Toronto likes to boast that it has more cranes that any other North American city. In fact, some politicians like to make the claim that Toronto has more cranes than New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami combined. But what does this really mean and how does this explosion of development affect existing residents?

Increased noise, obstructed views and restricted streets are obvious impediments to development. However, there are other inconveniences that politicians, construction companies and developers overlook. Toronto artist, Sean Martindale is trying to draw attention to one of these issues.

As a skeptic of advertising in the public realm, Martindale is frustrated and concerned with condominium advertisements that take up physical space on Toronto’s sidewalks. The A-frame “sandwich board” style ads that dominate sidewalk space make Toronto’s streets an obstacle course for pedestrians. In certain locations, Martindale has counted up to 40 signs in a single downtown intersection.

Inspired by this frustration, Martindale has collaborated with Adam Kraweksy and Martin Reis to turn these urban obstacles into artwork. The artists kidnap sandwich board advertisements from downtown sidewalks and then modify them. The former advertisements of shiny, brand-new condominium buildings are replaced with images of every day street life or old shots of buildings that have been torn down to make way for more condos. The artwork intends to send a very different message than one of luxurious living.

After revamping the sandwich boards, the artists relocate the advertisements in new locations across the city. Martindale, Krawesky and Reis have installed 36 modified sandwich boards around Toronto. A map with the boards’ locations can be found here.

While some may argue that the project does not alleviate congested pedestrian space, it effectively draws attention to an unanticipated problem of urban development and challenges people to reflect on the outcome of Toronto's condo boom.

Newly arrived in New York City, I’ve been doing a lot of walking. Browsing vintage stores in Williamsburg, getting cultured at the Met, shopping in Soho, soaking in the fabled street life of the West Village, admiring the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn waterfront, I could go on. The importance of walkability is becoming increasing recognised, but with all that walking, sometimes you just need a place to stop, to rest, and to watch the world go by.

Luckily for us weary wanderers, there is an abundance of informal seating available on the streets of New York. From plastic chairs outside a noodle shop to a bespoke wooden bench built around a street tree - once you start noticing street seats you suddenly start seeing them everywhere. This trend inspired Street Plans Collaborative to launch Street Seats, an open source project to map New York’s informal public seating. The aim of the project is to raise awareness of the positive impact of something as simple as providing a seat, and to inspire more people to get involved in improving public space in their neighbourhood. In conjunction with Neighborland, Street Plans Collaborative hosted a mapping party last weekend to build up the database of locations across the city.

We met up on a sunny afternoon in Union Square and went over the rules of what does and does not constitute a street seat – not a park bench or street furniture provided by the government, not outdoor cafe seating, we were interested only in seats provided by businesses, community groups or individuals as a gift to the city. Armed with smartphone cameras we then fanned out to tackle different neighbourhoods across the city, uploading geotagged photos as we went. My group managed to find over 20 street seats in Chinatown and Little Italy, with the mapping party resulting in over 100 new additions to the database across the city. Not bad for an afternoon’s work!

Regrouping in a bar later to discuss our findings, we discovered that while we had expected most seats to be associated with cafes and restaurants, they also included such diverse offerings as marble benches outside a church, a ‘customers only’ seat outside a cigar shop, to even a bench outside a bail bonds office! While there were some beautiful handcrafted artisan pieces, there were also simple utilitarian designs, and the seats didn’t necessarily have to be elaborate to be effective. An interesting trend was that street seats tended to be clustered together, suggesting that seeing the success of one example inspired other people to get involved too – exactly the process which streetseats.org aims to encourage in the digital realm.

Are there any DIY street seats in your neighbourhood?

Kidnapping Condominium Advertisements

New York City's DIY Street Seats