[URBAN NOTE] On those fake City of Toronto notifications for condo redevelopments

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO's Derek Flack was the first person I saw explaining what the above graphic--ostensibly, a City of Toronto notification of a planned condo conversion of Old City Hall--was about.

Plenty of people fell for the prank when they first encountered the sign, especially as it started to make the rounds on social media. Part of the reason for this is that the production of the sign looks convincing (notwithstanding the wood poles and the dated colour scheme.

The other reason, however, is that the real applications we're seeing these days have become so wildly outlandish. It wasn't so long ago, after all, that a massive residential tower was proposed just to the east above the F.W. Woolworth Building at Queen and Yonge.

Aside from the minor giveaways, there was a significant hint as the facetiousness of the application: the Tumblr link at the bottom of the sign. This would normally send people to the city planning website, but instead leads the curious follower to a treasure trove of other prank development applications.

They range from Casa Loma to OCAD to the CN Tower -- in other words Toronto's most sacred buildings. Another proposes to build a whole new condo atop of 1 Bloor East, the nearly complete development that already soars to 65 storeys. The whole lot of them offer some much appreciated levity in the midst of a development world gone mad.

The Toronto Star's Peter Goffin went into more detail.

From 180 residential units built atop the Ontario legislature, to condos balanced on the CN Tower’s observation decks, to a Toronto Islands ferry reimagined as a floating base for a residential tower, the “proposals” get more surrealistic as it goes on.

It’s all a goof on Toronto’s condo-building fervor, care of a pair of artists and self-described “urban interventionists” who work under the pseudonyms Glo’erm and Tuggy.

“It is a piece of satire asking the public and the city to take a critical look at many of Toronto’s recent development projects, which show countless examples of condo towers being naively plopped on top of historic buildings as if this could preserve their elegance and our tie to their history, despite these additions,” Glo’erm told the Star in an email.

“We hope that it reveals how poorly these signs serve Torontonians as a means of notifying them and seeking their feedback about changes to be made to the urban environment,” he added.

Their Tumblr account is here.