Book Review – Inventing Future Cities
Author: Michael Batty (MIT Press, 2018) Given the state of the world, it is fair to say that the future of cities is intimately intertwined with the future of the planet. The distinctions between the...
View ArticleGame day transit planning
When the Leafs or Blue Jays play a home game, Doug Tuira doesn’t watch to see if Auston Matthews will score an overtime winner or Roberto Osuna will close out the ninth inning. The Metrolinx Control...
View ArticlePODCAST: Spacing Radio 035, Activate
In this episode, we join Thomas McKechnie, playwright and organizer with Foodsters United — a new union working for a fair deal for food delivery workers in precarious employment. We speak to Urban...
View ArticleBook Review – Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design
Author: Kat Holmes (The MIT Press, 2017) The idea of universal design is powerful and (hopefully) prevalent in everything designers do. As I read Kat Holmes’ Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design,...
View ArticleChanging the definition of accessibility
André Darmanin is a recovered transit planner and currently writes on planning and policy issues on his blog — Metro Governance (metrogovernance.wordpress.com). One of my early memories as a teenager...
View ArticleFrom Bach to Transport: Leipzig holds a key to the future of cities &...
The International Transportation Forum is an inter-governmental organization of the OECD. It holds a summit of transport ministers every year in Leipzig, Germany. Leipzig was the home base of J.S. Bach...
View ArticleA City on the cusp: A Torontonian’s visit to Detroit
Claire Stevenson-Blythe is entering her second year in the Master of Science in Planning program at the University of Toronto. Her interests are in community-driven and inclusive development, urban...
View ArticleLORINC: Ford Nation’s growth plan cruises across the finish line
Now that Mayor John Tory has put the muzzle back on his political attack puppy, it’s safe to conclude that nothing else stands between the Ford government and its double-barreled plan to re-cast land...
View ArticleOpening conversations about active transportation in racialized suburbs
This guest post is by members of Transportation Equity Toronto, the organizers of the Mini Conference on Racial Equity and Active Transportation (bios at the end). Over 50% of Toronto’s population is...
View ArticleEmbedding municipal government in the constitution
Premier Doug Ford’s sudden and arbitrary interference in the 2018 Toronto municipal election – and the preliminary court decision that allowed him to proceed with it – was a startling reminder of just...
View ArticleLORINC: Welcome to the post-civic engagement era
With the landslide of hostile omnibus legislation spewing out of Queen’s Park this spring, I found myself wondering whether Doug Ford, General Secretary of the People’s Republic of Ontario and...
View ArticleCity politics in the wake of Ontario’s Bill 5 and lessons for Canadian cities
Last week, two things happened that are useful markers for where Toronto sits in the struggle to manage the impact from Bill 5: a court appeal and a committee meeting. There are insights and questions...
View ArticleLORINC: Celebration and Toronto’s Public Space Moment
The hundreds of thousands of soccer fans spilling onto St. Clair West after Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory marked a turning point for the city: evidence, after decades of caricatures and racist...
View ArticleOur new issue launches at Laneway Block Party
WHAT: Issue 50 release party / Laneway Block Party WHEN: Saturday, June 22 4pm-10pm WHERE: Foxley Place, at Ossington Ave. and Foxley St. COST: Free! New issue $5 The cover feature of Spacing’s 50th...
View ArticleIndigenous Innovation
I am one of an estimated 70,000 Indigenous people living in Toronto. And while there is a variety of social services spaces like the Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto, Miziwe Biik Aboriginal...
View ArticleAnalysis: the permanent King Street transit way is a model for all Toronto
The Toronto Streetcar, older or newer type, is an ever-present symbol of the city. The red, black and white TTC colours trundle along century old tracks, east and west, north and south and are a...
View ArticleLORINC: The myth of the city charter
Midtown city councillor Josh Matlow’s packed public meeting this week, convened to whip up support for charter status for Toronto, may have been good politics, but I’m not convinced the notion of...
View ArticleLORINC: Sidewalk Labs and the problem of smart city governance
On page 222 of the least jazzy of Sidewalk Lab’s four-volume magnum opus outlining its plan for Quayside-plus is the first of a series of supplemental tables that offer a clue about what the...
View ArticleROBINSON: How does government fit into smart city plans?
In the 48 hours since Sidewalk Labs’ Master Innovation and Development Plan dropped, we have all been working our way through its 1524 pages, watching as the pile of important questions continues to...
View ArticleIntroducing the Spacing School of Urbanism’s first workshop: Laneways
The Spacing School of Urbanism provides unique continuing education and professional development to Greater Toronto-area architects, planners, urban designers, developers, real estate agents, and...
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