St. Lawrence Market in Black and White

Some of you will have read my recent post about Kensington Market located near Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood and the University of Toronto. Well, this past weekend I visited Toronto’s other great venue for meets, poultry, fish, produce and treats: the St. Lawrence Market.

Unlike Kensington, this market is largely housed inside two buildings — the “north” and the “south.” But, like any great indoor city destination its liveliness spills out onto the street in the form of vendor stalls, food carts, and buskers. Each summer it is a great show of Toronto culture out on the streets. Today, the south building is home to the permanent stalls while the north building is largely occupied by farmers who come each weekend to sell produce.

An Early Spring Trip Through Kensington Market

This past Easter weekend I was out with my camera to explore the early signs of spring in our city. Being Good Friday much of the city was quiet. The hike began in Yorkville which, for all intensive purposes, was a ghost town without the usual bustle of people. With the buds just barely showing on the trees, photographing Toronto neighbourhoods void of people at this point in the year makes them look exceptionally dull.

Thankfully, The next stop on the list was Kensington Market, a part of Toronto that I have a love-hate relationship with — although on this specific day it was more love than hate. Kensington is located west of, and adjacent to, Toronto’s Chinatown and is bordered by College Street to the north, Dundas Street to the south, Spading Avenue to the east and Bellevue Avenue to the west. Its history dates back to the founding of “Bellevue” — the estate owned by former British militiaman George Taylor Denison who once owned the lands that make up the Kensington Market area as we know it today. In the 19th century the estate was sold and subdivided into lits for Victorian row houses to accommodate growth in Toronto’s population, largely made up of newcomers from Ireland and Scotland.

Source:  Toronto Public Library,
file X 65-64 – Public Domain Image of Kensington Market in 1924.
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The neighbourhood first began transitioning into a market during the early 20th century as its Jewish population grew and small shops, tailors and banks opened in the area. It was during this time that Kensington began to look a bit more like it does today — albeit it tidier than today’s tarp-ridden (rather than awening-covered) marketplace. Over the course of the 20th century the neighbourhood would change a great deal and fall somewhat into decline as its buildings aged. As the century progressed the Jewish population largely moved to other parts of the city while new waves of immigrants landed in Kensington, and Chinatown to its immediate east boomed. In the 1970s the city was receiving development proposals to demolish the victorian row houses and shops to make way for new concrete apartment blocks. These proposals were, fortunately, rejected by subsequent mayors Crombie and Sewell.

Christmas at the Eaton Centre, 2011

Just over a week ago now I was walking the streets of downtown Toronto in search of Christmas gifts when I decided to duck into the Toronto Eaton Centre. I’d been walking on Yonge Street when, after passing that empty void of privately managed “public” space known as Dundas Square and then through the crowds of buskers and preachers on the public sidewalk, I turned into the mall to see what it had to offer.

The Urban Photography Kit

Olympus E-P3 with 45mm f1.8 lens.

I’m like many urbanists today who roam the city with a camera in hand. Sometimes it’s an iPhone and sometimes its a DSLR, but for the photographer looking for stellar photos in a small and flexible package, the Olympus PEN series is a must have in my opinion. The Digital PEN series, named after Olympus’ classic PEN series from the 1950s and 1960s is an interchangeable lens camera (like a DSLR) but does not have an optical viewfinder — instead you use the large LCD screen to compose your photos. The PEN cameras are small and quite light relative to their large DSLR cousins, making them the ideal camera to sling over your arm when out in the urban wilderness. The top of the line PEN, the E-P3, has all of the functionality of a DSLR, a growing set of superb lenses, and has mighty stylish looks. For those who want a good photo right out of the camera, without the hassle of developing RAW files, the Olympus JPEG engine can’t be beat either.

About a year ago now I picked up the Olympus PEN E-P2 and, to my surprise, it quickly took over as my staple camera. In the city it is light and easy to carry and when traveling it is compact and easily fits in my carry-on luggage.  For those urbanists or travelers looking to get a new camera and invest in a few nice lenses, below is my suggestion for a great kit.

The Perfect City-Shooter Kit

• An Olympus PEN Camera — at the moment my recommendation is either the E-P3 or E-PL3 (L=”lite,” fewer features and a plastic body)
• Lightweight and compact monopod
• Olympus 12mm f2.0 wide angle lens for landscapes/cityscapes, architecture.
• Panasonic/Leica 25mm f1.4 “standard” lens for regular walk-around shooting.
• Olympus 45mm f 1.8 “portrait” lens for street photography and close-up photography.

Paris’ Viaduc des Arts and the Promenade Plantée

“A good city is a mix of memory and invention” — Robert Campbell, The Boston Globe

While federal and provincial stimulus funding for infrastructure has essentially come to an end as Canada’s economy has bounced back with some vigor in recent months, dialogue about public infrastructure remains a hot topic. During the downturn infrastructure investments were used to drive employment but were also intended to provide our regional economies with the tools they will need to succeed economically in the decades ahead. While elsewhere in the world (Australia, America, Asia, and Europe, most notably) the discussion focused on visionary projects – economic “trump cards” for a globalized world – like high speed rail, our dialogue in Canada has been more subdued. Whether the investment is in rail, or roads, or parks, or cultural institutions there is always a debate around the cost of the investment vs. the long-term value it will bring. But even in considering value, rarely is the potential reuse of infrastructure taken into account.

In urban design there is a long-standing principle called “robustness.” Robust spaces are those that can adapt to changing uses over time. For example, how does a space adapt if a roadway turns into a pedestrian-only street in the future?  Do we take this and other design principles into account when building new infrastructure? In North America do we ask ourselves how a given piece of infrastructure can be reused when it is no longer needed? Not typically, no.

With all of the buzz this past week about the opening of the second phase of the High Line in New York City – the superb reuse of an old railway corridor cutting through the city – I thought I’d take a moment to write about infrastructure reuse in general, and the value (economic, social, environmental and cultural) infrastructure can bring to communities. I also thought I’d point out that New York is not doing anything new. It is simply implementing, on a smaller and less comprehensive scale, what Paris France implemented years ago with an abandoned railway corridor of its own.

Let me share some history and observations about Paris’ Promenade Plantée and the Viaduc Des Arts.

From Viaduct to Promenade

This story begins in 1853, the year the Paris-Strasbourg Railway Company obtained the land and approvals to begin construction of an elevated portion of track from Place de la Bastile, the terminus of the new railway line, to the eastern edge of the city. The line, planned in 1833 and commissioned in 1859, was almost 500 kilometres long, linking the two cities together. Many portions of the line are still in use today but the corridor has been upgraded to accommodate France’s TGV high speed rail system. Within the City of Paris though, the introduction of the SNCF’s RER “A” commuter rail line in the 1960s quickly made the elevated portion of the line obsolete.

Sitting abandoned, the elevated “Viaduc,” its 64 vaults, and the railway station at Place de la Bastile began to fall into disrepair, impacting the local economy of the “craftsmen quarter,” its artists and all those engaged in the cultural industries there.   Two options were considered by the L’Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme, (APUR) Paris’ urban planning authority:

1. The cost-side approach: demolition of the Viaduc to accommodate new development and to re-establish the continuity of Rue de Lyon and Avenue Daumesnil.
2. The long-term value approach: construct a promenade above the Viaduc and renovate the vaults and several parcels of grey- and brownfield along the former railway line in order to recognize the area’s heritage while creating new opportunities for businesses and future development.

The second option was initially written off as being unrealistic, too expensive, too time consuming and too challenging. But, with enough time, the APUR and public ultimately recognized the value proposition of rehabilitation — it would indeed lead to broader reinvestment in the neighbourhood over time and would create a variety of spaces that could support a wide range of different uses and activities.

How this change of heart came to pass is a bit unclear to me as I’ve had some trouble researching this part of the story, but there may even be a Canadian connection. This is my best hunch. When Place de la Bastile was selected in 1982 as the site for the new state opera house a design competition for the new building was held. The winning competition entry belonged to Carlos Ott, a Uruguayan living in Canada, whose design included a promenade, or pathway system, integrated into the site plan that would make use of the Viaduc.

Construction on the new Opera Bastile and promenade atop the Viaduc got underway within a year. The City appears to have quickly changed its development regulations to ensure that the promenade could extend onto the surface beyond the Viaduc without being interrupted by new development.   The City also defined an “officially publicly useful” perimeter around the viaduct and many of the parcels acquired along the route.

The original construction of the Viaduc had divided neighbourhoods and created large portions of orphaned space. The promenade project was seen as a way to reconnect these neighbourhoods and spaces along the corridor by re-establishing access beneath the vaults and by converting orphaned space to accessible public space – parks and squares – and into offices and new apartments that would connect onto the promenade. The inclusion of apartments and offices were an excellent way to ensure that the promenade would have sufficient everyday use and “eyes on the street” to make it safe for those traversing its 4 kilometre length.

In 1994 the first vault was fully restored and by 1997 all 64 of the vaults were restored, with many converted into shops and studios. What did this mean for the project? The Viaduc des Arts was born. Above the Viaduc was the trail system, Promenade Plantée, a peaceful park space intentionally void of commercial activities while at street level new storefronts present residents and visitors with a wide range opportunities to engage with the districts’ craftspeople.

See Your World Through A Synth

Click to view Synth

If you like to take photos around town like me then this is something that might interest you. Are you ever in a setting where you can’t fit enough of the scene you’re looking at into a camera’s viewfinder — or you wish you could take a wide angle shot but still show some of the most interesting details of the street you are on or building you are in? This happens to me every now and then and when it does I often re-discoveer a fun little tool developed by Microsoft that produces some really fun digital photo experiences: Photosynth.