MAYOR-ELECT ROB FORD
• Urban-suburban split divides city [The Star]
• Voting for Smitherman, Ford divided Toronto’s downtown and suburbs [Globe & Mail]
• Who voted for whom: Downtown-suburban chasm [Globe & Mail]
• Graphic: How Toronto voted for mayor, by ward [National Post]
• Downtown vs. ‘burbs divide dismissed [National Post]
• Levy: Rocco Rossi’s not done yet [The Sun]
• Warmington: Ford back on the air waves [The Sun]
• Warmington: Housing sale a test for Ford [The Sun]
HOUSING
• Fiorito: Targeting a tenant at 200 Wellesley [The Star]
• Jobs key to growth plan in Simcoe County, says province [The Star]
• Why Toronto is better than U.S. cities for trick or treating [The Star]
• Weston residents angry over Metrolinx attempts to buy homes near Georgetown [The Star]
• Toronto residents fear expropriation of homes to build airport tunnel [Globe & Mail]
• Fire sale of social housing dwellings [The Sun]
• Is this Google Maps error actually a “trap” neighbourhood? [BlogTO]
ROADWAYS
• Ontario’s worst road no longer belongs to Toronto [The Star]
• Brake lines cut in three Toronto neighbourhoods [The Star]
• Toronto claims eight of Ontario’s worst roads [National Post]
• Oakmount Road’s Mysterious Fork [Torontoist]
TRANSIT
• Bombardier not worried that Toronto’s new mayor will kill streetcar order [Globe & Mail]
• When it comes to public transit, we all want the same seat [National Post]
CYCLING
• Toronto Cyclists Union to get new chair [BlogTO]
• What ever happened to velo-city? [BlogTO]
OTHER NEWS
• The Fixer: Gushing water makes Sinnott sloppy [The Star]
• For David Chen, the shoplifters keep on coming [Globe & Mail]
• Mississauga council shift could threaten inquiry into McCallion’s business dealings [National Post]
4 comments
Re: What ever happened to velo-city? [BlogTO]
The answer is that this was never a serious suggestion.
I know I snark a lot about Toronto vs its American peers, usually on a rant about some trend Torontonians are missing (i.e.building streetcar lines rather than voting for mayors who want to phase them out) but the Star article on trick-or-treating is 100% correct. Glad to see Florida noticing this too – you could probably write a paper solely on Halloween as a livability index.
Halloween in large cities in the States seems to be much more about gatherings at schools, parks, malls and parades rather than good old knock-on-doors trick-or-treating.
Other factors such as housing types, connecting street grids, walkability, geography (hills) also play a role and Toronto is tops in these matters as well.
The US cities I have lived in are, on the whole, missing out completely on the real Halloween fun that Toronto experiences. You can find it in smaller cities, college towns, etc. but in most big metro areas there is a tremendous history of fear from the bad old days when the inner cities were being abandoned and vandalism was a serious, serious issue that made people lock the door and turn out the lights. Check out this archive search of the New York Times from the 80s:
http://bit.ly/97vCIi
And to think that I used to wander with friends around North Toronto for hours with a bulging Unicef box around my neck. We’ll get a bunch of costumed kids on my very residential, mostly-gentrified block in upper Manhattan this year, but they will all be heavily escorted and at home by 7:30. And we still, in 2010, get articles like this in post-Guliani, super-safe, bike-lane-and-latte-loving Manhattan:
http://bit.ly/c8Fvip
http://bit.ly/aeiRZw
Enjoy your Halloween weekend – it’s truly a special part of living in Toronto.
I wonder who “assured” Mike Sullivan (see The Star’s report) that expropriation would be unnecessary. Even then, the current GO Transit/Sheppard East grade separation project has required several expropriations so you’d think that the penny might have dropped.
The tunnel is a better option for Weston than closing roads – at a higher cost to the general taxpayer. Unless there is an engineering reason why Metrolinx are mistaken about the need to expropriate or temporarily relocate, just shut up already.
It would be interesting to get David Hulchanski thoughts of whether this was more a City1 vs City2 and 3 outcome.