[PHOTO] Yiddish and Yinglish in the window of John's Italian Caffe, 29 Baldwin Street

I was walking with a friend late last month around Baldwin Street when I saw, in the window of John's Italian Caffe at 27-29 Baldwin Street, this Hebrew script. I didn't recognize what it was. I naturally uploaded the picture to Facebook and asked my friends.

Erin found a February 2013 post by Walking Woman that identified the language as a mixture of Yiddish and Yinglish, Anglicized Yiddish; David translated this as "Puter, kaas, krim, eygs, frish jeden tag", i.e. Butter, Cheese, Cream, Eggs, fresh every day." (The "eygs" and "frish" are the Yinglish words.) The window's lettering thus dates back a century to a time when this building was in the middle of Toronto's first Jewish neighbourhood, kept by the current occupants of this building.

[URBAN NOTE] "At a Packed Meeting, Kensington Market Says “No” to Walmart"

Torontoist's Jess Davidson described the community meeting held Thursday about the proposal to plant a Walmart on the western periphery of Kensington Market, on Bathurst Street. Official representations were made by the city and by property developer RioCan, but the people present from the community in question were fiercely and unanimously against the development.

Concerns were mainly focused on how the development would change the face of the neighbourhood, how a big-box store would impact locals, increased traffic and gridlock, and the health of local small businesses. There were also specific concerns about bringing Walmart to the community, and a number of speakers raised questions about the potential for environmental damage and higher rates of crime. Others, including the church’s minister, raised Walmart’s poor record as an employer.

Here were a few comments that really got the crowd on their feet:

• One resident pointed out that Toronto has a long history of activism. Downtown residents have worked to stop the Spadina Expressway, rallied to protect women’s rights, protested war, and, more recently, opposed the G20 and the OLG’s proposed Toronto casino. “You’re messing with the wrong neighbourhood,” she said. “Good luck, hope it’s a fair fight.”


• A 30-year Kensington Market resident reminded the crowd that the development will cause ripples beyond the local community. As he put it, “If you have flesh-eating disease in the thumb, it is not just the thumb that is affected.”


• Louis, who said he lives nearby, reminded the crowd that they do have a voice. As he pointed out, 60 communities have fought back against Walmart and won.

As for the last point, a slide in the City’s presentation said that planners will look at a number of factors when deciding whether to green-light this project. They’ll consider the shopping centre’s relationship with nearby properties, its effects on nearby shops and businesses, its impact on traffic, and how it supports specialty retailers.

It's worth noting that people in the comments tend to be of much more mixed opinion about the development, many wondering as I have if Kensington Market businesses would necessarily be affected by a Walmart, or even if preserving Kensington Market as it is now is such a priority.

[DM] "Three links on cities as enormously productive, and predictable, social organizations"

Over at Demography Matters this evening I had a links post up to three interesting theoretical papers on cities.

• The first paper I came across via via blogger James Nicoll. The 2007 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, "Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities", by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West, argues for the existence of structured urban hierarchies.


• Via The Atlantic Cities' Emily Badger, meanwhile, I came across "Urban characteristics attributable to density-driven tie formation". Authored by Wei Pan, Gourab Ghoshal, Coco Krumme, Manuel Cebrian, and Alex Pentland, and originally presented in June 2012, the paper makes some interesting claims about the exceptional benefits of large cities.

Via io9, I came across the April 2012 McKinsey Global Institute report"Urban America: US cities in the global economy", by authors James Manyika, Jaana Remes, Richard Dobbs, Javier Orellana and Fabian Schaer. It makes the claim that the United States is uniquely highly urbanized, and hence uniquely prosperous.

[FORUM] What do you think about cities?

Do you like cities and city life? Do you think it makes you free? Or, are you a fan of non-urban areas, rural or suburban or exurban?

(Me, I always wanted to live in a metropolis. Now I do.)