Urban Design
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REID: Some thoughts on the 1 Bloor West proposal
Last week, the owner of the land at 1 Bloor West (the former location of Stollery’s, plus some adjacent property) unveiled a proposal for a dramatic...
By Dylan Reid -
Stairs to nowhere, trap streets, and other Toronto oddities
There’s a set of stairs on Greenwood Avenue that lead nowhere. At the top, a wooden fence at the end of someone’s back yard blocks any further...
By Chris Bateman -
The transformer next door
The lights are on but there’s no-one home at 640 Millwood Rd. The two-storey suburban home near Bayview and Eglinton doesn’t exactly stand out among its...
By Chris Bateman -
Welcome to your private nuclear fallout shelter
In 1959, the builders of Regency Acres, a 700-home subdivision in Aurora, Ontario, offered something no other homebuilder in the country could: a private...
By Chris Bateman -
The horror of the Rupert Hotel fire still lingers
The fire had been burning out of control at the Rupert Hotel for 17 minutes before someone called 911. As flames and acrid smoke filled the corridors of...
By Chris Bateman -
YONGE LOVE: Passionate Urban Engagement
As with all things (and people) deemed iconic, Yonge Street’s popularity has experienced its slumps and fair share of competition from neighbourhoods such...
By Jay Pitter -
The slow and deadly evolution of Toronto’s crosswalks
Crossing the street in Toronto has been a potentially deadly challenge for almost a century. Until the 1950s, when the number of automobiles dramatically...
By Chris Bateman -
There are 100 graves in the parking lot of this mall
The 100 or so people interred at Christie’s Methodist Cemetery near Warden and Finch never expected they would spend a portion of eternity buried...
By Chris Bateman -
How the CN Tower killed Toronto’s rooftop lookouts
There was a time when observation decks were all the rage in Toronto. The designers and developers of tall buildings like TD Centre, Commerce Court, and...
By Chris Bateman -
10 NO BRAINERS: Say “Yes” to Parklets
10 No Brainers to Make Toronto More Awesome! is a project of the Centre for City Ecology that highlights small, achievable actions at the City-level that...
By Claire Nelischer -
BOOK REVIEW: Unruly Places
I have to be favourably inclined towards a book whose Canadian edition preface opens with a shout-out to Toronto urban explorer Ninjalicious and his zine...
By Dylan Reid -
NXT City Prize: Resilient spaces with Joe Berridge
The NXT CITY PRIZE is all about vision to reimagine Toronto’s public spaces and inject a sense of energy, dynamism and reflexivity. With a focus on ideas...
By Nxt City Prize