got on the table right now.
The current bylaw and patio relocation is detrimental to the health of our downtown. And if we kill the downtown, the heart of our community dies.
~~~~~
* Okay, we don't have laws about heritage hats, clothing or haircuts. Yet. But I suspect there are those who would impose them if they could. We often seem too focused on the trees to see the forest around us. Face it, we have a ruddy useless cat bylaw on the books, so no triviality seems beyond our reach.
These streets were alive: busy with shoppers, merchants, buskers and visitors. Stores pushed their displays onto the sidewalks. Transient merchants set up tents beside parking lots and drew crowds. There was colourful street art on sidewalks and buildings. And restaurant patios hugged the building facades and were crammed with people enjoying lunch or a beverage in the beautiful weekend weather.
In Kensington Market and Chinatown, the amount of walkable space on the sidewalk was barely a single person wide in some areas as merchants set up stalls and displays. On Spadina, half the sidewalk was eaten up by displays. Yet no one was complaining. Instead, the stores were bustling, the displays crowded by shoppers and just browsers. Buskers made music on many corners, music that enlivened the atmosphere. Everyone seemed to be shopping, eating or laughing.
It was wonderful, a sense of activity, a vibrant economy and a thriving downtown. Funny thing, too, Kensington, Spadina, Queen Street West, Church Street Village all show great pride of place and pride of heritage without having overly restrictive laws about heritage colours, awnings, railings, benches, seating, signs or hats*
I've seen similar blooms of life and business in Ottawa, where the Byward Market explodes with activity and business. And where patios are also building-side, and in some places sidewalks are cramped, where outdoor displays and vendors are daily draws and buskers entertain on every street corner.
Both Ottawa and Toronto even host highly successful, annual busker festivals, by the way. Both cities recognize that buskers provide free entertainment and turn a sterile walkway into an interactive activity zone.
The point is that in Toronto, the streets belong to the people, not to the bureaucrats, and not to the politicians. And therefore they are alive and welcoming.
Why can't Collingwood look to these cities for our model instead of the authoritarian, restrictive and dull-as-dirt proposals we have made for our downtown (including the recent flout-the-Charter-of-Rights licensing bylaw)? Why can't we find ways to encourage visitors and residents to come downtown, stay and spend money, or ways to animate and enliven the core, ways to make people feel like it's a fun, enjoyable place to be? No, we'd rather have a picture postcard downtown without the clutter of untidy shoppers...
Saturday night, we ventured out to Queen Street West for dinner. Even at 9 p.m., stores were open late, people thronged the sidewalks, music came from open windows and doors from pubs and restaurants. Some restaurants had waiting lines even late in the evening, and patios were bustling in the summer heat.
Wouldn't we rather see that sort of activity in Collingwood's downtown, instead of our sidewalks rolled up at 5. But with no patios to keep diners out and active, there's seldom a soul on the main street after 6 p.m. Our motto is a place to "live, work and play" but we're squeezing the play out of our downtown, and once that's gone, the "work" will leave, too.
People travel great distances to visit the Village at Blue, Wasaga Beach, Ottawa, Toronto and a hundred other places in Ontario. Why? Because they feel welcomed, entertained and excited. If our downtown doesn't do all of those things, no one will come here. We have to compete, not cocoon.
Why not develop incentives for restaurant owners to have patios - tax breaks or reductions in the already-hefty BIA fees? Or pay for their costs to allow them to open where some of council thinks - despite all advice and public protest - they should be? Why not provide incentives for retailers to stay open past 5 or 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday? Why not allow buskers to perform anywhere and everywhere they choose downtown? Why not have patios beside the buildings instead of exiled to the curbs side where no one wants them? Put an incentive package in place for a whole summer and see if it improves traffic and business downtown.
Why not make a pedestrian mall downtown every Saturday and encourage vendors and buskers to set up there? Right now we have a small farmers' market that half or more of council will grumble about when it wants to expand over a handful more parking spaces -spaces we don't even charge for right now!
I don't know. We could have them all, we could have a great downtown, an active, appealling, welcoming and lively downtown, not just a pretty one. Maybe if some of our councillors spent more time looking at how other municipalities handle these things - and how they are successful at them - instead of looking at themselves in the mirror, we might come up with some better options for the downtown than we've got on the table right now.
The current bylaw and patio relocation is detrimental to the health of our downtown. And if we kill the downtown, the heart of our community dies.
~~~~~
* Okay, we don't have laws about heritage hats, clothing or haircuts. Yet. But I suspect there are those who would impose them if they could. We often seem too focused on the trees to see the forest around us. Face it, we have a ruddy useless cat bylaw on the books, so no triviality seems beyond our reach.
