Frankly, I think the old dame Ossington deserves a break rather than be relegated to condo-ments.
At least she should be given a second glance, a second chance. There's a lot of urban memory here that can be worked with – to enrich the old city experience, which otherwise future generation may presume started today.
I waded into the Ossington Avenue challenge in recent months.
It made me change my way of thinking about the Ossington I was familiar with of old.
Much has changed around it, bringing change to Ossington itself – and the question: what about Ossington's future? Should it be pumped up on condo-steroids as some would have it, or put to some more astute purpose?
What I found in the ends was rather remarkable... A higher urban-return can be achieved by orchestrating a wide-base of improvement rather than opportunely (for some anyways) inserting an unrepeatable project into one slot. In assessing the situation, the interesting (nagging) observation was that the area had nowhere near approached its allowable zoning density – and why therefore raise the ante for one particular project?
Wouldn't it be better to find the key that can unlock the inherent systemic difficulty? Sure enough it was the same problem that has withheld development along the Danforth for instance... meeting the parking provisions required for additional residential units aloft.
The parking constraint has been used as a NIMBY device for many decades, necessitating large scale developments to punch through the spacial constraints to overcome requirements for car ramp space, parking aisles and the like – and in the process creating an imperative for large scaled projects.
BUT much has changed over the years beyond the City's ambition to intensify, hand-in-hand with strengthened monetary modeling.
The new ingredients are changing transportation reliances – where the car is now an occasional device rather than the primary mode of movement... LINKED with technological advancements in the form of car lifts and parking stackers – which are well suited to occasional driving. These open up a whole new vista of main street solutions, and there are several small-site propositions of this nature being advanced in the Beach right now.
It's possible today to solve the parking issue on much smaller sites than practicable before, and do it with only one level of basement below. That's a breakthrough benefiting main streets in neighbourhoods across Toronto which otherwise sway between stagnation and big-build propositions beyond any comprehension of tuning themselves to the local rhyme and its rhythms.
In revisiting Ossington, a further distinction from other neighbourhood villages came to my attention. I'd previously dismissed Ossington as being a somewhat tawdry strip lending it to convenient thinking that it should simply be considered transitory lands – a brownfield of sorts in the overall urban matrix.
Then I realised I was looking upon history effectively frozen-in-time for one hundred years – not unlike the prospect of Cabbagetown in the 1960's which led to chunks of it being remade into St. Jamestown and Regents Park in the days of the war on urban blight, before it was discovered that there was another industry and there were economies that could revive the texture of Toronto's origins.
This segment of Ossington is one of Toronto's oldest roads and by 1800 it was recognised as THE thoroughfare to all places west in Upper Canada, providing an adjusting leg in the Dundas Road to circumvent the escarpment lands of the Humber estuary, leading towards a practical ford further north.
The road preceded even the surveyors, and a small kink is still visible today, indelible long after the grid was imposed upon it.
Ossington's success and purposefulness came to an abrupt halt when Dundas Street was completed over the Garrison Creek ravine complete with streetcars paralleling Queen Street around WWI - solving the great transit congestion issue back then.
But it meant that Ossington was disconnected from the flow, and so time has stood still for Ossignton Avenue throughout the past one hundred years - and so presents us today with the oldest remnant of a bygone era.
These historical aspects are presented in the last pages of my report: ARRIS.CA/OCA
I waded into the Ossington Avenue challenge in recent months.
It made me change my way of thinking about the Ossington I was familiar with of old.
Much has changed around it, bringing change to Ossington itself – and the question: what about Ossington's future? Should it be pumped up on condo-steroids as some would have it, or put to some more astute purpose?
What I found in the ends was rather remarkable... A higher urban-return can be achieved by orchestrating a wide-base of improvement rather than opportunely (for some anyways) inserting an unrepeatable project into one slot. In assessing the situation, the interesting (nagging) observation was that the area had nowhere near approached its allowable zoning density – and why therefore raise the ante for one particular project?
Wouldn't it be better to find the key that can unlock the inherent systemic difficulty? Sure enough it was the same problem that has withheld development along the Danforth for instance... meeting the parking provisions required for additional residential units aloft.
BUT much has changed over the years beyond the City's ambition to intensify, hand-in-hand with strengthened monetary modeling.
The new ingredients are changing transportation reliances – where the car is now an occasional device rather than the primary mode of movement... LINKED with technological advancements in the form of car lifts and parking stackers – which are well suited to occasional driving. These open up a whole new vista of main street solutions, and there are several small-site propositions of this nature being advanced in the Beach right now.
It's possible today to solve the parking issue on much smaller sites than practicable before, and do it with only one level of basement below. That's a breakthrough benefiting main streets in neighbourhoods across Toronto which otherwise sway between stagnation and big-build propositions beyond any comprehension of tuning themselves to the local rhyme and its rhythms.
In revisiting Ossington, a further distinction from other neighbourhood villages came to my attention. I'd previously dismissed Ossington as being a somewhat tawdry strip lending it to convenient thinking that it should simply be considered transitory lands – a brownfield of sorts in the overall urban matrix.
Then I realised I was looking upon history effectively frozen-in-time for one hundred years – not unlike the prospect of Cabbagetown in the 1960's which led to chunks of it being remade into St. Jamestown and Regents Park in the days of the war on urban blight, before it was discovered that there was another industry and there were economies that could revive the texture of Toronto's origins.
 |
| 1816 |
 |
| You can see Ossington Avenue bending westwards at Argyle Street |
The road preceded even the surveyors, and a small kink is still visible today, indelible long after the grid was imposed upon it.
 |
| 1915 |
But it meant that Ossington was disconnected from the flow, and so time has stood still for Ossignton Avenue throughout the past one hundred years - and so presents us today with the oldest remnant of a bygone era.
These historical aspects are presented in the last pages of my report: ARRIS.CA/OCA
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