A Downtowner Eats Her Words
/After coming out in favour of downtown, Renee Sylvestre-Williams stumbles onto a kickass fashion party--in Woodbridge: "Drummers, cage dancers and fire dancers stalked the stage warming up the crowd who happily started whooping and cheering as each model strode down the catwalk. Wine was drunk, cameras flashed and when a shirtless model came out the screams just increased in volume."
Read MoreYes, I live in the suburbs. No, I don't drive.
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Jef Catapang assures us that life in Mississauga without a driver's license is still worth living: "Not caring about cars is one of the many ways I often feel like a downtown spirit living in the suburbs. I like concerts, film festivals and used bookstores and I always thought I would end up living nearer to the core to accommodate my interests. Money issues kept that from happening, but a funny thing happened in the meantime — I started to not hate it here."
Read MoreEthnic Aisle on the Ceeb
/Our own Denise Balkissoon was interviewed by Matt Galloway on CBC's Metro Morning, take a listen. Sadly, the podcast doesn't include the part where he says the blog has a wonderful name. Which it does, right?
My Problem With the Suburbs
/Canice Leung, who grew up in Richmond Hill: "Here are two events in my life that explain urban planning in Richmond Hill: 1. The time I was 14 and tried to visit the local bike shops to buy a bike. 2. The two separate incidences, at the same York Region Transit bus stop, in which I had two men, in two separate incidents, show me their penises."
Read MoreMissin' Mississauga
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Romantic nostalgia for the 905? Yes indeed, via Chantal Braganza: "Want to watch 25-year-olds live out their 2001 dreams of The Fast and the Furious in neon-lit cars with wire spoilers? Wendy’s, Hurontario and Britannia. Or some helmeted daredevil stand on the handles of a motorcycle as he (or she, never found out) rips down Dundas at 140 km/h? Tim Hortons, Dundas and Winston Churchill. Make-out point? Wherever you could park a car."
Read MoreOne vote for the 'burbs
/Today's Downtown vs. Suburbs post comes via Simon Yau, who advocates for life north of Eglinton: "I love my Costco membership. I love living in a spacious house. I love the silent privacy of my street. I love eating meals for $4 at Chinese food courts. I love being close to an Ikea. I love free parking. And to top it off, I could care less about bike lanes."
Read MoreSuburban vs. Urban Divide: Toronto→
/Trinidadian expat Renée Sylvestre-Williams lived in the GTA suburbs with her parents and now prefers downtown.
Read MoreDowntown vs. Suburbs: Yes, It's An Ethnic Thing
/When people talk about the Great Downtown/Suburb Divide, they are also talking about ethnicity.
Read MoreSuburbs vs. Downtown: Let's Get It Started
/It's 416 vs. outer-416 vs. 905 week on the Ethnic Aisle. We're going to be writing about downtown, the suburbs, the much-ballyhooed divide between them, and what ethnicity has to do with it. Hopefully you'll find it all interesting enough to come to our in-person chitchat next Monday, September 26. To kick things off, a few links:
From last weekend's Toronto Star, a piece by Kenneth Kidd on How the Liberal Lost Toronto in the last federal election. How much did it have to do with the Conservatives' targeting 905 ethnic communities? How repulsive is it that Jason Kenney was supposedly labelled Minister of Curry?
The blog Blue Kennel discusses Why Non-Suburbanites Distrust Suburbanites: "people move to suburbs not just to get things, like bigger houses and yards, but to get away from things in their old neighborhood: crime, traffic, and bad schools....And how to keep the bad things from following them? They have to be able to control the neighborhoods around them."
The Atlantic thinks this is The Beginning of the End for Suburban America because no one can afford to heat/cool huge houses or commute long distances the way they used to. (Thanks to Bernie Michalik for these last two links)
Secret Republic offers up an infographic on the Suburbanization of Poverty in the U.S., which should be old news to Torontonians familiar with the 2004 United Way report Poverty By Postal Code.
In August, Ute Lehrer and Roger Keil from the City Institute at York University were on Metro Morning discussing how suburbs are going to keep on growing--in the GTA and around the world--through the 21st century.
Will the suburban GTA decide which party wins this October's provincial election?
Hazel McCallion once told the Star that her biggest regret as mayor was not designing Mississauga to be more dense so that the city could afford decent transit.
And in Vaughan, mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua wants to transform the 905 outpost "from a suburban municipality to a world-class city," starting with a walkable downtown.
