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The Toronto link to America’s bloodiest serial killer
The bodies of the children were buried under the cellar floor. In a gloomy crawlspace beneath the home at 16 St. Vincent St. near Yonge and College, police detective Frank Geyer of Philadelphia pushed...
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Visual Thoughts #57
Last VT image: Jericho Beach on a sunny summer day, Vancouver, BC. *** Erick Villagomez is one of the founding editors at Spacing Vancouver. He is also an educator, independent researcher and designer...
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Bike Share Toronto and downtown subway relief
As a long-standing Bike Share Toronto member, I was excited to read that the Ontario government is investing in additional bikes and an expansion of the network. And as a cities/infrastructure nerd, I...
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Cost Effective Improvements for Better Transit Today
Canadian municipalities are confronted with an interesting predicament – our cities are growing at unprecedented rates. For municipalities, this population growth means greater strains on our...
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Book Review – The West Coast Modern House
The West Coast Modern House chronicles the development of mid-century modern Vancouver residential architecture and its continued influence on contemporary practice. The post-war era in Vancouver...
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How is your ward feeling today?
Social media and GPS are creating opportunities to map cities in many new ways. They also provide the opportunity to map city data as it flows in real time, rather than the traditional fixed type of...
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SUMMER OF THE GUN, 10 years later: Part I
In a four part series, Spacing’s senior editor John Lorinc and columnist Idil Burale look back on the “summer of the gun” in 2005. On August 9, 2005, The National Post’s city hall correspondent...
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SUMMER OF THE GUN: 10 years later, pt. II
The response to the summer of the gun has been characterized as a combination of prevention (i.e. place-based investment) and enforcement (i.e. targeted police strategies in designated areas with high...
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SUMMER OF THE GUN: 10 years later, pt. III
By Idil Burale and John Lorinc In Toronto, we are good at starting things, but we tend not to follow through or evaluate them down the road. Even before the summer of 2005, Mayor David Miller had...
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Book Review – City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis
Edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb (n+1 / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) When people write about their city it is frequently an opinion piece for a local newspaper and, more often than not,...
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SUMMER OF THE GUN: 10 years later, conclusion
By John Lorinc and Idil Burale In 2005, the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force made the following call to action: “No one – no family, no child, no senior – should be disadvantaged by where...
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John Graves Simcoe, Napoleon Bonaparte & the politics of horse shit
This is a photo of horse shit. But it’s not just any photo of horse shit. This horse shit is on Woodbury Common — a beautiful patch of heathland in the English countryside. And with horse shit on...
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Dead rail lines, lost streets, and more Toronto oddities
There’s a couple of new lofts at the southeast corner of Carlaw and Dundas. The courtyard between the two buildings curves elegantly south until it’s almost parallel with Boston Ave., a north-south...
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Weighing In: Fat Discrimination on Public Transit
Last year, on a beautiful mid-September morning, Tomee boarded the subway in high spirits. She was headed to a rewarding job at a reputable university, pleased with the progression of her blossoming...
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Book Review From The Stacks – Narrow Houses: New Directions in Efficient Design
Author: Avi Friedman (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) Avi Friedman is an architecture professor at McGill University who has been researching narrow dwellings since the 1990s, and sharing his...
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Funiculars of Portugal
Outside of Quebec City and Niagara Falls, Canada is a funicular desert. Edmonton is exploring construction of a funicular for access to the River Valley. While funicular is not a prominent word in the...
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The two worlds of my Etobicoke
My childhood was spent surrounded by the Humber River and grocery stores. I live in Rexdale, where there’s not much to do and every reason to leave. For the first decade of my life, north Etobicoke was...
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Mary Pickford’s most magical photographs
Back in the early 1900s, Mary Pickford wasn’t just one of the most famous people from Toronto. She was one of the most famous people from anywhere. At the height of Pickford’s film career, at least...
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Happy birthday to the Toronto streetcar system
There are perhaps few things more symbolic of Toronto than its streetcars. For more than 150 years, surface rail has formed the backbone of the city’s public transportation system, and despite numerous...
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McAdam, New Brunswick and the struggle of small communities
Many small towns, communities, and rural areas face challenges with the decline of traditional industries such as forestry. Often, economic development arguments are less about “growth” than about...
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