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LORINC: Ontario Place and a tale of two message tracks
After spending much of last Wednesday watching Therme Canada and its consultants perform in public, first during a four-hour session with a combined Waterfront Toronto/City design review panel, and...
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The Future Fix: Smart Cities, Reconsidered
Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Smart Cities, Reconsidered The term “Smart Cities” has been...
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MAYOR’S RACE: Eyes on the ball, not just the prize
On Saturday afternoon, a group of about 150 people of all ages gathered at 145 St. George, an 11-storey 1960s-vintage apartment building immediately north of the subway station. Their goal: to protest...
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Making places out of Toronto Centre’s neglected laneways
There’s a tactic in marketing: surprise and delight. It’s used to attract and engage with customers new and old by interacting with them in unexpected ways, like when the Raptors have a playoff game...
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MAYOR’S RACE: Candidates oppose Ford’s Ontario Place spa plans
In back-to-back water’s edge press conferences last week, Ana Bailao and Josh Matlow planted their respective flags on the West Island at Ontario Place, each arguing that the Ford government’s plan to...
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MAYOR’S RACE: Parsing the politics of Mark Saunders’ performative allyship
Toronto’s mayoral election is historic. So many candidates and so many political affiliations, identities, and experiences. Voting is going to be a difficult decision for many. One metric I will be...
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MAYOR’S RACE: Will it be a fear-mongering or city-building election?
The late Jack Layton used to have an adage about public life that profoundly informed his approach to politics: Proposition, he’d say, not opposition. Legend has it that this outlook took shape in the...
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MAYOR’S RACE: We need to talk about Doug
I have no idea what Ontario Place will look like in 2118, but I feel confident in predicting that Therme Canada’s 65,000 sq.-m human aquarium — or terrarium, as a friend recently put it — won’t be...
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Book Review: Building With Paper – Architecture and Construction
Edited by Ulrich Knaack, Rebecca Bach, and Samuel Schabel – Berkhauser Verlag, 2023 To identify industrial solutions in the building industry, missing basics such as material parameters must be worked...
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PODCAST: Spacing Radio 070, Toronto Mayoral Election Redux
Now that John Tory has officially stepped down as mayor, the field of candidates hoping to replace him is a big one. With roughly 50 candidates on the ballot so far, there’s a lot to make sense of. To...
View ArticleBy: W. K. Lis
That’s some fancy soldiers’ barracks that they’re building in the east end of the Garrison military reserve. Odd name for those new barracks, Hotel X?
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Robarts Library, an architectural oral history
When the University of Toronto’s John P. Robarts Research Library, located at St. George and Harbord streets, opened its doors in 1973, it was the largest academic library building in the world,...
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NEW ISSUE: Celebrating 20 years
Twenty-one years ago, I read an article about the Toronto Public Space Committee in Eye Weekly. Intrigued, I visited their website (back in Web 1.0 days) and, poking around, came across an obscure...
View ArticleOP-ED: Road Safety for All — What’s Not to Like?
By Albert Koehl and Roger Morier, road safety advocates and members of the We Belong on Bloor campaign of Community Bikeways. There’s nothing new about NIMBY-ists circling their wagons to bleat about...
View ArticlePublic Washrooms: The gift that keeps on giving
The holiday season is well underway, and many retailers are racing to keep their storefronts open for longer hours. Despite this, there is one pivotal piece of public space infrastructure that remains...
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LORINC: Olivia Chow’s next big move
It’s five months today — July 12 — since Olivia Chow was sworn in as mayor and I think it’s safe to say she has delivered the goods by cutting a multi-billion funding deal with Queen’s Park that sets...
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The Tradition of Christmas Window Displays
Holiday-themed window displays have long been part of our retail landscape. This story, originally published by Torontoist on December 23, 2015, touches upon the greatest Christmas window rivalry in...
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REID: To rename Yonge-Dundas Square, let’s follow the process
There’s no doubt Yonge-Dundas Square needs a new name. Whatever you think about the Henry Dundas controversy, the square’s current name sounds like placeholder, a purely descriptive moniker holding...
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A year-end interview with Mayor Olivia Chow
With the final council session of the year now in the rear-view mirror, Mayor Olivia Chow is spending part of this week powering through year-end interviews with City Hall reporters. Although she...
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REID: 10 walking improvements in Toronto over the past 10 years
Walk Toronto was founded ten years ago, in 2013 (I was one of the founders and am still a member of the steering committee). It’s a grassroots, volunteer advocacy group dedicated to making Toronto a...
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