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When Poverty Mattered: The 1970 uprising at the Social Planning Council
Editor’s note: Excerpted from the book When Poverty Mattered, Then and Now, by Paul Weinberg (Fernwood Publishing, 2019). There is something both surreal and very immediate in this account of the 1970...
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PODCAST: Spacing Radio 043, We are the public realm
In this episode, we talk about public space issues of the past, present, and future. Spacing Publisher Matthew Blackett tells us how the magazine itself sprung out of conversations about the public...
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Book Review: New Investigations in Collective Form – The Open Workshop
Edited by Neeraj Bhatia – Actar Publishers/CCA Architecture Books (2019) More than fifty years have passed since the publication of Fumihiko Maki’s seminal text, Investigations in Collective Form,...
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LORINC: Council ponders $600 million affordable housing incentive
It is Toronto’s ur-question, the riddle of riddles, the fodder for a thousand earnest studies. What combination of public policy, political will and pixie dust is required to re-kindle the market for...
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LORINC: Just who is the face of the TTC these days?
With apologies to the famously elusive picture book figure, where’s Rick? Increasingly, as the TTC finds itself in a public relations nightmare, I have found myself wondering why an agency that is so...
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MUKHERJEE: Why Toronto police are worse off under Chief Mark Saunders
In Act I, Scene IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marcellus, a guard, renders this famous verdict on his country’s politics: “Something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark.” A similar feeling seems to...
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LORINC: Burning down the (laneway) house
In recent months, I’ve found myself wondering whether Toronto City Council’s much-touted laneway suites policy, circa 2018, was nothing more than an elaborate bait-and-switch operation. This is a...
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Beverly Mascoll, a trailblazing Black entrepreneur
At this year’s Academy Awards, Hair Love won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. The six-minute film tells the story of an African American father learning to do his daughter’s hair for the first...
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Questions for City Charter supporters: What and whom is it for?
Note: At the end of November, I was part of a panel hosted by the Institute for Municipal Finance and Governance on “Does Toronto Need a City Charter?” This column is an edited version of my comments...
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LORINC: Downsview offers city-building opportunity with a long runway
The key take-away in the Metrolinx business case report released last week, on the economics of the Scarborough subway, is as simple as can be: the vast sums we’re burying in that mega-project will...
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The Sociability of Running
Running is often thought of as a solitary sport, a haven for those who enjoy being alone. Like walking and cycling, we typically think of it as a tool to escape the confines of the city and alleviate...
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OP-ED: Waterfront Toronto continues its Kafka-esque Quayside saga, but why?
Thorben Wieditz is an urban geographer who works at the intersection of labour, community and big tech. He helped establish regulatory frameworks for companies like AirBnB in Toronto, Vancouver and...
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Book Review – Compression
Author: Steven Holl (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019) Compression of human habitat should be a concern of all global citizens living on this fragile planet. In my junior year at the University of...
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Reclaiming Scarborough’s Stories in Zines
Co-written by Niyosha Keyzad and Armi de Francia Scarborough is subject to many stereotypes, and the mainstream local media is complicit in perpetuating them. Scarborough is, at best, cited as the most...
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LORINC: Understanding what resilience means in era of COVID-19
“Resilience” in recent years has emerged as the sexiest new addition to the lexicon of urbanist jargon — a word that denotes a kind of core strength, what we all hope we have in times of crisis, but...
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Domestic violence, social distancing, and the closure of public spaces
The recent social distancing protocols that have resulted in the closures of public places have reminded me of the hidden risks for women and children living in domestic violence. I was once that...
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LORINC: We are about to learn what civic resilience truly is in face of...
In this space last week, I argued that Torontonians, and their elected officials, need to have a far more serious debate about what resiliency actually means if we hope to create a city capable of...
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Hey Presto! The strange history and modest potential of the soon-to-be closed...
The future arrived in Toronto in 1948, but it was hidden away from view, in a 19th century transit garage on Sherbourne St. Six years before the long-dreamed of Yonge subway system finally opened,...
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Staying at home during a pandemic and what it means for the planet
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asks Canadians to “stay home if you can,” I start to ponder how and when this notion became so foreign to us. When did we become so mobile that we barely spent any...
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PODCAST: Spacing Radio 044, Corona and the distant city
In this episode, we try to gain some perspective on the Covid-19 virus from the safety of our own apartments. We talk to Toronto City Councillor Josh Matlow about his experience in self-isolation, as...
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