May 22nd, 2012
EDITOR: This is a continuation in our series looking at the laneway housing projects created in a University of Toronto Architecture Faculty's Laneway Housing studio led by Brigitte Shim & Don Chong. This work and text is by Sonia Ramundi , whose bio you can find below.
Berryman Avenue, located in Yorkville is home to the "Myer's Residence" at 19 Berryman, one of the first residential infill projects in our city. The steel frame house, designed by architect Barton Myers, allows for large spans that provide an interior courtyard, making natural light a prominent feature of the house. Inspired by the idea that a structural system or technique can control the presence of natural light, a site was chosen for this project on the same street and with the same orientation to the sun, but with an additional constraint: a small Victorian house at the front of the lot.
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The most recent TedxToronto featured a wide range of speakers discussing topics pertaining to "redefining." Among the speakers was David Miller who had an inspiring speech on redefining citizenship. Miller focused his speech on how the citizens within Toronto can commit to making the kind of city they believe in and how together we can redefine the government to meet those needs.
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WHAT: Spacing release party for Summer 2012 issue
WHEN: Tuesday, May 29th, 7:30-midnight
WHERE: Evergreen Brick Works, BMO Atrium
COST: free! (mag costs $5 /// discount subscriptions at the door)
RSVP: Check out the event listing on Facebook or email us
What would Toronto look like if a disaster hit our city? What would an earthquake do to our buildings? Are tornadoes a part of our future? What about an extended fuel shortage or a drought in the farmlands of Ontario? And what would happen if the CN Tower fell over? The Americans wouldn't invade us for our water — would they?
In Spacing's most cynical and apocalyptic issue ever, our contributors examine all the big, bad scary things that could rock the foundation of Toronto. And what better place to have it than along the edges of the Don River at the Evergreen Brick Works, one of the many places hit hard by floods during Hurricane Hazel in 1954.
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Urban Planet is a daily roundup of blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
Given the complexity and contentiousness of subway network design, it is tempting to think that there might be a science behind network development. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface looks at hundreds of subway systems worldwide and defines some key patterns that the systems share. The paper suggests that networks can be divided into a core and branches, with the core often lying beneath the city’s center and the branches extending outwards. Branches tend to be about twice as long as the width of the core and roughly 20 percent of the stations in the core link two or more lines. (Scientific American)
Image from Fat Panda Productions
For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter. Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca
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While Christmas is a long way off, Mayor Rob Ford decided to dangle a shiny bauble in front the eyes of North York and Scarborough voters, pledging during his radio campaign commercial, uh, show, that privatizing garbage collection east of Yonge will be on his to-do list for the 2014 election.
This obvious diversion tactic must be considered in the light of a pair of new polls that offer some key insights into the changing complexion of voter attitudes towards the city’s most vexing problem, which, it must be said, is not garbage.
Last week, Stratcom (whose principals worked on George Smitherman’s mayoral campaign) released a poll showing that Ford’s approval ratings fell sharply in both Scarborough and North York since February. In North York, his numbers plunged from 56 to 40%, while Scarborough’s approval rating dropped from 48 to 41%. Just over a third of Toronto respondents overall felt he is doing a good job — a figure that nudges up against David Miller’s all-time low of 29%, during the garbage strike. (Stratcom’s poll of 954 voters is accurate within 3.2%, 19 times out of 20.)
Voters in those parts of the city, it would be reasonable to surmise, may be growing weary of Ford’s empty and undeliverable transit promises. Indeed, according to a new Environics survey of GTA residents, Ford looks to be on the wrong side of one of the region’s most top-o’-mind concerns: transportation.
The Focus GTA poll results, which Environics generously agreed to share with Spacing Toronto readers, reveal that the number of respondents who cited transportation as the GTA’s single most pressing issue jumped sharply, from 22% to 38% between last fall and this spring. Six in ten found commuting to be stressful or very stressful, although that figure is somewhat smaller (52%) within the 416. (Environics’ results are based on 1,436 responses to an online survey.)
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Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist
Jerry Waese.
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May 18th, 2012
People have jobs. The "slum" we discussed last week has begun to come around and seemingly, it was an easy fix. This particular neighborhood had a couple bus stops, usually with only a 30% usage. But after noticing a few empty corners with no bus shelters or transit, we added a few more. That worked. Within a couple sim days the no jobs logos disapeared and transit boosted its use to something we now don't know how to handle.
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Hi Spacing readers. I'm pleased to announced that while continuing write and edit Spacing things, I've just started a new weekly column over at the Toronto Star exploring how and where we live in the GTA. I'll wander from downtown to wherever the farm fields start (and maybe, once in a while, hang out there too). The first one went up today, looking at Mississauga City Centre. Thanks for coming along for the walk all these years.
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