By John Lorinc
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LORINC: Ford Nation’s phony construction shut-down during pandemic
If you’d tuned in to the Ontario government’s daily press briefing last Friday, you would have seen a grim-faced Doug Ford presenting the sobering...
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MARY ROWE: Fostering Covid-19 resilience in Canada’s cities
This is a guest column by Mary W. Rowe, CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute Over 80% of Canadians live in cities, making us one of the most urbanized...
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LORINC: Paying rent in a pandemic
It’s the first of the month, which means, for many Toronto tenants, that rent’s due – a perennial transaction that was already imbued with stress, and...
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LORINC: We are about to learn what civic resilience truly is in face of Covid-19 pandemic
In this space last week, I argued that Torontonians, and their elected officials, need to have a far more serious debate about what resiliency actually...
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LORINC: Understanding what resilience means in era of COVID-19
“Resilience” in recent years has emerged as the sexiest new addition to the lexicon of urbanist jargon — a word that denotes a kind of core strength, what...
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LORINC: Downsview offers city-building opportunity with a long runway
The key take-away in the Metrolinx business case report released last week, on the economics of the Scarborough subway, is as simple as can be: the vast...
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LORINC: Burning down the (laneway) house
In recent months, I’ve found myself wondering whether Toronto City Council’s much-touted laneway suites policy, circa 2018, was nothing more than an...
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LORINC: Just who is the face of the TTC these days?
With apologies to the famously elusive picture book figure, where’s Rick? Increasingly, as the TTC finds itself in a public relations nightmare, I have...
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LORINC: Council ponders $600 million affordable housing incentive
It is Toronto’s ur-question, the riddle of riddles, the fodder for a thousand earnest studies. What combination of public policy, political will and pixie...
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We have a housing crisis— why aren’t we talking about rent control?
In the mad-dash scramble to call out the culprits and cheer on the saviours in Toronto’s ever-accelerating housing crisis, there’s been an outpouring of...
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Embodied carbon and the problem of concrete Toronto
Whatever else you might think about Sidewalk Labs (SWL), the controversial smart city proposal has made one undeniably positive contribution to Toronto’s...
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The delicate dance of governing Sidewalk Lab’s Quayside project
Three-and-a-half months after The Great Re-Set trimmed the sails of everyone’s favorite smart city villain, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff and Waterfront...