two strong aural memories

// Two strong aural memories

i. Morning on a mid-spring Sunday in Toronto. The city is relatively empty and a street car makes its way north on Bathurst. The distinct hum of the street car’s motion is set against a back drop of almost silence — but of course there are other sounds. The rustling of trees’ leaves, collectively heaving in one direction & then the other, a rattling and whooshing of the city’s canopy as a single entity. The faint city sounds of car doors closing and people shuffling are sharp above the rustling trees but blurred beneath the street car’s hum.

ii. Biking in Amsterdam, also mid-Spring, though the day of the week doesn’t matter as much. The jangling of my keys as they bang against my bike’s frame, hanging out of the back wheel’s lock. I cycle over a loose brick on the road, and hear its clack as my weight pushes it up. It clangs back down. A tram’s hesitant bell clucks soon after; it whirs by.

three inspiring urban sharing concepts

This post originally appeared on the Pop Up City

Whether it be the emergence of GPS-enabled smart phone applications that promote a sense of tactile-ownership over the city, or the necessity caused by global economic crisis, a major trend toward do-it-yourself, bottom-up urbanism has emerged.

All over the world, citizens are taking responsibility for the form and functionality of urban space. Together, we are building our own infrastructure, creating our own services and truly taking the city into our own hands. To get us inspired for the upcoming Stadsklas, let’s take a closer look at some of the ‘best of’ these bottom-up strategies for new-style urban development.

1. Pop-Up Seed-Sharing Stations

Hawaii-based Eating in Public’s Seed-Sharing stations are unmonitored installations that have started to pop up all over the USA and Canada. They offer a space for urban gardeners to exchange seeds and important information about how to best grow their fruits and veggies, and are a sign that urban farming remains a DIY movement at its core. Eating in Public offers a downloadable design guide, with a wide array of recommended models. The idea is that anyone can download the guide, and build a seed sharing station, anywhere in the world. Eating in Public encourages that the stations be placed in accessible areas with lots of traffic, so no one is deterred from participating. Each Seed-Sharing Station is equipped with envelopes, pens and pencils, so that seeds can be easily identified, and accompanied with instructions for best growth. All stations are built out of scrap and repurposed material, but maintain consistency worldwide with the Seed-Sharing station logo & Eating in Public website included on each installation. Each Seed-Sharing station is designed individually to fit the specificity of its context, showing how ‘local’ grassroots initiatives to improve the city are actually part of a global urban culture, with identical projects stemming from wide-spread ideas made possible by the Internet.

2. Toronto’s Tool Library

With the rise of the peer-to-peer economy, using has truly becoming the new owning. Along these lines, and in an effort to tap into all those power tools gathering dust in the garages and basements of the city, a couple of urban visionaries have opened Toronto’s first Tool Library — providing physical urban infrastructure to facilitate the borrowing of tools that would otherwise go unused for months, or years, to those who truly need them. Toronto’s Tool Library is one of many similar projects that have popped up all over North America, Australia and Europe. Tool libraries save their users hundreds of dollars, and a lot of closet space, and promote sustainability through resource-sharing. While tool lending libraries are not new (the first was in 1976 in Columbus Ohio), the recent opening of many around the world, with sleek design and easy to use websites, are beginning to appeal to a broad spectrum of city dwellers. They are also much more than a space for renting and lending tools. While sites like Airbnb, Share Some Sugar, and Thuisafgehaald facilitate interactions between people that can happen anywhere, tool libraries are community hubs, marking a trend toward online peer-to-peer services that make use of centralized ‘storefront’ locations.

3. The Fruit Fence

Another food-based DIY solution is the the Fruit Fence – a small scale, hands on solution that has the potential for major change at the city scale. While guerilla gardening has been extensively covered by the Pop-Up City and other blogs, the Fruit Fence is notable as it is an essential DIY project, a hack – or urban intervention – that anyone can do themselves in their own city. The Fruit Fence is a planter bag that converts the ever-present chain link fence into a vertical urban garden. Planter bags are made of recycled building material and can be easily thrown over and hung from a fence. The best kinds of plants are the climbing types – green beans, peas, and strawberries – that add colour, scents and delicious tastes to the urban landscape.  If you want to take the DIY to the next level, the folks at Fruit Fence have designed sensors to be placed in the bags, alerting passersby if a plant needs water or fertilizer. Alternatively, these signals can be sent to community organizations via SMS. The Fruit Fence planter bag encourages a sense ownership over cityspace, and shared responsibility for taking care of the city.

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In a series of six articles we’re exploring new forms of urbanism where bottom-up, DIY and spontaneity are key. Become a new-style city-maker with the Stadsklas (City Class), an action-driven summer course in the Netherlands organized by Stroom, that gets you ready to tackle urban issues in the 21st century.

 

torontodam

Click the map to enlarge it!

Readers, I have yielded to that irresistible urge to compare two cities - in a big way. 

I present to you a rough sketch of a comparison between the neighbourhoods of Toronto and Amsterdam, a mash up map that transposes Amsterdam neighbourhoods into the spatial configurations of Toronto, becoming a new city I like to call Torontodam.

Of course, certain liberties are taken – the comparability  isn’t perfect – but there is something to it: Toronto neighbourhoods seem to correspond quite well to their (urban geographer defined) Amsterdam counterparts.

The comparisons are based on geography, culture or a mix of the two.  For example, it works quite nicely that Amsterdam’s Indischebuurt, located in the city’s east, corresponds to Toronto’s Little India, also in the east.

If you are familiar with the two cities, please comment, and help improve the next draft. Some things to hash out: what should Cabbagetown be? Queen’s Park and the houses of Provincial Parliament? Cabbage town? What is Kensington Market — is there really no concentrated grungy neighbourhood in Amsterdam, no Camden Town (London) equivalent? So much to compare!

platform public space

The train platforms in Amsterdam’s Centraal Station are completely accessible to the public.

You can get to them, even if train tickets have not been purchased. Because of this, the platform is public space — and a direct extension of the city’s street life.

The train-fares in the Netherlands are collected by the OV Chipkaart system. It is highly automated so the gates onto the platform are left open. Paying train-fare correctly is the responsibility of the traveller, and not the train authority. Tickets and fares will often be checked on board, once the train has left the station.

The open gates of the OV Chipkaart

That the Centraal Station’s platform is public space means it plays a strong role in the psyche and imageability of the city. The wide open concourse and sweeping architectural arches that form the iconic half-cylindric roof of Centraal Station are available for appreciation from a wide audience, even those who aren’t taking the train.

I like this feature because it is fundamentally about access: not having to pay to get into somewhere changes its nature and role in the city. We can feel the potency of the “public” in public space.

Toronto’s Union Station

Toronto’s central train station, Union Station, is currently undergoing a revitalization. Its dingy train-platform is being “Europeanized”, and plans show a lovely glass atrium with sweeping architectural gestures that reference Train concourse halls built in the late 20th century constructivist tradition (e.g. the Eiffel tower).

Architectural rendering of ‘revitalized’ platform

I am excited about this project: it shows a shift in perception and a respect for rail infrastructure as a viable means of transportation versus the car – this is a big deal in auto-oriented North America.

But will the Union Station platform be similarly part of Toronto’s public space, an extension of its street life? Will we be able to explore its grandness without necessarily taking the train? It wasn’t before, and as a result, it doesn’t play a strong role in the city’s image.

I often describe North America as a “private property paradise”. It would be healthy for Toronto’s identity and imageability if Union Station’s platform was a public space, but at odds with the private nature of space in this city. Now that I think of it, the main hall of Union Station, a beautiful concourse is indeed a public space, enabling chance encounters, lingering and undeniably contributing to the imageability of the city. Technology, such as the OV Chipkart system in the Netherlands enables that publicness to extend even further onto the platform — a more equitable experience of the city.

I wonder what the platforms will be like in Union Station.

See also Honour System Anarchy

presenting at the urban ecologies conference

Exciting news, dear readers!

Your Urban Geographer is taking his urban theorizing out of the blogosphere and into the world at OCAD University’s Urban Ecologies Conference this June! Yes, a spring-time return to my beloved Toronto is near.

As a “Poster Presenter”, I will be creating a whimsical and interactive experience featuring a series of animations/GIFs that I have been developing since my 2011 Fuller Lecture. You can read my proposal to the Urban Ecologies Conference here.

Clips from my 2011 Fuller Lecture – “Everything is Everything”

The broad theme of the presentation will be the accessible expression of the theories of Urban Political Ecology. Though the sub-field is a highly convoluted, academic, jargony time, at it’s heart is the philosophical, deeply poetic and very important concept that humans are not separate from the ecology that surrounds them. Urban systems are natural systems, and if we shift our thought, we can build them to be more agreeable with their surrounding non-human ecosystems, and never hostile. We can also begin to address the social injustices that occur as a result of our inevitable impact on the planet, rather than focusing on conservation (which treats nature as something other to us – a commodity – to be exploited).

“Ecology is urbanization, and urbanization is ecology” said Michael Hough, an important nature-culture landscape architect. He is the author of Cities and Natural Process, a book that will figure prominently in my research for the presentation.

So, readers, I look forward to this project and sharing it with you! I am excited to think broadly about nature-culture and urban ecology while focusing on specific examples from my personal geographies in Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.

See you at the Urban Ecologies Conference in June!

the torontobrug

The Torontobrug is one of many bridges that span over the Amstel river. Literally, “Toronto-bridge”, it is named after the historical partnership and alliance between the two cities.

Incidentally, as you may know, Toronto and Amsterdam are both very important to my routes.

It comes as no surprise to me that the Torontoburg is one of the ugliest of the Amsterdam’s river crossings. It is a modernist, concrete mass, lacking the gezelligheid of the quaint, people sized bridges along the rest of the river (and indeed of the entire city). Instead, like many pieces  of Toronto, it is an auto-oriented, 4 lane thoroughfare, that, though it includes bike lanes, lacks that delightful Amsterdam coziness. Because of this, the Torontobrug feels as though it is quite literally a piece of Toronto infrastructure inserted into central Amsterdam.

But, like Toronto, it is intriguing in its immensity, and I enjoy exploring it: passing over and beneath it while walking and by bike. It is nice to have a piece of my home here.

There is also I’ve discovered, an Amsterdam Bridge in Toronto. From the pictures of it, it looks as though Dutch design has similarly made its way into Toronto.

When I go back to Toronto, I look forward to visiting the Amsterdam Bridge to experience how a piece of Amsterdam feels from afar.

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Your Urban Geographer has taken the liberty to making the connection between Toronto and the Torontobrug even stronger! By QaRt coding the Torontobrug sign, there is now even more of an aesthetic and deep link between the bridge and it’s namesake city.

make your tools accessible to those who need them at the tool library

This post originally appeared on the Pop-Up City

Here’s another solution for putting those tools gathering dust in your house to use: make them available for lending at your local Tool Library!

Opening next month, Toronto’s Tool Library is one of many similar projects that have popped up all over North America, Australia and Europe. The recent popularity of tool libraries is another example of how the peer-to-peer economy continues to gain popularity and evolve, changing the way we interact with each other and our cities.

The Tool Library harnesses the fact that on average, a power drill is used for just 12-13 minutes in its lifetime. They enable access to tools that are otherwise sitting idle at home and can save their users hundreds of dollars, and a lot of closet space. Using a tool library also promotes sustainability through resource-sharing, and are an example of how society is changing to be a more collaborative experience.

While tool lending libraries are not new (the first was in 1976 in Columbus Ohio), the recent opening of many around the world, with sleek design and easy to use websites, are beginning to appeal to a broad spectrum of city dwellers.

Vancouver also has a Tool Library, which opened in 2011. Like in Toronto, being a member of Vancouver’s Tool Library involves paying an annual fee, which varies depending on your income. This guarantees that its services are accessible to anyone, and is especially appealing to new immigrants, students, not-for-profit organizations and community groups. The co-op structure ensures that prices are low compared to other tool rental stores: renting the tools is free for members.

Like in Toronto and Vancouver, tool libraries worldwide act as much more than a space for renting and lending tools. They are also community centres that offer courses and workshops on how to use the tools. While sites like Airbnb, Share Some Sugar, and Thuisafgehaald facilitate interactions between people that can happen anywhere, tool libraries mark a trend toward online peer-to-peer services that make use of centralized “storefront” locations, emphasizing the social in social media.

a certain spatial discipline

The City of Amsterdam has put together a very excellent Pocket Atlas, and I’ve had the good fortune of getting my hands on a copy.

The Amsterdam Pocket Atlas provides a thorough look into the spatial qualities of the city, illustrated by maps that describe such delights as Amsterdam’s historical morphology, its tram network, an overview of the city’s mix of functions, green spaces, housing prices and more – a wide range of clearly presented facts expressed in well designed maps.

How thoughtful of the City of Amsterdam to have the Urban Geographers of the world in mind when they put this excellent atlas together.

But I shouldn’t be so naive. It’s obvious from the tone and content of the Atlas that the City is appealing to the corporations and industries of globalized capital -  attempting to attract fickle, foot loose business by enticing them with the region’s diversity, accessibility & connectivity.

However biased the Amsterdam Pocket Atlas may be, it is nevertheless chalk-full of golden nuggets of geographic trivia – a treasure trove of urban geography delights.

The Atlas shed light on something I found particularly interesting: the limits that the Dutch are able to put on the boundaries of their cities. Under a different plan, Amsterdam could very well have expanded infinitely into its surrounding region. Harlem, Leiden, even sea-size Zandvoort could very well be a part of a North American style GAA (Greater Amsterdam Area).

Reading the excellent Amsterdam Pocket Atlas, I learnt that “for over a century the city acquire[d] space to expand by annexing neighbouring municipalities. Since 1966 the municipal boundaries have been fixed”.

What foresight, to limit the growth of a city – taming the beast before it wreaks havoc on the innocent villages of its hinterland.

Sprawling Toronto did not demonstrate this discipline when it became a mega-city in 1998. Instead, it has become a vast city-region, where a centralized, over burdened municipality has replaced effective local governance. It is a place where the forces of homogenization are something to constantly battle.

The behemoth Halifax Regional Municipality too, could have learnt a lesson from Amsterdam’s spatial discipline when it decided to amalgamate into a too-enormous-to-make-any sense city-region in 1996.

Amsterdam’s ability to limit its borders means a lot of things. It means it is excellently predisposed to make the necessary balance between an ever-densifying city and its highly fertile agricultural hinterland. While Halifax struggles to institute a greenbelt to control sprawl, Amsterdam is well poised for its future.

I don’t know why Dutch cities have tendencies toward spatial discipline, but it manifests in many different scales. For an example, I’ll focus on the neighbourhood level.

Spaarndammerbuurt makes itself explicitly known to its visitors

Neighbourhoods in Amsterdam are discrete spatial units. They are distinct, and have borders that can be easily referenced and mapped. Some neighbourhoods even have pseudo-gates, explicitly marking the space as part of the district: De Pijp’s In/Uit De Pijp sign and the same in Spaardammerbuurt.

It’s clear whether you’re In, or Uit of de Pijp, a neighbourhood in central Amsterdam

This is also not the case in Toronto – most neighbourhoods bleed into each other, and people have a hard time of agreeing on what’s what.

Its seems the Dutch have no need for the advice dished out in Kevin Lynch’s tome The Image of the City. There is a strong tradition of spatial discipline here. Exploring the city, I feel firmly rooted in where I am, and entirely oriented. Dutch cities are bastions of imageability.

everything is everything in GIFs

I am pleased to present to you a sampling of clips/animated GIFs from my presentation Everything is Everything (Urban Political Ecology: Politicizing Urban Natures). The animation is based on a body of academic literature and my thesis work at McGill University. It is a playful visualization that is multi-disciplinary, informed by history, philosophy, geography, ecology and geology.

I am continuing to develop the presentation, and am currently expanding it by animating poignant examples of urban-nature from my native Toronto. The examples there are abundant, and the results will be inevitably whimsical.

I will keep you updated with my process, but for now enjoy clips from Everything is Everything as presented at the 2011 Fuller Terrace Lecture Series‘ evening of talks themed “The Nature of Things“

Enjoy:::::

Though trees and modernist buildings seem diametrically opposed, they are both the result of the processing of material from the earth. Both their designs are repetitive, and logically follow from basic units:

Our cities are built on top of and out of the earth. The quintessential wood paneled houses of Halifax are made from the trees that used to cover the Peninsula. The glass and steel that compose the city’s skyscrapers, though from farther away, are too the result of natural processes:

As human populations (i.e. western imperial societies) grew and spread over the surface of the planet, so did their systems of reason and rationality. At first, Nature was conceived as terrifying, something to be revered and despised. But as untouched Nature began to become scarce, receding in the face of increased population and technology, it became something to be desired, enjoyed, conserved. Nature is a fluid concept:

The world is complex, and it’s often hard to draw a line between where the natural ends and the artificial begins:

Like the bees, we gain our energy from fruits and vegetables, which stem from flowers. The bees use their energy to build their hives, and we, our cities:

urban ecologies conference

I am excited to announce that I have applied to be a presenter at OCAD’s upcoming Urban Ecologies conference in Toronto this June.

My proposal is to do a presentation similar to the lecture I gave during Halifax’s Fuller Terrace Lecture Series’ 2011 season. There, for an evening of talks under the theme “The Nature of Things”, I spoke about the history of the concept of nature, and society’s entrenched nature-culture binary which works to obscure the questions that matter most in contemporary environmentalism: who are the winners and losers of humans’ inevitable impact on the planet.

Clip from “Everything is Everything” – an animation/presentation about nature and cities.

For the lecture, I created a whimsical animation as an easily accessible version of the concepts of Urban Political Ecology – the body of literature that informed my undergraduate thesis, which in turn inspired the lecture. I used examples from Halifax to illustrate these concepts and relate them to the audience’s day-to-day experience of the city. Indeed, cities are places where the supposedly natural and non-natural come together most poignantly.

Halifax, as animated for the presentation.

I present to you my proposal for the upcoming Urban Ecologies conference at OCAD. The base of the presentation will remain similar to that which was presented in Halifax – but the examples will be customized to my native Toronto, where instances of nature-culture are abundant: the Don Valley Brick Works, the system of ravines that run through the city, the “re-naturalization” of the Don River, and the Leslie Street spit.

Enjoy – and whether I am accepted or not, see you at the Urban Ecologies conference in June!