Just received email from the Toronto branch of the Goethe Institute listing their summer events, some of which may interest you: Exhibition Ecology.Design.Synergy: Exhibition & Tour 23 June-11 July, 2010 What we build today will shape the world of tomorrow. If you want to learn more...

Just received an email from the Toronto branch of the Goethe Institute listing their Luminato co-sponsored events: Theatre "The Africa Trilogy" at the Luminato Festival 2010 Copyright: Volcano Theatre10-13 (previews), 15 (opening night)-20 June 2010 "The Africa Trilogy" with a...

Surely, though, the developers can make an appeal about OP decisions (at whatever level: municipal or provincial) to the OMB? After all, these are administrative decisions, there has to be some recourse--the OP is not approved simply through fiat! And no, I don't assume the OMB is a rubber...

O.K., thanks for the up-to-date news--I'll just have to try tracking down reliable information before I post, for a change. (Should I suppose the developers can appeal any refusal by the province of the change in the OP to the dreaded OMB?)

I don't have the news reference at hand, but hasn't Vaughan town council just approved the 1500 hectares for development? By a small majority, sometime in the last month? And there was the usual speculation about councillors' probable links with the developers. I recall there was some attempt...

Just an update for today, June 12, 2010. The surface oil slick superimposed on the GTA looks like this: Pretty awful. A week ago, Paul Rademacher was good enough to answer some questions I had about the source and currency of his data:

No, I think it is relevant to the issue of sprawl: after all, there is such a thing as *medium* rise apartment/condo building, not everything has to be 30 floors high. Happily raising families in such buildings is normal in other cities all over the developed world--why not Toronto?

On the issue of the dearth of affordable family-size apartment/condo spaces: doesn't the most recent Toronto Official Plan mandate some kind of mix of sizes that must be included in any new development? Or am I just imagining I read about something like that as one measure to stem the tide of...

Please explain how you (or Rob Ford, for that matter) would "build more subways, fix the road network, [...] build more affordable housing, create job programs for disenfranchised youth, etc." while slashing more municipal taxes, not taking on long-term debt, and given provincial+federal...

I find it weird that authorities in both Canada and the USA go into a state of panic and security hysteria when there are public demonstrations and marches of any significant size. Look at the kind of large regular demos that most European capitals have had over the last decade, whether the...

The NY Times map is good, but I'm not sure what the differences in the oil slick extent shown there and in Paul Rademacher's oil slick. Presumably the data sources and their evaluation are different. Here is today's oil slick moved into the southern Ontario area: "Toronto" was...

À propos getting at the gravel and stone lying underneath useless suburban development: perhaps there would be some point in combining that with the construction of subways! Although considering the pace of transit development in Toronto, maybe that's not such a brilliant idea... Toronto is...

And I also think classical Italian hill-towns are also a model in terms of urban layout and amenities, with the physical setting helping to maintain a sharp urban/rural separation in density. With fast LRT connecting such urban dots, the cultural/social associations among these "isolated"...

I hope I did not give the impression I'm for wall-to-wall urban development with just green accents here and there: real park land, as you say, is important. "Green lungs" is not just a figure of speech. One of the big problems in Ontario is that urban development territorial limits seem to be...

No doubt that replacement strategy is a good one, but the ex-mine land would still have to be remediated and some green areas must be created--you don't want a 100% urban area, I think, the only way we sorry misled humans are going to begin to live in harmony with nature is if we care enough to...

Yes, it works on the oil spill page I linked to, but only if I use either Internet Explorer 8 or the latest version 3.7a4 of Firefox on Windows 7; I still use Firefox 3.0.20 (outdated) as my regular browser, I'm waiting for 3.6.4 to be released. To use the Google Earth Windows version plugin in...

Never again--quite so, although Lastman was more jokey salesman schtick than real comedy. But the current 2010 candidates are not exactly confidence enhancing either.

A quick change of subject, for some municipal election entertainment before we all die of frustration: Reykjavik has elected a new mayor, a stand-up comedian Jon Gnarr Kristinsson . His party's promotional music video is quite amusing--does Toronto's municipal politics need something similar? A...

Oh, I had thought that the arena proposal was parachuted in and something not originally part of the Lower Don planning at that location, or at least not encroaching on the river-bank public park and the mixed residential/commercial character of the development.