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    A future midrise Toronto/urban renewal in the future?

    Ok, this is sort of a controversial topic, but let me dare to ask it: how long do you think inner city Toronto can continue to be a landscape of low-rise semi-detached homes? We've managed to fit about 200,000 new people into our inner city by squeezing condos into what remains of old...
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    Are hospitals the new freeways?

    In terms of their impact on neighbourhood life, vitality, etc. I was thinking about how one of the biggest impediments to Toronto's downtown vitality is, ironically, one of the biggest assets to Toronto's economy and downtown job growth: the giant "Discovery District" of hospitals and...
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    Areas that are not quite urban, not quite suburban

    I was thinking the other day about how Toronto has a general lack of commercial streets that are sort of quasi-urban/quasi-suburban. These would be immediately-postwar commercial arteries where most of the retail comes right up to the sidewalk, and the residential areas are all on a grid, but...
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    Huge expansion planned for Washington DC's Union Station

    Link to report This plan is unfunded. Proposed main level plan: Proposed lower level plan: Proposed rear entrance: Proposed new train room: View down main concourse: Existing main hall will see few changes:
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    Global cities built-up areas compared (incl. TO!)

    Over at SSP, an Australian forumer known as Spotila has been mapping the built-up area of the world's city regions to scale. They're the best comparisons I've seen so far. Here are a few for comparison (the SSP site has many more cities at better resolutions):
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    Portlandia

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmq9dq6Nsg Somewhere along the way, America traded Tocqueville for Taco Bell and Walt Whitman for Wal-Mart and became a prison industrial complex where everything contains High Fructose Corn Syrup and everybody is about to be foreclosed out of their tract home...
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    Mapping where locals and tourists go

    I found this project to map where tourists (red) and locals (blue) or either group (yellow) take pictures that are uploaded to the internet. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about the project's background, and/or who did it. Toronto: Montreal Vancouver --- London: New York...
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    Alternative to DRL

    Here's a thought: Let's say we combined the Milton, Lakeshore and Georgetown corridors so they ran through Union station on to Stouffville (say, Milton East), Richmond Hill (say the continuation of the Georgetown corridor) as well as Lakeshore East. Now let's say we electrified these lines and...
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    Old doc on the CN Turbo

    Here's a great promotional film from 1970 on the CN/UAC turbo. It runs for approx. 25 minutes (3 youtube videos): Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETYDiT4h4oU Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qegIRh9DFHc&feature=related Part 3...
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    A Ravine Promenade

    Ravines are very characteristic of Toronto and Atom Egoyan called them "places of [urban] contact with very primal forms of nature". Very few cities have this, and we take it for granted. Unfortunately, most unbuilt ravines exist in lower density, primarily residential parts of the city where...
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    Parking "cap and trade"

    Not sure if this belongs in Transportation or Toronto issues... I've been thinking about ways to reduce car reliance and use in Toronto and also to move away from mandating developers to build X number of parking spaces in a condo or office development. Similar to cap and trade, but more...
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    Salon: "Tea Partiers as the new Hippies"

    For those interested in US politics, I thought this article was very interesting. It was mentioned in David Brooks' latest NYT piece: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/02/23/counterculture/index.html Glenn Beck is the new Abbie Hoffman The out-of-power right has built a...
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    How would you change Ontario's high school curriculum?

    I thought this might be an interesting thread to open up, although I don't know whether this belongs here or in the Politics section. First off, do you believe that the role of public education is to mould a more civil society? Secondly, and this can be answered whether you answered yes or...
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    Bad restaurants

    Instead of paying for a meal and getting burned, I thought we should share our subpar restaurant experiences before we make hasty reservations. --- Mambo Lounge 120 Danforth St. Cuisine: Tapas, Spanish/Cuban Price: $20 mains (4 tapas); $55 for 2, without wine. What was wrong with it...
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    Toronto Transportation Idiosyncracies

    These are relatively silly, non-negotiable "rules" found only in Toronto that local transportation advocates and planners feel have come from on high and cannot be transgressed. I'll start: #1: Thou shalt not build one way streets. It has been decreed that it is bad for pedestrian vibrancy...
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    Funny store names

    Some of my faves: "My Cha Fing dish" restaurant CNN Jewelers (complete with CNN logo) Grand Trunk Real Estate (complete with GT logo) Yours?
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    NYC closes Broadway to cars

    I found this interesting. There is the same stoking of a "culture war" mentality among pro-car councilors and advocates in New York but, unlike Toronto, there was swift action in closing and pedestrianizing Broadway from Times Square to Herald Square thanks, mainly, to a very powerful DOT...
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    Montgomery, ON?

    I recently read this excerpt from a piece on transportation planning and telecommuting by Berkeley professor, Robert Cervero from 1996, and I was wondering what ever happened to this plan for "Montgomery, Ontario". Remember that this is 1996, so the tech might seem a bit dated: "the village...
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    Rush hour fare idea (or why Presto is needed presto)

    There is considerable research showing that ridership will decline much less if fares are raised by the same amount during rush hour versus at off-peak times. In economic terms, rush hour fares are therefore said to be much more inelastic than non-rush hour fares. That's fairly intuitive. So...

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