Archives /// February, 2012
June 26th, 2005
WELCOME TO THE SPACING WIRE
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Welcome to the Spacing Wire. This new feature on spacing.ca is designed to act as a hub for news, articles, events, websites, projects, and ideas about public space issues in Toronto and from around the world. We believe that for any of us to fully understand whose space is public space, we must know the current events that help shape our cities, for better or for worse.
In order for this feature to be successful we will need your help -- please forward us information about articles and sites and events that you think we should highlight. We ...
June 27th, 2005
Public Art in Vancouver Alleys
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
A group called Space Agency has organized a temporary public art project for alleyways in Gastown for a weekend in August.
http://www.spaceagency.ca/event.htm
Designing Toronto’s Streets
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The city of Toronto is currently engaged in setting design standards for new local residential streets in Toronto (not main streets). They are conducting public consultations, including a web-based survey (note - you may need to read the background info first before completing the survey).
The standards will have a powerful effect on the amount of public space in the city. For example, they will set the size of the Right-0f-Way (ROW), which is the amount of public space between private lots on the street - the space for sidewalks, trees and road. The development industry is ...
June 30th, 2005
The Halftone Conspiracy
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Halftone Conspiracy is a collaborative poster project. Monthly, the co-conspirators gather, with posters they've created in hand, to transform a pre-determined location. The posters can be of any size, shape or method that the conspirator chooses. The only rule is that the conspirator must create their poster based on the selected theme.
The first theme is "My Latest & Greatest Invention"
Check out the web site here .
In no way removed
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
While parks are recreational spaces where an individual or group can take a break from the urban environment, the parkette's natural environmental features are often negligible. There is rarely enough room to throw a Frisbee without it flying into oncoming traffic, and there is nothing essentially restful about a bench on seven square feet of grass along side a major city artery. The parkette is a marginal island of green in the midst of a sea of asphalt and concrete.
Parkette: In no way removed is an interesting public art intervention that is worth checking ...
July 2nd, 2005
Vienna goes ad-free
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
All the signs in a popular Vienna shopping district have been swathed in bright yellow fabric as part of an art project designed to spark debate about excess advertising. All advertising signs, slogans, pictograms, company names and logos — everything from the Starbucks coffee chain symbol to the signage for a bank — have been covered as part of the two-week project entitled "Delete!" by artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf.
Go to CBC Arts to read the article.
July 4th, 2005
Dufferin Grove + Little Malta
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing editor and flaneur Shawn Micallef wrote the City article for Eye this week.
And a nice little piece on Dufferin Grove in the "Wandering Eye" feature.
Toronto Trolls
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
The Toronto Troll project is currently running at Mercer Union. They're going to do art stuff in the city at night to remind us that the city still belongs to us, at night. Go to the website and see what they're up to. If you already feel you're in touch with Toronto at night, you should go down and let them know. I think they're looking for research subjects.
From the website:
This June, the French Collective Atelier Wundershà¶n Peplum (AWP) will transform the front gallery at Mercer Union into an alternative mobility hub for Toronto "nighttimers" through an engaging schedule ...
Make your own Toronto brand
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
In response to the dreadful and much-maligned new Toronto Brand, the Globe and Mail is offering to publish alternative branding ideas. "Send in your ideas for how you'd promote the TDot [sic] (slogans, campaigns, ads, random observations). We'll publish a selection of the best."
Send your suggestions to globetoronto@globeandmail.ca
July 5th, 2005
European talking about walking fest
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The Swiss are hosting the 6th International Conference on Walking in the 21st Century, on the theme of "Everyday Walking Culture."
"The conference aims to increase recognition, in the opinion of public representatives, experts and policy-makers, of the positive contribution that walking makes to everyday city activities."
Check out in particular the "Walkshops."
July 6th, 2005
Lakeside
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Our very smart friends over the Toronto Environmental Alliance are getting into the cultural game with the opening on their art show Lakeside. The event is a collaboration between the environment and art communities on the question: Can our beaches thrive?
Opening night info:
When: July 7th, 2005 (7 - 10:00 p.m) at Gallery 1313
1313 Queen West, 2 blocks east of Lansdowne
Features a performance by artist Ilona Staples. Refreshments. Cash Bar.
The exhibit runs from July 6 - 24, 2005.
Artists: Catherine Lathwell; Dyan Marie; Fedora Romita; Freddie Towe; Ilona Staples; Katharine Harvey; ...
July 7th, 2005
Dundas Square – worst of both worlds
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of Toronto has agreed to start paying the operating costs of Dundas Square - including those security guards - but the space is still controlled by a private board. So now we have the worst of both worlds - the public pays for it, but it's not public space.
Howard Moscoe sums up the absurdity nicely:
"The square is very, very tightly controlled," he says. "City vendors, who are licensed by the city, can't even touch it. [The board] has all its rules, they've got all the power, and yet the city's picking up the bill — for one of ...
July 9th, 2005
Flying the Blue Flag
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In the last two weeks, both Eye and NOW have covered the Blue Flag project going on at some of Toronto's beaches. Spacing editor Dale Duncan also covered the flag waving situation in Spacing issue 3 (Dec. 2004). We think Eye's coverage is closer to the reality of the situation.
For Nicole Cohen's piece in Eye click here.
For NOW's Insight feature click here.
July 10th, 2005
Urbanism
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Chris Hardwicke runs a wonderful wesbite called urbanism.org which is a portal to the planning and architecture world. It functions in a similar fashion to the Spacing Wire. Chris also has contributed to Spacing, most recently in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue with is futuristic proposal for elevated bike network around Toronto. Check out his site.
Also, Shin-pei Tsay, of the Project for Public Spaces, keeps a great blog called Bird to the North about NYC urban design issues. Worth checking out.
July 11th, 2005
Team Recess
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Team Recess, a company "all about fun events for grown up Torontonians. Nothing too athletic and nothing too brainy, just a good time running around with friends" is starting to do things in our city.
So far they've organized a photographic scavenger hunt in Toronto. They've got sponsors too.
Full details here.
URBAN SCREENS 2005
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
An international conference on the potential for those huge TVs that proliferate our cities will be held in Amsterdam this September. Similar to the piece I wrote in the most recent issue of Spacing on the P2P interactive billboard project at the Drake Hotel, these folks are interested in what we could do with these screens other than just run endless loops of advertisements.
URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture. ...
July 12th, 2005
These street are not made for walking
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Christopher Hume wrote an excellent column yesterday in the Toronto Star about the state of walking in this city. Check it out here.
SPACING PHOTOBLOG
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you haven't already seen it, Spacing has launched our own photoblog, SpacingPhotos. Every weekday a new image related to a theme will be posted from one of the city's numerous photobloggers. For the month of July, we are showcasing "History" in Toronto's public realm. Bookmark it and visit daily.
July 13th, 2005
40-storey ROM condo
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Royal Ontario Museum wants to build a 40-storey condominium tower on the current site of the McLaughlin Planetarium, and says it expects the development to generate controversy.
The tower, Mr. Thorsell said, will have "very high, very beautiful apartments. It's going to be the most beautiful residential building in the city -- and the most expensive, I would think."
The Globe and Mail suggests the tower plan is neccessary to pay for the ROM's shiny new addition.
Water Wars: From Durban to Toronto
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Toronto Environmental Alliance, in collaboration with Gallery 1313, present:
Water Wars: From Durban to Toronto
A Public Forum with:
Shelley Petrie, Executive Director, Toronto Environmental Alliance
Patrick Bond, Director, The Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Tony Clarke, Director, Polaris Institute, Ottawa
Thursday, July 21st 7- 9pm
Masaryk-Cowan Community Centre, 220 Cowan Ave.
Reception to follow at Gallery 1313
Sponsored by:
Toronto Environmental Alliance, Gallery 1313, York University International Political Economy and Ecology Summer School, and the Socialist Project.
Great idea, wrong funding model
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Could this be a Toronto bus stop? (image is from London's transit system)
Howard Moscoe, TTC Chair, has put forth a great idea -- install a display for bus arrival times along suburban routes. But with any good idea in Toronto comes a caveat -- the only way for the TTC to pay for it is to sell space to advertisers. The City of Toronto has recently received hundreds of millions of dollars for TTC-related projects, yet we have to turn to advertisers to pay for every new feature? Opposition to the subway video ...
July 14th, 2005
Viva York Region
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Close to home:
Viva - York Region's new rapid transit system - is making the TTC look silly. Their busstops have ticket vending machines, electronic ticket validators, and a real-time display that tells you exactly when to expect the next bus. Check out the other features to speed up bus transit at their website:
Viva
The whole system looks great. If only York Region had the density and street grid to support tranist.
Extreme Subway Makeovers
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Could drab, functional Museum station one day feel like an extension of the Royal Ontario Museum, with Greek columns in the place of its current yellow-tile pillars?
The Globe and Mail reports that architect Jack Diamond and the TTC are proposing artistic themed renovations to some subway stations. No images yet but, personally, I'd go for 50's tile over fake Greek columns anyday. The interactive video sounds cool though.
Bikes and feet
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Christopher Hume had an outpouring of response to his recent column on the state of walking in Toronto. He mainly focused his derision on drivers, but many readers wrote in and complained about reckless cyclists. While riding on sidewalks is dangerous, I think people have to understand that cyclists are continuously in danger on the road -- especially when cars use bike lanes as their personal parking spot. This city is perfect for cycling (relatively flat) yet our infrastructure discourages it in so many ways. Sadly, a sidewalk is the safest place for cyclists some times.
Here's the column.
July 15th, 2005
Get to know the city this weekend
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
This weekend there are a number of excellent public space related events that are worth checking out.
1. Sorauren Park Summer Festival. Saturday. Spacing is test-running Stories In Toronto, where a number of people share their true tales of life in public space. We will begin our own event in August. Lots of things to do from 1-11pm. More on their website.
2. Art exhibit at King Station. Starts Saturday. For his exhibit Wednesday January 5, 2005, artist Michael Brown collected a total of 69 individual transfers on a 10-hour trip on the TTC ...
July 16th, 2005
Generating An Alternative Night-Time Mobility
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Saturday, July 16th @ 10:00PM
Meeting points @ Mercer Union (37 Lisgar Street) and Front Street, in front of Union Station
Explore Toronto's public space by night with the Toronto Trolls. A night migration from Queen West to Regent Park and the Don Valley Ravine. Buses will drive participants from outdoor urban art performances, to hidden retreats in the Don Valley Ravine.
www.mercerunion.org
www.torontotroll.ca
Lost Space on Church
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Bert Archer has a new smart blog. He recently posted about the closing of the venerable Second Cup at Church and Wellesley - until recently home to the famous "Steps" - but the building owners didn't like all the people hanging out, so they bricked up the Steps, effectively killing the defacto public space they oversaw. Bert had this to say about the Second Cup closing:
Serves them right.
It's rare that you see direct repercussions from businesses doing bad things. The market seems to have a way of taking care of the evil-doers. Which makes this For Lease sign a ...
July 17th, 2005
Sinister Paradise of Dubai
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Dubai, the Las Vegas of the Middle East, has a distinctive and inviolable criterion when it comes to development in its city: everything must be "world class," which means number one in The Guinness Book of Records. Thus Dubai is building the world's largest theme park, the biggest mall, the highest building, and the first sunken hotel among other firsts.
But the building of this city is rife with stories of modern-day slavery and organized crime. Mike Davis, the author of important books like Dead Cities and City of Quartz, wrote a great piece posted on ...
July 18th, 2005
The Beautiful City Billboard Fee
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Them.ca, a Toronto-based non-profit street art organization, announced today the launch of a new project called The Beautiful City Billboard Fee (BCBF). The BCBF proposes that billboard companies pay an annual fee with the proceeds used to commission public art. The BCBF could fund the renewal and celebration of local communities through creative expression.
Also annouced by Them.ca, a poll conducted by Pollara found that 66% of Canadians support the BCBF initiative. The results were identical in Toronto. This is all very encouraging news for those concerned about ad encroachment ...
Coke wants billboard removed
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
An interesting battle is going down in India between Coca-Cola and photogrpaher Sharad Haksar. He has been using a billboard space for three years to focus on Indian social issues. His current billboard (image above) is a commentary on how the country is experiencing water shortages yet Coke is widely available in the country. Activists also claim water shortages usually accompany the arrival of a Coca-Cola bottling factory. The billboard has "inflicted incalculable damage to the goodwill and brand of Coke," says one of their lawyers. The soft drink ...
July 19th, 2005
Live Action Scotland Yard (L.A.S.Y.)
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Joel Friesen runs a transit tag game on the TTC. Live Action Scotland Yard (L.A.S.Y.) is a giant game of hide and seek. One guy tries to hide by using the subway system while three or four other people have to find out where he is by the clues he leaves and the dispatchers phoned in instructions.
NEXT GAME: Saturday, July 23rd, 2005
More info here...
The Beaches Guardian Angel
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It is not often that a newspaper does an obituary on a street person, but the Toronto Star did so this past weekend on The Beaches' Steve Whale. He'd carry bags of groceries home for eldery women, watch unlocked bikes, sold Outreach, tended to the dogs of shoppers, and became a hard-working and welcome fixture in the community.
Check out the story here. (registration required to enter site)
July 20th, 2005
Toronto 1966
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Cyberia, "The Urban Planning Portal", has a forum section where somebody posted some hot pictures from the top of the TD Centre in 1966, when it was being built. They're huge pictures, and will sprawl right off your computer, but it's so much fun to look at Toronto back then. City Hall was even more striking and space age surrounded by old straight Toronto the Good - and some kind of radio tower where the Sheraton is now. It's like a snapshot of Toronto coming of age and beginning to loosen up: ...
Get Lost
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Village Voice reviews A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit.
We live in an increasingly standardized environment, bouncing from one branch of Starbucks to another, and it's almost impossible to get truly lost thanks to technology. Solnit believes that our fear of not knowing where we are is partly due to our inability to read the language of nature. "There's an art to attending to the weather, to the route you take, to the landmarks along the way. . . . And there's another art of being at home in the ...
July 21st, 2005
A Summer’s walk along Concord & Delaware
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Toronto Architectural Conservancy presents A Summer's Walk down verdant Concord & Delaware Avenues on Sunday July 24th at 2PM. Why these streets? "Some of the architecture is quite ambitious, some is work-a-day, but nearly all is vibrant," so says their website. All the info is over here..
Does Toronto need a design review panel?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
John Sewell wrote a column in Eye this week on Toronto's desire to implement a design review panel for architecture and urban design. There are many people pressing the city to move forward quickly with this, but there are others who think the city's needs to set better urban planning guidelines, something that is missing from the Toronto's Official Plan. Read it now.
Garbage on our streets
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Christopher Hume trashes Eucan's Monster Garbage cans in today's Toronto Star:
The path to civic greatness is littered with wannabe cities. The ones that make it are those that grasp the fact that every element of the urban landscape is important and that all are connected. This includes everything from the biggest elements, buildings and roads, to the smallest, like garbage bins and telephone poles.
Read article in The Star.
If you oppose these things, get involved here.
What to do with Scarborough RT
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There is some real concern about what is going to happen to the aging Scarborough Rapid Transit line. It was built with unique and not-widely used technology that is hard to replace. Check out Councillor Brian Ashton's concerns in The Star today.
Funky retro image from the Transit Toronto website.
July 22nd, 2005
Scared of heights
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Two articles in today's Globe and Mail have contrasting arguments about tall buildings in Toronto and their relationship to public space.
John Bentley Mays addresses Toronto's fear of heights while Stephen Teeple and Khaldoon Ahmad defend medium density.
Unfortunately neither of the articles address the relationship between real estate values and height which would take some of the mystery out of why developers continue to propose tall buildings in the face of neighbourhood criticism.
July 24th, 2005
Center for the Study of Pedestrian Culture
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
"The Center for the Study of Pedestrian Culture is a portal for place-based research and creative projects, focused primarily on the humble and revolutionary act of walking. Artists, writers, composers, psychogeographers, historians, architects, general walkers, and anyone interested in issues of place are welcome to contribute articles, reviews, news, bibliographic entries, projects, artist statments, syllabi, etc."
July 26th, 2005
Slow Street Movement
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Toronto Star has two articles about pedestrians today. Slow streets, safer driving? looks at Eric Dumbaugh's study: "Safe Streets, Livable Streets" (small pdf) which shows that roads with wide sidewalks and streetscape treatments such as trees are safer because the busy street scene causes drivers to slow down. The response from City staff quoted in the Star seems defensive.
Lawsuits cost city $49 million reveals the City's Lawsuit settlement history. It turns out that about half the settlements — $24.3 million — were agreed to by the City's ...
July 28th, 2005
Get out of the city in the city
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing managing editor Dale Duncan wrote the cover story for Eye Weekly this week, "Urban Escape: how to get away from the concrete grind without leaving Toronto." And Spacing associate editor and [murmur] mastermind Shawn Micallef also wrote about the Toronto Islands as our very own Brighton Beach.
Trashing EUCAN bins
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Toronto Star columnist Slinger wrote a great piece ripping apart the EUCAN monster garbage bins. And he didn't stop the blame game there -- he took city councillors to task for the idiocy of even going ahead with this pilot project. He asks, "how many councillors does it take to make the city uglier?"
Read all about it here (The Star needs registration).
NOW takes on smog
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Last week NOW ran an article on the top 10 things Toronto can do to fight smog in the city. The ideas may be unrealistic in the current political climate, but they are the right things to do. This week, Mayor David Miller responds to each item.
July 29th, 2005
TTC to test two-hour tranfer system
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The TTC is embarking on a new initiative that will be piloted on St Clair Ave. for the next 18 months. Passengers will be able to request a 'time transfer' that will allow a rider to enter and exit the streetcar for up to 2 hours using a transfer that you request from the driver. This will allow you to hop on and off the streetcar, all on one ticket.
The pilot will start in September and continue until the end of the St Clair right-of-way streetcar track re-construction.
Book launch tonight!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee are presenting a book launch tonight starting at 7:30pm at the Victory Cafe (on Markham, a block west of Bathurst and a block south of Bloor). Come and join the editors of Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans for a presentation of their new double book. Yes, a double book! Editors Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg will present their work, share stories, and answer questions.
Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans tells inspiring stories of urban renewal through the eyes of the artists, environmental visionaries, and local ...
The Bridge
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Shadowland, a neat theatre company located on our Toronto Islands, has some festvities planned for tonight called "The Bridge" on Ward's Island marking the 25th anniversary of the undestruction of their homes.
The Bridge begins at the Ward's Island Clubhouse with a special viewing of Matthew Ferguson's short film The Day at the Bridge - and continues with their annual Fire Parade and theatrical reenactment of the Islanders victory.
It all starts at 7pm tonight. More info here.
This just in: Gridlock is Bad
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
John Tory just announced the Ontario Conservative initiative to solve our Gridlock problem. They've set up this website, as a place where you can tell them what you think about Gridlock, and also share your ideas with the Tory trafficologists.
We don't want to be cynical and pre-judge something from the party most festooned with SUVs, so we'll assume this is Tory doing what the opposition party should do. So, we should all go to site and contribute and counteract the people who will say more lanes on the DVP are the solution. Tell them you ...
July 30th, 2005
Public space Saturday
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Globe and Mail had a bunch of interesting articles today. The first article was about the number of stray cats running around in our alleys. Some say there are 500,000 homeless kitties, while others contest there are only 250,000. The second article focused on the plans being put forward to reclaim the middle lane of Jarvis Street and turn it into a median. The project would also widen the sidewalks and include other streetscaping niceties. The third article talks about the business opportunities, and changing dynamics, on Toronto's only clothing ...
July 31st, 2005
Transmedia 29:59 Launch in Dundas Square
By Michelle Kasprzak // No Comments
TRANSMEDIA :29:59
A project by Year Zero One
Curated by Michael Alstad and Michelle Kasprzak
This Wednesday, August 3rd, a programme of one minute videos by artists will be launched on the pedestrian-level billboard in Dundas Square. Two videos will play each hour, on the 29th and 59th minutes. Launching on August 3rd on the 29th minute of each hour is "Movie Stars" by Manu Luksch, and on the 59th minute, "Screen Kiss" by Jillian McDonald. These two artists will have their videos broadcast on the 29th and 59th minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days ...
August 1st, 2005
Should Canadian cities install security cameras on streets?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Globe and Mail runs daily opinion polls, and the question posed the other day was: "Most of London is monitored by police cameras. Should Canadian cities follow suit?" Of nearly 14,000 votes, 61% said yes, and 39% said no. We are shocked to see these kind of numbers. If anyone one can explain this to us, please email us with an answer. We'll post some responses.
August 2nd, 2005
Parking Lot of Dreams
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Toronto Star has a good story today dispelling myths about public space in the burbs. The dance troupe Rated Inc. reclaims a Jane and Finch area parking lot for night time practice - animating public space and drawing onlookers.
Public Office Space
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Globe and Mail has a rare article about the increased demand for better office space including bicycle amenities, better food and public-private space. Unfortunately the article doesn't link these amenities to adjacent public space. The good news is that the employees are putting the pressure on the companies and thus the landlords to provide better space for everyone.
[murmur] wants your Spadina Stories!
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
[murmur] is happy to announce we have started on our biggest project yet: Toronto's Spadina Avenue. We are currently searching for and recording stories that have occurred along the street, from Bloor to Queens Quay.
We want you to tell us your stories: short tales and anecdotes that are located, at least in part, somewhere on Spadina. They could have happened last week or 50 years ago. Also, we're interested in the stories you know about - the history and events you tell people about when you walk down the street with them. If it means ...
Reading Toronto Spits
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Guest writer Chris Thomaidis has put up a series of posts on the Reading Toronto blog about the Leslie Street Spit/Tommy Thompson Park. He talks about the birds, the weird "art" one can find there and the constant truck activity during the day. Some nice pictures too.
It complements the article Trevor Haldenby wrote about the Spit in the current issue of Spacing which, as they say, is available on newstands now.
August 3rd, 2005
Spacing goes national!
By Spacing // No Comments
This image was captured by a Spacing reader in Halifax outside the city's seminal newsstand Atlantic News. Why is a store in Halifax carrying our mag? Well, Spacing now has national distribution. Sixty-eight stores across the country now carry the magazine, including twenty-four outlets here in Toronto. We just received the list of stores from our distro people, Magazines Canada, so we hope to have each and every location up on the site very soon. If you live in Canada and want Spacing at a store near you, all you have to ...
Spying on Gated Communities
By Michelle Kasprzak // No Comments
A group called Heavy Trash has installed "viewing platforms" on the edges of gated communities in Los Angeles.
Heavy Trash is "an anonymous arts organization of architects, designers and urban planners". Their blog extensively documents their viewing platform project, which aims to stimulate dialogue about urban issues. Their blog also has some excellent information about gated communities, and instructions on how to build your own viewing platform.
Via archinect, and Space and Culture.
August 4th, 2005
Best Public Spaces in the World
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit out of NYC that helps communities and cities build smart public spaces, has an interesting feature on their website called Great Public Spaces. It focuses on markets, parks, streets, buildings, and neighbourhoods. Their August newsletter added 10 new highly-touted public spaces (Vancouver's Stanley Park was the only Canadian entry).
Also check out two other features: Five of the World's Most Overrated Places, and the list of Five Endangered Public Spaces.
Saturday: De-Fencing in the Annex!
By Dave Meslin // No Comments
On Saturday August the 6th, the Downtown De-Fence Project will be liberating eight houses from the strangulation of their rusting, isolating chain link fences.
Join them -- all you need is your hands (although if you have any pliers, garden clippers, wire cutters, power grinders, etc., you should bring those too). Get a free workout and beautify the city at the same time!
Click here for locations, photos & more info.
Comments on police cameras in public space
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A few days ago we asked for your comments on The Globe and Mail's opinion poll question: "Most of London is monitored by police cameras. Should Canadian cities follow suit?" (results were: 61% yes, 39% no). Here is what we received:
------------
My impression is that people who live outside Toronto have a very different impression of public space than we do here. I have friends and family in Cambridge, Waterloo, Whitby, etc. And, being suburbia, these cities are not designed for pedestrians - so when pedestrians are sighted, they are sinister. People never venture outside their homes... The ...
Halftone Conspiracy this weekend
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Halftone Conspiracy is a collaborative poster project open to anyone. Monthly, the co-conspirators gather, with posters they've created in hand, to transform a pre-determined location. The posters can be of any size, shape or method that the conspirator chooses. The only rule is that the conspirator must create their poster based on the selected theme.
THEME: is "My Latest & Greatest Invention"
MEET DATE/TIME: Saturday August 6th, 1:00 PM
MEET LOCATION: South-East corner of Bloor & Brunswick (Look for the conspirator with the staple gun and a bunch of posters)
August 5th, 2005
The outdoors helps your brain, kids!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A decent article from Orion on kids who suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and how green spaces can help their affliction. It seems that after spending time in green space or near nature (even just looking through a window at it), kids had better attention and were less irritable. The article theorizes that maybe anxiety and irritability are really symptoms of what they call 'Nature deficit disorder'.
A flâneur manifesto
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Shawn Micallef reveals in Eye this week the key to Toronto's hidden beauty through walking:
We're told, over and over, that Toronto is not Paris, New York, London or Tokyo. We're trained to be underwhelmed. Will Alsop told The Globe and Mail earlier this year that when he first came to Toronto he found it "unbelievably ugly." He's sort of right. Toronto seems to exist without design or reason. We don't expect to turn the corner and see beauty or to be amazed. Why then, are so many people amazed about being Torontonian right now?
Neighbourhood walks in west Toronto
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Architectural/social historian Alec Keefer, President of Architectural Conservancy Toronto, is leading a series of walks in Parkdale, High Park and the Liberty areas on Sunday afternoons during the summer and fall, rain or shine. (All proceeds support Parkdale Community Information Centre).
The next one is this Sunday:
Living South of King — August 7, 2005
"This walk features residential architecture of the highest quality in the area from Dunn Avenue east to Tyndal Avenue. You will trace the evolution of the design of turn-of the 20th century housing as well as the growth and development of apartment buildings between 1910 and 1970. ...
Subway to Nowhere
By Michelle Kasprzak // No Comments
German artist Martin Kippenberger envisioned a sort of global underground system, with stations as far apart as Greece and Germany, and in his art projects inspired by this concept, installed many entrances to the imagined global subway system, most of which lead to nowhere.
Kippenberger has been dead for eight years. The Canadian iteration in this work is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Dawson City, Yukon. It's the first and only "subway" in the Yukon. The subway entrance was built by his friend, Reinald Nohal. The project is playful, suggesting that the entrances to ...
August 6th, 2005
Terror and the TTC
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Toronto Star reports on the 10-year anniversary of the subway accident just north of Dupont station which killed three people and injured 140. According to most transit observers, that fatal crash changed everything at the TTC. Read it here.
The Globe and Mail ran a small first-person article today about the writer's experience with a "missing backpack" found on a streetcar and all the paranoia that came with it. I have conflicting thoughts about terror in Toronto: I'd like to think Canada/this city are not very important to terrorists, but I also think 'why not ...
Street signs
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you haven't noticed, over the last few months the city has been installing new street signs to replace some of the rusting and aging wayfinders (the image above is the older designs being replaced). Some say they are cheap looking while others boast of their readability. Read all about it in the Toronto Star today.
image by Hans Boldt & Sylvana Grisonich-Boldt
Home Tours with Darren O’Donnell
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As part of the Summerworks festival, Darren O'Donnell's theatre company brings you Home Tours. Darren will take an audience around the neighbourhood, knock on random doors and see who will give a tour of their home. Maybe they will give you some food.
When: Monday, August 8, 2005, 2:00PM
Where: Meet at Factory Theatre Courtyard, Bathurst and Adelaide
Why: Ideal entertainment for the end of the world
August 8th, 2005
Fallen Fruit
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A community group out of LA is trying to convince people to lobby their cities to plant fruit trees. They declare: "Our cities are planted with frivolous and ugly landscaping, sad shrubs, and neglected trees, whereas they should burst with ripe produce. Great sums of money are spent on young trees, water and maintenance. While these trees are beautiful, they could be healthy, fruitful and beautiful."
Check it out here.
Suburban homelessness
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In the Toronto Star today: "As houses sprout like dandelions in new subdivisions all over the suburban GTA, the regions around Toronto have the look of an upwardly mobile, middle-class paradise. But the large houses and swimming pools that dot the landscapes of Durham, York, Peel and Halton regions mask a quieter and related trend: families losing their homes and winding up in shelters." read article here.
Reading Toronto podcasts
By Spacing // No Comments
The Reading Toronto blog has a new podcast feature up on their site. There is an interview with Matt Blackett of Spacing, and two other interviews with [murmur], and the Toronto Psychogeopgraphy Society. To check them out click here.
Sim City comes to life
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
From Boy Reporter Ron Nurwisah:
Remember Sim City, the wildly popular game that let you be your own Robert Moses (or Jane Jacobs), constructing cities, mapping out highways, waterworks, public transit and other amenities?
The gamers were onto something. An article in the Boston Globe (registration required, or use this site to get around it) looks at how a few cities in the US are using software like Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to involve the public in planning decisions that would've been cost-prohibitive and time consuming just a few years ago. The software ...
August 9th, 2005
Pedestrian death and transit safety
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The TTC and Toronto Police are launching a safety campaign that targets aggressive drivers, impatient cyclists, and pedestrians running into traffic to catch a streetcar or bus. It comes a day too late as a 26-year old woman was struck by a car yesterday when she was rushing to catch a bus in the Steeles and Kennedy area in Scarborough. Read all about it.
Accidental Cyclists
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
A group of concerned cyclists has started a project called Ghostcycle in Seattle. The group gathered data about local bicycle collisions and then chained up 40 white bicycle memorials (password) around the city. Maybe Toronto needs a similar reminder.
Meanwhile Planet Ark reports that Americans purchased more bicycles than new cars and trucks combined in the past year -- and all without employee discounts or zero-percent financing.
August 10th, 2005
Transit geeks can make their kids transit geeks
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you have a little one on a school vacation and want to start your pro-transit brainwashing (which we encourage) you should check out this event taking place Thursday by the fine people at GO Transit.
The City as a Playground
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Back in Spacing #3 (Work & Play issue, Dec. 2004) we profiled parkour and urban games. The Star and the Globe have recently caught on to these events. The Star article focused on Manhunt, Capture the Flag, Scotland Yard. The Globe did their part by profiling the art of buildering.
Oh Wente
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
I avoid Margaret Wente's column generally, because by doing so I remember that the Globe is a good paper with columnists who actually do some research. Yesterday she wrote about her SUV, and strangely, freedom. And how freedom is linked to her right to drive her SUV. It's mostly a cranky rant designed to enrage - the way my dad tells me to eat meat though I'm a vegetarian. It's a blog-worthy level of discourse (ahem) - not sure how this stuff makes it into Canada's Standard-Bearer of the news. This part was particularly stupid:
It's no accident that bus ...
Big Brother is Broke
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Globe and Mail reports that the Feds would love to put video cameras in all public transit but they don't have the cash right at the moment. Transportation Minister Jean Lapierre isn't scared though:
"According to all the security reports I read, there are no immediate threats to Canada; however, it's one of the countries targeted by the terrorists."
Although I doubt he takes public transit often.
The Globe doesn't mention any privacy concerns. Perhaps the Feds should be looking for funding to put video cameras in all private vehicles as well? ...
Meeting on the fate of the Gardiner & Street Design
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Thursday August 11, 2005 starting at 6:30
Location: 115 the Esplanade (near Church St.)
East meeting room, ring bell
6:30pm: street design
7:30pm: the future of the Gardiner & smog reduction efforts
At 6:30 pm there will be a discussion on the characteristics for future arterial streets or boulevards in Toronto with Stephanie Tencer, a city planner specializing in streets and urban design. This is a meeting of Feet On The Street, in association with Rocket Riders.
FOTS is working on a plan to reduce car use and smog in the central area of Toronto (& perhaps other areas). Plans to ...
August 11th, 2005
Graffiti Is Art
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Graffiti Education: A seminar, from the Artist's perspective
History, significance, appreciation, culture, style, future?
Next Seminar: Tuesday August 16th ~ FREE
Scadding Court Community Centre (corner of Dundas & Bathurst)
Room #1, 7pm to 9pm
contact: graffitiseminar@yahoo.ca
For more info on graffiti seminars, murals and events in Toronto check out their website.
What are we scared of?
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
We love Christopher Hume. He is a valiant defender of the public realm. Sometimes he gets so excited about his cause that his writing becomes frenetic. Today he has a particularly sloppy rant about risk aversion in public space design in the Toronto Star.
For more thoughtful reading on the subject try this excellent publication: What are we scared of? (pdf link). Via
From CABE a great resource for research about public space, planning and architecture in the UK. ...
Spacing featured in New Statesman
By Spacing // No Comments
This week, the New Statesman and the Australian Financial Review are running edited versions of an article called "The future of the human race depends on public space" that originally appeared in Ode magazine. The article, penned by former Utne editor Jay Walljasper, talks about Copenhagen, Barcelona, Cape Town, and Toronto (focusing on Spacing). Check it out.
Alley Jaunt
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you need an art fix this weekend, Alley Jaunt is your poison. This Saturday and Sunday, the back alley garages surrounding Trinity Bellwoods Park are transformed into art exhibits, installations, performance, and film/video venues. This year Alley Jaunt presents over forty local artists and invites the public to explore their work through the city's less traveled passage ways. Follow the path of chalk drawings and flags to guide you to the participating garages and join the local community in turning these private spaces into public gathering areas.
August 12th, 2005
Cutting trees to save trees
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Approximately 7,000 trees will be cut down in Toronto and Vaughan in an attempt to stop the ongoing Asian long-horned beetle infestation. The massive felling, which follows the removal of more than 16,000 trees over the past two years, is set to start Aug. 22 in three areas in Vaughan and one in Toronto. Read all about it in the Toronto Star today.
Urban Oases
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The amazing Jeff Chapman has a wonderful website called Urban Oases that chronicles his, uh, times spent in Toronto fountains. He writes:
"What is it about Canada that inspires Canadians to build so many wonderful fountains? I think Canadians are just excited by the idea of water that isn't frozen, and more impressed with the novelty of seeing water move."
August 13th, 2005
Changing tides of Chinatown
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
From the Toronto Star today: "Community leaders believe two seemingly contradictory goals — clinging to tradition and more savvy marketing — will help the neighbourhood stay vibrant in the face of fierce competition from slick Chinese-style malls in the suburbs. That may entail everything from street events like this weekend's Chinatown Festival to courting U.S. tourists or holding a clean-up-the-neighbourhood campaign." Read it here.
August 14th, 2005
Community garden in Kensington
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A mystery washing machine, filled with dirt and flowers, has appeared on sidewalks around Kensington over the last few weeks. Spacing intern Liz Worth reports on the search for the responsible parties in this week's Wandering Eye feature in Eye Weekly.
Finding the soul of Toronto
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing's friend Pier Girogio DiCicco, Toronto's poet laureate, wrote an emotional piece in the Star about Toronto and the city's search for a soul. DiCicco and other Torontonians were sent by City officials on a mission to London, Barcelona, and Berlin to understand what gives each city a buzz. He comes to some interesting conclusions is his uniquely eloquent way. Check it out here.
August 15th, 2005
Dark News
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
In the Toronto Star today:
Christopher Hume sees the dark and supports the cause for annual blackout day. Meanwhile renegade senior citizens fight graffiti with sunny graffiti.
Billboards we like
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A group of young anti-war activists liberated a billboard in Los Angeles to make their voices heard. You can watch the Quick Time video by clicking here.
Report Card on monster bins
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee have released a report card on the city's monster garbage bin pilot project -- the Megabin's parents are not going to be pleased. If you have seen these trash cans and wish to give the City of Toronto your opinion then fill out their survey. Your feedback will help shape the outcome of this horrible experiment.
August 16th, 2005
Ride the Rocket subway party
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
On Tuesday, August 16th, you are invited to join a subway party for a night of cosmic proportions. Bring: costumes, instruments, bubbles, decorations, cameras, space toys, glowsticks, moon boots or just a friend to the end of the southbound platform of Downsview station at 11:22 PM. Your destination: alpha centauri! You blast off with enough time to catch the last rocket back to Earth.
For more info go here.
Reducing emissions in the GTA
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Environment columnist Cameron Smith asks, "Can the progress achieved by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund (TAF) in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto be expanded to the much larger GTA? The answer to this question is probably yes, but the yes comes with a very big 'if'." Read on.
Scientific Art
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Ontario Science Centre has a new website showing the shortlist of pubilc artworks for its Grand Hall. There are some provocative and interesting works, most of which are interactive or kineteic. They are looking for public feedback. Check it out.
Ad share
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Guardian has a story about the rapid succes of Vélo'v which is reportedly the largest bike share organization in the world.
Vélo'v uses computerized racks with prepaid cards to distribute its 1500 bikes around Lyon. It operates more like Toronto's Autoshare than Bikeshare with a sprinkle of Eucan's funding model. It seems Vélo'v is run by a billboard multinational, which agreed to launch and operate the bike scheme in part-exchange for the right to sell advertising space on the city's bus and tram ...
August 17th, 2005
Ride classic streetcars Aug 20th!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A tip from our friends at the Transit Toronto blog: The TTC will be pressing its fleet of classic streetcars into service on Saturday, August 20, on the 509 Harbourfront route, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The move is in celebration of the opening of the Canadian National Exhibition. This will be a rare opportunity to ride the TTC's two restored PCCs (4500 and 4549) and its Peter Witt (2766) in regular service at regular fares. (Photo taken from Transit Toronto site as well).
August 18th, 2005
Philosopher’s Walk & talking TTC buses
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In the Toronto Star today, columnist Christopher Hume talks about the plans to fix up University of Toronto's Philosopher's Walk. And next month the TTC plans to roll out their automated bus stop announcement system on the Bayview 11 route, a six-month pilot project, and hopefully expand it to the entire system. The Globe and Mail did a similar story but focused instead on the blind lawyer who has been fighting the TTC to immediately implement this system.
The Other Way
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
For those of you who are considering submitting something for The Better Way exhibition, take a look at this Metro Arts and Architecture website insitisting that subways need not be boring or dreary! Packed with great examples from other cities.
GO Transit email alerts
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
GO Transit patrons may benefit from a new service offered by the agency: a free e-mail subscription service that lets passengers sign up for timely, customized news about the GO service they use. To register, passengers can visit this site to subscribe to the service. Customers who register for GO's E-News will receive e-mail alerts about service improvements, new schedules, any major delays, construction notices, and other news and information.
August 19th, 2005
Mayor doesn’t need more power
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing thinks the most public of public spaces in Toronto should be City Hall. It is where the beacon of local democracy should fly highest. There are many discussions currently underway that focus on how our local democracy can work better, with an emphasis on the power of the mayor, city council, and community councils. One of Spacing's favourite councillors, Joe Mihevc, wrote an opinion piece in the Toronto Star today rejecting the need to give more power to the mayor's office. More power in the mayor's office is great with Miller at the helm, he ...
A new bike rack painter
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
They say imitation is form of flattery, so the City Beautification Ensemble should be pleased that they are spawning copycats. The CBE, known around the city for painting Toronto's "ring and post" bike racks and bringing colour therapy to our streets, has a fan in an anonymous man (shown above) who has spent the better part of the summer painting bike racks and utility poles along Roncesvalles Ave. in the Parkdale area. Many thanks to Adam Krawesky of www.inconduit.com (and Spacing contributor) for alerting us and use of the image.
We Heart Dufferin Grove Park
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing editor Dale Duncan, writes in Eye this week: "From the bus stop outside Dufferin Mall, Dufferin Grove seems like many of the other 1,460 parks in the city of Toronto. But the 5.75-hectare park, which runs along Dufferin Street...is not your ordinary park. The Zamboni garage also functions as a kitchen. Park staff bake cookies in the rink house. Neighbours gather for healthy $6 dinners every Friday night. You can make pizza in the outdoor ovens, start a garden, and buy organic food."
August 20th, 2005
Parks Canada temporarily suspends Geocaching
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Parks Canada has temporarily suspended Geocaching (featured in Spacing's "Work and Play" issue) in national parks because of a variety of concerns about its impact on the parks. They are consulting with the Geocaching community to find a way to resolve these concerns.
See the Parks Canada website for more information.
Spacing on AM 640
By Spacing // No Comments
Spacing will be featured on AM 640 Sunday afternoon from 2:30-3:00pm here in Toronto. You can also catch a spot on [murmur] earlier in the day at 12:15 on the same station. Tune in if you can.
August 21st, 2005
Subways make underwater reefs
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Not sure how many of you know this (we just found out, too): since 2001, a slew of New York City subway cars have been dumped into the ocean up and down the east coast of the US to help create artifical reefs. Good Humor trucks have even been used. This seems insane to us, and some states have decided to stop this weird practise. Read about it here or read about unwated toilets in a similar experiment on the west coast.
Paris artists need your help
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
We know this happens all over the world but we still wanted to bring your attention to it: A group of artists in Paris have taken over a big, abandoned ministry of education building which has sat empty for 10 years. The artists cleaned it up, renamed it La Générale, and now it is home to studios, a gallery, musical and drama practice spaces, a theatre and a public cafeteria. The artists have reached out to local youth, schools, businesses. The mayor of the district supports the artists' reclamation of the building. But the ministry of education ...
August 22nd, 2005
Recycled Trash Bins
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
ArchitectureChicago PLUS reports on the finalists for a Chicago's Young Architect's Forum's competition for a recycling receptacle in Chicago. The bins are strange, quirky, fun and a little weird. My favorite is the green ball that sits on existing trash bins. It reuses the existing bin which is what recycling is all about.
Strange they don't seem to have giant ads on them either.
The Streets Are Alive cinema series
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee are starting a monthly fundraising event called The Streets Are Alive that features six independent films about the cities we live in, the spaces we share, the obstacles we face, and the people who are trying to make a difference. All films are at the Bloor Cinema (Bloor and Bathurst). Each screening is followed by a Q & A with guest speakers. The first film night is Tuesday August 23 featuring "City Space: Power, art and public space" (2004).
For more info on films, dates, and times check out the ...
Banksy graffiti on Israel’s wall
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The British "guerrilla graffiti" artist Banksy has created a series of graffiti on the security wall that Israel is building through the West Bank - often through the midst of Palestinian communities. The images of freedom and long views he has created subtly highlight the the way the wall in fact restricts movement and sightlines for Palestinians.
He also concedes that the enormous height and length of the wall "makes it the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers."
Find out more from the Guardian, including the interesting ...
Spadina tree pits in bloom
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Someone has been planting lush, beautiful gardens in the pits around trees on both sides of Spadina south of Sullivan. Possibly, in order to do so, they have been removing the hideous concrete lids which normally cover tree pits.
It is a wonderful initiative. The trees along that part of Spadina are particularly sad, dying regularly in their shallow, concrete-covered pits. The concrete lids, which are supposedly needed so that no-one treads on the roots, prevent rainwater from getting into the soil, exacerbating the watering problems of these trees. ...
August 23rd, 2005
Watching the highways
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
We at Spacing hate to see traffic jams. Only bad things comes from auto congestion: pollution, idling, missed dinners, flared tempers, etc. For those of you that need to take the highway regularly, you will appreciate this website: the City of Toronto lets you look at the flow of traffic along the Gardiner Expressway, Lake Shore Boulevard, and the Don Valley Parkway from any camera that you wish. The image above, just outside the SkyDome, is being updated as the day goes on.
Another feature on the City's website is the ...
iPod subway maps
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
An inventive web designer by the name of William Bright is making us transit geeks get all excited. He has developed a site where you can download images of the subway maps of 12 major subway cities from around the world and place them on your iPod. There is a photo feature that comes with your iPod that allows you to display an image of your choice (instead of always staring at the song listing). The maps you can download are: Berlin, Bilbao, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Lyon France, Melbourne, Montreal, ...
August 24th, 2005
TTC Rider needs tips
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide [ ttcrider.ca ] is putting out a call for Unorthodox Tips for Riding the TTC. They are looking for complicated and simple tips that people can use when riding the TTC. Some examples:
(1) when crossing from the University/Spadina subway line to the Bloor subway line, the options are to do this at either Spadina station or St. George station. It's much quicker to do this at St. George station
(2) if you hear a subway pulling into the station while you are walking down the stairs ...
How would you make Toronto a better city?
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The final results of the “Think Outside the Box†initiative—a month-long chance to vote for the top priority among a list of issues are in. According to the survey Torontonians see many opportunities for civic improvement (pdf), especially in the areas of the environment, transit, roads, architecture and the arts.
The top three categories for improvement were:
Environment (less waste, cleaner water and air etc.) — 25%
Getting Around (transit accessibility, improved roads, bike facilities) — 17%
City Appearance (architecture, street aesthetics) — ...
Vital Images
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Calling all Toronto photographers.
Another intiative by the Toronto Community Foundation is a call for submissions for vital images. They are seeking images that portray quality of life in Toronto and citizens working to improve quality of life in the community. Selected images will be reproduced on a special page in the 2005 edition of Toronto's Vital Signs, TCF's annual report on quality of life in Toronto. More info here (pdf).
Finch Avenue does the collapse
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The wicked storm that passed through Toronto on the weekend did some serious damage. Spacing is lucky enough to have been forwarded photos from a resident who lives just beside the road collapse on Finch Avenue, near York University. Follow this link to see 9 photos of the roadway slowly succumbing to the heavy flow of Black Creek.
August 26th, 2005
Torn posters of Sydeny
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Sean Gannan, a Torontonian transplanted to Sydney, has been avidly photographing hoardings and walls where generations of posters and handbills have been glued down and then partially torn away: "Heavily postered sites which have been stripped are becoming a new obsession for me. The stunning intersections create stunning art that only needs my lens to frame it." (from Boing Boing).
Tree Pit Gardening Angels come forward
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The gardening angels responsible for the Spadina tree pits in bloom have come forward - it's urbanspace Property Group, who are responsible for the marvellous renovation of 401 Richmond. They were inspired by another neighbour - and let's hope they inspire others in turn. It's not that hard, and does wonders for the street - and the trees. If there's a neglected tree in a concrete-covered pit outside your property, try it yourself!
Urbanspace says it best themselves:
"We're not shy! As the owners and operators of 215 Spadina Avenue (urbanspace Property ...
Death of an Urban Explorer
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Jeff Chapman, a.k.a. Ninjalicious, the creator of the urban exploration zine Infiltration, died this week at the age of 31. Many moving tributes to him have been written, including ones on Urban Exploration Resources and on Torontoist.
Spacing was lucky enough to have Jeff write an article for us in Spacing #3 (Winter 2005) called The City as a Playground.
The newspaper box question
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Do newspaper boxes clutter, enhance or privatize public space? Read all about it: Spacing's own Dale Duncan has analyzed the newspaper box question in all its many angles for Eye.
The city is currently considering a bylaw to, finally, regulate the boxes. In response, a coalition of media companies is working on a scheme for multi-newspaper "superboxes" at key intersections.
Walking LA
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
A woman named Lisa Salem is trying to walk all over Los Angeles, without going back home, with only a camera-fitted baby stroller sparsely packed with a cellphone, sunglasses, bottled water and Kleenex, relying on friends and the kindness of strangers met through chance encounters. She has been doing it since May (though she's had to return home occasionally), and recording her experiences in a blog.
She explained to the LA Times: "We're all living such different experiences of this town, and yet when we say 'Los Angeles' we tend to presume ...
August 28th, 2005
Toronto Psychogeography Society
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
The Toronto Psychogeography Society likes to walk around Toronto (and other places too). Sometimes we post our city-wandering thoughts to our collaborative blog. Take a peek at it, or sign up for the RSS feed.
Recently Laura wrote about a psychedelic cul-de-sac she found near Christie and Davenport. Dylan wrote about a linear walk from Queen and Spadina to Parkdale and there's also a picture of some of the debris that washed up on the Toronto Island (see Finch post below). It was no Katrina, but it was still somethin'.
August 29th, 2005
Graffiti film at the Bloor Cinema
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Bloor Cinema • 7pm • $9
Our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee begin their public space cinema series The Streets Are Alive on Tuesday. The first film is City Space, a documentary exposing the conflicts and contradictions surrounding graffiti in Vancouver. Each month a different film about a public space issue will be presented. More info on the film series here.
The sights and sounds of the TTC
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Toronto Star writer Joe Fiorito seems to be able to capture the pulse of this city in his columns. His latest piece deals with ad-covered subway cars and the mandatory station announcements. A notable passage in his column:
Mr. Ducharme may be over a barrel; in order to do his job fully, he has to bring forward all the lame ideas brought to his attention, for the consideration of his masters. But when I told him that ad-wrapped trains cheapened the look of the system, and cheapened the look of the city, he said, "I don't disagree ...
Study of cycling in Canada
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute has issued an interesting study comparing cycling in six major Canadian cities. Despite Toronto's many cycling initiatives, it has the lowest number of cyclists as a percentage of work trips of any major (over half a million inhabitants) city in Canada - way behind the other large cities of Montreal and Vancouver, and behind even Hamilton. To be fair, this statistic is for the GTA - it's somewhat better in the City of Toronto - but we clearly still have much work to do.
Read the full report (PDF format).
An interesting ...
August 30th, 2005
Two new visions for the TTC
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Vision #1: TTC commissioners will be debating on Wednesday whether Fleet Street should be home to the city's next streetcar right-of-way (it would run between Bathurst and Strachan just north of Lake Shore Blvd). The ROW would be used by the Bathurst and Harbourfront streetcars. The area will soon be a hub of residential life with condos going up all around the 'hood. The construction of a dedicated transit line before a neighbourhood is built makes a lot of sense.
Vision #2: As the Spacing Wire posted on July 14, ...
August 31st, 2005
Plant seeds not bullets
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Toronto Star has a good news story about urban farming in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. Run by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority the urban farm gives youth a productive outlet as well as a tranquil place in a devalued suburban area.
For another perspective on curbing gun violence check out Smart City Radio's mp3 podcast interview with Dr. Gary Slutkin, founding director of CeaseFire, a Chicago-based organization that is having remarkable success in slashing the number of killings in targeted neighbourhoods.
A Toronto Poster Project
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Artist Jackie Kriekle has put up a bunch of posters around Toronto neighbourhoods that invite people to explore and possibly comment on those areas.
This work consists of a series of posters mounted in several overlapping downtown Toronto neighbourhoods. The posters are hung on the lamp posts and the billboards of the community, there to be discovered as one moves through the city. They depict idiosyncratic moments in construction and community which are shared by the individuals who live in and pass through these neighbourhoods. If a passerby's interest is piqued, the posters provide minimal directions that will lead them to ...
Documentary on Urban Exploration
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
A new documentary called "Echoes of Forgotten Places" about Urban Exploration:
On the fringes of every city lie the relics of our industrial past. Swept aside to make way for condos and shopping malls or left to decay in silence: these huge structures stand as a testament to the acomplishments of the industrial age.
I haven't seen it yet, but have been told 90% of it was shot in Toronto locations like the Hearn Power Plant, the Wychwood carbarns, the Don Valley Brickworks, some old factories in the Liberty Street area and in some storm drains.
More info here.
September 2nd, 2005
Street art from around the world
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If a wide range of graffiti and street art excites you, then you should bookmark the site Streetsy. The site is updated daily with most of the images being fed by a multitude of Flickr photo streams and tags (no pun intended) from Toyko, NYC, and Paris.
image courtesy of this site. Tip comes from the TTC Rider's Sean Lerner.
September 3rd, 2005
No to TVs in subway cars
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
On Wednesday, TTC commissioners voted 4 to 3 against a pilot project that would place TV screens with endless commercial loops in our subway cars. Hats off to councillors Adam Giambrone, Olivia Chow, Joe Mihevc, and Howard Moscoe for doing the right thing. If you'd like to know more about the debate surrounding TV ads on the TTC then go to this web site.
We at Spacing think this is a smart move because it reflects the public's weariness of ad encroachment. Canadians see or hear over 3,000 advertisements a day (about one every 20 ...
September 4th, 2005
York Region’s VIVA
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Toronto Star had some great coverage of York Region's new VIVA transit system in the Saturday paper. Reading it online is fine, but the two page layout and photographs will give you a better understanding of what is being unveiled. This is a very important step for the suburbs to be making. The health and fortune of this region depend on these types of initiatives working. Christopher Hume does a good job explaining why.
Sewell on street signs
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
John Sewell writes in Eye this week about the erection of the re-designed street signs. Over the past year he has had a very difficult time getting City staff to answer some of his questions about the process and implementation of the street monikers. One of his central beefs with the signs is the lack of sophistication and elegance they possess. Also, the arrival of the new signs represent the removal of visual landmarks that remind us of our proud pre-amalgamated past.
See The Wire's post on August 6th, 2005 about the new street ...
Slipping through the CNE’s spectacle
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing associate editor Shawn Micallef wrote about the CNE in this week's Eye. In keeping with his psychogeographic ways, Shawn wanders through the spectacle and stumbles upon the charming intricacies that make up the world of The Ex. My favourite passage is:
There are other signs around that read, "If you ate today, thank a farmer," along with nice pictures of the kings and queens from various county fairs. It's like the Ontario hinterland comes to Toronto. I'm all for it, and I love the connection to the rest of the province. Toronto should ...
September 5th, 2005
Life in the Bike Lane
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Offthemapgallery is moving to a new location and celebrating the move with a Green Bike Convoy and an exhibition called Life in the Bike Lane curated by Rupen.
The Green Bike Convoy will be taking place Sunday September 11th starting at 1:30pm at 80 Spadina (OTMG's old location) and go to 712 Lansdowne Avenue (OTMG'S new location) to open the reception for the Life in the Bike Lane exhibition.
More info here.
September 6th, 2005
Road construction halted
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Last month, housing developers unearthed a native burial ground while widening a road north of Canada's Wonderland. What is worse, York Region failed to consult native groups when it conducted an environmental assessment for the work to be done on Teston Rd., an environmental lawyer says. Early estimates pegged the number of bodies interred at the site at more than 100, but that number has now climbed to well over 200. The Toronto Star writes about it today.
Israel security wall art
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As Dylan Reid posted on the Wire August 22, 2005, the security wall Israel is building in the West Bank is being used as a public canvas for artists and locals to express their feelings on the barrier. British stencil graffiti artist Banksy has erected some pieces, and now a group called Health & Wall is promoting an art exhibit inspired by the wall to raise awareness for the health risks, both mental and physical, associoated with the wall's construction. (photo by Miki Kratsman).
Guerilla gardening goes mainstream
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Mainstream gardening writers are finally catching on to the guerilla gardening phenomena. We've seen articles on GG this summer in the Globe and Mail, National Post, on CP24, and this week the Toronto Star's garden specialist Kathy Renwald writes about a Hamilton GGer and what we can learn from this green urban intervention. You can learn first-hand about guerilla gardening over here.
September 7th, 2005
Transit: York subway, new TTC initiatives, and VIVA’s growing pains
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It's only a matter of time before the TTC gets the green light to build its long-awaited subway to York University, says Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara in the Toronto Star today. Also, York Region's VIVA transit system is experiencing some growing pains. Read about it here. And the TTC has launched a bunch of new initiatives this month. Check them out at this web site.
September 8th, 2005
Gas tax cometh
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It seems like there has been a lot of transit-type news lately. So here's another one, this time from today's Toronto Star.
"Nothing grabs attention quite like the sight of a tall, blond mayor stalking the city's streets and subway system carrying a giant cheque for $24.45 million. Wearing a grin and toting the cheque, Miller hopped the subway to carry the symbolic payment from the federal government back to his office at Toronto City Hall after a news conference at Union Station.
Read about the gas tax money flowing into Toronto.
September 9th, 2005
Toronto City Hall is turning 40
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Saturday, September 17, 2005
8:30 - 10 pm
The September 1965 opening of the newly designed City Hall marked an era of architectural experimentation. Finnish Architect Viljo Revell gave Toronto one of the world's most distinctive civic symbols and helped to create an instantly recognizable and attractive cityscape.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Toronto City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square will be transformed into an open air theatre of music, dance and pyrotechnics. The evening also kicks off Toronto's Live with Culture -- a major 16-month celebration of ...
Walk in Leslieville
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Saturday September 10th • 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Join Todd Irvine, a professional arborist from LEAF and his guest, City Councillor Paula Fletcher, for a guided tour of the many interesting trees that grace the streets, parks and hidden alleys of Leslieville. Todd is an active member of Toronto's public space reclamation movement -- he is a founding member of Spacing and The Toronto Psychogeography Society, and is an important cog in the Toronto Public Space Committee.
Meet at the southeast entrance to Leslie Grove Park, at the intersection of Jones Avenue and Queen ...
September 10th, 2005
12 Lessons from 12 Cities
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Globe and Mail's Tralee Pearce offers Mayor Miller some tips from other cities ranging from free wireless networks, public events, wind powered transit, diverse street food, green roofs, sexier subways, public art and better waterfronts.
She must be reading Spacing.
September 12th, 2005
Wild Capitalism Hunting Games in Calgary
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
I'm in Calgary for the Art City festival. We've set up three [murmur] sites out here. Calgary isn't the place I thought it was. Very car oriented and in that sense private -- not a lot of places to bump into other people. But when I have, the people I've met here have changed what I thought about this place. Lots of good things going on, like this Art City with lots of pieces of public-ish art stuff.
ATSA (Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable), the group from Montreal who set up the bombed out SUV ...
Enemies of the Ordinary photo exhibit
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Opening Night: Wednesday, September 14, 2005
"Enemies of the Ordinary"
A photographic exhibit by The Toronto Urban Exploration and Adventure Group
Explore the world as revealed by the Toronto Urban Exploration and Adventure Group Photographic Exhibition. Varied passions and photographic styles provide an opportunity to view the world from a new perspective. Re-discover the wonders that surround us.
Where: Charlotte Room, 19 Charlotte St. (Spadina & Adelaide area), Toronto. Look at map here.
When: 7pm - 10pm, free for everyone.
September 13th, 2005
Spacing sponsors photoblog presentation
By Spacing // No Comments
Spacing is sponsoring a presentation on Toronto-area photoblogs this coming Sunday at the Yorkdale Apple Store. Some of the city's most shutter-happy photobloggers will be talking about their work, inspirations, methodology, and technical know-how. Spacing's Creative Director Matthew Blackett will talk about SpacingPhotos, the Wire's sister daily feature. All other info can be found here.
Spacing has been an enthusiastic supporter of the city's photoblogging community for a few years now. When we started planning the magazine in 2002 it was imperative for us to use strong visual imagery. Our search took us ...
September 14th, 2005
Metro Art
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
John MacFarlane writes about the art of the Montreal Metro in the Gazette:
At $2.50 for a cash ticket, Montreal's metro system is probably the cheapest art museum in town.
More inspiration for the The Better Way. Deadline for submissions is: October 31st 2005.
September 15th, 2005
The High Cost of Free Parking
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Terrence Belford writes a rather one-sided article about Toronto's impending parking crisis in the Globe. What is bad news to the Globe:
That is the spectre of Ontario cities, especially Toronto, not having surface parking lots at all and the impact that would have on all forms of commercial tenancies.
Sounds like good news to me. It means that real estate values downtown are getting to the point that it's more profitable to build a building that run a parking lot. That is a sign of a healthy downtown. Who wants surface parking ...
Community transformation examples
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Sierra Club has an interesting feature on its website which allows you to flip through images of reimagined intersections in suburban sprawl areas. The feature highlights step-by-step what a neighbourhood could look like if you widen sidewalks, add some trees to the streetscape, and increase building density. While the examples are American cities, they could just as easily be in Richmond Hill, Mississauga, or Whitby.
September 16th, 2005
Eco-Feedback
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Environmental effects are not always as dramatic as Katrina. Often we forget about our affect on the ecosystem as it is slow to change or even invisible to the eye. An interesting project from Denmark is working on prototypes for visualizing air quality in public space:
The Indicator is to be placed in the city to make existing information on air quality and pollution levels accessible and give information that is specific to the location in which it is placed.
Check out the prototypes here.
The Barren Poles of Calgary
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
There's a lot of cultural stuff going on Calgary -- it isn't all cows and oil -- but you would hardly know it walking down the street. When I arrived last Tuesday, I spent a few hours walking around the city in the late afternoon and then later at night. I was struck at how bare the poles are. Many have "Post no bills" written on them. There are only a few places to poster. They have these panels that rise out of bike posts. People in Calgary post neatly. Everybody seems to make uniform posters. And ...
September 17th, 2005
Union on two wheels?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Today's Globe and Mail has an interesting article on the drive to unionize Toronto's bike couriers. As it stands, most couriers earn about $15,000 a year and have no benefits. They face serious health risks working in the middle of heavy downtown congestion, nevermind the constant threat of car-on-courier accidents. But there are a mix of emotions surrounding the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' attempt to bring the radical side of parcel delivery on side.
From an outsider's point of view, a union for the hoof and pedal clan seems like a perfect match. ...
September 18th, 2005
Toronto photobloggers at Apple Store tonight
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing is sponsoring a presentation on Toronto-area photoblogs tonight at the Yorkdale Apple Store. Some of the city's most shutter-happy photobloggers will be talking about their work, inspirations, methodology, and technical know-how. Spacing's Creative Director Matthew Blackett will talk about SpacingPhotos, the Wire's sister daily feature. Other Spacing contributors presenting will be: Matt O'Sullivan, Gayla Trail, Adam Krawesky, and Rannie Turingan.
More info can be found here.
September 19th, 2005
Skyscrapers of the world
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Toronto is a weird place when it comes to tall buildings. We have the CN Tower, the world's tallest free-standing structure in the world. But we're also home to Jane Jacobs, who believes in low-rise and human-scale development. Our Official Plan, which is still not "official," does not set out guidlines for developers when it comes to the height of structures they wish to erect -- that will come once the Official Plan is ratified. In the meantime, we have silly disputes like the plans for One Bedford (right across from Varsity Stadium). ...
Guerrilla Gardening in the Star (again)
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Yes, it was only two weeks ago when the Toronto Star did a feature on Guerrilla Gardening, but Christopher Hume looks at the act of vandalizing with nature in today's paper. He talks to the friendly Dave Meslin of the TPSC for insight.
How the streets get cleaned
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
It's easy to forget how much work it takes to keep our public spaces clean. This weekend, the Globe and Mail featured a great story in its weekend Toronto section comparing the two street-cleaning methods Toronto uses -- man with broom and bag, and motorized garbage sucker -- and profiling two of the workers who make them happen.
It's interesting to note that, when all costs are added up, the non-polluting human is only marginally more expensive per kilometre cleaned than the polluting, somewhat obnoxious machine.
Pedestrian posters
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of Toronto recently launched a new set of posters aimed at making drivers more aware of pedestrians.
The posters feature cars being damaged when they hit pedestrians, with the tag line "If only."
They are part of the City's twice-a-year pedestrian safety campaign.
It's good to see the City being dramatic about the dangers cars cause to pedestrians - although pedestrians are only involved in about 3.5% of traffic accidents, they account for about half the fatalities from traffic accidents in the city.
Patchwork soccer
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Spacing's "Work and Play" issue discussed the importance of play in public space, both as a way of asserting public use of space, and as a way of bringing citizens together. A recent article in the Star highlighted a fine example of this issue. Newcomers and locals have taken over a scrap of unused ground beside a temporary residence for newly arrived refugees, and use it for a regular game of pickup soccer mixing together Canadians and refugees in a common language of sport.
Adding insult to injury
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
It's not enough that the City has allowed Astral Media to put up massive billboards in our parks disguised as bogus "information pillars" -- in defiance of the supposed policy banning advertising in city parks. It's not enough that they insult our intelligence by only providing "information" in the form of a generic map whose only customization is a red star for "you are here" (in Montreal, the equivalent at least provides a detailed local map). It's not enough that none of these pillars actually ...
September 20th, 2005
Viacom’s breaking all the rules
By Dave Meslin // No Comments
The Toronto Public Space Committee has researched the contract that Viacom has with the City of Toronto for ads on transit shelters and has found that many of their current ad campaigns violate the conditions. The TPSC is calling for the immediate removal of the iPod ads on streetcar shelters, the nine foot tall Listerine bottles on bus shelters, and the Herbal Essence shelter wraps. Words from the TPSC's website:
The iPod ads have been the target of unprecedented vandalism. As soon as they were installed, people began ripping them down. While the TPSC does ...
September 22nd, 2005
Bumvertising
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
I was up the other night watching the Daily Show when they did a report on Bumvertising. Benjamin Rogovy, a 22-year-old "entrepreneur", as news reports call him, wanted to drive web traffic to his site, so he convinced a few panhandlers to attach sponsorship signs to their pleas for change or food. This is so bad on so many levels. The worst thing? It has been done before -- check it out here. Here's a full desrciption:
Bumvertisingâ„¢, or the use of sign holding vagrants to advertise, is a development of PokerFaceBook.com's ...
SPACING EVENT: City Club of Toronto?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The City Club of Toronto? Ideas and Experiences from Portland
Spacing invites you out to an event we are helping promote.
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005 • Innis Town Hall • 7pm, free
Imagine meeting regularly with Torontonians who are passionate about civic issues. What if these citizens worked together in an organization devoted to nonpartisan education and research, community service, public affairs, and leadership development. And, what if there were regular events and forums, citizen-based research initiatives and reports, special programs, and issue committees, all dealing with issues of importance to our city, our region, our ...
Today is CarFree Day
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Without the financial support of City Hall, Torontonians are holding their own Car Free Day.
Thursday, September 22nd is World CarFree Day and they're partying in 1544 cities in 40 countries. We don't want to be left behind so we're throwing a parade!
Thursday, September 22nd:
4:00 -- Meet at Bellevue Square Park in Kensington Market for preparations and tea (Bring your own tea).
5:30 -- Take back the streets! We will depart en masse on foot, on stilts, on bikes, on trikes, on boats, on floats, playing music, and dressed for the occasion...doing ...
September 23rd, 2005
The Health Impacts of Sprawl
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Our friends at the Ontario Smart Growth Network present a great little event that connects urban sprawl with the increasing obesity of North American society. The discussion is called "Health Impacts of Sprawl and How Smart Growth Can Solve Them" and takes place here in Toronto on Wednesday, October 5, 2005.
According to public opinion polls, healthcare has been the number one issue in Ontario for most of the last decade. Unfortunately, trends indicate that obesity, heart attacks, colon cancer, osteoporosis, respiratory and mental health ailments are all on the rise. Mounting ...
Who’s Driving the City?
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
While London is installing solar powered lighting in its busstops and New York is putting thousands of new bus shelters, newsstands and, public washrooms on its streets, Toronto is more worried about the width of the seats on its busses (due to national obesity rates rising).
Meanwhile on Car Free day, Toronto City Councillors showed their leadership by driving to work:
"Tell them I drove. I never supported the thing in the first place," said Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, through her mouthpiece and assistant Jim Burnett. Notwithstanding ...
September 24th, 2005
Keeping Segways off sidewalks
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Following a resolution by the Toronto Pedestrian Committee in April against allowing Segway scooters on sidewalks, the local distributor started a publicity campaign to persuade the City allow these contraptions on the sidewalks (including for the purpose of advertising).
An article in the Bloor West Villager discusses the subsequent events and discussions.
The basic message of all pedestrian activists has been, these are great vehicles, let's put them on the road where all motorized vehicles belong, not on sidewalks. They would need to be modified to be road-worthy, but Segway is already developing various ...
September 25th, 2005
Spacing at Word on the Street
By Spacing // No Comments
Sunday Septemtber 25, 2005 • 11am-6pm
Spacing will take part in our second Word On The Street event. We are very excited to be able to meet such a large swath of the city's avid readers. We will be selling all of our issues published to date, plus subscriptions and the ever popular Toronto subway station buttons. The 2004 WOTS was eye-opening for the Spacing staff -- we met everyone from soccer moms to anarchists who shared like-minded goals and aspirartions for the city.
Spacing will also be presenting a panel at the WOTS called ...
September 26th, 2005
Word on the Street wrap-up
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Word on the Street was fun for us at Spacing. Though it looked like it may rain at any minute, it held off until late Sunday evening, long after we had all packed our boxes and gone home. A couple of highlights: the panel Blogging Toronto presented by Spacing was held in an overflowing Beyond the Page tent (panelist Sam Javanrouh has posted a pic); NDP leader Jack Layton bought a button for each station in his home riding and wore them for the rest of the day on his ...
PEDAL POWER! ~ Film night at the Bloor Cinema
By Dave Meslin // No Comments
PEDAL POWER! A night of two-wheeled films
Tuesday September 27 @ THE BLOOR CINEMA, 7pm, $9
featuring:
"Return of the Scorcher" (1992) & "We aren't Blocking Traffic...We ARE Traffic" (1999)
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about the state of cycling in Toronto. Panelists are: Adam Giambrone (City Councillor), Darren Stehr (torontocranks.com), Derek Chadbourne (bikestore owner), Maogosha Pyjor (Community Bicycle Network), Martino Reis (ARC), Wayne Scott (Hoof & Cycle).
More info at www.publicspace.ca
City Secretly Supports Car Free Day
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
It seemed fitting that I got a parking ticket on the eve of Car Free Day last week - the holiday the City chose not to support this year, inspiring councillor Michael Walker to wax poetic about his Hot Rod Lincoln. I have a little hand-me-down car that usually sits on the streets and collects leaves unless it's needed for some utilitarian purpose that a bike can't handle. Whenever I drive it I remember why I rarely drive, and wonder how people do this everyday. Returning home, I drove all around my neighbourhood looking for a ...
September 27th, 2005
SPACING EVENT: City Club of Toronto?
By Spacing // No Comments
The City Club of Toronto? Ideas and Experiences from Portland
Spacing invites you out to an event we are helping organize promote.
TONIGHT! • Innis Town Hall • 7pm, free
Imagine meeting regularly with Torontonians who are passionate about civic issues. What if these citizens worked together in an organization devoted to nonpartisan education and research, community service, public affairs, and leadership development. And, what if there were regular events and forums, citizen-based research initiatives and reports, special programs, and issue committees, all dealing with issues of importance to our city, our region, our province and ...
September 28th, 2005
Hot St. Lawrence Design Porn
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
The good folks at the City of Toronto Planning Department have released a wonderful document on Urban Design Guidelines in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. It's good. It uses hot language and phrases like "Intimate spaces like the Sculpture Garden are a unique characteristic of the neighbourhood" and "Pedestrian-oriented cafes on The Esplanade" and "Consistent scale and high quality architecture blends new and old buildings on King Street East." You can download it by clicking here -- but don't let your mother see it, unless she's one of those moms that let you watch the late night ...
Map Porn
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Radical Cartography has an amazing collection of analytical maps. My personal favorite is a scale comparison of all North American Transit systems arranged more or less geographically.
For world subway systems to scale check out fakeisthenewreal.
City Council this week
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There are some interesting things going down at September's meeting of City Council. Here's a primer:
1. Video screens on the Gardiner: As the Toronto Star reports today, Cineplex Galaxy on The Queensway at Islington in Etobicoke wants to put up twin high-definition video screens at the back of its building, next to the Gardiner. One screen would face southeast and the other southwest. Etobicoke's community council approved the screens, but Spacing's favourite City councillor, Joe Mihevc, is urging council to block the decision. Les Kelman, director of the City's traffic management centre, said in the ...
Toronto Walks in October, apparently
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Apparently, the City of Toronto is going to designate October as "Toronto Walks Month." A lovely idea, but it's hard to find out what exactly this means -- the only information on the City website is a press release about the opening ceremony. The ceremony will take place for half an hour in Dundas Square on Friday, Sept. 30, from 1:15 to 1:45, including a proclamation by the Mayor. The press release assures us that more details about the program will be available at this launch.
The event is part of a campaign to get Toronto to be ...
September 29th, 2005
Capture the Flag
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
CAPTURE THE FLAG! Bay Street
Friday, September 30th // 8:30 PM // meet at King & Bay
Capture the Flag, the massive urban game where teams hit the pavement of Toronto, takes place this Friday. Run around the streets of Toronto's Financial District, land of towering skyscrapers of steel and glass. Ride subways, streetcars, busses & escalators to the enemy base, hide underground in the PATH system. Defend your concrete turf by tagging trespassers and sending them back to their side. Rain or shine. For more info, directions, rules & maps, check out ...
Big blooming bunny art
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing's next issue, due out in early November, is all about street and public art, so we are becoming increasingly aware of the controversy installations can cause. Case in point is the giant bunny that can be found on a hillside in Italy erected by the artist group Gelitin. In this linked article, you can also find a number of other curious giant public art installations.
Public Toilet summit
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Yes, there is a conference for every possible topic or vocation out there. The World Toilet Summit is wrapping up today in Belfast, Ireland. One of the goals of the summit is to bring attention to all levels of government around the world about the poor state of public toilets. I think we all have experienced an insanely gross loo in our days. As one person from the summit said, "This affects our quality of life."
Some of the choice objectives of the coference, found on the WTS website: 1. To introduce a ...
September 30th, 2005
Human River on Garrison Creek
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Human River -- a walk along the hidden Garrison Creek
Sunday October 2nd 2005, with different starting points along route
The Garrison Creek still flows beneath our city. As it rushes hidden under homes, stores, roads and parks, we find signs of this lost river in tilting houses, dips in the streets, buried bridges and a string of green valleys. Join the Toronto Public Space Committee and hundreds of local residents as they trace the water's winding path through bustling neighbourhoods and quiet green spaces. With everyone wearing blue, you will be part of a human ...
October 1st, 2005
Take the Tooker
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
With the price of gas rising, pollution increasing, obesity growing, parking diminishing, & congestion clogging, you would expect government to take action. The humble bike offers a time-tested 100-year old solution that is cheap, accessible, light, quiet, small, personal and pollution-free.
Cars have highways, streetcars have tracks, pedestrians have sidewalks. It's about time that the bike gets the infrastructure it deserves.
The Take the Tooker campaign is a great start: a proposal to make just one continuous east-west bike lane atop the ...
October 2nd, 2005
Billboards and art in Halifax
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Whenever I see a billboard or ad that has little or no information on it, I suspect a sneaky but clever ad campaign. Contact, the photo festival that takes place each May, uses outdoor billboards and bus shelters that challenge us to examine the use of advertising space in a whole new context.
And this is what they are doing in Halifax -- Billboards is a public art project (pictured above) curated and organized by Eye Level Gallery. Located on the exterior wall of 2128 Gottingen Street, this off-site initiative ...
October 3rd, 2005
NYC & SF transit don’t like iPod subway maps
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In late August, the Spacing Wire reported on the wonderful website iPod Subway Maps. Designer William Bright created images of 12 cities' subway maps so you can download them on to your iPod for display (seems there is a neat function on the big iPods that is similar to desktop wallpaper designs). Sadly, the tall foreheads at New York's and San Francisco's transit authorities want him to stop distributing these images. He has received cease-and-desist letters, or in NYC's case, they are willing to lisence the map to him for $500. ...
Spacing reports from Winnipeg
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
I'm out in Winnipeg leading a workshop on magazine design for Spacing's national distributor Magazines Canada. I've only been here a short time but here are some initial thoughts about this city:
THE GOOD:
• Along Winnipeg's fabled street of Portage, the city has turned the metallic traffic signal boxes into street-side art installations (pictured above). I've seen eight of them so far and each uniquely portrays an aspect of Winnipeg's history and culture. This type of work is happening in Toronto too, both unofficially (along Spadina similar boxes have been wallpapered) and officially (Joe Pantelone's office ...
October 4th, 2005
Wireless Toronto in St. Lawrence Market
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Wireless Toronto is partnering with the South Market Tenants Association and the St. Lawrence Market Complex to bring free wireless Internet access to the historic neigbourhood. This joint initiative is a fresh way of re-imagining how technology, community groups, the arts sector, and businesses can come together to re-vitalize Toronto's public spaces. You can check out the launch of this initiative which takes place Friday, October 7, between 5 PM — 7 PM in the West Mezzanine of the South St. Lawrence Market.
Wireless Toronto is a volunteer-based, not-for-profit community group committed to encouraging ...
Infiltrations’s book Access All Areas
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Even though Ninjalicous, the creative force behind Infiltration, passed away in late August he is still helping us go to places where we are told not to go. His new book, Access All Areas, is for sale through mail order and PayPal on the Infilpress website. There will be a launch party on Thursday, October 20 at the Gibsone Jessop Gallery in the Distillery District.
October 6th, 2005
Go Leafs
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
On this last of the hot and sticky evenings I was riding down Yonge to the YMCA, thinking it was unusually quiet. I had the streets to myself -- or at least it seemed that way. Even a slight reduction in traffic makes this city seem empty(er). It had been a frustrating day of bike riding. I yelled at a woman in a Cabriolet doing a U turn in the middle of King St. today. I called her a menace, and she heard me. It felt good to stay on message in times of ...
Eglinton Station Gets Arty
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Toronto's Live With Culture campaign is taking artwork and performance out of the galleries and theatres and bringing it to where people live, work and commute. Eglinton subway station has been transformed into a "culture station" featuring visual arts, film and in-station performances for the month of October. Ten "Culture Cars" are also travelling the city featuring in-car entertainment, ranging from poetry readings to musical performances.
The art has taken over all of Eglinton Station, including a photographic mural of Yonge Street from the waterfront to Finch Avenue and a synthetic forest populated by tree-like forms and armor ...
October 7th, 2005
SPACING: subway buttons receive award
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The American graphic design magazine HOW Design named Spacing's Toronto subway station button collection the third best wearable item in their 2005 Self-Promotion Annual. We think this is pretty cool.
Sidewalk art in Ward 19
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
City Councillor Joe Pantelone's office (ward 19) have a neat pilot project going on: they have convinced Bell to let them hire local artists to paint the metal boxes that dot the streetscape. The above image, by Norman Yeung, is a before and after shot. It's located at Markham and College, beside Andy Poolhall. The image below is by Trevor Goodwin and appears on Halton Ave., just west of Trinity Bellwoods Park.
This is a great project idea and we hope Mr. Pantelone's office pushes the City to adopt and expand such a programme. I ...
October 8th, 2005
Squabble on the waterfront
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As usual, whenever there is talk about Toronto's waterfront, sniping and mixed messages are sure to follow. In the Toronto Star today, Christopher Hume seems a tad disappointed in Mayor David Miller's handling of his first meeting as a member of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation board. The Globe and Mail also outline what some of the squabbling is about.
Remaking the face of public space
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you have a copy of today's Globe and Mail you should flip to page A16 for a feature on our friends at the Toronto Public Space Committee and their fight to curb the visual pollution that mars Toronto's city streetscape. We'll provide you a link to the Globe's site, but it is subscriber protected. You can also check it out here, which is not password protected. Also, read about Reading Toronto's Robert Ouelette experience on CityTV with Dave Meslin of the TPSC and Ouelette's comments on the Globe article.
Writing in Public
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Since 1999, Found magazine has been collecting messages found in public areas and sharing them with the world. This week, the Toronto Star published an interesting profile of its founder, Davy Rothbart, on the occasion of his visit to Toronto.
This is the anonymous note featured in the story that I wish I had written to someone:
"I want to buy you a lot of pretty things and shyly offer them to you one at a time"
I hope the intended recipient read the note before it made its way into the public realm.
ProJet Montréal
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
It's kind of nice that, at least officially, party politics is not a lynchpin of Canadian municipal elections. Watching the post-Katrina terror unfold down south, and the way things seemed to somehow follow party lines -- in the feds-vs-local-vs-state level he-said-she-said stuff that went on -- it might be a very good thing.
But in Montreal a party called "ProJet Montréal" might change that. They're a "municipal political party" -- which could be an altogether different thing.
Projet Montréal proposes that Montrealers who deeply love their city rally around an energetic project of equitable and durable urban development aiming ...
October 10th, 2005
Skyways and Ice Houses
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Every other Wednesday, Salon.com is featuring The Big Idea: a look at architecture and design ideas to build a future around. Their recent posting led me to the book Skyways & Ice Houses by photographer Catherine Opie. Since the late 1980s, Opie's interest in the motif of the visual road trip has resulted in photographs that simultaneously document and question the self-constructed identities of the people and places that characterize America. Opie's American cities series explores the historical specificity of architectures that are often taken for granted. Her take on the Twin Cities' ...
Butter Jam
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The butter billboard campaign may be clever, but this jam of the campaign (on Spadina north of Queen) is even better, turning an ad into a sci-fi creature-feature standoff.
The character appears to be part of some kind of street art campaign and also appears elsewhere in Toronto, and in some other cities.
October 11th, 2005
Saving St. Clair? Judge rules today
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Somthing to watch for today: a court decision on whether to let construction of the St. Clair Right of Way to continue. In the Star today they sum it up like this:
A three-judge panel decision expected today will either allow the TTC to start as scheduled tomorrow to dig up parts of the road, or send city lawyers and councillors scrambling to find some way to save their much-touted $65 million project.
Opponents argued before a Divisional Court panel that the City of Toronto violated the provincial Planning Act by not amending its official plan ...
Skate Furniture
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
We-make-money-not-art reports on a Tom Hawes project that helps skateboarders find their place in public space:
Skateable Furniture is a range of benches that encourage skateboarding as a positive activity for youth to regenerate public spaces. The seven benches fit together in many different combinations, and the low back and fortified steel edges allow for many possibilities in terms of "skate-ability". The benches draw on the visual language of London and are designed to blend into both traditional and modern spaces.
October 12th, 2005
St. Clair streetcar construction stopped by judges
By Spacing // No Comments
A three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that the TTC must stop construction on the St. Clair dedicated streetcar lanes. The group Save Our St. Clair (SOS), who oppose the right-of-way, challenged the TTC and the City of Toronto in a game of semantics. You can read the reasons for it in this Toronto Star article .
Margaret Smith, the local resident who galvanized opposition and formed SOS, was rather proud:
"People should take heart. You can believe in something and you can fight for something you believe in and you can fight on principle. I really ...
More on Montreal Civic Politics
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
If you're not busy planning your St. Clair boycott, let your mind wander up the 401 again. In response to my post about Projet Montreal below, and the idea of municipal level parties, Carl Wilson wrote in and shed some light on how things work up there:
Actually, Montreal city politics has been a contest between municipal parties for decades and decades. ProJet is nothing new, just the latest. The Montreal Citizens' Movement (MCM) is the most storied of the parties, now defunct. The current mayor's party is something called the Montreal Island Citizens Union, the prev. mayor was ...
More on St. Clair
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Some folks are writing letters and calling up the SOS group to voice their displeasure in the way they've stopped City building. They list their contact info on their website:
saveourstclair@sympatico.ca, 416.658.4632
Give them a call, and tell them what you think, and if you email, cc your councillor, or heck, Royson James, [ his email is rjames@thestar.ca ]who is somehow getting a kick out of the loophole SOS used and saying hyperbolic things like "the tyranny of city hall." Here's a few excerpts from letters people have already written:
Dear SOS Group,
I have recently heard of your ...
October 13th, 2005
The Bubble Project
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The bubble project is a great idea for tagging advertising in public space:
Our communal spaces are being overrun with ads. Train stations, streets, squares, busses, and subways now scream one message after another at us. The bubble project is the counterattack.
Start your own bubble campain today.
Miller, City react to St. Clair stoppage
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Here are a few more links to give you an idea of what is going on with the St. Clair right-of-way battle. The City of Toronto has 15 days to appeal the decision, but are still waiting for the written statments from the judges. An answer will pave the way for the TTC and City to move forward on this. Mayor Miller and chief city planner Ted Tyndorf have said they will amend the Official Plan in that is what it takes to get the project back on course. Check out the articles in the Globe and Mail and ...
Private money in public infrastructure
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Christopher Hume, in the Star today, writes about the need for the private sector to invest in building Toronto's future infrastructure. I'm very wary of this, but Hume makes a point of how uncomfortable Ontarians are about P3 models, highlighting the ownership debacle of the 407 highway. At least he is smart enough to point out the pitfalls of this type of development.
God knows infrastructure investment makes sense in Toronto, and Ontario. According to the government's own figures, the province will need to spend $100 billion over the next 30 years to keep ...
No way, Segway!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The City of Toronto did the smart thing yesterday by rejecting the idea of a pilot project that would allow Segways on to our sidewalks. Robyn Reisler, president of Segway Ontario, said in an interview he was shocked that the City is unwilling to allow even a trial period. Shocked? The Segway is a great toy, but does not belong on our sidewalks (Spacing wrote about it in our Spring/Summer 2005 issue). If we cannot legally ride our bikes on sidewalks, a motorized vehicle does not belong there either. We allow motorized scooters for folks ...
October 14th, 2005
The value of public space in dollars
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There is no real way to express the value of the public realm of a city. But we can certainly measure its importance to our consumer-driven economy as expressed in outdoor advertising rates. We know that a single billboard along the Gardiner Expressway can cost $16,000 to $39,000 for four weeks, generating $200,000 to $500,000 a year. Clear Channel Outdoor, the largest outdoor advertising company in the U.S., is going on the stock market, and hopes to raise $350 million right off the bat. In 2004, they had a revenue of $2.4 billion. I think ...
Metropass Affinity Program
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
File this under: WHY ISN'T THE TTC COMING UP WITH THESE IDEAS?
The Metropass Affinity Program (MAP) is an initiative by the Sierra Club of Canada that is just being launched and needs public input. The MAP could vastly increase transit usage by rewarding people for a good action (choosing transit over private automobile), rather than punishing people for a bad action (choosing their car over transit). The main thrust of the plan is to have participating businesses give discounts/incentives to anyone that shows a current and valid Metropass. It gives people more incentive to buy ...
October 15th, 2005
Urban Leadership Awards
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Canadian Urban Institute, the nation's leader in progressive civic policy development, annually recognizes people and organizations with their Urban Leadership Award. The nominations are open from now until December 8, 2005. The categories to consider are: City Renewal, City Initiatives, City Livability, City Youth, City Soul, and Local Heroes. There are many people and groups in this city that are deserving, so try to nominate them all! Former Toronto mayor, and CUI President, David Crombie sums it up best:
"The quality of urban life is rooted deeply in the quality and strength ...
The Toronto Effect
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
According to the Star today:
Toronto is becoming more architecturally diverse and denser which is helping some people give up their cars with the added incentive of rising gas prices.
Ode to the Bollard
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The simple bollard: a punctuation mark in a mature urban environment; a marker of mediation between conflicting modes of transportation; a tiny totem of civilization:
Bollards -- chances are you don't care about them or even know what they are. Sadly, I do. And I'm about to tell you all about them. But this is exactly what Internet self-publishing is for, right? Two-thousand words on bollards.
October 16th, 2005
The Cold War Against St. Clair
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
How is your St. Clair boycott going? Mine is going just fine -- I even (mostly) shut my eyes yesterday as I crossed the pariah avenue while out for an evening run up Spadina Road (there are less traffic lights in Forest Hill) -- out of sight, out of mind. It was nice to see the editorial in today's Toronto Star come out against the Save Our St. Clair group, and even Royson James, in his own way, is talking about the bad omen this all sends.
Triumphant in the courts, opponents of a streetcar right-of-way down St. Clair ...
October 17th, 2005
Toronto’s Bike Plan gets the gears
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing managing editor Dale Duncan wrote in Eye Weely about Toronto's Bike Plan, and the bike lane proposal that would stretch across Bloor and the Danforth.
With increased concern over Toronto's growing number of smog days, global warming and the drastic rise in gas prices, one would think providing infrastructure to encourage cycling would be a growing priority at city hall. City-wide surveys have found that 85 per cent of cyclists feel bike lanes make the streets safer. Less than 20 per cent reported feeling comfortable cycling on major roads without marked lanes ...
Thank you, John Sewell
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
John Sewell, the former mayor of Toronto from 1979-81, has been writing about city issues for Globe and Mail, Eye Weekly and NOW for 18 years. This week, his final column appeared in Eye, and he took the opportunity to encourage us young folks to try and inject some new blood into City Council. He complains that too many councillors have made a career out of public service, with their eye tightly focused on re-election rather than the public's good. Hear hear! I will certainly miss his willingness to ...
October 18th, 2005
Tar Babies
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Last weekend I visited the ancestral suburban split-level homestead in dear Windsor, Ontario for Thanksgiving. There is no public transportation there, and walking is only for the foolish and poor. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was generally assumed that those dudes who rode around the city on their 10-speeds did so because they had been busted for drunk driving -- the car culture in Windsor was that crazy. When I lived there I was in constant fear that my old beater Honda Accord would break down yet again, leaving me stranded in the almost-country.
So, ...
October 19th, 2005
[murmur] Launches on Spadina!
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Please join us tomorrow (Thursday Oct 20th) at Grossman's Tavern (379 Spadina Avenue at Cecil) from 6-9pm for a (free) reception celebrating the launch of the [murmur] Spadina project with 50 new sites and nearly 150 new stories along the street.
[murmur] has been recording Torontonians over the past few months telling parts of Spadina's story in their own words. Some of the stories are anecdotal, other times historic, but always heartfelt. Find one of the familiar green [murmur] signs on Spadina, call the number on it with your mobile phone, and listen to a tale ...
The city’s tax straightjacket
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Royson James wrote an interesting explanation of Toronto's confusing property tax system today, as property owners across the city received their latest property value assessment.
The odd thing about property taxes is that the total amount the city receives from existing properties does not go up or down with property values - rather, it is a set amount that simply gets re-distributed among property owners. The city does not receive more money if overall property values go up (or less if they go down). So, if your property value goes up less than the average property in ...
October 20th, 2005
Capture The Flag! U of T
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Friday October 21st 2005 • 100 St. George Street • 8:30 PM
Gargoyles, peacocks and beavers, oh my! Newmindspace invites you to join them for a game of Capture the Flag on the entire downtown campus of Canada's oldest university. Defend your territory by tagging trespassers and sending them back to their side. Utilize seven subway stations, two streetcar routes and three buses to get to the enemy flag, outmaneuver their flag keepers and dash to Queen's Park for a point in this fast-paced, heart-pumping urban game. Meet on the steps of Sydney Smith at ...
Access All Areas book launch tonight
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Even though Ninjalicous, the creative force behind Infiltration, passed away in late August he is still helping us go to places where we are told not to go. His new book, Access All Areas, is for sale through mail order and PayPal on the Infilpress website. The launch party is tonight at the Gibsone Jessop Gallery in the Distillery District starting at 7pm.
Before heading out to Access All Areas launch, don't forget to check out the [murmur] launch party for the Spadina installation of their cell ...
Welcome In My Back Yard
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Catherine Porter considers the power of Nimbyism in today's Toronto Star.
It's about time Toronto learned to love itself and the complexities of urban life. Change is good, diversity is good, neighbours are good.
For another perspective on neighbourhood protection versus the good of the larger community check out the WIMBY project from the Netherlands. WIMBY is a concept developed by the architectural historians Crimson as an alternative to Nimbyism. Here is an excerpt from their manifesto [flash]:
We believe that each town ...
More St. Clair ROW stuff
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Globe and Mail wrote about the City of Toronto's plan to challenge the three-panel judges decision to stop construction of the St. Clair right-of-way. The City seems to be using similar tactic to the Save Our St. Clair group -- find some kind of technicality and hope it works out. Petty games of semantics being played out in court is fine for the lawyers, but local residents and businesses need a transit system that works. Check out the Star's report, too.
The wonderful people at Eye Weekly wrote a great editorial about the ...
October 21st, 2005
While we’re talking about streetcars…
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
We've been talking about the crappy side of streetcars for the last week. Here's something that might cheer up the transit geek in you: On Monday, October 24th, from noon until 5pm, the next generation of Toronto streetcars (possibly) will be on display at the Toronto Hummingbird Centre (1 Front Street East). The event is free, open to the public, and there's door prizes.
The five-hour public display by Bombardier highlighting what could be sliding along the streets of Toronto within the next decade. The TTC is in the process of considering what vehicle will replace ...
Planning for bikes
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Yesterday in Toronto, the Bikeway Planning and Development Workshop was held at Ontario Place gathering 30 municipal planners and transportation planners from southern Ontario. The keynote speaker was Marc Jolicoeur, chief research analyst from Vélo Québec. So why is a bike activist from Quebec advising us on bike infrastructure? Because Quebec recently announced a $5.4 million investment to complete 4,300 kilometres of bikeways through the province, largely through the creation of bike lanes on most secondary highways. Sadly, Toronto is four years behind on its 10-year Bike Plan, and the only agency that ...
October 22nd, 2005
Pimp my subway ride
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If the new streetcar designs that we posted about yesterday weren't enough to get you hot, check out what the TTC is considering to replace their aging subway cars. A bunch of designs were presented during Wednesday's TTC Commissioners meeting. The feature on the new cars that would be most different for us Torontonians is a continuous, open-concept subway train that would extend from front to rear (above image, right). TTC Commissioner Howard Moscoe says the new trains would have benches instead of individual seats, which would aleviate ...
The Big Pipe and parks for dogs
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Eye Weekly had two interesting bits in this week's edition: First, Enviro columnist Gord Perks writes about the Big Pipe in York Region (the collection of cities and towns north of Toronto) and how the municipality is messing with the ground water and rivers that flow into Toronto. Also, St. Andrew's Park, located west of Spadina and south of Richmond, is going through the final stages of its renovation, having been remade into a local playground and family park (look for a feature on the park in the upcoming issue of Spacing). But dogs run ...
Trash Talking
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
While Toronto is testing Monster Garbage Cans that look like multiplex theatres, Berlin is installing cute (ad-free, orange, solar-powered) talking trash cans:
Agency spokesman Thomas Klockner told CNN the bins are becoming increasingly popular -- although sometimes people are surprised to hear the bin talk.
"It is a surprise because you don't expect a waste bin to talk. If you put something inside and it says, 'thank you' or 'welcome to Berlin,' you are amazed," he said.
"But then you start talking with your friends about it, 'Hey, I passed by a waste bin ...
October 23rd, 2005
Expo 2015 Consultation
By Michelle Kasprzak // No Comments
"Once every five years a city gets the opportunity to step onto the world stage and become a focal point of international attention and achievement. In 2015, that city could be Toronto. Early in 2006, Toronto City Council will decide whether to submit a bid to host a World Expo in 2015." (from the Expo 2015 Public Consultation website)
Hosting the Expo is a huge undertaking that will undoubtedly change the face of Toronto. Even the preparation of a bid will draw resources and inspire both darts and laurels by proposing dramatic changes. John Sewell spoke out in Eye ...
October 24th, 2005
Behind the billboards
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A fine arts student in Poznan, Poland has created a wonderful public art installation that I have wanted to do for years, but had no idea where to start. Thankfully, Kasia Kesicka has done it and done it very well. The project entails using billboards to display the objects (buildings, trees, etc.) that the advertising infrastructure is blocking. Kesicka chose both dilapidated and commercial areas to display her work. I wonder if Viacom or Pattison would allow an artist or group to do something like this in Toronto? Or it ...
October 25th, 2005
Rivers vs. Highways
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
A friend pointed me towards David Byrne's October 17th Journal Entry where he wonders why we think natural things are beautiful before we think human-made things are.
Is it more interesting to look at a river than a highway? (A highway with cars passing on it, I mean.) Is a colorful paint spill on a sidewalk as beautiful as a sunset? ... Is it a cultural prejudice? Over the millennium have we grown accustomed to gazing at rivers and viewing the works of man as impressive, but not as moving and beautiful as a river? ...
The spin on monster garbage bins
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Only a few days left to complete the public survey of the monster garbage bins. If you are unfamiliar with this subject go to this site to find out more. Then come back and read the silliness below.
In a press release today by EUCAN -- creators of the monster garbage can — the company tries to spin the Megabin as an agent of energy savings. This contention is flawed, if not dishonest.
The release identifies the project's environmental benefits: six bins have solar panels to supplement the grid-supplied power ...
Call for Submissions: Public Space Invaders Film Night
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Spacing is looking for submissions for our second Public Space Invaders film night. Last January, on a bitterly cold night, 200 people packed the Drake Hotel's Underground Bar to watch a varied collection of films that celebrated and critiqued the public realm. We are primarily looking for films that deal with public spaces in Toronto. They can be fun, arty, serious, very serious, beautiful or even ugly. Student films are fine too — we want to show Toronto from a variety of angles. Archival films are also great — tell us if you have some great shots ...
Queen West Heritage District Study
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of Toronto is embarking on a Heritage District study for Queen Street West between University and Bathurst. The study will create an inventory of buildings along Queen, identify key buildings of historical interest, seek to identify the essential character of the street, and provide specific recommendations both for preserving existing heritage buildings and shaping the construction of new developments in order to maintain this character. It is the first heritage district study of a commercial area in Toronto -- the others so far have been residential areas (although commerical areas have been designated heritage districts in other ...
October 26th, 2005
Car Free Kids
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Gideon Forman writes about raising kids without a car in the city in today's Toronto Star. The story is personal and a bit sappy but his emphasis on the social, physical and tactile interaction with his children is right on.
(Ironically, the datadriven web-ads on the side of the webpage are for cars.)
First Skate Plaza
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The city of Kettering, Ohio, has built the first skateboarding plaza -- that is, a skate park based on the real-life street structures that skateboarders are compulsively drawn to, such as stairs and railings, rather than artificial structures such as bowls. The design of the park was inspired by actual locations in North American cities that have consistently attracted skateboarders. An attractive aspect is the extensive greenery and decorative details in the features, a contrast with the plain concrete of most skate parks. More info.
October 27th, 2005
NOW and Eye are good to us
By Spacing // No Comments
Today is full of good little announcements. Both of Toronto's weeklies have great things in them relating to Spacing and our extended family. First off, NOW named our good friends over at the Toronto Public Space Committee the "Activist Group of the Year" for all of their work defending our public spaces. Congrats, people! They also gave Spacing two secondary nods -- In the Best Blog category, Torontoist.com took top honours, but our very own SpacingPhotos was a worthy runner-up. The Toronto Free Gallery took Best New Gallery honours, which ...
October 28th, 2005
Public Security
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Although Toronto is more worried about shootings than car bombs. Worldwide, urban security is an increasing concern. Before we start making our cities look like battlements take a look at this project by Rogers Marvel Architects.
They have developed some designs that make better public space while protecting buildings from attack.
TTC Ridership on the Up-and-Up
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
We've been hearing for so long about the decline in public transportation, from ridership to funding, so it's especially nice when it seems like things are turning around. Some good news about TTC ridership from a news release:
TORONTO, Oct. 27 /CNW/ - TTC ridership is up almost 3 percent over the same period last year.
TTC expects to carry at least 427 million riders by year end ... a 9 percent increase over ridership in 1999 when the TTC carried 393 million.
October saw record sales of Metropasses - 202,000 passes in one month, a 50 percent ...
October 29th, 2005
EVENT: Spacing at Canzine
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Sunday, October 30, 2005
The Gladstone Hotel • 1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin)
Spacing will be at Canzine 2005 here in Toronto. We will have a table selling our magazines, subway station buttons, subscriptions, and chatting it up with the wonderful people who pack the event each year. Last year we did a soft-launch of our buttons -- becuz of your enthusiastic acceptance, we decided to go big-time with the buttons, and it paid off! Hope to see you Sunday.
The Veins of the City
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Stephen Wickens writes about Toronto's hidden rivers in today's Globe and Mail highlighting the long fight to restore our urban watersystems. Prompted by the HumanRiver project, the article features Brown + Storey architects, LostRivers, and our friends the Toronto Public Space Committee, and the Guerrilla Gardeners.
October 31st, 2005
Watering
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Spacing editor Dale posted recently on the Eye Weekly blog about the goodness of Toronto's water, and a recent proposal to bottle it to make the point that our water is clean and good -- and often better than the bottled stuff we get. It reminded me of a friend of mine who would react violently when offered Brita filtered water, shouting The Water's Fine Damn It! I think it must be the convenience thing -- water bottles are the perfect size to carry around, and certainly better than those terrible hippy Nalogen bottles that ...
Scarborough subway dreams
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
City councillors from Scarborough were out yesterday on the RT handing out flyers to get local residents on-side in transforming the aging transit line into a full fledged subway line. The grumblings about what to do with the RT started a while back, and first posted on the Wire on July 21, 2005. Read about it in the Globe and Mail today, or read the story that first appeared in the summer in the Toronto Star.
November 1st, 2005
Bike accident
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
I spent the last few days moving into my new place in Parkdale, so I was traveling by cargo van or car half the time. On Monday, I headed north on Dufferin and made a left west on to Queen. My girlfriend noticed that Gladstone and Queen to the east was blocked off by police tape. She could also see a bike under a truck. In the evening, she heard a streetcar driver talking glibly to a passenger about a "schmuck who slid under a truck and went splat. Dead."
Spacing editor Shawn Micallef passed the ...
Segway Won’t Go Away
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Since this spring, the local Segway company has been trying to get its motorized electric scooters allowed on Toronto's sidewalks. It has managed to persuade Councillor Bill Saundercook to be its spokesman on the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, and on City Council.
When the company's idea was voted down in the Pedestrian Committee, it went to the Works Committee. It was voted down again. Furthermore, the City Solicitor prepared a report stating that Segways on sidewalks would be illegal not only according to City by-laws, but also according to provincial law. Then the Toronto Star wrote an ...
November 2nd, 2005
City for Sale (a real fixer-upper)
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The City of Toronto must be on the verge of bankrupcy. Witness the absurd idea of selling the naming rights of the civic centre of the City: Nathan Phillips Square in order to pay for its renovation.
The Square is named after Nathan Phillips, who was mayor of Toronto from 1955 to 1962. He was the mayor that got the City Hall built in the first place and was dubbed the "mayor of all the people." Not "mayor of all the corporations."
Transmedia :29:59 November: Webcam Art
By Michelle Kasprzak // No Comments
Year Zero One has just released November's new content as part of TRANSMEDIA :29:59, a year long exhibition on the pedestrian level video billboard at Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. Launched August 1st 2005, TRANSMEDIA :29:59 features one minute video works 24/7 every half hour on the 29th and 59th minutes.
This month, on the 29th minute: Cheryl Sourkes - Live from the Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. And on the 59th minute: BlueScreen - streamScape.
Cheryl Sourkes' Live from the Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas is a series of videos made by animating stills captured from a remote ...
November 3rd, 2005
SPACING EVENT: Repair Club comes to Toronto
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Repair Club comes to Toronto
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 • 7pm, free
Innis College Town Hall (off St. George, just north of Harbord on U of T campus)
Come take part in this Spacing sponsored event! There will be a discussion by the leaders of the City Repair Club of Portland on how to change your urban environment with creativity in collaboration with the powers at City Hall (a weird combo, for sure!).
City Repair was formed in 1996 by citizen activists who wanted ...
November 4th, 2005
Keep on Walking
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Walking man escapes in Gotham.
More fun with walk signs.
This just in from Etobicoke…
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
The other day, we reported on Doug Holyday's proposal to sell Nathan Phillips Square naming rights to make some money. Our Etobicoke correspondent, cdl42, has discovered secret documents that describe Holyday's plans to sell off the rights to his own name. Holyday couldn't be reached for comment, but we figure it's a simple case of "anything for a buck."
By categorizing this post in "Ad Creep", Spacing Magazine is in no way implying Holyday is an Ad Creep. Ad Creep is a public space phenomenon. Doug Holyday is a politician from Etobicoke. Totally different things.
Interactive 05
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Interactive 05, a celebration of interactive culture in public space, is on until Monday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre down on Front Street. It's part of the Toronto International Art Fair and is a free event. Until Monday, you can roam the public spaces of the Convention Centre and interact with a variety of electronic-ish art projects. The exhibits are all in the south building -- the first is a sound installation on the bridge south over the train tracks. If you haven't been to the convention centre, it's the south building located ...
November 5th, 2005
Bendale: About Place
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
In the Globe and Mail's Real Estate section yesterday, Dave LeBlanc, the Architourist, wrote a piece about the Virtual Museum of Canada exhibit called "Bendale: About Place." The exhibit was produced by the City of Toronto's Scarborough Historical Museum located in Thomson Park (both are hidden gems in our city). It's an oral history project with lots of photographic archives -- it's very much history from the perspective of Bendale residents themselves. You can poke around the exhibit here.
I worked on this project last year and got to sit in so many ...
The end of walking?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing Wire reader Simon Bryan recently emailed us and said he enjoyed our links and commentary on the possibility of the Segway hitting Toronto sidewalks (you can read our posts by clicking here).
Bryan said the only point we hadn't covered was the intentions of Segway's inventor Dean Kamen. Kamen has said from the beginning that his invention is intended to replace walking, not wheeled transportation. Bryan writes, "Kamen feels walking is so medieval he created his anti-walking device to take the drudgery out of perambulating. No wonder the well-heeled lobbyists so covet our sidewalks! Competing ...
Still We Ride
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Check out the screening of the film Still We Ride documenting the politics of the critical mass ride in NYC. The film highlights the ongoing struggle to maintain democracy and human rights in our streets. Trailer [.mp4]
On Friday August 27, 2004 just days before the start of the Republican National Convention, a massive police operation was underway. By the end of the night 264 people were arrested. It marked one of the largest mass arrests in New York City's history -- and the arrested had done nothing illegal.
Friday, November ...
November 6th, 2005
Design for the Cold
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Toronto is a winter city, but we often don't like to admit it, and as a result, our public spaces are often designed so that they're only attractive for the warm half of the year. So it is refreshing to hear that the Design Exchange is presenting “Design for the Cold,†an exhibit organized to raise awareness about how Canadians experience winter, showcasing design solutions which focus on taking the chill out of winter environments.
"For the show, which runs through November 25, 16 designers, educators, and health sciences researchers will present ...
November 7th, 2005
Memorial for killed cyclist
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Candlelight Memorial for cyclist Ryan Carriere
When: Monday November 7th, 2005; 7:00 p.m.
Where: Queen and Gladstone
Toronto cyclists were saddened to learn that 31-year-old Ryan Carriere was killed last Monday, October 31, at the intersection of Queen St W. and Gladstone Avenue (read the SpacingWire posts the following day). Ryan was headed home on his bicycle to help prepare for Halloween, to be shared with his wife and two daughters.
Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (ARC) along with Ryan's many friends and family will be holding a candlelight memorial for him at the ...
Random Act of Pole Art
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
People complain when utility poles are decorated with posters, but I doubt anyone complained when these utility poles at the corner of Cross and Beaconsfield were decorated with painted vines and flowers. Kudos to whoever put up these random acts of pole art (rumour has it local comic artist Fiona Smith decorated these poles a few years ago).
TTC wants some pizzazz (and other transit stuff)
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
A few items on The Better Way
1. The TTC is running a contest called Pizzazz Me! They are using TTC Chair Howard Moscoe as the face of the campaign, decking him out in some sort of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test wardrobe. Anyway, the contest asks riders to submit their best ideas for “livening†up the TTC. You can check out their web page over here, or you can email them your ideas directly. Contest ends November 25. If we could help you with a suggestion: ask the TTC to sell ...
Urban Pillow Fight
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Feathers fly and teddies soar as you converge on Dundas Square for a massive urban pillow fight! Swing and whack as you evade pillow-wielding foe. This one comes straight out of London. Bring a (concealed) pillow to the middle of the square at 2 PM and wait for the signal. Pillow fight!
2 PM, Sunday, November 13, 2005
Dundas Square, Yonge & Dundas
November 8th, 2005
Plan – What Plan?
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Bike Toronto has the low-down on the Bike Budget. A report to council [pdf] is recommending the proposed 2006 bike plan budget (red line) would have no increase above the 2005 budget. The result would be a budget that is almost 1/3 of what the original bike plan (green line) recommeneded: "In order to comply with the corporate affordability guidelines issued by Finance."
This short sighted recommendation is blind to the sustainable economics of cycling. Cycling reduces traffic, smog, parking space, fatal collisions, obesity, and noise. All ...
Contested Streets
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Contested Streets: Breaking NYC Gridlock is a full length documentary film that explores the rich diversity of New York City street life before the introduction of automobiles -- and then goes on to show how New York can follow the example of other modern cities that have reclaimed their streets as vibrant public spaces.
Trailer (5 minute) [Quicktime]
Cyclist memorial
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
This is an image captured at the memorial for Ryan Carriere, who was killed last Monday, October 31, at the intersection of Queen Street W. and Gladstone Avenue when he was hit by a transport truck. Thanks to Benjamin Jordan for sharing his images.
St. Clair ROW, Nathan Phillips Square, & the ROM condos
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Toronto Star had a few articles today that directly relate to some of the issues we've been covering here lately on the Spacing Wire.
1. St. Clair ROW: Since the case about the St. Clair ROW is going to be heard again, the group that is fighting the dedicated streetcar line, Save Our St. Clair (SOS), is worried that the City would use a long drawn-out legal fight to bankrupt their movement. They had raised about $60,000 for their legal challenge. To quote Margaret Smith, head of SOS, "We are a group of citizens. ...
REMINDER: Spacing presents City Repair tonight at U of T
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Repair Club comes to Toronto
TONIGHT! • 7pm, free
Innis College Town Hall (off St. George, just north of Harbord on U of T campus)
Come take part in this Spacing sponsored event! There will be a discussion by the leaders of the City Repair Club of Portland on how to change your urban environment with creativity in collaboration with the powers at City Hall (a weird combo, for sure!). For more info click here.
November 9th, 2005
Does the Bike Plan have legs?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As of late, we have been bemoaning the lack of action by the City on its own Bike Plan (for background click here and here). The Toronto Star reports today that the slash in funding that happened last week (down to $2.2 million from $3 million) from the Finance Committee, may be restored today by the Works Committee. Read about here.
Shadow games
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
When a new development is proposed in Toronto, the developer has to conduct "shadow studies" to make sure that it will not cast unreasonable shadow on important public space -- such as streets and parks -- or on private properties.
The problem is, these studies generally use as their benchmark the equinox -- March and September 21. If it allows sunlight on a location on that day, a new building is deemed not to cast a shadow. In fact, what this means is that the building may well cast a shadow over public space for half the year.
Consider this new ...
November 10th, 2005
T.O. to BE
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
There are so many proposed and under-construction projects in Toronto that it's hard to get a grasp on what it all means to the city at large, and how it all might change Toronto. A member of the Toronto Urban Forum decided to take a panormama of the city (taken from that cluster of new condos on the Etobicoke Waterfront west of the Humber) and place the renderings of each of those individual projects in the existing skyline. While it's possible that a number of these projects may never happen (think of the way ...
People for St. Clair
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Before Toronto got into the silly situation about the dedicated streetcar lane up on St. Clair, there was a great group doing community work to bring about consensus in the neighbourhoods along the 512 route. SCRIPT (St Clair Right-of-way Initiative for Public Transit) has got itself back into action and explains in good detail why the ROW is the best option for all of us.
Pedestrian lighting
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
One way to make streets more friendly to pedestrians at night is to incorporate pedestrian-scale streetlights over the sidewalk. The Harbord BIA has recently sponsored the installation of such lights along Harbord west of Spadina.
Of course, once upon a time there was no street lighting at all. We easily forget how pervasive street lighting is in the city, and it's hard to imagine what a street was like without any lighting at all. However, you can get some idea of what it was like by walking along Palmerston south of Harbord at night. ...
November 11th, 2005
Abandoned Art
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Montreal Gazette reports on Champ Libre's art festival in abandoned urban spaces. Champ Libre holds an international festival of video and electronic arts every two years. The nomadic celebration moves around the city, taking over abandoned and marginal sites close to downtown. The festival's unique combination of architecture, contemporary art and new media technologies brings out the beauty and promise of these neglected spaces.
November 12th, 2005
To Scarborough or York U?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Toronto Star has a a good report today about the aging Scarborough RT and the possible extention of the subway to York University. The Globe and Mail also wrote about it. Residents of Scarberia were gathered together this week to discuss what to do with the RT as it hurtles towards its expiry date of 2015. Bus lanes? A new light rail line? Streetcars? It also became clear that participants were not concerning themselves with the University-Spadina line. As one resident at the meeting said, "I don't really care about that." ...
November 13th, 2005
uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
In today Ideas section of the Toronto Star, the first essay from uTOpia has been reprinted. uTOpia is a new book from Coach House being released next Sunday at a big day-long event at the Gladstone Hotel. Quite a few Spacing Magazine editors and contributors have pieces in this collection "featuring passionate, visionary essays by thirty-four different journalists, artists, thinkers, architects and activists, uTOpia is a compendium of ideas, opinions and strategies. The anthology explores plans to redevelop the Island airport into a Ward's Island-style community; how the Zeidler family is energizing ...
November 14th, 2005
Transit sites to check out
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There are two sites worth checking out if you are a transit fan. The first one is The Yet Better Way by Leif Harmsen who decided to envision the way Toronto's subway and transit system should look like. He has added subway lines to Eglinton, Queen, and one out to the Zoo. You can download the PDFs -- there is one for the east and west side of the city.
The other site is Metro Bits, which has a great collection of art in transit stations from around the world. Toronto's Sheppard line ...
November 15th, 2005
Goodbye, Dear Riverdale?
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
One of the things I love most about Toronto is the way our modern structures sometimes seem to rise straight out of the wilderness of our ravines and parks -- and it's partly what I write about in my uTOpia essay Pssst. Modern Toronto Just Wants Some Respect. A perfect example of this, one I don't talk about in the essay, but very much at risk this week, is Riverdale Hospital.
Stand on the top of the hill just south of the Riverdale Zoo and look east across the Don Valley and check out how beautiful ...
So long and thanks for all the fish
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Toronto Star reports about how the City of Toronto lost the controversial Aquarium proposal for Exhibition Place due to, among other things, lack of transit connection. Regardless of the ethics or value of Aquaria this story highlights the issue of having public places like the Ex and Ontario Place that are cut off from the city. As well it demonstrates how profitable institutions realize the value of urban proximity or good transit connection.
Why do you want to kill me?
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
I can help you my friend. I know the cure. What is it? The same thing that cured me. Ride your bike to work. It's instant, it's complete. Your world will open up and display its beauty all around you, you will be happy to be alive and enjoy each day, and you will become a part of humanity once again.
Housing Projects and Public Space
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
An important dimension of the recent two-week bout of rioting in France, one that a few people have noted, is the shape and use of public space.
According the the Globe and Mail, the trigger for the riots was local residents calling the police when they saw a group of visible-minority youths crossing a public park (perfectly legally). Two youths died by accident after fleeing from the police, which proved to be the catalyst for the riots. Which raises the question, is public space truly public if it is not equally open to everyone, regardless of appearance?...
November 16th, 2005
Pillow Fight!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you missed the wonderful public space intervention Pillow Fight last week at Dundas Square -- staged by newmindspace -- you should check the sites of Sam Javnrouh of Daily Dose of Imagery (and a constant Spacing contributor) for some great images. Here are links to his images on Flickr, and his daily photoblog.
Union Station Precinct Meeting
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
As part of the planned renovation of Union Station, the city is holding a "precinct study" to look at how to renovate the area around the station -- one of the most heavily used pedestrian areas in the city, but one whose decrepit state does not reflect its importance to the city.
Two public meetings are scheduled to enable the public to provide input into this process:
The second in a series of public forums that are part of an ongoing Union Station precinct study will be held on Tuesday, December 13 from 6 p.m. to ...
November 17th, 2005
The Push-bike Architecture Treasure Hunt
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Our lives are very busy. And if they're not, they certainly should be. But for all of us, especially those who cycle, there are breaks in our daily routines, which we can use to disconnect from the personal and reconnect with our surroundings.
The Push-bike Architecture Treasure Hunt is a great project from London, UK that helps people appreciate the hidden details of the architecture that frames their daily lives.
TPSC on the cover of Eye Weekly
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
That smiling face , and wall of activists, that adorn the cover of Eye Weekly this week are the Toronto Public Space Committee. Spacing was born out that group, but we've since moved on to independence. There's a nice interview with Dave Meslin, the TPSC's co-ordinator about the group's history and how it has built a movement around public space issues here in the city.
New issue of Spacing Nov. 24th!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
SPACING #5 WINTER 2006: The New Beautiful City
RELEASE PARTY: Thursday November 24 2005
Arts & Letters Club • 8pm • $10
Spacing's fifth issue will hit the streets in late November. The cover section for this issue is called The New Beautiful City. Our contributors explore Toronto's public art and how thousands of people use the public realm as a canvas. What a better way to welcome Spacing's foray into full colour! Please click here to find out which stores carry copies of Spacing.
To help celebrate this fine issue, ...
November 18th, 2005
Montreal’s big tent
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing contributor Leah Sandals has a piece in our upcoming issue about politics in public art. One of the artist groups she focuses on is Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable (ATSA) who are repsonsible for the burnt-out SUV that sat in Dundas Square this past summer. Next week in Montreal, ATSA kicks off Etat D'urgence '05, a huge tent in the middle of the city where they will feed, clothe, and entertain the homeless. You can watch a video from last year's event [French audio track].
uTOpia reminder
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Don't forget to come to the uTOpia launch this Sunday at the Gladstone Hotel. Come by during the day and bring the kids or at night only with kids who have fake IDs. Spacing is sponsoring a panel on public space at 2pm, and advance copies of our new issue on public art will be on sale, a whole 4 days before our launch at the Arts and Letters club. It's also a chance to pick up a [murmur] map (by Marlena Zuber who also did one of the uTOpia maps). This ...
November 19th, 2005
Development issues are hot
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you haven't already noticed, Spacing managing editor Dale Duncan has taken on the City beat for Eye Weekly. The topic that has been turning her crank recently are the myriad issues surrounding development and planning in Toronto neighbourhoods. She recently posted a few observations on the Eye Blog about: the Harry Stinson 90-storey Sapphire tower; the work of Active 18 in the Queen Street West area near the Gladstone Hotel; and why grid layouts are good (except in Portland, Oregon). She has some other ...
November 20th, 2005
Spacing release party Nov 24th!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
SPACING #5 WINTER 2006: The New Beautiful City
RELEASE PARTY: Thursday November 24 2005
Arts & Letters Club • 8pm • $10
To help celebrate this fine issue, Spacing invites you to come out to the release party on Thursday November 24th at the Arts & Letters Club. Things get going at 8pm. The cover price is $10 which gets you a magazine and some good times. Come experience the historic Arts & Letters Club, one of the finest spaces in the city. It is located at 14 Elm Street -- two blocks ...
November 21st, 2005
A moving canvas
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
SpacingWire reader Paul Bowser pointed us towards an art project called Moving Canvas from Berlin that excites and scares the hell out of me -- a video projector is attached to the side of a subway train and projects images onto the walls of the tunnels [Quick Time movie]. It is a great idea and wonderfully executed, but will probably be used in the near future for advertising purposes. It doesn't have to be this way -- if the TTC wanted to really add some pizzazz to our transit system, something like ...
Decision by the lake
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Christopher Hume writes in the Toronto Star today: "Sometime [Tuesday] at city hall, the much discussed East Bayfront Precinct Plan will finally go before the policy and finance committee. This is the first step in a process that could result in the transformation of downtown Toronto. If the committee accepts the plan, which it should, the next step is council, which has the final say. The plan, two years in the making, proposes a vision of the waterfront as a place where people live, play and work. The newly formed neighbourhood would accommodate 8,000 ...
November 22nd, 2005
Student transit in Scarborough
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The Varsity, the University of Toronto student newspaper, has an interesting story in today's issue about the difficulties facing students taking transit to the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus. While the campus is significantly increasing the number of students it takes in, TTC service has not been expanded to catch up. The story also points out that Scarborough is competing with York University for scarce funds for subway expansion -- in Scarborough's case, to replace the aging Scarborough light transit line.
The case for expanded transit to the Scarborough campus is complicated, because the current ...
November 23rd, 2005
Reminder! Spacing release party Thursday
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
SPACING #5 WINTER 2006: The New Beautiful City
RELEASE PARTY: Thursday November 24 2005
Arts & Letters Club • 8pm • $10
This is just a reminder for all of you that Spacing is having a release party for our new issue on Thursday. Come out for a few drinks, chat with city-caring people, and dance to the selected tunes of DJ Tyler Clark Burke (of the Santa Cruz parties and Three Gut record fame).
Bring your friends down to the Arts & Letters Club. Things get going at 8pm. The cover price is ...
November 24th, 2005
Complete the set (subway buttons, that is)
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
For those of you brave enough to come out to the Spacing Winter 2006 release party tonight, you will have first dibs on the new Sheppard and Scarborough RT station buttons (pictured above). There are six buttons for the RT, and five for the Sheppard line. These buttons are now part of the entire system package. The buttons will go on sale this weekend through our website and in stores during the first week of December.
Also, if you show up tonight you'll be able to buy copies of uTOpia published by ...
November 25th, 2005
The Urbs 2005
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The Gridskipper is asking for nominations for The Urbs 2005. Urban blogging awards. They define an urban blog as a regularly updated blog site with over half of its content focused on a city, cities in general, city living, urban lifestyles, urban travel, or something of the sort.
I can think of a few Toronto blogs that should be represented:
Toronotist
Spacing Wire
Spacing Photos
Reading Toronto
Urbanism
If you have some favorite urban blogs nominate one today. Deadline is Wednesday, December 7.
First snowfall
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Toronto photoblogger Jay Morrison captured the city's first snowfall while exploring the east end yesterday. Check out his photo essay.
GTA Carpool registry online
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Smart Commute Association yesterday launched Carpool Zone [smartcommute.ca], the first Internet carpool service to help commuters in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton find people to share a ride with. The association is a new partnership between the cities and regions around Toronto and Hamilton and its objective is to provide and encourage commuting options such as working from home, transit and cycling. The goal is to have 10,000 users by the spring with a minimum of 5,000 car pools. This would result in 2,500 less cars on the road. Read more about ...
November 26th, 2005
Nathan Phillips Sq. and a GTA transit authority
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Two items from the Saturday edition of the Toronto Star:
1. Nathan Phillips Square renovations: In the words of city councillor, and vice chair of the city's budget committee, Joe Mihevc, "We can decide to fix the leaks, and put cement in the cracks and just tread water with what we have. Or we'll decide to rethink our front yard with a new vision. We can decide to swim." City council has decided to fund $16 million worth of fixes to the square, and hope to get another $24 million to help re-think the entire plaza ...
November 27th, 2005
Canadian Blog Awards
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It seems the SpacingWire has been nominated for Best Culture Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards. That's pretty cool. Also nominated in the Best Photo Blog category are Spacing contributors Sam Javanrouh, Gayla Trail, and Rannie Turingan. If you want to cast a vote, go to the CBA website. You have until Wednesday, November 30th. And then there may be another round of voting for the finalists.
November 28th, 2005
New York trash for sale
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Artist Justin Gignac collects trash from the streets of New York City and carefully packages the litter into a plastic cube. He sells each unique collection online, boasting that it makes the perfect gift "for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape." Check out NYCgarbage.com.
Secret Swing goes missing!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The blog Ryantowne is reporting that the Secret Swing, found between two buildings off of Graffiti Alley, has sustained serious damage. The chains have been cut, and the seat is missing.
photo from Photojunkie.
Kingston Road LRT
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The TTC is proposing a new dedicated streetcar line in Scarborough along Kingston Road to Eglinton and then west to Kennedy station. They are asking for money to begin an environmental assessment, and if all goes well it could be up and running as early as 2009.
Toronto’s Governance
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
There has been much talk recently that the City of Toronto's governing structure needs to be reformed, and earlier this year the City appointed a three-member panel to review its governance and propose reforms.
The panel released its report on Nov. 23, 2005, to mixed reviews. As expected, it proposed strengthening the office of the Mayor -- something that many pundits have been calling for. It also paid attention to increasing citizen involvement and the role of the four community councils, and proposed some modest reforms in that direction as well. These reflected ...
November 29th, 2005
Community Gardening 101
By Laura Hatcher // No Comments
Yes, the ground is verging on frozen right now, but the people at the Toronto Community Garden Network and Foodshare want to put their winter to good use and inspire a new batch of community gardeners. There are all kinds of places you can start a community garden —- in a city park, on an abandoned plot of land, on a rooftop, outside your apartment building, or at your school. These two organizations are a great resource if you are interested in starting one up.
Starting in January, Foodshare and the TCGN are presenting ...
Subway station revitalization unveiled
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Today, the Toronto Community Foundation unveiled its proposal to redesign three subway stations along the University Avenue subway line. Their main goal, according to the press release, is to boost cultural tourism and public transit in Toronto. The designs are already causing a variety of opinions and reactions that are worth checking out. Here's an article from the Star, too.
Personally, I am not too enamoured with the designs. We'd have to walk around each station first to really get a proper feel, but I ...
November 30th, 2005
DIPS and other fun at City Hall
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
New local street standards for Toronto
A joint committee of Works and Planning today considered the "DIPS" report from staff which sets standards for future new local streets in Toronto.
Although there was an extensive consultation process, which clearly sent the message that citizens want streets to be pedestrian-friendly, few of the citizen or pedestrian recommendations made it into the final report. Some of the key problems are:
-- The road widths proposed are very wide -- a minimum of 8.0 meters, up to 8.5 meters. This is much wider than existing streets in the older parts ...
December 1st, 2005
The mayor has a challenger
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It's election season, but the focus for Spacing this week is not on the shenanigans of Ottawa politicians, but on the upcoming city elections just under a year away. City Councillor Jane Pitfield announced she is going to run for mayor of Toronto in the 2006 municipal elections. This makes us at Spacing quite happy. Why? Well, Spacing is planning for a mayoral debate, and a viable candidate to challenge Mayor Miller makes the debate worthwhile. And this is as good of a time as any to announce that the Spacing Fall 2006 issue will ...
December 2nd, 2005
Fembots and The City
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Saturday December 3rd 2005
at the Royal Cinema (606 College St., just west of Clinton). All ages show.
Doors at 7pm, show starts at 8pm. Tickets $12 at Soundscapes and Rotate This.
The Fembots, one of Toronto's best indie bands, have released a CD called The City, which is a homage to the unknown stories of Toronto. It is one of my fave releases of the year. Spacing is lucky enough to have been asked by the Fembots to provide images from our staff of photographers (and photoblog) to be projected on to ...
December 3rd, 2005
Mazda wants employees to walk to work
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Without an ounce of irony, Japanese automaker Mazda announced it is encouraging its employees to walk to work. The program is eloquently called the "Eco-walk commutation allowance" -- employees will be paid 1,500 Yen ($12 Cdn) if they travel four kilometres (roundtrip) at least 15 days a month. Each of the country's 20,000 workers are eligible. Competitor Yamaha introduced a similar program over a year ago.
Vancouver cracks down on public heroin use
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Police in Vancouver say they plan to start arresting drug addicts who shoot up in public, an uncontroversial idea in some cities but not in Vancouver. The police say they want to get drug use out of the streets and doorways of the Downtown Eastside and into the city's supervised injection site. Dr. Anita Palepu, who treats drug users from Vancouver's streets, says addicts going through withdrawal can't wait in lineups at the site and she fears the crackdown will prevent them from being treated for communicable diseases.
It is worth reading up on Toronto's plans ...
Cycling calendar by CBN
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you don't know about the Community Bicycle Network, you should visit their web site. They are the ones trying to convince City Hall to make this city more bike-friendly by doing simple things like implementing the City's very own Bike Plan . To raise funds for their organization, CBN has produced a beautiful full-colour art calendar, featuring 12 original images from the winners of the 2005 Women & Cycling poster project. It's gorgeous, and it's packed with locally relevant cycling and environmentally-friendly dates. The calendar was produced ...
December 4th, 2005
Dying to walk
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently ran an article linking pedestrian deaths to an individual's socio-economic standing. The article even points out that ethnicity is playing a part in who walks and who drives. Hispanic people die in pedestrian-vehicle accidents at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group in every Southern state except Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee, where only blacks die at a higher rate (according to 2002 data reported by states to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Nearly two out of every five pedestrian-vehicle deaths in the U.S. occur in ...
Utilitarian canvases
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Spacing Wire posted back on October 7th, 2005 about the work Joe Pantalone's office is doing with local graffiti artists and Bell utility boxes. Spacing contributor Liz Worth wrote this week in Eye Weekly about Ward 19's newest reinvented boxes at the corner of Hallem and Shaw (above image before and after). The work has won Pantalone's office a Clean and Beautiful City Award. They expect to have a total of 12 Bell utility boxes painted by Spring 2006, with hopes that the initiative will spread across the city. Something similar ...
Gentrify this!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Gentrification is a hot topic in all cities, and the neighbourhoods surrounding Toronto's downtown core are no exception. Much of the West Queen West area has been changing at a fair clip over the last decade. When Starbucks moves in, which is currently happening at Dovercourt and Queen West, you know the debate about gentrification will certainly arise, as one commentator has already made his/her point with spray paint (image on right). Go to the Torontoist.com post about this graffiti to read the variety of opinions on the new Starbucks, and the influence the Drake ...
December 5th, 2005
Scottish Stickum
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
I've been wandering around Edinburgh for the last seven days. It's a tangle of old streets, volcanic rock, super green grass, bone-chilling dampness, nice suit and tie combinations, and dusk that starts at about 2:30 p.m. It's a bit hard to walk on all the cobblestones, and the "newer" flat paving stones are a bit slippery, but the sound of footsteps on European sidewalks is nice and they echo differently than they do in Toronto (more wood buildings, maybe).
There is not very much postering in the city centre. Out in Leith, the port area (and Trainspotting ...
Solid and Memorable Edinburgh
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
It's hard not to compare Edinburgh and Toronto while here —- it's problematic though because it's easy to be knocked over by street after street of fairy-tale landscape (somebody I was chatting with referred to it as "shrink-wrapped perfection") and then get down on Toronto for not having the visual consistency this place does. In a few different conversations, people have mentioned that the history here is a constant presence, and that it's hard to get out of its shadow and do something new, echoing the sentiments expressed by Eric Rutherford in his uTOpia essay. There ...
December 6th, 2005
Greening Toronto’s roofs
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing Wire reader Brendan Stewart sent this along:
The City of Toronto is currently in the middle of a process to develop a policy that will encourage green roof development in the city. The city commissioned a discussion paper that was presented to the Roundtable on the Environment, that is partly based on an academic study, which you can read here.
Although green roofs are usually installed in private space, they are relevant to public space issues because of the number of benefits that contribute to the quality of life of city dwellers. ...
New Orleans Installs Free Public Wi-Fi
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of New Orleans is installing free public Wi-Fi (wireless internet connection) throughout the city, by hanging simple, cheap, shoebox-sized boxes from lampposts. The system will be accessible to anyone with a wireless connection on their computer. The system will also save the city money by enabling city employees such as building inspectors and police to quickly file and process paperwork on-location (through a secure network).
The new system is, in part, a response to the recent devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Because a Wi-Fi ...
December 7th, 2005
Bus Shelters of Mellieha
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in Europe during December and is posting sporadically throughout the month. -- The Editors
I arrived in Malta last night and went for a walk in my temporary neighbourhood today. Mellieha is a town on the north side of the Island, with a large sandy beach that's usually packed with people in the summer. Today it was grey and empty, but nice. The public transportation here is pretty good -- a fairly robust bus network. There are new air conditioned coaches, and then these really old things that belch black smoke (I ...
Paul Dotey’s “Bridge”
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Local artist Paul Dotey handed me a copy of his six-page zine at the release party of Spacing's current issue. I had it on my "must read soon" list but didn't look at it until today. The little thing is a beauty. It depicts the Bloor Viaduct at three stages in time -- its current state, the aftermath of some kind of disaster (above image), and the very far future. No words, just sparse drawings that leaves the meaning of the story up to the reader. Personally, I like end-of-the-world imagery (more in the Don ...
December 8th, 2005
TONIGHT: Ecobunk Awards
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Do you ever get upset when you see blatantly misleading advertisements? So does the Toronto Environmental Alliance. Each year they host Ecobunk, a fundraising show that highlights ads that confuse and muddle environmental issues. It is usually a side-splitting affair that pokes fun at the most outrageous corporate green advertising of 2005. So go to the Plaza Flamingo (423 College Street) tonight and help raise a few bucks for TEA, one of the best organizations in the city. Things kick off at 8pm, but the event usually sells out, so show up early. ...
TONIGHT: Graffiti Art Show
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
THEM, a graffiti art organization which works to find employment for young urban artists, is hosting an art show tonight at It's Not A Deli (986 Queen W.). Lots of Toronto graffiti artists will have work on display.
Mural art by Case
Mellieha Redux
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
I recieved an email from Rebecca Cefai here in Malta -- she read the post about the bus shelters and had some nice user experience to recount, which sounds a lot like the complaints levelled against Toronto's glass shelters:
I just thought you would like to know that the Maltese text on the bus shelters is a poem by Oliver Friggieri called "Jekk" ("If") and it basically says that if you do all there is to be done in this life, then you destroy it, because "Life is a question gathered in a thousand whys/and becomes for ...
Go go Google Transit (and subway party)!
By Laura Hatcher // No Comments
I'm fond of GoogleMaps as a way figure out where I'm going, mostly because of the "satellite view" feature. But now even more mapping fun is on the way. Google has just launched GoogleTransit, a feature that allows you to search a city's transit system. The Trip Planner allows you to enter the specifics of your trip, and then uses all available public transportation schedules and information to plot out the most efficient possible step-by-step itinerary. According to their FAQ page, you can even compare the cost of ...
December 9th, 2005
GIFT GUIDE: name a BikeShare bike
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Over the next week or two the contributors to the Spacing Wire are going to suggest some random gift ideas for the coming holidays. The first idea I'd like to share was brought to my attention by Spacing Biz Manager Holland Gidney. For $75, you can name one of BikeShare's yellow bikes. You can be vain by naming it after yourself and humble because the program is run by the wonderful Community Bicycle Network.
In defense of Sprawl
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The Torontoist's Ron Nurwisah sent this along to us:
Sprawl is the arch-nemesis of progressive urban planning. North America's love affair with the car and the suburbs has created unsustainable, unlivable and homogenous neighbourhoods. Suburbs from California to Vancouver, from Miami to Toronto have led to gridlock, the destruction of green spaces and the collapse of once vibrant inner city areas.
Or have they? In the cheekily titled Sprawl: A Compact History, Chicago-based art history professor Robert Bruegmann argues that sprawl isn't a 20th century North American phenomenon spurred on by ...
In defense of Proximity
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Closer to home the Globe and Mail has several stories about dense urban life. John Bently Mays talks about the importance of mid-rises in the future of Toronto Avenues. Derek Raymaker talks about creating housing close to transit nodes in the suburbs highlighting the importance of integrated local and regional transit. And Dave LeBlanc summarizes one of our favourite new books uTOpia.
Discuss uTOpia here.
Union Station Precinct
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of Toronto is planning to revamp the precinct around Union Station -- one of the most central and busy but also most neglected parts of Toronto. It has already held a forum to get the public's ideas about this area, and it will be holding another next week:
The second public forum will be held on Tuesday, December 13 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Metro Hall Rotunda, 55 John Street and will include a presentation at 7 p.m.
Meanwhile, in the Toronto Star today, Christopher Hume discusses some of the ...
Sprawl Malta Euro Mega-Remix
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in Europe during December and is posting sporadically throughout the month. -- The Editors
Just to add to the sprawl debate, it certainly isn't a North American phenomenon. Here in Malta, the same thing is happening. This is one of the densest places on the planet —- it's a tiny island nation that could fit inside of Toronto. Since I was a kid, it was Malta's urban form that I found most interesting. It looked so deep in pictures, like a labyrinth of houses and buildings that were much more ...
December 10th, 2005
GIFT GUIDE: Spacing’s 4-issue Gift Pack
By Spacing // No Comments
Spacing is happy to announce a special holiday promotion: the Spacing 4-issue Gift Pack. To save you time, we have conveniently wrapped all of our available issues in a TTC route map and put them on sale exclusively at Pages Books & Magazines (256 Queen Street West, Toronto). For $18, you have the best possible holiday gift for the urban enthusiast in your family or circle of friends. (Sorry, issue 1 is sold out.)
If you haven't already heard about the promotion, it's probably because you are not part of Spacing's mailing list. You can hear about ...
December 11th, 2005
Countryside Shelter
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in Europe during December and is posting sporadically throughout the month. — The Editors
There was a request to see some of the old bus shelters I mentioned about in my first post about Malta -- so yesterday I went out and found these, near Marfa. Marfa located on what I call "the tail of the fish" because we always said Malta was shaped like a chubby fish. These are made out of what most everything in Malta is built with: limestone, which gives better protection against the ...
The Art of Psychogeography
By Laura Hatcher // No Comments
The Ideas section of today's Toronto Star has a feature on psychogeography. The article notes a growing interest in psychogeography among artists, architects, and urban planners, and checks out the Glowlab: Open Lab festival and exhibition that wraps up today at Art Interactive in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through a series of public events, the artists participating in the nine week event explored the effects of the urban environment on people's emotions and behaviours.
The piece also looks at some Toronto psychogeographic happenings: local artist Jessica Thompson is interviewed about her Soundbike project, and ...
Subverting graffiti
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Christopher Hutsul has an interesting piece in the Toronto Star today about a Sony graffiti promotion in NYC and San Francisco:
Graffiti purists are rankled by the recent appearance of spray-painted advertisements for Sony's Playstation Portable in several American cities. Although this isn't the first time a corporation has borrowed a street-art aesthetic in an effort to appeal to young, urban audiences, this campaign has been seen by some as an attempt to mimic authentic graffiti, thereby marginalizing the subculture.
"The ads were meant to appear as if they were done by artists, that they were an ...
The posters of climate change
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Yvonne Bambrick, one of the organizers behind Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market, sent along a photo of some of the street art that lined the streets of Montreal this past week (The UN Climate Change Conference has been taking place in Montreal since Nov. 28th). For a larger version of the image click here. Coincidentally, the new theme on Spacing Photos is street art.
December 12th, 2005
Hybrid taxis in NYC
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
On November 10, 2005 the first hybrid taxi fleet was launched in New York City. The vehicle runs on a combination of gas and electricity and generally emits no exhaust when travelling under 25 mph. These hybrid taxis are indeed a step in the right direction for a city that has over 12,000 taxis. The switch to hybrid vehicles is a result of the "Clean Air Taxis Act" which implemented some new regulations this past summer giving taxi drivers the option to choose their vehicle from seven gas-electric hybrid models. I do find it ...
Development developments
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Today the Ontario government proposed new legislation that would give councils and citizens more power to determine what developments go ahead, and influence the architecture and design of proposed new buildings. It would also restrict powers of the Ontario Municipal Board, the independent tribunal that rules on land use complaints, by scaling back on its current duties as decision-maker to merely hearing appeals on local planning matters. Read the whole article here.
Christopher Hume's column in the Toronto Star, which appeared before the legislation was announced today, explains what this means to residents of Toronto.
December 13th, 2005
Is Toronto ready to grow up?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
(all links go to the Toronto Star)
Is Toronto ready to grow up? Christopher Hume ponders this qestion in his column today regarding the potential overhaul of the OMB. Mayor Miller weighs in on his hope for a reformed OMB. The new controls the City may receive could help Toronto raise the quality of design, architecture, and sustainability in development projects.
The St. Clair Right-Of-Way is back in the news, this time with the rising costs of the the dedicated streetcar line. What should be of note to SpacingWire readers is the legal costs ...
Vanity Fair and Toronto
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Looks like Vanity Fair has a thing for Toronto. On VanityFair.com, Tepper Anderson visits our fair city and discovers the vibrancy of Toronto's literary scene. What is of interest to Spacing is Anderson's experience on the city streets, especially his take on the [murmur] project (which is run by Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef). Also of note is the list of Toronto literary links that includes one to Spacing.
BMX park along the waterfont?
By Dale Duncan // No Comments
Tomorrow evening (Wednesday, December 14) Councillor Sylvia Watson is holding a community meeting to discuss the idea of building a BMX course at Marilyn Bell Park along the waterfront. It's an intriguing proposal -- the course would be cheap to install, and would provide a alternative way to engage people, especially youth, in the use of our public spaces.
An inspiring Parks and Rec employee (who shall, for now, remain nameless due to a perplexing little rule the City has about it's employees talking to the media) recently told me, ...
Light pollution
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Above is a real-time image of the northeast of North America. At night, it clearly demonstrates the amount of light pollution our continent creates (that's Lake Ontario in the middle, with Toronto and the GTA on the left side of the lake). I have a telescope that I like to pull out once and a while, but stargazing in the city is a tad difficult, to say the least. Check out this site for all types of views of Earth and the moon.
Dreams of Front Street
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The Union Station precinct study (led by various architects and consultants) held a public meeting tonight to discuss options for re-shaping Front Street in front of the station. The overall direction is very positive -- the primary goal is to expand the pedestrian realm, and create a spectacularly attractive space welcoming people to the city.
The study cited some remarkable statistics: pedestrians outnumber vehicles by 10 to 1 on this part of Front St. (and 20%-30% of those vehicles are taxis). As well, currently during rush hour traffic is effectively travelling in one ...
December 14th, 2005
Light poles disappearing in Baltimore
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
No one is sure why 130 light poles in Baltimore have disappeared.
The city revisits the expressway
By Laura Hatcher // No Comments
Like so many roadways of the 1950s and '60s, Seattle's I-5 freeway cut through the city and destroyed pedestrian connections between neighbourhoods. In an effort to undo some of this damage, the city has decided to create a park under the elevated freeway. The 7.5 acre strip of park space includes a picnic area, a mountain bike trail, and a dog park. As well, residents are encouraged to take part in the creation of other sections of the park. Read more about it here.
While nothing is underway yet, there is talk of ...
December 15th, 2005
Citizen TTC Commissioners
By Spacing // No Comments
Eye Weekly was inspired by a suggestion by Ed Drass, the transit columnist of the daily commuter paper Metro, that the two seats currently open on the TTC should be filled by non-politicians. Since 1990, all of the seats on the Commission have been filled by city councillors, so this move would be a break with tradition. But as Drass pointed out, services as important as the police have non-elected citizen commissioners. Eye's editorial this week has some suggestions about who would best fill the two available slots: Steve Munro, a TTC actvist; James ...
Roadwitches
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The BBC reports on a campain in Britain to lower speed limits to 20mph in urban areas which highlights some DIY traffic-calming happenings that are described by their creator as "roadwitches". Inspired by the artist Damien Hirst these traffic calming art installations have included an 11-feet high rabbit, a big bed (for a sleeping policeman), a Casualty-style fake crash scene for Halloween and the setting up of a living room in the middle of the road.
December 16th, 2005
PARK(ing)
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
The San Francisco based group Rebar created their own roadwitching by renting a parking space for a temporary park. 70% of public land is devoted to the car in San Francisco (as in most major cities) leaving little for green space. If people can rent valuable public space to temporarily store their cars - why not rent the space for other activities like picnics, barbecues, croquet or a public park?
Malta Markings
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
There's some neat graffiti here in Malta — but it's the old fashion kind, with little messages left here and there about love and often hate. Like a time-warp to the 1950s (and backward -- to the etchings on latrine walls of roman times). There are a few places where the mural type graffiti is up, but I'm less interested in that because I can never understand the font they use and it looks just like the stuff in North America (I'm sure it's different to the connoisseur, but I'm not) — where as this stuff seems particularly Maltese ...
December 17th, 2005
Roadwitching, Toronto-style
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Chris Hardwicke posted on the Spacing Wire the last two days about Roadwitching in London and San Francisco. We received the above image from Martin Reis who is active in road reclamation projects here in Toronto. This photo was taken in Kensington yesterday where they dropped change into a parking metre, and filled in the parking space with snow and pylons. Streets Are For People holds events throughout the year that plug parking spots with people, bikes, and furniture.
The other side of the OMB
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In the Toronto Star today, Christopher Hume writes about the other side of the OMB -- when they make decisions that are actually good for Toronto, such as the development of Two Roxborough at Yonge and Roxborough. Hume writes:
Clearly, the board, that much-maligned quasi-judicial body that has final say on development in this province, has done a few things right, even by the city's account. Over and over, people have complained that the OMB is "undemocratic" and its members unelected. That, of course, is exactly the point. That's why it can make the ...
December 18th, 2005
Winter election fun!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Who said a winter election can't be fun? Spacing contributor and photoblogger-about-town Adam Krawesky [ www.inconduit.com ] captured people in Trinity Bellwoods Park on Friday improvising with an Olivia Chow election sign as a toboggan.
New Press Pause show
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There is a great graffiti art show that is currently underway, curated by the Press Pause collective, that features the work of Elicser, the artist whose handiwork adorns the cover of the new issue of Spacing. The Second Best Gallery is located at 53 Niagara Street. The show runs until January 16.
Press Pause artists are also responsible for the work in Rush Lane -- the graffiti alley that runs along the south side of Queen St. W., between Spadina and Bathurst. They also are providing their skills to the downtown Bell utility ...
Secret swing back in action!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The secret swing is back action. The swing, found between two converging buildings just off of the graffiti alley behind Queen West stores, had its seat and chains cut off in late November [ read the SpacingWire post about it ]. Two kind people named Vince and Kai replaced it on December 13th. Read more about Corwyn Lund's fantastic installation. Photo and tip from Sean Galbraith
UPDATE: Sean also sent along the above photo. The seat now bears a date, signatures, and has writing on it: "The Secret Swing belongs to the people ...
December 19th, 2005
SPACING: Monday’s new articles
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As we announced in our monthly newsletter, Spacing will post new articles every Monday. This week we have three pieces for you:
• Spacing contributor Jaime Jacques reports from Accra, Ghana on the contrasting perspectives of African versus North American public spaces.
• David Fontaine profiles Piazza Jonny Lombardi at College and Grace in Toronto's Little Italy.
• We make available The Flaneur column by Shawn Micallef from our Summer 2005 issue.
GIFT GUIDE: Spacing 4-issue gift pack at Pages
By Spacing // No Comments
Spacing is happy to announce a special holiday promotion: the Spacing 4-issue Gift Pack. To save you time, we have conveniently wrapped all of our available issues in a TTC route map and put them on sale exclusively at Pages Books & Magazines (256 Queen Street West, Toronto). For $18, you have the best possible holiday gift for the urban enthusiast in your family or circle of friends. (Sorry, issue 1 is sold out.)
If you haven't already heard about the promotion, it's probably because you are not part of Spacing's mailing list. You can hear about ...
December 20th, 2005
Parkour video
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The phenomena known as Parkour has been catching on like crazy lately [ read Jim Munroe's article from Spacing Spring/Summer 2004 issue ]. It can be easily explained as extreme jogging -- but instead of sticking to the sidewalk, you run over cars, fences, even entire buidlings. I was forwarded an 8-minute Parkour film [ streamed on Google video ] shot in Russia that shows a young guy running around, through, and over his town. The buildings are burnt-out and abandoned, the infrastructure is crumbling, but the Russian tracuer (what they call a parkour ...
New York City transit strike
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If you haven't heard, New York City's transit system was shut down at 3am today by a union strike. Nealy 7 million people are walking, biking, or stuck in gridlock. New York Governor George Pataki denounced the strike and the transit union: "They have not only endangered our city and state's economy, but they are also recklessly endangering the health and safety of each and every New Yorker," he said. He is also worried that a strike could cost the city $400 million a day (what "cost the city" means is unclear -- ...
No strike, but they don’t use it….
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Unlike NYC, the TTC is working fine, so I found a "story" on CityNews (what was wrong with the old CityPulse name -- it was cool) last night somewhat funny and depressing at the same time. Seems Fairview Mall up at Don Mills and Sheppard was giving away 5 VIP parking spots near the front entrance. Crack "news" "reporter" Audre Brown interviewed some of the winners. One 60 year old guy in an Oldsmobile said "This is awesome -- it probably saved me 1 hour". Another woman said the VIP spot saved her 2 hours of ...
Walking News
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
The City of Toronto has a program in place to add sidewalks on both sides of all arterial and collector roads in Toronto (not local roads). The work is proceeding gradually, with a couple of million dollars a year assigned. For example, next year a sidewalk will finally be added to the side of 401 Richmond, at Spadina.
To get an idea of where the work is needed, the City is building a database of where arterial and collector roads are missing sidewalks. They welcome additional information -- there are always more to add. If you know ...
December 21st, 2005
Macroscopes
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Yesterday's Toronto Star had two stories that reminded me of John Thackara's macroscope idea:
A macroscope is something that helps us see what the aggregation of many small actions looks like when added together. My favorite example is that everybody in Melbourne, Australia, is crazy about building small concrete patios in their backyard as a kind of mini fashion item. When you add all those thousands upon thousands of little bits of paving stones and cement together, it turns out that more of the earth is being sealed off from the rain and nature ...
Honk if you like to walk
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Jose Lourenco sounds off for pedestrians in the Toronto Star by asking the simple question: Cars get horns, why can't the rest of us?
The results of the experiment were intriguing. The air horn did help to halt reckless auto activity, true. And, granted, there was the delicious feeling of horning when a vehicle was in the wrong — we were almost like cars. I'm thinking of taking it one step further and getting a set of turn signals for my backpack and brights for my coat.
Knit graffiti
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
There is a new type of graffiti that should catch on here in Canada -- knit graffiti. A Montrose, Texas crew, calling themselves Knitta, are yarn bombing neighbourhoods. Knitta is at the confluence of two rising cultural tides: crafting and street art. The former has been embraced by hipsters: sites like Craftster.org regularly attract 300,000 unique visitors a month; Stitch 'N Bitch groups are popping up all over.
"We're taking graffiti and making it warm, fuzzy and more acceptable," says AKrylik, one of the Knitta gang. "I like ...
Kensington Market Festival of Lights Tonight
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Come celebrate the spirit of light in Kensington Market on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 6:00pm-.
Light up the longest and darkest night of the year at the annual Kensington Market Festival of Lights. Enjoy the annual lantern-lit celestial carnival and Samba Squad pumped procession, as they move through the narrow, culturally rich streets of historic Kensington Market.
Bang a drum or a pot and pan, ring a bell, carry a lantern, make a puppet or wear a mask.
For more info email: redpepper.spectacle@sympatico.ca
December 22nd, 2005
Stay Connected
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Patrick Evans writes in the Toronto Star about a Statistics Canada report connecting strong community feelings with health and longevity. The article reminded me of the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. In that book Putnam suggests that North Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbours, and our democratic structures.
The StatsCan report suggests that people in urban centres have a weaker sense of community than those in rural areas. A recent New York Times ...
December 23rd, 2005
Local Government
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Former Mayor of Toronto and Eye magazine city columnist John Sewell is running an interesting web site devoted to local government, www.localgovernment.ca. It provides resources and publishes an email bulletin analyzing local government issues and championing increased power for local communities.
The most recent issue of the bulletin includes very interesting analyses of the provincial government's proposed amendments to the Ontario Municipal Board, and its new City of Toronto act. The analysis is far more in-depth than the coverage these initiatives received in the media, and is therefore well worth the ...
December 24th, 2005
Public squares around the world
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
NOTE: The Spacing Wire will be posting only occasionally throughout the next week -- The Editors
Probably the best North American resource for learning about issues that affect the public realm is the website of the Project for Public Spaces [ www.pps.org ]. Planning and development departments from all over North America (including the City of Mississauga) are using PPS's knowledge of the built urban form to make their local public spaces work. Each month they put out a newsletter called Making Places that focuses on a theme, and find wonderful examples of good ...
December 25th, 2005
The suburban loft
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
If we needed another signal of the demise of the urban loft, it has arrived. A development in a suburb of Denver is experimenting with the suburban industrial loft home for the family. The lofts are houses set well back from the street with double-car garages. No nearby shopping, restaurants, bars, or public transit. The places have names like "The Cannery." It's "city living without the city," a phrase I read somewhere. Read more here.
We’ve been nice (according to the Star)
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In Saturday's edition of the Star, Spacing was placed on the Nice side of the Naughty or Nice list in the their A&E section. They write: "For the inspiring magazine Spacing, which improves with each new issue; for making us want to fight for a better city; and for helping us realize that we live in a pretty cool town, after all."
Thanks!
NOTE: The SpacingWire will be posting occasionally throughout the next week -- The Editors
December 26th, 2005
When the Streets are Home ~ STREET NURSE
By Dave Meslin // No Comments
Tuesday December 27 2005 • BLOOR CINEMA ~ 7pm ~ $9
STREET NURSE ~ A film night with special guests
During the Season of Giving, please join the Toronto Public Space Committee as they screen a film about someone who has given so much, to those who are most in need.
A 'question and answer' discussion will follow the film, featuring Cathy Crowe, Director Shelley Saywell and Dri, a former resident of Tent City.
"Street Nurse" is a powerful point-of-view documentary that explores the streets of Toronto through the eyes of Cathy Crowe, who ...
December 27th, 2005
NYC police infiltrate bike and anti-war activism
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
An early holiday present to New York City cycling activists was revealed last week in the New York Times. For the last 16 months, undercover NYC police have infiltrated organizations and people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident. From the NY Times website:
The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, ...
December 28th, 2005
Reading Toronto
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Some might say that the Reading Toronto blog is our competition, but in fact they are our friends. RT offers readers intelligent critique and ideas that are shaping our city. Their contributors include urban planners, architects, designers, artists, writers -- the whole gamet. Here are a few recent posts that are worth reading:
The Hidden City: a look at the spate of gun violence of our youth.
Ossington My Ossington: by Hal Niedzviecki, and his observations on the intersection of Queen and Ossington.
Eight projects re-shaping Toronto.
The 504: ruminations on the King streetcar.
The Island ...
December 30th, 2005
Dear Detroit
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
I'm visiting hometown Windsor right now. Yesterday I went over to Detroit to visit my long lost friend Emily —- I recently rediscovered her thanks to The Internet. We met at muddy Woodstock '94 waiting for Nine Inch Nails to come on (no, the one with all the rapes was Woodstock '99 — '94 wasn't so violent), and we spent the next few years visiting and driving around Detroit. She showed me pockets of the city I wouldn't have found without a local guide -- parties in massive Victorian mansions surrounded by ruins, Belgian "feather bowling" ...
Reasonable Thoughts on Terrible Events
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
In these confusing days after the awful Boxing Day shootings -- days full of more questions than answers, and political moves like Jane Pitfield calling for "emergency meetings" -- it's good to read something like Andrew Spicer's blog where he has produced a few good and thoughtful posts on the shootings that also sum up some of the the coverage in various papers.
In general and unrelated, Spicer's blog has lots of good posts on the federal election as well as other Toronto stuff.
Harper on transit
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
From CBC.ca: People who buy monthly public transit passes will be given a tax credit of 16 per cent, saving the average user about $150 per year, The Conservative Party unveiled today in Vancouver. At the same campaign event, Harper attacked Liberal support for the Kyoto Protocol, which permits buying emissions credits from other countries to meet Canada's greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Incidentally, both Haprer and Martin were campaigning during the campaign "break" which was to start-up again on January 1.
December 31st, 2005
Edible Estates
By Laura Hatcher // No Comments
Growing food in your front yard is unconventional in just about any North American city, but in many places, especially the suburbs, farming your yard could be considered a defiant act. The Edible Estates project wants people to reconsider how they use private front yards. At work in nine different American cities, Edible Estates will partner with residents to turn their suburban lawns into prototype food-producing gardens.
"Edible Estates proposes the replacement of the American lawn with a highly productive domestic edible landscape. Food grown in our front yards will connect us to ...
Toronto’s Public Spaces in 2005
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Both Eye Weekly and NOW ran excellent 2005 year in review features. Here's the stuff they pointed out that the Spacing Wire thinks is worth mentioning.
At Eye Weekly, they highlighted the launch of [murmur]'s third story-telling intervention along Spadina Avenue. There are over 150 stories to pick from -- just spot the green ear, call the number on it, and select a story by a local Torontonian. Genius.
The TTC was in the news a lot. The good stuff: new transferable Metropasses, bike racks on buses, video advertising ...
January 1st, 2006
Toronto’s New Year resolutions
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
This might be a good time to lay out our wish list for 2006.
• Do not approve the EUCAN monster bins: Within the coming months, the City's Works Committee will vote on whether to approve the EUCAN monster garbage bin pilot project. The receptacles are billboards first, and trash bins second. Little thought seems to have been put into how people will actually use the bin, but its perpendicular placement on the sidewalk seems to have been seriously thought-out. The last thing these monstrosities do is help make this a clean and beautiful city. Also, the ...
January 2nd, 2006
SPACING FEATURE: Toronto’s new wayfinding signs?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In Spacing's current print issue, we challenged Toronto artist and Spacing contributor Marc Ngui to identify neighbourhoods and locations that were lacking the appropriate wayfinding signage and create new icons using his unique blend of social and political commentary.
Our city has a plethora of signs that tell us where or where not to park, if a street is a dead-end, or point us towards cultural institutions. We thought it would be fun to imagine the real hazzards of this city. You can download a PDF of the icons and make yourself stickers, buttons, ...
SPACING FEATURE: How did that get there?
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As mentioned before, each Monday Spacing will post articles that have appeared in the magazine. We will also post new articles and reviews specifically commissioned for our online readers.
This week we have Marc Ngui's piece on Toronto's wayfinding signs (posted below). Also, Spacing managing editor Dale Duncan wrote about the prolonged process of putting sanctioned public art on to our streets. From Dale's article:
The process the City currently goes through to obtain new pieces involves committees, competitions, money from developers, and a host of other time-consuming, bureaucratic things that one would ...
These bad people
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
Since I have the luxury of living downtown and not in a violence-prone neighbourhood, and since I don't know anybody personally touched by violence, I look at images and reactions like the one above (found at John Fewings's political cartoon website) and worry. I "get" cartoons like this, but I also feel a fair amount of reservation, because though a terrible thing happened there, that isn't the Yonge and Dundas I walk through every-other-day, and we should calm down and figure out why all this stuff is happening, and figure out real ways to stop ...
January 3rd, 2006
Couch biking
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
It's as wide as an SUV but has to be carried across rail tracks. It's called the Couch Bike. Two guys (one Canadian and the other a Norwegian) rode this contraption across PEI and part of New Brunswick this summer. They were stopped by an RCMP cop who wanted to cite them for traffic violations but let them go cuz they had "a nice rig." Download the Window Media video of the trip [ 8.3 MB ] or go to their journal of the jounrey.
Don’t Drink and Walk?
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
An interesting study by Transport Canada shows that a significant number of pedestrians killed in traffic accidents are drunk, often extremely drunk, especially those victims in the 26-45 year old age range (over half of those tested in this age range, though it's not clear how representative the testing is). It's certainly better to walk than to drive, but it's even safer to sleep it off rather than walk. And if you've got a very drunk friend who is walking somewhere, it's one more reason to walk with them to keep them safe.
The finding is part ...
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Public Space Invaders film fest
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing is looking for submissions for our second Public Space Invaders film night. We have received a good stack of submissions but there is still room for more. We've extended the deadline to Friday, January 20, 2006.
BACKGROUND: Last January, on a bitterly cold night, 200 people packed the Drake Hotel's Underground Bar to watch a varied collection of films that celebrated and critiqued Toronto's public realm (and a few other cities). We are primarily looking for films that deal with public spaces in Toronto. They can be fun, arty, serious, very serious, beautiful or even ugly. Student ...
January 4th, 2006
Federal election: Waterfront debate this Sunday
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Date: This Sunday, January 8, 2006
Time: Noon to 2pm
Place: Harbourfront Community Centre — SE corner of Bathurst St. and Queen's Quay W.
It has been 1,444 days since the Federal Transport Minister said the best plan for Toronto's money-losing island airport would be to close it down. How many more days before the Feds finally act? We'll find out this Sunday at the Trinity-Spadina candidates' debate. For more specifics on the event and questions that will be asked click here.
The focus of this debate will be the role and the future of ...
Today’s Traffic News
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
A story in the Toronto Star today showed that, despite the hype about gun-related deaths in Toronto, the car was deadlier than the gun in 2005. In Toronto, 59 people died in traffic accidents, while 52 were killed by guns. Half of those traffic deaths were pedestrians (29).
"This is a serious problem, but it's something that has been downplayed or ignored by a lot of people. It seems to be as if people expect (traffic fatalities) to be one of the factors of modern life," said Helen Riley, co-chair of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee. ...
Pedestrian Plans Galore
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
As Toronto begins the preliminary stages of developing a Pedestrian Plan, it's useful to see what others have done. Bicyclinginfo.org ("Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Centre") has a useful list of exemplary pedestrian plans (and cycling plans). It also has loads of other useful cycling and pedestrian resources.
The Antisocial Libertarians of England
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
A neat article by George Monbiot in The Guardian about the culture of car driving in England, and his fear that "the car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation that recognises only the freedom to act" and that when you drive "society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away." He could probably add Canada to his list.
Most interesting is his thoughts on the roots of this culture back in the Iron Lady's tenure, and how ...
January 5th, 2006
FRIDAY: What the TTC could be
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
WHAT THE TTC COULD BE
January 5-8, 2006: noon to five
XPACE Gallery • Kensington Market • 303 Augusta
Over the last decade TTC Commisioners have plastered the transit system with wall-to-wall (and floor-to-floor!) commercial advertising. The Toronto Public Space Committee asked Toronto's transit riders to "re-imagine the TTC" without any ads. Using this new blank canvas as a starting point, they redesigned buses, streetcars and subways. Their work will be on display at XPACE Gallery.
OPENING NIGHT: Friday January 6th 2006. 7 to 11pm
Read the article in the Toronto Star.
Maisonneuve and Micallef on Toronto
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing's very own Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is a guest columnist for Maisonneuve this month. He takes on the task of explaining to the rest of the country just how fragile the city's ego is. A sample:
The truth is that Toronto's ego actually bruises very easily—a sense of decline over the past twenty years and a lack of mythology for its citizens to seek comfort in means that our civic skin isn't as thick as the rest of the country thinks it is. Torontonians habitually and chronically undervalue their city and its stories; we ...
Royal Mess
By Dylan Reid // No Comments
Today, the Toronto Star's "Fixer" column features a corner of Royal York road where people waiting at a TTC bus stop have been sheltering in the porches of adjacent newly-built townhouses.
The painful part of this article is the proposed solution -- moving the bus stop. No one seems to have thought of actually building a shelter on the lawn beside the bus stop. Of course, the owners of the townhouse would probably complain that it took up what little lawn they have. But the fact is, that lawn is almost ...
January 6th, 2006
Honk if you like Transit
By Chris Hardwicke // No Comments
Kevin McGran reports in today's Toronto Star that GTA tranist use is higher than ever. This suburban transit enthusiasm is evident in the magazine 54east that is named after a bus route. The magazine (now online) created by Think Tank Toronto features a neighbourhood soundtrack, the stripmalls of Scarborough, the green roofs of Scarborough, and best of all Honk if you love Scarborough T-Shirts. [via]
January 7th, 2006
EUCAN’s pants are on fire
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
As most readers of Spacing know, we are not fans of the EUCAN bin. You can read all about our reasons here, here, here, or here. There is no doubt in our mind that Toronto needs to clean up its streets and sidewalks, but these bins do nothing but encourage people to consume more, and thus create more garbage and waste.
So when the City released its survey yesterday about the public's perception of the bins, we were sure the numbers would validate our viewpoint. And they did. But by mid-afternoon EUCAN had its ...
January 8th, 2006
When condos attack and defending suburbia
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Eye Weekly is running a series of articles on development in Toronto. In the first piece, "Beyond NIMBY," Spacing's managing editor Dale Duncan writes about how most residents just want to be part of the process of development in their communities.
"Instead of looking to simply placate resistant residents, the challenge now facing the city is how to give citizens a voice in the process. A citywide model for consulting residents does not exist -- at least not in the way associations would like it to -- while a confusing planning process, made up of ...
January 9th, 2006
Island airport debate
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The debate for federal candidates held on the waterfront last night showed the animosity towards an Island airport is very much a hot local issue. Nealry 500 people showed up (who says the electorate is apathetic?) to hear what Tony Ianno and Olivia Chow had to say (the other parties, with all due respect, are not really part of the Trinity-Spadina race). Ianno said he'd support shutting down the airport if that's what residents and voter wanted (obivously he hasn't been listening too hard because that feeling has been made clear with every hoarse voice from the ...
SPACING: advertising vehicles
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
We know that there are lots of Spacing readers who are comfortable with outdoor advertising. We still like you. But we're sure almost all of you would agree that mobile advertising trucks, specifically sent out into the streets of Toronto to sit in gridlock, are not good for anyone except the advertisers. It doesn't matter if they are running on bio-diesel fuel, or are capable of delivering water to the homeless (yes, that is what MotoMedia says their vehicles do in their down time), these trucks create smog, contribute to ...
January 10th, 2006
Editorial on ads vs. art; young pedestrian killed
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
You know you've made it as an effective community group when newspapers start writing editorials about your campaigns. The Toronto Public Space Committee's recent gallery show, What The TTC Could Be, challenges the notion that we could have a better transit system with less ads and more art. The Toronto Star today wrote a pretty lame defense of advertising as an artform in repsonse to the TPSC's show. Read it here and decide if their argument even makes sense.
Also in the Star, a sad report on how an 11-year-old girl was ...