Archives /// Head Space

Spacing asked Toronto's Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David McKeown, to draw the connections between urban planning and public health. As it turns out, the way we design our cities can be as vital to our health and well-being as an apple a day. Spacing: What is the link between the work that you do and the public realm? McKeown: The city shapes our health in a number of different ways. Toronto's Board of Health has always been concerned about the urban environment. This year we're celebrating our 125th anniversary. My predecessor 100 years ago was concerned about issues such as housing ...

Nick Saul is the executive director of The Stop Community Food Centre, an organization in the Davenport West neighbourhood whose range of services includes a food bank, workshops, and community kitchens. The Stop is also involved in the Artscape Wychwood Barns project. Spacing: What are the opportunities that exist within the city to produce more locally grown, nutritious food? Saul: I am a big believer that we should take every green space we have and turn it into food production. I think we should be growing food in our backyards, in our front yards, on our balconies. The Stop has ...

Kris Nahrgang is telling me about his uncle. "In the 1970s he and some friends took some shovels to one of the old cemeteries downtown," he says. The stunt outraged a lot of people, but it served as an opportunity for Nahrgang, Chief of the Kawartha Nishnawbe First Nation, to raise a sorely neglected point about Toronto's past: "How is that different from what's happening to our people?" Nahrgang's community is around 700 people strong, centered on land north of Peterborough. Technically, their land stretches much further. "Toronto is in my territory," he says, describing a land treaty that stretches from ...

Rob MacDermid is a political science professor at York University. His Funding City Politics report was released in January 2009 by the Centre for Social Justice and VoteToronto. Spacing: How did election financing in Toronto in 2006 compare to other cities? MacDermid: In the City of Toronto, there were eight or nine candidates that ran without getting corporate funding — like councillors Kyle Rae, Cliff Jenkins, Joe Mihevc, and of course Mayor Miller. That has really helped reduce the amount of corporate influence in campaigns in the City of Toronto. Also, Toronto offered a rebate program which gave citizens back a ...

So, are you tired of hearing about Richard Florida yet? You wouldn't be the first in Toronto to feel that way about the most celebrated urbanist since Jane Jacobs. Just ask Richard Florida. "I wish people wouldn't pay so much attention to me. And sometimes when I lay up at night, I'm like, 'I wish I could be less noticed,'" Florida says. "I think that the arguments become too personalized. Too personified. They lose resonance." Florida is relaxing in a comfy chair in the brick-and-beam environs of the Martin Prosperity Institute, the urban think tank at the MaRS Centre for Innovation ...

Rudy Ruttimann was recently awarded a Vital People grant from the Toronto Community Foundation for her work with Sketch, where she is the executive director. Spacing: Why is the arts an important tool in engaging young people and addressing poverty and homelessness in Toronto? Ruttimann: Young people are very resilient in being able to use services as they need them. They have to go down to an office and tell their story, and then they hopefully get what they need from it. When they walk into Sketch, they just are who they are and they choose when to enter into their story. ...

Atom Egoyan's new film, Chloe, is a remarkable achievement in Toronto's sad sack history of being Hollywood North, the place that doubles for any number of American cities. At last, a big budget work filled with such international luminaries as Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, and Amanda Seyfried has been made that trumpets its location as being Toronto. It's no surprise that Chloe was made by Egoyan, Toronto's preeminent filmmaker. Spacing talked to the Cannes-award winning filmmaker and Oscar nominee about Toronto and cinema. Spacing: Why did you choose to shoot Chloe in Toronto? Atom Egoyan: It seemed an obvious choice to set ...