Spacing Radio

Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Digital Placemaking Data and technology allow placemakers to experiment with new ways of measuring, designing, and most importantly engaging with the people they are designing public space for. Ideally, digital placemaking empowers everyone to shape the spaces they use, love, and rely on. Farhaan Ladhani is co-founder and CEO of Digital Public Square, an organization who's ethos is "healthy communities enabled by good technology." Farhaan explains how digital placemaking can help create ideal public spaces for a wide variety of people: “Thinking about the way in which these tools can be used to foster engagement in the community can be really useful for all sorts of things, from consultation, through to participation on decision making, through to the provision of information.”

As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. Lorraine Lam is community organizer who works with unhoused people, John Lorinc is a Spacing senior editor, together, we try to make sense of the encampment evictions of last year, and how the next mayor and council must better serve people who are at risk in our communities.

Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. This is a special, French-language edition. Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre.  CET ÉPISODE: Trois-Rivières : un virage intelligent Face au futur est presenté en collaboration avec le magasin Spacing et Evergreen dans le cadre du programme Réseau de solutions pour les communautés. C'est une initiative de Villes d'avenir Canada. Après la ville de Québec, Trois-Rivières est la deuxième ville la plus ancienne de la province. C’est aussi l’une des villes industrielles les plus anciennes au Canada. Comment une municipalité comme celle-ci gère-t-elle ses enjeux de mobilité? Vincent Turgeon et Samuel Laferrière qui œuvrent auprès de la municipalité de Trois-Rivières nous expliquent comment, alors qu’ils tentaient de renouveler les systèmes de préemption pour les véhicules d’

As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. But the Big Smoke isn't the only municipality going to the polls October 24th. All across Ontario, people are choosing their mayor, their local councillor, even their regional chair in some cases. To get the story outside the Toronto bubble, and to speak to the future of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, we talk to The 905er podcast hosts Roland Tanner and Joel MacLeod. They break down races across the region surrounding Toronto, talk sprawl vs. tall, and how GTHA municipalities can band together to demand better regional transit.

As Toronto gets ready to vote, we are bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. In this episode, it's a classic transit panel with Matt Elliott (Toronto Star columnist and City Hall Watcher proprietor) and Tricia Wood (York University urban geography professor and Spacing urban affairs columnist).  We talk about lessons we did (and didn't) learn from the pandemic, the need to restore TTC service levels and ridership, and we walk you some of the campaign promises made so far.

Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Experiments in Mobility It can be hard to convince governments at any level to invest in a new idea. This is especially true with transportation, where breaking away from the status quo can sometimes seem an impossible dream. But when opportunity to explore potential new ways of moving people is granted, on a small scale, and for a brief period of time, that allows us to experiment — to see what works, and what's worth investing in more generally. Camile Machado is project manager for New Mobility at TransLink, Metro Vancouver's transit network. She tells us about a range of pilot projects and research being to to find new tech and data-driven ways to solve transit issue and improve service. “The mobility ecosystem is changing really fast, with all these trends of shared mobility, autonomous driving, connectivity, electrification — they're all changing the landscape. So, i

As Toronto gets ready to vote, we’ll be bringing you regular panel discussions with journalists and experts who will break down the candidates, platforms, and issues that will shape our city for the next four years. In this episode, we talk to Spacing senior editor Shawn Micallef and Spacing contributor and West End Phoenix associate editor Kunal Chaudhary about how it's too quiet out there, public space, and the divided city.

Spacing and Evergreen proudly present The Future Fix: Solutions for Communities Across Canada, a special podcast series. This is a special, French-language edition. Spacing et Evergreen présentent ensemble une nouvelle série de podcast, Face au futur : des solutions pour les communautés du Canada, d’une côte à l’autre.  CET ÉPISODE: La culture de la bicyclette est-elle inclusive? Si vous vivez à Montréal ou que vous y êtes déjà allé, vous avez certainement remarqué qu’il y a beaucoup de cyclistes. On peut même dire que c'est une ville où la culture de la bicyclette est bien établie. Comment fait-on pour maintenir le statut d'une ville agréable pour les cyclistes et à quels défis la municipalité est-elle confrontée? Marianne Giguère, conseillère à la Ville de Montréal, nous parle de gestion et d'inclusion tandis que Catherine Morency, professeure à Polytechnique Montréal, nous explique comment la technologie peut intervenir pour faciliter la vie des cyclistes, et même, des autres citoyens.

Another election, another surprise announcement from Premier Doug Ford that throws it all into disarray. Ford's proposal for "Strong Mayor" powers for Toronto and Ottawa's next mayors have left many wondering why the Premier is intervening in local-level governance. One of these people is former Toronto Mayor David Miller. We speak to Miller — currently managing director of C40 Cities, advising municipalities on fighting climate change — about why a Strong Mayor system would be harmful to local democracy, as long as key issues for this elections such as housing, transit, active transportation, and the environment.

We're all used to headlines about impossibly soaring housing prices in Canadian cities: prices that leave many out of the market, and out in the cold. But this model of perpetually increasing home values is the dream for many owners. You buy a home, let it accumulate in value, and do whatever you can to insure that growing value isn't threatened. But this model is unsustainable and leaves many people without proper housing options. Dr. Paul Kershaw is a University of British Columbia professor, founder of Generation Squeeze, and author of the paper "Wealth and the Problem of Housing Inequity Across Generations." He says these rising home values have changed what it means to be wealthy: “We have to be cognizant of the fact that there is a cultural and political addiction to high and rising home prices for many in this country, because it makes us better off. And some people will resist that [...] I'll get angry emails: 'I'm not rich!' But what we need to have right now is more and more dialogue about who's a

The Toronto municipal election is underway, and we'll be spending the summer bringing you coverage, all the way up to E-Day on October 24th. But how do we get people engaged, and avoid the abysmally low voter turnout we saw in the Ontario provincial election? What does "Ford More Years" of Premier Doug mean for the municipal race, and the next council? What key items should be made election issues? And what does new police data which admits to systemic, racist overpolicing of minorities and use of force mean for the police reform movement? To answer these and other questions, we've got panel guests John Lorinc (Spacing senior editor) and Jennifer Pagliaro (Toronto Star crime reporter focusing on youth justice, formerly of the City Hall bureau). The race is on!

The housing market is one everyone's minds these days. It determines who can live where, who can afford to buy a home, or even afford rent. It keeps some people in poverty, while making a small few incredibly rich. Is there a way governments, at various levels, can help bring some stability to an unstable market? To begin our discussion, we speak to University of British Columbia associate professor Thomas Davidoff, director of the Centre for Economics and Real Estate, who co-authored a revealing study about laneway houses in Vancouver: “Neighbourhoods that have relatively low prices (and of course it's relative in the City of Vancouver), so the east side of Vancouver, there doesn't seem to be any adverse effect on neighbouring property values. But the effect is bigger on the order of 5 to 7% in the more affluent neighbourhoods.” On the other side of the country, in Montreal, we talk to McGill University associate professor David Wachsmuth about the outsized influence short term rentals such as AirBnB have

Spacing and the Balanced Supply of Housing research node proudly present The Overhead: Understanding Canada’s Affordable Housing Crisis, a special podcast series. THIS EPISODE: Non-market housing solutions For many housing advocates, part of the solution to providing affordable housing is removing housing from the volatile market. This means finding ways to secure housing ensuring it won't be sold, flipped, or inflated in price. It's something the Better Supply of Housing research node has been examining, as part of a holistic approach to the housing crisis. Cliff Grant is director of strategic relations at the Aboriginal Housing Management Association in British Columbia, and says non-market housing is part of a that organization's recently published "Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy": “We're working on both fronts. One, the strategy to maintain current assets, and two, then looking at the data — a lot of which comes out of the municipality's housing needs assessment.” In Toronto,

Urban designers and placemakers often struggle to create cities that work for everyone, including youth. But the youth themselves are often left out of planning and engagement, or aren't being invited to participate in a way they feel comfortable with or excited about. How do we engage youth in building their cities?  Federico Palacios is a graduate student at X University's (formally Ryerson) School of Urban and Regional Planning. He has developed the Cities for Youth Toolkit: a resource for people to better engage youth in city building. To help establish the importance of youth engagement and participation, Federico speaks to Gladki Planning Associates planner Lindsay Toth, Urban Minds' outreach coordinator Enosh Chen, and Carizon Family and Community Services youth engagement in systems lead Joana Lincho.

Housing affordability and homelessness in Canada is a national disaster. And while there are many solutions proposed, the crisis likely requires a complete, holistic approach goes beyond just supply. That's the mission of the Balanced Supply of Housing research node, led by Principal Investigator Penny Gurstein. In this episode, we will meet some of the people working with the BSH, and ask them what they're doing to further the cause of a decent housing for all. Marika Albert and Andrés Peñaloza, for example, provide policy for the BC Non-Profit Housing Association. As Marika says, non-market housing has been de-prioritized for decades: "In the late '80s/early '90s, we saw a shift at the Federal level where, essentially, investment in social housing programming pretty much came to a grinding halt. And we didn't see investment really at the level that we needed to keep up with population and changing demographics. And so what we're seeing now is a need to catch up." And McGill University's Nik Luka has both

Those working with unhoused people in Toronto, like Sanctuary Toronto outreach worker Lorraine Lam, are warning about the total collapse of the City's shelter system: as COVID continues to sweep through those communities, and we experience extreme low temperatures. Spacing contributing editor Perry King (author of the book Rebound: Sports, Community, and the Inclusive City) talks about what to do with the City's five publicly-owned golf courses. And Neil Brochu talks about his contribution to Spacing's latest book, Souvenirs of Toronto Sports, all about how the queer community in the '60s formed the Rotator Curling League.

We end the year with a classic case of man vs. machine, as journalist and culture writer Graham Isador talks about tiny delivery robots taking over city sidewalks, and Toronto Council's decision to pause so-called micro-utility devices until sometime in 2022. Next, we talk to journalist and author Stephen Dale about his new book, Shift Change: scenes from a post-industrial revolution, all about Hamilton, Ontario's struggle with a rapid gentrification and housing cost crisis. Finally, with Spacing's latest "Growth" issue on shelves, Contributing Editor Sarah Hood tells us what we can find in those pages, and why it's always a good time to talk about plant life in the city. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.

With many people still working from home, the future of Toronto's PATH system — the underground mall serving the financial towers above — is in question. Globe & Mail urban affairs reporter Oliver Moore, who wrote about this crisis, explains the situation. And Spacing senior editor John Lorinc talks about the possible implications the City's new Inclusionary Zoning policy may have on Toronto's housing and affordability crisis. Finally, as a preview of Spacing's upcoming book, Souvenirs of Toronto Sport, I talk to Ian Wolfe, archivist and member of the board of directors for the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame & Museum, about Toronto's skiing history, and the closing of one of the City's last two downhill ski facilities at Centennial Park.

In this episode, we follow up on the municipal elections in Edmonton and Calgary, with a bit of a rant about rooming houses. Then, we talk to journalist and Spacing contributing editor Perry King about his new book Rebound: sports, community, and the inclusive city. Finally, as a preview of our upcoming "Growing" issue of the magazine, we talk to Sundance Harvest farm director Cheyenne Sundance about urban farming, empowering marginalized and BIPOC communities, and food justice.

With the mayors of both Edmonton and Calgary stepping down, and Alberta municipal elections taking place October 18, we decided to bring you all out west. But first, the City of Toronto released a detailed account of how much this summer's park encampment evictions cost. Matt Elliott wrote a Toronto Star column breaking down the cost, and we talk about how that money could have been better spent actually supporting people who live in encampments. Then, Alberta-based journalist Tim Querenguesser tells us what the fourth wave of COVID is like in that promise, and about the power vacuum being left by Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi stepping down. As well, when Alberta municipalities this month, they will have to vote on some politically charged referendum issues at the same time. For more insight on Alberta municipal politics, follow Tim's newsletter on Twitter: @RageMunicipal