By John Lorinc
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LORINC: Some borders matter more than others in pandemic
A small procedural question, perhaps for the Ford government. Should we be expecting to see check-points erected on Highway 400 south of 7, or the QEW...
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LORINC: Welcome to the City’s policy-by-surveillance
I enjoy the revelations of a muck-raking auditor-general’s report as much as the next red-blooded taxpayer, but I must confess a sense of unease about the...
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LORINC: Raising the stakes in the MZO wars
The judge who handed down a temporary injunction last week, halting the demolition of the historic Dominion Foundry in the West Donlands, was withering in...
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LORINC: A first-responder service for mental health crises
This column was originally published in Spacing‘s fall, 2020, edition. City council’s executive committee yesterday voted to recommend a $1.7...
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LORINC: Calculating the pandemic’s carbon footprint
Does your Blue Bin runneth over? On my morning dog walks, I’ve noticed in the past several months that a growing number of blue bins hauled to the curb...
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LORINC: The never-ending war between Queen’s Park and City Hall
There could have scarcely been a more succinct visual metaphor for the chronically dysfunctional relationship between City Hall and Queen’s Park than the...
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LORINC: Yonge Street’s new mission
It sometimes seems as if the ‘whither-Yonge Street’ question has been loitering on the edges of our civic debates ever since the City iced the...
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LORINC: 2020, a year of urban resilience
The answer to the “whither-cities” question that’s buzzed around the edges of pandemic punditry was never seriously in doubt. Cities are...
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LORINC: Crombie’s resignation from Greenbelt Council reminds us to look upstream
Of course, the Ford government responded with misdirection and a bit of money. In the wake of David Crombie’s weekend resignation from the Greenbelt...
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LORINC: Tall or small is a false choice between main streets and intensification
At its meeting Monday, the Toronto Preservation Board (TPB) voted to adopt a set of staff recommendations that seemed, to some observers as well as...
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LORINC: The crowded bus problem during the second wave
The TTC has been steadily bringing back vehicle operators since early September as ridership levels rise. As of October 9, buses were running at about 50...
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LORINC: Preparing to weather the winter pandemic
After an emotionally complicated long weekend featuring spectacular fall colours, ambiguously-limited Thanksgiving gatherings, and disturbing statistics...