Toronto Star

Frank Lloyd Wright loved cars. In 1928, the legendary architect designed one of America's earliest drive-through restaurants, the Yucca Vine Market in Los Angeles. These days, the idea of applying high design to drive-throughs seems more like an exercise in irony than architecture. City planners made an elegant stab at it anyway yesterday, releasing a set of guidelines for humanizing drive-through design in Toronto. Their document is utopian in a way Wright might have related to, if not agreed with. "It's about the quality of our civic spaces ... we want people to be inspired to stop and spend time, rather than just drive through," said Marsha Kelmans, a city designer who helped present the guidelines to council's planning and transportation committee. Councillors were impressed and sent the paper out for public consultations. If all goes well, it'll be back at city hall for final approval by the end of the year.