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The design of the city itself affects the way we relate to the seasons.

"It sounds strange," says Toronto architect James Brown, "maybe even dangerous, but I think we should have regulated places, specific sites, where people can have bonfires. There are a number of places where you could do that safely, especially along the waterfront. We also need to create amenities, places where people can get a cup of coffee and a bun."

Brown also suggests that "five-ton stake trucks be parked every 1,000 metres in places such as Coronation Park and the Martin Goodman Trail. They would sell everything from cold beer to hot chocolate.

"Part of it's the winter," says landscape architect Janet Rosenberg, "part of it's a head space. You need winter programming as well as ways to try to make it comfortable for people."

If Actions has a subtext, however, it's that of waste. Many projects included are based on reclaiming the vast quantities of food we throw away – a quarter of all food produced in North America ends in a trash bin, much perfectly edible.

"Our whole economy has become a waste economy," writes Zardini quoting Hannah Arendt, "in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world, if the process itself is not to come to a sudden catastrophic end."

Arendt's words, written half a century ago, have never been so pertinent.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Torontonians remain fixated on height, which can be counted on to raise the inevitable hackles. Often overlooked in the clamour is the growing number of small, infill schemes that fill gaps in the urban fabric. These can be seen along arteries such as Queen St. E., King St. E., Kingston Rd. and even the laneways and alleys of the old city.

Municipal authorities – political and bureaucratic – have fought the charge to intensify these lesser avenues, but at some point resistance will be futile. It is an idea whose time has come and which can no longer be denied.

The most glaring oversight of the industry and city officials is the lack of family-sized units. Finding apartments with enough bedrooms can be difficult, if not impossible. Indeed, the trend is to smaller and smaller units.

Historically, middle-class Canadians have disapproved of families living in highrises, unless, of course, they are poor. That, too, has started to change. The flight to the suburbs that traditionally occurs when couples have kids has slowed and more families are opting to stay downtown.

Thus the condo builders' focus on young professionals and empty-nesters no longer reflects reality.

In other words, the condo industry is struggling to keep up with a market whose demands grow ever more sophisticated. In light of developers' deep-seated conservatism, this should be expected. What it means is that the city must adopt a more proactive stance, encouraging appropriate built form with tax and density incentives.

As we know from painful experience, the notion that there exists a topology of rationality and certainty no longer holds. Instead, we should be talking about the landscape as a stage that enables an endless variety of activity.

The new landscapists will need to adopt a more opportunistic approach, taking advantage of the unexpected.

Every major city – Paris, Dublin, New York – does it. It's just that Toronto does it so often.

"We have a lot of façadism in Toronto," admits one of the city's leading heritage architects, Michael McClelland. "And almost no one likes it. But it's indicative of Toronto's political climate. Though it's easy to deride façadism, what do these people propose in its place? People who simply dismiss it don't understand. It's often the agreed-upon compromise."

It has also become an acceptable method of balancing civic growth and architectural history. And despite the obvious drawbacks, it's a strategy that can work.

Pluralism may be Canada's new reality, entirely appropriate in a country that grows ever more urban and diverse. Diversity, of course, is shorthand for racial variety, simple ethnicity, multiculturalism, but it goes beyond that.

At the same time, traditional political distinctions – Conservative and Liberal, right and left – are less helpful today. Indeed, they have become obstacles. And though we cling desperately to outdated national myths, this is already the most urban century the world, let alone Canada, has ever seen.

The messy outcome of the federal election reflected the form of urban reality, but not its substance. As always, our system favoured rural over city voters.

There's no reason to believe this will change any time soon; Canadians have grown accustomed to federal governments that play little or no role in urban life, other than to set tax rates.

We talk about economic turmoil and taxes without articulating an idea of what we want Canada to be. Our political system has never seemed so out of touch, so unable to cope.

Undervalued and overwhelmed, Canada's cities, where the vast majority of us live, are fighting to remain competitive, but it grows harder and harder. National housing, transit and infrastructure programs are conspicuous in their absence.

It's not that the city is so much greener than others; the difference lies in the ease with which it can be inhabited.

What does that mean? Well, to begin with, benches – and lots of them.

Simply put, benches allow us to inhabit a city. They help transform a place into a destination. They tell us we're welcome and give us a chance to be spectators as well as participants.

Here in Toronto, it seems benches are regarded with suspicion; perhaps our attitudes are vestiges of a time when this was a city that associated sitting and relaxing with slothfulness and indolence. To sit is to loiter. Even now, there are plenty of signs reminding us that loitering is forbidden. The devil makes work for idle hands, and, in Toronto, idle feet.

And you'd think Toronto, which likes to make a big deal of its commitment to pedestrianism, would latch on to the bench. In the grand scheme of things, benches offer a cheap and easy way to demonstrate its seriousness about getting people to walk.

But the culture of official Toronto is one of fear and loathing. From the bureaucratic point of view, benches are risky business. They attract the homeless, drunks, drug addicts, and worst of all, skateboarders. They are dirty, dangerous and, well, to be avoided.

Still, it's the provinces that provide the most glaring example of Canada's failure to keep up with its own evolution. Not only have they outlived their usefulness, these relics have become a divisive force that stand in the way of Canadian cities, which is where the future will unfold. Just look at Calgary and Edmonton, which despite being the most populous centres in Canada's richest province, are dull, dreary and decades behind the times.

The fact is that the gap between Canada and its political system has grown into a chasm. Our leaders – civic, provincial and federal – no longer reflect or operate in the real world. Unencumbered by the demands of reality, they are free to devote their time to their own needs and inter-governmental squabbling. It's really all they are able to do.

the minister had tipped his hand and that of the government. What he signalled goes beyond indifference, or even ignorance. The fact is neither Flaherty nor his Conservative colleagues recognize they have any responsibilities for Canadian cities per se.

The cities' task is to stop "whining," do their jobs and take care of the infrastructure, including potholes. Hiding behind some fundamentalist interpretation of the British North America Act and which level of government does what hardly constitutes leadership.

The Canada the federal government sees is not the one in which the rest of us live. It is an abstract construction, an approximation not to be confused with the truth.

Then the city should focus on trees, which once defined Toronto, and drinking fountains, which used to be ubiquitous. After that, let's look at clocks.

In these ways, we could enhance our relationship with the city at relatively low cost. Even if Toronto doesn't change, the experience would.

Just eight years after the end of the last century, it's clear that the word "urban" no longer means quite what it did. Indeed, for the first time in human history, more people now inhabit cities than don't. Canada is no exception.

"Canadians don't think of themselves as an urban nation," Miller notes. "But the fact is that we live in cities. The economic ingenuity of cities is what's going to lead us into the future."

But as Miller points out, we have a little governance issue here that we have yet to deal with; namely weak cities, a federal regime apparently unaware of them, and provinces with their own priorities.

"Politically," Miller continues, "cities in Canada don't exist, especially at the federal level. As far as I know, this is virtually unique in the world. Throughout the world, federal and national governments invest in cities, but we don't see that here. All cities in Canada are suffering from lack of federal spending."

According to Miller, "We have tied ourselves up in political correctness and NIMBYism. People have such a fear of change, but at some point things have to change."

The status quo, he warns, will lead inevitably to declining productivity and quality of life.

And while cities everywhere else are busy renewing themselves, Miller fears Canadians have grown complacent, taking the nation and cities' prosperity for granted.

"We need to develop a sense of urgency," he says. "Toronto is such a rich city, but we're not marshalling our strengths in an effective way."

At this point, Miller suggests, the best way to overcome inertia and get some momentum going is simply to pick a project and start.

And so it is a measure of how far removed we have grown from ourselves that many of us now see walking as extraneous. It is viewed as a kind of hobby, a pastime, a luxury, certainly not essential, and definitely not a means of transportation.

Indeed, we have reached a point where we classify ourselves according to whether we walk or drive. Thus we are either drivers or pedestrians. Because walking is not considered necessary, we give precedence to those who travel in cars and trucks. From their perspective, people who walk are obstacles, in the way.

Though we can't turn back the clock, the only way to ensure urban health is to plan cities with walking in mind. If nothing else, this necessitates a human scale. There's no better measure of that than walking. Not to say that everyone will walk everywhere, but that we should be able to, it should be an option. No, it must be an option.

Fleet St., Lake Shore Blvd. and around the Rogers Centre. These islands of condos separated by six-lane highways are hostile, even dangerous, for walkers. Pedestrians are definitely not welcome here; they get in the way of drivers, who are always in a hurry.

This is not how to build a city. This is how to destroy a city.

In the meantime, the ownership of the land had evolved into a patchwork of civic, provincial and federal agencies that in addition to the TRCA includes the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Toronto Economic Development Corp (TEDCO) and the Toronto Port Authority. Its annual management budget is paltry, under $200,000.

Perhaps because of this administrative confusion, and continuing neglect, the Spit was free of the kind of human intervention that has altered the landscape everywhere else. By the time the city started to get serious about reclaiming and revitalizing the waterfront, the Spit was an established part of life in Toronto. Though only open on weekends and holidays, it had become a magnet for birders, bikers, hikers and joggers. Indeed, it has achieved storied status, attracting 250,000 visitors annually. We see it now as a shining example, a desperately needed ray of hope in a world fast destroying itself.

Half a century after the Spit was begun, its problems are the result of this unexpected success. In 2006, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp., now Waterfront Toronto, announced plans to incorporate the Spit into a larger park, Lake Ontario Park.

This isn't necessarily cause for alarm. But we shouldn't forget that the key to the Spit's transformation from dump to natural habitat has been the absence of man. True, hundreds of trucks show up most working days. But their impact is minimal. They drive down the road that forms the spine of the peninsula, drop their load, and return.

The real threat may come from the people who go to the area for leisure. Though well-meaning and sympathetic, they represent the forces of gentrification. Despite their good intentions, their presence means planners feel pressure to ensure the park has all the amenities – toilets, interpretive centres, picnic benches, trails, lights, information kiosks and so on, the whole paraphernalia of civic green space – the public expects.

To a great many contemporary architects, this must seem precious and all rather beside the point. Their job is to deliver their client's bidding as cheaply and painlessly as possible, and to hell with the rest.

And the city, why should they worry about that, it's not their concern?

Condo critic

THE LIBERTIES, 717 BAY ST.: This nasty slab sums up the ethos of a generation of architects that may be well trained, but was certainly poorly educated.

There isn't a single element of this complex here that engages us at any level; more disturbing, there wasn't meant to be.

It comes to us as one of those poor architectural creations unloved by those who gave it birth. Its justification is strictly an economic one.

The miserable green metal columns that support the glass canopy clutter the sidewalk and the building. You just want to get past it as fast as possible.

The frontage on Bay and Gerrard Sts. has been broken up into a series of bays that reach up from a four-storey base.

The bricks are beige and the results aren't pretty.

GRADE: D

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Email us at condocritic@thestar.ca