Why can’t Toronto be more like Rome?Well, there are at least CMXCIX answers to that question. I’ll focus on one: Piazzas.The Eternal City has 28 of those, meaning public squares of fame and monument and usually big sweeping spaces. More ubiquitous are the tiny oases around nearly every higgledy-piggledy corner, down narrow cobblestoned alleys where cars cannot enter. Intimately-local gathering spots surrounded by bars and restaurant patios, often studded with a historically insignificant but charming fountain — 2,554 fountains throughout Rome, gurgling water everywhere, potable, including one just off the Via Veneto where signoras fill their jugs every day because that particular water is believed to be the best for boiling pasta.Piazzas by definition make a city more walkable, more sociable, more congenial.Toronto’s plazas, the handful of them, are cold-shouldered quadrangles, designed for standing not sitting, for hastily traversing not lingering, unless there’s a concert. Hardpan spaces like Dundas Square and Nathan Philips Square, the latter losing even its architectural grandeur with ill-advised additions such as the peace garden and stage shells and, much of the time, cluttered with a mess of table displays for produce and kitsch.Those pain-in-the-arse concrete benches are not conducive to idling.Read more:There’s no tally of close calls on Toronto streets. So pedestrians are turning to #NearMissTorontoWhen it comes to road safety in Toronto the burden is not equal for all usersMontreal 3D crosswalk experiment messing with drivers’ minds to increase pedestrian safetyOf course Toronto doesn’t have Rome’s more temperate weather. When it’s really hot, patio bars at my favorite piazza, Campo di Fiori, drag out giant fans that swirl a cooling mist over al fresco diners. In winter, many bistros remain open-air with charcoal-fired braziers set throughout.Rome may be multi-millennia old, the centro laid o ...
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