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Oct 10, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | John Lorinc |Walter Kehm |Jesse Carliner |Tys Klumpenhouwer
While the bulk of last week’s media coverage of Infrastructure Ontario’s curiously-timed disclosure of Therme’s lease focused on the financial terms and the mega-garage, the bits that most intrigued me have to do with a phrase that comes up dozens of times in this 297-page contract: “Therme Public Area.” During the too-ing and fro-ing over the configuration of this half-billion-dollar human aquarium, critics, including several experts on Waterfront Toronto’s design review panel, focused...
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | John Lorinc |Walter Kehm |Shawn Micallef
When College Park (pictured above) formally re-opened, in 2019, the City of Toronto put out a rather breathless press release on what had been achieved in this “placing making” exercise: “[a] multi-year, multi-use redevelopment project has resulted in an exhilarating and engaging outdoor experience that regenerates a vital public space in the heart of downtown.”You be the judge.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Peter MacCallum |Jamie Bradburn |Walter Kehm
For the most part, the buildings on the north side of Dundas Street West between Spadina and Bathurst are an architectural hodgepodge. The one exception to the general heterogeneity was, until recently, the block of four matching storefronts at 606-614 Dundas West, between Augusta and Denison. In 1992, I photographed this quaint commercial row in black and white. In 2023, noticing how much it had deteriorated, I returned to document it in colour.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | John Lorinc |Shawn Micallef |Walter Kehm
In the coming weeks, Waterfront Toronto crews will remove the final plug in the new Lower Don, thereby allowing the river to finally flow naturally towards the harbour through the $1.25 billion flood protection valley constructed in the Port Lands over the past five years.
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Jun 24, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Peter MacCallum |Walter Kehm
Following the appointment of Charles E. Chambers as Parks Commissioner in 1912, Toronto’s park system entered a period of continuous expansion, creating new parks, playgrounds and recreation centres to meet the needs of a growing population. Between 1913 and 1939, Arthur Goss produced more than 2,000 photos for the Parks Department. His work on this commission overlapped with work he was doing for the City Architect’s office and the Board of Education.
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May 16, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Shawn Micallef |Walter Kehm
Spacing’s senior editor and co-founder Shawn Micallef has expanded and updated his 2010 book Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. The new book is out now and available in person and online at the Spacing Store and at other bookstores. The new edition includes updated, hand-drawn maps by Marlena Zuber. Toronto changed so radically in a decade and half that the book required a near-complete overhaul to note the changes and add considerable new material (that is, more of Toronto walked).
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Mar 8, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Walter Kehm |Daysha Tatya Loppie
In 2005, Ontario passed the Accessibility of Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), which made accessibility for all public establishments a legal requirement by 2025. That goal won’t be met, unfortunately. To tell us about the progress that was made because of the legislation, and what still needs to happen, we speak to AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky.
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Cheryl Thompson |Walter Kehm |Jamie Bradburn
This piece is co-authored by Dr. Cheryl Thompson and Daysha LoppieMany statues have commemorated white historical figures in Toronto’s public spaces: Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald at Queen’s Park, which was raised in 1894; the equestrian statue of Edward VII, erected in 1969; and the notorious Edgerton Ryerson statue, installed in 1889, that once stood at the heart of now-Toronto Metropolitan University’s campus. Some of these statues have met strange but fitting ends.
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Feb 16, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Miriam Palmer |Walter Kehm |Ian Darragh |Shawn Micallef
Amidst a record-breaking spell of winter heat, Winter Stations, the longtime East End project created to enliven the deepest cold snaps, is opening its tenth annual installation along Woodbine Beach. On February 19th, nine pavilions on the beach itself, and three additional installations on Queen St. East, will open to the public.
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Nov 20, 2023 | 
spacing.ca | Nathan Abraha |Walter Kehm |John Lorinc |Shawn Micallef
For Claire Basinski, like many other millennials, the original SimCity served as her closest exposure to city planning in her youth. Today she’s president of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI), and she provided her reflections on the endless possibilities of the most recent city-building game to be released, Cities: Skylines II.
