Urban Design
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REVIEW: Cities: Skylines II – A new dawn for city-building gaming
For Claire Basinski, like many other millennials, the original SimCity served as her closest exposure to city planning in her youth. Today she’s president...
By Nathan Abraha -
I visited public toilet paradise and it was heaven – why can’t Canada do this?
I found public pee paradises and their names are Hong Kong and Japan. Public washrooms, or lack of by policy choice, in Canada has been my pet thing for a...
By Shawn Micallef -
CNE’s grand plans of the past: Visionary days for people places in Toronto and Ontario
EDITOR: Landscape architect and urban designer Walter Kehm worked on the CNE master plans in the late 1960s and recently found these images that included...
By Walter Kehm -
PODCAST: Spacing Radio 073, Love Park and Love Letters
We meet Globe & Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic in the new Love Park on Toronto’s waterfront, to talk about good public space design...
By Spacing Radio -
PODCAST: Spacing Radio 072, From Leipzig With Love
This Spring, Spacing Radio had the opportunity to take the show on the road to the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany. Now that the whole...
By Spacing Radio -
OP-ED: Kensington Market needs its streets fixed, not redesigned
It’s been a bad month for place-keeping in Kensington Market. First the Kensington Market Community Land Trust’s (KMCLT) attempt to purchase two buildings...
By Dominique Russell -
The case for ordinary public spaces
It feels like the city is bursting at its seams. The glue that holds us together, including the public realm and city services such as transit and shelter...
By Cara Chellew -
The Ontario Place redevelopment isn’t about tourism
There’s a lot to question about the Ontario government’s plans for Ontario Place. The 95-year-long lease of the land on the site’s West Island to Austrian...
By Maryam Siddiqi -
Filling in the Missing Middle for food retailing
The term “missing middle” has quickly become recognized as shorthand for housing that fills the gap between single family dwellings and...
By Glenn Miller -
EXCLUSIVE: What is the source of Therme’s financing?
When Infrastructure Ontario executes public-private partnership arrangements, there are numerous permutations — design-build-finance-maintain, outright...
By John Lorinc -
Making places out of Toronto Centre’s neglected laneways
There’s a tactic in marketing: surprise and delight. It’s used to attract and engage with customers new and old by interacting with them in unexpected...
By Maryam Siddiqi -
LORINC: Ontario Place and a tale of two message tracks
After spending much of last Wednesday watching Therme Canada and its consultants perform in public, first during a four-hour session with a combined...
By John Lorinc