Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

PAN AM GAMES
• Hume: Give us the Games, we need the subway [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto gets its Pan Am games face on [ Globe & Mail ]
• Winner will be announced this evening [ National Post ]
• Premier quietly confident in ‘very strong’ T.O. bid [ Toronto Sun ]

ADAM GIAMBRONE
• Giambrone’s TV show not all ‘Adam love-fest’ [ Toronto Star ]
• A rocky start for `On the Rocket‘ [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Toronto Public Library, union reach deal [ Toronto Star ]
• Why were port authority board minutes altered? [ Toronto Star ]
• Free rides costing TTC $25M: Ford [ Toronto Sun ]
• Time to chuck our views on recycling into the bin [ Globe & Mail ]

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

CITY FINANCES
• Finance officials propose new and higher user fees [ Globe & Mail ]
• Toronto needs to levy its own sales tax, city budget chief says [ National Post ]
• U.S. Cities That Tax [ National Post ]
• Miller’s final gift to the city [ National Post ]

CITY HALL
• City Hall : Lame game [ Now Magazine ]
• Open at last [ Now Magazine ]

PAN AM GAMES
• Teams break out all the icons [ Toronto Star ]
• James: Winning bid a modest prize civic ego desperately needs [ Toronto Star ]

NEIGHBORHOODS / COMMUNITY
• Spadina: Toronto’s evolving spine [ Eye Weekly ]
• A Toronto neighbourhood where the middle class, students and the needy live on one street [ Globe & Mail ]
• Library 2.0 [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Workers call for subsidies [ Toronto Sun ]
• MaRS old becomes new [ Eye Weekly ]
• Toronto railpath park [ Now Magazine ]
• Carbon proof: Ontario economy will love new emission controls [ Now Magazine ]
• Florida state of mind [ Now Magazine ]
• GTA house sales up 64% in October [ Globe & Mail ]
• Smitherman’s career may be blowin’ in the wind [ Globe & Mail ]

Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

• Londoners got their first “X crossing” this week at Oxford Circle, one of the city’s busiest downtown intersections. For Torontonians who want to compare, BBC News has a great slide show of London’s version of the pedestrian scramble.

• On the Slate blog, Tom Vanderbilt looks at jaywalking as part of city life, arguing that the risks are minimal and that “waiting for a signal when no cars are in sight [is] ridiculous and anti-urban”.

• Bologna, Italy may soon be home to a sleek 5084 meter solar-powered monorail system. Designed by Ghini Associati, the “Energy Belt”, which would user solar energy captured from photovoltaic panels at each station and along the track’s southwest side, is being proposed as a quick transit route from the main train station in Bologna to the airport.

• The Los Angeles cyclist community is hoping to see the “justice system’s commitment to protecting the rights of bike riders” as the now infamous assault trial of Dr. Christopher Thompson finishes up its third week. Thompson is on trial after pulling in front of two cyclists (with whom he been exchanging nasty words) and slamming on his brakes. The two cyclists suffered from severe injuries–cyclist Patrick Watson went face first into Thompson’s rear widow and cyclist Josh Crosby was propelled onto the pavement. While Thompson claims he didn’t intend to hurt the cyclists the case has become a rallying cry for the city’s bike community.

• The City Fix Mumbai Blog looks at what “the world’s cheapest home” could mean for urban India.  The Tata Group (the company behind Nano car) is currently building 1, 000 units of the 390,00 rupee (US$8,500), 283 square-foot home outside Mumbai.

photo by Mike Roberts

MAYORAL RACE
• John Tory tops Toronto mayor poll [ Globe & Mail ]
• Mayoralty poll suggests many undecided, but John Tory has advantage [ Nationsl Post ]

TTC
• Better barrier for subways ‘an obsession’ [ Toronto Star ]
• New Year’s TTC fare hike likely [ Toronto Star ]

PAM AM GAMES
• City’s hopes rest with PanAm bid [ Toronto Star ]
• Going for Pam Am gold in Guadalajara [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Ontario unveils ‘green’ licence plate for eco-friendly vehicles [ Toronto Star ]
• Fiorito: Mandatory reno costs doom tiny post office [ Toronto Star ]
• Rebound in condo sales ‘miraculous’ [ National Post ]
• For public debate on auto insurance [ Toronto Star ]
• Truckers gather for downtown protest [ Toronto Star ]

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

Toronto lawyer Patrick Brown sent out a mass e-mail this evening warning of troubling developments for non-drivers (people without auto insurance) in new regulations being proposed for the insurance industry by Ontario’s minister of finance, Dwight Duncan. I haven’t had the opportunity to do research on the new regulations beyond reading what’s in today’s newspaper, which brands the regulation as financial relief for motorists. I’m providing the e-mail here for your information and discussion.

This morning I attended a stakeholders meeting with the Ministry of Finance regarding the new changes to auto insurance. It is now on the news.

The present law reform is not fair to cyclists, public transit users or pedestrians.

Today I specially asked whether the reduce benefits being proposed will apply to innocently injured cyclists, pedestrians and transit users. The answer was “yes”.

The system here in Ontario is complex to say the least, but I will try to simplify as best I can the issue below.

When anyone (including cyclist, pedestrian car driver) is injured or killed by a bad driver (even a drunk driver), they will have various benefits available to them.  These include various things to help them get better. Medical benefits, rehab benefits, attendant care etc.

With the new changes introduced today, many benefits are being drastically reduced.  However, the justification for such a reduction is “consumer choice”.

The new insurance reforms provide an option to the auto insurance policy holders to increase the amount of their benefits if they so chose.  They simply up the premium in the policy.

However, if you are a cyclist, pedestrian or transit user, and do not have a car insurance policy, you do not have the ability to buy up on your benefits. You have no policy to do so. You must accept these reductions.

Essentially your benefits (if you are part of this group) have just been drastically reduced without the choice of getting more coverage.

How significant are these changes to cyclist and pedestrians. The following are the amount of benefits being reduced:
1.  Medical Rehabilitation Benefits (non catastrophically injured)  are being reduced from $100,000 to $50,000
2.  Attendant Care Benefits (for non catastrophically injured) are being reduced from $72,000 to $36,000.00
3. Housekeeping and caregiver benefits eliminated.

The insurance companies argue “consumer choice”.  Ie if you want more benefits you can pay an increased premium. Unfortunately that does  not help those without car insurance policies and who elect to travel by a safer and less environmentally intrusive mode of transportation.  Many students, seniors, and lower income households do not have vehicles in the city.  They do not have car insurance policies.  They do not cause injuries. But they do get doored, hit, and stuck down all the time! I also suspect it will continue for some time.

The Government however did do something right. They restored access to claim compensation when someone is killed by a negligent driver.  They announced today the revocation of the $15,000 deductible. Many cyclist advocated push to change this.  This is a good thing for many  who lose a loved one.  For instances to give some context, when Ryan Carriere was killed cycling on Queen by a negligent truck driver (four Halloweens ago), his family had $90,000 in deductibles taken away from them. Despite successfully proving it was the truck drivers fault and being successful in their law suit. This was simply taken away as a deductible.

The Government will be moving forward in the next two month to draft regulations to bring the above laws into force next year. It is uncertain if they will change this unjust result regarding (cyclist and pedestrian who do not have auto insurance) benefit reduction.

I strongly urge you to let your members know this.  This issue will be overshadowed by the lawyers, insurance industry and health professionals during the present media attention to this issue.

http://www.news.ontario.ca/mof/en/2009/11/ontario-providing-choice-in-auto-insurance.html

Patrick Brown
McLeish Orlando LLP
1 Queen St. East
Suite 1620, Box 76
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2W5
http://www.mcleishorlando.com/

Photo courtesy Kate.28

PAN AM GAMES
• T.O., your moment is here [ National Post ]
• Mayor to show his Pan Am passion [ National Post ]
• A vision beyond 2015 Pan Am Games [ Toronto Star ]

EXHIBITION HOTEL DEAL
• Integrity watchdog to probe Exhibition hotel hiring [ Globe & Mail ]
• Probe into hotel deal urged [ Toronto Star ]

AUTO INSURANCE CHANGES
• Ontario insurers cite hefty hike in benefits as reason for rising auto premiums [ Globe & Mail ]
• Auto Insurance changes [ Toronto Sun ]

OTHER NEWS
• Toronto opens up [ National Post ]
• They’re baaack! Coyotes in Don Mills [ Toronto Sun ]
• ‘Beep, Beep’: Delivery vehicle draws stares as it zips around on three wheels [ National Post ]
• Truck training protest could slow morning commute [ Toronto Star ]
• Adam Giambrone to host transit talk show [ Toronto Star ]
• Expect another TTC fare increase in New Year [ Metro ]
• James: Mayor David Miller a lame duck? Horse feathers [ Toronto Star ]

After the St. Clair Right of Way was approved, Toronto Environmental Alliance activist Gord Perks told me that nothing worth doing at City Hall takes less than five years. In light of that wisdom, the seven years it has taken to get a billboard tax into City Council’s committee process seems about right.

On Wednesday, Planning and Growth Management committee will finally consider a tax on billboards and a new signs by-law that makes it harder to get a new billboard approved in most neighbourhoods while ramping up the fines on illegal billboards to make them unprofitable.

The tax and by-law are being advocated for by the umbrella group Beautiful City Alliance, which includes artists and public space activists that range from the Scarborough Arts Council and the Art Gallery of Ontario to IllegalSigns.ca and Toronto Public Space Committee. (Spacing is also an endorser of Beautiful City, and I am personally involved in the campaign.)

While the by-law and tax provisions are good but not great, there are some important changes that need to be made by the Planning and Growth Management committee when it considers the issue at its meeting this Wednesday. While John Lorinc made some suggestions on Spacing Toronto this morning, the Beautiful City Alliance disagrees with them because his main proposal (BMX/skateboard infrastructure) could, in fact, be accommodated in Beautiful City’s proposal without limiting access to arts funding for youth, if that’s what youth prefer. Plus, there are two vital issues that need to be addressed to ensure any new programs or infrastructure are funded.

Most importantly, City staff have proposed that revenue from the billboard tax “offset” (by which they mean displace) the money currently in the City budget for culture, effectively meaning that all proceeds from the billboard tax will go into general revenues. This would fly in the face of what the more than 50 organizations and 3,000 people who have signed onto the Beautiful City campaign are asking for: that the tax money go to improving our city, not maintaining the status quo. The Alliance believes that sorting out the issue of where funds are allocated should be left to City Council’s operating budget approval process.

After ensuring that this billboard tax has the desired impact on Toronto’s neighbourhoods, the Alliance will seek to have the projected revenue from the tax increase from $11 million to $18 million. When last projected by City staff, it appeared as though revenues from the tax would be at least $18 million, and possibly as high as $56 million. Following a delay in the approvals of this tax and by-law that was orchestrated by the outdoor advertising industry, the tax is suddenly down to $11 million. At $18 million, the City could achieve what the thousands of Beautiful City supporters are seeking: 50% increase to Toronto’s arts and culture budget; $300,000 per year for youth arts and culture programming in Toronto’s 13 priority neighbourhoods; $100,000 for each ward for local beautification projects; and 17 new by-law officers to adequately enforce the new signs by-law.

The final hurdles in this seven-year campaign won’t be easy to jump. A murder of lobbyists hired by the outdoor ad industry is registered to influence councillors and reports are filtering in that they are stalking the halls outside city councillors’ offices just waiting to bend ears and twist arms. The only way to overcome the power of big money lobbyists is to continue to show how much public support there is for a new by-law and tax. So I urge those who believe that a billboard tax is right for Toronto to set aside any nitpicking and focus on the task at hand. After seven years of developing a campaign with broad support, it’s time, as they say, to dance with the one that ‘brung you.

Come out to Wednesday’s Planning and Growth Management meeting in Toronto City Hall’s Committee Room 1 to show your support, and if you would like to have your voice heard, register to depute on the issue or send the committee a letter.

The BeautifulCity.ca coalition has admirable, but possibly naïve, expectations about the civilizing benefits of public art.

The group wants the city to use the projected $11 million windfall from the new billboard tax to finance public art projects in every nook and cranny of Toronto. As BeautifulCity has told councillors [ PDF ], “Economic spin off effects of this historic increase to arts funding helps to ease recession and youth unemployment. Tourism goes up. Torontonians enjoy a more humane, fair and beautiful city.”

I’m not persuaded. For years, we’ve been shaking down developers for a public art contribution, and they, in turn, have been making perfunctory gestures. In general, I’d prefer better architecture, but one takes what one can get.

Does it make the city more “humane”? At the margins, yes, although I can think of numerous public art installations that do little to improve the public realm.

I also question the non-aesthetic benefits BeautifulCity touts. Public art projects don’t produce steady work. If you’re an artist, you may get one or a few commissions out of such a program. But the city’s going to want to spread the wealth broadly, so it won’t add up to a steady income for anyone, except perhaps the inevitable consultants who turn up to direct the effort.

Let me suggest an alternative.

Teenagers are the one demographic group consistently excluded from public spaces, both by neglect and design. While the city and neighbourhood groups go to remarkable lengths to build playgrounds, we all get nervous when adolescents congregate in parks, which, in turn, rarely offer little more than a slab of asphalt with a couple of hoops.

We have parks with community gardens and tennis courts, benches for seniors, and fenced off pens for dog owners. Children’s playgrounds come in every flavour and colour. But amenities designed specifically for youth - hard to think of examples.

In recent years, however, the city has stumbled upon something genuinely successful, although you’d never know it from grazing around Toronto’s parks and recreation website.

Six skateboard facilities and two BMX courses have opened in a handful of locations across the city (all but one in the east end). By most accounts, they’re busy to the point of overcrowding.

Council has recently signaled its support for a city-wide skate park/BMX “strategy,” but of course the money’s not there.

I’d propose that public space and cycling advocates should be pushing council to earmark billboard tax revenues specifically for the construction of a broad network of skate/BMX parks, with the goal of making them easily accessible to teens instead of constructing a handful of car-dependent destination facilities.

The city wrings its hands endlessly about “youth engagement,” but recreation leadership programs and the like only touch a handful of kids. What teens of all backgrounds need most are interesting, minimally supervised, active spaces where they can legitimately hang out without paying a fee to take a course.

Permanent skate and BMX facilities more than do the job. Councillor Janet Davis, who chairs the community development and recreation committee, says she’s seen young people take responsibility for these parks, and involve themselves in the planning, design and even management. There’s also a public art component, in the form of legal graffiti.

There’s even a safety angle. Based on her experiences with a three-year-old skate park in East York, Davis says the boarders feel so much ownership that they actually discourage gang activity and loitering. Contrary to conventional wisdom, those all-important eyes on the street might actually belong to a 17-year-old.

BeautifulCity is absolutely correct in demanding that council reinvest a public space tax in public space. But in the name of equity during a period of economic hardship, let’s ensure that all this money goes toward creating engaging public spaces for those who’ve long been excluded, simply by dint of their age.

photo by Sam Javanrouh

Each Monday, we bring you some of the popular posts from our sister blog, Spacing Montreal. We’ll keep an eye open for topics and discussions that are pertinent to current public space issues in Toronto.

• An in-depth look at historical Montreal maps reveals a hidden network of rivers, streams, marshes and lakes lost underneath the city’s streets.

• In a close race this Sunday Montrealers elected Mayor Gérald Tremblay to his third straight term as mayor. Alanah Heffez’s post on Montreal’s government structure is a great primer on the city’s sometimes confusing (especially for Torontonians) decision-making apparatus

• An unauthorized Halloween-themed art tour through Montreal’s underground tunnels, saw a normally desolate space  “echo with life and creativity, if only for one ephemeral evening”.

Photo by Spacing Montreal, on flickr

DEVELOPMENT/ INFRASTRUCTURE
• City looks to preserve waterfront silos [ Globe & Mail ]
• A spat over spots: Can places like the Brick Works succeed without parking? [ National Post ]
• Feds mull help for Gardens [ Toronto Sun ]
• Flaherty announces new cash for the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair [ National Post ]
• Price of urban dream park may be more development [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• How to defend Michael Bryant [ Globe & Mail ]
• Toronto’s scariest Halloween displays [ Globe & Mail ]
• George still curious about the mayor’s job [ Globe & Mail ]
• Sign tax bylaw could bring down billboards [ Toronto Star ]
• Resting in peace? Not at this graveyard [ Toronto Star ]
• Speakers outline ways to give city a creative boost [ Toronto Star ]
• Porter: A new path to peace needed for cars, cyclists [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto photographers find beauty among ruins [ Globe & Mail ]

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

It was another fruitful day at the Creative Places and Spaces: Collaborative City Conference, today in the light-filled MaRS building. Beginning with Welcoming & Opening Remarks by Ilse Treurnicht, CEO MaRS, Joseph L. Rotman, Chair, Canada Council for the Arts and Simon Brault, Vice-Chair, Canada Council for the Arts, we heard about the difference between invention and innovation

Brault asked, “How do you make it real, how do you come to the point where those ideas are transforming the society, reshaping the cities in which we live?” He answered himself by saying that it “means a lot of collaboration, a lot of involvement, you need time, you need to be persuasive.” He added, with relation to challenges of coming from a family of many children, similar to Ken Robinson and Charles Landry, “if you don’t collaborate, you die, you don’t go anywhere.”

The first Video Spotlight of the day was by Luigi Ferrara, director at the School of Design at George Brown College, entitled The Transformation of Montreal. He explained that the transformation in Montreal was possible because of a collaboration between arts groups and all levels of government. His key ideas were that “when you’re not rich you have to make sure things will last,” and that “artists don’t ask where they come from, but what they want to do together.”

Robin Cardozo, CEO of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, said that “opposing collaboration these days is like opposing motherhood and apple pie,” but spoke about key ideas to keep in mind. “It only works when it makes sense. Forced collaborations, marriage of convenience, shotgun weddings, almost never work.” He asked delegates to look beyond their own backyard for collaboration partners, as the outcomes are usually the most interesting.

On that note, David Buckland, artist, environmentalist, and founder of Cape Farewell, presented his work collaborating with artists, musicians, poets, and scientists. Presenting beautiful images and words, leading to another standing ovation, his message was about using collaboration to spread a message and create a global dialogue.

Lyn Heward, Consultant and Executive Producer of Cirque du Soleil, focused on seven ideas to getting good collaboration: having great expectations; surrendering to your senses; treasure hunting and creative transformation; the nurturing environment; how constraints, challenges, differences and consumer expectations become creative catalysts; risk-taking: do you ever get burned; and keeping it fresh.  She also said that “good ideas can emerge from anywhere within the organization or team, ” and “there’s always more than one way of doing things” — relating to Sir Ken Robinson’s remark on Day One about how if you’re getting stuck, maybe your not asking the right question or looking at the problem from the right angle.

Like a contemporary British invasion, the next Keynote Speaker, Charles Landry, author, urban thinker, and founder of Comedia, spoke about Creative Bureaucracy, which he described as “two words seemingly in tension.” But he pointed out that there is a realignment that people are trying to bring out, and touched on the idea that “the city is greater than the sum of its parts,” and how individuals and organizations need to align their mindsets. In closing, he stated, “vision shapes rules, not rules vision,” and pushed the idea of “unlearning,” to which he said, “unlearning is an incredibly important thing; art can be a jolt to sort of try and turn the perspective around in some sort of way.” These ideas related closely to what Robinson spoke about on Day One, with the effect that our education system has on our creativity and the need to question these methods. In the discussion between Landry, Heward and Buckland, Buckland said, “you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that caused it.”

Playing the City, a Video Spotlight by Matthias Ulrich of Frankfurt, examined the questions of how the public participates in the political dialogue, and what is meant by public space. According to Ulrich, in recent years, terms such as participatory and collaborative have changed the way we approach design. These changes are evident in public art installations, such as A Wall is a Screen, where films, with specific cultural and urban contexts, help to produce thought provoking theatre.

During the afternoon, there was a chance to break off into smaller groups with the Breakthrough Sessions. The panel on Collaborative Governance with City Councilor Adam Vaughan, Devon Ostrom, Paul Born and David Wolfe discussed the need for leaders to engage and support collaboration. Asked by an audience member about the challenges of defining collaboration versus partnerships, Born replied by saying, “collaboration is like sex, it’s like mold feeding of each other and becoming more.” Speaking about the differences in scale between cities in Toronto, Born furthered this by saying, it’s, “not a questions of scale, its how you enter into a system and how that system is able to absorb a new idea.”

In the final summary, the panel listed their highlights and what they will bring away from the conference. With the challenge of managing different interests, Tonya Surman, of the Centre for Social Innovation explained that organizations must ask what their converging interests are, which are not necessarily common interests. It was clear that the conversation on collaboration has been started but a strategy for implementation needs to be the next steps.

Photos by Artscape Toronto

TORONTO ZOO
• Zoo proposes 3.2% budget increase [ Globe & Mail ]
• Zoo faces ‘blood on the floor’ [ Toronto Sun ]
• Toronto Zoo defies city directive to cut budget [ Toronto Star ]

NEW DEVELOPMENT
• New life for Gardens [ Toronto Sun ]
• Hume: Trail breathes life into ‘dead zone’ [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Annex’s Ici bistro wins liquor fight [ Globe & Mail ]
• Proposed bylaw to go after illegal billboards [ National Post ]
• Is Mayor David Miller a lame duck? [ Toronto Star ]
• Smart meter phase-in sparks cost fears [ Toronto Star ]

The Creative Places and Spaces: Collaborative City Conference started with a bang…or rather an om! As delegates filled the round tables in the beautiful Carlu Concert Hall, the stage was filled with lithe, lean bodies, contorting themselves into planks, trees and warriors. Along with rhythmic music and singing, the yoga enthusiasts were soon surrounded by break dancers, tap dancers and an acrobat hanging upside down from a rope. No, we are not at a Cirque du Soleil rehearsal, but rather one of the world’s leading dialogues on creativity.

This year’s conference has the theme of the Collaborative City and promises to be a thought-provoking and inspiring few days. As Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio One 99.1 FM’s “Here and Now” and the MC for the morning session stated, we are going to “hear a lot about how ideas and collaboration can inspire change. Leadership is going to play a large part in that dialogue.” On that note, he introduced Mayor David Miller, to give the first welcoming remarks of the day. Miller spoke about the need to collaborate not only within our own city, but also between cities, with the example of Toronto’s twinning with Frankfurt and their current project to collaborate in the film and television industry. Miller also touched on the idea of asking the experts to help write and develop reports and strategies, rather then asking for their opinions after the fact, which he says they did with Toronto’s Agenda for Prosperity, noting it was unanimously passed by Council, a rare thing for the City of Toronto. Tim Jones, CEO of Artscape, the organizers, said, quite pertinently, “we have a lot to learn from one another…there are tools and there are methodologies, but most important, we need to raise our game as a city.”

Sir Ken Robinson, the morning’s first keynote speaker, inspired the crowd to their feet with his words on creativity and imagination. He spoke about the unrecognized creativity in all of us and our capacity, as humans, “to stand outside our current situation and bring to mind alternatives…[that] can have a future one can speculate about.” Robinson claimed you cannot start with innovation, but rather you must first “cultivate your imagination [and] creativity is a step on from imagination.” He defined creativity as “the process of having original ideas that have value” and that “being creative means challenging things we take for granted.” He discussed the importance of divergent thinking, stating, “if you’re stuck on a question, ask a different one.”

Scattered throughout the speakers were short Video Spotlights, and the first was by Eleni Arbus, an independent filmmaker, who produced The Melbourne Laneways. The Australian city has had somewhat of a revitalization recently of its narrow laneways, which cut through the city, like many of Europe’s Old Towns.  These changes have occurred despite there being no overall program or strategy that targeted these small streets. Instead, it came from a collaboration between local artists, business owners, and architects. According to Rob Adams, Director City Design and Urban Environment for the City of Melbourne, an incentive program has now been set up to promote businesses and residents to inhabit and make changes to these areas. As the video makes clear, it was a series of small changes in policy that allowed these areas to develop, not one single project. As Andy Mac, a local graffiti artist whose art adorns most of the laneways says, “you have to grow these cultures, they come from a general grassroots thing…people need to feel like they can play and invent.”

Up next, Richard Florida, the second keynote speaker, gave praise to Mayor David Miller saying, “when all is said and done, he will be seen as one of the most transformational figures in the modern history of Toronto, steering this city from where it was…to where it needs to go, which was no easy task.” Discussing his new book, with the tentative title  The Great Reset: How the economic crisis will reshape the way we work, our cities and the way we live, Florida spoke about the major crises throughout our history and how these moments in time shaped our societies and created periods of great innovation. “Each of these periods has tapped into a new reservoir of human creativity,” Florida said, adding that at the first CPandS conference, Jane Jacobs told him that,  in relation to squashed creativity, “it is the squelchers that are the problem, those squelchers are not just people, they are institutions.”

During the Town Hall Panel discussion, moderated by Sara Diamond, President of Ontario College of Art and Design, Robinson stated that the “role of a great creative leader is not to have all the great ideas, but to create the conditions for great ideas, ” while Florida responded by saying, “a city that works is one that activates intuitions.” Speaking about the problem of simply piling on more layers of government in order to make change happen, Florida said we should rather pull out the layers that don’t work and make communities and neighbourhoods stronger with more self-government, stating, “government is best done locally in a distributed fashion.”

Katerina Cizek, Filmmaker-in-Residence at St. Michael’s Hospital, spoke with Gerry Flahive, Senior Producer, National Film Board, Dr. Katherine Rouleau, Assistant Professor at St. Michael’s Hospital and Ana Serrano, Director, Canadian Film Centre New Media Lab about raising awareness of health issues in Canada through a collaboration between filmmakers and health professionals. She touched on the importance of these Video Bridges to talk to those wanting to create a dialogue, but who aren’t necessarily those that can make change happen.  The National Film Board announced during this session a new global project called High Rise, which will look at 10 towers in 10 suburbs in 10 growing cities around the world. Using local community members to create the multi-media project, it will ask how documentary film can help reinvent our cities, both community based and universal, local and global.

Tom Wujec, of Autodesk, bestowed the virtues of collaboration and creativity in the business sector, about the ability of rendering products (such as Autodesk) to visualize the future. But if the future and the results of collaboration are unforeseeable, as both Robinson and Florida touched upon in their talks, how are these ideas transferable to non-market driven collaboration? Wujec encouraged three key ideas for collaborating: bring the Chief Design Officer to the table; foster a community that values design and authentically embrace design. What can apply from Wujec’s thoughts is bringing holistic thinking to the idea of the collaborative city.

In the final session, Aled Edwards, Chief Executive of the Structural Genomics Consortium, Pekka Sinervo, Senior V.P. Research, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS discussed the challenges and benefits of open-access collaboration in sciences. They spoke about the “need to learn how to fail in the open,” as Edwards explained. One of the most important questions they raised was whether these projects would have worked as well, or better, without collaboration, to which Edwards responded with, “collaborating willy-nilly didn’t work, you had to know the person,”  learning the value and importance of personal connections.  As Sinervo points out, “good collaboration works because there is trust, there is respect, there is good collegiality.”

Some interesting ideas and questions were raised throughout the day, but the most important challenge is how to move from dialogue to action. But as one tweeter commented, “Choir, meet Preacher”, we all know collaboration is good (for the most part), but many organizations and individuals don’t know how to get the ball rolling, and as was made clear today, you need to be specific with the who’s and why’s of a collaborative partnership.

So…stay tuned for Day Two, which will include highlights from Luigi Ferrara, Director of School of Design at George Brown College, Lyn Heward, Consultant and Executive Producer for Cirque du Soleil, Charles Landry, Author, Urban Thinker and Founder of Comedia and many others.

Photos by Artscape Toronto and Nicole Bruun-Meyer

HALIFAX — Last night at the Eye Level Gallery in Halifax, the editors of Spacing launched our newest adventure: Spacing Atlantic!

Spacing Atlantic is the third blog added to our lineup, joining sister blogs Spacing Toronto and Spacing Montreal. The Atlantic blog will cover urban landscape issues in cities across the east coast from St. John’s to Fredericton, Moncton to Charlottetown, Saint John to Sydney.

Our launch party attracted over 150 people. Most of the people I talked to expressed a great deal of excitement that Spacing could help further the discussion about a variety of public space issues that are slightly off the local radar, especially from a political standpoint (read the Spacing Atlantic post about Halifax’s transit plan debate to get an idea). As publisher of Spacing, I’m eager to learn about the challenges east coast cities face as they become more sustainable and embrace progressive urban design (the debate about the scramble intersection in Charlottetown is a perfect example). We’ve assembled a great cast of contributors and think this venture will be a rip-roaring success.

Halifax’s alt weekly The Coast has nice review of the event. You can also check out the photos of the event on our Flickr account. Many thanks to Dan Mattison of clickproductions.ca for his photographic skills.

Spacing Atlantic contributors (left to right) Hugh Pouliot, Alex Boutilier, editor Jake Schabas, and publisher Matthew Blackett.

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

PAPER CUP BAN
• Meanwhile, city puts a lid on the paper cup ban [ Toronto Sun ]
• City urged to scrap coffee cup refund plan [ Toronto Star ]

EX HOTEL DEAL
• ‘No conflict of interest’ for architect: Pantalone [ National Post ]
• City paid for N.Y. hotel tour by key players in Ex deal [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Cash crunch puts Toronto in a Dickens of a situation [ Globe & Mail ]
• New rules could fuel green bonanza [ Globe & Mail ]
• Public Health’s shelter skelter [ Now Magazine ]
• Gardens in the sky, but no fruit in sight [ Now Magazine ]
• Mayoral madness: get in the ring! [ Eye Weekly ]
• Dude, where’s my top floor? [ Eye Weekly ]
• Parking lot mishap becomes smash hit [ Toronto Star ]
• Judge shoots down ‘2-beer defence’ for impaired driving [ Toronto Star ]
• Now’s Best of Toronto Guide 2009 [ Now Magazine ]