Toronto Street Furniture Program Blasted

"The latest assault on civic life comes with the rollout in Toronto of a monumental street-furniture program. The aim is to de-clutter the city's public realm by allowing a private company, Astral Media, access to nearly 200,000 square feet of advertising on its newly built transit shelters and aluminum information columns in return for supplying the furniture and handing the city a bunch of money.

As if our narrow sidewalks of concrete and patches of asphalt were not already difficult to negotiate, residents will now be asked to share their turf with 25,000 additional pieces of street furniture, including uncommonly ugly garbage cans – known, in the city-corporate parlance of the day as litter and recycling receptacles."