Graeme Stewart over at Reading Toronto had this proposal for a new system map for the TTC, here in Montreal the STM (Société de transport de Montréal) shows both the metro system and the suburban rail system on most of the displayed maps. It gives a different idea of the overall urban landscape if you include them both.
The Toronto Transit Commission currently operates the largest public transit system in Canada. For the time being it is the most comprehensive rapid transit system in the country. The Toronto system saw the majority of its growth in the late seventies through the early nineties(Transit Toronto 2008). The Subway is run by the Toronto Transit Commission and is one of Canada’s oldest rapid transit systems. The first train left the platform in 1954 when the Young Line opened along a former streetcar route that ran south down Younge Street from Eglinton Avenue to Front Street before making a turn into a station that was then called Bay Street but later renamed Union due to its proximity to the city’s main railway terminus Union Station. Read the rest of this entry »
So this post is mostly a little Canadiana for you all. Canadians are very familiar with the fact that Toronto is the city that many of us love to hate. It is our biggest city, the economic center of the country and has always occupied a peculiar place in the Canadian mind. When travelling Canadians will pull it out when comparing International cities, two and a half million people and the (formerly) tallest free-standing structure in the world (Stupid Burj Dubai.) At home Canadians tend to dislike Toronto, there is always some reason that it is not as nice as where they are from and Montrealers, well it’s best we not go there. Torontonians tend to just be oblivious to it all, confident in the knowledge they live in ‘one of the world’s most livable cities’ source.
Tonight thanks to Spacing We find a travel article written in 1982 for the New York times by Margaret Atwood. The article talks about they way she saw her city.
THE CITY REDISCOVERED
Published: August 8, 1982
MARGARET ATWOOD is a novelist who lives in Toronto. Her newest books, ”Dancing Girls and Other Stories” and ”True Stories,” a collection of poems, will be published by Simon & Schuster in September. By MARGARET ATWOOD
W hen I was growing up in Toronto as a child, in the 1940’s, I loathed it. I associated it with standing in the slush with dampness seeping through my boots, itchy bloomers, gray muggy skies, old ladies who hit your knuckles with the metal edge of the ruler if you didn’t know the words to ”Rule, Britannia.” Later, when I was in high school, I liked Toronto a little better, though not much. There did not seem to be a great deal to do, apart from sock hops, smoking in the washrooms and avoiding the appearance of being too interested in frog dissection. As for university, it produces angst in the best of us, and I was probably wrong to attribute mine specially to Toronto. Nevertheless, I did.
As I aged, I was pleased to discover that I was not the only person who found Toronto loathsome. Almost everyone else did too. Montreal was where international flavor, international finance and naughtiness (which meant, to Torontonians, wine with dinner) reigned supreme. New York was where the truly sophisticated hung out, and Buffalo was where you went if you couldn’t afford the other two. Toronto was … well, Toronto was where you lived when you weren’t having fun. The notion of anyone actually visiting Toronto, for any purpose other than to attend the sickbed of a moribund relative, was alien to me. I set my first published novel in Toronto (where else was I to set it?) but was so embarassed by the location that I never actually named the city and disguised the street names as best I could. Everyone knew that real novels were not set in Toronto.
Toronto
There is a great little article over at Pruned about proposals for Deep Water Cooling for the city of Toronto. What some people may not realise is that the city already does this, and has been doing it in a limited fashion for quite a long time, the cities water intake system is designed to use the lake water its pulling in to cool some city structures before sending it out into the city water system. There is some debate over the environmental impact of expanding the system and the impact it would have on lake Ontario. If it became the delfacto air conditioning unit for the city… however I would recommend you click below and read the pruned article for that debate.
Enwave and the City of Toronto have created an innovative cooling system that brings an alternative to conventional air conditioning to cool Toronto’s downtown core — one that is clean, price competitive and energy efficient. A permanent layer of icy-cold (4°C) water 83 meters below the surface of Lake Ontario provides naturally cold water. This water is the renewable source of energy that Enwave’s leading-edge technology uses to cool office towers, sports & entertainment complexes and proposed waterfront developments.
"In Redhill Surry Robert fiddler created a massive pile of hay bales in his yard and his neighbours didn’t really think anything of it, he is a farmer after all. Then about six years later the bales came down and voila a Mock Tudor Castle."
The battle of the Super towers
"It’s always said that a guy who has a big skyscraper has a big … investment portfolio. South Korea is a country where all men aspire to have big … investment portfolios. In the last few years, every town, village and post office box has announced it’s plans to build the tallest building in the neighbourhood, town, province, or galaxy."
France’s Big Bridge
"The Millau bridge in France currently holds the record for the worlds tallest road bridge. At a towering 343m (1,125ft) at its highest point, it is definitely not for anyone afraid of heights. The bridge crosses the River Tarn and the valley of the same name and has been termed by some as “one of the most breathtaking ever built.”
Super Green Buildings, the urban farm
"In the not so distant future, it is predicted that as much as 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas and, by 2050, the population of the world will increase by as many as 3 billion people. Dr Dickson Despommier suggests Vertical Farms, which are at first a radical idea more suited to science fiction, but, after consideration, is not all that radical at all."
The ‘Hotel Of Doom’ Awakes!
Reuters is reporting that the infamous 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang has awoken from its slumber and is once again seeing construction work. It has been reported that Egypt’s Orascom group has been contracted to refurbish the top floors of what has been termed by some as the ‘Hotel of Doom.’"
Model Activism: Townhouse Neighbourhood 1:35
"It isn’t every day that you come across a new kind of activism, but I would like to suggest model activism as a new term. Wouter Osterhold and Elke Uitentuis, the artists in residence at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, used architectural modeling to spur their neighbours into action and spur discourse on the plans for this city neighbourhood."
Citynoise
Community Consultation