Another day, another public backlash against Rob Ford’s policies.
Thursday afternoon activists and urban experts joined together to urge city council to reject the mayor’s plans to scrap the existing Port Lands redevelopment project, which they warn will undo nearly a decade of planning and consultation aimed at building an innovative mixed-use neighbourhood on industrial land.
“We come here with a very simple message: stay the course,” said former chief city planner Paul Bedford at a press conference at the Toronto Reference Library Thursday afternoon. “Stay the course, and keep the waterfront planning under the control of Waterfront Toronto. Don’t depart from the vision.”
Last week the executive committee endorsed plans spearheaded by the mayor’s brother Doug, councillor for Ward 2, that would wrest control of development of the lower Don Lands and Port Lands from Waterfront Toronto and put the project under the control of the Toronto Port Lands Company. Gone would be plans for a mixed-use neighbourhood of 12,500 residential spaces, 3 million square feet of commercial and retail space, and 53 hectares of parks. In their place would be a tourist-centric development complete with a mall, Ferris wheel, and monorail.
“In my forty-year career as a city planner, I’ve never seen such total disregard for sound planning, professional expertise, and strong citizen engagement,” said Bedford of the Ford plan.
Earlier in the day Bedford, prominent urbanist Richard Florida, and U of T dean of architecture Richard Sommer released an open letter signed by 140 of their colleagues calling Ford’s waterfront plan “a tired recycling of 1960’s thinking” that “will do major permanent damage to what should become a vital and exceptional part of the downtown core.”
The letter cautioned that a major mall would require a 6,000-space parking lot that would be waste of valuable land and cause a traffic nightmare in the city’s east end, and questioned the city’s decision to sole-source the redesign to architect Eric Kuhne without a competition process. The letter also argued that building a huge Ferris wheel makes no sense because Toronto already has a high-profile tourist attraction that gives great aerial views of the city in the CN Tower.
Bedford, Florida, and Sommer were joined at the press conference by Code Blue TO, a new activist group that has launched a petition in support of Waterfront Toronto’s vision.
The Waterfront Toronto plan was a joint effort that began in 2003 with cooperation between the federal and provincial government and mayor Mel Lastman, and according to Code Blue has attracted $2.6 billion in private investment.
The current council’s support for Ford’s waterfront plan is far from assured. With the whiff of dissent at City Hall getting stronger as the mayor’s support plummets over his handling of the Core Service Review, it’s not clear he’ll be able to muster the votes. A member of his own executive council, Councillor Jaye Robinson, has already said she won’t back it because of the lack of consultation with the public and city staff.
There is talk of reaching a compromise between the new and pre-existing plans, but Dennis Findlay of Code Blue warned that would be a mistake.
“Our answer to compromise is that it’s a Trojan horse,” he said. “They’re going to come in with something that takes us off stream. Dump it, forget it.”
The urban experts could only speculate why Ford seems intent to shelve a plan nearly ten years in the making and replace it with his own. But they believe the city could be looking to solve its budget problems with a one-time windfall that would come from the sale of city-owned properties on the Port Lands.
Sommer says Ford’s planned sell-off is short sighted.
“We have to insist on beginning with a question of values and asking what kind of city we want to build and pass on to the next generation, and whose values that city will represent,” he said. “The debate must be about ideas and values and not just money.”
