With the Junction Arts Festival just around the corner, a group of local knitters who've dubbed themselves the "Junction Yarnstormers" hit the neighbourhood last night, armed with woolly wonders designed for Dundas West's many bike racks, telephone polls, benches, fences, and bus shelters. The group follows a growing trend in public art, often refered to as 'knit-bombing'. In Bansky-inspired incognito, the knitters donned festive floppy hats, hoods, and the odd ninja mask, concealing their faces as they transformed the street, ...

It was an eerie experience traversing Toronto's should-be-bustling downtown streets in the days leading up to the G20. But it wasn't freedom I enjoyed, cycling the city's main throughfares free of traffic — it was the apprehension and uneasiness that accompany urban desolation. As an abundance of city planners since Jane Jacobs have asserted (and as The Star pointed out in post-G20 editorial), people keep a city safe. So when Toronto residents and business owners retreated, imbued with the message that their streets were about to turn ugly, that's exactly what we left them vulnerable to do. The tactics of looters and vandals have been discussed elsewhere, but, as I witnessed throughout the weekend, it was the police who best utilized our city's infrastructure for the purposes of intimidation and violence. As a participant in Friday's and Saturday's demonstrations, I was shocked to see the police appropriating those things we rely on and enjoy about life in this city, turning them into tools used against us.

cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic HALIFAX — National Housing Day was first marked on the calendar by a team of Toronto housing advocates on Nov 22, 1998. But this year, more than a decade later, it was infused with new meaning. Housing is back on the national agenda, with proposed Bill C-304 calling for the development of a national housing strategy designed to ensure safe, adequate, accessible, affordable housing to all Canadians. The Bill, seconded by Halifax MP Megan Leslie, has deep implications for Canadian cities, and the diversity of housing challenges they face. â€œHousing impacts the health of communities," says Leslie, who is the NDP critic for housing and homelessness. "It's not just about putting a roof over someone's head, it is about the health of a community general — the physical health, the mental health, the economic health of a community.” The need for a national strategy was made amply clear at yesterday's National Housing Day events in Halifax. Gathered at St. Matthew's United Church, a crowd of over 100 marked the opening of the Out of the Cold emergency shelter for a second winter. A collaborative community initiative by the Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, Community Action on Homelessness (CAH), St. Matthew's, and a dedicated team of volunteers, the shelter provides 15 beds for men and women. A panel consisting of members of the organizing committee, housing advocates, and community members shared stories on why initiatives such as this one are so important in a city like Halifax, wrought with its own unique set of housing challenges. However, the grassroots, community-based strategy provokes conflicted feelings for many of those involved. The fact that the shelter receives no support from the government is "the elephant in the room that we have to recognize," said Fiona Traynor of Dalhousie Legal Aid. "It's all being done by volunteers, and as great as that is, it's still, in my opinion, a black mark on the federal and provincial governments." This black mark is indicative of the need for a national strategy.

WHAT: "Toronto Movie Theatres: Palaces for the People," lecture by Paul Moore; followed by screening of the documentary, Dreamland: A History of Early Canadian Movies WHEN: Saturday, August 22, 4pm WHERE: Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Ave HOW MUCH: $5 suggested donation WEBSITE: 32ElvisMovies.com, Revue Cinema "Moore is the author of Now Playing: Early Moviegoing and the Regulation of Fun, a definitive study of Toronto cinemas and the emerging mass audience. With the help of anecdotes and archival photos, Moore will reveal the history of local theatre chains, architects and ...

"Why is cycling such a 'white' sport?" asks this Monday's headline on the Guardian's bike blog. In the article, author Matt Seaton focuses specifically on cycling as a competitive sport, but later in the piece muses on urban cycling, speculating, "even in ethnically diverse inner-city areas, I bet that the vast majority of cyclists you see will be white (and probably middle-class, too — but that's an issue for another day)." It is exactly this perception that led U of T planning student Erica Duque to focus her thesis on the topic of ethnicity and cycling in Toronto. â€œI originally started thinking about it in terms of who cycles in Toronto; I just informally asked people," says Duque. After these initial conversations showed a pattern in people's impression of the cycling population as mostly white, Duque decided to pursue this line of questioning further, through an online survey and interviews with the cycling advocacy community. “I wanted to find out who other people thought cycled in Toronto and also get some demographic statistics on who cycled.” It is this relationship between perception and reality that began to form the crux of Duque's line of thought. While she faced limitations in getting demographical data that was accurately representative of Toronto's cycling population, Duque's survey results (some of which will be released in the upcoming issue of Spacing magazine -- out August 25th) did indicate that a majority of people characterize the average cyclist in Toronto as white. This perception rang true across ethnic lines, as survey respondents who identified as white as well as those who identified as visible minority felt this to be the case.  International cycling advocate and Executive Director of Mississauga-based organization, Walk and Bike for Life, Gil Penalosa, is unsurprised by this result: "I think they're right. I think that that's the perception and in this case I think the perception is reality," going on to discuss how the cycling population is most likely disproportionately white as compared to Toronto's overall ethnic make-up. In a city that liberally boasts its multiculturalism, this is a problem. In a city where bike-lane debates take upwards of 7 heated hours, our municipal representatives duking it out over Toronto travellers' best interests, this is an even bigger problem.

Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues in Toronto. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This week's World Wide Wednesday is dedicated to automobile liberation (as in our liberation from the car... not the car's movement for sovereignty).  Look out for ...

New bike lanes are not the only reason why Dupont has recently moved up on my list of preferred cycling routes. Just this Tuesday, as I approached the unfriendly intersection where Annette, Dundas West, and Dupont meet, and descended into the underpass that dips below the rail corridor, I was met with an amazing new feature that further bolstered my sense of belonging on the street: a beautiful new bike-themed mural that stretches the entirety of the south wall of the underpass. Behind this project is the city-wide ...

“From the rez to the city, my people are you with me?  You're tuned in to the chief of the concrete city,” rapped hip-hop artist Wabs Whitebird at last Friday's pow wow at Eastview Public School in Scarborough. Sharing insight into his experience as an aboriginal person born and raised in Canada's largest urban centre, Whitebird's a cappella performance provided a hip-hop interlude amidst the day's traditional pow wow festivities. Kids from the neighbourhood raced around the event, hopping from the playground to the barbeque and into the dance arena, where they joined head dancers Nadjia Melanson and Joseph Harper. On-lookers and vendors surrounded the dance arena, where three drum groups (two local and one visiting from Peterborough) performed from the centre of the circle, seated next to the flags and ceremonial staff. This was the third annual pow wow to be held at the Scarborough elementary school, originally organized by Waabanong Head Start, a preschool program for aboriginal families in the neighbourhood. While some may find grey high-rises and Kingston Rd traffic a curious backdrop for a pow wow, it shouldn't be unexpected, as the aboriginal population continues to increase rapidly in Canadian cities.  The 2006 census reported 54% of aboriginal Canadians live in urban centres.  Nevertheless, some people are still surprised to learn of a pow wow happening in Scarborough, said organizing committee member Sue Rogers, going on to discuss what a meaningful moment it was in bringing the community together. With National Aboriginal Day taking place on June 21st, the message Rogers hopes to communicate through the pow wow is one of celebration and awareness.  She emphasized the importance of pow wow in teaching the next generation about their heritage so they will continue to keep it alive. To check out some more photos from the event, click continue reading below.

Just three days into this year's Bike Month, a damp May 28th was host to Bike Summit 2009, a day-long conference on cycling policy co-hosted by the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation (TCAT) and the Clean Air Partnership.  International and local presenters covered everything from bike parking to economic and health improvements, sharing perspectives and recommendations that could greatly improve our city's cycling potential. Spacing will revisit and follow up on some of these ideas, perspectives, and words of two-wheeled wisdom, in hopes of continuing this momentum and encouraging Toronto to actually reach some of the best practices presented at the summit. I thought the above photo rather apt, as a pretty basic don't in bike-friendly street design.  This is Annette Street. The small, predominately residential, west-end strip that has been home to all sorts of controversy, confusion, and convolution around the implementation of new bike lanes -- a saga which seemed to see an innovative community advocacy organization come out on top.  While it's been a few weeks since the bike route was finally painted in, unfortunately, the pavement painting folks and the parking signage folks seem to be out-of-synch.  Certain patches of the Jane to Lansdowne route have had parking signs appropriately changed, meanwhile other blocks seem arbitrarily left parking-oriented, allowing cars, like the one above, to sit leisurely (and legally) in the way of safe biking along this new route.  Now with the city-workers' strike, it'll be another delay before the signs are changed and west-end cyclists can enjoy Annette as a safe, consolidated, well-designed bike route.  And all this ironically in time for this year's Bike Blitz on cyclist safety. In contrast, panelists at the Bike Summit session, New Approaches to Street Design, had all sorts of insight as to smart approaches in designing multi-use infrastructure.  Joshua Benson of the New York Department of Transportation shared stories from the Big Apple's much-buzzed-about new bike facilities; while Norma Moores of IBI Group and Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals discussed signage, pavement markings, and other indicators that work best in Canada; and the city's Nigel Tahair swung it back to a local focus, discussing cycling and transit design for Toronto's waterfront.

"The story about newcomers coming to Canada is all about their skills not being recognized," said Peter Dorfman of Toronto Public Health yesterday. "In a small way, what this campaign does is it recognizes that one of the strengths that newcomers bring is their cycling skills and their transit-friendly skills." The campaign Dorfman is referring to, From Back Home to Our New Home, a collaboration between CultureLink Settlement Services and the Toronto Cyclists Union, celebrated it's launch yesterday at CultureLink's brand new facility at Dundas and Bloor. The ...