Categories
Cycling History Infrastructure Roads Toronto Walking

The jarring streetscape of Jarvis Street

Over a century ago, Jarvis Street was Toronto’s most fashionable address, and home to prominent families including the Masseys, who made their wealth from the farm equipment industry, and whose names live on through Massey Hall, Hart House, the Fred Victor Mission, and Massey College. The wide boulevards allowed for lush street trees to flourish, […]

Categories
Development History Ontario Travels Urban Planning

The end of another Eaton Centre

Opened in 1990, the Hamilton Eaton Centre will close for good on Boxing Day, 2022.

Categories
Brampton Development Transit

A new twist in the story of a downtown parking lot

A nearly-completed GO Transit parking lot in Downtown Brampton may never open, as Rogers eyes the site.

Categories
Brampton Infrastructure Transit Urban Planning

A tale of two stations: Brampton and Bramalea

With the expansion of parking at Bramalea GO, why is Metrolinx eager to add another parking lot in Downtown Brampton, especially with Ryerson’s downtown plans on hold?

Categories
Brampton Development Transit Urban Planning

The future of Downtown Brampton

Metrolinx-owned houses on Railroad Street, Brampton Over the last three years, I have been following developments in Downtown Brampton, especially lands surrounding the Brampton GO Station. In April 2016, Metrolinx, the provincial agency responsible for GO Transit, began buying properties in the northwest corner of Brampton’s downtown core, including twelve houses and two low-rise office […]

Categories
Election Maps Politics Toronto

Mapping the Downtown city council races

At the end of 2014, despite some disappointing results in that year’s municipal election, I was feeling optimistic about 2018. In 2014, there were a number of great candidates running for city council, and I expected many would try again in 2018. After council finally approved the recommended 47 ward model for the 2018 election, […]

Categories
Brampton Development Politics Transit Urban Planning

What’s next for Downtown Brampton?

Boarded up houses on Elizabeth Street, Downtown Brampton Earlier this year, the provincial government announced the location of Ryerson University’s Brampton campus, a partnership with Sheridan College, to be built on the GO Station parking lot in Downtown Brampton. Meanwhile, Metrolinx quietly purchased several houses and office buildings south of the station for new GO […]

Categories
Cycling Ontario Travels Urban Planning

Brantford’s downtown was the “worst in Canada” – but has it bounced back?

It’s complicated.

Categories
Brampton Transit Urban Planning

What’s going on in Downtown Brampton?

Two years ago, Metrolinx started buying up properties in Downtown Brampton in order to build a new surface parking lot for GO Transit commuters. Now more houses are boarded up, and there are plans for a new university campus.

Categories
Development History Ontario Urban Planning

Ontario’s failed downtown malls

Bayside Mall, formerly the Sarnia Eaton Centre, on a Saturday morning in 2013. Most stores are vacant or occupied by non-profits or independent businesses. The Toronto Eaton Centre, large, famous, and vital, is only one of many malls built in the downtown cores of Ontario cities between the 1960s and 1990s. From Thunder Bay to […]