Criticism
Yonge-Dundas Square is controversial in some circles. Criticism ranges from suggestions that the city has missed an opportunity for more green space within the downtown core (or that they have missed an opportunity for what some critics consider more interesting architectural elements) to questions of what the true intent behind the ostensibly public square is. The Toronto Public Space Committee and organizers of Toronto iterations of the Reclaim The Streets phenomenon often point to the square as an example of what they consider a negative trend in urban planning.
The square is surrounded on all sides by gigantic commercial billboards in a redevelopment scheme modelled on New York City's Times Square or London's Piccadilly Circus. Many have pointed to the square as a prime example of the creeping privatization of public space. Those making this point have been bolstered by the fact that the square's board is populated by both local businesses and residents. The Board of Management for the Square is an ABC organization of the City of Toronto. While there are permit fees for commercial events, community groups can use the Square for free under the Square's Community Use Policy. All events are charged back for staffing and equipment use.
Read more about this topic: Yonge-Dundas Square
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)