URBAN GREEN
• Electric car plan faces long road [ National Post ]
• On the eco frontlines [ Now Magazine ]
TRANSPORTATION
• Hume: St. Clair fight is first of many [ Toronto Star ]
• 407 toll road inquiries hit a dead end [ Toronto Star ]
DEVELOPMENT
• Toronto Councillor defends move to quiet Queen West [ Globe & Mail ]
• Ontario urged to protect Queen’s Park from nearby development [ Globe & Mail ]
• Port Authority gets new ferry [ Globe & Mail ]
OTHER NEWS
• When shopping was stress-free [ Toronto Star ]
• Man ignored as he lay dying [ Toronto Star ]
• Housing, food support empower women [ National Post ]
• Out with the aughts: The decade in which Torontonians became more engaged with their city [ National Post ]
• Year in Review: Cityscape [ Now Magazine ]
• Year in Review: City scene [ Now Magazine ]
• Toronto ascendant [ Eye Weekly ]
3 comments
Props to Spacing for being widely recognized as one of the great things about the decade in Toronto, along with numerous other public space activists, progressive politicians and hopeful citizens that really make Toronto a special place.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it all terribly.
Adam Giambrone is following Joe Pantalone down the same counter-productive road by seeking to restrict ALL restaurants, including bakeries, delis and unlicensed cafes, in the hope that this will calm down nightlife. I note that the Queen Beaconsfield Residents Association is disappointed with the bylaw, and is wondering why the City can’t just simply distinguish between bars and restaurants — just like every other City in the world.
Joe Pantalone’s Ossington bylaw was so hastily written, it originally required new restaurants to provide parking for patrons (which would encourage MORE car traffic, not discourage it). Even the bylaw that was presented at Community Council had to be reworded at the last minute when someone pointed out that by including kitchen space in the restaurant size calculations, the bylaw would effectively give preference to bars (which can operate without kitchens) over restaurants — exactly the opposite of the bylaw’s intended result.
According to the Globe, a City staff report says that the obvious solution of limiting the concentration of bars in an area isn’t “feasible,” since Toronto doesn’t legally distinguish between bars and restaurants. Um, City of Toronto staff? You ARE the City of Toronto! Why not write a real bylaw that actually targets what you are targeting?
But that would affect other parts of the City and so would require a real debate, and the local councillor would not be able to count on the rest of council deferring to his capricious whims. I guess it’s easier to spray buckshot across the entire hospitality industry in the hopes of hitting a few noisy bars.
John- I agree with you completely. We need regulations that treat bars and restaurants differently.
I’m with the residents association that was involved with the planning process. We did a lot of research, and gave city planners examples from a number of cities around the world (and around Canada) where there are various criteria that allow bars and restaurants to be regulated differently. But the final recommendation from the city fails to make this distinction, subjecting an unlicenced coffeeshops to the same restrictions are bars. I don’t see how this is to anyone’s advantage.