[PHOTO] Nine photos looking out at Spinnakers' Landing

I had seen Spinnakers' Landing in my 2014 visit--some of the photos are visible here--and so on this trip, my photography concentrated on the surroundings of this waterfront pier-based, at the low tides and the harbour beyond.

[URBAN NOTE] On the proposed Rail Deck Park of Toronto

The above photo, one of the many I took in May from the top of the CN Tower, came to mind when I heard one particular news item. The big new urban development in Toronto, as described by the Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro, is the proposed to roof over the rail lands as far west of the CN Tower as Bathurst Street and to build a park--Rail Deck Park--on top of this roof.

A bold new legacy park pitched by public officials for the downtown core, being dubbed Toronto’s Central Park, would link long-separated neighbourhoods and provide much needed green space.

That’s the hope of Mayor John Tory, local politicians and senior planning officials in the newly announced attempt to secure the rights to the air space over the rail corridor between Bathurst St. and Blue Jays Way to build a 21-acre deck park now being called Rail Deck Park.

Although the city made its intentions clear Wednesday, there are still many unknowns. Most critical is how to pay for the construction and maintenance of such a significant space with looming budget pressures ahead. And a project of this size, according to those pitching it, is still many years in the making.

With an area just larger than 16 regulation football fields, the proposed park would dwarf all other green spaces in the core. It’s an open space that chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat said could be “our Central Park” — a “grand civic gesture” in a part of Toronto experiencing unprecedented residential growth and one that is also the most deficient in parkland.

It's difficult to disagree with this Torontoist op-ed which thinks so much green space will be a good thing, notwithstanding the effort needed.

Tory told media the park, which would span across Bathurst Street to the Rogers Centre, would take at minimum four to five years to build, and a cost has not yet been calculated. (Other parks, by comparison, have cost upwards of tens of millions of dollars per acre.) But the City says adding more green space, especially in building-dense downtown areas, is the main priority. “We need to ensure we’re building neighbourhoods, building communities, not just building towers,” says Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), who has been advocating for more city park space. In July, Cressy proposed un-paving a parking lot near King and Spadina to create more green space downtown. Online, Torontonians are already championing the plan.

NOW Toronto placed this park in the context of efforts at greening the waterfront. (This article was also the source of the graphic I used.)

The initiative is part of the City’s TOCore project, which is responsible for developing a comprehensive plan for reshaping the downtown core. According to City stats, Toronto’s downtown population has increased by 50,000 residents in the past five years, and that population is expect to double in the next two decades. Rail Deck Park would function as the “missing link” between the King-Spadina neighbhourhood, City Place and the Waterfront.

The park is one of several green-ification projects in the works for Toronto’s west side. In late 2015, plans for the long-overdue Fort York Pedestrian and Cycle Bridge were finally unveiled. The stainless steel span expected to be completed in 2017 will connect Liberty Village and Fort York residents to the waterfront parks and surrounding spaces. It will cross two rail corridors and connect Stanley Park and Fort York.

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc likes the idea, but is concerned about whether or not Toronto's political culture will allow its realization.

According to the area councilor Joe Cressy, Livey’s officials scrutinized a handful of key issues: the ownership of the air rights, the cost, and the technical feasibility.

The air rights, above the 27-foot level, belong to CN Rail, Toronto Terminals Railway and Metrolinx; city officials have determined that they can be acquired. But with developers actively exploring the possibility of privately buying air rights over the corridor, Cressy says council’s key move, when a staff report surfaces in September, will be to approve an official plan amendment designating the entire space above the tracks as open space.

The plan, as my colleague Kieran Delamont explains here, is going to be very expensive, even allowing for the large and unused parkland acquisition reserves that Spacing investigated last year in our “Parks in Crisis” series. Cressy contends that both the province and the feds may put money into the project. But this ask is merely the latest in a long series of big ticket asks, not least of which is the $1 billion flood protection berm that will unlock development on the Portlands. (Let’s not even talk about transit.)

Which brings me to Downsview Park. Those of you who dimly remember the early years of Jean Chretien’s Liberal regime may recall that two of his loyal foot soldiers, Art Eggleton and David Collenette, persuaded the prime minister to donate the decommissioned air force base to the City, alongside similarly high-minded pledges to establish it as Canada’s first national urban park (whatever that means).

Yet after a few years of high-end architects conjuring up fancy visions, it became clear that no one was prepared to put out to actually build the thing, at which point Canada Lands Corporation, the ultimate owner of the land, began cleaving off parcels at the edges for re-development with an eye to using the proceeds to build the park. The idea of encircling a large park with higher density buildings is actually sound planning, but this cross-subsidization strategy was accomplished in an ad hoc and haphazard way. There was more than a little disingenuousness from the various powers that be, and plenty of anti-development yodeling from Maria Augimeri, the local councilor.

If the Rail Deck Park can be achieved, I think it should. Torontonians want and deserve nice things, and this downtown park would definitely be one such thing. I just hope, with Lorinc, that we will be able to overcome our dysfunctional political culture long enough to build it.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• The Big Picture shares photos from Rio in advance of the Olympics.


• James Bow remembers Mel Hurtig, the recently dead Canadian nationalist.


• Centauri Dreams considers space-based collection of antimatter.


• Crooked Timber examines the tyranny of the ideal.


• Dangerous Minds looks at a charming early 1980s board game, Gay Monopoly.


• The Dragon's Gaze predicts future transits of Beta Pictoris b.


• The Dragon's Tales examines dwarf planet candidate 2015 RR245.


• Far Outliers shares some odd placenames found in the western United States.


• Language Hat reports on a new English/Yiddish dictionary.


• Language Log looks at how speakers of Slavic and Turkic communicate with each other across Eurasia.


• The Map Room Blog reports on an interesting-sounding exhibition on maps here in Toronto.


• Marginal Revolution considers a link between slow population growth and slow economic growth, and suggests land use policy in Tokyo is ideal for a large city.


• Steve Munro shares exchanges on GO Transit services in the Weston corridor.


• North's Justin Petrone shares his progress towards
  
• The NYRB Daily looks at how Russia and China in particular make extensive use of doping at the Olympics, and international sports generally.


• Savage Minds considers how writing can help anthropologists who have witnessed violence heal.


• The Volokh Conspiracy engages with the bloody legacy of Mao.

[NEWS] Some Friday links

• Bloomberg notes the closure of Poland's frontier with Kaliningrad, looks at how Google is beating out Facebook in helping India get connected to the Internet, notes British arms makers' efforts to diversify beyond Europe and examines the United Kingdom's difficult negotiations to get out of the European Union, looks at the problems of investing in Argentina, looks at the complications of Germany's clean energy policy, observes that the Israeli government gave the schools of ultra-Orthodox Jews the right not to teach math and English, examines the consequences of terrorism on French politics, and examines at length the plight of South Asian migrant workers in the Gulf dependent on their employers.


• Bloomberg View notes Donald Trump's bromance with Putin's Russia, examines Melania Trump's potential immigrant problems, and is critical of Thailand's new anti-democratic constitution.


• CBC looks at how some video stores in Canada are hanging on.


• The Inter Press Service notes that the Olympic Games marks the end of a decade of megaprojects in Brazil.


• MacLean's approves of the eighth and final book in the Harry Potter series.


• The National Post reports on a Ukrainian proposal to transform Chernobyl into a solar farm, and examines an abandoned plan to use nuclear weapons to unleash Alberta's oil sands.


• Open Democracy looks at the relationship between wealth and femicide in India, fears a possible coup in Ukraine, looks at the new relationship between China and Africa, examines the outsized importance of Corbyn to Britain's Labour Party, and looks how Armenia's defeat of Azerbaijan has given its veterans outsized power.


• Universe Today notes proposals for colonizing Mercury, looks at strong support in Hawaii for a new telescope, and examines the progenitor star of SN 1987A.


• Wired emphasizes the importance of nuclear weapons and deterrence for Donald Trump, and looks at how many cities around the world have transformed their rivers.

[URBAN NOTE] "City asks Pokemon Go makers to remove pokestop from ferry terminal"

This is amazing. From the Toronto Star's Oliver Sachgau:

After a few weeks of being the most popular mobile game in recent history, Pokemon Go is now facing backlash from the City of Toronto, who are trying to mitigate the crowds playing the game at the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal.

Hundreds of people have been camped out almost 24 hours a day at the park by the terminal, hunting for virtual pocket monsters on their phone. The park and surrounding area is also the site of nine pokestops – in-game locations where players congregate. Players have also been setting up lures – bait that attracts more virtual monsters to the stops.

The end result is a constant crowd of hundreds of players at all hours of the day and night, hoping to be the very best like no one ever before.

Matthew Cutler, spokesperson for Toronto’s parks and recreation department, said the city has reached out to Niantic, the game’s developer, to move some of the stops to other parks and ease the pressure on the ferry terminal.

“We love the game. We love what it’s doing in terms of bringing people into the public realm. We’re just of the mind that there may be a better park in the city for this kind of concentration of play,” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "John Tory’s Impending Impasse Over TTC Budget Cuts"

Torontoist's David Hains notes the real limits of John Tory's rhetoric on TTC funding.

At Council’s meeting in July, a lot of attention was paid to the approval for the $3.2-billion one-stop Scarborough subway extension.

But it overshadowed another motion that will have a big impact on transit as Council faces that immutable truth so politically convenient to ignore: things cost money.

The transit agency faces a $231-million budget gap to maintain service levels for 2017, the result of rising costs and Council passing a motion demanding a 2.6 per cent budget cut for every City division and agency. A draft letter by TTC management says they can’t make up that amount without “unpalatable” service cuts according to the Toronto Star, and can only get one-third of the way through belt tightening, a 10-cent fare increase, a draw from reserves, money shuffling, and the typical budget dance.

John Tory wants the full $231 million without service cuts, or he says the City may have to hire consultants who will do it. And thus we are at an impasse.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. The Rob Ford administration was predicated on the notion that there were vast amounts of waste to be found in government, if only Toronto had the right person to find and get rid of it. Now, Tory promises the same.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto says goodbye to legendary gay bar Zipperz"

At blogTO, Phil Villeneuve bids goodbye to Church Street's Zipperz.

Imagine walking into a dimly lit downtown cabaret bar. There's a man at a piano belting out show tunes while several others sit around him staring up into the night. You grab a drink and every single person in the room is quietly checking you out. You've just walked into their Cheers, their home away from home and you're totally welcome, but who the hell are you?

Trying to find something to stare at other than your glass, you spot a thick, red velvet curtain in the back corner of the room.

Walking over to it you start to hear a distant thumping, but it's when you pull back that impossibly heavy curtain, that a scene from an '80s gay cruising flick reveals itself.

Flashing lights, stainless steel dancefloor, and a crowd of gay men and women with their hands and cares in the air. This is Zipperz, there is nothing like it in Toronto, and it's now closed because of yet another condo development.

The Church and Carlton bar opened as Buttons in 1998 by a couple friends of current manager Harry Singh. Singh, a ball of endless energy who talks a mile a minute, filled with village histories and late-night tales, worked with them, but eventually took over the bar in 2000 when the original owners were running the place into the ground.

[ISL] "P.E.I. man goes door to door trying to become the next senator"

The Toronto Star carries this Canadian Press article about one Prince Edward Island man's efforts to campaign for a seat in the Senate.

Amidst the tourists in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops strolling among Charlottetown’s heritage homes, Owen Parkhouse stands out in his tan business suit.

On a hot August morning, he is going door to door, campaigning to become Prince Edward Island’s next senator.

While there’s no election for the job, Parkhouse has spent nearly four weeks knocking on doors, confidently asking for signatures to help support his application for the job.

“I thought I’d go door to door and get some sense of the peoples’ reaction to the Senate. A lot of people don’t know what the Senate is all about,” Parkhouse said Tuesday as he knocked on doors near Charlottetown’s downtown waterfront, a few blocks from the spot where the Fathers of Confederation gathered in 1864 to create a new nation.

He has gathered more than 500 signatures to include with an application that must be submitted before the end of the day Thursday.

[URBAN NOTE] "How does Montreal maintain its enviably low rents?"

As Eric Andrew-Gee explains in The Globe and Mail, relatively weak demand driven by relatively low levels of migration, abundant if aging rental stock, and government policies explain the low rents of Montréal.

The only thing missing was a wrought-iron staircase.

Otherwise, the apartment that Bronwyn Ford shared with her university friends in Montreal’s bohemian Outremont neighbourhood was a pure product of its place. High ceilings. Creaky wooden floors. A Hasidic landlord named Israel.

It also shared a more important attribute with its neighbours: It was cheap. Four bedrooms at $1,800 a month. That sort of price for a handsome, spacious apartment might look like a typo to the rest of Canada. But in Montreal, it rates as unremarkable.

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Montreal metro area is $760. The Toronto average is $1,288. In Vancouver, it’s $1,368. In all, just a handful of Canadian cities have cheaper rent than Montreal – and then only much smaller, sleepier communities such as Saint John and Trois-Rivières.

Even as stratospheric housing costs in Toronto and Vancouver dominate headlines and bankers warn of a Canadian housing bubble, the country’s second-largest city continues to churn along with bargain-basement rents that would make most of North America salivate.

[DM] "On the Jedi phenomenon and the Australian census"

At Demography Matters, I react to an io9 article that draws from a Brisbane Times article about how people claiming to follow the Jedi religion in the Australian census can actually worsen the collection of data.

This is funny, but this is also an important example of how modern statistics can be flawed.