Nowadays, everything is disposable. Diapers are disposable. Phones are disposable. Cars are disposable. Buildings are disposable. Even thumbs are disposable.
Weather is no impediment to building demolition, as illustrated by the above photograph of a parking garage on Yorkville Avenue in mid-town Toronto. Developers will replace it with a pro-forma glass tower 60 or 70 stories high where people will huddle in 500 square foot units, 8 to a floor. To be honest, I’m not opposed to intensification in Toronto’s downtown. It produces a vibrant pedestrian life which is the opposite of ghettoization and promotes safer streets.
I’m more concerned about the fact that many of these building are, in effect, landfill-in-waiting. Development becomes a way to defer the transfer of raw materials from their sources (mines and factories) to dump sites. I’m further irked by the fact that many of these temporary waste transfer sites (otherwise known as condominiums) take their blueprints from the same boring-as-fuck cookie cutter design mill. Toronto has become a glass tower yawn.
To change the subject, here’s a joke. An architect points to a condominium in downtown Toronto and says to his friend: “There’s a building I designed. It has 59 floors. It used to have 60 floors, but that’s another story.”
