Spacing Radio is back for Season Four and we’re jumping right into Toronto’s election debate!
Check out our newest episode or subscribe via iTunes.
This election has been zany, to say the least. We go to Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume for his take on why candidates have strayed so far off topic. And leading up to voting day, reporter Daniel Guillemette is on the campaign trail looking at how the front-runners are using our public spaces.
Also in this episode, all the election talk about the so-called “war on the car” got producer Mieke Anderson thinking about the traffic lights that control our movement. And reporter Andrew Walsh rarely knows when his streetcar will be arriving and sets out to investigate the technologies designed to reduce his frustration.
And we want to hear from you! Host David Michael Lamb will be at Spacing magazine’s release party Wed. Oct. 6th asking: “What do you think is the first thing the new mayor should do on Day One in office?” We’ll be featuring your responses in an upcoming episode. (If you can’t make it out, we invite you to answer the question on the blog).
5 comments
I have a question. Jane Jacobs predicted exactly what CVA taxation would bring Toronto……….
Jane Jacobs is opposed to market value assessment and calls the scheme “nutty.”
“‘The reassessment proposal would increase taxes for many businesses and residents in the city of Toronto while lowering them for many in Metro’s suburban areas. The tax measure will leave Toronto with only two large population groups, the rich and the poor, because of the high levies it will impose on middle-class tenants and homeowners. This tax will have the effect of making the city an impractical place, but not for the richest part of the population or for the most assisted part of the population.
“‘This is a very bad situation for the city to get into. This is a kind of rot. Property values in cities are higher than elsewhere because these urban areas are efficient ways of doing everything. This is why people start businesses in cities or go to cities.
“‘The very concept of market value assessment, with its idea that somehow there is an unearned value in the city that must be gotten at, is wrong. It attacks the core of the value and the potentiality of that city. Market value assessment will undermine small businesses and the jobs they provide,’ Mrs. Jacobs said. She has seen the dying away of small businesses in American cities, often because of exorbitant taxes.”
Ask what they plan to do about it! At we going to wait for the unemployment level to reach 13%, 14% or 15%, in Toronto before this becomes an issue?
Ugh. When is Glen goign to realize that Spacing is not Canadian Business magazine?!?!? This is a magazine about design and the community. Yes, taxes are important, but not the end all and be all of discussions about this city.
I guess I will when Spacing stops postings like this……….
https://spacing.ca/toronto/2009/10/26/john-lorinc-a-graveyard-for-small-businesses-and-other-urban-myths/
I actually sort of appreciate Glen’s comments. You can’t read them in Canadian Business or really anywhere else. The points he (continually) makes have everything to do with the city’s physical landscape, and if he didn’t (continually) comment on Spacing, I’d never see them made anywhere else. So.
Thank you Andrew! I don’t post here for the sake of being an antagonist. I just try to bring a different, or missing, perspective. I don’t think that I have ever been disrespectful.
The reason I posted the JJ comment was that yet another Vital Signs report clearly demonstrates that her prediction has become reality. For precisely the reasons she predicted.