Urban Design
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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...
By John Lorinc -
PODCAST: Spacing Radio 052, Public Realm Resolutions
We began 2020 with a bit of optimism — how could we know? We had an episode about the public realm and its importance, and spoke to urban...
By Spacing Radio -
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...
By John Lorinc -
Reading List: John Sewell, “The Shape of the Suburbs”
When John Sewell’s book The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl came out in 2009, I read it soon after publication, flagging passages...
By Dylan Reid -
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...
By John Lorinc -
COVID-19 stimulus spending needs to be wise to the perils of road building
In times of economic crisis, stimulus spending is important. But spending it wisely is even more important. In the midst of the climate and public health...
By Nicholas Sanderson -
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...
By John Lorinc -
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...
By John Lorinc -
LORINC: Preparing to weather the winter pandemic
After an emotionally complicated long weekend featuring spectacular fall colours, ambiguously-limited Thanksgiving gatherings, and disturbing statistics...
By John Lorinc -
Re-purposing Toronto’s city-owned golf courses
Public space has never been so popular. Over the summer in Toronto, we saw streets closed for active recreation, parks filled with people young and old...
By Cara Chellew -
Parks, policing, and the pandemic
Park People’s national COVID-19 survey shows that parks have become more important than ever to Canadians during the pandemic. While many have been using...
By Adri Stark -
Fixing Avenue Road
The car wins on Avenue Road. It always does. The pattern of valuing the convenience of drivers over everything else has been fixed since 1959, when the...
By Murray Campbell