[PHOTO] Tenements of Manhattan, New York City

Even Toronto's low-rise buildngs are short compared to New York City's: the famous tenements with their characteristic fire escapes scattered across Manhattan, from the Lower East Side to Harlem, are easily at least double the height of the buildings one would find in Toronto's comparable lower-density neighbourhoods. (Of course Manhattan is the dense core of a city at the core of a metropolitan area substantially larger and denser than the Greater Toronto Area.)

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bag News Notes comments on some recently-published photos of the family of Bashar Assad--father, mother, children--and how they seem particularly staged.


• The Burgh Diaspora links to an article describing how migration to the United States from one Mexican village helped, via remittances, to lift it to middle4 classes.


• The Discoblog summarizes a recent paper taking a look at conflicts of pattern in Wikipedia article edit wars, noting--among other things--that certain specific patterns of editing indicate that a conflict will go on for some while.


• Eastern Approaches writes about the Bosnian city of Tuzla, home to--among other things--salt lakes. They're popular with tourists, see.


• Geocurrents links to a news item highlighting the latest efforts--so far mostly rhetorically--to start up economic cooperation between China and countries of the Portuguese-speaking world.


• GNXP's Razib Khan highlights the ongoing controversy over the division of the indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere into three groups, a conflict centering on the question of whether or not the Amerind group actually exists.


• Registan highlighted Tajikistan's position of being able to cultivate multiple partners, trading basing rights for money, Russia and India standing out.


• Zero Geography maps the relative prominence of articles on different countries in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian Wikipedias.

[URBAN NOTE] "John Tory Calls for a Large Park in the Redeveloped Ontario Place"

Hamutal Dotan's Torontoist post describing former Ontario Progressive Conservative politician John Tory's proposal redevelop the Ontario Place multi-use recreation complex into a new waterfront neighbourhood, a new park serving as focus for residential neighbourhoods, plausibly describes the place's future for me.

The February announcement of the site's closure may--notwithstanding Shawn Micallef's positive memories of the site in its prime--have come too late, at least from the perspective of saving money. Demographic and cultural shifts made the old public amusement park model non-viable, and worse, unnecessary and unwanted, while Ontario Place's waterfront location has become very popular as a place for people to live. The only times I have been down to the waterfront in the past year have been to visit friends who live in the area, and I don't think I'm exceptional in that regard.

Why not take advantage of the emergent trend and sell off the unused land before real estate prices crash?

Six months ago, the provincial government announced that Ontario Place would be shut down, effective immediately, and that an expert panel would be convened to study options for revitalizing the aging waterfront attraction. Today, that panel delivered its report on Ontario Place to Minister of Tourism and Culture Michael Chan.

Calling it “an exciting model for a new Ontario Place,” John Tory summarized the panel’s recommendations for reporters this morning. The panel is calling for a major “state of the art park” to be built on the site: one that is free, easily accessible, and where “people can gather at any time of day and at any point in the year.” They recommend that this park take up the majority of the site, and that development be scaled accordingly, to maintain Ontario Place as a primarily public space. This should include some residential—but “not a wall of condos”—a major institutional or corporate anchor tenant, some retail and entertainment tenants, and new transit infrastructure to support this development.

The panel was determined, said Tory, to develop plans for an Ontario Place “that better reflects Ontario’s culture and history and life…a lot of things have changes since Ontario Place was conceived and built.” Noting the rapid waterfront growth Toronto has seen in the past two decades, Tory emphasized that Ontario Place needed to serve the residents of the city and the nearby communities: “a new opportunity to work and to live and to play and to discover along the water’s edge.” Residential, institutional, and retail tenants are key, says Tory, to keeping Ontario Place vital throughout the year, and not just a seasonal summer attraction.

It’s a stark contrast to the vision for the waterfront that the mayor and his vocal brother have presented since being elected to office, a clear rejection of the Ferris wheel/casino model of development in favour of some more urbanist city-building goals. John Tory’s Ontario Place is meant for the people who live here, not trying to attract tourists for the weekend.

“We strongly recommend bold, excellent design, and insistence on using sustainable and green building principles,” Tory went on, repeating that “discipline” would be required in choosing private-sector development partners who respect these goals. “Any new projects, we believe, must respect and enhance the natural beauty of the surroundings by protecting sightlines to the water,” a point that is discouraging for condo developers who might want to build up—high up—against the water’s edge, and put those lakeside views in their promotional materials.

Tory spoke with clear affection about the old Forum concert venue; he hopes Ontario Place will create a free outdoor performance space (as opposed to the current ticketed amphitheatre). And allaying concerns many historically-minded Torontonians have expressed, the panel recommends keeping the cinesphere and pods; “it’ll never become part of our heritage if we tear it down after 40 years,” Tory remarked this morning.

[URBAN NOTE] Preferential voting in Toronto by 2018?

The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale goes into much more detail than the CBC about the idea of instituting preferential voting for Toronto municipal elections.

At the request of Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee and council’s government management committee, city elections officials are now studying a proposal to switch to a ranked ballot system. Councillor Paul Ainslie, the government management chair and a Ford ally, said he plans to bring the proposal to the council floor in November.

The group that has spearheaded the push for ranked ballots, the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT), says 18 of the 45 members of council have endorsed the idea, including four members of Ford’s executive committee. While an endorsement-in-principle does not necessarily mean a committed vote, and while the Star could not independently confirm all of the endorsements, a 23-vote majority appears within reach.

[ . .]

The second: the provincial government would need to approve. According to the Ranked Ballot Initiative’s Dave Meslin, a prominent local activist, municipal affairs minister Kathleen Wynne has told him that she does not believe the province should stand in the city’s way if council votes in favour.

[. . .]

The ranked ballot system typically works as follows. Instead of choosing a single candidate, as they do now, voters are free to rank candidates in the order they prefer them. (A “1” for their favourite, a “2” for their second favourite, “3” for their third.) If a candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — more than 50 per cent — the election is over.

But if no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — say, if the most popular candidate has 35 per cent — the least popular candidate is eliminated, and the second-place votes of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the candidates who remain. This process of elimination and addition, known as an instant runoff, continues until someone has a majority.

At present, a widely disliked councillor can be re-elected with the support of even a quarter of the vote because several lesser-known challengers split the opposition vote. The ranked ballot, Meslin said, would ensure that the victor is truly the pick of the people while also weakening the powerful advantage enjoyed by municipal incumbents.

[LINK] "The Appearance of Devotion: Babies, Booze, and the LCBO"

Writing at Torontoist, this weekend Natalie Zina Walschots wrote a wonderful reaction in relation to the Toronto Sun's latest attempt to kickstart anti-Muslim sentiment in Ontario. You might remember that recently, the Sun devoted its front page to condemning a Muslim street preacher at Yonge and Dundas who favoured passing laws making the niqab mandatory for women on the grounds that unclad women invite sexual assault, not noticing that they have a columnist who compared women in unspecified dress to deer in an area with an active hunt. Most recently, the Sun--in Walschots' words--"clothed a 14-year-old boy in the garments of a devout Islamic woman, including a hijab, which covers the hair, and a niqab, a veil over the face that leaves the eyes exposed," this religious wear then allowing the teenager to "walk into three separate LCBOs and purchase a bottle of sambuca with cash," without anyone asking for identification.

(Am I alone in being amused at the idea of the spectre of burka-clad underage drinkers buying booze?)

The only thing the article actually revealed was a deeply racist discomfort with a particular culture and set of religious practices, and an almost pitiful attempt to generate web traffic. This is an example of invented news, revealing a “crisis” that does not exist in an attempt to further a specific agenda: in this case, distrust of members of a specific group. There has not been a rash of young boys trying to buy alcohol from the LCBO dressed as Muslim women. There was no specific incident the Sun was following up on. Instead of using that front page to cover something important, something with weight and meaning and teeth and heart, they put a little boy in a costume they found frightening and instructed him to buy booze, hoping to make a few more people in the world more scared of those clothes and what they represent—what the Sun thinks they represent—as well.

[. . .]

I was 14 the first time I bought a bottle of alcohol, too—my parents’ earnest desire to mark my 19th birthday notwithstanding—in the small town in Southern Ontario that recently earned the title of the safest municipality in Canada for the third year in a row. My face was not obscured, I carried no fake identification, and I was not prompted by anyone else, not even a goading friend. I took some of the cash I had earned babysitting, walked in, and walked out with a bottle of malt liquor that I hid in my closet and drank lukewarm. I hated it. I rarely bought alcohol after that, preferring to simply pour myself a surreptitious glass of whatever bottle of wine might be lingering in the fridge after my parents had company. I had no idea what I should buy and my random guesses tended to be disgusting. Every now and again, though, I would stroll in and walk out with a bottle.

[. . .]

In many ways, the boy the Sun sent out was dressed exactly as I was in those days. We were both cast as mature members of our community, not children or stereotypical rowdy teenagers. We were quiet and demure, and displayed cultural signifiers of religious devotion. We seemed the very opposite of suspicious for these reasons, and so both of our costumes worked. The boy’s success says far less about the usefulness of the niqab as a disguise and more about the general belief that religiously devout, quiet women are probably not getting into any trouble.

While most LCBO employees are positively militant when it comes to carding customers who display even the remotest chance of being underage, the Sun happened to find a disguise that worked. Saying that the effectiveness of such a disguise means that the niqab is dangerous is about as ridiculous as saying that children being allowed to wear any clothes typically worn by adults, or by devout members of any religion, is dangerous. It is declaring any outward sign of devotion, be it a crucifix or a kippah or a hijab, suspect, because it carries with it the implication the wearer is pure of spirit and intention—an implication that can be exploited by thirsty teenagers (or Sun editors on a mission) for other ends.

If anything, it reveals that a greater measure of openness, education, and cultural awareness is needed, perhaps for employees of the LCBO and more definitely for members of Sun Media. We’ve become so uncomfortable asking questions about cultural and religious practices we don’t understand that we simply decry their existence as dangerous and scary, or pretend they don’t exist. A curious and polite question from a cashier about an appropriate, respectful way to handle the situation would have completely defused things. Better training on the best way to handle potentially identity-obscuring modest clothing is certainly called for. Framing a religious or cultural practice as dangerous out of fear and bigotry is not only wrong, it is also terrible journalism.

[BRIEF NOTE] On The Dark Knight Rises

After I caught The Dark Knight Rises Friday with suitablyemoname, the consensus was that the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy was a solid eight out of ten, inevitably and unfairly suffering a bit via the inevitable comparisons with 2008's amazing The Dark Knight, fairly suffering a bit more from the sheer density of plot crammed into the three hours of film. The plot was compelling, though, directed well--intelligently, creatively, even with a sense of humour. Nolan's recurring actor collaborators, Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy joining Michael Caine and Christian Bale and Gary Oldman, did excellent jobs, Anne Hathaway additionally doing a good job in creating a new iconic Catwoman capable of standing up to Michelle Pfeiffer's version in 1992's Batman Returns.

But the movie had me thinking about the implications of the plot.

( What would happen to the world? )

Thoughts?