Weird Wednesdays on Urban Planet takes a look at obscure, absurd, and curious things about cities around the world.

It's been in international headlines throughout the past few weeks over false reports that it will be changing its name, but this tiny Austrian hamlet has been "Fucking" (or close to it) since the Dark Ages.

Nestled right near the Austrian-German border, Fucking is home to just over 100 residents. It's credited as being named after  a Bavarian noble named Focko who lived in the area during the 6th century (-ing being an old Germanic suffix meaning "people of"). The first documentation of the settlement was in 1070, when it was called Vucchingen. The next mention, two decades later, was of the local lord, Adalpertus de Fucingin. The name evolved to Fukching in 1303, then Fugkhing in 1532, with the current spelling taking over in the 18th century.

The community got its first international attention during World War II as British and American soldiers had their pictures taken beside the four traffic signs, which simply read "Fucking." British tourists have become very popular in last half century and are notorius for taking lewd photographs and even stealing the signs. The community recently replaced the signs with welded steel and concrete ones to deter theft. While the taxpayers weren't happy with constantly replacing the old (costing €300 each), it did make for some unintentionally funny quotes from local officials:

"We will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed. It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke? It is puerile."

However, it seems the community does also embrace its English meaning. Starting in 2008, Fucking has been home to the Festival of the Fuck Bands, a gathering of similarly-named bands from all over the world.

photo by gemskiii

For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter.  Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca

Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex's personal blog on architecture

In my roundup of shows at the Contact festival, I somehow missed the latest exhibition by Michael Awad at Nicholas Metivier. An architect and artist, Awad has been at work for years on his Entire City Project - an encyclopedic take on Toronto's streets, public buildings and infrastructure. His show closes Saturday, May 19.

There's another Awad event of interest on Friday: Photo + Design, a symposium at the Design Exchange that brings together Awad with three other notable photographers, Peter MacCallum, Montreal's Marc Cramer and Vancouver's Nic Lehoux, and the wonderful Toronto-New York architecture photographer Ben Rahn. They'll talk about their work and share "their unique perspectives on architecture and design."

Don't miss it, or Awad's show. Using a digital camera apparatus he's customized himself - bridging still and video technology - Awad captures long, continuous views of places (Queen Street West, Pearson Airport) and buildings (the Eaton Centre, the Art Gallery of Ontario) as he walks or drives through them. The resulting works are  massive arrays of visual information that condense the city and its inhabitants into dense mosaics.

I wrote about these works for the Globe and Mail in 2005, and some of them were on show at the AGO in 2006. Since then he's only broadened his scope, with major public art commissions including one, in collaboration with David Rokeby, at the office tower Telus House at the foot of York St. in downtown Toronto. Video here.

As for the Entire City Works, recent subjects include the ring road around Milan, railroad yards, and a continuing assembly of thousands of ordinary Torontonians, captured by his camera's capacious eye as they ride escalators. Those escalator shots, in particular,  are amazing, agglomerative portraits of humanity.

These tiny reproductions don't do justice to the large-format prints. Do go see them.

WHAT: Spacing release party for Summer 2012 issue
WHEN: Tuesday, May 29th, 7:30-midnight
WHERE: Evergreen Brick Works, BMO Atrium
COST: free! (mag costs $5  ///  discount subscriptions at the door)
RSVP: Check out the event listing on Facebook or email us

What would Toronto look like if a disaster hit our city? What would an earthquake do to our buildings? Are tornadoes a part of our future? What about an extended fuel shortage or a drought in the farmlands of Ontario? And what would happen if the CN Tower fell over? The Americans wouldn't invade us for our water — would they?

In Spacing's most cynical and apocalyptic issue ever, our contributors examine all the big, bad scary things that could rock the foundation of Toronto. And what better place to have it than along the edges of the Don River at the Evergreen Brick Works, one of the many places hit hard by floods during Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

Come out to our release party on Tuesday May 29th at the Evergreen Brick Works. We will have prizes to be won in our raffle (Patagonia stuff, movie passes, bike accessories, etc), a handful of disaster themed activities, and a few new merchandise items for sale.

Magazines will arrive in subscribers' mailboxes during the last week of May and into the first week of June. You'll be able to pick up a copy on newsstands starting June 5th.

cover illustration by Steve Murray

If one follows the logic of this week’s casino rhetoric to its logical conclusion, it seems probable that the ballot question in 2014 will be this: Should Toronto have a casino on the waterfront?

I’d put money on it.

The brothers Ford desperately want the 2014 election to be about that most reliable of motherhood issues, subways. But finance minister Dwight (“Golden Mile”) Duncan and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chairman Paul Godfrey may have unleashed a willing-host process that could dramatically alter the race – in effect, setting in motion a dynamic that could favour a challenger who figures out how to conflate a referendum on casinos with a referendum on the incumbent.

Consider the emerging architecture of this issue: The province is determined to build a casino in the Greater Toronto. But as Duncan told The Globe and Mail in April, “We will work with those who want to work with us. We certainly won’t impose anything on anybody [italics added].”

While Godfrey has warned that the OLGC would choose Mississauga or some other exotic suburban locale if Toronto didn’t get its act together quickly, one casino official who appeared at executive committee Monday quickly put the lie to that particular threat. As MGM Grand and Gerry Schwartz and all the other, uh, gamers have said in no uncertain terms, a Toronto waterfront site is the proverbial jackpot.

In other words, the deep-pocketed suitors are saying to the province, don’t fold just yet.

The executive committee Monday sent the casino file off to staff for a major bureaucratic work-up, but the political reality is that Adam Vaughan has already made it abundantly clear that council must base its ultimate decision on the results of a referendum.

While Ford smacked his lips and made yummy noises during the casino flacks’ presentations this week, and has also claimed previously that such projects create economic activity, he’s on record as saying that he believes the decision should be subject to a referendum (indeed, he wants both casinos and subways on the ballot).

The casino proposal, I’d say, is nothing short of manna from heaven for the centre-left, which may be why Ford allies like Michael Thompson and Giorgio Mammoliti have half-heartedly shilled for a mid-term plebiscite.

Until now, the centre-left was facing the surprisingly unhappy prospect of waging a battle against the ultimate Teflon candidate. Nothing seems to stick to Ford, for reasons that surpass understanding, and he’s still oddly credible to voters who feel that the city spends too much and needs more subways. And, his administration stared down the public service unions, which, I suspect, quietly gladdens the hearts of even some of those who publicly profess to despise the man.

In the pre-casino calculus, Ford gets to wage a culture war. He would have little difficulty painting an elitist, downtown box around Vaughan. And he could just as readily depict Shelley Carroll as a suburban turncoat – a despicable David Miller accomplice who really hasn’t got the jam to live north of the 401.

But with the casino on the table, everything changes. Suddenly, the centre-left has all the key ingredients to paint the mayor into a corner: corporate villains (the casino operators, with their smooth promises and endless supply of euphemisms), political villains (the Liberals, marinating in their own hypocrisy), backroom deals, and the always-reliable invocation of Toronto’s long lost goodness – a message that resonates as loudly in central Etobicoke as it does in Moore Park.

Vaughan has cited the 1997 casino referendum as evidence of the public’s sentiment – more than 70% of the voters rejected the idea – and claims those results still hold. I don’t agree: Toronto is not the same place it was 15 years ago, so another vote is in order. But I think he knows in his gut that the prospect of a multi-billion, den of iniquity by the lake gets old progressive conservative Toronto up on its hind legs and barking. Nor is the opposition to a casino easily dismissed as a “downtown” phenomenon. That kind of framing just won’t make sense.

All that said, it seems to me that an anti-casino challenger needs to move beyond the easy and familiar objections. Take the addiction issue: I understand that gambling addiction is real and calamitous to those involved. But there are lots of Torontonians who have visited Casino Rama, played local slots or dropped some cash on the tables during a business convention in Vegas, and have done so without ruining their lives. What’s more, alcoholism is also a terrible addiction, but we don’t genuflect about bars, dolled up LCBO outlets and other purveyors of the drink.

Then there’s the spectre of previous waterfront boondoggles, such as Skydome (another Liberal extravaganza). Yes, provincial taxpayers got hosed, twice. Yes, a bunch of business people made off like bandits. But I’d venture to say that most Torontonians circa 2012 are glad that the Skydome (a) exists; and (b) is where it is. So that analogy isn’t persuasive.

Mainly, it will be incumbent on the anti-casino candidate to be for something else: propositional politics, of the sort that Jack Layton used to practice. Here, the lesson of David Miller and the 2003 island airport bridge controversy is instructive. By vigorously demonizing Robert Deluce and his plan to fly turboprops out of the island, Miller unwittingly gave Porter more free advertising than he could ever have paid for. And while the airport has made the island noisier, it hasn't stopped thousands of people from becoming new lakeside condo owners.

So if Vaughan (or another centre-left challenger) manages to steer council towards a 2014 casino referendum, as seems increasingly likely, he’s got to make damn sure his rhetoric – which has a tendency to list heavily in the direction of sanctimoniousness – doesn’t whet the appetites of all those not-so-good Torontonians who may be less than alarmed by the prospect of a mega-casino.

The right answer, I suspect, will involve painting the mayor as someone willing to gamble the future of the city and its waterfront. After all, what could be a surer strategy than an emotional appeal to the risk-averse NIMBY in all of us?

TRANSIT
• The downtown relief line already exists: Markham councillor [Globe & Mail]

REAL ESTATE & DEVELOPMENT
• Toronto office market poised for new boom [National Post]
• Toronto lifts Canadian homes sales, Vancouver drags [Reuters]
• Dozens of Beach-area residents rally against planned condo [National Post]

CASINO
• Toronto casino debate to resume in the fall [CBC]
• Tanenbaum to make bid for Toronto casino [Globe & Mail]

G20
• Byron Sonne walks free, but the G20 forever changed his life [The Star]
• Judge acquits G20 activist Byron Sonne of bomb-making charges [Globe & Mail]
• Sonnce case another black eye for G20 [The Sun]
• Byron Sonne not guilty on charges he plotted to attack 2010 G20 summit in Toronto [National Post]

OTHER NEWS
• Jewish restaurant United Bakers celebrates 100 years; still family-run [National Post]
• Charities, non-profits protest Toronto’s new garbage pickup fees [The Star]

In an ongoing series for Spacing, Toronto-based writer Julie Baldassi delves into Hamilton's built heritage conversation, its key players, and important buildings.

Some buildings have been salvaged, but many barely stand, crumbled beyond the point of repair, with their broken windows and unkempt facades noticeably sticking out. Increasingly, the debates over the future of Hamilton's heritage buildings have come to represent a changing landscape of political interests.

Much like other post-industrial cities in the American Rust Belt, Hamilton has been traversing a period of revitalization in its downtown core. As the largely suburban city has begun to take note of its new-found urban potential, there is an ongoing debate over what to do with the abundance of vacant old buildings downtown.

In Toronto, it’s understood that the conversation about public transit represents something more than just the minutiae of urban planning — it stands on the back of ideological clashes between suburban and urban voters. Similarly, Hamilton's built heritage debate represents a political chasm – between those who value the buildings as culture worth preserving, and those who just want to see downtown cleaned up, with or without these relics of Hamilton's heritage intact.

Let's be clear about something: Hamilton is not Toronto. Nor is it a suburb of the GTA — it’s the ninth-largest city in Canada with over half a million citizens. In 2012, the core continues to see a flurry of construction, with as many as eight construction cranes up — which is good news, since the Real Estate Investment Network of Canada voted Hamilton the best place to invest in the country over the next five years. Hamilton has a livable, vibrant urban core which is distinct from its suburban periphery. And, over the past decade, the urban core has been inhabited by a new generation of creative, entrepreneurial Hamiltonians who have raised the profile of their local arts community and thriving businesses. These facts are worth stating — not to brag or invite flattering comparisons to grander cities or boroughs — but to illustrate the point that Hamilton is its own city with its own unique set of growing pains and reasons for civic pride.

Once upon a time in the 1950s, downtown Hamilton was a prosperous shopping centre. But as Hamiltonians began moving out to the suburbs filled with big box plazas, the city’s downtown deteriorated as it lost its purpose as The Shopping Destination. In decades that succeeded, the city made various efforts to “modernize” the core. One such project, the Jackson Square complex, cleared several blocks of existing 19th century pedestrian-friendly infrastructure for an amalgamated superblock of inward-facing malls and underground parking. Today, the project is still widely criticized for its design; award-winning Canadian architect Bruce Kuwabara has called it “anti-urban.” The project, and others like it, mistakenly brought a suburban ethos to an urban centre, effectively thwarting the core's relevancy — why go downtown to go shopping or see a movie when you can go do both those things at identical locations in the suburbs? And, if a core stops being a safe, liveable, cultured place, why go at all?

Today, growth downtown is happening in a different way than the top-down style of the 70s. It's slow-burning, building by building. But increasingly, beautiful, culturally-relevant buildings are being cleared to make room for newer structures, a process that is often cheaper than renovation costs.“Demolition by neglect is a concept that seems to prevail in Hamilton,” a local blog called The Hamiltonian wrote in 2010, as plans were announced to take down the 1913-built Century Theatre, originally called the Lyric. First built to host vaudeville acts including the Marx Brothers, the Lyric became the Century movie theatre in 1940 when it was remodelled with an Art Deco interior style. The Heritage Canada Foundation has listed the Century Theatre as one of the country's worst losses, indicating on their website that, “after years of not enforcing its own property standards bylaws, the City declared the heritage designated façade unsafe, allowing the owner to demolish it.” As built-heritage advocates angrily pointed out at the time, the building's roof had been partially collapsed more than a decade prior and, without any repairs being made (or enforced by city bylaws), the roof gradually collapsed the floors beneath in an increasingly hopeless state of deterioration. Demolition of the Century was to make room for a 59-floor condo at the site, but construction has yet to begin on the vacant lot.

Consider again Hamilton's present situation: growth — an increased demand for investment in real estate in the core, and a community of artists who have helped bring the downtown neighbourhood to where it is today. Unsurprisingly however, the city wants to attract investors, and investors want a bargain – which is often at odds with preserving the cultural integrity of heritage buildings. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the arts community feel a sense of ownership over the neighbourhood they worked hard to revive. And, coupled with their economic relevancy to the area, several prominent members of the arts community have gained political traction too. When artist and activist Matt Jelly ran for downtown city councillor, a big part of his platform involved protecting built heritage and ensuring that vacant buildings weren't neglected to the point of disrepair.

Debates over the preservation or destruction of heritage buildings are invariably polarized, because physically speaking, neither option allows for much compromise: either the building stays up or is taken down. In a recent Cities Centre Lecture Series, John Ralston Saul and Mark Kingwell spoke in “heated agreement” about the relevancy of art and culture for its own sake, and not for the sake of any utilitarian (read: economic) advantage. Ralston Saul said, “The culture of a city works when it looks and feels and functions like itself; like us. If it doesn't, then it isn't culture — it's imitative, it's a reverberation.” Although it was a Toronto-centric discussion, he might as well have been defending Hamilton's preservationists against any number of proposals to tear down an old building and start from scratch. It begs the question — with so many beautiful, old, distinctly Hamilton buildings available to be re-purposed, why would anyone want to white-wash the cityscape with generically 2012 condo towers?

At the same talk, Kingwell proposed a “paradox of culture” which again, speaks well to Hamilton's situation. “How do you get people to change what they care about,” he asked rhetorically, “when they already only care about something else?” In other words, how can Hamilton's built heritage advocates convince investors to preserve culture, if what they value is only based on utility and money? The argument for saving built heritage evaluates the decision based on a system of ethics which weighs aesthetic, cultural, and historical (often nostalgic) considerations as ends in themselves. And because investors and construction companies evaluate their business decisions based on the almighty dollar, the political tension related to heritage buildings shows little signs of easing up.

photo by Brian Kowalewicz and Alex Kingsmill

Urban Planet is a daily roundup of  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.

From the makers of Walk Score and just in time for "Bike to Work Week" comes Bike Score - the online tool for assessing neighbourhood bikeability. The tool uses data including the locations of bicycle infrastructure, amenities and hills. And Canadian cities are featured too!

With files from the Calgary Herald and Forbes

Image from Bike Score

For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter.  Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist
Jerry Waese.

In the final video for our series with famous Toronto Historian Bruce Bell around Old Town Toronto we visited the St. James Cathedral.  The church was initially established in 1797 but rebuilt in 1839 after being burnt down by a fire. As a popular heritage site, often visited by the Queen and Royal Family when in Toronto, the Cathedral Church of St. James is both a parish church ministering to the historic St. Lawrence neighbourhood and a cathedral.

TRANSIT
• GO to offer refunds in fall if train more than 15 minutes late, but… [The Star]

CASINO
• Province’s casino threat hollow, MGM executive suggests [The Star]
• Exhibition Place emerges as favoured bet for Toronto casino [Globe & Mail]
• MGM wants casino on Toronto’s waterfront [National Post]
• Onex chief game to invest in proposed Toronto casino scheme [Globe & Mail]
• Toronto casino decision delayed to the fall [Toronto Sun]

G20
• Toronto police, OPP called the shots on G20 Response, report says [Globe & Mail]
• Report exonerates RCMP for actions luring violence-marred G20 summit [National Post]

OTHER NEWS
• How to make art? This academy thinks today’s schools have it all wrong [OpenFile]
• Innovation helps Royal Conservatory hit all the right notes [Globe & Mail]
• Peter Kuitenbrouwer: No Joy for forgotten Toronto landmark [National Post]
• PanAm velodrome: Boon or bust for Milton? [The Star]

Urban Planet is a daily roundup of  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.

Did you ride your bike to school as a kid? According to this piece on NPR, back in 1969 nearly half of children got to school on foot or by bike. Today, that figure is closer to 13%. Reporter David Darlington talks about what has changed - from concerns about liability to sprawling neighbourhood design to a changing understanding of bikes as recreation rather than transportation.

Image from sfbike

For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter.  Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca

In  Saturday’s Globe and Mail, I wrote about a Markham councillor – a conservative, no less – who has a radically sensible notion: That Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission should actually work together to create an integrated transit network. Imagine that: cooperation in the public sector. What a concept!

In particular, Jim Jones has been talking up a plan to twin the tracks on the GO rail corridors, buy electric trains, and develop a two-tier express/local commuter rail service linked to the TTC’s east-west lines. Building on the anti-diesel movement in the west end, Jones’ scheme not only delivers rapid transit to Scarborough, it also opens up a space to re-cast the debate about the downtown relief line, which, to date, focuses mainly on another subway line.

But before Jones’ untested idea can receive any kind of serious technical and financial scrutiny, the province and the city need to make a concerted effort to coordinate the way Metrolinx and the TTC carry out their long-ranging planning.

The lack of interoperability between GO and the TTC is an old and much commented-upon phenomena rooted in jurisdictional rivalries and the physical constraints of the city’s rail infrastructure. The consequences are writ large on our geography: with a few exceptions – Union Station, Yorkdale, Finch, etc. – the GO network doesn’t connect to the TTC, and the city, for its part, turns its back on the GO stops (e.g., Oriole Station, hidden cleverly under the 401, off Leslie).

The new LRT lines, coupled with Metrolinx’s proviso that the TTC roll out the Presto card across its entire network, begins to break down the pointless psycho-political wall separating the two agencies. The question now is, what else can be done to further reinforce and build on these connections, with the goal of leveraging the opportunities that arise by combining two crucial transportation networks.

Seems to me we’ve arrived at an especially fortuitous moment to be thinking creatively about far-sighted solutions that don’t involve uploading the TTC.

With Metrolinx preparing its long-awaited investment strategy, John Tory is brewing up an advocacy campaign to encourage the McGuinty Liberals to get off their asses and implement the revenue tools needed to fund transit expansion. Metrolinx, moreover, is cooking up Big Move 2.0, a mandated refinement of the agency’s long-range plan. The TTC, in turn, is scrambling to solve the worsening subway crowding crisis. And Waterfront Toronto is trying to figure out how to deliver transit to the soon-to-be-populated West Donlands and East Bayfront.

A good first step: quickly move to improve the linkages at the governance level. Why isn’t TTC chief general manager Andy Byford, for example, an ex-officio member of the Metrolinx board? And given the imminent citizen appointments to the TTC, why shouldn’t Metrolinx have a guaranteed seat on the Commission?

Right now, the lines of communication between the two are hopelessly circuitous, as the March transit war proved. There’s no reason why the two agencies shouldn’t have some kind of institutionalized connection at the governance level. That’s how it works with Waterfront Toronto. Why not with transit?

It also seems logical that the GTA’s major transportation agencies (GO/Metrolinx, TTC, Mississauga Transit, York Region Transit, etc.) establish some kind of permanent secretariat so senior officials have a forum where they can regularly meet and address future planning issues related to the integration of their respective networks.

Transit officials do talk to one another already about operational matters. But if Metrolinx and the province succeed in gaining support for new revenue tools, those communication channels and venues for joint planning will need to become much stronger.

The same thing should happen with land use planning. Metrolinx, to its credit, is actively developing “mobility hub” strategy to intensify around some of the GO stations. The goal: create mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly nodes on lands now dominated by asphalt parking lots.

Many of these are in the 905, obviously, but Metrolinx is working on a couple of potential City of Toronto locations, including Weston and Bloor/Dundas West, both planned stops for the Air-Rail Link on the Georgetown South corridor. Metrolinx and the City have been refining a  planning vision for Dundas-West [PDF] for about two years. A key detail: digging a short pedestrian tunnel linking the eastern end of the Dundas West subway station and the GO platforms, currently accessible by a pair of glorified drain-pipes under a rusty rail overpass.

That planning process, long-overdue, is evidence of increased institutional cooperation, although the money decisions — who’s going to pay for that tunnel? — have yet to be worked out. Less clear, however, is whether the TTC and Metrolinx, the city’s planners, and other agencies (e.g., Infrastructure Ontario) are putting their heads together to find other locations and opportunities to create those kinds of connections. The Waterfront seems like one obvious venue, but there are others.

Markham’s Jim Jones, taking the long view, correctly believes there’s an opportunity to intensify at the proposed local Scarborough stops along his I-METRO-E, each of which intersect with TTC routes and east-west arterials.

Or consider the west end, and #stclairdisaster specifically — intersected, as it is, by two GO rail corridors (Barrie and Georgetown) at Caledonia and Keele. At council last week, a staff report estimated that it could cost at least $30 million, but probably more, to widen the underpass just west of Old Weston Road.

It’s a huge sum. But if we’re going to go to the trouble and expense of re-building that bridge to fix a traffic problem, surely we should thinking about how to leverage that outlay to link the streetcar and the GO service that passes above.

Yes, it’s all very long-range stuff. But if and when Metrolinx’s investment strategy receives political assent, the possibility of establishing such linkages is no longer abstract and impossibly remote. Yet all that potential depends on the province and the city demolishing the silos that have long separated GO and the TTC and replacing them with a formal kind of partnership arrangement, such as the one that characterizes the relationship between Waterfront Toronto and the city.

With tens of billions of dollars and the GTA’s congestion crisis at stake, the region simply can’t afford to have these two systems traveling on separate tracks.

photo by Sean Marshall

WHAT: All of Spacing's heritage-style t-shirt on sale
WHEN: Today until Sunday (May 14-20, 2012)
WHERE: on Spacing's e-store
COST: $22 (usually $30) with promo code and includes shipping

We've been having another stretch of great weather and that's put us in the mood for another t-shirt sale! Each of our town heritage shirts display the coat of arms or corporate seal of former towns and villages that have been absorbed into the city of Toronto.

All week, Spacing is offering a special discount on our Toronto Town heritage t-shirts.  You can pick up on for East York, The Junction, and Etobicoke!

Usually, our t-shirts run for $30 each, but we're slashing prices this week: only $22! The Spacing e-store is the only place this t-shirt is available, so we encourage you to act now.

PROMO CODE: If paying by cheque, enter the code after you've confirm your address (the last checkout stage). If you're paying by credit card/PayPal, enter the promo code during the last step once you've confirmed your info and shipping address on PayPal.
• East York promo code: eastyork2012
• Junction promo code: junction2012
• Etobicoke promo code: etobicoke2012

PRICE: This is just a note that the price will remain at $30 throughout the transaction — the discount will be applied once the promo code is entered during the last step of the transaction — Your total cost before taxes will be $22. PLEASE NOTE: If buying multiple t-shirts you have to make separate purchases because the promo code only works on one item per transaction.

SHIPPING: We will be doing mailings peridically through the week via Canada Post Xpresspost. When your order is shipped, you will receive an automated fulfilment email that will include your tracking number. You can always pick the product up at our office too, just let us know by emailing tshirts@spacing.ca.

TRANSIT
• Past pieces of Toronto: Subway interlining [OpenFile]
• How the Eglinton LRT will transform neighbourhoods [The Star]
• Strobel: For whom the road tolls [The Sun]

REAL ESTATE & DEVELOPMENT
• House price war: Toronto vs. Vancouver [The Star]
• Demand for new housing set to pump market bubble bigger [Globe & Mail]
• Caviar condos set to flood Toronto market [Reuters]
• Gee: The unexpected merits of Toronto’s condo boom [Globe & Mail]
• 5 building blocks of a Toronto casino [National Post]
• As condos rise, pressure on urban parks grow [Globe & Mail]
• With Walnut Studios, condo developers and artists have found a way to live in productive harmony [National Post]

OTHER NEWS
• Narrowing Toronto’s Yonge St. to just two lanes is worth a try [The Star]
• Toronto’s Don River goes wild when flooded for Paddle the Don [The Star]
• Levy: Community support key to park projects [The Sun]

Urban Planet is a daily roundup of  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.

A Friday treat: listen to the sweet sounds of the Copenhagen Philharmonic serenading Danish commuters. (Huffington Post)

Image from Huffington Post

For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter.  Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca

Like we mentioned a few weeks ago, Spacington has developed a bit of a slum. As displayed above, this once thriving neighborhood has become an area of little growth, dirty abandoned buildings, and a limited amount of available work. We get it, this slum isn't nearly as "slummy" as it could be- there is still a strong mix of wealths, mixed use, and utilized transit- but the neighborhood has lost it's drive.

Usually in the game, a no job logo hovering above a building represents the lack of jobs in a commutable distance. Basically, it takes too long for a Sim to get to work, or they can't find work.

The neighborhood shown above is thriving. The area consistently reinventing itself, changing it's buildings, and doubling it's density. The neighborhood shares the same amount of transit and zoning (high density for the most part) as the previous neighborhood but has a healthy growth thriving workforce.

So give us your thoughts, taken from examples or not: How do we reinvent and begin growth in our semi-slum?

Spacington: Want to see previous posts about Spacington? Click on the "Sim City: Spacington" link in the "RELATED" box just below.

Keep up on the action and follow Spacington on Twitter.

The ongoing Contact photography festival across Toronto includes video installations. This one, called Rituals of the Slaves by Toronto filmmaker James Leahy, is made up of Super 8 and 8mm film Leahy took in Toronto between 1988 and 1992. It's part of the It's the end of the world as we know it exhibition at the Toronto School of Art.

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 31st

Spacing magazine presents the CREATIVE MAPPING CONTEST

Do you love maps? Are you an illustrator, graphic designer, or visual storyteller? Spacing wants you to submit your original creative maps inspired by a Canadian city.

To date we have received an amazing assortment of submissions. But we also had a whack-load of requests for late submissions. In the spirit of openness, we've extended the deadline until the end of May.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Thursday, May 31st, 2012

COST: Free!

WHAT MAKES A MAP CREATIVE (see examples at bottom of page)?
The art of map-making has taken tremendous strides in the digital age. In the last decade, there has been an explosion of maps that are not necessarily meant to be used for directions, but instead are considered works of art and inspired imagination. We want you to create an illustrative map that reflects a Canadian city (or a neighbourhood, community) or is inspired by the urban elements that make up a city (examples: waterfront, transit, cycling, walking, graffiti, parks, architecture, laneways/alleys, streets, traffic, taxis, weather, sewers, infrastructure, etc....)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

HOW TO ENTER: You must register to enter. Send us an email and we will provide you with uploading details. EMAIL: creativemapping@spacing.ca

How many maps can I submit?
As many as you like.

When will the winners know that their map is being published?
Spacing will email all winners in the summer to make sure we have the optimal file for printing, as well as make sure your name is spelled correctly. Nothing will be published in Spacing without your permission.

Are there prizes?
Yes (but no cash). Besides all the fame you will receive for being published in Spacing (!?!), there will be a variety of prizes from sponsors and Spacing advertisers. We will announce the prizes available as we get closer to the deadline.  Spacing is assembling a team or jurors from across Canada, including a few Spacing editors. We are trying to get a mix of jurors from different professions (cartographers, architects, graphic designers, illustrators, and Spacing readers). We will publish the jurors' names after the final submission deadline of April 30th.

What if my map is not selected — what happens to it once the contest is over?
Spacing plans to publish the winners' maps as well as a number of honourable mention entries on our web site (we will keep the online versions low-resolution and embed the files into an app so that your work cannot be extracted and distributed without your consent).

On your entry form, you can indicate whether you wish to allow Spacing to hold onto your map(s) so that we can consider using it in future issues.

What if I don't live in Canada?
We won't hold that against you. We just want the maps that you create to be inspired by Canadian cities (since our audience and distribution is exclusively in Canada).

TECHNICAL STUFF

Is there a preferred size to the maps?
There is no limit to the physical size of your map. But please consider Spacing's page dimensions (landscape format) when submitting your maps. Your map doesn't have to be the exact same size as our pages, but you should keep in mind readability of text and other design elements in relation to our dimensions. PAGE SIZE: 10.5-inches in width / 8.125-inches in height; add .25-inch to either side if you wish to see the map "bleed" off the edge of the page.

What type of file can I submit?
Photoshop: If you submit a Photoshop file, please make sure it's saved as an uncompressed JPG, in CMYK, and has a minimum resolution of 300dpi. Make sure the file is "flattened" so that any fonts or effects are not lost when opened on Spacing's computers. Please submit a low-res JPG so that we can compare/contrast with your high-res entry.

Illustrator: If you submit an Illustrator file, please make sure it's saved as a PDF or EPS, and in CMYK. All fonts need to be converted to outlines (mandatory!). It is always safest to "save down" the file to the lowest possible Illustrator version (ie. CS1) in order to make sure there is no corruption of the files once Spacing receives it. With Illustrator files it is always smart to submit a low-res JPG so that Spacing can make sure it has received the file as it is intended to be seen.

Please note that any photo files that are embedded in your Illustrator file must be in CMYK and have a resolution of 300dpi.

InDesign: Spacing prefers not to receive any InDesign files. If you must submit your entry in this format please save it as a PDF and also submit a low-res JPG.

Mixed-Media: Some entrants may choose to create a map with mixed-media that cannot be properly displayed as a scanned image. We ask that you submit it by mail or in person. It must be post-marked or dropped off at Spacing's office no later than April 30, 2012. Please note that we will not return your submission unless you specify your desire to see it returned. Spacing will contact you to make arrangements.

Send it to:
Spacing
720 Bathurst St. #309
Toronto ON, M5S 2R4, Canada

What if my file is huge — can I upload it as Stuffit or Zip?
Yes, if your file size is over 20MB we ask that you place your files into a folder and either Stuff or Zip your files.

How should I name my files?
Please title your files with your name (ie. "matthew-blackett-map.pdf"). It will make us very happy.

Where do I upload my files?
Once you've sent an email to Spacing [ creativemapping@spacing.ca ] to notify us of your interest to enter the contest, Spacing will provide you with FTP details.

CREATIVE MAPPING EXAMPLES: Still not sure what we're looking for? The maps below are good examples:

• MASH-UP MAPS (two separate subjects combined) like this one that was just published in the Winter 2012 issue of Spacing. It imagines if the actual highways of Ontario were subway lines instead.

• NEIGHBOURHOOD MAP, such as this example by Marlena Zuber

• FANTASY TRANSIT MAPS: You can find a wide range of these for any city that already has/wishes they had a subway system. This example of an imagined Ottawa subway system is by Adam Bentley of Spacing Ottawa.

• UNCATEGORIZED MAPS: Below are examples of mapping that are we are seeking for this competition.

by Olly Moss

by Ork posters

Matthew Cusick creates paintings of people using maps.

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist
Jerry Waese.

CITY HALL
• Toronto ordered to double payment to landowner for Dufferin project [The Star]
• Gun retailers still demanding personal info [The Sun]
• Councillors better show up when called for jury duty: Ontario Attorney General [The Sun]
• Shooting their mouths off about Toronto gun ban [The Sun]

REAL ESTATE & DEVELOPMENT
• Mimico waterfront: Another “wall of condos” disaster in the making? [The Star]
• Clustered venues for PanAm Games a win for tourism and traffic [Globe & Mail]
• In Toronto, new condo is a chip off the old block [Globe & Mail]
• Hey Toronto condo owner, why so glum? [Globe & Mail]

OTHER NEWS
• Decision needed now on Toronto casino: OLG’s Godfrey [The Sun]
• The 10 Toronto spots where Suresh Doss wants to see food trucks [OpenFile]
• Breaking bylaws: The outlaw garage sale [OpenFile]
• Heritage Toronto announces 2012 spring program of walking tours [Canadian Architect]
• Toronto’s park people creating fertile ground for growing neighbourhoods [Torontoist]