Reading Toronto

Reading Toronto To Rebuild

Reading Toronto launched on March 30th, 2005. Its objective—to give the city's exceptional creative producers an online forum, one they could use to describe Toronto in new, revealing ways. On the "about" page we wrote:

Reading Toronto looks at the city through the eyes of many of its most creative artists and arts institutions. The growing ubiquity of high-speed Internet connections allows visitors from around the globe to experience the city in ways never before possible. More than that, they can contribute their own stories, experiences, and ideas about Toronto. As descriptions of the city accumulate, we expect that new ways of reading Toronto will emerge.

The effort was worth it. RT offered Toronto-related stories from brilliant contributors like Gary Michael Dault, Amy Lavender Harris, Piers Handling, Margaret Atwood, Anne Michaels, Cory Doctorow, Alexander Pilis, Bernie Miller, Jeanne Randolph, Ian Chodikoff, Jeremy Keehn, Johnson Chou, Lloyd Alter, Mark Kingwell, Matthew Teitelbaum, Michael Anton Dila, Paul Raff, Steve Mann, Vera Fenkel, and many, many more. Their contributions alone make this site a worthy project.

But Reading Toronto is a more than an online compilation of stories about Toronto, it's an experiment too. Why? 21st Century cities are by extension if not by full practice digital cities. The people whose job it is to shape those cities are in subtle, ongoing collaboration with the people who use them. That collaboration can be improved by increasing the information feedback between city users and city designers. If we look under the hood, that's the relationship we were experimenting with here. Ultimately, the technology—or our mastery of it—never reached as far as we hoped. We did, however, have some notable successes. The spirit of collaboration and information feedback reached impressive levels when RT brought together hundreds of people who wanted to make the T.T.C.'s website better. We were the catalyst, but the city's user groups, if I can appropriate that term from the software world, were the engine behind the change. The episode in RT's history is a case study on how user-generated content can improve a city's infrastructure.

Over the past three years other online blogging voices have made themselves heard as well. Spacing.ca, blogto.com, and torontoist.com are among the preferred sources of information on Toronto's events, culture, design, and politics. We've promoted them on our home page almost from the start because their work is so good, representing the best blogging content around.

With the city's online reporting in such good hands, Reading Toronto is taking some time off to work on a new experiment. We think it will be a next-generation social amenity for city dwellers. Stay tuned.

If you want to get in touch with us, please continue to use the contact link above.

Robert Ouellette

Editor, Reading Toronto

Toronto’s Smog-Related Deaths

The head of Ontario's opposition, Bob Runciman, released a report this week making some startling claims. When Premier Dalton McGuinty took office he promised that Ontario's reliance on coal generated power would end by 2007. One year later and it turns out not only are we still using coal, but as many as 9,500 Ontarians die each year from smog-related illnesses. If that figure were going down rather than up, we'd think that changes were being made for the better. In fact, smog-related deaths have gone up from 1,900 per year in 2003. "There are now more smog days per year in Ontario than in the entire eight years before the 2003," claims a report released by the Ontario Conservative Party (you know you've gone into some perverse alternate universe when the Ontario Torys are trying to lead the fight against pollution here).

To add insult to injury, Torontonians now have their very own power plant on the waterfront—something considered unimaginable ten years ago but now an almost belching fact. What is going on? Has anyone vetted these figures? Is there truth in what the Conservatives are claiming?

With a more positive spin to the story, http://www.modeshift.org writes:

Though Premier McGuinty succeeded in 2005 in closing the Lakeview coal-fired plant in Mississauga – and demolishing it with explosives on June 28, 2007 — he missed the 2007 deadline for the other four. Last month, as another electrion approached, he announced in Toronto that wouldn’t happen again. His government just approved a regulation that requires all of the province’s coal-powered generating stations to close by 2014. ”There is only one place in the world that is phasing out coal-fired generation and we’re doing that right here in Ontario,” he said.

Absurd Green Architecture In Dubai

Building in Dubai will always challenge the idea of sustainability because of the extreme temperatures and lack of water in the region. In spite of that reality, capital generated by $139 a barrel oil is making it possible for architects to try radically new, untested technologies in designs that attempt to generate more energy than they consume and in doing so achieve something that could be called sustainability.

So it is with Italian architect David Fisher’s design for the green environmental tower in Dubai. Named the “Dynamic Architecture” building, the sixty storey tower is also a power source. Forty-eight 0.3 megawatt turbines are contained within its rotating floors. Fisher writes, “Considering that Dubai gets 4,000 wind hours annually, the turbines incorporated into the building can generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hour of energy.”

The architect describes three technologies that the project relies on for its success. First is the ability for architecture to be dynamic, to constantly change its form. Second, is the integration of power-generating technologies that let the building generate more power than its inhabitants consume. Third, is the factory-based construction that will reduce the number of site workers, speed construction time, and improve the final finish quality.

Take a look at this rather pretentious video for an explanation of the tower. What’s my take on it? Before I was an architect I followed a Buckminster Fuller inspired career path working in aircraft manufacturing for the de Havilland Aircraft Company. I’ve seen the technologies required to make this work from both sides of the technology spectrum, and odds are that this building will fail to meet its objectives. That does not mean it is an unworthy experiment. Inventing new ways of sustainable living will not be easy or cheap; however, we have little choice but to try and if it takes $139 oil to get us there so be it.

Can We Have A Drum Roll Please: The TTC’s Website Preview

We've waited a year and a half. Patiently. Today, however, Toronto's much under-serviced population will get a glimpse of how the T.T.C. will provide a better transit website. The T.T.C. (in the guise of councillor Adam Giambrone) is calling the press down to City Hall to unveil the Beta version of ttc.ca. Will the people-powered movement kicked off on Readingtoronto.com January 1, 2007 and voraciously taken up by readers of http://www.BlogTO.com, http://www.Spacing.ca, and the http://www.Torontoist.com make a difference?

Will the contributions of everyone who attended TransitCamp be wasted? Will the T.T.C. and its web developer have taken the easy way rather than the better way? I can't make the event—one days notice—so I'll be anxious to read the reports from bloggers and the media who can.

What would a great site look like? There is no one model, but there are good references. A great site would have clear, easy to understand information on routes, timetables, delays, special events, and a whole host of other information in real time. It would be mobile friendly. Waiting for those often late streetcars on Broadview would no longer require calls to the 1-800-clairvoyant line for hints on when to expect the next one.

Can we have a drum roll please?

What Would It Take . . . ?

What would it take for Toronto's subway to make a list like this? Probably billions of dollars and a remarkable vision that's been absent from Ontario politics for over 30 years. Perhaps we should think a little less about over sized waste bins and put our energies where they are most needed like transit.

Mutable Spaces Of Innovation

In a world that is increasingly mediated by online exchanges, it is always refreshing to remember the role well considered architecture plays in the act of connecting people and ideas.

I'm at the MaRs Centre in downtown Toronto attending Mesh08, a conference celebrating the power of Web 2.0. The tag line for this conference is "Connect, Share, Inspire." In its third successful year, Mesh gathers together the people who create the collaborative online experiences we enjoy. Those people are behind a technology-driven social shift that is changing the world—look at the "people-powered" movement of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama for an obvious example.

As significant as that change is, it is important to remember that one of the reasons conferences like Mesh work is that they take place in social spaces like MaRs. A first for Toronto, MaRs' objective is to:

MaRS is a non-profit innovation centre connecting science, technology and social entrepreneurs with business skills, networks and capital to stimulate innovation and accelerate the creation and growth of successful Canadian enterprises.

The symbiotic relationship between this mission and the space that contains its activities is essential to the Centre's success. The designers of MaRs anticipated that too many prescriptive spaces would limit the innovation that might take place here. The spaces here are mutable in that they can adapt needs of the people who use them.

Spaces of impromptu encounter and assembly in the MaRs atrium

Holiday Tour Of Leslieville In Pictures

Toronto, it is often said, is a city of villages. In spite of its seemingly endless expansion at the edges, the city's centre is always brought back to a collection of small, centralized communities that predated the automobile. Each of these villages seems to await its turn at rejuvenation. This is the story of one.

Since Queen Street West became the cultural mecca of Toronto's arts community, shop prices there have soared. Smaller businesses can no longer afford to buy in to that market—but they can afford Leslieville. In case you don't know the city, Leslieville is located along the other end of Queen Street. Just go east from Yonge, over the Don Valley, past Broadview, and you're almost there. Given new life by Toronto's nearby film studios, Leslieville has everything a culturally savvy visitor needs to explore. New restaurants seem to open every week. Furniture stores with a modern bent flourish. The city's latest collection of art galleries are doing well. Shops like Gadabout with its shelves full of quirky collectibles offer a timeless respite from the Internet era. And coffee shops are everywhere.

We took a walk along Queen on Saturday evening on our way to dinner atEdward Leveque's Kitchen (which was a real pleasure for us with a terrific wine list—although the steak is not the best item on the menu) Here are a few photos from that stroll.

Harbourfront Nets Surprising Fish Installation

When I was a kid my grandfather took me fishing along the shores of Lake Erie. The shallowest of the Great Lakes, Erie then supported a sizable fishing industry out of harbours like Port Stanley and Port Burwell. No longer. Most Ontarians today wouldn't know the difference between a salmon and a pike, but two Toronto artists want to change that. They want your kids to enjoy the natural abundance the lakes once offered and could again.

If you haven't taken the time to visit Toronto's Harbourfront this spring the holiday weekend provides a perfect reason to pack up the kids, jump on a streetcar, and come down to the York Quay Gallery to take in the FishNet experience. You won't regret it.

The show's creators, Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside describe it this way:

FishNet: The Great Lakes Craft and Release Project is a two-part project comprised of a craft phase and a release phase, transforms textile fish into real fish. Led by Toronto-based designers Claire Ironside and Angela Iarocci, the project is now on display at the York Quay Gallery, Harbourfront Centre from May 3 to June 22, 2008.

The heart of the crafting phase centres on 25 Toronto based schools each building a regionally specific school of textile fish and researching their species as part of their classroom curriculum.The release phase occurs when Harbourfront Centre, acting metaphorically as a fish hatchery, sponsors the 'release' of the crafted textile fish, an activity which will ultimately underwrite fish habitat restoration and restocking programs in the Great Lakes.

FishNet is to be presented to the public in a variety of forms including a project web site, classroom activities, a public exhibition, and as an invitation to other schools within the Great Lakes bio-region to undertake similar projects. When complete, the project will have combined and coalesced the creative talents of approximately 2,000 students, educators, artists and designers for the purposes of exploring and engaging in the multiple themes of sustainability, collaboration and activism.

FishNet identifies absence or neglect as the creative basis for a subtle form of protest art—one that provokes an engaging solution while strengthening the ties that bind us as a community living within the Great Lakes bioregion and beyond.

FishNet has received grants from Harbourfront Centre's Fresh Ground new works and the Ontario Arts Council, Arts Education program. Additional financial support has been provided by the Toronto District School Board and Inner City Angels.

Please come to Harbourfront and support the project by releasing a fish. For more information go to http://www.projectfishnet.org.

Toronto’s Answer To Kids Who Like Trees?

The satellite photo above shows what the trees edging Mossgrove Park looked like a little more than a month ago. The bottom photo shows what happened after the city responded to some complaints that kids were 'hanging out' in the park after dark. Let's think about that... kids were hanging out in the park—after dark. I guess that means the residents of Riverdale where I live should prepare themselves for a wholesale decimation of the trees in WIthrow Park. Let's not stop there. High Park has to be next. Toronto's ravines? Why not!

Police spokesman said that they asked the city to cut off the trees' lower branches. The city's Parks Department missed the memo.

Sometimes I worry that we are becoming a society that can no longer tolerate differences and any amount of uncertainty. Let's face it, there are always people whose choices in life are driven by fear. If the majority of us accept that condition, just turn off the lights of our culture and lock the door, because the forces of fear will turn us into a country few, if any will want to be part of.

Buenos Aires Animates The Street

'Blu' offers up a recent graffiti animation from the streets of Buenos Aires. Watch it and you will not believe what the artists accomplished. One questions though—how long did it take?

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.