cities – Angry Robot

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The Socialist YouTuber Using Cities: Skylines To Explain Politics

Thanks Maggo!

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Toronto cyclists are using pool noodles to combat dangerous drivers

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Who Just Beat the Bay Area in Tech Jobs? Toronto

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How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System

This is fairly terrifying.

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Why shopkeepers in one Ontario city have enlisted a low-income cleanup crew

In Peterborough

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Toronto wants mid-rise housing, but can we afford it?

Yes, but developers make more money from high-rise, so they’re not into it. I like this idea though, despite it paining me as well as it would transform many great (albeit unaffordable) neighbourhoods:

Expand densification deeper into Toronto’s sleepy, leafy, low-rise neighbourhoods. [Ted Kesik] argues that the city should open up the so-called “yellowbelt” (areas where single-family homes predominate) to allow for fourplexes and other mini-condos to be built. He suggests the return of the so-called Toronto Specials of the 1950s and ‘60s that responded to an earlier wave of immigration would do a lot to let homeowners unlock the value in their land, and create more affordable options for newcomers and new families.

I would also hope that the reforms to the OMB – it’s now the LPAT – might close the door to out-of-control high-rise construction.

Torontonians like to sound off on Americans’ inability to deal with guns and gun deaths. But Toronto’ s inability to deal with the car creates its own killing fields.

The SARS crisis took 44 lives in Canada. Ninety-three pedestrians or cyclists have died on the streets of Toronto since Vision Zero was implemented two years ago. The time for half-measures is over — and the half measures are not working, anyway.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Electric Scooters

“Six months ago, a conservancy official cleaning out an office came across two cardboard boxes that had been sitting around for decades. Inside were 2,924 color slides, pictures made in parks across New York City’s five boroughs late in the summer of 1978. No one had looked at them for 40 years.” (via)
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The Meadoway: 16 km stretch of urban park will connect downtown to Scarborough

They are going to build a mixed-use path the length of this hydro corridor.

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Bike lanes help, not hurt, suburbs, Keesmaat says

She makes a good point.

This is really about the kind of city we’re creating. It’s about much, much more than bike lanes… It’s also about the revitalization of our suburbs. Are we going to reinforce this idea that they are just places that you get through on your way to somewhere else, or are we going to start creating a critical mass of activity and animation and economic activity, so you don’t need to go downtown to be in a great environment?

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How bike lanes could get Toronto’s suburbs moving

Interesting stuff about cargo trikes.

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Mayor John Tory blasted for saying it’s ‘unusual’ for Toronto parents to live without a car

To save you a click: it’s not.

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Transit now rules the road as King Street pilot project launches

Surprisingly, it seems like a success so far? I hope enforcement keeps up

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Toronto condo prices reach new heights

$1,000 per square foot. Scary thought re future affordability:

“An average 800 square foot condo is going to have to rent for around $4,000 a month just for that investor to break even.”

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I Left Vancouver Because Vancouver Left Me

via this

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Back to the future: Google’s vision for Toronto is straight out of the 19th century

Even if the negotiations fall apart thanks to Google’s demands or the city’s recalcitrance, there’s still good news: the most important parts of Sidewalk’s plans, the parts that would most determine whether the city’s eastern waterfront becomes a livable, green place that could accommodate Toronto’s burgeoning growth, don’t require Google’s impressive piles of money at all. The city could do it on its own — if it actually wants to.

There’s also this article from John Lorinc. The conclusion I’m coming to is that the plans aren’t bad – it’s Google’s involvement that makes them dodgy.

As the top bureaucrat announces her departure from city hall, the untold story of how she tried but failed to prevent what’s been called the city’s biggest transit “boondoggle” can be found in her email inbox

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Toronto’s outspoken chief planner quits

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Cycling to work: major new study suggests health benefits are staggering

We found that cycling to work was associated with a 41% lower risk of dying overall compared to commuting by car or public transport. Cycle commuters had a 52% lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40% lower risk of dying from cancer. They also had 46% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 45% lower risk of developing cancer at all.

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L.A. — the city of traffic jams — finds a way to get people out of their cars

Spoiler: it’s LRT

Angry Robot