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Bringing the Street to Life

Wendy Gold | Categories: August 3, 2011 By Wendy Gold

We love creative uses of old infrastructure. In Lyon, France, a glass and metal phone booth is transformed into an aquarium and literally brings the street to life.
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Posted in Aesthetics, Lyon, Sustainability | Tagged aquarium, Benedetto Bufalino, Benoit Deseille, Festival of Light, fish, France, Lyon, phone box, telephone booth | Leave a comment

OpenCity Weekly Review

OpenCity Projects | Categories: August 1, 2011 By OpenCity Projects

Editors note: Starting today OpenCity Projects brings you a weekly column every Monday morning, rounding up the best in public spaces from around the world.

Innovative Park Creates Unusual Combination
Sherbourne Common, a newly completed park in Toronto, combines sculpture, children’s play areas, grassy expanses, and an urban canal, with an innovative underground stormwater treatment centre that uses ultraviolet light to clean the water before running it through the above ground portion of the park and out into Lake Ontario. (via The Globe and Mail)

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Posted in Accessibility, Aesthetics, News, Social Cohesion, Sustainability | Tagged Brooklyn, Lake Ontario, library, Madrid, New York City, public space, sculpture, Sherbourne Common, shipping container, stormwater, Toronto, Transit, Vancouver, water treatment | Leave a comment

The Beautification of New York City Streets

Guest Author | Categories: July 26, 2011 By Guest Author

New York City may not be known for its outdoor spaces (with the exception of a few parks), however, recently, the Bloomberg administration has done a great job at “beautifying” NYC and creating a safer and more pleasing streetscape.

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Posted in Accessibility, Health, New York, Safety, Social Cohesion, Sustainability | Tagged beautification, bike lanes, New York City, pedestrians, streetscapes, Times Square | Leave a comment

Car-less Kensington : A Good Idea?

Jordy Gold | Categories: July 19, 2011 By Jordy Gold

I have always loved shutting down the streets in Toronto’s Kensington Market to cars for the final Sunday of every month from May through October. The streets flood with people and performers. It is obvious this is something desperately wanted by many, and some local businesses boom when it happens.

For years I, and many others, have been frustrated that we cannot shut these streets and others around the city to cars on a more regular, if not, permanent basis. I have written about this frustration in the past. It had never occurred to me that there could be a serious downside to creating a permanent no-car zone in a place like Kensington.

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Posted in Accessibility, Aesthetics, Economics, Identity, Safety, Social Cohesion, Sustainability, Toronto | Tagged Bloor, car free, College, Copenhagen, Dundas, gentrify, Kensington Market, New York, Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington, pedestrianization, PSK, Queen, rent, Ryerson, Spadina, Streets are for people, Times Square, Toronto, Trinity Bellwoods, University of Toronto, Yonge, Yvonne Bambrick | 5 Comments

Making Connections at Richmond Street West

Jake Tobin Garrett | Categories: July 12, 2011 By Jake Tobin Garrett

401 Richmond in downtown Toronto is an adaptive reuse of an old tin factory into a hub of artist studios and galleries. Located at the corner of Spadina Ave and Richmond St West, this huge brick building extends its exterior, dotted with old loading docks, one entire full block east to Peter St. Up until just a few months ago, however, the south side of this stretch of road had no sidewalk. In order to walk east, you had to cross the street and use the thin strip of sidewalk there.

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Posted in Accessibility, Aesthetics, Safety, Toronto | Tagged 401 Richmond, bicycle, design, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, parking, pedestrian, sidewalk, Spadina, streetscape, Toronto, urban, Urbanspace, Walking Strategy | Leave a comment

A Place for Civic Engagement

Wendy Gold | Categories: July 5, 2011 By Wendy Gold

In recent months, we’ve been inspired by images of protest in Egypt and all over the Middle East. The common platform is central public space where people gather to send a visible, mass message. In Egypt, it’s Tahrir Square. In Libya, it’s Green Square and Martyr’s Square and in Bahrain, it’s Pearl Square.

The lesson seems to be that public space is a critical platform for democracy. The place needs to be central, highly visible, open to everyone and, ideally, has some symbolic, local meaning for people. It could be a square, a main street or a park.

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Posted in Identity, Social Cohesion, Toronto | Tagged Arab Spring, Bahrain, democracy, Egypt, G20, Green Square, Martyr's Square, Middle East, Pearl Square, Queen's Park, Sri Lankan, summit, Tahrir Square, Tamil, Toronto | 1 Comment

OpenCity Projects Launches New Blog

OpenCity Projects | Categories: June 24, 2011 By OpenCity Projects

We’re pleased to have a site redesign that highlights our new blog. OpenCity is all about consulting with a range of people to understand how they experience cities. So, our blog is the perfect place to explore great public spaces and how they make our cities better places to live.

Every week we’ll feature new stories, from our network of contributors in major cities like Amsterdam, New York and Toronto, about local experiences and global trends.

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photo by Michèle Champagne

Posted in News | Tagged Amsterdam, blog, cities, global trends, local experiences, New York, OpenCity, public space, redesign, site, Toronto | Leave a comment

G20 Could Have Used Some Design 101

Guest Author | Categories: June 30, 2010 By Guest Author

A Long, barricaded fence in the heart of downtown Toronto.
20,000 police officers
A billion dollar security budget.
It was designed to fail.

Here at OpenCity, we’re continually broadening the typical definition of design. Not only about creating shiny and slick objects of desire or building a better kitchen. Good design can help solve problems. It enhances our experiences, both big and small. It creates solutions that satisfy opposing interests. Design thinking requires identifying many stakeholders and researching each of their specific needs.

Let’s examine the different stakeholders involved in hosting an international summit.

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Posted in Accessibility, Safety, Toronto | Tagged billion, Canada, designed to fail, G 20, inconvenience, police, Prime Minister, riot, shameful, Toronto, trust | Leave a comment

NYC Miles Ahead of T.O.

Jordy Gold | Categories: June 1, 2010 By Jordy Gold

About a year ago I heard that they closed off Times Square in New York City to cars (OCPer Andrew Horberry commented on this at the time). This closure meant that the entire space would be reserved for pedestrians, cyclists and people who wish to use the space with new seating provided throughout the area.

Two weeks ago I had a chance to experience this first hand on a trip to New York City. Yes, they had re-opened one small part of the street to vehicle traffic, however, much of the space is still reserved for people and plants and fun on a semi-permanent basis.

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Posted in Accessibility, New York, Sustainability, Toronto | Tagged Christopher Hume, cyclists, Kensington, New York, NYC, Pedestrian Sundays, pedestrian zones, pedestrians, PSK, Ryerson, Times Square, Toronto, U of T | 1 Comment

Blog

Bringing the Street to Life

Making Connections at Richmond Street West

OpenCity Projects Launches New Blog

G20 Could Have Used Some Design 101

NYC Miles Ahead of T.O.

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