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The work of the mid-20th century architectural photography firm Panda Associates feature at The Idea of North, for their documentation of what was in the autumn of 1961 the future home of the futuristic Toronto City Hall.
Sep. 25th, 2016
The work of the mid-20th century architectural photography firm Panda Associates feature at The Idea of North, for their documentation of what was in the autumn of 1961 the future home of the futuristic Toronto City Hall.
[BLOG] Some Sunday links
Sep. 25th, 2016 09:53 am- blogTO notes that Muji is opening up a second location.
- James Bow writes about how voicing complaints can make things better for transit riders.
- The Dragon's Gaze notes the detection of ice in the disk of HD 142527.
- The Dragon's Tales links to a paper speculating on the origins of rings like Saturn's in the disruption of dwarf planets.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money notes Rich Lowry's low bar for Donald Trump.
- The LRB Blog notes that refugees are not going to get into the European Union.
- Marginal Revolution is rightly appalled by a journalist who argues against research in longevity.
- Understanding Society's Daniel Little announces his new book, New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science.
- Window on Eurasia argues that Huntington's description of Ukraine's divisions is incorrect, and warns about the strength of Putin.
Spacing Toronto's Shawn Micallef mourns John Bentley Mays, a Toronto writer whose writings helped Toronto know itself.
When I first moved to Toronto in 2000 I spent a lot of time at the Reference Library, ostensibly looking for a job on their computers and in their newspapers. Job-hunting is no fun so there was lots of motivation to procrastinate, and the library is a good place to do that. One of the things I picked up was John Bentley Mays’ 1994 book Emerald City. The subtitle was “Toronto visited” and this book certainly did that.
Divided into sections with titles like “Thinking Places”, “Shopping”, and “Suburban Idylls”, Mays wandered through the well known and less well known parts of the city, visiting the Port Lands, Garrison Creek, Don Mills, Mississauga and dozens of other places, many of them on the edge of things or peripheral places. He starts off with his first walk through the city when he arrived here in 1969, zigzagging from Deer Park down to Exhibition Place. Then he makes the case why this is a city worthy of a second thought and some deeper contemplation. Then goes on to deeply explore it in the book.
Mays had an eye for the overlooked details and weaved Toronto observations and history with his deep understanding of literature and art. Toronto was placed among other world cities and metropolitan cultural movements, a context that foresaw the kind of city Toronto has continued to grow into over the next two decades. He dedicated the book to his daughter, Erin, calling her a “city kid,” something I had always wanted to be, and perhaps now that I had moved to Toronto, was becoming myself. As a newcomer to this place, Emerald City was providing some of the back-story and identity I needed to become that.
I choose to read Edward Keenan's Wednesday article in the Toronto Star, starting with the Rail Deck Park, as a challenge for us to do better.
I want to fall in love with this thing because I imagine in my mind’s eye what it could be, in a dead zone of the city right now, in the heart of a growing central area, and think: “What a kick-ass awesome thing that would be to have in the city.”
I want to live in the city that says it is worth it, because we are a wealthy and growing city, and because it would belong to all of us, and because it would be awesome.
And yet…
…and yet I know this is a city that already has a much larger downtown park — on the Toronto Islands, roughly the size of New York’s Central Park — and chokes off access to it on aging ferry boats, so that a family of four wanting to visit must pay more than $22 to access the park, and must line up for a long time, crowded into a pen in the hot sun, waiting to board.
…and yet I know this a city in which the man who is now deputy mayor launched a crusade to protest the cost of pink umbrella lighting installations in a new waterfront park just a few years ago, and ramped up the outrage over new washrooms at Cherry Beach.
Well done, Missisauga! From the Toronto Star's San Grewal:
Waterfront piazzas, a 1.5 kilometre beach, new lakefront land the size of 48 football fields and mixed-use neighbourhoods housing 20,000 people on 250 acres of reclaimed industrial land — Mississauga is set to kick off a project on the shores of Lake Ontario that promises to be the envy of the world.
On Saturday, Ontario's finance minister will realize a dream that has driven him for more than a decade, as he and other dignitaries announce the “ground making” of new waterfront land and islands next to where a colossal power plant formed a barrier between the city and nature for almost 50 years.
The grand undertaking — involving the city, the province and Credit Valley Conservation — is part of a major reclamation of Mississauga’s waterfront called Inspiration Lakeview.
“There probably isn’t another city in the world that has this much space on the waterfront to do what we’re going to do here,” says Finance Minister Charles Sousa, also the local MPP.
The planned 300-acre development will feature boardwalks, canals lined with restaurants and boutiques, wetland trails, commercial and residential space, buildings to house cultural events and possibly even a Great Lakes research facility.
The Toronto Star's Jim Coyle describes what seems to be the successful first stage of Alexandra Park's revitalization.
On a golden early-autumn day, under flawless blue skies, local residents took to the streets Saturday to celebrate fresh starts and brighter futures in the downtown neighbourhood of Alexandra Park.
The 18-acre tract — originally built in the 1960s as public housing, squeezed between the bustle of Kensington Market, Chinatown and Queen St. W. — has long been terra incognita to many in Toronto, and regarded by some who did know it as a no-go zone of gangs and hidey-holes.
But all that’s changing under a revitalization plan that began in 2008 with not much more than dreams and determination and, eight years on, celebrated the official opening Saturday of its first 40 new townhomes.
The party brought drum bands and bouncy castles and ice-cream trucks and smoking barbecues onto the sunny streets, along with delighted residents like Hamza Waseem.
Waseem, 21, came to Canada from Pakistan at age 5 and has lived in Alexandra Park since 2004.
“As a community we were known for drugs, violence, crime,” he told the Star. “But now it’s bringing more safety, and we feel better for sure. We were closed off, we were isolated from the community,” he said. “This is opening us up and making it safer.”
blogTO's Derek Flack blogs, with photos about the imminent transformation of Toronto's Junction Triangle, to my west, by (among other things) a dramatic increase in transit hubs.
Many Toronto neighbourhoods are in the midst of transformation via the rise of condo developments that bring with them a huge influx of new residents. West Queen West and Liberty Village are good examples of places where this process has already taken place, and over the next half decade Yorkville is about to experience profound intensification.
But condos aren't the only driving force of change in Toronto, even if it often seems like that's the case. Take, for instance, the Junction Triangle. This wedge-shaped west side neighbourhood is about to undergo a series of transformations that will alter its identity completely.
Condos are a part of the changes taking place here, but some of the biggest developments on the horizon related to the feature after which the neighbourhood is named: the railway tracks. This area is bounded by some of Toronto's busiest rail corridors, and it's the traffic on these tracks that will be a major factor in the transformation here.
The most controversial development on the way for the Junction Triangle is the Davenport Diamond Grade Separation, which will put a massive rail overpass through the heart of the neighbourhood. There was significant community pushback on this project but it's going ahead as of early August.
If there's a silver lining for residents, it's that the overpass poses some novel options for public space and a possible connection to West Toronto Rail Path. That won't be much consolation for residents whose homes back onto the project, but it might help to establish a stronger relationship to Bloor St., which is currently cut-off on the north side of the area.
Spacing Toronto features an essay by a Toronto civil servant, Mary L. MacDonald, in defense of Toronto's established policy regarding districts dense with heritage.
What we choose to build, what we choose to demolish and what we choose to save tells us a lot about dominant human values: social, cultural, environmental, economic and political. Buildings and landscapes embody these values and reveal information about the people who designed them, the people who inhabit them and the geographic, cultural or historic moments or movements that inspired them. Our built environment and landscapes tell stories, and they reveal and illustrate our many histories, both the illustrious and the otherwise invisible.
Toronto’s diverse cultural heritage is reflected in the built form and landscapes of its neighbourhoods, main streets, commercial areas, ravines and parks, as well as in the traditions and cultural spaces of its over 2.5 million residents. Cultural heritage is widely understood to be an important component of sustainable development and place-making and, as Toronto’s growth intensifies, Toronto City Planning is acting to ensure that intensification is reconciled with the ongoing conservation of significant heritage areas. To this end, the City is using a suite of policy tools and processes to create a culture of conservation and context sensitive design, recognizing that, as Canada’s largest city, Toronto faces both unique challenges and opportunities in conserving and benefiting from heritage conservation districts (HCDs).
In his September 15, 2016, opinion piece on HCDs, Michael McClelland asserts the City of Toronto is looking for a “silver bullet” to control development in the downtown core; neither are HCDs a “blunt tool.” On the contrary, the identification, evaluation and designation of HCDs across the entire City have been made a planning priority because HCDs are valued for their ability to provide contextual, place-based policies and guidelines. HCDs are also valued for their ability to strengthen business areas; leverage economic development; positively influence conservation and planning outcomes; enhance civic engagement; protect the public interest, and demonstrate compliance with provincial planning policy and the City’s own Official Plan.
Torontoist features Beatrice Paez' lovely photo-heavy feature on In/Future and its Ontario Place site that makes me wish I could have visited it this year. Maybe next year?
Ontario Place opened to much fanfare in 1971, hailed as an icon of the province’s progress. Decades later, its stature in the city’s consciousness has since faded. In/Future, the much-hyped arts and music festival, hopes to bring Ontario Place back onto the public’s radar after a long hiatus.
More than four years ago, Ontario Place temporarily shuttered its doors with an eye to recasting itself as a multi-purpose site. It will reopen in 2017.
Rui Pimenta and Layne Hinton are the creative conspirators behind In/Future, which sets the stage for the park’s return from irrelevance. The festival opens the grounds to artists and musicians to project their take on how the site might appeal to a broader audience—beyond those prone to fits of nostalgia.
As much as it reimagines Ontario Place’s potential, In/Future also takes a retrospective gaze through several site-specific installations. With “Still,” artist Max Dean’s photographic installations offer up a narrative constructed with the props and mannequins salvaged from the out-of-commission Wilderness Adventure Ride. The inanimate objects—moose, bears, and miners—reassemble themselves into a tableau, continuing to take up residency in the deserted complex.
More futuristic is Laura Millard’s “Recursive Traces,” which displays images of snowmobile-etched circles, captured using a drone. Against the backdrop of her illuminated sketches and Styrofoam icebergs, Philip Glass’s “Étude No. 1” is played on loop. The piece is performed by Millard’s collaborator, Simone Jones.
This is the best picture I ever took of the flag of Prince Edward Island, adopted in 1964.
The upper third of the flag features the English heraldic lion which appeared both on the coat of arms of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, for whom the province is named, and on that of King Edward VII. The lower two-thirds show an island on which appear three small oak saplings (on the left) – representing the three counties of PEI (Prince, Queens, and Kings) – under the protection of a great oak tree which represents Great Britain. This symbolism is also reflected in the provincial motto, Parva sub ingenti (the small under the protection of the great).
Based upon the Armorial Bearings of Prince Edward Island, the flag contains a gold Heraldic Lion which also appeared on the Coat of Arms for Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (for whom the Province was named) and on that of King Edward VII, who granted the Bearings. Beneath the lion is a single plot of grass representing PEI and England, both of which are islands. Upon the mound of grass stand a mature Oak tree (the official tree of Prince Edward Island) which represents England and three smaller saplings on the left, representing the 3 counties into which Prince Edward Island has been divided since 1767. Framing the flag on the three sides away from the mast are alternating bands of red and white, the official colors of Canada.