The Vibrant Streets: Toronto’s Coordinated Street Furniture Program – What It Is and Its Impact
The Vibrant Streets: Toronto’s Coordinated Street Furniture Program, is a list of guidelines which aim to improve the urban public realm through cohesive, well designed street furniture amenities such as transit shelters, benches, recycling bins, publications boxes, and information and wayfinding signs. Through the Vibrant Street Guidelines, streets as a public space should be made more accessible to people with disabilities, have less clutter, and maintain quality street furniture and amenities. These street furnishings should be well designed, and mesh with the character and theme of its neighbourhood. In order to pay for the project The Vibrant Streets Guidelines proposes that the funding for improved street furniture will be achieved through advertising space on the street furnishings. This combination of street furnishing and advertising is referred to as the integrative street furnishing program. Although the public engagement study indicated that heavy advertisement on street amenities was extremely unpopular, the guidelines assured the public that pedestrian needs would be put first because proposals for street furniture and amenities would be of exceptional design, universally accessible, safe, of high quality, easily maintained, pedestrian-oriented, while maintaining unobtrusive advertising. Essentially, The Vibrant Streets: Toronto’s Coordinated Street Furniture Program’s purpose was to outline city guidelines with regards to street furnishings and amenities while presenting the background research that influenced the design and policy guidelines. The guidelines culminated in a package offered to companies interested in working with the city’s Coordinated Street Furniture Program to produce street furnishings and advertising. Toronto’s Coordinated Street Furniture Program contract was awarded to Astral Media.
The Vibrant Streets Guidelines were informed by the following documents:
- City of Toronto Accessibility Design Guidelines
- City of Toronto Transit Shelter Program Guidelines
- College Street Revitalization Initiative
- Harbord Village Residents Association
- Fort York Neighbourhood Public Realm Plan
- Railway Lands Central & West Public Realm Plan
- Union Station Precinct Study
- St. Clair West Transit Improvement Project
Interested? Read More…