[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links

• John Lorinc at Spacing considers the complication idea of a city charter for Toronto. Is it worth it? Does it ignore other governance issues?
• Tourism is booming in Toronto, transforming the economy of the metropolis. The Toronto Star reports.
• NOW Toronto notes how the Toronto District School Board is introducing educational courses intended to prepare students for careers in hospitality.
• Legal controversy surrounding the governance of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and other like cemeteries in Toronto, is ongoing. The Toronto Star reports.
• In Milton, the owner of an illegal rooming house where one tenant died has been found financially liable. CBC reports.
• The Toronto Star tells the story of soldiers returning from the First World War who attacked Chinatown and its inhabitants, here.
• NOW Toronto points to an exhibition of photos created in solidarity with Hong Kong journalists.

[PHOTO] Five photos of Spadina Avenue at night

[PHOTO] Into A&A Department Store, 251 Spadina Avenue

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Chinatown, neigthbourhoods, Port Lands, TTC maps, TTC open house

• Downtown Pets and Aquarium has reopened, just south of its old Chinatown location. blogTO reports.
• John Lorinc at Spacing writes about what Toronto should do as it moves towards an intensification of development in its neighbourhoods.
• Blayne Haggart writes at The Conversation about how the Sidewalk Labs plan for the Port Lands in Toronto really should become an election issue.
• Sean Marshall takes issue with some of the maps used by the TTC to advertise its different and varied routes.
• Robert Mackenzie at the Transit Toronto blog notes that, on Saturday the 21st, the TTC will be hosting open houses at the Leslie Barns and Greenwood Yard.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Zanzibar, Chinatown, Golden Mile, beer, ravines

• The story of Toronto nightclub Zanzibar is, indeed, a fascinating one. (Soon to go, with the rest of Yonge Street.) The Toronto Star has it.
• Will gentrification undermine Chinatown, downtown on Spadina Avenue? Global News reports.
• The Golden Mile of Scarborough, along Eglinton Avenue, is set to be radically transformed by development. blogTO reports.
• Oh, why not allow for the sale of beer at some convenience stores in TTC stops? blogTO has it.
• Alireza Nareghi looks in MacLean’s at the threat posed to the ravine environments of Toronto by invasive species, and at what is being done to save them.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Yorkville, Burning Man, Rol San, 29 Dufferin, Cherry Street

• The Toronto Star looks back at its coverage of Yorkville in the 1960s, back when it was a hangout spot for hippies.
• Toronto Life shares photos of some Toronto-originated artworks put up at Burning Man this year, here.
• blogTO notes that Rol San, a leading dim sum place in Chinatown, might be erased by a 13-story tower.
• The crowding on the 29 Dufferin bus produced by the CNE is something I notice regularly. blogTO reports.
• The Cherry Street Bridge, after a month, is finally going to be fixed. blogTO reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Manhattan, Vancouver, New Orleans, Derry

• CBC Ottawa reports on the impressive scope of the new light rail mass transit planned for the wider city of Ottawa.
• Richard Florida, writing at CityLab, notes a study tracing the second of two clusters of skyscrapers in Manhattan, in Midtown, to a late 19th century specialty in shopping.
• The Tyee notes how activist Yuly Chan helped mobilize people to protect Chinatown in Vancouver from gentrification.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the free people of colour of New Orleans, a group established under the French period but who faced increasing pressures following Americanization.
• At Open Democracy, Christophe Solioz considers what is to be done to help protect the peace in Derry, second city of Northern Ireland, in the era of Brexit.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Chinatown, Alternative Thinking, Bloor West, Black Toronto,Quayside

• Toronto’s Chinatown on Spadina Avenue is facing pressures from gentrification, including architectural ones, the Toronto Star observes.
• blogTO notes that the building housing shop Alternative Thinking is the only survivor of the old Honest Ed’s-anchored Mirvish Village.
• Urban Toronto shares revised plans for 2452 Bloor Street West, in Bloor West Village near Jane.
• Black people in Toronto tend to live in “segregated” neighbourhoods, census and other data suggest, according to this article in the Toronto Star.
• Global News notes the demand of privacy commissioner Anne Cavoukian for the data being gathered by Waterfront Toronto in the Quayside project.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Lawrence Heights, waterfront, Distillery District, Chinatown

• Christopher Hume at the Toronto Star notes how the ongoing attempt to revitalize Lawrence Heights will try to plug that neighbourhood back into the wider city of Toronto.
• Urban Toronto notes efforts by condo designers to make the Sugar Beach towers suitable for families.
• Ontario Place would be a perfect place for a swimming pier, wouldn’t it? CBC reports.
• Daily Hive notes that the Distillery District will soon house the Collège Boreal.
• blogTO notes a classic Chinatown building on Spadina Avenue that has been given a terrible makeover.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, London, Moscow, Cape Town, Tokyo and Kawaguchi

• Ici Radio-Canada notes the stiff competition that the port of Montréal is facing from its American competitors.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the solidarities created among diverse groups in London by the effects of the Blitz.
• Window on Eurasia notes the paranoia of some commentators and power figures about the emergence of ethnic neighbourhoods in Moscow, Central Asians featuring particularly.
• Guardian Cities notes that Bo Kaap, a traditionally Muslim Coloured enclave in Cape Town, is facing severe pressure from gentrification.
• The South Chima Morning Post notes the fact of the emergence of a thriving Chinatown in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi, and the controversy that this new neighbourhood has created.