Neighbourhoods
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THE WARD MUSICAL: Songs and Sounds of a Lost Toronto Neighbourhood
If you try to imagine your way back into the early 20th century streets and laneways of The Ward — the dense immigrant enclave razed to make way for...
By John Lorinc -
The lost streets of South Parkdale
No Toronto neighbourhood paid for the Gardiner Expressway quite like Parkdale. Before construction of the lakefront highway in 1958, the land south of...
By Chris Bateman -
401 Richmond is already at its highest and best use
I loved 401 Richmond before I even knew what it was. It was 9 years ago and I was in Toronto, visiting from Vancouver. My friend Lauren, a curatorial...
By Jake Tobin Garrett -
Behind the Kensington Market Research Project
Joshua Barker is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and the director of the University’s Ethnography Lab. The Lab was...
By Sarah Yellin -
The space age Parkway Plaza, Toronto’s first heritage supermarket
It was only a shopping mall, but when the Parkway Plaza opened at Ellesmere Road and Victoria Park Avenue in 1958, it signalled the arrival of space age...
By Chris Bateman -
Misuse of Heritage Conservation Districts can deaden both past and future
The City of Toronto believes it has found a silver bullet to control development pressure in the downtown core through the use of a tool known as a...
By Michael McClelland -
The life and death of Peter Dickinson and The Inn on the Park
Peter Dickinson was dying when he designed the Inn on the Park. From a bed in Mount Sinai hospital, his body weakened from cancer, Dickinson listened to...
By Chris Bateman -
Toronto’s Summerville pool is a slice of the Mediterranean
It’s easy to overlook the Donald D. Summerville Olympic Pools. Despite its sturdy presence on Lake Shore Boulevard East, the futuristic elevated...
By Chris Bateman -
LORINC: The Rail Deck Park considered
About two years ago, deputy city manager John Livey, Toronto’s top planner, realized the strategy of creating pocket parks and little private plazas...
By John Lorinc -
Misleading Leaside: Lobbyists score a hat trick with digital billboard
Outfront Media wants to construct a massive digital billboard in the residential community of Leaside. The problem is, no one wants digital billboards in...
By Dave Meslin -
LORINC: The Scarborough subway and the climate change agenda
What will future residents of Scarborough think, 30 or 40 years hence, when they cast their minds back to the craven transit decisions being made today by...
By John Lorinc -
How co-housing designs community into developments
For a lot of city dwellers, knowing their neighbors names is a rarity, let alone knocking on their door to ask to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar...
By Alex Steep