Infrastructure Fetish
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The gutter report
When walking around a big city people generally look straight ahead or perhaps slightly upward to appreciate the built form. But one of Toronto's...
By Matthew Blackett -
Who was first past the post?
“It’s like taking the cherry off the sundae,” says architect and designer David Dennis of Jack Layton’s claim that the now federal...
By Tammy Thorne -
Traffic lights: Organizing chaos
We all remember those days before the turn of the millennium when the Y2K bug was expected to wreak havoc on our world. We imagined chaos overtaking us as...
By Matthew Blackett -
Raising the stink
They may not be very noticable, but the green, 12-foot pipes that rise from the ground and often dot the edge of parks throughout Toronto are linked to...
By Matthew Blackett -
Hawkeye for the pest guy
George Costanza on the TV show Seinfeld has a deal with the pigeons: they get out of his way, he looks the other way on statue defecation. Torontonians...
By Matthew Blackett -
Lifting the spirits of dead trees
The next time you're admiring the wilderness of High Park, you might find some of the vegetation staring back at you. Throughout the park, four...
By Matthew Blackett -
Why are there no lamp posts on Yonge?
The apparent lack of lamp posts south of Charles and north of Grosvenor on Yonge Street is at first unsettling, suggesting that the stretch of sidewalk...
By Matthew Blackett -
Neighbours with a buzz
Except for the constant thrumming of the 60-cycle hum, these Jekyll-and-Hydes make no other noise. Perfect neighbours, they go about their super-heated...
By Matthew Blackett -
The gym comes to the park
With warm weather once again gracing us with its presence, our city's parks and trails have revealed themselves anew. To some of us, seeing our...
By Matthew Blackett -
Watershed signs: A city of streams
It is an indisputable fact that in most locations throughout Toronto, a person is never more than 15 walking minutes from a river or tributary. All that...
By Matthew Blackett