Spacing Magazine

See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.

One of my urban detective sessions: browsing through well-known New York City neighbourhoods famous for having changed, like Williamsburg and Greenwich Village. Taking Google Street View back to the earliest documented year available, I went looking for and following evidence. I was travelling along Bleecker Street when I found the caricature transformation story I had heard of before.

On the morning of July 22, CBC Radio news reported on a suspicious fire that had occurred overnight at a commercial plaza near Eglinton Avenue East and Kennedy Road. Later that day, I viewed cable news footage of the fire scene and immediately recognized the location as Liberty Plaza, which I had photographed for my Strip Malls documentary project in 2022. The majority of the 60 malls included in my Strip Malls series are each represented by a single architectural photograph.

See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.

Many of us want more sustainable, safe, affordable and accessible homes. Despite zoning and land use changes to allow multiplexes and small apartment buildings in more places, the reality is that such designs are not yet living up to their architectural potential. The reason, in part, is because the Ontario Building Code (OBC) makes it surprisingly difficult to build this scale of housing properly.

See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch.

Read part 1 of this conversation. Sabat Ismail (SI) met with Rachel Wang, Sylver Sterling, and Jess Nachman, creators and editors of the Journey Lines zine, to discuss the zine and its launch. The zine explores the art, experiences, and stories of queer trans black people of colour (QTBIPOC) cyclists in their own words. Rachel Wang (RW) (she/her) is an environmental consultant and founding Executive Director of the Bike Brigade.

I can’t remember a moment when split-screen politics was quite as pronounced as it is right now. Consider: On Friday, the federal Liberals put Doug Ford’s ridiculous island airport expansion nightmare up on blocks, thanks, in large measure to an outpouring of negative feedback — 87,000 responses to the public consultation, the vast majority of them opposed to the scheme — as well as the underlying nebulousness of a half-baked plan.

Summer is the season to pause, to take a break, to refresh body and mind. It’s generally understood that not as much will get done (with the exception of construction), that people may be absent in the flesh or at least in the spirit. The most fortunate may escape to the countryside and a cottage, others to a front porch, back yard, or balcony, or if those are not available, to parks, beaches, and patios.

Every Sunday, Avenida Paulista in São Paulo fills completely with people. Then, as the day winds down, the street exhales. A van creeps along the avenue collecting the plastic cones. Behind it, a police motorcade rolls forward at walking pace. Behind that, the accumulated traffic, finally allowed to move, roars back to life, and within minutes eight lanes belong to cars again as if they always had. For seven hours that day, they hadn’t.