We Are All on Pugs

The panel. From left to right: Adam Vaughan, Alan Vihant, Joe Berridge, George Baird, and moderator Michael King. Photo by David Topping/Torontoist.

Berridge, like Vaughan, doubted the benefit of a master plan. "I actually don't think Toronto is plannable," he explained. "We are a chaotic, messy, growing, dynamic place." Calling Toronto "the Mumbai of the developed world," Berridge deemed Toronto "preternaturally ugly" and all the better for it. "We've got to get away from the whole idea of beauty and park it in Venice, which is"—like Paris, he said—"another boring city." And we have to spend serious money on development, which means more taxes.

Baird was less opposed to the idea in principle of a master plan, but called for one that was "more dynamic." "You do need a framework for growth which is efficacious," but to be effective it must have "public support," which is what is really missing now, because the "public doesn't think it has a purchase." To make something spectacular, Baird said, a city needs "collective will." And "we're gonna have to spend money." (He also teased "five remarkable plans for parks" on the waterfront and promised that "they're gonna be terrific. You're gonna be surprised.")

Like Baird, Vihant suggested that a master plan could exist, but that it'd always be changeable and changing. "There was a master plan," he said, "and we've changed it," pointing to the lakefront's redevelopment, the turn it made from an area focused on stadiums to one focused on residents. Toronto has, he said, "an ad-hoc-ism which I like"; like Berridge, Vihant suggested that Toronto should not look to Europe and must root out its "bleeding-heart Euro-philism."

Vaughan seemed to agree, too. "You can't codify Kensington Market into existence," he said. "What you need are good neighbourhood plans," ones tailored to individual neighbourhoods' needs. For the city's problems, Vaughan blamed not localized planning, but the "awful colonialism we suffer under"—the constant need to beg for money from the provincial and federal governments. The solution? We get the money that we need from each other. "The challenge in this era," Vaughan said, "is to respect and love being taxed. This city is worth paying for."

Photo of Regent Park, taken last December, by Metrix X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It was Vaughan, though, who would singlehandedly break the amicable tone of the night, a tone that he'd largely set. (The first thing he'd said earlier was "all my comments are without prejudice," a joke about how city councillors want to be able to launch defamation lawsuits using public money.) As King, the moderator, started to ask a question about what Toronto can learn from the rest of the world in terms of avoiding, or fixing, developments like Regent Park and St. Jamestown—pointing out how far those developments were from the utopias they were originally envisioned as being—Vaughan got more and more upset. Quietly muttering "ridiculous" as the question developed, which his microphone picked up before he repeated the word, louder, right into it, Vaughan fought to cut King's question off altogether a few seconds later. It was amalgamation and its effects, Vaughan argued overtop of King, that was largely responsible for the degeneration of the city's ability to build neighbourhoods. "We got it right," Vaughan said, "and then that awful colonialism came and took it away." Instead of so heavily concentrating our search for answers externally, he explained that we should "look to the city's own history," to architects like Jack Diamond. Vaughan's final punctuation on his point sucked the air out of the newly tense room and the colour right out of King's cheeks. "I will be damned," Vaughan said, "I will be damned if I hear Toronto talked about in that way on this panel."

Total silence from the panel and the audience. When a flustered King attempted to recover a few seconds later, stammering and stuttering through his follow-up question, he was met with a bit of nervous laughter from the crowd. Wrapping up the panel (very) soon after, King turned to the audience. "Is there anyone who'd like to ask a question," he asked, still looking confused. No hands. "...Of Mr. Vaughan?" A bit of laughter; still no hands. (The press release sent out late last night by the Pug Awards would describe the roundtable as "lively.") Then Vaughan stepped in unprompted, talking for a minute or two more about how the focus must be on Toronto's "physical and human beauty." King thanked him for it, and the Pugs were given out shortly thereafter, proof that cities, like the politicians that serve them, can be full of extraordinary ideas and still make extraordinary missteps.

All images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of the Pug Awards.