Jane & Finch and el Zocalo

the public realm of daily lifeAlana Young
If one wants to understand a city, one must first look to the street. It is here in the inherently public realm that the story of daily life unfolds, a place where every occurrence has the possibility of becoming property of the public domain. The most seemingly simplistic of public spaces, the street is often the most revealing in its reading of a city. Not only is it a form of civic infrastructure the street constitutes the shared space of the collective body. Nowhere was this made clearer to me than during my time spent living in Mexico City. There, the street formed a physical manifestation of the city and its people, constantly re-asserting itself under the immense pressures of everyday life. In a state of constant flux and apparent chaos, the street was ceaselessly transformed by its inhabitants into a multitude of unanticipated forms and uses. Not only a place for transit, the street provided a haven for vendors of all types to sell their wares, for performers to create spectacles of the most death defying acts, and for self-proclaimed artists to exhibit and sell their latest works. At other times the street was converted into an unofficial stage for soccer fans relishing their victories in the World Cup, an outdoor gallery for various art and photography installations, and even as a temporary home for thousands of protesters during election disputes. Being able to attract and support such a great number of non-conventional uses, it immediately became clear to me that the street, as a valuable public space, was very much alive and thriving. The continuous adaptations and transformations the street would undergo and the equally continuous number of active participants was truly fascinating. The rhythm of activity exposed countless human behaviours and social trends, ultimately instilling an identity of place. Many contemporary theorists, architects, and urban planners have also recognized the street as an extremely valuable public space, acknowledging its key relationship to both the micro-scale functioning of everyday life and the larger macro-scale elements that create the image and identity of the city. Frequently considered an essential outlet for both collective and individual expression, the street must be re-envisioned as a vital public space of encounter and happenstance–a place of possibility that facilitates and stimulates engagement in the public realm. These ideas are studied extensively by Sophie Watson in ‘City Publics: The (Dis)Enchantments of City Encounters’, who acknowledges the challenges modern ideals acquire in contemporary society. In a time when design promotes uniform, standardised space she chooses to analyse a series of marginal sites where differences such as ethnicity, age, race and gender are not only recognised, but also celebrated. She argues for a civic realm which, ‘will go some way to destabilize dominant, sometimes simplistic, universalized accounts of public space and help us re-imagine urban public space as a site of potentiality, difference and delightful encounters’. (Watson 2006: 19). Constructing ‘normative’ public spaces, she warns, will ultimately lead to failure in their inability to recognise and incorporate change. In Ludic City Quentin Stevens also shares a concern for standardising the everyday by examining the patterns and significance of play and diversion that often occur in the street. He suggests one should more carefully analyse the informal, undefined qualities of quotidian routine believing that, ‘play reveals the potentials that public spaces offer’. (Stevens 2007: 1). Play, in Stevens’ opinion, provides a critical reading of underlying social transformations and previously neglected conditions helping to inform more responsive designs. The San Diego-based architect Teddy Cruz also advocates the power of marginal spaces and unplanned circumstances, allowing them to form an integral role in creating responsive environments. In a time when an architecture of homogeneity is commonly used to ‘reduce cultural difference and intensity into projects of beautification’, Cruz believes in developing architecture and public spaces that are more adaptive and humanising. He argues that it is not the grand architectural gestures that generate engaging places but rather the ‘negotiation between planned and unplanned, official and unofficial is really what shapes urbanism’ (Cruz 2006). Throughout Toronto one can find a variety of curious interstitial spaces and in-between places. Each site represents a part of Toronto’s social, cultural, political and economic conditions. One particular place of interest is the intersection of Jane Street and Finch Avenue in North York, a neighbourhood often referred to as the most dangerous in Toronto. In reality the crossing at Jane and Finch, a community that is home to immigrants from more than 120 nations, merely lacks a unique identity. The site is similar to many other disenfranchised public spaces, where street and parking lot merge into one massive, relentless field of asphalt, full of chaotic signage and towering apartment buildings. Instead of responding to the needs of the community the site is barren and uninspired, a tactic meant to mask difference and discourage non-conforming activity. Visits to the site uncovered various informal happenings. While some events that take place, such as the traveling carnival and the Sunday market are sanctioned and supported by the surrounding retailers, many other unofficial and often less than ideal events have become customary. Heavily used by cars and pedestrians, the intersection is a common destination and transfer point for many TTC bus patrons. Due to its high exposure, some community members find it is an ideal location for acts of self expression and protest, while others use it as a meeting point before heading onto their final destinations or for the conducting of ‘business’ transactions. Taking advantage of the abundant space, some even momentarily park to make a phone call or jot down notes in their car before departing, and several large delivery trucks meet daily for their lunch break. While the parking lot adjusts to suit the users needs, there are countless ways to make it a more responsive and engaging public space. In a community of more than 55 000 inhabitants there is latent potential to harvest the abundance of fresh voices, which could generate a dynamic model for similar diverse communities, much in the spirit of Watson’s explorations. The answers are right in front of us; it is a matter of recognising the rich insights that experts like Sophie Watson, Quentin Stevens and Teddy Cruz have to offer. Rather than designing a place of uniform indifference, we should build spaces that celebrate the unrealised qualities of a site and its people. If the city is a place of unlimited possibilities, then the street must reflect it.

Young, Alana. 'The Public Realm of Daily Life: Jane & Finch and el Zocalo' On Site review, no. 19 Spring/Summer 2008
©Alana Young and On Site review

Where we go, what we eat

Where we go, what we eat
Tonkao Panin
French, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Thai.
Hearing these words, some may think of people with different ethnic and cultural identities. Some may think of different countries with picturesque landscapes. Some may even picture cities with distinct architectural qualities. A lot of us simply think of food.
Black truffles, sun-dried tomato, jalapeno, sesame oil, soy sauce, lemon grass, these ingredients once spoke languages particular to places and cultures. Not only did they remind us of the distinct flavors and aromas of the food we have tasted, they also connected us to various sights, sounds and touches of the places they came from. There were times when food was defined by small geographic zones, prescribed by the products and traditions in those areas. But as places and people became connected, either by profitable trades, sympathetic diplomacy or hostile wars, our food has been modified. When we migrated, we always left remarkable culinary traces in places we passed and settled. Today the food we consider local may contain ingredients our grandparents never dreamt of. Changes in our environment also alter our food, particularly climate changes that have affected both our soil and water. Franchised restaurants and cafes, globe-trotting chefs, fusion fares and exotic ingredients that cross continents, all affirm that today food has become more of a global commodity than ever before. So have architecture and place.
In this age of rapid communication network and advanced information technology, we are living in a here-and-now mode. No places seem to be too far away, no information impossible, no goods unattainable. Today a trip to a Cuban or a Greek restaurant means more than actually eating the food. It offers a quick escape or a short break and satisfies us in a manner not so different from surfing the internet searching for exotic places we wish we could go to. But as exotic consumer goods and faraway places became much easier to reach, we begin to turn our interest to something more obscure and something previously unobtainable. Today Chinese, Japanese and Thai have become such household cuisines that we begin to look for something else.
Within the past few years, an odd type of specialist was born. It is the food hunter, who glimpses and tastes the new frontier of global food.1 The food hunter acts like a culinary detective, tracking down exotic and obscure ingredients from Asia, tasting them and putting them in hands of daring chefs. The focus of his job is to concoct the methods and combinations to get odd ingredients into the world’s menus, restaurants and markets. This is how bael fruit syrup and fish-paste from Thailand or wild guava liquor from Vietnam entered the menus of restaurants in the US and Europe. Perhaps these ingredients count not so much for their flavour but more for their rarity and obscurity. Once out of their native contexts, these ingredients became a symbol for exclusivity much like visiting a faraway land so pure in its natural state that only a few are allowed to enter.
As the new class of food connoisseur seeks for the more authentic (perhaps meaning the more obscure), the traveller of the twenty-first century aims for something similar. During the twentieth century, a type of tourism became popular in many countries with the rise of packaged tours to cities for vacations that would entertain and edify. It was the beginnings of urban tourism — a set of tourist resources or activities in towns and cities offered to visitors from ‘elsewhere’. The urban tourist leaves his own locale in search of excitement in other cities. Urban tourism focuses on urban culture and local environments presenting experiences that are absorbed by the visitor to a place that is far beyond their own living environment. But as the twentieth century closed, urban tourism has also been transformed. While some of us take great pleasure in consuming exotic ingredients, others are satisfied by being able to reach places equally uncommon. As Thai and Vietnamese food have lost their novelty, so have their well-known cities and towns. Bangkok, Phuket, Hanoi and Shanghai seem so familiar that they can no longer generate the sense of surprise that twenty-first century tourists want.
Certainly, tourists who seek well-known destinations still exist, but there are some travellers who intentionally neglect those iconic places. They see themselves as cultural travellers, travelling to less known destinations, looking for something seemingly ‘authentic’. They want to see the real, daily lives of local people. Paradoxically this search for authenticity that drives cultural travellers to the so-called non-tourist destinations has caused changes more dramatic than urban tourism did to major cities during the twentieth century. Tokyo, Beijing or Bangkok have been major tourist destinations for decades, slowly becoming accustomed to visitors. But today the once unheard-of Hoi-an in Vietnam, Lijiang in China, Mae-Hong-Son in Thailand have abruptly been outfitted for curious cultural tourists. Every place, as a tourist destination, can be considered as an image integrated by cultural attributes that travellers shape from their perceptions and their symbolic interpretation of this global image. However, tourist destinations can convey images that are artificially created by marketting strategies. As the towns turn their attention towards travellers, ways of life long vanished have been resurrected, scenes that no longer exist have been recreated. Thus emerges a contrast between the created image and the perceived reality. Today many cities have accepted that the fabrication of cultures is a part of urban reality in the twenty-first century.
As our food culture has dramatically been transformed, our travelling culture as well as its relationship with everyday life has also changed. Certainly there is nothing wrong with using Thai bael fruit syrup or Vietnamese guava liquor in any dish, as long as they complement the cuisine. However, exotic ingredients from faraway also fulfil our anxiety and curiosity for global information. They demonstrate our imaginary ability to go everywhere, to know and to be able to obtain everything. But when this quest for the exotics extends its boundary from culinary and consumer goods to real places, how shall we prevent lives and cultures from becoming merely a product or ingredient shaped and reshaped according to the needs of the visitors. Perhaps time will tell us how we, in the twenty-first century, will be able offer cultural solutions for the riddle we have created from our cultural demands.

1 John Krich, ‘The Food Hunter’. Time, vol 169, no. 24-25, 2007.

Panin, Tonkao. 'Where We Go, What We Eat' On Site review, no. 19 Spring/Summer 2008
©Tonkao Panin and On Site review