David M. K. Sheinin In early December 2020, former Toronto mayor and federal Progressive Conservative cabinet minister David Crombie resigned as chair of the Ontario Greenbelt Council. Created in 2005, the Council advises the provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs on maintaining the Southern Ontario Greenbelt. As the COVID-19 second wave loomed large, Crombie’s announcement won little media play. But the… Read more »
Richard White As anyone who lives in or frequents Toronto’s inner-city can attest, the place is over-run with human activity. The word “congestion” is probably over-used in urban affairs, and it still feels tainted by its long association with slum clearances, but it is the word that comes to mind when travelling about the city’s lower downtown these days. Walking… Read more »
(adapted from an earlier post on torontoplanninghistorian.com) Richard White Among the most persistent myths – in the sense of widely-held but erroneous beliefs – about Toronto’s planning history, perhaps even about planning history generally, is that the modernist planners of the postwar generation wanted to “bulldoze” anything old and replace it with some lifeless, modern, tower-in-the-park sort of structure. Indeed,… Read more »
By Daniel Ross For more than four decades, John Sewell has been a constant presence in Toronto civic life, where he has somehow managed to combine relentless criticism of the status quo with a long record of public service. He first drew attention as a community organizer in the late 1960s, before going on to have a career in city… Read more »
(adapted from an earlier post on torontoplanninghistorian.com) By Richard White Earlier this month, it was Jane’s Walk time again in Toronto, and thousands were out this past touring various urban locales under the guidance of local experts. It is a remarkable success story, this concept, and a fitting legacy for someone who conceived one of the most influential books of the twentieth century… Read more »
