Monday’s headlines

7 comments

1. I think selling naming rights to an arena is fine – people are used to that. Selling naming rights to a park or a bridge would be something else again.

   As for selling air rights over subways – there are some opportunities there both for densification and monetisation but developers will have been watching the Old Mill development where the engineering challenges were quite substantial.

2. The Kings Travel Study Bulletin, looks to be highly selective. Designed to produce a predetermined outcome. Between 1991 and 2001 the percentage of residents in wards 20,27.28, whom commuted outside of the city to work increased by 14.3%. On top of that the study ignores any temporal influence.

3. Glen, do you have more up-to-date data? 2001 is a good 9 years ago and pre-dates the mass-condofication of downtown.

4. Yu,

   I do not have it. The information is from StatsCan. I could get more up to date info but would have to pay for it. The ones I used were compiled by the city (pg. 50 http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2005/agendas/council/cc051026/pofedp2rpt/cl001.pdf ).

   Insofar as the info predating ‘condofication’. Yes post 2001 was the height of the condo boom. On the other hand Toronto job creation was mediocre. So the trend could have well worsened.

5. Saturday Star had a very lengthy article on disadvantaged neighborhoods, focusing primarily on the growing phenomenon of inner suburban poverty. See link below.

   http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/751444–13-neighbourhoods-in-need

   I realize this issue isn’t particularly trendy or something that many hipsters want to focus on but I think it should be of interest to those pretending to be interested in urban issues.

   The surprising comment in the piece is that despite the millions of dollars spent, there are a few anecdotal stories of success, BUT no evidence that the City’s programs to address this issue are working. Personally, I think that is too harsh a judgment; what the author doesn’t seem to consider is that the programs may be working but because the core problems (which in my view are a continuing influx of people through migration and immigration into a municipality where unemployment is already very high and job opportunities diminishing) are not being addressed, the programs don’t seem to be making a difference. What also doesn’t seem to be considered in the article is whether the City really has the capacity to address the core problems.

   Lest this comment be interpreted as anti-immigrant, let me be clear in stating that it’s not the immigrants that are the problem, it’s our high immigration policy which either through intent or incompetence, seems focused on creating the underclass of desperate people that cheap labor employers can never get enough of. At a time when unemployment is at about 10% (much higher if you count those who’ve exhausted benefits), we still have employers saying they see labor shortages. Of course, what many of these employers mean is that they are anticipating some difficulty getting people to work for the low wages and bad conditions that they want to offer. If there weren’t so many desperate people around, some of these employers might actually have to offer their staff a living wage and provide safe working conditions — and we certainly don’t want that to happen. Anyone who has tracked these issues over the last decade or so knows that it was only a matter of time before something like the Xmas Eve scaffold accident (4 dead) happened.

6. Regarding Glen’s point about workers commuting out of TO to the 905 area, the latest articles I saw in the Star and the Globe (a few months back) all show that the outflux of traffic from TO was now greater. The stats were more recent than 2001… but I didn’t save the article.

   As for the King Travel Study Bulletin (Star’s Condo Commuters can ease gridlock), there are many issues that the article does not address (which is typical for any story by transportation reporter Tess Kalinoswki who seems more interested in doing PR for the TTC or City Hall or condo developers than in looking critically at issues).

   Yes, it’s great that people live close to their work — but the increasing instability in the work world (short-term contracts, less time with each employer do to layoffs, partners having work in different areas) has made that increasingly more difficult. Also, the vast majority of the condos that have been built do not address the needs of families but simply target people at a particular slice of their life cycle.

7. samg, what you said reminds me of the recent ‘Travel Time Survey’. In the papers, southbound Spadina was mentioned as one of the areas in which travel times increased greatly. The survey ignores the fact that less cars are travelling southbound on Spadina (they should have counted the #) than its historical maximum and the increased time is more a result of the timing of the lights at the intersection.