Robert Fabian blogs

Glenn Gould

rfabian — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 15:00:18 +0000

The first session of my "The Imagination of Glenn Gould" class will take place this afternoon, Thursday, February 9, 2017. I remember seeing Glenn Gould play with the Cleveland Orchestra when I was in high school. And his recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations have remained among my favorites. I had already offered several music classes. Offering a class on Glenn Gould made sense. The challenge is to find ways to translate my enthusiasm for his work into a meaningful LIFE course.

One of the things I didn't recognize when I initially sketched the course is the degree to which Glenn Gould was the product of a unique moment in technological and economic time. After only ten years on the international concert hall stage, he withdrew from public performance. Fortunately, recordings had improved enough that a recorded performance could be a close approximation of what might have been heard in the concert hall. Even though Glenn Gould was no longer present before us in the concert hall, his ideas, his imagination could still be with us through the new world of high tech recordings.

G;enn Gould, the concert pianist, could prosper through his recordings and through the video productions in which he participated. That is much less true for today's classical musicians, ... the Internet world of "sharing" audio and video files has dramatically changed the economic equation. Today, classical recordings draw people to live performances. What little money this is to be had from classical music depends on live performance. Before Glenn Gould, the technology wasn't good enough for recordings to provide a full musical experience. After Glenn Gould, the sale of classical recordings isn't sufficient to provide a reasonable living to recording artists.

Clearly, Glenn Gould felt that the essential essence of what he had to offer could be capture by audio and video recordings. It was his mental image of the music that was so important. Yes, that imagining needed to be expressed, but the concept was what was so important, ... and so distinctive in the recordings he made. He was widely reported as having practiced by thinking through the various ways in which he might express his conceptualization of a piece of music. He practiced by thinking about the music. The idea came first. The idea was of central importance. Actual performance was of secondary importance.

... to be continued

The String Quartet

rfabian — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 15:01:40 +0000

This semester I will be offering a 6 session course on "The String Quartet" at Ryerson's LIFE Institute. This being a course offered by a senior (me), for seniors (LIFE Institute Members), the focus is on improved understanding and appreciation. Theory will play only a minor role - LIFE members are not there for theory, and I'm not competent to present it. But there is a basic question of "Why has the string quartet been so popular?"

By the middle of the 18th century, the string quartet established itself as the musical form used to express a composer's purest and most intimate musical ideas. Clearly, not every composer had this view of the string quartet, but there is a long and very distinguished list of composers for whom that was the case. By common agreement, the list starts with Haydn and Mozart. It includes Beethoven and Schubert. And continues with many of the leading composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

What's so special about the string quartet? In part, it's an almost inevitable consequence of the composition of the orchestra. Every orchestra has a first violin section and a second violin section and a viola section and a cello section. Given all of the musicians that staff an orchestra, the players for a string quartet - two violins, a viola and a cello - are relatively easy to find. It was also an ensemble often found in the musical salons of the 18th century. There were (and are) string quartets available to play music composed for the string quartet.

Once the cycle starts, it becomes almost self perpetuating. The string quartet exists, therefore composers write for it. Since there is a musical catalog of string quartet compositions, more players are encouraged to form into a string quartet to play that music. And as more string quartets are formed, more composers are encouraged to write for it. And so it has gone since the middle of the 18th century. That's clearly part of the story, but it's not the full tale.

There's a fascinating question about how many simultaneous musical lines we can hear. Many people report that it's quite possible to hear two simultaneous musical lines. Indeed, Bach's two-part inventions are often viewed as a natural starting point in the appreciation of complex musical ideas. Can we really hear a three-part composition, or does our attention shift between different pairs of musical lines? Depending on how the verb "hear" is defined, different answers are offered for that question. But simultaneously hearing four musical lines is generally seen as impossible.

What does that say about the potential four musical lines from a string quartet? On a practical level, often the composer has only one or two leading voices, with the other players providing support. Four simultaneous musical lines are relatively rare - Bach's Art of Fugue is a famous exception, having been written as four parallel musical lines. One consequence of this human cognitive limitation is that we can hear something new every time we listen to a four part composition. Our recognition can shift from different pairs or triplets of musical lines, sometimes encouraged by our mental state and sometimes encouraged by the performers. A simple translation of this is that a rich four part composition can be endlessly fascinating, being different every time it's heard.

The possible four simultaneous musical lines is part of what makes the string quartet special. Another special feature of the string quartet is the similarity of the tonal colors from the four instruments of the quartet. Yes, the violin, viola and cello can play different ranges of notes, but aside from pitch, the tonal colors are similar. Mentally compare the sounds from a woodwind quintet from those from a string quartet. The composer can use tonal color as well as pitch to distinguish musical lines from a woodwind quintet. With a string quartet, the composer is almost required to put the musical ideas above their tonal expression.

What emerges can be an endlessly fascinating pure expression of musical ideas - it's the architecture of the ideas rather than their cladding. That, of course, is a mixed blessing. You don't just sit back and let the music from a string quartet flow over and around you, the very structure of the music encourages you to get inside and really hear what the composer has to say. String quartet music is, in a sense, the antithesis of "easy listening" - its very structure encourages the listener to think.

A natural hypothesis is that many composers recognized this aspect of music for the string quartet. String quartet music was seen as pure, intimate and personal expression of musical ideas. The string quartets were often composed with just this in mind. Beethoven used the string quartet to express some of his purest, most intimate and most powerful musical ideas. And so did a long line of composers from Haydn through to Schoenberg, Schostakovich, Bartok and Britten.

The OMB, II

rfabian — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:17:02 +0000

In retirement, I was confronted by an urban planning challenge in downtown Toronto - a developer proposed to put twin 58 storey towers just a few meters from my study window. Early in my urban planning learning experience, I had to face the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) challenge. The OMB exercises something that is all too close to the divine right of kings. They, in their infinite wisdom, can make or unmake any land use decisions made by the city of Toronto, or by any other local body anywhere in Ontario.

That didn't seem reasonable to me. I wrote a blog post and deputed to the city about this misuse of the divine right of kings. I've now had an additional five years of experience with urban planning in Toronto. I developed and presented urban planning courses at Ryerson's LIFE Institute (largely by 50+ course leaders for 50+ course participants). I've participated in urban planning working groups and I've sat in somewhat stupefied amazement during portions of OMB hearings. I still believe that the role of the OMB should be changed, but now recognize that it's not a simple question of abolition.

There is a complete planning echo-system at work in Toronto. Municipal councilors are elected from the different wards in the city. They provide the oversight for virtually all planning decisions in their ward. And some of the councilors enjoy a "war chest" arising from the so-called Section 37 charges which developers are required to pay. These can amount to tens of millions. Admittedly, there are restrictions on how these monies can be spent, but the entire ward urban planning process can feel quite proprietary. Couple proprietary ward councilors and a relatively weak mayor, ... too little attention can be paid to city-wide urban planning concerns.

The city-wide Official Plan is actively under review. That review process has taken considerably longer than many of us had expected. Indeed, the province recently changed the rules. The old rule called for a five-year Official Plan review cycle. The new rule calls for a ten-year review cycle. In addition, there is an active plan development for the entire downtown core of Toronto. This planning initiative is mid-way through an expected two-year process. Finally, there is an approved local planning framework which covers an area (Historic Yonge Street) that includes the site of the initially proposed twin 58 storey towers. That planning framework is under active challenge at the OMB.

The OMB follows a pseudo-legal process. Allowed arguments hew to something close to the medieval casuistry process. Land use planning principles can be cited, as can previously decided cases. Evidence is accepted from recognized experts. The OMB board member who presides at a hearing renders a judgment. She or he can accept the land use planning decision passed by city council, accept the challenger's view of what should have been passed, or render such judgment as she or he feels would be in the best interest of those concerned with the decision. Throughout this decision process, local residents can express their opinions, but their views clearly do not have the weight of expert testimony.

There are several problems with this entire process. It's clearly adversarial. Decisions naturally fall somewhere along the spectrum of views presented by the two principal adversaries - typically the city on one end and a developer on the other end of the spectrum. There is scant reason to expect that the best land used planning decisions would necessarily fall somewhere along this spectrum. Compounding the problem is the fact that the board member hearing the case need have no planning expertise or even any knowledge of the specific land whose use is being disputed. The OMB isn't structured or staffed to be a planning body.

The OMB is a dispute resolution body which by default makes many of the key land use planning decisions in Ontario. And even when no direct appeal is taken to the OMB, the threat of an appeal to the OMB hangs over the heads of all involved in land use planning. The province has taken some modest steps to improve the process. It now encourages the use of mediation rather than relying solely on the casuistry found in a formal hearing. It now provides that greater weight be given to non-experts who may be impacted by the decisions being argued. And there is the prospect of a Community Planning Permit System that may remove some land use planning decisions from OMB review.

The fundamental problem remains: the OMB is not staffed or structured to make land use plans. One "simple" change could move the process to a more positive place. Encourage the OMB to act like an appeals court and toss an ill-made land use decision back for review and reconsideration, effectively remanding such decisions. Such an encouragement would alter the dynamics of the entire process. Today, an appeal to the OMB begins what could be a lengthy process, but at least there is the assurance of a decision at the end of that process. Were remanding to be practiced, there would be the threat of repeating the planning process, with possibly the same outcome. The urge to compromise would be increased. It could be a positive step.

Overall, there seems to be a broad recognition that the land use planning process in Toronto does need to be improved. The province, with Bill 73, has taken some tentative steps in what may be a positive direction. There remains an open question of whether significant land use planning improvements will be possible in this development long-cycle. Granted there are some positive indicators, but everything takes so long. It is to be hoped that the staffing and structure of the future OMB will match its mandate. The current gap between what it is able to do well and what it does is just too wide.

Living Yonge

rfabian — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 03:40:40 +0000

Yonge Street runs immediately west of our condo. "Our" stretch of Yonge Street - between College & Bloor - is under threat of major developments. Land is expensive, but tall glass condo monoliths seem to sell well. The city with the active help of the neighbourhoods either side of Yonge has developed a planning framework, and it has been translated into an Official Plan Amendment. That has been challenged before the Ontario Municipal Board, which has the power to overrule any municipal land use decisions.

I've developed a paper supporting that Official Plan Amendment. My document is called "Living Yonge" and is available for downloading (as a pdf file). This blog entry provides a gentle introduction to that more formal document.

London, England classifies its roads along two dimensions - living and moving. Most roads are used in part for living by pedestrians who use the road, and for moving by cars and truck driving on the road. The mix is different for each road. Based on raw number of users, "our" stretch of Yonge Street is more used for living than for moving - there are significantly more pedestrians than vehicles. The local Business Improvement Association had just published a major report called "Yonge Love". "Living Yonge" made sense as the title of a defense of the Yonge Street that should be.

It's about the importance of a defined street-wall that is to human scale - consistent within each block and no more than 14 meters of 4 storeys high. It's about the importance of places for informal interactions between those walking on the street. It's about the importance of fine-grained retail that features interesting and distinctive design elements, all at the 5 km/hr pedestrian speed. It's about the importance of recognizing and respecting the 19th century heritage that is so strongly present on the street. It's about preserving a reasonable sky-view.

If the city is allowed, by the OMB, to impose the reasonable rules of its recent Official Plan Amendment, there is every chance that a Great Yonge Street will emerge, between Dundas Square and Yorkville. That's a goal consistent with a street that should be more about living than moving, a "Living Yonge".

LIFE Courses

rfabian — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 15:45:07 +0000

Note: My LIFE courses have a website: http://LIFEcourses.ca. See that site for information about my courses.

LIFE is The LIFE (Learning Is ForEver) Institute of Ryerson University. It's the largest senior learning institute in Canada, with over 1,500 active members. You have to be 50 or older and pay a modest annual fee to join and take classes. Dozens of inexpensive non-credit courses are offered in the Fall, Winter and Spring terms. Courses meet once a week for 4, 6, 8 or 10 weeks and are led by volunteer LIFE members or by professional lecturers.

Ryerson University is just down the street from our Toronto condo. I discovered LIFE almost by accident. I joined and took the first few LIFE courses. The courses were a mixed bag, which is only to be expected given the diversity of membership and the diversity of course leaders. But I saw a personal opportunity. Leading classes has been a part of my professional life for years, as an academic and as a professional talking to other professionals. I took the plunge and offered to lead my first LIFE class.

I've now lead a variety of LIFE courses on everything from philosophy to urban planning, technology and music. My motivation has always been a personal desire to learn more about a subject. For me, leading a class is an excellent way to learn more about a subject. First, there's the discipline of planning the sessions. I'm led to what could be called the “architecture” of the subject. Then there's the test of understanding which comes with presenting material to fellow seniors, some of whom may have considerable professional experience in the subject.

When I led academic courses or professional courses, the students' mastery of the material was a keyNote: My LIFE courses have their own website: http://LIFEcourses.ca. This is a general blog entry about the courses offered by Ryerson's LIFE Institute. test of success. The nature and quality of my presentations would have an impact on course success, but the students' understanding was always the central concern. At LIFE, course success rests on a different foundation. Yes, LIFE courses need to present their material in an intelligible way, they do need to be enlightening. But they also need to be both engaging and entertaining.

Different LIFE courses will offer a varied mix of enlightenment, engagement and entertainment, but all successful LIFE courses need to offer all three. That's not quite true. If a course is entertaining enough, it doesn't have to be very engaging. That's not a major consideration for me because I would not feel good about predicating course success on primarily being entertaining. My goal in leading LIFE courses is to offer all three. But it took me a little while to recognize the importance of engagement and entertainment.

Taking LIFE courses needs to be intrinsically rewarding. What happens in the classroom is really important. What can be done with the material presented is less so. Again, there are exceptions to any such blanket pronouncement, but for most LIFE courses, the classroom experience is key. How to develop engaging and entertaining classroom experiences? YouTube showed me one way to make that happen.

YouTube is a humongous library of video files on almost all conceivable subjects, and is adding dozens of hours of new video every minute of every day. One effective way to increase the entertainment value of the classroom experience is to liven the presentation with selected clips drawn from that humongous library. I find there is an important secondary benefit in using YouTube clips – students in the class can follow up by viewing the entire video file if they're really interested in the material.

In my experience, the engagement element is very subject dependent. It critically depends on the participants knowledge before they enter the classroom. The best discussions happen when all of the participants are reasonably well informed. A LIFE course on current events would be an example of a course in which all classroom participants could be expected to be reasonably well-informed (else why would they even consider taking such a course). A LIFE course on baroque music is much less likely to have a classroom full of reasonably well-informed people. But even in such a course, some discussion and some comment can enliven and engage.

Bottom line is that unless the course leader is a professional entertainer, successful LIFE courses need to add elements to the course with clear entertainment value. I've found both YouTube and classroom guests can add effective entertainment. YouTube is freely available to all LIFE course leaders. Getting good classroom guests depends on personal contacts. The larger point is that successful LIFE courses pay attention to entertainment.

Leading LIFE courses has led me into interesting and personally valuable areas. My LIFE urban planning courses have led me to a level of understanding that makes me a more effective advocate for positive neighbourhood change. The one philosophy course that I led gave me a far better appreciation for what can make life meaningful. I'm mulling over the idea of a LIFE course that would combine urban planning and philosophy – a mix of self, communities that enable that self to emerge and “places” that ground communities and their members.

The challenge I face in the coming term – Winter 2016 – is to provide a meaningful and entertaining course on The String Quartet. I've already committed to lead the course and LIFE members have already signed up for the course. I've long known that some of the finest compositions by some of our best composers have been string quartets. Why is that? What's special about the string quartet? And then, how to “package” 6 string quartet sessions that will enlighten, engage and entertain?

Leading a LIFE class is challenging, but can be deeply rewarding. LIFE is working on ways to reduce the initial learning curve for class leaders. If you think you might want to lead a LIFE course, give me a call (416-769-1885), or call the LIFE office (416-979-5000 ext. 6989).

Linux Desktop

rfabian — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 19:56:20 +0000

For years, the operating system on my desktop was some version of Microsoft Windows. Then Microsoft decided to change its focus. Windows was to be the universal operating system for smartphones, for tablets, for personal computers and for servers. That led to abandoning Window XP and attempting to move everyone to Windows 8. The market did not react positively to this version of Windows, nor did I.

All of which led be back to Unix/Linux. Back in the 1970s, I was a fresh-faced young Computer Science faculty member. Unix was a very interesting operating system that went back to basics and did it properly. It became one of the most successful mini-computer operating systems. Bell Labs, where Unix was developed, provided licenses to a variety of computer companies, including IBM, Microsoft and Sun. Eventually, the rights (such as they were) were sold to Novell. But it was a bit of a rights muddle.

Linus Torvalds built a version of Unix that employed none of the copyrighted code from the original Unix. He named it Linux and it first saw the light of day in October 1991. It's open source which allows anyone to build their own version of Linux. Today, Linux or its direct descendants is the world's most popular operating system, with versions of the operating system running on smartphones, tablets, personal computers, servers and mainframes.

The personal computer versions are available in a very wide range of flavors. The proprietary operating system for Apple desktop computers is based on Linux. Canonical has made a business by offering a version of Linux intended for an “average” desktop user. Their version of Linux is called Ubuntu. And the MINT team is supporting a version of Ubuntu that offers a more conventional desktop, with proprietary, but free, codexs already installed. I've been using MINT on my desktop since version 15.

MINT is now up to version 17.2, with support for that version is promised to 2019. I've been happy with MINT. Out of the box, it has almost all the software that I need. LibreOffice is a satisfactory replacement for the Office from Microsoft that I had used on a Windows desktop. It does “everything” that MS Office does, … and then some. Firefox has been my preferred browser for years, and its sibling email program, Thunderbird, has similarly been my preferred email program for years. Both are installed out-of-the-box with MINT. And MINT installs a full range of programs to work with all types of media files.

If that wasn't enough, I can always go to the Software Manager. Currently there are some 73,000 programs that are available at no cost through Software Manager and for which MINT compatibility has been tested. There are a small number of programs that I still want back from my Windows days. WINE, a no cost application running under MINT, will run many standard Windows applications. Fortunately, the handful of Windows applications that I want all run under WINE. After a day or so to fiddle with the way MINT displays information on the screen, I was back up doing everything that I did under Windows.

My MINT experience has generally been quite positive. MINT revived a limited netbook computer I have – performance is noticeably better than under Windows. I did make an initial tactical mistake on my desktop. It is possible to find instructions for the installation of tens of thousands of additional Linux applications. But not all Linux applications run smoothly under all varieties of Linux. I strayed too far off the recommended path, the path shown by Software Manager. I was forced to rebuild my very first MINT install. Since then I have generally followed the advice of Software Manager, … and each subsequent install has performed better than the previous one.

The difficult background question is whether MINT is right for everyone. It's more than right for someone who has a technician do all the installing and who just uses standard desktop applications. The out-of-the-box experience really is quite good. And MINT ranks high in terms of stability and security. MINT just works, especially if a technician is available to install the system. At the other end of the spectrum, MINT is far more open than Windows. Someone who knows what s/he is doing can tweak a MINT system in interesting and useful ways.

Problems can arise, however, for users who tinker with their desktop, but depend on Microsoft to do all of the under-the-covers bit fiddling. MINT can do all of the basics. Windows has simple ways to effect a range of additional changes. MINT is far more open and allows the knowledgeable user to make radical and sweeping changes. Almost any and all aspects of MINT can be changed by the knowledgeable user. MINT is steadily expanding the range of changes that the naive user can safely make, but it isn't yet at the level of Windows.

One interesting aspect of MINT is that there is no cost to try a copy. The software is available to freely download. It simply installs on a DVD as a self-loading application. Virtually all of today's desktop computers will boot from a DVD. Booting from the MINT software burned onto a DVD presents the user with a three-way choice. Option One is to run MINT from the DVD drive. Understandably, that limits the speed of disk access, but does give the user the “full” MINT experience. Option Two is to install MINT as a dual-boot option. That choice leads to a basic question on start-up – Do you want to run Windows or MINT today? Unfortunately, Microsoft is taking steps to discourage such behavior with Windows 10. Last, Option Three is to install MINT as your desktop operating system of choice. Once you make the pro-MINT decision, that's the natural option.

Urban Planning

rfabian — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 00:59:52 +0000

“It's hard to make accurate predictions, especially about the future.”

Information Systems Prolog

The simple process of predicting the future is difficult enough. Predicting the impact of a significant planned change is even more difficult. There is a kind of Uncertainty Principle at work. We plan a change with a view to establishing, post change, certain desirable or required characteristics. Problem is, the process of installing the change can and often does alter what we would see as desirable or required.

I saw this clearly in my work with information systems. Users were generally able to describe what changes they would like to see with a new information system. When the new system was installed, it then became apparent that a somewhat different set of changes were desirable or required. The new information system changed the environment enough that what was desirable or required changed, often in very significant ways.

This information system planning reality manifest itself in several ways. Some significant number of new information systems were deemed to be failures when completed. The goal of freezing the specifications during development proved almost impossible to realize. Very few information systems were installed exactly as they were initially specified. Exact budgetary predictions proved notoriously inexact, with overruns that could be anywhere from 5% to 500%. The simple “waterfall” approach didn't work – it was impossible to complete a step and never come back to reconsider.

A number of ways were developed to work around this Uncertainty Principle. A central feature common to most efforts was to take only small steps, testing each step to see what further changes would be required. Working in the information systems domain simplified the process – the steps were mainly “virtual”, existing as changed patterns of zeros and ones stored on a disk. It cost time to build the new pattern of zeros and ones, but there was virtually no cost to the physical process of overwriting what was on disk.

Still, there was and is a great management and political appeal to pretending that the plan for a new information system is exact and that everything will go as planned. A decision is required for which someone could be held accountable. Basing the decision of exact planning numbers provides a kind of political protection - “How was I to know that the system would exceed its budget and not deliver the expected benefits? I made the best decision with the information I was provided. What more can you expect?”

Urban Planning Introduction

I lived with all of this as an information systems professional. I like to think that we made progress with incremental development, with spiral development and with rapid development methodologies. Then I retired from active consulting. We moved to downtown Toronto. Recently, a developer proposed to put twin 55 storey condo towers just outside my study window. This was only one of a gaggle of new condo buildings are under development in downtown Toronto – there are something like 10,000 proposed new condo units within 500 meters of my study. My attention naturally turned to urban planning, specifically as it would impact our downtown neighbourhood.

Downtown Toronto in 2015 may not be typical, but it is interesting. Last year, Toronto had more high-rise buildings underdevelopment than any other North American city. There is a downtown building boom on in Toronto. The problem isn't attracting developers, it's channeling their eager investments in socially, environmentally and architecturally beneficial ways. NIMBYism is rampant – the pace of change is furious and that in and of itself makes many people uncomfortable. But there is an important background question about the best way to plan in this environment.

The Uncertainty Principle applies – it's very difficult to predict the impact of new developments. This applies both to an individual proposal and to the overall planned impact of multiple proposals within an area. The actual planning process is a hodge-podge of different kinds of rules applied at both the local and the provincial levels. A number of planning responses can be observed at work in downtown Toronto. There is no obvious “best” way to plan. Two planning archetypes illustrate what has been happening.

A new building is proposed. The local stakeholders rise up in arms. “How dare they propose such a dense, tall, oppressive, monstrosity just next door.” Those local voices are seen as strong enough to warrant striking a Working Group. The stakeholders are all invited to join the Working Group. One possible spin-off could be a second Working Group that participates in development of an area plan. It happened with the building proposed outside my study window. But there were a number of “special” conditions that applied in this particular case, and might not apply elsewhere.

Urban Planning Alternatives

In Toronto, developers always have the option to take their proposal up to the provincial level. Specifically, after 180 days, if the city has not ruled in ways satisfactory to the developer, an appeal can be made to the Ontario Municipal Board, (OMB). This provincial body has the power to overrule virtually any municipal planning decision. And the OMB operating procedures are stacked in favor of the established and well-funded stakeholders. “Experts” have the only important opinions before the OMB – it's a quasi-legal body that bases (almost) everything on precedent and expert opinion. One commonly cited estimate is that full participation in an OMB hearing will cost at least $100,000.

In the case of the building outside my window, the developer held off going to the OMB. They really wanted to find ways to make their proposal attractive to the stakeholders. They held off for over two years and worked with all of the local stakeholders to find a mutually acceptable compromise. Not every developer is prepared to wait that long. Tens of millions of dollars in land investments and building plans must site idle during the process. The special conditions in this example apply in too few cases.

One common alternative is for the developer to go to the OMB as soon as possible. This has a number of practical effects. The voices of local residents are muted – they are not generally recognized as experts. The discussion moves out of the public eye – a Working Group makes little sense for a proposal that has already gone to the OMB. There remains, however, an interesting discussion window. It will be six or more months before an official OMB hearing can begin (at least for current proposals in downtown Toronto). During that window, negotiations can and do take place. But a stakeholder need to be recognized as a “party” for them to be an active participant. And parties must be prepared to pony up the required $100,000 (for lawyers and experts).

In many cases, a compromise is reached. The developer negotiates with the city's planning staff and with the local member of city council. That local council member, called a Councillor in Toronto, is the one who must introduce any required zoning by-law changes. S/He is in a powerful position, but the impending OMB hearing acts to sharply limit the concessions that can be won. The process takes place in a largely private setting outside the purview of the other stakeholders.

Background Concerns

However it plays out in specific cases, there are some important background concerns that rarely come to the fore. In an ideal situation, new residential units would not be approved until after appropriate neighbourhood park space had been committed. And additional occupants in a neighbourhood would not be allowed until after appropriate public transit had been committed. Neither has happened with any regularity in downtown Toronto. As a result, the park space per downtown resident is less than one square foot, and declining. And it is now very difficult to get on a downtown subway train during rush hours, often requiring that riders wait for several trains to go by before they can board.

The entire process leaves quite a bit to be desired. The Uncertainty Principle will apply. There may be limited exceptions, but they will largely be confined to far-seeing experts who are able to realistically project into the future. The non-expert stakeholders will face an inevitable challenge in realistically predicting the impact of proposed changes. Put that to one side. How should the allowed or encouraged changes be described? Zoning by-law changes for specific buildings are possible and practical. Proposed zoning by-law changes for an entire area are a remarkably blunt instrument.

The Plan Itself

Form based building codes have been offered as a superior alternative. Some considerable success has been achieved, especially in new developments. Form based codes have been successfully used to guide such developments, resulting in walkable and transit oriented areas. One observed problem is that such new areas often lack the vitality and inspiring diversity that can result from the incremental development of an area. There can be too much sameness when one form based set of building codes is applied across an area.

A logically attractive alternative would be to constrain changes through use of a pattern language which recognized a limited number of harmonious problem solutions. New developments would be constrained to adopt a similar way of addressing the challenges (the problems) that have to be confronted by developments in the area. Exceptions could come from an appeal to modify the approach to a problem or to extend the list of problems for which there are recognized patterns. It all hangs together logically and has great conceptual appeal. But far too few people, stakeholders or not, easily recognize the power of an appropriate pattern language.

There are several “grand” schemes that, some hope, will provide a better way to plan and guide development in an area. One potentially appealing alternative when it can be applied is to declare an area to be a Heritage Conservation District (HCD). Toronto has had considerable success with its HCDs. Neighbourhoods and shopping districts in Toronto have thrived under HCD protection. When an area has already begun the gentrification process, establishing an HCD seems to work. The HCD can be used to lock down those features of the built environment which attracted gentrification. The critical pre-condition is the gentrification needs to be solidly established. Alas, that's not the case for the Yonge Street outside my window.

Another alternative that is being discussed is use of what Ontario calls a Development Permit System (DPS). An area plan can have real teeth under the DPS. There is only the most limited appeal to cases outside the area or to expert opinion. If a proposed development doesn't fit with the area plan, it gets rejected. There may be a technical question about whether or not a proposal fits, but there would be little opportunity to creatively interpret the plan to produce a favorable decision in particular cases. There is a gross timing issue about DPS applied to the Yonge Street outside my window – the lead time is such that there would be little left to guide by the time a DPS area plan was developed and approved.

And the DPS approach suffers from a serious political drawback. Local stakeholders are very often called into action, not by abstract planning exercises, but by proposals that ask for too tall, too dense, too much of everything that is undesirable in a new development. The key trigger point with the DPS approach must come before the lion's share of proposals are submitted in an area. The planners get excited about the DPS area plan, but many of the local stakeholders will not be motivated until they see the actual threat.

Muddling Through Uncertainty

The current approach is an almost ad hoc combination of features. Details could certainly be improved. I would like to see the OMB confined to decisions about the planning process, and leave planning to planners and other stakeholders. I would like to see the suburban requirement to devote 5% of a development area to parkland adjusted so we get more than a square foot of parkland for each downtown resident. But these are details. The ad hoc features that combine to shape the future of Toronto are doing a not too bad job. It's uncomfortably accidental, but that might not be a bad thing. We're less likely to make grand mistakes the way we too often did in early post-WWII urban planning. It's messy and accidental, but that's an important part of what makes it work in the real world.

Site Plans

rfabian — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 14:21:40 +0000

My old site still exists (link), albeit in a static form. Rather than migrate material from the old site to this new site, my plan is to gradually populate this site with material that is relevant to my current interests. Eventually, I may drop all reference to my old site, but that's a number of years in the future.

I've been impressed by bloggers who regularly post new material. My initial plan is to write a new blog entry every week. A daily blog post is almost forced to be thin, and a monthly post is too infrequent to stay top-of-mind. Once a week seems like a reasonable plan. The subject matter is likely to vary widely, but my intent is to offer content that is not highly topical.

I retain a selective interest in technology. Most of my career, before I entered my 3rd Age, connected in direct ways to technology. The big difference today is that I no longer feel a professional need to stay on top of best practices. But I do pay attention to my desktop and my website and my camera and my Android device(s). From time to time I may write about those technologies which I'm following. The exception is my connection to Alpha Insights, a new virtual consulting group.

Presenting courses at Ryerson's LIFE Institute is a continuing focus. The material I prepare for my courses will appear, not here, but on my LIFE Courses website. Developing courses inspires and is inspired by a range of personal interests.

The following topics are ones that I am currently following:

Urban Planning - We live in downtown Toronto and a gaggle of new condo buildings are planned, proposed, approved, under construction or occupied. Our world is being reshaped, not always in positive ways. Understanding what could be possible and finding ways to appropriately influence development is important to me. There may be blog entries on aspects of urban planning.
Community - We are strongly shaped by the communities in which we were raised and by the communities in which we find ourselves. I generally agree with the Communitarians about the importance of responsibilities to counter-balance claimed rights. We're gone too far, but it's less than clear what effective steps we can or should take. Nor is it clear how to balance local as against global concerns.
Music - Classical music has always been important to me. It was an important focus for me in high school. While I no longer perform, I still take great pleasure in exploring new worlds of classical music. The proliferation of music sharing site has allowed me to sample work from composers who were previously unknown to me. For me, this is a good example of technology opening new musical worlds for me.

Stay tuned. I'll have more to say, every week if things go as planned.