You could call me a yuppie. I live in a concrete box downtown. I work as a young professional at a prominent downtown non-profit. In the months when I can actually feel my face, I bike five kilometres to work every day. And I'm damn proud of the lifestyle. Well, otherwise than the utter lack of community at CityPlace, the setting for my concrete box. I have lived in CityPlace (I can hear the mounting exasperation already) for almost two years now. I enjoy the downtown vibe, the access to ...

Here we go, the last weekend before the election on Monday. And it's all up in the air, so to speak. Two frontrunners and trailing Joe, alone in his vision for Toronto. Here's the round-up of what Spacing Votes has been talking about for the past week. (Oh, and we'll see you at the polls on Monday, right?) • The TTC is an undeniable service that most Torontonians use, some quotidianly. And it's the future of the TTC that Sandy Wu investigates, gleaning the highlights/lowlights from each of the candidate's transit platforms. All holding onto separate notions for how the TTC should be run, each candidate clearly offers their priorities — if it be Transit City (Pantalone), more subways, less streetcars (Ford), or extended subway lines (Smitherman). In fact, the candidate's transit platforms are strong barometers for their holistic platforms. A nice indicator, if you will. • As we have highlighted before, this election has turned somewhat meta. Introspection has turned on the newsgathers — that would be the media — and how they bolstered the support of essentially five frontrunners from Day 1. But as newsrooms shrink and news dissemination grows, how are topics like mayoral races affected? Who gets the headlines and why? What and who is deemed most newsworthy in a race of dozens of candidates? And the deeper, more introspective question: Does the media even affect the electorate's ultimate choice? Spacing's Nabeel Ahmed investigates during a time when blogs are growing and newspaper readership numbers are heading south.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • First up, John Lorinc looks towards Rob Ford and his possible governance tactics, if elected mayor, of course. Good governance is a bit of a sore point for many Torontonians and Ford at the helm with his "muddled headed ideas" might not serve for the better. But there is a saving grace. As chief planner Paul Bedford recently opined, the changing of the guard at City Hall can serve well for a constructive debate surrounding the city's governance. Fingers crossed. • Unlike governance, there has been chatter around cycling in this mayoral race. A good deal, argues Mike Radoslav in analyzing each of the candidate's cycling platforms. Who's promising what? Who's promising to tear down what? And how has Ford changed his original thoughts on biking in the city with his now-infamous "swimming with the sharks" video. I know you're curious, so here you go. • Time to self-reflect: How has the media fared in this election, has the media put Ford into place and then tore him down, and where are the, you know, real issues (see: governance) in the headlines? Some of the topics brought up by a panel of seasoned journalists, and then somewhat defended after the audience had a lot to say in an election panel earlier this week.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • The Ford-as-mayor reality is starting to take effect. After two polls came in showing Ford pulling far ahead — Nanos poll has Ford at 45.8%, Angus-Reid poll reads: 39% — the media is taking note, mainly through unflattering editorials and columns. But to what point did the media get Ford to his way-far-in-the-lead position? Spacing's Nabeel Ahmed takes a look at Ford's relation with the media from his uneventful beginnings through the pot charges, soccer coach days and poor-quality YouTube videos to today. • And time again for another CP24 debate. Unlike the last couple progressive, and dare I say useful debates, this one returned to the classic argumentative clashing. With the trailing candidates also taking note of the polls, they each took shots at Ford, his campaign promises and past indiscretions. And through the yelling, there was some sobering comedy in the fact that there is still a huge number of undecided voters still looming. A whopping 25% are still on the fringe. Then again, only 41% of the electorate came out for the last municipal election in 2006. • John Lorinc looks at a little bit of reoccurring election history. Going back to the 2003 race, Lorinc ties together the similarities between the outgoing mayor and the current frontrunner. One way to stop Ford's non-gravy train, Lorinc opines, is for one of the candidates to call it quits. This possibly being Joe Pantalone. In Pantalone's defence, Andrea Addario, David Miller’s communications director in the 2003 mayoral campaign, makes a case for why Pantalone needs to stay — and continue to gain steam.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • One option for added revenue for the TTC is selling air rights. It's an option that some are eager about (Rocco Rossi, Sarah Thomson and Rob Ford) and some not so much. Looking to Hong Kong's transit system as an example, Sandy Wu looks into the feasibility of such a plan and what it would mean to the TTC, and the city at large. And the T-Dot wouldn't be the first Canadian city to table the idea — both Vancouver and Ottawa are curious, too. • Sarah Thomson launched a thorough bike plan last week. A plan — Bike City — that is be lauded by many, and being railed against mainly by drivers. (What else is new?) Spacing sat down with Thomson to discuss her proposed Bike City and flesh out what hard action will be taken. With main concentration downtown where the roads are smaller (and unsafer), the mayoral frontrunner proposes physically separated bike paths on major downtown corridors. It's a progressive plan that Thomson says fits a progressive city.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • Now that it's post-Labour Day and Torontonians are back from cottage country, the real race can begin. And last night, dare I say it, it did. The first debate of the three-part series, Toronto Debates 2010, went smoothly last night with the candidates chopping up Toronto's economic future. With little bickering, only a couple of barbs thrown (mainly from Smitherman and Ford) and an actual consensus between the five frontrunners, maybe we've hit a turning point. At least for the way the candidates approach debates anyway. • Rob Ford released that long-anticipated transit platform of his. And he did so via YouTube, of course. A place he's been having a lot of fun with in the past. But this time wasn't the jocular, it was, er, serious, I guess. Ford announced, mainly by reading off his notes at a slow pace, that his $4 billion transportation plan is sensible and smart. By cutting back on streetcars and adding subways, Ford noted that this won't bring on the gravy train. Meaning no extra taxes or road tolls. He plans to (somehow) reallocate the Transit City funding from the province and put it toward his plan -- as if he could do that. He also noted that he would ambiguously and without any hard action, acquire $1 billion in private funding. As if that's an easy task as well.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • It's been a race in which the issues are pushed to the wayside and bickering and past indiscretions reign supreme. As election day (October 25) comes into eyesight, most of the electorate is waiting for post-Labour Day to engage. But as Mike Radoslav writes, the important issues (substance) is being lost to Ford's history of substance abuse inter alia (scandal). So when are we going to start demanding discussion over, you know, some key issues in lieu of attention-grabbing headlines of past and present faux pas? October 25 isn't that far away, Toronto. • If anyone knows anything about Sarah Thomson's campaign, it's her relentless push for an expanded subway system. It's basically mayoral race common knowledge. In our continuing series to look at each candidate's platform on transit, we put the spotlight on Thomson's robust expansion project. She's in favour of subway expansion over light rail transit, and even she admits that's going to come with a hefty price tag. But she notes there are options including road tolls, open payment systems and private sector partners for footing the bill.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • In an exclusive interview with Spacing, George Smitherman sat down to discuss cycling. (Ford’s team has declined to interview at present time on transit in general, until they announce their transportation platform). In the interview, Smitherman notes that cycling is rightfully a hot topic on the campaign trail as Toronto continues to be “more challenging to get around.” Smitherman didn’t note any concrete plans for cyclists, but implied that transportation (and by virtue, bike lanes) needs to be thought about deeply before action is taken. For Smitherman, it’s a “pursuit of quality over quantity.” • It’s been a busy week for Rob Ford. His name has littered headlines and even trended for the majority of yesterday on Twitter. Last weekend, before the now-notorious comment on immigration in Toronto, a Ford video went viral. Captured in 2007 in city hall, Ford opined on bike lanes in the city. His take: “What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you’re going to get bitten.” He then went on to say that Toronto’s streets aren’t for bikes, they’re for motor vehicles. And in the case of a cyclist casualty, Ford remarked: “It’s their own faults at the end of the day.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • In our continuing look at each candidate's take on transit, we turn the glaring spotlight on Rocco Rossi. He's the man championing the expensive, yet possibly quite convenient Presto cards. They are the same cards that are piloting with GO Transit and other regional transit operations. And Rossi is pushing hard for the smartcards, which, he argues, will reduce fraud and save the TTC millions in revenue collection savings. • The bike vs. cars debate continues onward. As the Jarvis Street bike lanes are now officially open to cyclists, mayoral candidates are still voicing their distaste for the street's transformation. This would namely be Rocco Rossi and George Smitherman. The latter who told Spacing Votes: "I kind of regret how the whole thing has played out" concerning the bike lanes. If Rossi is elected mayor, he has vowed that he will strip the freshly-laid bike lane paint and change things back to as they were.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing Votes — our dedicated 2010 election blog — will feature regular posts form our contributors that examine campaign promises and platforms that focus on Toronto’s urban landscape. Here’s our round-up of posts from the last seven days. • So, John Tory is officially out. Even though he was never officially in. With much discussion buzzing around Tory and if he would throw is hat in the ring was garnering much attention on Twitter and social media networks. So much so that Tory officially announced last night that he definitively wasn't running in the upcoming mayoral race. Finally, something that's official in this race. • After recently completing his walk across Hogtown, George Smitherman did a lot of talking. As Smitherman is a proponent of walking and cycling culture in Toronto, Marc Acton Filion takes a closer look at Smitherman's approach to public parks. Filion argues that for parks to be legitimately taken into consideration for revitalization, however, Toronto is going to have to cut off some cars in doing so. And a good place to start is with showing some love to Queen's Park.