Yonge and College: carefully controlled private interests At the north-east corner of Yonge and College Streets, a relatively new and busy location for a national chain of pharmacies occupies the ground floor. In a part of town frequented by a whole range of publics and presently undergoing urban revitalisation efforts to create ‘a downtown that’s cleaner, safer, and more inviting’ 4 , this building is a model for neighbourhood changes to come. Its boundaries are broken down by a whole series of mullionless shop front windows which at first glance seem to provide the openness and ‘eyes on the street’ missing from the Chinatown Centre. On closer inspection, the boundary is far less inviting to the public. Through both material and form, public engagement beyond the visual (and of course, economic…it is a store, after all) is deterred. Clad in stainless steel and glass at its base, and with little to no surrounding urban furniture, the prospect of lingering longer than absolutely necessary to complete a purchase isn’t exactly convincing. More blatant are the rows of stainless steel
balls covering all the window sills. Too narrowly spaced to sit in between, too cold and awkward to sit upon, these small modifications to the building’s edges actively prevent anticipated informal usages and minimal traces of public occupancy altogether. Assured instead is the maintenance of a clear view to the merchandise and a controlled branded image projected onto the urban landscape. This boundary is not only a billboard, but a static boundary that favours the private owner of the commercial space beyond. While private businesses may have every right to project themselves onto the street at the outer edge of their building, what is at risk is the stifling of the unpredictability of public life at the building’s edge – a factor that should not be underestimated in the production of rich urban space and urban life. In the making of a space that is cleaner and safer, it is more inviting only to the consumer inside.
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On Site review 23 Small Things
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