'Staff never thought 26 families would want to live in this amenity rich, tree-lined neighbourhood close to employment centers and multiple low cost transportation options' Skill issue!

Bike Share and I have fused into one being. In, like, a literal way.

Scarborough councillors out trying to take choices away from residents and make new housing more expensive. The irony that is it was Ainslie who moved the original parking study motion a few years ago when he heard about its success in Edmonton. secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...

"Bike lanes, road construction, transit builds." Feels like there might be one key thing missing from this list of congestion causes. What could it be?

Starting to feel a bit like a taxpayer who is not being respected, I gotta say.

Looks like the City is going to try to appeal this decision to the Divisional Court. (This is unusual. The OLT has authority to decide land use matters. The City would need to show an error of law, not just that they disagree about land use, is my understanding). secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...

From Safe Parkside: look what happened on Parkside Drive after Premier Doug Ford banned speed cameras.

Really enjoyed this even though I didn't follow the case at all. "Put simply, it is the intelligence community that should be earning the trust of parliamentarians, not parliamentarians surrendering their privileges to secure the trust of the intelligence community."

NEW: Official government documents written and saved in Google Docs are no longer covered by Ontario’s freedom of information laws, the province has decreed, as its transparency clampdown continues to roll out. #Onpoli globalnews.ca/news/1184611...

What if the land for cars was previously contaminated by apartments? Gotta check to be sure.

I would simply create a land use system with fair and transparent rules that didn't rely on site-by-site negotiations behind closed doors.

So nice to see an interview with someone who wants people in their neighbourhood in a city. Also, the real danger was always the 10-minute city, which was a conspiracy to get me to eat a lot of pizza. It's working. www.thestar.com/life/food-an...

I got two census forms, mine and one for the same apartment in the wrong building (dropped it back in the mail). But tonight I found out that my sister, who lives across the country got 3 forms, 2 for wrong apartments. Now I need a census question about how many census forms people incorrectly got.

You can tell people not to post politics on a Sunday, but politics will inevitably show up regardless (and apparently this is 10x truer if you live in Scarborough Southwest).

It’s bleakly amusing how our cutback in immigration is almost a perfect case study in how doing that is bad. It instantly resulted in an even more exploitative labour market, the economy has completely stalled out, and people are even more mad about immigrants. Whoops.

A lot of the things that people like about NES - outspoken, doesn't always take the party line - are the things that make it hard to win leadership and even moreso a local nomination race. "Normal" people don't join political parties so you're reliant on party insiders for support.

Not sure there's ever been anyone with such consistent timing on being wrong as McCullough. It's quite remarkable.

I miss having a real media critic in this country because many of my peers are probably afraid to publicly denounce this crazy behaviour & get blacklisted from the NYT but I personally do not care 😎 I already have a job at a media outlet with ethical standards around reporting.

I don't want to give RAs any ideas but: minimum pool size?!

Fascinated to learn that some Toronto councillors are concerned about the fact that garbage bins might block the sidewalk and affect accessibility. New information to me. If anything, a building with a property manager seems less likely to do this.

Fontra and regrettably councillor Saxe are describing this as creating an externality as if it's normal practice in any city we envy to require enough space to turn garbage trucks around inside the building. We're not trying to create good buildings. We're trying to create expensive ones.

Things I'd like to see in a new OP: -a removal of the concept of stable neighbourhoods. Everywhere must allow at least incremental growth. -a move towards planning for growth and away from planning as response to development application. -a move away from lot-by-lot policy and towards true zones.

Gonna try and break this later by searching for "parking" in Toronto City Council.

Maybe I always waited until census day before but I don't remember previous censuses making me so anxious about predicting the future and, particularly, the fact that I might die between the time that I filled it out and the official date-of-the-count.

A few talks happening for #DoorsOpenTO later this month (including one at the archives on Sat 23 May) Free registration opens today: www.toronto.ca/explore-enjo... #Toronto

Thought I would take the old Poplar Plains route home this weekend as a change and it was a reminder of how the Yonge bike lanes are superior in almost every way (also, I'm in a fight with Google maps now. Mostly flat?!).

Much talk about the Church St pedestrianization at the first Pedestrian Summit TO. Feels like the start of something. The appetite for pedestrian spaces is huge. @chanface.bsky.social

StatCan is not on bsky, so cross-posting their LinkedIn message here.

Very fun ride! Cycling + raccoons on a crisp spring day.

Well I'll take that as official confirmation of the recent rumour mill: @dianachanmcnally.bsky.social seems to be running to succeed Gord Perks on Toronto City Council.

LFGGGGG WE ARE PEDESTRIANMAXXING HOT PEDESTRIAN SUMMER 🚶🚶🔥🔥

If the people who claim to support housing when speaking against housing at Toronto's various Community Councils actually ever showed up to support housing, we could really do some stuff.

There will always be a reason for transportation services to say NO to pedestrianization. It is time council takes the first step to reform this outdated viewpoint and say YES to reforming how Toronto pedestrianizes streets. The community, BIA and local councillor support this effort. That’s rare.

This certainly reads like the records were deliberately withheld in anticipation of the bill passing.

Only in toronto is giving more space to pedestrians who can't fit on local sidewalks called overcrowding

If there are so many challenges to living in a neighbourhood - no sidewalks, poor snow clearing, no amenities within walking distance - perhaps it's worth having a discussion about whether the character should be "very stable"??? www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis...

Yes, the next provincial election is not for a while. But lower popularity makes it less likely that the federal government will want to support, say, an airport expansion with a poor business case. This has been your cynical politics "take of the day." ✨

Guys, Rob is posting over here now. If we're still doing the "follow to encourage people to move over" thing, good opportunity. ( @mdruker.app and @philmarfisi.bsky.social: hot regional chairs news)

I need Toronto's councillors to talk amongst themselves and decide whether the Reserve Funds are: (a) rainy day funds that are not allocated and are intended for unforeseen circumstances, or (b) all allocated to projects and about to be spent so no need to worry that they've grown into the billions.

Matt points to the increasing number of ward based opt-outs as a reason to pay attention to this year's Toronto council elections. I will supplement that by highlighting that Bill 98 will require the Official Plan to be rewritten in 2 years and that's a huge deal. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

"During a council debate last week over whether to approve a pilot project to allow vendors to sell food in some parks this summer, veteran city councillor Frances Nunziata had a question: if the pilot project was approved, could she opt out?" www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Well, at least they had the guts to do it openly. Fun fact: a change around how roof height was measured in Toronto's harmonized zoning by-law lowered the effective building height in Toronto, putting many existing homess in violation. The OAA spent years fighting it at the Ontario Municipal Board.

It's good that people are making use of this space, but let's remember that this sub-market space exists because we used to require tons of expensive underground parking to be built before we would allow homes to be built. We stopped in 2022 but some councillors keep trying to bring it back.

This will sound ridiculous in response to a discussion that includes Vancouver but Toronto's waterfront used to be much worse and has slowly gotten better due to various painstaking governance things. (Which of course makes recent waterfront takeover news all the more concerning).

Being a Toronto troublemaker and bringing my food to the parkette. I'm a rebel like that.

This assumes that your city isn't getting the developer to donate land to them to widen the road. www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis...

Local 👏 journalism 👏 matters 👏 www.thestar.com/entertainmen...

❤️❤️😭 Cities are for people!

Let cities be weird and varied and interesting. Let cities be cities!

Cities, man.