I normally have a lot of time for the Toronto Environmental Alliance, but the heat this week must have wiped out the organization’s institutional memory. How else to explain the perplexing and conspicuous omissions on TEA’s mayoral candidate environmental report card [PDF], released yesterday. For those who missed the evening news, Joe Pantalone comes out with solid grades, while George Smitherman gets frowny-cons and a rather catty put down (“needs to apply himself”) in the comment section. A little background on both is definitely in order: Pantalone, it’s true, has wrapped himself in the tree advocacy role for years. Whether this title has actually led to more trees being planted in Toronto is an untested proposition – municipalities plant constantly – and he certainly didn’t do much to ameliorate the plight of the thousands of pencil-neck trees that continue to die miserable deaths on our sidewalks. TEA gives him a smiley face on the 70% diversion goal question, but neglects to note that council has missed this target, as well as David Miller’s 2010 deadline, by a wide margin (residential diversion is at 46%, up from 40% in 2005). Pantalone was deputy mayor the whole time. Should he not be held to account for that failure?

The Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) has published a list of key policy priorities it hopes Toronto's mayoral candidates will endorse. Noting that Rocco Rossi's denouncement of Transit City and bike lanes on arterials has been the only discussion on environmental issues to date, TEA executive director, Dr Franz Hartmann called on candidates to put a focus on the environment. The group listed six priorities as essential to continuing the push towards a cleaner and healthier city. Those priorities are: -       Build Transit City and fund it -       Achieve 70% waste diversion by 2012 -       Buy and support locally produced green products -       Build transportation infrastructure everyone can use -       Implement the city's sustainable energy strategy -       Provide tool to prevent pollution The emphasis of the priorities is to build on past initiatives and to ensure continuity of what the group calls "ten years of environmental success". Beyond the importance of these priorities to personal and communal well-being, TEA contends that the issues are also essential to continuing Toronto's leadership role on the environment. The city's pesticide bylaw, which helped lead to the province wide ban, and its pollution disclosure bylaws regarding the presence of toxic substances, were cited as examples of progressive action now being studied elsewhere. "Because Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, what happens here has a big impact on the rest of the county" said Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director of the Candian Environmental Law Association. "That's why so many prominent environmental groups endorsed these priorities. We want to send a clear signal to all Mayoralty candidates that these priorities matter and that the next Mayor must adopt them."

Spacing recently received complaints of TTC vehicles idling for long periods of time in the bus loop of Wellesley station. Most irksome about the incident is that the employee inside the idling vehicle was, go figure, busy taking a nap. Besides the annoyance of watching paid public employees brazenly sleeping on the job, this incident underscores the complexities of enforcing the City's anti-idling bylaw and the intricacies of which vehicles are excepted. While Toronto's 1998 anti-idling bylaw does make some exceptions for TTC vehicles, it stops far short of giving the commission a free pass. The text of the bylaw states that TTC vehicles are allowed to idle in excess of the normally allowed three minutes only while loading or unloading passengers or during "stopovers" -- periods of no longer than 15 minutes which occur at transit terminals and are for the purpose of allowing adjustment to service schedules. The bylaw explicitly states that the stopover exception does not apply when "idling is substantially for the convenience of the operator of the vehicle." Based on this, we can definitely say that the TTC employee caught sleeping at Wellesley was guilty of breaking the bylaw.

The Clean Train Coalition is being honoured with the 2009 Bob Hunter "Damn Fine Activist" Award, given out by the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA). This is the first time the yearly award has been given to a group as opposed to an individual. "The Clean Train Coalition owes its success to the thousands of Toronto residents who", according to co-chair Carina Cojeen, "have worked together for a better city." Founded to represent the Georgetown South rail corridor, the Coalition has been working to persuade both ...

Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent September 30 - October 3 in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is sharing some of the lessons he learned there and reflecting on their implications on public space, livability, and sustainability in cities. The first session I attended at the OPPI / CIP conference was called LEED-ing by Design. The purpose of this workshop was to educate planners about Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Neighbourhood Development (LEED ND), which, according to the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), aims to “integrate the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design.” Knowing a bit about LEED Building certification (as well as some of its critiques), I was curious to see what design elements would apply at the neighbourhood scale.

"Every time you do something in the city, don't just do it, do it beautifully." A seemingly simple statement made by Joe Berridge at IPAC's recent Cities and Public Policy Conference, speaks volumes about how we see planning and urban design policy making in Toronto.  It summarized much of the talk during the two days and over 40 speakers, who included politicians, academics and management.  A common thread of the speakers was the need for us to change the way we think about cities and urban design. The conference opened with Mayor David Miller and Toronto's role in Canada and among other global cities.  He spoke about Toronto being a city that people choose to live in because of its diversity, culture and economic opportunities.  While admitting he did not have the answer, he urged the delegates to think about how cities can sustain themselves in a changing political context, a relevant issue for Toronto, now that Mayor Miller's time in Office is ending. Eva Ligeti, Executive Director of Clean Air Partnership stated, "one of the key things that is holding us back is our culture of entitlement," and an overall thinking that "whatever we have now, cannot be changed."  She references Malcolm Gladwell's ideas in The Tipping Point and "the magic moment when ideas transcend and social behaviours cross thresholds, tip and spread like wild fire, whereupon institutions undergo fundamental change."  Ligeti gives the successful example of the five-cent a bag bylaw, which the City of Toronto recently implemented.  A very simple change that has shown people things can be done on a small scale and now stores all over Ontario are doing the same.  As Ligeti says, "a small item, but it worked."

What would our city look like in a world that had gone beyond fossil fuels? It's an important question, for if we can't paint a picture of the future we want we're not likely to get it. Oddly enough, it's not a question that many people have tried to answer. Most of the thinking on alternative energy has focused on the cool technology, rather than the urban spaces it would inhabit or the social relations that would underpin it. The debate on public space, on the other hand, has largely ignored where our energy ...

Playter Gardens sits at the northeastern end of the Prince Edward Viaduct, a stamp-sized park bordering Cambridge Avenue and Danforth.  Overgrown and untended, crack-pipes are often found littered around the park.  Only one flower garden still remains to back up Playter's namesake.  Instead, high grasses and dead branches lie in the dense shadow of dangerously leaning trees. Although abandoned by most of the neighbourhood, not all has been lost. Transplanted would better describe the evolution occurring at northwestern edge of Danforth Ave. As Playter Gardens has declined over the last two years, small gardens have been popping up along Cambridge Ave., plots that have been rapidly expanding.  A variety of plants, vegetables and even trees are now growing in the formerly unused grass beds that line the street. I caught up with Chris, a Cambridge Ave. resident and the driving force behind these guerrilla plantings, who explained that his inspiration for these gardens wasn't just aesthetics.  After being fed up with cars continually running over the grass across the street from his house as they cut the turn into their apartment garage a little too close, Chris decided to take matters into his own hands and created what would be the first of many Cambridge Gardens.

TTC workers were out watering the new green roof on top of Eglinton West subway station yesterday morning.  The 9,000 square-foot garden is planted almost entirely of sedums, looking like either a carpet of Hs or (appropriately) train tracks.  Although originally criticized by some as "an expensive frill" one year ago, Terry McGlade pointed out in a recent interview that whether or not the new roof provides a noticeable change in the ambient temperature of the subway platform (which is open at the northern end), the insulation provided by the plants ...

Biking along the Eglinton bridge over the Humber, I spotted a tiny little garden on the eastern bank of the river just north of the bridge.  The garden is almost entirely concealed and can only be spotted from several spots along the northern sidewalk of the bridge just west of Scarlett. The outline of the garden and its irrigation mounds can just barely be made out on Google Maps. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be startlingly well-kept and well-tended, growing a variety of plants protected by an elaborately built fence built out of branches and wire.  There was even a small locked gate facing the river, with a thin dirt path leading to large flat stones ideally placed along the bank of the Humber for collecting water. I spent a bit of time trying to research this garden and found that it was featured in a Jane's Walk, but that the gardener is an "anonymous newcomer."  The property is technically owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, but my bet is that the garden is either entirely off their radar or they are simply turning their heads to allow the gardener(s) to work.