Loos likely was responding in part to religion and a world of religious edifices that had always been decorated. In the early years of the 20th century, when a new spirit of rational inquiry evolved in Europe and when ideas of social equality were coming to the fore, the rejection of religious architecture may have made some sense. But a century has passed, and though religion still retains an iron grip on too many human lives, the architectural ideas of the great cathedral builders, even if they were once passé, are now as fresh as spring flowers.

Le Corbusier, perhaps the most famous of the triumvirate of Modernism composed of himself, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe took the well-meaning ideas of rationalism and extended them too far. Le Corbusier’s love of the car–his separation of cities into various functions–transportation, living, shopping, etc. was totally contrary to ideas about living, vital, glorious cities.

I want to submit that the solution to all modern life is found in that oldest of city structures–the piazza. Though we tend to think of the piazza as purely Italian, in fact the French “Place” and the English square have much the same virtue. All are public gathering places.

Frank Gehry, the Canadian-born American architect, who’s now become a household name in sophisticated circles, has a great piece in The Atlantic about architecture and cities. Gehry points out that though most Americans (and Canadians) live in sterile box-like houses in the suburbs or glass curtain-wall towers in downtown cities, they nonetheless make pilgrimages to see great architecture, like his own Guggenheim Bilbao, his dorm at MIT, (pictured above) or the cathedrals of Chartres and Paris. It is odd, isn’t it? But its somehow very American. Something in the national character likes culture, art and beauty, but it likes it over there in some other place. No one wants to live it.

I spent part of last summer in Vienna. Vienna is a far smaller city than New York, or even Toronto where I live now, and small cities are obviously more limited in what they can offer culturally. But Vienna is gorgeous! I felt like I could have spent a lifetime there. The only thing missing–and that was just to a relative degree–was North America’s human diversity, its broad rainbow of faces, styles, colors, etc. Vienna, like much of Europe, is also socially tolerant. (For example, nudity is permitted on the Donauinsel near downtown.)

Have you ever noticed how even tiny European cities sometimes have dozens of museums, beautiful architecture, and great nightlife? Why is it that Vilnius is more interesting than Houston? What is it about North America that kills aesthetic ideas? Giving up the car and living downtown is always too expensive in the American mind.

Will Alsop, a British architect, is the crazy mind behind the Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. When I first moved to Toronto, it was one of the few buildings I saw that provoked any excitement, that provided any kind of challenge to Toronto’s bland architectural sensibilities.

Now Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for The New Yorker has written an article on Alsop and his Toronto creation in the latest issue of the magazine. Goldberger states:

The Sharp Center has upped the ante for architecture in Toronto, which has more often been defined by bland efficiency than by stylistic invention.

This would be a grotesquely accurate description of Toronto–a city I’ve come to appreciate by living here, but that remains so far from beautiful that one comes upon the Sharp Centre with the joy of a thirsty man finding an oasis in the desert. Never was a better city joined to worse architecture than is the case in Toronto. Bravo Mr. Alsop, both for listening to people and for having the courage to be bold.

In Toronto, where I live now, there are no traffic islands except on University avenue. There they are wonderful except that the avenue itself is so dead. Because of the big office and industrial buildings there there are never any pedestrians along the avenue.

In comparison, here I have a picture of the wonderful Astor Place traffic island with its cool and crazy cube. It’s kind of empty in this picture, but its usually very busy. Just try this island at rush hour on a weekday!

Too many North American cities are generous to the car. Many people with cars love this, of course. University Avenue in Toronto has three lanes going each way, as does Avenue Road. With three lanes each way we’ve got a bloody highway in the middle of the city.

As we know highways are deadly to cities. New York, in contrast to Toronto, forces one-way traffic on most streets. This slows traffic down, allows more human population density, and is safer overall for everyone concerned.

One recent development in urbanism is the idea of “naked streets”. This is not, as one might wish it to be, a haven for urban nudists, but the idea that when all forms of separation between the street and the sidewalk is removed–when the first priority does NOT go to the car–streets are safer.

The naked street idea involves the removal of all barriers, street lights and stop-signs along a street. Presumably too it makes the entire space of the streetscape into a sidewalk. I can’t walk down the middle of Bloor street without getting hit by a car or bus, but imagine if we all had to share the entire space. Traffic, paradoxically, would have to SLOW down. This inevitably would be a good thing.

Now if only we could get the nudists to walk there…

Why can’t this city, with such extraordinary possibilities for rich human encounters, with everything from parading nudists, hip-swinging transvestites, and burka-wearing women do something more for its physical environment? What I would love to see would be a great bit of public architecture. But both Toronto’s city hall and its research library are the kinds of sterile, person-hating, back turning, aloof architecture that it makes good sense to hate. Why not take a vast centrally-located site and build something grand and truly beautiful? When was the last time Toronto, (or any other city for that matter) built a grand masonry arch to frame a window? Why not say no to the glass curtain wall, no doubt the most popular and most ugly architectural innovation of the last century?

It’s so sad to walk down Avenue Road and see old apartment buildings that have beautiful deco detailing, copper doors, and even bits of relief sculpture, all neglected because traffic has to move so fast there that all sense of pedestrian movement, of the deeply human aspect of architecture is gone? The city is a living organism, indeed one of the greatest human inventions of all time, but one that is constantly threatened by people’s hatred of each other and of difference.

The great sadness in Toronto is that it is so evident that the city could do so much better!

So why do you drive?