An modest proposal for Toronto's Quayside development...
Photo via Pixabay
Now that Sidewalk Labs has left Toronto, There is a huge opportunity to fill in that vacuum and do something un-Toronto-like: design a neighbourhood that is unlike anything we've seen before and firmly cement Toronto's reputation as the city of the future. Something of the magnitude of Medellin's Metrocable, Cerda's resilient grid or Curitiba's seminal Bus Rapid Transit.
To get the best and brightest talent to submit their ideas while making sure that a behemoth firm doesn't come in and steals the show and their ideas, here is a modest proposal that outlines how we could go about it:
Hold an open competition and hold it in stages:
1st stage is open to any designer operating in Canada, as long as they have fewer than 50 employees. The catch? They're only allowed to submit a one-page written proposal, no diagrams, no design, just words.
Stage 2: shortlist 10-15 submissions and invite them to submit a schematic design. Budget to pay them a reasonable stipend, roughly equivalent to what the average Canadian firm would charge for a similar scope of work. Cover expenses.
The winner gets to design the project in full and lead it at least through to the end of Design Development, if they're too small to stomach the resources to do so on their own, pair them with one of the many large firms operating in Canada, that can bring the lacking expertise to the table
All contenders retain full intellectual property on their designs and are free to do whatever they please with them.
Offer financial bonuses for designs that achieve the best life-cycle costs, not just the cheapest construction. The more efficient, the greater the financial incentive. Extra bonus for designs that aim at preserving and fostering the local culture. To paraphrase Austin/Portland’s overused used motto: “Make Toronto Weird”.
Incentivize developers to go for quality instead of quantity. There are many financial mechanisms to do so. Make it so palatable to them that it becomes a no-brainer.
You might think: but that going to cost a lot of time and money to organize, to which I reply: we cannot afford to not spend the money and risk getting another set of bland, crappy condos or worse: hare-brained ideas that aren't well suited for Toronto's climate. Bright designers will figure out ways for the project to make back its initial investment in the design by saving money on construction and operating costs, that is what they're good at, after all.
Who's with me?
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