I recently spent a week in Toronto on a Tuesday in November. I had a few a
places to go that were mostly unknown to the locals. I asked various people
who worked at Eatons and few other places for directions on how to get to
the Royal York. They told me they hadn't heard of it and didn't know where
it was. Its only a few blocks from where they worked. I thought this was an
interesting so I asked various people the locations of buildings I could
see across the street. All except for one did not know where they were. The
point is the lack of orientation/interest in our cites and the need to look
up and look around is as much the responsibility of the designer as the
pedestrian or the worker down town. Architects and urban designers as a
group have abandoned sensibility in the city in favor of big design... mine
is bigger than yours or more importantly... yours is smaller than mine...

As a boy in a small town I took great comfort in knowing where everything
was and being able to navigate by the hills and the ocean. Why is it we
cannot build in that sense of place and location in these places? We have
made some many giant steps in technology but our ability to create good
solid design in the city is dismal. Why?  We can communicate across the
country but not across the street. Will there be no streets in the future.
Why didn't the lady from New York look to see the Empire State Building?
No reason to look?
What was the value of her being on that street?

I ve alwasy found a grounding in working in heriateg places that I would
like to see designres duplicate in  everyday life. Unfortunately they don't
know the challnege exists let a lone how to begin to design for it.









At 07:42 AM 2/27/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Candy -
>
>When I first moved to NYC, I worked with a woman who was born and bred
>there.  One day, she was telling a story about how she worked near the
>Empire State building, but never knew where she was in relation to it.  It
>wasn't until after she had left that job that one day a friend came to
>visit and asked to go see the ESB.  She was surprized when she discovered
>she'd been walking right by it every day on her way from the train to the
>office and back again.  Sometimes it pays not only to look in one's own
>backyard, but looking up it a pretty neat view, too.
>
>- Pam, always looking skyward
>
>------------ Previous Message from  Candice Brashears <[log in to unmask]>
>on  02/26/99 08:18:02 PM tourists never go to their own backyard anyway -
>It's not that the grass is greener elsewhere, it's just that we can "always
>see what is close by - and do it another day".
>
>