summer of the street

Yesterday i spent most of the day walking up and down yonge street.
Call me crazy but i think yonge doesn't get spoken about too much when discussing the livelihood of streets in toronto. Sure yonge street has a festival, but i personally think the festival takes away from the essence of the street and to be frank is a lousy attempt at a street festival (see 'the danforth', 'montreal jazz festival' for proof).

College, queen, bloor, dundas, spadina, get alot of press and love from us twenty-somethings.
anything north of bloor is irrelevant, because there is usually a cooler equivalent south of bloor.

But yeah, yesterday, walking yonge street north of bloor, there's alot going on, its a busy street aside from the north - south traffic. Solid range of businesses, buildings of mixed usage (sounds like i'm doing a commercial strips assessment), a good mix of old and new architecture. This ranges from bloor almost up to lawrence. Like i've been told in class time and time again, streets and street scaping are important, they lay the foundation for the vitality of an area. Streets should be more than a mean of travel, they should be a destination, a place to hang out, shop, sit, relax, be seen.

With the Death and Life of Great American Cities and Great Streets on my reading list, this could very well be for me a summer of the street. Stay tuned.