The thing about congestion is it means people want to be here
When the poet Baudelaire wrote: “It is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude” he might have been talking about our busy streets.

thestar.com
Dec. 19, 2014
By Shawn Micallef

There’s a lot of fretting in Toronto over congestion right now. John Tory has made battling gridlock one of the top priorities of his mayoralty and congestion, we’re led to believe, is a bad thing. It’s something to fix.

The thing about congestion is it means people want to be here.

It’s like a rip-roaring party where everyone violates the fire code by stuffing themselves into the kitchen, or how nightclubs like to have a lineup outside to suggest a crowd inside. There are dead and dying cities around the world that are trying hard to become more congested. Toronto and the GTA are only starting to learn how to be comfortably congested. It would be better if we could find ways to enjoy it, too.

Certainly, there is bad congestion. Watching full subways pull in and out of stations on the Yonge line and being unable to board is not good for anyone.

Drivers in Toronto don’t have it easy, especially when the transit system is inadequate, but there isn’t a great city worth living in anywhere in the world where it’s a breeze to drive. On the positive side, jammed traffic can be good for pedestrians.

The Danforth, much of Bloor St., Dundas St. west of Ossington Ave. and other roads around town are pedestrian friendly areas. We can cross through the slow moving traffic on foot anywhere midblock. Just watch out for bicycles.

Congestion means safety, too. An empty or sparsely populated street can be intimidating for a lot of people. In a crowd, there are always enough people inclined to watch out for one another.

Good congestion could also be called critical mass; the amount of people needed to make a city interesting and exciting, like an onion with infinite layers to peel and discover.

There’s a fantastic scene in the 1982 film Tootsie where Dustin Hoffman is walking down one of the big avenues in Midtown Manhattan dressed as Dorothy, the actress he plays in the film. The entire frame is filled with people walking down the sidewalk, a river of ambulatory humanity. It’s the biggest “big city” moment of the film. Who are all these people? Where do they come from and where are the going?

Toronto feels like that sometimes. At rush hour going to or from Union Station in the financial district, or on a busy Saturday on Bloor St. in Yorkville, with its wide-by-Toronto-standards sidewalks filled with people. In mid-December the city always seems most lived in and populated; people aren’t yet away and there’s a sense of purpose.

Some of them are frazzled to be sure, but the holidays get a bad rap for being all about the madness. Whether artificial or genuine, it’s nice to be around people that seem demonstrably festive. Perhaps it’s the effect of boozy holiday parties.

The nineteenth century French poet Baudelaire loved crowds and congestion and wrote of them often. “It is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement,” he wrote. “The lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy.”

If you want to feel the electricity, the best spot in Toronto to see congestion at full wattage might be on the third floor of the Eaton Centre by Michael Snow’s flying geese sculpture. From there, all three floors and connecting escalators are visible. Everywhere you look there are people, layers of them. It’s like the snake pit in Raiders of the Lost Ark: everything is moving.

If you don’t like people, it isn’t the place for you, but if you find comfort in being in a city that other people want to live in, it’s a thrilling view.