[URBAN NOTE] Nine Toronto links

• Metrolinx using paid influencers to promote the Ontario Line is certainly a choice. The Toronto Star reports.
• Union Station retiring an old mechanical system 90 years old used to control TTC vehicles is a landmark event. The Metrolinx blog reports.
• Jamie Bradburn looks at the birth of the Gardiner Expressway, here.
• Alok Mukherjee at Spacing questions why police in Toronto have stopped enforcing traffic regulations.
• Protesters charged with blocking the Bloor Viaduct during the Extinction Rebellion have had the charges dropped. Global News reports.
• Sean Marshall shared his account of his address to the Toronto Police Services board, here.
• Jamie Bradburn looks at the history behind the mid-20th century expansion of Church Street.
• NOW Toronto notes that workers at the Broadview Hotel have become unionized.
• Samantha Lui writes at NOW Toronto against the false negative stereotypes applied by so many–even briefly by Google–to Scarborough.
• CBC notes that a lawsuit surrounding benefits fraud by TTC employees has been settled, expensively.

[PHOTO] Sixteen photos from a stroll west of Lake Ontario from Dufferin Street to Palace Pier

Walking west one evening last week along the Lake Ontario shoreline, from the Dufferin Loop all the way to the Palace Pier on just the far side of the Humber River, was enjoyable. It was a glorious summer night.

[VIDEO] Humber River flowing, north of the Humber Bay Arch Bridge

[PHOTO] Sixteen photos of the Pillars Picnic (#pillarspicnic, #keepthepillarsTO)

I got late Sunday night to the Pillars Picnic, delayed by an unexpected partial shutdown of the Yonge subway line and by a necessary stop at the Black Eagle for burger and friends. The Pillars Picnic had been advertised in a NOW Toronto article, as a musical bidding farewell to the pillars in a patch of waste ground at Queens Quay and York Street in Harbourfront. The plans of the city of Toronto to build a Claude Cormier-designed park here for this burgeoning condo neighbourhood meant that these pillars, legacies of a York Street on-ramp for the Gardiner, were to go. I personally like the pillars–they evoke for me, in miniature, the modernist Stonehenge Confederation Bridge assembly yard in Amherst Point on Prince Edward Island–and supported the campaign to keep them. That campaign failed, sadly, but at least there was the concert.

(The artists performing when I arrived were Ivy Mairi backed by Matthew Bailey. They put on an excellent set.)

[PHOTO] Skyline looking east, Dufferin Loop

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Neon Museum, renovictions, Y&E, ROM, Room With A View

• Jamie Bradburn was decidedly unimpressed by the Neon Museum at Junction House.
• Renovictions are a real concern for many renters in Toronto, already living on the edges of their budgets. CBC reports.
• Urban Toronto notes an interesting consolidation of two development plans into one at Yonge and Eglinton, here.
• blogTO notes how the Royal Ontario Museum is now going to offer free admission every third Monday of the month.
• Natalia Manzocco writes at NOW Toronto about how the Room With A View pop-up restaurant underneath the Gardiner Expressway ended up triggering city concerns over housing.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: real estate, GO Transit, new homes, Gardiner Expressway

• blogTO shares a new map depicting prices for new homes at different stations on the GO Transit network, here.
• This real-estate ad offering an actively used office as someone’s home for a mere $C 1695 a month is ridiculous on so many levels. The Toronto Star reports.
• Transit Toronto notes that GO Transit has dropped fares on trips shorter than 10 kilometres while raising them for longer trips.
• 98% of the material used in these modern houses worth $C 1.7 million is made of recycled materials. The Toronto Star reports.
• The irony of a posh pop-up restaurant being created underneath the Gardiner Expressway while, just a bit to the east, homeless people living under the highway were driven from their shelter, is shocking. CBC reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: poverty, real estate, architecture, neighbourhoods

• After a fire last night, the homeless encampments underneath the Gardiner Expressway have been cleared. Global News reports.
• blogTO reports on a terribly depressing unit offered for rent in East York at $C 1250.
• blogTO notes that a new pedestrian sky bridge is scheduled to be built in Exhibition Place.
• Urban Toronto notes that the steel skeleton has been put in place for the new extension to Robarts Library.
• blogTO reports on moves to place Ontario Place under heritage protection, sparing it redevelopment.
• George Popper writes at Spacing against new city development protocols for Toronto neighbourhoods.
• The state of 650 Parliament Street, now slated to be reopened in August of this year, is appalling. The Toronto Star reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: winter, Bruce McArthur, homelessness, real estate, TTC

• Yesterday saw record-breaking snowfall in Toronto, with more than 25 centimetres of snow, and today saw cold. CityNews reports</u.
• That Bruce McArthur has pled guilty to the eight charges of first-degree murder against him, avoiding a trial, is a minor blessing. CBC reports.
• The homeless people living under the Gardiner are apparently not facing imminent risk of eviction from their encampment. The Toronto Star reports.
• blogTO shares this map showing home and condo prices near each of the stops of the TTC.
• Ricardo Tranjan at NOW Toronto makes a point that, especially after the costly privatization of Highway 407, any transformation of the TTC must need to be approved by the people of Toronto.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Tornoto links: homelessness, cohabiting, TTC, fashion, Brooke Lynn Hytes

• Paul Salvatori writes at NOW Toronto about the homeless encampments beneath the Gardiner, surely a call for some meaningful action at the municipal level.
• VICE reports on how six young Torontonians dealt with the housing shortage in Toronto by buying a home together, cohabiting.
• blogTO takes a look at the ease of fare evasion on the TTC.
• Jamie Bradburn takes a look at some vintage fashion ads from Toronto in the 1980s.
• Etobicoke-born Brooke Lynn Hytes has become the first Canadian to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race, in Season 11, CP24 reports.