Jason Thorne, Toronto’s new Chief Planner, has visited cities on four continents. While travelling – principally on vacation, including a recent jaunt to Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile – he has noticed a pattern: Locals always think a city is in bad shape.
“Everyone’s highly critical of their own place, and sees the cities they visit as aspirational,” Mr. Thorne said in a recent interview. “It’s not until you’ve walked a street 15 times that you notice the sidewalk is cracked.”
Soon he will notice all of Toronto’s cracks, and have some power to fix them. Mr. Thorne began his new role Dec. 30, leading hundreds of staff to guide the future of Toronto.
His ambition: a beautiful city with room for more people.
“In planning, a lot of the discussion is about how tall the buildings will be,” he said. “But just as important: How are these neighbourhoods connected to the rest of the city? What is the public space going to look like?”
Mr. Thorne aims to focus on waterfront development, he said, and also “to think holistically about the neighbourhoods and the whole city.”
A holistic view is what Toronto needs. The city faces a huge housing shortage and the hangover of a 20-year boom: rising inequality, overstretched transportation networks, and public spaces that are in rough condition. It has a plan with a basic structure that hasn’t changed in 25 years.
The planning department has its own issues. Its internal culture has been insular and defensive; some senior staff seem oblivious to economics and hostile to change.
Mr. Thorne arrives as an outsider. The tall, gregarious 51-year-old has never worked in Toronto City Hall. A father of two and a native of Hamilton, he recently spent a decade as that city’s general manager of planning and economic development. He also worked at Queen’s Park under the McGuinty government and spent five years in the private sector.
He and his wife, Megan Torza, who is a partner at the architecture firm DTAH, are now selling their home in Hamilton and looking for a new one in Toronto.
It appears Mayor Olivia Chow hired him to be a change agent. The city recently hived off development review into a new department headed by Valesa Faria, leaving Mr. Thorne with the big picture. In a statement, the mayor said he “will bring fresh and creative eyes to our planning department and help make Toronto a beautiful, people-centred city.”
Mr. Thorne added: “I think she sees the Chief Planner role as being about planning policy, but also integrating with other areas.”
Good. Today, decisions about development, public space and transportation are too often made in silos. While planners sing the praises of walkability, the transportation department is using 20-year old engineering standards to make new streets. Under Ms. Chow, the parks 10-year capital budget is rising to more than $4.3-billion. But citizens don’t look to the head of parks capital planning for leadership.
Luckily Mr. Thorne understands the importance of design. “The quality of public space and the quality of public buildings says a lot about what a city wants to be,” he said. He’s receptive to the idea of a city architect or designer, which is being studied now by city staff at the urging of Councillor Josh Matlow.
Change is required. For the past quarter-century, City Hall has delivered a crop of underwhelming public parks and buildings.
Meanwhile the city’s urban design and heritage planning teams, which now report to Mr. Thorne, have created a fog of incoherent policy and practices. Nobody seems to have a clear idea what good urban design or good architecture means.
Then there is big-picture planning. Here Mr. Thorne is poised to be cautious. I asked whether he foresees major change in city planning policy. “It’s already happening,” he said, citing reforms over the past decade, including laneway houses and legalizing small apartment buildings on major streets, plus recent changes to allow six-unit buildings in one ward.
In the future, he said, “I expect midrise housing to do a lot of heavy lifting for new housing supply, and my goal is to make it easy to build.”
Those answers will not satisfy anyone looking for a revolution. But Mr. Thorne is still in the honeymoon phase with Toronto. Soon the cracks will appear to him, too, and perhaps so will a new perspective on a city that has long been reluctant to try anything ambitious. New blood can only help.
Published by: Alex Bozikovic; Architecture Critic – The Globe And Mail