Toronto Street Furniture

You may have seen them around the city already – the new, sleek designs of bus shelters; showy, automated joint garbage and recycling bins; ergonomically designed jazzy new benches. New artful designs or hotbed for even more advertising in our already commercial-saturated city?

Rather than serving any public purpose here in our city, the new series of street furniture steals what precious little space Torontonians to post their own public material – culture jamming material, graffiti, or even the posters we put up across the city to promote the cause of taking back our space.

What’s more is that the city developed the designs specifically with commercial interests in mind. Astral Media, the company that owns nearly all the ad space on the new Toronto street furniture and hundreds of ads across the city, aided in devising the new bus shelters, garbage cans, benches and nearly any other piece of street furniture you once thought was merely existent for your comfort or convnience.

What does the city get out of this deal? Try $21 million from the Astral media ad sales – a guaranteed $428.8 million over the next 20 years. Don’t get too comfortable; you’re sitting on a gold mine.

Consider the myriad number of other uses OUR space could have, apart from plugging the new iPod or hottest CTV show. Vancouver did – rather than selling our space to a media conglomerate, they allowed their citizens to design their manhole covers and other street furniture. It’s a bit dated, but here’s the news report:



Really, David Miller? I guess the $21 million was the icing on the cake in that city council meeting.

One final thought to leave you with – Astral Media is also (“allegedly”) responsible for dozens of illegal billboards and signs across the Greater Toronto Area. Do not let them get away with this – TAKE BACK OUR SPACE!