Portraits of Queen West is #KevinSteele's extraordinary photo-book, a work of "sequential art" featuring time- and space-series of a single - rather glorious - stretch of #Toronto's #QueenStreetWest:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
"If the #Ontario govt were really serious about building housing, the lands around all GO stations would be well on their way to becoming dense walkable communities rather than vast oceans of asphalt. #DougFord talks about housing, but the 4 #Toronto wards that lost population, including the Ford-family's riding, are all low density to begin with & represented provincially by the Premier or his caucus members. Those areas can take lots more housing but are taking very little." @stephenwickens1
Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
As much as I like Olivia Chow as a possible mayor for #Toronto, one issue is a deal-breaker: the tearing down of the Gardiner Expressway.
I live in the east end of the city, and the boulevard option doesn't deal with the traffic as well. In fact, a lot of die-hard NDP neighbors said they will vote for someone else based on this one issue.
Here are the issues:
Most of these neighbors rely on using the Gardiner to get across town when public transit is not feasible. Parents taking their kids and gear across the city; people with mobility issues; leaving the city from the east end requires driving across town; deliveries; picking up bulk items from downtown shops or buying furniture from Kijiji; commuting to jobs across town that start at unusually early times, or are located in places poorly services by TTC (or it takes 2 hours by TTC vs 20 minutes driving). All those cars downtown and on the Gardiner aren’t people driving a few blocks – people are going serious distances.
While reducing car use in the city is laudable – it’s unrealistic, especially as huge numbers of new condos (complete with many new car owners living downtown) will be moving in over the next few years. It’s a numbers thing: even if the percentage of people driving downtown decreases, the absolute number will increase simply because there are more people and more cars.
On the east end, traffic is already terrible off Lakeshore. Exiting at Carlaw continues to be crowded and a mess. There are no really good ways (and too few) ways to leave the Lakeshore there and go north.
The plans I believe Ms Chow is referring too for tearing down the current construction-in-progress doesn’t have a good plan for cars exiting the Gardiner either – it will be an awful mess. I’m not convinced it can deal with the predicted volumes of traffic. It will become another Carlaw or worse.
And what about seamless connection to the DVP?
A couple of years ago, there were community surveys regarding the current plan – I filled one out. It has community support.
Tearing it down is also a huge waste of money – of which my tax payer money has gone into.
Good breakdown of the new system in Toronto. I’d still argue Montreal’s new zonal system is more logical and easier to understand, but then Torontonians can tap in with their credit card or phone which I’m insanely jealous of. OPUS just can’t be killed off fast enough in my opinion.
Congratulations to Toronto who elected a mayor who will actually build a better city. It's about time.
The results are particularly interesting for Saunders (8.58%) and Furey (4.95%) who ran openly-hostile campaigns against good urbanism and in particular, bike lanes.
Both candidates made "tearing out the bike lanes" a core pillar of their campaigns.
Let's hope this sends a message to future politicians: anti-urbanism doesn't get you elected in Toronto anymore.
This is an impressive (but very long!) read with some great analysis and tonnes of photos along the proposed alignment. Very much worth your time to digest over the Christmas break if you’re following along with high frequency rail developments in Canada.
Perhaps an unpopular statement, but not everyone who owns a house in #Toronto is rich. There are a good number of “house poor” people who while they may own a house, are living on a fixed income, are an elderly senior etc. and can’t maintain the property. I’ll bet there are ways to integrate the house poor into housing solutions (more multi-generational housing, downsizing on place, allowing city-subsidized micro-housing units in back yards etc.). 1/2 #housing
Hey yeah! I haven't written about a concert in a long time! I haven't been to one since before COVID-19, hell, even when concerts slowly started to return at times, I still did not go because I didn't want to subject myself to crowds until it died down as well as cancellations due to restrictions. Then my chance finally came when Rob Zombie decided...
Downtown #toronto outdoor #masking is effectively zero right now.
A few holdouts still masking indoors, sub 5%.
Let's see what happens when four years of variant evolution crashes into vax and relax "it's over" as the only mitigation strategy in the building next wave..
"Emergency rooms are closed, there's a nursing shortage, a housing crisis, classrooms are over crowded, and Covid deaths are on the rise, but don't worry folks, the Ontario Conservatives are once again laser-focused on making it slightly easier for us to get beer."
With availability starting in 2026. An election year.
Yesterday on Facebook I was grousing about how people deliberately misrepresent the concept of the 15 minute neighboorhood, and a FB friend claimed the 15 minute neighbourhood would mean no access for ambulance and fire trucks. I wished it had just been some random yahoo. It's sad to see people you know taken in by such BS. #urbanplanning#toronto
Primary School starts this morning in Toronto. I was out for a walk last night, and on a street with a 40 kph speed limit, cars were routinely doing 60 kph. I wonder how many kids will be injured or god-forbid killed this school year on their way to/from school by drivers who feel the rules of the road don’t really apply to them? In this auto-erotic city, sadly I’m sure the number won’t be zero. #toronto#transportation
Hey 🇨🇦
Make sure your #measles vaccines are up to date if you're travelling to 🇺🇸 for March Break.
Florida is 'lettin' it rip'
Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected. The virus can live for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed.
I've never had much use for the idea of food banks. People should have adequate incomes, affordable housing and robust public services so that they can afford to eat. This is a particularly sleazy example of the charity industrial complex and this dude is a candidate for city council in the by-election tomorrow in #Scarborough Southwest (#Toronto Ward 20).