The Meeting Point

The Meeting Point is a Toronto novel by acclaimed writer Austin Clarke that narrates the difficult and sometimes humorous interactions between West Indian immigrants and Toronto in the early 1960s. The "meeting point" referred to in Clarke's novel refers not only to physical spaces of intersection and gathering, but also to the cultural encounters these meetings generated. The novel underscores the reality that few places are neutral, layered as they are with cultural baggage, territorial impulses, history, and change.

At the same time, it is possible for certain places to become iconic meeting points. With this in mind, last week Spacing Wire asked the following question of its readers:

[W]here would you instinctively choose as the most obvious meeting point in Toronto? It has to be specific enough that you would be confident that you would see the other person immediately if you were both there (i.e. not just Grand Central Station, but specifically the information booth). If there isn’t an adequate landmark in the location you propose, feel free to suggest something that should be built to create the required landmark.

By this morning sixty people had responded, most suggesting spaces like the base of the CN Tower, Dundas Square, Nathan Phillips Square (at City Hall), Union Station, the intersection of Yonge and Bloor, or the fountain in the Eaton Centre.

For me, the most obvious meeting point to intersect with someone coming from out of town via train would be Union Station (either inside in the great hall or outside along Front Street). Via car, I would suggest meeting at Yorkdale Shopping Centre, where it is possible to park and then transfer to the subway system. I have also met people at the Greyhound bus station on Dundas Street West near the Eaton Centre, or occasionally at the Eaton Centre itself. The transit focus applies when meeting local people as well: frequently we will choose a mutually convenient subway station or street intersection from which we might move toward multiple destinations. But as someone who lives near the centre of the city, my orientation tends to be central.

What about you? What are your natural 'meeting points'? Are they within the city at all, or do they tend to focus on surrounding suburbs? And what is the focus of these meeting points? Transportation and mobility? Shopping? Socializing and entertainment? I noted, while reading the responses to Spacing's question, that, in addition to accessibility, the responses tended to suggest a focus on activities associated with consumption (rather than, say, civic engagement or religion). Is this different for you? Would it be different in other cities or suburbs? Would it have been different in the past?

[Toronto intersection image created by Striatic and used under the aegis of a Creative Commons license.]

Amble Time

Amble Time, the creation of Irish researchers associated with the now-closed Media Lab Europe, is "a digital map that provides visualisations of time constraints to help support decisions about where to go in navigating a city on foot." Using GPS (global positioning system) technology, the project differs from similar navigation tools in that its interface describes not only the shortest route between geographical locations but instead offers a visual array of journeys that might be taken during a given time period.

In one experiment, the researchers chose evocative passages from James Joyce's famous Dublin novel Ulysses to help guide Amble Time users through this Irish city. Rather than navigating directly from a place of departure to a destination, users were invited to amble through parts of the city for an hour, choosing locations referenced in Joyce's text. Upon arrival at a common destination, users were invited to reflect upon their journeys using another piece of interactive software called ("Polymorphic Letters") linking their commentaries to the locations they had visited, creating what the researchers call "neighbourhoods of narrative."

A paper discussing the project may be read here (clicking the link opens a .pdf document).

The Amble Time project (with its associated software, Polymorphic Letters) facilitates what lead researcher Carol Strohecker calls a "map with a sense of time." In a number of respects the project is profoundly psychogeographic because it invites people to wander the city with something other than their destination in mind.

If you are interested in psychogeography, you might want to read Anna Bowness' article, A Literary History of the Flaneur, which appeared in Spacing Magazine, No. 2., or Stephen Cain's essay, Annexing a space for poetry in the new Toronto, which was published recently in The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto (Coach House, 2006). If you are interested in walking, you might wish to read Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin, 2000).