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Rexdale deserves a spa: An invitation to Therme
Therme Canada’s proposal for a spa is better suited for Woodbine Entertainment’s renewal plan, and would allow the City of Toronto and the Ontario government to strengthen their investments in north...
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Visualizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Toronto
This week marks the third anniversary of the original COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. While many have moved on from COVID-19, as evidenced by the shedding of masks and the return of handshakes...
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Book Review: Ron Thom Architect – The Life of a Creative Modernist
Author: Adele Weder (Greystone Publishing, 2022) Drawing on extensive archival research and over one hundred interviews, this definitive biography – filled throughout with historical photos – sheds...
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LORINC: The devil will be in the details of John Tory’s housing action plan...
Update: Council yesterday passed Mayor John Tory’s Housing Action Plan, with a raft of tweaks, including a provision to require parking minimums for multi-tenant dwellings (aka rooming houses). For...
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As is: Photographs of Ontario Place, 2021- 2022
In advance of Spacing’s upcoming issue focused on Ontario Place, we are sharing some of photographer Steven Evans’s images of the site. See his website for the full three sets of photos. I first...
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NEW ISSUE: Ontario Place
A decade of neglect has transformed Ontario Place into an accidental playground. As you will discover in our cover section, what was once intended as a provincial showcase has evolved into a...
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LORINC: Toronto’s Rooming House deal: Solving the ultimate puzzle
Toronto is a city whose residents are encouraged (or encourage one another) to dislike certain things, but who have also forgotten (or never really knew) the source of their animosity. Maybe other...
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Book Review: The Ecologies of The Building Envelope – A Material History and...
Author: Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Jeffrey S. Anderson (Actar Publishers, 2021) Given the number of books I read and review every year, it is rare to be surprised by a book. Like all cultural...
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LORINC: John Tory’s housewarming gift to the new police chief
In the early 1980s, when inner city crime was soaring in many large metropolitan areas, a pair of American sociologists concocted what they dubbed the “broken windows” theory of policing and community...
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LORINC: Can the Ontario Science Centre save Ontario Place?
Here’s a strange little detail about the 20-car pile-up that is the Ontario Place redevelopment scheme: Shortly before Christmas, the province posted a heritage impact assessment (HIA) on its...
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EXCERPT: Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic
The following is the afterword by Spacing‘s Shawn Micallef in the new book Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic published by University of Toronto Press (you can purchase it...
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LORINC: How to expedite affordable housing during a crisis
With the launch of the annual budget slam dance, at the beginning of a new term of city council, on this, the 25th anniversary of amalgamation, it seems like as good a time as any to pose a timeless...
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LORINC: The taxing discussion about a parking tax
Can anyone who pays attention to City Hall say they didn’t see this one coming? The latest news from the budget committee’s deliberations is that the City’s proposed fees for CafeTO may be high enough...
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LORINC: How safe is the TTC?
How safe is the TTC? Notwithstanding a media narrative that is solidifying faster than quick drying cement, the quick answer to this question is: very. According to the latest CEO’s report, the rate...
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OP-ED: We can’t let perception of danger become reality
Toronto is a safe city. Not just by global standards, but by North American standards. It doesn’t feel that way right now. At least not to public transit riders. I can rhyme off statistics about how...
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Reimagining under the Gardiner
Toronto’s journey towards urban renewal could witness a new stage unfold with plans to transform overlooked areas beneath the Gardiner Expressway between Dufferin and the Don Valley Parkway. The Under...
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Megalandscape: A counter-proposal for Ontario Place
The Ontario government’s proposal to cannibalize Ontario Place by building a monstrous, for-profit spa on public land will destroy a waterfront ecology that has matured over the last half century. Yes,...
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LORINC: The Sad State of Police Governance in Tory’s Toronto
It feels like matters of policing, never far from view, have hung particularly heavily over the city’s business in this past month — an arc that began early in the new year with Mayor John Tory’s $50...
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LORINC: Seizing the opportunity of Tory’s resignation
Let’s not talk about candidates and the horse race, just for a fleeting moment. The end of the John Tory era, which came to a screeching halt at about 8:40pm on Friday evening, is, of course, a...
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Cars as predators
I am currently on sabbatical leave in Mumbai, India. Last week, I went to an eye-opening lecture at IIT Bombay by Dr. Sunetro Ghosal, “Immoral Wilderness in Urban Spaces.” He raised provocative...
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