Affordable Live and Live/Work Space for Creative Practitioners: Artists and other creative people are routinely priced out of areas that become popular due to the very creative activity that they help to generate. As they are displaced, their ability to create and to benefit from close interaction with their peers is threatened.

This problem is being tackled by Artscape, a non-profit enterprise that builds creative communities. Having spun out of the Toronto Arts Council in 1986, Artscape’s six developments consist of seven buildings containing 187,000 square feet of affordable space, including artist work studios, live/work studios, rehearsal space, office space for non-profit creative organizations (theatre and dance companies, art service organizations, galleries), a recording studio and galleries. The organization has two more projects in development. The Green Arts Barns project near Wychwood Park will provide 50,000 square feet of live/work, work, community and office space for artists and arts organizations, along with a greenhouse. Artscape will also provide 47 affordable residential units in a high-rise tower designed by Daniel Libeskind at the Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts.57

Also providing affordable space for creative practitioners is mission-driven developer urbanspace Property Group. This company’s efforts are aimed at preserving and restoring historic spaces to adaptively reuse them for commercial opportunities for the creative sector. The building at 401 Richmond co-locates creative producers and micro-enterprises of many different types, charging both market and below-market rents according to tenants’ ability to pay, and providing common facilities such as a café, a roof garden and an early learning centre. The Robertson Building, at 215 Spadina, is home to the Centre for Social Innovation, an affordable space for a group of cultural, environmental, and socially-driven organizations that work in a collaborative and dynamic environment.

Toronto’s ‘Cultural Renaissance’: Toronto is currently experiencing a renaissance as many of its major cultural institutions undergo renovation or reconstruction. A combination of public and private (philanthropic) investment has dedicated over a billion dollars to spectacular cultural projects across the city.58 At its conclusion, the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet School, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Soulpepper Theatre Company will all have new homes. The Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario will get architecturally daring extensions. And the Royal Conservatory of Music and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics are expanding and renovating. These showcase design projects follow in the recent tradition of other highly-acclaimed building designs, such as the Sharp Centre for Design at OCAD, designed by Will Alsop and Robbie/Young + Wright, and the Leslie Dan Pharmacy building designed by Norman Foster with Moffat Kinoshita for the University of Toronto.

Public and/or Natural Space: Toronto has many interesting and attractive natural outdoor spaces. Our parks, woodlands, shoreline, tree-lined streets and unique ravine network are appealing to walkers, strollers, hikers and bikers. Our outdoor spaces provide opportunities to express the city’s creativity and appeal to residents. Toronto’s most distinctive natural asset is its extensive ravine system that criss-crosses the city and provides a natural refuge from the bustling urban environment.

Heritage Preservation: Heritage buildings provide attractive and intriguing space to accommodate creative activity. Toronto’s Distillery District, once home to the Gooderham & Worts Distillery and now a National Historic Site, has been redeveloped as a pedestrian-only village entirely dedicated to arts, culture, and entertainment. The District’s old distillery buildings now house one of Artscape’s affordable work space developments for artists and arts organizations, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (home of both the George Brown Theatre School and the Soulpepper Theatre Company), galleries, cafés and retail boutiques selling creative products that range from jewellery to furniture to photographic services.

Another example of creative heritage preservation is the Don Valley Brickworks on Bayview Avenue, where an old quarry and brickyards are being restored and developed into a year-round experiential learning centre and cultural attraction where nature, culture and community meet. This project is being carried out by Evergreen, a charitable organization working to bring nature and community together, with support and funding from the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada. Recognizing the role creativity can play in the redevelopment process itself, Evergreen has an artist employed to help direct the vision and the future activities that will be provided on the site.

Design of Built Form: The new City of Toronto Act will give the City more control over architectural detail and building design, allowing it to influence the look and feel of its urban form. The City of Toronto plans to launch a pilot design review panel by the end of 200659 to advise on and complement current planning tools and design guidelines already in place. As design review becomes integrated into the planning process, it will play a key role in ensuring design excellence in the city’s built form, a critical step in ensuring that the city’s buildings reflect and project its creative capabilities.60

Strengths and Challenges:

Toronto’s pioneering projects to provide affordable space for creative activity (Artscape, 401 Richmond) offer a much-needed refuge for creative practitioners facing escalating prices of the property market. Other cities have come to regard these models as best practice for providing affordable and appropriate space for certain creative industries. But the years-long waiting lists for these affordable spaces speak to the urgent need for much more accessible and workable space for artists. Theatre space in particular is in high demand now as properties are converted to high-rise residential or other uses and small theatres using these premises must vacate. Some small theatres have had to close due to this loss of space.61 And, as noted earlier, property values in recognized arts districts such as West Queen West have escalated as the area’s artists and other creative residents make living there highly desirable. Large-scale condominium development proposals have been quick to follow, threatening the character of the area as rents skyrocket and creative activity gets pushed out to the margins.

Toronto needs more affordable, stable spaces for artists and other practitioners. Currently, creative spaces are protected and preserved in a piecemeal way, without sustained help from official planning policies. Toronto needs a systematic approach to protecting and creating its affordable space, rather than relying on isolated projects accomplished by single arts organizations and a few benevolent developers.

Toronto must also consider its overall space assets and how best to protect and enhance features such as our liveable scale, our natural ravines, new ‘Cultural Renaissance’ buildings and other bold architecture projects. Toronto must:

— Recognize that natural spaces are an untapped asset where the city could express its creativity.
— Ensure that the design of built form is considered a priority and is coordinated in a city-wide fashion. This means that design must be considered early on in the development process for its ability to promote interaction, liveable scale, heritage protection, aesthetic excitement and a positive city image. The land use planning system, including the decisions taken by the Ontario Municipal Board, will have to be more actively supportive of such an approach if it is to be successful.
— Continue taking risks on bold architecture projects.
Toronto’s waterfront represents one of the city’s biggest space challenges, but also one of its greatest potential opportunities. With hundreds of acres slated for redevelopment over the next 30 years, Toronto has a vast amount of space for innovative projects that could inspire and reflect our city’s creativity. The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation has already acknowledged that culture and creativity play an important role in its work. It has created an advisory Design Review Panel and plans to incorporate artistic elements into new infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, parks), retain and reuse heritage buildings, develop live/work spaces for artists to develop lively communities and improve linkages to the Distillery Arts and Entertainment district.62 Toronto must ensure that the waterfront becomes a model of great creativy-led urban regeneration that is characterised by good design, creative projects and accessible, stable space for creative practitioners.

Opportunities: A Strategy for Creative Space

Built Form

8. Provide Affordable and Stable Creative Space Systematically
Toronto should take a systematic, coordinated and strategic approach to ensuring there is an adequate and stable supply of affordable creative spaces. Toronto should be guided by examples such as the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center in Brooklyn, NY (see sidebar). Our case study research uncovered a striking contrast between New York City and Berlin. In New York, artists are moving to the outer boroughs and beyond as they are no longer able to afford Manhattan – leaving a vacuum of creative activity in this traditional epicentre of the arts. In East Berlin, on the other hand, the abundance of affordable space is drawing creative talent from markets like New York, although it remains to be seen whether it will be protected.

9. Create a Mortgage Investment Fund for Creative Industries
Toronto should create an investment fund with the express purpose of ensuring that artists, arts organizations and creative enterprises have the financial option of owning rather than leasing their premises. The ownership option is an effective hedge against the inevitable displacement of creative people and enterprises when their neighbourhoods become gentrified.

10. Support Development of Waterfront Ground-Floor Strategy
A ‘ground-floor strategy’ along the public edges of the waterfront would provide space for creative businesses and animate the waterfront in a way that would draw visitors to the area. Such a strategy would see developers lease their ground floor space to an official body that would manage the right mix of tenants – market-rate retail and more established creative enterprises, as well as subsidized space for new and more creative businesses. This project would take one of Toronto’s untapped assets, its waterfront, and ensure that it offers an eclectic and exciting mix of creative spaces and other uses.

11. Support Design Review Panel
Treat design as an important public project by building awareness of the importance of good design to public officials, the business community and the public. Toronto’s new Design Review Panel, once in place and working effectively, should produce a more liveable and inspiring urban space, and motivate further design excellence. Toronto needs to support the Design Review Panel when it begins its operations. By supporting this panel and its mission, Toronto will join cities like Montreal, whose Commissioner of Design is responsible for increasing public awareness of design, promoting design to public officials and the business community, and encouraging outstanding design.

Natural Space

12. Animate the City Below – Toronto Ravines
Toronto’s natural spaces, particularly its unique ravine network, should become an opportunity for creative expression. There are endless possibilities for creative recognition and enhancement of this singular natural asset: creatively designed benches could be placed throughout the ravine walks; gates with historical inscriptions could be installed; landscaping that allows a closer interaction with the Don River and its many tributaries could be designed; entranceways heralding the way down to the ravines could be erected at street level; murals could be placed at interesting points along the ravineways; cultural history interpretation could be offered; and lighting and sculptural installations could be placed to augment the natural beauty. These and other projects would animate this remarkable and distinctive ravine network, better support the ravines’ role as connectors and transit routes, and demonstrate how the ravines help us experience Toronto’s natural environment.