NOW has two stories worth reading this week: one is on postering and the pros and cons of the newly proposed by-law. Spacing has the exact same concerns and hope expressed in the article. Eye Weekly’s editorial also deals with the postering question.
The other piece to check out is the debate over neighbourhood gentrification. The article specifically focuses on the West Queen West ‘hood and the effect of the Drake Hotel. While it is easy to lay blame on the Drake, there are other factors to consider in this complex debate. Personally, I find gentrification to be a hard topic to wrap my head around — it deals with the conflicts of class, income, community “ownership,” and a whole bunch of complex issues about capitalism. If that last sentence seems jumbled and disjointed, then you can understand what is going on in my head. The gentrification debate deserves a full-length feature in Spacing, and I certainly don’t want to try and tackle it in a short and glib blog post. So go read the NOW article.
