Not In My Back Yard: A Storm on St. Clair
“Riders on the Storm” by Mondo Lulu. St. Clair Avenue, Toronto
Since the term first arose sometime in the 1980s, NIMBY—“Not In My Backyard”—has taken on pejorative connotation, becoming a word that symbolizes selfish, irrational or arbitrary opposition to any development—even the sort that could benefit the community or city at large.
Before NIMBYism, however, there was only activism—earnest, well-meaning community activism. Jane Jacobs rallied ordinary citizens to fight against government-imposed highways in New York and Toronto; in Montreal, residents of the McGill Ghetto fought a massive development that would have obliterated the neighbourhood. They saved dozens of rowhouses and incorporated them into a progressive new cooperative.
The battles of the past have helped to change North American attitudes towards development. People are less likely than ever to accept “progress” at face value. At the same time, citizens’ voices are heard by government more than ever before. Is opposition to new urban development increasingly waged by people whose interests are purely selfish? Or has legitimate grassroots activism been unfairly tarnished by the NIMBY label?
In most cities, it’s not hard to find cases of pure, unadulterated NIMBYism. In Montreal, Concordia University long planned to build a new high-rise business school on a vacant lot at one of downtown’s busiest intersections. (Construction finally began in January.) Nearby townhouse owners complained that the building would be ugly, block their sunlight and be out of scale with the area. One owner even added that the lot should remain vacant because it was a nice place to walk his dog. But the townhouses are only three stories tall—any new building would block their sunlight—and the new Concordia building will in fact be shorter than many of the high-rises already surrounding the area. The project’s opponents did not enjoy broad support in the neighbourhood, many of whose residents are Concordia students and immigrants who live in highrise apartment blocks.
Most of the time, however, the line between honest community activism and self-interested NIMBYism is less clear-cut. This is certainly true in Toronto, where a debate raged for years over the future of St. Clair Avenue. Running east-west like a belt across the waistline of the city, Saint Clair is at once the hopping main street of several neighbourhoods and a major transportation artery. The streetcar line that runs down the middle of the six-lane avenue carries more than 30,000 riders per day. In 2002, with the streetcar tracks in dire condition and needing to be replaced, the City of Toronto decided it should go one step further and install a streetcar-only right-of-way lane down the middle of the street. Different ROW visions were presented and debated during a lengthy environmental assessment, but the final version called for a two-lane right-of-way raised six inches above the rest of the street, with a lane of parking and a lane of moving traffic on each side. Left turns would be allowed only at marked intersections.
Almost from the beginning however, the plan met with strong opposition from some residents and business owners along the avenue. Margaret Smith led that opposition. In 2002, she founded Save Our St. Clair (SOS), to fight the plan for a right-of-way, and in 2005, her group managed to temporarily block the ROW’s construction. Reached over the phone, Smith plead her case in a friendly but firm manner. “Many of us weren’t opposed at the beginning, but as we got into it and many of us raised our concerns and realized we weren’t being listened to, we got pretty upset,” she said. “It was clear that the [environmental assessment] was a ‘decide and defend’ process. The proposal [the city] had in 2002 was not substantially different from the proposal they had at the end of the environmental assessment.”
Smith insisted that the streetcar right-of-way will reduce parking, increase traffic congestion, hurt businesses, make the pedestrian environment unwelcoming and restrict emergency vehicle access. Sidewalks will be narrowed, eliminating restaurant patios and street trees. The only benefit of the ROW for transit users, Smith adds, will be a mere one to two minutes shaved off their total transit time. But many right-of-way proponents, including the bulk of Toronto’s media, objected to these arguments, going so far as to accuse SOS of being anti-transit. The Toronto Star lashed out at the organization, dismissing it as “a small group of area residents and shopkeepers worried about loss of parking space and too little room on the road for cars.” Smith insisted that wasn’t the case. The proof, she said, is in SOS’s alternative vision of St. Clair, which she described in detail: wider sidewalks, priority signals for streetcars at intersections, reserved lanes for streetcars during rush hour—restricted left turning, too—bike lanes and increased streetcar frequency.
Joe Mihevc, a Toronto’s transit commissioner, long-standing St. Clair city councillor and the ROW’s most ardent supporter, is critical of SOS’s alternative vision. “We examined that option during the environmental assessment and [it] simply will not work. It’s worse for cars—it will restrict them to one lane during rush hours—and it’s not good for public transit because, whether you like it or not, people will use the centre lane [when they’re not supposed to].”
Reached over the phone, he briskly addressed SOS’s concerns: emergency vehicles would be able to hop the ROW’s six-inch curb, he said, giving them an unrestricted path down the middle of the street. Sidewalks would be narrowed by a small amount only at signalized intersections, to accommodate left turn lanes, while mid-block sidewalks would retain their width. Street parking is already eliminated during rush hour, and any loss of parking caused by the ROW will be compensated by new off-street parking near the commercial strip. Finally, public art would be commissioned and the ROW would be lined by trees. All in all, an additional $30 million would be spent for “neighbourhood improvements” along with the $55 million already slated for right-of-way construction and track replacement.
Mihevc insisted that SOS is blind to the bigger picture. The St. Clair ROW is just one step in a plan to build a denser, more sustainable Toronto, he says. “Over the next generation, we’re expecting another half-million to a million people in Toronto,” he said. “Where we’re going to put them is along transit-oriented arterial roads, [which] we’re looking to redevelop in order to minimize car use. On St. Clair, there are a number of development applications in the pipe. The intensification is happening; you can feel the city pressure. The current traffic is only going to get worse unless we take the longer-term view to give people better alternatives.” In other words, the St. Clair right-of-way is part of a much larger city-building project, one aimed to reduce car use and make for a greener metropolis.
When asked about SOS’s complaints that the city’s public consultation process was arrogant and opaque, Milhevc grew impatient. “When you can’t win on the content you attack the process,” he snapped, adding that the St. Clair environmental assessment was the most extensive public consultation process in the history of Toronto, with more than fifty public hearings.
Both Smith and Milhevc claim a large majority of St. Clair residents on their side, but without any way to accurately measure neighbourhood opinion, it’s impossible to say for certain who’s right. SOS raises a perfectly valid point about the need for extensive and transparent public consultation when it comes to urban development. They also have, at least on the surface, some perfectly legitimate concerns about the effect of light-rail ROWs on small businesses. A point of contention between pro- and anti-ROW advocates is the Spadina LRT, a streetcar ROW built in 1997 that runs through the heart of Toronto’s largest urban Chinatown. Shortly after I first wrote about the St. Clair debate in late 2005, Steve Wickens, an editor for the Globe and Mail, emailed me with a story he wrote earlier that year. The Spadina streetcar, he found, was slower than the bus it replaced and had actually driven away riders. Not only that, but it had turned the profitable Spadina bus into an unprofitable light-rail line. “I work at The Globe and Mail, which is right on Spadina, the city’s existing dedicated right-of-way line. It was only after using this route that I realized why so many Globe employees drive to work,” he told me.
Chinatown merchants blame the Spadina right-of-way for killing their business, although, as I wrote last October, Chinatown’s decline is part of a continental trend that might have more to do with changing demographics than with a streetcar line. In any case, St. Clair’s business owners will just have to wait and see how their ROW affects business: last March, they gave up their legal challenge against the light-rail project. Construction is now well underway.
It’s hard to make a pat judgement over whether the controversy over the St. Clair right-of-way is a case of NIMBYs railing against change or heroic community activists fighting for the survival of their neighbourhood is another matter altogether. It’s worth noting that Joe Milhevc has often been labelled a NIMBY himself—recently, he led a Saint Clair residents’ revolt against a proposed drive-through McDonald’s on the urban street. That alone should demonstrate that divisions—between citizens and the government, citizens and shopowners, citizens and developers—are less clear-cut than they might seem. Labels like NIMBY only serve to poison the debate. As long as all parties agree that cities must be allowed to grow and evolve, there’s nothing to lose from thoughtfully considering all points of view.
Rendering of the St. Clair right-of-way as it will look when completed
Tags: Toronto, Urban Design
Gethin Davison says:
Hello,
I read this article and thought I would email as I am currently studying the relationship between NIMBYism and ‘place-identity’ I am looking for cases where new mixed-use development (urban densification) has been completed at or close to subway or rail stations and which encountered NIMBY or neighbourhood opposition at the planning stages. I am interested at investigating the ways that the design of the scheme incorporated these views.
Any suggestions for cases in Toronto would be great- the study is based in Australia.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
mondo lulu says:
Hi Christopher,
A little update on the situation on St. Clair West.
Two years later, construction is well underway and the street looks like a huge crater for a two-mile stretch. Business is struggling due to the noise and dust, and many have fallen by the wayside.
On a good note, new, upscale shops and restaurants have moved into the nabe, on their prescience that things will boom when the construction ends. These include a breakfast place (though not a proper replacement to my dear, departed Tivoli Restaurant), a choclatier and a cupcakery.
To combat the dip in foot traffic, the Business Improvement Associations in the area have been doing small awareness campaigns that defiantly tell the neighbourhood that they’re still open for business.
Here’s one that I shot for my local BIA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dzgnboy/3654375302/
I’m hoping than next year does bring positive change with the completion of the streetcar line. Lord knows we need it.
mondo lulu
st. clair west
toronto
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am