History
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Reading List: Unplanned Suburbs
We think of suburbs as places where the middle classes go to leave the city. But Richard Harris’s book Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900...
By Dylan Reid -
Book Review – Histories of Ecological Design: An Unfinished Cyclopedia
Author: Lydia Kallipoliti (Actar, 2024) In an era when “green” is a brand and climate collapse is a backdrop, Lydia Kallipoliti’s Histories of Ecological...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: Divergent Models
The city, we’re often told, is a model—something to be learned from, exported, improved. But what happens when models conflict? What if the city itself...
By Erick Villagomez -
Marking Lake Ontario’s lost shoreline
This article is published in conjunction with Spacing issue 71, which focuses on Toronto’s waterfront. The issue will be available shortly at the...
By Chris Bateman -
The Singapore Chronicles: Memory in the Margins
Pulau Ubin, a small island northeast of mainland Singapore, serves as both a geographical and symbolic edge to the city-state’s narrative of modernity...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: Housing the Nation
Few cities in the contemporary world have made public housing as central to urban life as Singapore has. With over 80% of the population living in flats...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: The Politics of Preservation
Singapore’s skyline is constantly in motion. Construction cranes and hoardings are as much part of the visual identity of the city as its heritage...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: City of Intentions
To understand contemporary Singapore, we have to understand key aspects of its history—divided here into “Four Acts.” This will be our starting point...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: Introduction
Singapore often appears as a paradox—both widely admired and deeply critiqued. It is a city-state that epitomizes precision and planning, where efficiency...
By Erick Villagomez -
Disappearing Sunlight
What has recently been dubbed the “Sunlight” mural hung on the facade of the spray-drying tower at the historic Lever Brothers* Don Valley plant for total...
By Peter MacCallum -
They Were Right Here: Tracing Black People Enslaved in the Town of York
The presence of Black children, women, and men who were enslaved in Upper Canada has been omitted from, or marginalized, in the Canadian historical...
By Natasha Henry-Dixon -
NEW ISSUE: Collecting stories
When Spacing’s publisher Matt Blackett suggested an issue about collectors, I was skeptical. Was this really going to capture something essential about...
By Dylan Reid