Each Tuesday, Spacing Montreal will share with you some posts from our sister blog, Spacing Toronto. We hope it will enable constructive dialogue on the urban issues faced by both cities, though we’ll settle for some witty jibes against la Ville reine in the comments.
Queen West Fire. Wednesday morning a fire destroyed a stretch of buildings on Queen Street West near Bathurst. One article posted the same day of the blaze links to news coverage of the disaster. In two separate posts, Matthew Blackett reflects on the growing number of unofficial media sources on such scenes (“shutterbugs”) and on the sociological meaning of this phenomenon (Blogging the Blaze : part I and part II). Yesterday, Gary Miedema posted an article looking at the architectural heritage that was lost with the fire.
American Suburbs the New Slums? An article published in The Atlantic asks whether the abandonment of homes in American suburbs might not create new slums. The series of comments following the post look specifically if this is happening in Toronto.
Panel tells City to sell lands, install road tolls, raise taxes… An independent panel is advising the City of Toronto to take on a number of drastic measures in order to right the city’s economic ship. The post links to an article published in the Toronto Star.