Clean Up Good

Wildfire season has already begun in Canada. Due to climate change, we are seeing more frequent and devastating fires. They choke the air, the decimate the landscape, and they displace people from their homes. So we have to fight them with everything we've got.

Neal McLoughlin is superintendent of the Predictive Services Unit at BC Wildfire Service. He tells us how AI and drone technology is helping to monitor, fight, and prevent forest fires.

And Moulay Akhloufi is a professor at the University of Moncton, where he heads their Perception, Robotics and Intelligent Machines Lab. He tells us how his team has been exploring every avenue available to detect wildfires, and predict how they'll spread. That includes video games.

The Future FIx: Fighting Wildfires With Drones and Video Games

It's Bike Month! It's a time we celebrate cycle culture in Toronto and surrounding cities and towns. At least officially. Despite some significant gains in cycling infrastructure, there are still a lot of people and (more troubling) politicians who'd like to run riders off the road.

To put this all into perspective, we spoke to Lanrick Bennett Jr., a cycling advocate who, for the last few years, has represented Toronto as the Bicycle Mayor.

And, Spacing co-founder Shawn Micallef tells us about the new edition of his book Stroll: psychogeographic walking tours of Toronto. In 2010, Shawn wrote the book as a series of guided walks, with historic background and personal reflections, through different parts of the city. Now, 14 years later, he's retread those steps for a brand new version of the book.

Episode 78: Bike Month

Toronto is often accused of being over-regulated. It's a fair criticism.

For example, photographer and urbanist commentator Dan Seljak tells us how he stumbled upon the small Finch Store selling espresso, fighting to stay open in the face of City zoning laws.

For more of the story, and how Finch Store was granted a reprieve, we speak to local City Councillor Alejandra Bravo.

And we speak to Councillor Gord Perks, chair of the Planning and Housing Committee, about why Toronto works on complaints-based bylaw enforcement, and how we can improve the system for small businesses, special events, and more.

Episode 79: Is Toronto strangled by rules?

We heard a lot about drones at the Paris Olympics, but what about in our own backyard?

In this episode, Spacing's John Lorinc tells us about a piece he wrote called Eyes in the Sky, which documents the stealthy creep of the Toronto Police Service's use of drones to keep tabs on residents.

Next, author and green advocate Lorraine Johnson tells us about an open letter she co-signed urging Canadian municipalities to change their outdated bylaws which prohibit growing habit gardens and other helpful plant species in our lawns and backyards.

Finaly, Ingrid Buday founded No More Noise Toronto out of frustration with the city's high-volume noise pollution, especially traffic sounds. The group advocates for new bylaws protecting residents' right to peace and quiet, and gathers its own data to make the case.

Episode 80: Toronto's Drone Scandal

It's been a while since we had a good, old-fashioned transit talk with friends of the show Tricia Wood (York University urban geography professor and Spacing contributor) and Matt Elliott (Toronto Star columnist and publisher of the City Hall Watcher newsletter).

We talk about returning TTC service levels to pre-pandemic levels, what we should look for in the next TTC CEO, what is even happening with the Eglinton Crosstown, and Doug Ford's transit expansion plans.

Episode 81: Talking Transit '24

This month, we respond to Doug Ford's stated plan of banning new bike lanes in Ontario municipalities and building an underground highway from Markham to Scarborough.

Then we speak to environmental lawyer and cycling advocate Albert Koehl about his book Wheeling Through Toronto: a history of the bicycle and its riders. We talk about how attitudes towards cyclists have changed over time, or even repeated themselves.

Finally, we talk to transportation consultant and former TTC Chair Adam Giambrone about the need for a culture change at Toronto's transportation commission.

Episode 82: Toronto's political gridlock

We're pleased to bring you another season of The Overhead, and we begin by checking back on a topic we've been tracking from the start: community land trusts.

This time, we're focusing specifically on the "community" aspect of land trusts. We've spoken about the benefits of removing certain land from the market, preserving it as affordable housing in perpetuity. But how do land trusts help longstanding cultural communities so they can continue to call their neigbourhoods home?

We see different communities turning to land trust model as a way to avoid displacement, or reassert cultural ownership over land they've traditionally called home: in the traditionally Black neighbourhoods of Hogan's Alley in Vancouver and Africville in Halifax, or in Toronto's Chinatown.

To answer this, we spoke to Nat Pace, network director of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, and Chiyi Tam, managing director of the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust. As Tam puts it, when we talk about the heritage of a place, we spend a lot of time speaking about the buildings or the character. We lose sight of what really makes a place:

"Heritage is the people, it's not the buildings. And affordability is a core function to do heritage preservation work, in and amongst all of our communities — whether that's dragon dancing or whether that's the literal existence of Africville."

How can ownership over land help preserve our diverse communities?

The Overhead: Preserving Community

This time of year, with the temperature below freezing, it feels appropriate to talk about housing. So, we're bringing you two conversations with two authors who have both recently written about that very topic.

Carolyn Whitzman is the author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis.

And Mitchell Cohen wrote Rhythms of Change: Reflections on the Regent Park Revitalization.

The first book provides a macro view of housing in Canada, and the second provides a look at a specific development in Toronto.

Episode 84: Two Housing Carols

With Justin Trudeau stepping down as Prime Minister and the very real possibility of an federal election, Premier Doug Ford mulling over a snap provincial election, and President-elect Trump threatening a trade war, it's almost impossible to predict what 2025 will hold.

And yet, Toronto and other municipalities in Canada must muddle through as best they can and create an annual budget. That process has already started in Toronto.

To rate Trudeau's legacy (for better or worse) in Toronto, and to identify possible pitfalls and goals for the megacity's newest budget, we've put together a panel discussion featuring CivicAction CEO Leslie Woo and Spacing Senior Editor John Lorinc.

Episode 85: City Accounting for Global Chaos

For renters, security of tenure — the ability to stay in a home without fear of being destabilized by eviction — is essential. When you have that security, you can put down roots in your neigbhourhood for you and your family.

But evictions occur all the time. They may be the result of lack of payment, but there are different legal avenues for landlords to pursue "no-fault evictions," such as renovations or moving in a family member. Sometimes these are simply loopholes being exploited, but that's difficult and costly to prove for the renter. Because housing is such big business, there is plenty of incentive to evict current tenants and name a new, higher price.

Alina McKay is Research Manager for the Housing Research Collaborative the the University of British Columbia and Sean Grisdale is a PhD Candidate in Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. They have both been conducting research on evictions and security of tenure.

Clean Up Good

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