Spacing Magazine

The © Urban Cartoon Syndicate was launched in May 2024, jointly with Spacing Vancouver. Coming out roughly weekly from a group of cartoonists and illustrators, each cartoon captures a timely message about civic affairs and life in our cities. New submissions are welcome (write us at CitizenYVR@gmail.com). Re-use by media or others is welcome, with credit to the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate, and we appreciate an e-mail to let us know.

The bent of the Gardiner Expressway flanking the west side of Bathurst Street currently functions as the eastern entrance to the Bentway, but when I photographed it in 1998, it framed an open vista stretching west toward Strachan Avenue.

Bloor and Bathurst in Toronto is where the story begins. Looking east down Bloor, the street’s low rooftops gave way in the distance to a cluster of supertall towers, marking Yonge and Bloor, where money concentrates differently than it does along this stretch. Bloor and Bathurst facing east, 2026. Image: Google Street View Mirvish I was sitting on a bench in Mirvish Village on a sunny summer afternoon. Everything around me felt brand new and unused.

After the Ontario Court of Appeal (ONCA) shot down CycleTO’s legally innovative charter challenge that sought to stop Doug Ford’s attack on the city’s bike lanes, Queen’s Park wasted little time before issuing a request for proposals in early September. The government has asked contractors to submit bids on the “project” by the end of November. CycleTO, meanwhile, has not yet said whether it plans to seek leave to appeal the ONCA decision to the Supreme Court.

The © Urban Cartoon Syndicate was launched in May 2024, jointly with Spacing Vancouver. Coming out roughly weekly from a group of cartoonists and illustrators, each cartoon captures a timely message about civic affairs and life in our cities. New submissions are welcome (write us at CitizenYVR@gmail.com). Re-use by media or others is welcome, with credit to the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate, and we appreciate an e-mail to let us know.

“There is still a long way to go, many strategies to experiment with and many changes to implement, yet in the course of these intensive and dynamic processes, it is worth pointing out each successful attempt. I hope this book will be a great inspiration for many readers, architecture aficionados, students, and professionals to push the changes further and with greater impact.

In this episode, we talk about the physical and systemic barriers facing people living with a disability who are trying to access housing in Canada. University of British Columbia Adjunct Professor Colin Phillips and Balanced Supply of Housing Research Manager Alina McKay co-authored the report “The Right to Accessible Housing: Identifying Needs and Building the Right Supply.” In it, they document the many challenges people with disabilities face finding and securing safe and appropriate housing.

Most people do not spend much time thinking about municipal government. They think about finding housing, getting to work, walking their children to school, meeting friends in a park, navigating construction, paying taxes, or wondering how their neighbourhood is changing. They think about the city itself—not the institutions that help shape it. Yet municipal government quietly influences many of those experiences every day.

In the hall-of-mirrors that is the current mayoral election, as my colleagues John McGrath and Matt Elliott noted, we had the following weirdness last week: Premier Doug Ford, in an aside at a presser, sort of endorsed Mayor Olivia Chow. The amplifier of this plug was none other than soon-to-be-former councillor Brad Bradford, who took to social media to accuse his rival of excessive chumminess with the provincial anti-Christ, or words to that effect.

A public hearing runs late into the evening. Dozens of residents take turns speaking. Some support the proposal. Others oppose it. City staff present reports and technical analysis. Councillors ask questions. Eventually, after hours of discussion, a vote is taken. The next morning, participants often leave with very different impressions of what happened. Some feel democracy worked exactly as intended. Others believe the outcome was predetermined. Some feel heard. Others feel ignored.