[PHOTO] There is a light, at the Evergreen Brickworks

This solitary light and stool in the brickworks down in the Don Valley caught my attention Thursday.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy reports on the astounding scientific illiteracy of Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci.


• blogTO compiles a list of the best tobagganing hills in Toronto.


• Citizen Science Salon looks at what we can do in the redwood forests.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a gap in the disk of TW Hydrae.


• Imageo notes that 2016 is the warmest year in the records.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a pride parade protected by police went off in Montenegro.


• Language Hat shares the story of Lazer Lederhendler, a son of Holocaust survivors in Montréal who became one of the leading translators into English of Québec literature.


• Language Log looks at the distant origins of Japanese terms for "dog."


• Marginal Revolution notes the rising popularity of Vladimir Putin on the American right.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the links between Russia and the "Calexit" movement.


• The Volokh Conspiracy celebrates Saturnalia.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Russia's use of genetics to disentangle the Tatar peoples and argues that the definition of Russians and Ukrainians as fraternal is dangerous to the latter.

[ISL] "Borden-Carleton's 'Stonehenge' remains undeveloped"

The Guardian's Nancy MacPhee describes how the Confederation Bridge assembly yard at Borden-Carleton is still intact, still undeveloped and transformed. I'm firmly of the opinion that the site should be kept: It's visually striking and could potentially be a destination in itself.

My most recent photo post, from my 2016 visit, is here.

Despite a call for tenders for its remediation, P.E.I.’s ‘Stonehenge’ remains untouched.

But the province’s Economic Development and Tourism minister, said the plan remains to revitalize the former Confederation Bridge fabrication yard area and to collaborate with the Town of Borden-Carleton to find a project that fits best with its future economic development plans.

“It is still a very important strategic asset for us and we’re working closely with the community of Borden-Carleton,” said Heath MacDonald. “They are in the process of doing a STEP program, which is an economic evaluation for their town. They feel that, and we feel that, there could be a tie in to the fabrication yard.”

Last February, Finance P.E.I. issued an invitation to tender for the demolition of the former fabrication yard situated on Read Road.

But a contract was never issued, and the 112-acre site is still untouched, its large above ground concrete pillars an eyesore in the community. The site, in clear view as visitors come off the bridge, has been abandoned since 1997.

MacDonald confirmed that three tenders — two from off-Island companies and one from within the province — had come in earlier this year, all more than double and one triple the anticipated $1 million government had hoped to spend on the site.

[URBAN NOTE] "NYC subway’s Second Avenue line faces deadline to open after 45 years"

The Toronto Star carries Jake Pearson's Associated Press article noting how New York City's Second Avenue subway line is nearing a deadline. Will it meet it? We'll see.

New Yorkers have become accustomed to waiting on the subway. But nearly 45 years?

That’s how long it’s been since construction began on a much-needed subway line beneath the east side of Manhattan. And if history is any guide, it’s anybody’s guess whether a Dec. 31 deadline to open it will actually be met.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been pushing the end-of-the-year deadline set by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) hard in recent days, saying it’s become about more than the long-delayed Second Avenue subway — it’s about the faith people have in government.

“Nobody believes it’s going to be done on time, nobody,” the Democratic governor said in a radio interview this week. But, he added, “If we can get it done on time … if we can open that thing up at the beginning of the year, maybe people will start to say once again, “Wow. Maybe we can do something.”

The Second Avenue subway, seen as crucial to alleviating traffic on one of the world’s busiest transit systems, has been star-crossed since it was first envisioned by the city’s transportation board in 1929. Those plans were derailed by the stock market crash a few months later.

[URBAN NOTE] "NDP’s tortured love-hate relationship with Toronto"

Martin Regg Cohn's Toronto Star column makes some harsh, but not necessarily inaccurate, judgments about NDP feelings towards Ontario's capital and largest city.

Despite [leader Andrea Horwath's] right turn, her fellow New Democrats at city hall are going in the opposite direction. Mere days after she explained herself to Tory — no need to toll commuters because a future Horwath government will turn over all the cash you need from general tax revenues — a gaggle of NDP councillors sensibly backed the mayor’s plan.

What do these city hall New Democrats see in road tolls that their fellow travellers at Queen’s Park are blind to? Might it be fidelity to transit priorities? Fear of congestion? Environmental peril?

Perhaps they sense that, despite Horwath’s twists and turns, public opinion has turned. Polls on tolls traditionally show strong resistance, but recent surveys point to majority support in Toronto.

In a previous column, I described how the NDP-PC anti-toll tag team was “the last straw” for a lifelong New Democrat, former MPP Paul Ferreira, who has left the party in protest. Ferreira, once chief of staff to ex-leader Howard Hampton and (briefly) Horwath, told me in an interview that by opposing tolls — without thinking through the implications — the party was being intellectually dishonest.

And geographically duplicitous.

In the last election, Horwath lost crucial Toronto seats while pursuing her populist, pocketbook appeals elsewhere. Many New Democrats still buy into the caricature of Toronto as a bastion of wine-swilling, blood-sucking elitists who don’t feel the pain of hard-working rural folk.

[URBAN NOTE] "Mayor Tory Discovers We Don’t Have Enough Transit Service"

Steve Munro has at it with John Tory over the mayor's belated recognition that Toronto needs more mass transit, starting from a letter that John Tory offered to this effect.

This letter informs us that the quality of TTC service is affected by the availability of the streetcar fleet, and in turn, of the bus fleet which has been partly diverted to serve streetcar routes. The letter is quite clear in saying that crowding results from diversion of buses to the streetcar routes, and from a lack of reliable streetcars.

That is not the same thing as “we don’t need any more service because there isn’t enough demand”. Indeed, even if the TTC had a larger reliable fleet, it would have no money in the 2017 budget, nor available headcount (i.e. authority to hire more drivers) to bring these vehicles out onto the street. The vehicle shortage and Bombardier’s late deliveries are actually helping the TTC and Mayor Tory impose his limits on service expansion. Without them, he would have an embarrassment of idle vehicles.

We have seen this problem at the TTC before where attempts to improve service (the Ridership Growth Strategy under Mayor Miller) were thwarted by a shortage of vehicles and operators. TTC management plans to bring an updated RGS to their Board in January 2017, but unless both the Board and City Council approve funding and staff, nothing can happen during 2017 except by shuffling service from one route or time period to another. This is “fine tuning”, an exercise in “efficiencies”, not a commitment to a broad-based improvement in service.

If routes are overcrowded, the first thing the TTC owes everyone is a detailed list of when and where this is taking place. How many buses and streetcars are we really short of requirements, and if they were available, what would be the budgetary effect simply of getting up to the service standard set by the Board? If we are already at this standard, how can Tory and Colle claim that crowding is the result of a vehicle shortage?

One big problem with crowding is that, beyond a certain point, it does not really measure demand. How many people could not get on because a bus was full? How many people gave up and walked or hailed a cab because their streetcar never showed up?

Budget hawks whose attitude to transit roughly equates to “there’s always room for one more on the roof” ignore this problem of latent demand and abandoned attempts to ride the TTC. They would rather talk about how there must be even more money the TTC can wring from its operations to avoid higher subsidies. They don’t see the taxicabs trolling major routes for fares whenever there is a gap in service (they’re not hard to find) and picking off would-be TTC customers.

[URBAN NOTE] "Carlton most popular streetcar route for fare dodgers"

The Toronto Star's Ben Spurr shares the news about fare dodging on the different streetcar routes of the TTC.

Riders of the 506 Carlton line are the TTC’s worst fare evaders, while those on the 511 Bathurst are the network’s most law-abiding.

That’s according to new numbers from the TTC that tracked fare evasion rates on streetcar lines during the first six months of the year.

A report going before the transit commission’s board on Tuesday shows that evasion rates across eight streetcar routes were relatively consistent, ranging from 2 per cent to just under 4 per cent. The TTC targets a rate of about 2 per cent.

Carlton topped the list with a rate of 3.79 per cent, followed closely by the 505 Dundas (3.73) and the TTC’s busiest streetcar route, the 504 King (2.93). The 511 Bathurst car had the lowest rate, with just 2.01 per cent.

Brad Ross, a TTC spokesperson, said the agency has no explanation for discrepancies between fare evasion rates on different routes. But he noted that the TTC only switched to a proof-of-payment (POP) system on all its streetcar lines in December 2015, and customers are still getting used to it.

[URBAN NOTE] "Shrinking inventory making Toronto home buyers even more aggressive"

The Globe and Mail's Carolyn Ireland looks at the effects that increased competition between Toronto real estate buyers over a shrinking pool of available real estate is having on the psychology of agents and buyers alike.

It seems so long ago that $200,000 above the asking price was a shocking amount to pay for a comfortable house in Toronto. In reality, it was early 2016.

As the year crept on, the amounts above asking became more jaw-dropping. By about the end of May, deals for $500,000 above a $1.4-million list price became commonplace. The outliers stretched toward a $1-million premium as the spring market drew to a close.

And still, the dynamic hasn’t changed: The number of properties for sale shrinks, which in turn makes buyers more ravenous.

Real estate agent Matthew Regan saw the market encapsulated in one deal recently: He listed a house, built in the 1970s, in the coveted Lorne Park area of Mississauga with an asking price of $1.489-million. The house drew 11 offers and sold for $1.92-million.

He had two bully offers within six hours of the house hitting the market, four offers after 24 hours and 11 by the deadline they set for the third day.

[URBAN NOTE] "After Oakland, what's the future for warehouse parties in Toronto?"

blogTO's Phil Villeneuve writes about the future of the warehouse party in Toronto, in the wake of the Oakland Ghost Ship catastrophe. Is Toronto in line for a similar disaster?

Mario Angelucci, Acting Chief Building Official for the city of Toronto says warehouse parties in the city are mostly legal, as long as they adhere to Ontario Fire Codes.

"When events are proposed in warehouses, the City reviews the proposal to ensure the buildings meet all of the fire and life safety requirements." Angelucci explains.

"These requirements include... exits, emergency lighting, early warning systems, smoke control measures, and fire and life safety plans," he says. These are tools to get people out of the building safely in case of emergency.

Angelucci says often temporary measures to ensure life safety are put in place or one-off events in warehouses, which are treated with the same diligence as any event in a non-traditional space.

They have alternatives to help organizers install things to make sure people are safe the night of the event.

[URBAN NOTE] Douglas Quan in the National Post on the death of the Chinatowns of Canada

Douglas Quan's extended photo essay at the National Post takes a look at the different trends, including gentrification and suburbanization, that are threatening the survival of the traditional Chinatowns of Canada. The particular attention to Toronto's different Chinatowns is something I appreciated, but the article has a national focus.

As dusk fell over Chinatown recently, a line formed outside the entrance to Kissa Tanto, a stylish Japanese-Italian eatery named Canada’s best new restaurant this year by enRoute magazine. A trio suited up for the downtown office towers nearby sipped cocktails over candlelight at the Juniper Kitchen and Bar. Around the corner, twentysomethings seated at share tables gorged on vegan pizzas at Virtuous Pie.

Hip new restaurants and glass and concrete condos in Canada’s largest Chinatown have, some say, injected a youthful vigour into an area that has been stagnant for years.

Gone are the days when produce and seafood stores spilled their wares onto busy sidewalks and shoppers haggled with shopkeepers to “peng di la!” — drop their prices even more.

Today, only three barbecue meat shops and a handful of fishmongers and produce stores remain. One of the largest Chinese grocers, the cavernous Chinatown Supermarket, sits empty — save for an industrial sink at the back and two fluorescent tube-lights that still flicker in one corner.

Are we witnessing the death of Chinatown, not only in Vancouver, but across North America?

A report in 2013 by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund warned that Chinatowns in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were “on the verge of disappearing” due to “accelerated gentrification.”

Calgary’s city council recently gave tentative approval to an application to build a 27-storey tower in the heart of that city’s Chinatown that members of the Chinese community say will obliterate the small-retail charm of the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, the “trendification” of Toronto’s main Chinatown continues, and the complexion of the city’s Chinatown East is changing as many Chinese business owners flee to the suburbs.

[URBAN NOTE] Kerry Gold in The Globe and Mail on the decline of Chinatown in Vancouver

In The Globe and Mail, Kelly Gold's article looks at the problems faced by Vancouver's Chinatown in the face of rapid development.

Imagine if Chinatown no longer existed. Those shops stacked high with winter melon like mini Zeppelins, heaps of dried mussels and cucumbers, butcher shops with crinkly Chinese sausage dangling from green string and bright pink BBQ pork, ginseng, tea – all of it gone, replaced with chain stores and high-end supermarkets.

There’s already a fancy new supermarket on Main Street where, under the watchful eye of a concierge at the door, you can buy $10 sandwiches at the espresso bar. At Gore and Pender is the giant mural depicting Tao scholar Lao Tzu. Now, a residential building under construction completely obstructs it.

Gentrification isn’t just nibbling at Chinatown’s edges. Thanks to rezoning changes, it’s taking major bites out of the neighbourhood. There are two major mixed-use condo rezonings at Main Street and Keefer that are massive, bulky and featureless, like something you’d see on Robson Street. Instead of Chinatown’s packed sidewalks that force you to dodge elderly people with their wheeled shopping bags – part of the experience – this stretch of bright wide sidewalk speaks of new money.

Class inversion is happening in cities throughout North America. Urban cores used to be the domain of low-income groups, while the wealthier demographic lived in the suburbs. In recent years, wealthier groups are choosing urban living and pushing low-income groups to the outskirts, or further.

“You have to ask, ‘Where is this coming from? Who are you serving?’” asks Kevin Huang, executive director of the Hua Foundation, a non-profit for young Chinese-Canadians. Mr. Huang is also committed to supporting the people who form the tight-knit Chinatown community, and who are now under threat of displacement.

[FORUM] How have your neighbourhoods evolved?

My neighbourhood of Dovercourt Village, and the west-end neighbourhoods surrounding it where I have spent most of the past decade, has evolved significantly. In brief, gentrification has started, with higher-end residential and retail options coming to join--perhaps, eventually, to replace--what had been a substantially working-class enclave. The transition has been good for me, so far, but I do fear what might yet come.

What about you? How has your neighbourhood been changing? Has it been consistently changing in any particular direction? What do you feel about this?

Discuss.