Stories about Built Environment
“Somebody Is Going to Get Hurt”
Inspections at industrial workplaces in Ontario fell nearly 30 percent in the last decade, according to analysis by The Local. In the same period, critical injuries more than doubled.
How Noise Shaped a City
Toronto’s anti-noise movement began in the 1930s. Ever since, noise policing has been inextricably linked with issues of race, class, and power.
Are Noisy Hospitals Making Us Sick?
The constant beeping, talking, and overhead paging aren’t just an annoyance—they can lead to delirium, longer recovery times, and even sleeping pill addiction.
The City Below the Sound
As someone who’s half-deaf, I’ve always moved between two Torontos—the surface city and the muted, shadowy one beneath it.
FAITH/VOID Was a Thriving DIY Venue. Then Came the Noise Complaint
Fights around Toronto’s unofficial music venues reveal a stark reality—there is noise this city values, and noise it doesn’t.
The 35 Jane
What a bus route reveals about race, class, and social vulnerability during a pandemic.
A Summer Without Tourists
We don't usually think of Toronto as a travel destination. But when the tourism industry imploded overnight, the effects rippled across the city.
A Small Town on Copeland Avenue
For years, I’d been craving the community and intimacy of small-town life. Then the pandemic hit and I found that it had been around me the whole time.
Cruising Through COVID
I never thought I’d own a car. Now I’m stockpiling groceries and driving through the zoo, locked safe inside my vehicle like the Pope.
My Own Private Island
The ferry is empty. Beavers and mallards rustle through the bush. Without visitors, life on the Toronto Island is quiet and peaceful. It all feels terribly wrong.
Last Week, In Review
As the first tentative positive signs emerged, it was tempting to look beyond the week—to try to trace the curve past where it flattens to the point it sinks beneath the horizon. It's too early for that.
Tuesday in Allan Gardens, Where the Police Guard the Benches
With shelters crowded and drop-ins closed, the police and the homeless play a strange game of cat and mouse.
Saturday is Just Another Day
Every hour is a hundred years long, and each day is over before it’s begun. In a pandemic, everyone has their own personal theory on the passage of time.
Sunday in the Suburbs
The broad emptiness, the desolate streets, the deadening sameness—it turned out my parents’ suburban neighbourhood was the ideal place to live through a global pandemic.
Welcome to Lawrence Heights
The future of Toronto as an equitable, liveable city begins in inner suburbs like this.
How it Feels to Be “Revitalized”
A revitalization project promises to transform this public housing community into a mixed-income neighbourhood. But meeting the needs of existing residents while appealing to affluent newcomers is a difficult balance.
The Picture Man
Thirty years ago, Rodrigo Moreno photographed neighbourhood kids for a school project. He's come back ever since, tracing the changing lives of people in a corner of the city few find worthy of documenting.
Where the Spadina Expressway Didn’t Stop
Defeating the Spadina Expressway is a celebrated story of urban resistance. Less told is the story of the neighbourhood that has lived with a freeway running through its heart for the last fifty years.
The Swimmer
Our intrepid beach correspondent swims his way across the city over one week to answer the question: what is Toronto beach culture?
Children’s Village Forever
Ontario Place designer Eric McMillan invented the ball pit, built the epicentre of kid-life for a generation of Torontonians and, for a brief moment, promised to revolutionize the way we play.