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Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around...
"A 72 Year Crossing at Yonge and Bloor" Comparative...
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the...
Name: Evergreen Brick Works Farmers' Market Location:...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010...
LISTEN TO THIS SPACING RADIO PODCAST George Smitherman...
The Toronto City Summit Alliance held a roundtable...
Toronto bike riders can celebrate a "first" today:...
This is part of a series of posts by students in...
I normally have a lot of time for the Toronto Environmental...
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around...
Weird Wednesdays on Urban Planet takes a look at obscure, absurd, and curious things about cities around the world.
It's been in international headlines throughout the past few weeks over false reports that it will be changing its name, but this tiny Austrian hamlet has been "Fucking" (or close to it) since the Dark Ages.
Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex's personal blog on architecture
In my roundup of shows at the Contact festival, I somehow missed the latest exhibition by Michael Awad at Nicholas Metivier. An architect and artist, Awad has been at work for years on his Entire City Project - an encyclopedic take on Toronto's streets, public buildings and infrastructure. His show closes Saturday, May 19.
There's another Awad event of interest on Friday: Photo + Design, a symposium at the Design Exchange that brings together Awad with three other notable photographers, Peter MacCallum, Montreal's Marc Cramer and Vancouver's Nic Lehoux, and the wonderful Toronto-New York architecture photographer Ben Rahn. They'll talk about their work and share "their unique perspectives on architecture and design."
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.
If one follows the logic of this week’s casino rhetoric to its logical conclusion, it seems probable that the ballot question in 2014 will be this: Should Toronto have a casino on the waterfront?
I’d put money on it.
The brothers Ford desperately want the 2014 election to be about that most reliable of motherhood issues, subways. But finance minister Dwight (“Golden Mile”) Duncan and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chairman Paul Godfrey may have unleashed a willing-host process that could dramatically alter the race – in effect, setting in motion a dynamic that could favour a challenger who figures out how to conflate a referendum on casinos with a referendum on the incumbent.
Consider the emerging architecture of this issue: The province is determined to build a casino in the Greater Toronto. But as Duncan told The Globe and Mail in April, “We will work with those who want to work with us. We certainly won’t impose anything on anybody [italics added].”
While Godfrey has warned that the OLGC would choose Mississauga or some other exotic suburban locale if Toronto didn’t get its act together quickly, one casino official who appeared at executive committee Monday quickly put the lie to that particular threat. As MGM Grand and Gerry Schwartz and all the other, uh, gamers have said in no uncertain terms, a Toronto waterfront site is the proverbial jackpot.
In other words, the deep-pocketed suitors are saying to the province, don’t fold just yet.
CITY HALL
• Bag fee could be kept alive by council [The Sun]
• Councillors moving into their new office “palaces” [The Sun]
• Councillor wants update on city’s ice time policy [The Sun]
TRANSIT
• The downtown relief line already exists: Markham councillor [Globe & Mail]
REAL ESTATE & DEVELOPMENT
• Toronto office market poised for new boom [National Post]
• Toronto lifts Canadian homes sales, Vancouver drags [Reuters]
• Dozens of Beach-area residents rally against planned condo [National Post]
CASINO
• Toronto casino debate to resume in the fall [CBC]
• Tanenbaum to make bid for Toronto casino [Globe & Mail]
G20
• Byron Sonne walks free, but the G20 forever changed his life [The Star]
• Judge acquits G20 activist Byron Sonne of bomb-making charges [Globe & Mail]
• Sonnce case another black eye for G20 [The Sun]
• Byron Sonne not guilty on charges he plotted to attack 2010 G20 summit in Toronto [National Post]
OTHER NEWS
• Jewish restaurant United Bakers celebrates 100 years; still family-run [National Post]
• Charities, non-profits protest Toronto’s new garbage pickup fees [The Star]
In an ongoing series for Spacing, Toronto-based writer Julie Baldassi delves into Hamilton's built heritage conversation, its key players, and important buildings.
Some buildings have been salvaged, but many barely stand, crumbled beyond the point of repair, with their broken windows and unkempt facades noticeably sticking out. Increasingly, the debates over the future of Hamilton's heritage buildings have come to represent a changing landscape of political interests.
Much like other post-industrial cities in the American Rust Belt, Hamilton has been traversing a period of revitalization in its downtown core. As the largely suburban city has begun to take note of its new-found urban potential, there is an ongoing debate over what to do with the abundance of vacant old buildings downtown.
In Toronto, it’s understood that the conversation about public transit represents something more than just the minutiae of urban planning — it stands on the back of ideological clashes between suburban and urban voters. Similarly, Hamilton's built heritage debate represents a political chasm – between those who value the buildings as culture worth preserving, and those who just want to see downtown cleaned up, with or without these relics of Hamilton's heritage intact.
Let's be clear about something: Hamilton is not Toronto. Nor is it a suburb of the GTA — it’s the ninth-largest city in Canada with over half a million citizens. In 2012, the core continues to see a flurry of construction, with as many as eight construction cranes up — which is good news, since the Real Estate Investment Network of Canada voted Hamilton the best place to invest in the country over the next five years. Hamilton has a livable, vibrant urban core which is distinct from its suburban periphery. And, over the past decade, the urban core has been inhabited by a new generation of creative, entrepreneurial Hamiltonians who have raised the profile of their local arts community and thriving businesses. These facts are worth stating — not to brag or invite flattering comparisons to grander cities or boroughs — but to illustrate the point that Hamilton is its own city with its own unique set of growing pains and reasons for civic pride.
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.
From the makers of Walk Score and just in time for "Bike to Work Week" comes Bike Score - the online tool for assessing neighbourhood bikeability. The tool uses data including the locations of bicycle infrastructure, amenities and hills. And Canadian cities are featured too!
With files from the Calgary Herald and Forbes
Image from Bike Score
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
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist
Jerry Waese.
In the final video for our series with famous Toronto Historian Bruce Bell around Old Town Toronto we visited the St. James Cathedral. The church was initially established in 1797 but rebuilt in 1839 after being burnt down by a fire. As a popular heritage site, often visited by the Queen and Royal Family when in Toronto, the Cathedral Church of St. James is both a parish church ministering to the historic St. Lawrence neighbourhood and a cathedral.
FORD
• Ford can win again; here’s why [The Star]
• Rob Ford cancels ‘Cut the Waist’ weigh-in, reduces schedule to every other week [National Post]
• Toronto exec committee votes to toss bag tax [Toronto Sun]
TRANSIT
• GO to offer refunds in fall if train more than 15 minutes late, but… [The Star]
CASINO
• Province’s casino threat hollow, MGM executive suggests [The Star]
• Exhibition Place emerges as favoured bet for Toronto casino [Globe & Mail]
• MGM wants casino on Toronto’s waterfront [National Post]
• Onex chief game to invest in proposed Toronto casino scheme [Globe & Mail]
• Toronto casino decision delayed to the fall [Toronto Sun]
G20
• Toronto police, OPP called the shots on G20 Response, report says [Globe & Mail]
• Report exonerates RCMP for actions luring violence-marred G20 summit [National Post]
OTHER NEWS
• How to make art? This academy thinks today’s schools have it all wrong [OpenFile]
• Innovation helps Royal Conservatory hit all the right notes [Globe & Mail]
• Peter Kuitenbrouwer: No Joy for forgotten Toronto landmark [National Post]
• PanAm velodrome: Boon or bust for Milton? [The Star]
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