Founded before the time of the automobile, Toronto has many charming old neighbourhoods that maintain good urban design. However, as you walk through the city, you will notice that many of these old neighbourhoods have been flattened to make way for the car. Wide streets, elevated roadways, congestion and air pollution. These are things you will notice when you step out of your car and be present in the spaces that make up our city.
Bad by design elevates my pedestrian perspective to demonstrate to people just how prolific and destructive the car is to our city. The overarching theme of the project will take a critical approach to the way we design our cities. I want to challenge the selfish ideals of drivers who prioritize their comfort and convenience over the well being of pedestrians and all other road users and question why we build exclusively for the car.
In this series of images, I pair photographs together in diptychs, utilizing a drone, telephoto lens, and standard 70mm lens to provide pedestrian perspectives as well as macro level overviews of car oriented urban design and its impacts on our city. This approach allows viewers to step outside their cars and see the world not just from a human scale perspective but also step back to see the impacts of these infrastructures on a neighborhood and city scale.
Brandon Oreto
(He/Him)
A Photographer of 10 years, Brandon Oreto is a skilled professional with a passion for urbanism and digital art. Brandon has worked with a range of mediums and techniques but particularly enjoys shooting Urban Affairs adjacent projects while on walks around the city. Big prints and bold subjects are right up Brandon’s alley, printing large-scale images on rolls is commonplace in his practice.