SHANGHAI — Despite dramatic decreases in the number of cyclists in Chinese cities over the past 15 to 20 years, transport of goods and products, informal collection of recycling, deliveries and use of bicycles for retail and selling is still very common. I've uploaded a photo gallery (Flickr set) of some of this activity easily seen in Shanghai. While Shanghai is in many other ways a very modern and advanced city, the continuing use of bicycles for so many purposes seems directly related to the presence of so many people willing (or forced) to ...

Source The Bund in the 1930's SHANGHAI -- Shanghai's waterfront is synonymous with its history. The archetypal image of Old Shanghai is a view of the city's former front door, the storied Bund along the Huangpu River, lined with ostentatious colonial banking and commercial buildings, symbols of Shanghai's bizarre history of foreign control and profiteering. For New Shanghai, you simply have to turn your view across the River to Pudong, where a profusion of skyscrapers have sprouted on what was docks, warehouses and fields only 15 years ago, giving Shanghai as modern a skyline as anywhere. Pudong Skyline from the Bund

This animated map showcases the datum bookends of the excellent publication The Three Cities within Toronto: Income polarization among Toronto's neighbourhoods, 1970—2000 by David Hulchanski from UofT's Centre for Urban and Community Studies (downloadable from their website). Income levels are shown as census tract averages as relative to the average for the Toronto CMA - the light pink is middle income (20% below to 20% above average), with the most interesting change occurring between that and the darker pink representing low income areas (20% to 40% below average). The geographic explosion of ...

The Star today published a cover story (Beyond Density) in their Condos section on the efforts in Mississauga to create a more vibrant and pedestrian-friendly downtown - key among the problems identified has been the large scale of the block patterns in Mississauga - to prove the point the article includes urban form/fabric drawings of 9 cities (one hopes at the same scales) in order to compare the scales of the fabric of the street network. I include the drawings below alphabetically (with Mississauga first). (edit: a friend requested I lay out all the drawings in a grid for easier comparison - I hope you enjoy - click on the above image for a larger version)

Waterfront Toronto has released the 3 competing designs for the public space at Jarvis Slip at the foot of Jarvis Street (Christopher Hume of The Star wrote and videoblogged about them today, and the Globe had an article). PDF files of the competitors' panels and written report submissions have been made available at the Waterfront Toronto site. - but since at least one of the PDF's is 90MB, and there's nowhere else to just see some images from the designs (edit: torontoist posted images on friday) I thought I'd make some available (click on the link below to continue reading if you are viewing from the home page). ---------------------------------------------- Info on the public presentation and exhibition: Public Presentation January 21, 2008 7:00-9:00 p.m. Metro Hall (Rotunda) 55 John Street Exhibition January 21-25, 2008 Metro Hall (Rotunda) 55 John Street, Toronto ----------------------------------------------

Along with its article today about the TRCA's work preserving watersheds in the GTA (Clock is ticking for conservation dream), The Star included a beautiful map of the major watersheds flowing south from the Oak Ridges Moraine through Toronto (click on the image for a larger version). The article describes some of the difficulties the TRCA is having in expanding its protection in the upper reaches of many of the watersheds. The Star poetically continues: "Stripped of political boundaries and roads, the GTA map resembles a vast network ...

The Star included a map of "Greater Toronto's language quilt" in their Ideas section today compiled based on recently released 2006 census data. The map is hidden away on their website in a massive (c. 20MB) pdf file (if you dare, here's the link), so here are some more easily digestible images of the spread's content (click to enlarge). While we love to trumpet Toronto's diversity, it's nice to have some statistical proof to back up our claims. It's pretty fascinating that the second largest language group in the GTA (by mother ...

Photo: St. Thomas St, Yorkville A second construction hoarding was erected on St. Thomas St south of Bloor recently, across the street from an existing hoarding (which has since been taken down). For a short time, the two facing hoardings protecting the sidewalks appeared to resemble a street lined with arcades, in its small spatial scale not unlike many you will see in southeast Asia, such as this one in Singapore. Photo: Street/lane in Singapore This small scale of space ...

The TWRC will announce the winner of the Lower Don Lands competition tonight at their event at the Royal Ontario Museum entitled "Leading With Landscape". For more information on the submissions to the competition see the Spacing Wire post or the TWRC site. The event tonight includes a "presentation and panel discussion with the internationally recognized landscape architects at the forefront of the transformation of Toronto's waterfront", including James Corner (of Field Operations), Adriaan Geuze (of West 8), Greg Smallenberg (of Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg) and Michael Van Valkenburgh (of ...

The designs for the Lower Don Lands from the 4 shortlisted teams in the "Innovative Design Competition for the Lower Don Lands" being run by the TWRC were released today in conjunction with an exhibition (including lovely models) at BCE Place. The Exhibition Launch and Public Forum is on Monday April 16 from 6-9 pm at the Allan Lambert Galleria in BCE Place (181 Bay Street). PDF's of the full display panels are available from the TWRC website. ---------------------------------------------------------- STOSS INC./Brown + Storey Architects/ZAS Architect...