In The News

Yet another report confirms what anyone walking our streets has been noticing. Toronto and the rest of Canada is reaching new heights.
 
"Canada is in the midst of a tall building boom. Twenty six buildings taller than 150 meters have been built in Canada since 2005, according to a new research study by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH)."
 
"Canada added four buildings taller than 200 meters in 2012, the most Canada has ever completed in a single year, the CTBUH study found. In contrast the United States completed two building over 200 meters in 2012."
 
"The epicenter of Canadian tall building development is Toronto, where 15 buildings taller than 150 meters are under construction, more than any other city in the western hemisphere. Toronto is projected to have 44 buildings taller than 150 meters by 2015, up from 13 in 2005."
 
Read the full report here
Original source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat                                                     

As we gear up for our Yonge Talks January 17 event on the power of play, an article by Clare Reddington in the UK edition of the Huffington Post caught our eye this week.
 
"Over half of the world's population can be found living in cities and increasingly, they expect more from the place they live and work," writes Reddington. "How can we make cities more malleable, more hospitable places? In the future, playfulness, the creative expression of fun, will be key."
 
She cites projects in Utrecht, Helsinki, London and, of course, Toronto.
 
"Usman Haque's Flight Path in Toronto, invited people to slip on a pair of wings and reclaim the airspace, rediscovering the 'sport' in transport and asking questions about how we move from place to place."
 
Read the full article here
Original source: Huffington Post UK

In the Harvard Business Review blog this month, Matthew E. May writes about the how shared spaces contribute to a different kind of urban and corporate mindset.
 
"Take 'shared space' urban design, for example," writes May. "In these schemes, motor vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists all share the road equally, with the only rule being 'all due respect to the most vulnerable.' There are few if any traffic signs or lights. Curbs have been removed, asphalt replaced with red brick, and fountains, trees and café seating are situated where you think you should drive. It's completely ambiguous. You have no choice but to slow down and think as you move through the space. The result is double the traffic flow with at least half the accidents."
 
"This kind of design began as an experiment in small European towns that didn't have a budget for traditional traffic controls at high-volume intersections and it has since spread to metropolitan cities. Visitors to the 2012 Olympic Games enjoyed the shared space rework of London's cultural mecca, Exhibition Road, a three-year, multi-million dollar project."
 
"Look around the corporate world, and you can find great examples of organizations also taking the 'shared space' approach too so people can better collaborate and innovate. Take the community workspaces at Toronto's internationally recognized Centre for Social Innovation (CSI). The idea is to create the conditions and context for people to feel comfortable, develop relationships with others interested in the public good, and engage in mutually beneficial interactions."
…
"The power of this kind of self-organization suggests that creativity and innovation might best be achieved not through rigid hierarchy and central controls, but from one or two simple but vital agreements."
 
Read the full article here
Original source: Harvard Business Review Blogs

Think of what has put (and kept) Toronto in the world headlines in the last few years: Our film festival, our stable banks during the financial crisis, SARS, outlandish mayoral drama and now… a smartly dressed monkey loose in Ikea.
 
"Dubbed on social media networks as the 'Ikea monkey,' the Canadian rhesus macaque monkey was spotted in a parking lot near an Ikea in Toronto before he walked in to the famous Swedish furniture store," reports Australia's Herald Sun.
 
After he was identified as a pet named Darwin, the UK's Sun breathlessly kept on top of the breaking developments in the story. "Last night Darwin was taken to a sanctuary in Ontario triggering a bitter 'custody' battle with his owner—a lawyer from Toronto. Animal experts said Darwin is in lockdown after saying he was a DANGER to humans—and was 'stressed' after having a 'bad day.'
 
Australia's ABC News added a political angle: "Outside Canada's parliament, opposition MP Chris Charlton evoked the monkey in swipes at the government: 'Conservatives are as lost as a monkey in an IKEA. Though at least the monkey was wearing a coat to cover his shame.'"
 
And Hollywood.com speculated on Darwin's future: "Our little monkey friend galavanted into our hearts by way of the Toronto Ikea from whence he was discovered, but that was only the beginning. There's a whole big world out there, and Ikea Monkey is ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille. So off he went: to Hollywood, of course! There was still so much to learn and explore! But with a single-color dream coat."
 
Read the full stories here and here and here and here
Sources: Herald Sun, The Sun, ABC & Hollywood.com

A new book of photography by Toronto artist Robert Burley, called Disappearance of Darkness, is receiving warm reviews in the UK.
 
"There have been various valedictory photographic essays about the passing of analogue photography over the past decade, but none quite as extensive as Robert Burley's 10-year project to chronicle the disappearance of the sites where film was produced and developed," writes the Observer's Sean O'Hagan. "No doubt digital technology will record and define this century just as analogue photography did the last. What will disappear, though, is the physical manifestation of the photographic process, not just the print, but the negative, the contact sheet, and, with it, a certain process of often painstaking creativity and chemical transformation."
 
Losing the places that processed film commercially also creates a hole in cities like Toronto.
 
"What is striking about his images of the Kodak Canada plant in Toronto, where he lives, for instance, is the futuristic anonymity of the building, both inside and out. In a pristine administrative area, an employee's fleece hangs on a slim pillar like a flag of defeat, while the absence of human activity is almost palpable. The exception is one large-scale photograph, taken from above, in which he captures a spread of small figures leaving the car park after an employee meeting that took place during the last few days of production."
 
Read the full story here
Original source: The Observer

In a photo essay in the Huffington Post about lower-key alternatives to hyped New Year's Eve destinations, Toronto was suggested as a substitute for New York City.
 
"Sure, you could go smash yourself up against a million other people in Times Square or pay $200 to go to a nightclub, but why not ring in 2013 in another cosmopolitan city without the headaches that come with trying to hail a cab in Manhattan on Dec. 31 (trust us, it's impossible). Toronto offers the urban nightlife of Manhattan, with a little more breathing room and a more reasonable Canadian price tag (comparison: a deluxe room at the Four Seasons in New York for New Year's Eve is $1,195 USD, a deluxe room at Toronto's Four Seasons is $518). Toronto's equivalent to the Times Square ball drop happens at CityTV's celebration in Nathan Square, where celebrities gather for the countdown to midnight and fireworks. Make sure to check out Toronto's Distillery District, a lively area full of restored Victorian industrial buildings and chock full of cafes, galleries and bars."
 
Read the full story here
Original source: Huffington Post

BroadwayWorld writes about the buzz building for the Mirvish's all-Canadian Wizard of Oz, "thanks in part to the fantastic CBC reality show Over the Rainbow which allowed the Canadian public to vote for the young lady they wanted to portray Dorothy. Danielle Wade was the chosen one, and she seemed very much at home with her Wizard of Oz family last week."
 
"The show was created by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and features the original British creative team, including director Jeremy Sams and Choregrapher Arlene Phillips. The cast features Cedric Smith as The Wizard, Lisa Horner as The Wicked Witch, Jamie McKnight as The Scarecrow, Mike Jackson as The Tin Man, Lee MacDougall as The Cowardly Lion, Robin Evan Willis as Glinda the Good Witch and Charlotte Moore as Auntie Em."
 
The show opens December 20.
 
Read the full story here
Original source: Broadway World

Fox News has declared Toronto to be one of the best budget travel destinations for 2013.
 
"Toronto is seriously having a moment. The cultural, entertainment, and financial capital of Canada has not only undergone a huge building boom (with more than 30,000 new homes being built over the past year alone) but New York City exports are opening up here at rapid pace, like the new Thompson and Trump hotels, and David Chang's Momofuku empire. (In fact, foodie-ism is at its prime in Toronto—the St. Lawrence food market, which, with its 120 specialty vendors, is regularly considered one of the world's best.) But what makes it a great budget destination is that unlike the rest of the world, hotel prices didn't increase at all in the first half of 2012, with the cost of an average room remaining at $148, according to the 2012 Hotels.com Price Index."
 
"Like any good bustling North American city, there are myriad cultural options to be found here, from museums, great theater, art galleries, and shopping, but because this is a harbor town off Lake Ontario, there are also plenty of affordable outdoorsy activities like hiking, biking, and canoeing, especially around the Toronto Islands. And because about half of the population was born abroad, the ethnic food scene is as good as it gets anywhere in the world."
 
Read the full story here
Original source: Fox News

The gang at HotelChatter checked out the new ALT Hotel Toronto Pearson, owned by Canadian boutique hoteliers, Groupe Germain.
 
"We gotta tell ya, this hotel-in-a-box is stylin'!"
 
"Back in April we reported Groupe Germain planned to open several ALT Hotels across Canada, and Toronto is the first up. The ALT Hotel business model is to maximize style while keeping costs down by minimizing superfluous services and prefabricating the hotel rooms—sort of like how cruise ships are built (ergo, hotel-in-a-box!)."
…
 
"Our room was surprisingly big with absolutely no evidence that it was built off-site. The bed was comfy with a snuggly duvet, there were plenty of nooks to store your stuff, a bee-yoo-ti-ful Italian 'Calla' chair, a big glass shower with Canadian brand Fruits & Passion toiletries in big bottles—so no pilfering—and a rainfall showerhead (there's even a faucet at foot-level so that you can check the temperature of the water with your tootsies before you commit)."
 
Read the full story here
Original source: Hotel Chatter

In an examination of the liveability of Melbourne for The Age newspaper, writers Jason Dowling and Miki Perkins turn to Toronto, a city that bears some resemblance to Australia's second largest city.
 
"Toronto ranks fourth in the liveability stakes and has reached a number of conclusions when it comes to planning: urban sprawl must end and building new freeways will not solve a city's transportation needs."
 
"'We only have infill development in the city…. the question is how do we do that infill?' says Toronto's chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat."
 
"About 15 years ago, Toronto and the regional government realised urban sprawl was destroying natural habitat and threatening the city's water supply, so it was halted. Ending sprawl involved significant negotiation with the development industry because a lot of developers had purchased farmland on the assumption they would be able to continue to develop ad nauseam, Keesmaat says. Once the boundary was made clear, it shifted the market and drove a significant amount of development into infill sites. Keesmaat says it was a 'huge problem' if developers could lobby the government to move the urban boundary."
 
"Melbourne's boundary has expanded almost 100,000 hectares in a decade, with developers and planning ministers interpreting the urban 'boundary' as a point of negotiation. Keesmaat says the fundamental issue all cities must address when planning for growth is having 'a very clear structure of where growth won't go,' and limiting urban sprawl is part of that."
 
"'It's about identifying hubs where there is a very strong nexus of public transportation and an opportunity to accommodate mixed-use growth,' she says."
 
Read the full story here  
Original source: The Age

Toronto has made the list of the world's 20 best Startup Ecosystems.
 
The 2012 Startup Ecosystem Report lists only three Canadian cities; Vancouver and Waterloo also made the list. Published by Startup Compass, a project which maps, models and analyzes what makes startups tick, the report consider 50,000 startups globally, measuring them against criteria including talent, mindset and "differentiation from Silicon Valley." That number one ecosystem is referred to as "SV" in the report. Toronto came in at #8, one spot lower than London.
 
"Toronto is the largest startup ecosystem in Canada and is one of the largest startup ecosystems globally even though it creates 85% less startups than SV. It has a healthy funnel of startups across the stages of the Startup Lifecycle. Toronto competes for startups with regional competitors such as NYC, Boston and nearby Waterloo," states the report.
 
"Toronto entrepreneurs are as ambitious as their counterparts in SV. They consider building a great product and trying to change the world as their key motivations in similar proportions. They are similarly committed to work full time before product market fit, and focus similarly on 'new' vs 'niche' markets."
 
"The key challenges of Toronto startups are similar to SV startups: customer acquisition, building the product, funding, and building the team."

Download the full report here (registration required)
Original source: Startup Compass

IT World Canada reports that the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has awarded a contract worth $25 million over 20 years to Broadcast Australia Pty to build an open wireless network throughout the city's 61-station subway system.
 
"The city specified that all cellular carriers in the city have the ability to buy access on the network. But what the terms will be and whether carriers will want to pay that amount isn't known yet."
 
Before going completely live Broadcast Australia has to first wire at least two subway stations to test possible interference with the TTC's internal wireless operations system. If that test fails the agency can cancel the contract."
 
Read the full story here
Original source: ITWorldCanada.com

It's barely opened its door and the new Shangri-La Hotel has made a list of the world's top hotels.
 
The new University Avenue landmark made the cut in the second annual 100 Fodors Hotels Awards. In the City Chic category, the hotel rubs shoulders with the Armani Hotel in Milan, the Park Hyatt in Washington, The Rookery in London and the Siam in Bangkok.
 
"Stunning art and design are second only to the service at this grand hotel opened in September 2012. A towering sculpture from one of China's most celebrated contemporary artists, Zhang Huan, makes for an impressive entrance, and the bi-level lobby features enormous calligraphy paintings and a handcrafted piano…. Guest rooms have Asian design touches like raw-silk wall coverings and replicas of ancient Chinese chairs, plus luxurious amenities like marble baths and separate rain showers—and endless city views."
 
"If that's not enough, the hotel complex is also home to three restaurants and a bar by famed New York chef David Chang of the Momofuku empire. New Yorkers are already making reservations."
 
There were more than 4,000 nominees in 41 countries across nine categories.
 
Read the whole list here
Original source: Fodors