Murray Whyte of the Star write about orphan spaces: “They are the unloved, invisible and, chances are, right outside your door — dozens of them — waiting, wanting, right now. Don’t panic. They’re not closing in, even if, as some say, their numbers are growing. They’re waiting for you to come to them. They are what a handful of urbanists, bureaucrats, designers and planners in this city have come to call “orphan spaces” — those slices of cityscape, large and small, that have fallen off the map. They are not, officially, part of the plan. Through generations of building, bulldozing, and rebuilding, layers of new city built around and on top of old, orphan spaces are the built environment version of vagrants: lost, neglected, and usually in need of a little lesson in hygiene. How awful, you might think. Somebody should do something about that.”
Christopher Hume writes about the TTC’s mistakes on subway development and the need for smart LRT growth.
What next? The What If section of the Star a few weeks ago has created a rush of ideas into the newsroom of 1 Yonge. Presented today are more wacky ideas of how to improve the quality of life in Toronto: from sheep running around in the streets as traffic calmers, to a linked walking circuit that lines our aterfront, to building a highway out over the lake so we can tear down the Gardiner.
