And to put my feelings into more concrete and specific recommendations - the only politically easy thing to do is make a park, the right thing is to look at the entire area from exhibition place to Ontario place as a whole, use about a third of it for amusement (a permanent replacement for the...
But then candidates for mayor of Toronto don't have the power to do anything much at Ontario Place and they do at exhibition place, which is more than twice the size.
First off, I'm ambivalent about the spa for reasons that are pretty well articulated by generalcanada above. There isn't anything inherently evil about either private ownership or a spa. The sheer size of it, the publicly funded parking garage, the possiblity that something better could be there...
The Gardiner and Lakeshore have a much bigger negative effect on liveability of the waterfront. Gil already wants all of Ontario place to be a public park, another controversial plan that I think makes a bit more sense than closing the airport. And compared to completely shutting down the...
Yeah I should have been clear, I think we should be much more ambitious and should be aiming to electrify everything. High speed from Edmonton to Calgary seems like a good start.
Improving intercity passenger rail in Canada ought to be a much bigger political issue than it is. It goes without saying that climate change and political risk means we should be looking for alternatives to air. But also I think we're surprisingly well positioned already - most Canadian cities...
But then it's equally common for us to act as though we have unique problems and can't look elsewhere to see what has been tried and what can be learned from other countries
Among other factors the number of homes that are available is either not going up very fast, or else is actually declining, not sure which, because of people (like me) buying houses that used to have apartments and then renovating to use the entire space. What is being built is mostly small...
Transit development in the city of Toronto should be done the same way. No consultation, just do it. I realize people don't have a lot of faith in Metrolinx to do the right thing but haven't we reached the point where delay is worse than the possibility of making mistakes?
As a homeowner in a part of Toronto most residents of the GTA would call "downtown" I would be happy to do an experiment with as-right multifamily/mixed use/multistory zoning in a large area downtown if doing so would shut up people like Ibbitson who (I would be willing to bet) lives in the...
Does anyone remember clearly about the pre Miller bridge plan: was is totally clear that the bridge, like the current tunnel, was to be for airport access exclusively? I have vague memories of columns in the Star, say, arguing that keeping the islands just a bit inaccessible was good and that's...