WINTER SCENES, CONTINUED Sunday, March 20, 2005 - Christopher DeWolf MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : MAN HUGGING A BABY ON ST-LAURENT BLVD. MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : HAZY DAY AT JEAN-TALON MARKET MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : CONVERSATION ON ST-LAURENT BLVD. MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : SUNNY AFTERNOON IN A PARK AV. CAFE MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : CLARK STREET AT BERNARD MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : BUILDINGS IN THE FUR DISTRICT MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : HOUSING PROJECTS NEAR ST-LAURENT BLVD. MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : SKELETON OF A BUILDING, ST-LAURENT BLVD. Head to the archives for last month's posts. PUBLIC SPACE + PUBLIC PHOTOS Thursday, March 10, 2005 - Christopher DeWolf Photos by Gayla Trail, from Making Happy. Public space is the city. Nearly all of the scenes that make urban life so interesting (and such a wonder to photograph) occur on the street, in the park, on the subway ― in the public realm. Spacing is a Toronto-based magazine dedicated to that city's public space (see City Murmurs, the Urban Eye column about Spacing). Along with articles on the pleasures of getting lost, hidden spaces in Toronto and the many games we play in the streets, Spacing's website includes a photoblog featuring some of Toronto's best urban photography. Like what you see? Soon you'll get a chance to see those photos live and in person, at PUBLICity, a five-week exhibition "examining Toronto's urban landscape and public spaces as captured by its top photobloggers." Photographers include Gayla Trail and Matt O'Sullivan (featured above and below, respectively) along with many others. PUBLICity's opening reception is next Thursday, March 17th, from 7pm to 10pm. Check it out, grab some drinks and admire the beauty, ugliness and idiosyncrasies of Toronto's urban space. PUBLICity Toronto Free Gallery 660, Queen St E, Toronto Hours: Wed-Fri 12-6; Sat 11-6 416.913.0461 Photo by Matt O'Sullivan, from The Narrative. Head to the archives for last month's posts. POWER TO THE PEDAL-PUSHERS Monday, March 7, 2005 - Christopher DeWolf Photo by Christopher DeWolf. In Planetizen's latest guest editorial, urban studies student Rocco Pendola extolls the virtues of Critical Mass's "temporary urbanism," writing that it takes "our present reality and implement[s] wholesale cosmetic, physical, and attitudinal changes," making city streets much more pleasant places for a few precious moments. Yet Critical Mass, a monthly, unorganized bike ride through the streets of hundreds of cities around the world born in San Francisco in 1992, takes a lot of flack from a wide range of people, including motorists, police and politicians. The gathers are dangerous and inconvenient, they fume, angry at the brazen arrogance of those cyclists who dare to claim the streets for themselves. Surprisingly, however, some of the harshest criticism comes from die-hard cyclists, such as "cycling transportation engineer" and consultant John Forester. Under the vehicle codes of the United States and other countries, cyclists enjoy the same rights as motorists; bicycles are considered, technically speaking, to be the same as cars. Thus, according to Forester and his supporters, the problem isn't that cyclists suffer from unfair laws: "[Critical Mass] serves primarily as a goof-off for people that are too timid or ignorant to ride as they should," huffed one cyclist in response to Pendola's article. If only cyclists knew how to properly negotiate car-filled streets, they'd have no problems at all!  But here's the problem with that kind of reasoning: bikes just aren't the same as cars. It's obvious. Bicycles are manually powered, lightweight and do not encase their drivers in thousands of pounds of glass, plastic and metal. They're also environmentally-friendly, which is especially important if Canada expects to meet its Kyoto Accord goals. This is why transportation codes and city governments need to establish a new hierarchy of transportation: Pedestrians, bikes, buses and cars are not equal in real life, so they shouldn't be equal under the law. Private automobiles are the most inefficient mode of transportation in cities today, ferrying around solitary drivers while creating unwarranted amounts of pollution, noise, visual degradation and danger. While cars certainly have a role to play in cities, their inherent destructiveness means they should be they should be subservient to other, more sustainable forms of transportation. Speed limits should be lowered to ensure the safety of pedestrians and cyclists; pedestrians should be allowed to jaywalk freely on all but the busiest streets; and public transit, including rail, buses and taxicabs, should be readily supported. Forester's ideas are flawed because they reinforce a system of laws and urban design that give an unfair advantage to cars simply by insisting that bicycles are equal to large and potentially lethal pieces of machinery. This is where Critical Mass comes in: designed to make cyclists visible by taking up the whole road, and forced to ignore traffic laws to ensure their unity and safety, the "spontaneous" gathering of cyclists delivers a deliberate and calculated blow to the dominance of private automobiles. Its participants like to argue that it isn't a protest, but really, it is ― and a highly relevant one at that. It's about time someone questions the entire system by which we organize traffic in our cities. Head to the archives for last month's posts. WINTER SCENES Monday, March 7, 2005 - Christopher DeWolf MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : WOMAN, BOXES ON ST-LAURENT BOULEVARD MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : PARK AVENUE NEAR VAN HORNE MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : MAILWOMAN ON JEANNE-MANCE STREET MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : WAITING FOR THE BUS ON PINE AVENUE MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : CLARK STREET AS SEEN FROM PINE MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : CORNER OF NAPOLÉON AND ST-LAURENT MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : SPONTANEOUS CHINATOWN FRUIT MARKET MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : RAINY NIGHT IN CHINATOWN MONTREAL, Feb. 05 : SUNSET AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY Head to the archives for last month's posts.