The title of this post is deliberately misleading simply because whenever I go to a city I look down to see what the city offers — whether it be garbage bins, sidewalk etchings, or fire hydrants. As any long-time Spacing reader will know, I have a bit of an obsession with streetscapes and the elements that are peppered along roads and sidewalks. Whenever I visit another city I tend to spend a day wandering around, looking down and photographing the details. That was no different when I visited Pittsburgh this past weekend. When I told friends and colleagues I was off to Pittsburgh for four days the most often response was, "Pittsburgh?" Yes, Pittsburgh. While I've been to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo, Pittsburgh has always been off my radar. The city has always had a reputation as being down-in-the-dumps since it lost hundreds of thousands of jobs from the 1960s into the 1980s when steel mills and factories closed shop. While the population of the city has dwindled from 675,000 in 1950 to 311,000 in 2009, the city has reinvented itself as a bio-medical and education hub (luckily, the city has six universities all within walking distance of each other).

I was never very good at skateboarding as a kid, though I spent way too many nights trying to slide the bottom of my board along the curb outside my house. Over time, the board became more useful as a tool for moving my ball hockey net to nearby school yards and parking lots. But I had a lot of friends in high school who were excellent boarders so I spent numerous hours taking photos as they perfected their moves and tricks. In the intervening years I ...

SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo. I know I'm stating the obvious when I say this: parking a vehicle downtown, in Toronto or any city, can be a challenge if not entirely frustrating. But the parking policies of a city go a long way in determining how a city is experienced at street level. For instance, the city of Prince George, BC has nearly 50% of its entire downtown area covered in parking lots. Toronto's downtown used to ...

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SUMMER SHORT 017 ON SPACING RADIO You know when you're exploring a city for the first time and you turn a corner only to stumble upon something completely unexpected? This is what happened to Spacing producer Mieke Anderson on a recent trip to London, England. Initially, it was only a faint sound barely within earshot. Then suddenly she was face-to-face with the St Mary-le-Bow Church and consumed by the ringing of its famous bells. Wandering the streets of London you'll still hear people say that you're ...

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SPACING RADIO PODCAST Sometimes exploring a city means just shutting your eyes and listening. In this soundscape, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes you underground into the Glasgow subway system. Affectionately known as "the Clockwork Orange" because of its orange subway cars and circular route, Glasgow's underground dates back to 1896 making it the third oldest in the world. Recently, the city was considering shutting down parts of the system if they couldn't come up with the money for a massive ...

Source: Statistics Canada By Emily Richardson — cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic Despite dramatic differences in population, density, infrastructure, and growth, there is remarkable consistency between commuting patterns in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax, particularly when it comes to travelling by car. And incidentally, when it comes to getting us out of them, we seem to find buses and bike lanes unconvincing. A closer look at our most recent census data raises some surprising – and some predictable – findings about the way we get to work and how preferences change as our cities grow. First a few words on sources and statistics: All data in this article, with the exception of bike lane information, is based on the 2006 census of Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal's census metropolitan areas with trends from the 2001 census. I will be the first to concede two important shortcomings in the data. First, neither the number of cities nor the number of data points within each city is sufficient for any analysis to be statistically significant (in other words, proper analysis requires more, and more robust, data to hold up to scrutiny). Second, the data is a static snapshot in time, and it lacks any context that might explain why the upcoming 2011 census might paint a vastly different picture. But despite these drawbacks, the census data does highlight some consistencies between cities and concerns about the economic, social, and environmental implications of our commuting habits. It remains to be seen whether erratic fuel prices, transit-pass tax incentives, and growing bike-lane networks over the past four years will meaningfully influence our commuting habits by 2011. In the meantime, comments and observations are welcomed in response to this anecdotal food for thought.

Last year I spent a month in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany examining how the great cities of those countries tackle urban design, transportation and planning issues. Previously, I've also spent time in The Netherlands where I got to experience the quaint and charming city of Utrecht, though it was only for two rain-filled days so I sadly never got to see the scene portrayed in the video above. What is remarkable about the video is the sheer volume of trips made by bike in the morning rush hour. I got to see similar scenes in Copenhagen and Malmo last year — although I was only armed with a camera I tried to capture the "congestion" of bikes on a busy throughfare.

As part of Monday's campaign launch to showcase the city's new streetcar design (to hit the streets in 2013), the TTC asked residents to help develop a nickname for the streetcars. This reminded me about what they do in Gothenburg, Sweden (a cool city I visited last spring and found to be rather similar to Toronto). Each Gothenburg streetcar is named after a retired employee of the transit agency (you can see the name "Endre Nemes" in the photo just above the number 357 on the left side near the door). Now, ...

The Architecture for Humanity discussion I attended last week, titled "Open Sourcing City Hall," really got me thinking about how hard it can be to get information out of the government. For a regular citizen, unless projects are covered by the media, their progress is often left unknown. The funding for certain projects is often unclear and where our tax money goes is frequently a thing left to surprise. So when host Patrick Connolly showed us a video of a speech by Andrew Mclaughlin, former head of global public policy for Google, and current deputy chief technology officer for the Obama administration, Government 2.0 began to make sense. As he spoke at an Expo in Washington of how the American government is trying to be more transparent and inclusive by sharing all of its municipal and federal information, I immediately thought how amazing something like that would be here at home. It goes beyond the current method of civic engagement of writing letters upon letters or making multiple phone calls to find out what’s being done about a certain issue. Government 2.0 is the concept of a web-based service that allows access to government records such as crime, city services, and projects that are underway. But beyond access to those records, it gives you the ability to interact in a social media platform to discuss the issues and their progress.

Next week I'm on a panel called Shaping the City at FutureEverything, an art-music-conference-festival in Manchester, England. FutureEverything, in part, explores intersections of society and technology and there is a big emphasis on city issues. While I'll be talking about some of the stuff we do here in Toronto, I'm particularly interested in chatting about how Toronto has trouble with its mythology while a city like Manchester does not. I've never been to Manchester but expect when I arrive it'll have the usual sense of familiarity that I get whenever I'm in a city in the UK or Ireland. This is, in part, due to the colonial nature of Canada -- so much of this place is named after that place -- but also because smaller cities like Manchester seem to effortlessly be able to exist in the minds of people who do not live there. Apart from the colonial angle, there is also the pop culture one. How did Manchester become such a music powerhouse? How did word get out about the "Manchester Sound" from the late-punk era onwards -- why was the "Madchester Scene" of the Cool-Britannia-Tony-Blair 1990s so well known? Why does Toronto have so much trouble doing the same thing? The bands seem just as good here. Is there a connection between a city's historical position (Manchester was one of the main engines of the British Empire) and it's long-term cultural power, even after the sun set on that empire? Are they just better at marketing themselves? Are they cooler (do they ask themselves these questions we perpetually ask ourselves)? Is it the sports teams? The billboard pictured above is of Carlos Tevez who played first for Manchester United and now for Manchester City -- nobody would want to see a Leaf welcoming people to Toronto right now, correct? Is it because they have two sports teams and the NHL won't even give a hockey team to Kitchener-Waterloo because it's too close (Manchester's metro area is around 2.5 million while Toronto's is 4.5ish)? As I piece together thoughts on this, thinking about what I'll say next week, I'm interested to hear from our readers what their thoughts are on the state of Toronto's mythological aura vs Manchester, London, or anywhere else. For our UK readers (we have some!) and others who might want to forward it to their UK friends who may be interested in FutureEverything, below is more info on the festival.