City

He has been appointed by the Province to the board of Waterfront Toronto, a public agency created by the federal, provincial and municipal governments that aims to enhance community engagement, boost economic activity, and provide more public and inclusive spaces along Toronto’s waterfront.

“We know that a successful waterfront can become a huge asset for a city, helping to attract and retain talented people, helping to attract inward investment, both residential and commercial-industrial,” says President Gertler. “If we are able to get the waterfront right, Toronto will be that much more successful in achieving these goals.”

Beauty in the everyday: author and U of T alumna Kyo Maclear writes about birding

ullahnor — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 21:00:59 +0000

Beauty in the everyday: author and U of T alumna Kyo Maclear writes about birding

ullahnor Wed, 01/18/2017 - 16:00

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Author Kyo Maclear identifies herself as an amateur birder. She writes about birding in the city and how it helped her get through a difficult year (photo by David Wall)

Stacey Gibson

Author legacy

Stacey Gibson

Topic

Birders often speak of a “spark bird” – the one that hooks you on birding, and never lets go.

For author Kyo Maclear, a U of T alumna, there were two: the exotic magnolia warbler – the yellow-streaked songster who migrates north from South America – and the more modest house sparrow, ubiquitous on Toronto’s streetscape and in its skies.

“There’s a competitive aspect to birding: people covet the rare,” says Maclear. “But actually, finding house sparrows everywhere makes it so pleasurable because they’re always around. I’ve always liked the common.”

It is finding the beauty in the everyday and urbane that Maclear captures so well in her new book, Birds Art Life, equal parts memoir, sketchbook and meditations arising from birding in the city.

The book centres on one year in Maclear’s life: a devastating one in which she watches her father – an award-winning war reporter – lose his independence and dignity after suffering two strokes.

An only child with two young boys, Maclear struggles to care for two generations of loved ones. She needs an outlet to help her breathe and recalibrate. A new friend with a passion for birding takes her on outings, introducing her to chimney swifts in High Park, trumpet swans at a local marina, red-necked grebes at Humber Bay.

“Just walking around the city with him made me discover that every shrub and tree had a whole sub-world of birds that I’d never known about,” she says.

The passion for winged creatures does, indeed, run deep among writers: Sylvia Plath had her beekeeping, Nabokov his butterflies, Jonathan Franzen writes feverishly about his birds.

While Maclear identifies as an amateur birder, the passion she feels for them begins to fuel her work.

“For me, having a bit of a routine where you make space and hold a space for beauty or for creativity is so important. And birding gave me the oxygen and psychic spaciousness needed to get through a creative rut,” says Maclear, the author of such children’s books as Virginia Wolf.

Maclear’s love of all things literary and artistic was writ large during her days at U of T. While pursuing a BA in fine art and art history through University College (and later a master's from OISE), she wrote about art, dance and theatre and drew illustrations for the Varsity.

She and a group of friends – including now well-known activist Naomi Klein – created Free School at UC, an open-format classroom where speakers talked about everything from ecology to the anti-apartheid movement as students sat in a circle and let the conversation flow.

“That give-and-take, to me, is the DNA of learning,” says Maclear.

Today, Maclear is writing another children’s book and working on her PhD at York University.

The birding remains, and she’s grateful that it helped her see beyond Toronto’s concrete: “I didn’t notice the rhythms of the city and the whole understory that was happening,” says Maclear of her pre-birding days.

“I could see the permanent infrastructure of buildings, but I didn’t notice how much was transient – the seasonal, annual story that happens where certain birds vanish and then others appear. There’s a sense of rhythm that’s very analog and human.”

Transit expert Michael Schabas says Toronto must recognize transportation is a business, not just a service

Romi Levine — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:49:42 +0000

Transit expert Michael Schabas says Toronto must recognize transportation is a business, not just a service

Romi Levine Wed, 01/11/2017 - 12:49

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Michael Schabas says he's still optimistic about Toronto fixing its transportation woes (photo by Linus Follert/Flickr)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Transportation

City

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Subheadline

The U of T alum brings lessons from London to Toronto transit: "You need to offer a better service quality – faster and more frequent trains, all day and on weekends"

Few transit systems hold a candle to London’s sprawling network of trains. Its comprehensive web of rail lines serve everyone from well-to-do businesspeople to blue-collar workers, transporting them to every corner of the city.

Transit consultant Michael Schabas, an alumnus of U of T's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, played an important role in making the London transportation system what it is today.

He is sharing his insights from the United Kingdom in a new book, The Railway Metropolis: How planners, politicians, and developers shaped Modern London.

“The book is about how London learned to build railways that were worth having that attracted passengers, that operated efficiently, that were affordable and efficient,” says Schabas.

Schabas, who has worked on transportation projects all over the world, is currently in Toronto helping Metrolinx implement the Regional Express Rail project, a large scale transformation of the GO Rail network.

He spoke with U of T News about what Toronto can learn from London’s successes and missteps.

Why is it important to tell the story of London's transportation system?

Because railways are so expensive and take so long to plan and build that some cities never learned from their mistakes. The last railway Toronto built was the Sheppard subway – that was about 20 years ago, and before that, the Spadina RT, which came 10 years before it.

You have to learn from other cities. You can't just learn from your own city because it's probably too long ago.

London learned from Vancouver when it built the SkyTrain. I worked on the first line in the early 1980s, and London copied it with the Docklands Light Railway, an automated, elevated system that other cities around the world have also copied. But Toronto still learns only from itself so it only wants to build subways and streetcar lines.

What are Toronto's other transit shortcomings?

Toronto only thinks about the capital costs. It assumes that a railway always loses money and doesn't do analysis of business cases – so you have plans like the Scarborough subway, which is supposed to replace the Scarborough RT but obviously won't attract any more passengers because it's going to do pretty much exactly the same thing as the existing line. And, it may actually cost more to operate than the RT it will replace.

Most of the investment in London over the last 30 years has been to upgrade the surface railway. The London Overground is a new service created by knitting together and electrifying surface railways. That's the lesson Toronto is learning with the Regional Express Rail project that's now going ahead.

I'm a Toronto boy. I grew up in Toronto. I left Toronto in 1979 because I didn't think Toronto would do anything clever with railways for the next 30 years. I went to Vancouver and then London and built a lot of railways. Most of which have been successful but also a lot of mistakes were made.

My book tells the stories of the projects that have been delivered in London. If you get to the last page, you will see that I give London a score of 7/10. Not bad, but plenty of room for improvement.

What score would you give Toronto?

At the moment, we don't want to talk about it. But I would say if I write the same book on Toronto in 2040, 8/10 is still within reach.

How do we get past the roadblocks Toronto's transit system is currently facing?

Toronto needs to learn that transport is a business as well as a social service. You need to offer a better service quality – faster and more frequent trains, all day and on weekends. There's a line I use as a title of one of my chapters, which is credited to the mayor of Bogotá: the successful city isn't a place where the poor people have cars, but it's a city where the rich people use public transit.

By rich people, I don't think he meant millionaires. He meant people with jobs, people with cars, people carrying knapsacks with laptops in them.

In Toronto, those people do use public transit to go downtown, and they love it. But they don't use it to go from Scarborough to Mississauga because it's too slow, and they end up sitting in their cars on the 401.

In London, those people use public transit. Toronto is a rich city, and it needs its public transit system to also be for "rich” people.

How optimistic are you that Toronto will get to the point where it can create the transportation systems it needs?

I'm very optimistic.

Toronto is a potential railway metropolis. It's very dense, even in the suburbs. Even Scarborough and Mississauga are much denser than American suburbs. People don't realize that.

Toronto has six freeway lanes in to the downtown. Houston has 43.

Toronto has very little in the way of a freeway system. Rail is the only way to make Toronto keep growing, and luckily for Toronto, it's not too late – the corridors are there for the RER, and Toronto never had the problems American cities had that made “rich” people stop using transit.

Carding controversy: U of T faculty members speak out

Romi Levine — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 15:41:28 +0000

Carding controversy: U of T faculty members speak out

Romi Levine Wed, 12/07/2016 - 10:41

Cutline

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders speaks with media at a carding consultation meeting at the Toronto Reference Library (Cole Burston/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

A group of leading Torontonians is calling for carding to be abolished and all data gathered through the practice to be destroyed.

The call comes in an open letter issued after the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) announced a new carding policy Nov. 17. That policy says police can still stop, question and document people – but not for being part of a racialized group.

The letter was authored by Rinaldo Walcott, an associate professor at the ��Ƶ’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and director of the Faculty of Arts & Science's Women and Gender Studies Institute, and author Dionne Brand, former poet laureate for Toronto.

“The decision by the TPSB represents a significant impact on the rights of Black, Indigenous, and Brown people, as well as homeless people and other marginalized people in our Toronto community,” the letter says.

It has been signed by 53 community members, from artists to academics – including U of T faculty members Alissa Trotz and Beverly Bain.

Those opposed to carding say the practice disproportionately targets young Black men and racialized groups.

“Statistics tell us that Black men have been stopped at least four times in their lifetime repetitively, which is unknown for white men or any other category of racialized men,” says Bain.

A lecturer in women and gender studies at U of T Mississauga, Bain has been an anti-racism activist for over 30 years.

Last year, a group of influential Ontarians including U of T President Meric Gertler banded together to urge Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders to reform carding practices.

“It just seemed to be a practice that could not be justified,” President Gertler told The Globe and Mail earlier this year.

Toronto’s new carding policy states that police cannot approach anyone they deem suspicious because of race, but some police will still have access to data from previous incidents.

“We wanted to send an open message to young Black people that we are with them, that we know they are our cousins or nieces or younger brothers or sisters, and so on,” says Walcott.

“But most importantly, we felt that it was important that other members of the Toronto community know that Black people are not looking away. That for us, this is not business as usual, that the effects of carding and the ongoing debate about its legitimacy has been extremely difficult for Black people.”

Bain says it’s important to put pressure on the police, the city and the province.

“It was really critical for me to sign this letter because what we know is that carding is a violation of the person, of young Black men's right to be able to walk the streets safely without being profiled.”

U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work is also joining the conversation around carding. It’s sponsoring an event at OISE in partnership with the Urban Alliance on Race Relations that brings together legal experts and human rights advocates to discuss the current state of carding and how it affects communities in Toronto.

“Carding and racial profiling are discriminatory acts that reflect structural inequalities that impact the health, mental health and well-being of marginalized populations,” says Reshma Dhrodia, the student life, outreach & equity adviser at Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

“The faculty believes that supporting this event and amplifying the voices of those on the panel will help illuminate further the role of social workers doing direct work and policy work with the persons and communities that experience this kind of discrimination.”

Mayor Tory’s Gardiner, DVP toll good for Toronto, says U of T’s Enid Slack

Romi Levine — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 19:44:25 +0000

Mayor Tory’s Gardiner, DVP toll good for Toronto, says U of T’s Enid Slack

Romi Levine Thu, 11/24/2016 - 14:44

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Traffic snarls on the Don Valley Parkway test drivers' patience (photo by Jess via Flickr)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Toronto Mayor John Tory announced plans to implement a $2 road toll for the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway today, hoping to generate much-needed income for the city.

The highways carry thousands of commuters in and out of the city each day, but Tory said the tolls would raise $200 million every year – funds that could then be used for transit costs and expansion projects. With $33 billion in unfunded capital projects, the city is in need of a new source of revenue, he said.

Tory also proposed a number of cost-cutting measures such as a hotel tax and a 2.6-per-cent reduction in the operating budget of city divisions like police and libraries.

U of T's Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance (IMFG), which is part of the Munk School of Global Affairs, released a paper this week outlining different taxing options for cities like Toronto in order to generate revenue.

U of T News spoke with Enid Slack, IMFG director and co-author of the report about Tory’s toll proposal and alternative revenue sources.

Why does Toronto need more sources of revenue?

What we've talked about in our paper is really the demands on municipal expenditures and how they've changed over the last 30 years – so for things like roads and transit, investing in infrastructure that's deteriorating, investing in new infrastructure. Our cities over the last 30 years are more interested in being more internationally competitive and that means not only providing water, sewer, roads and the traditional services but also making our cities very livable so we can attract young, skilled workers. Frankly, they can go anywhere, but we want them to come here.

The list goes on and on for the expenditure side of the budget, but when we get to the revenue side and look over the last 30 years, nothing much has changed. Cities in Canada have property taxes, user fees and some provincial and federal transfers so the time has come to think about what other sources of revenue are appropriate for cities.

When we looked at cities around the world – they all have other sources of revenue. They are not reliant on property taxes as their only source of revenue.

This is not as bold as you might think. Other cities are doing this, and other cities have tolls on their major roads.

Other than generating income, what are the benefits to introducing road tolls?

The obvious benefit is to reduce congestion so that fewer people will get in their cars – maybe they'll carpool or maybe they'll take transit. It has a lot of time benefits for people and environmental benefits – less pollution, fewer health care costs as a result, fewer accidents, less policing costs. There are a whole lot of benefits over and above just the revenue.

The point with tolls is that the users of the road are paying for it – whether they live in Toronto or somewhere else. And if the money is put into improving the roads or into transit, everybody benefits as well.

Tory also proposed a hotel tax during today’s announcement – an initiative included in the IMFG paper – what can this kind of levy provide for the city?

Hotel tax has advantages because it's a tax on visitors. When visitors come to the city, they use services. They walk on the streets. They use parks and policing services, and they don't pay any taxes in Toronto. A hotel tax is a way to get tourists to pay for some of the services they use when they're in the city. Other cities in Canada have hotel taxes – Vancouver, other B.C. municipalities, Montreal, Charlottetown. When you look around the world, many cities have hotel taxes.

How can Torontonians be convinced that increased taxes or taxes on more services will benefit them in the long-run?

We shouldn't start the conversation with taxes. We should start the conversation with what's our vision for cities in Canada. What do we want to see? People know what they want. They want good services. They want good transit. They want roads that aren't congested. They want parks. They want libraries. And we have to pay for them. If they have some understanding that those taxes are paying for these services, that they are getting something for their taxes, I think they're less unwilling to pay taxes.

Some politicians will also need convincing that taxes are a good idea. How can that be done?

If we want a great city, we all have to understand – citizens and politicians – that we will have to pay for it. If we don't, our cities will crumble. Infrastructure will deteriorate. The services won't be very good, and people won't be very happy when that happens.

U of T helps launch an army of tree lovers

lavende4 — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 19:13:38 +0000

U of T helps launch an army of tree lovers

lavende4 Mon, 10/24/2016 - 15:13

Cutline

Tree-lined Cabbagetown street (photo by Jay Woodworth via Flickr)

Scott Anderson

Author legacy

Scott Anderson

Topic

Subheadline

The Faculty of Forestry is teaching Torontonians how to care for one of the city’s most valuable resources – its trees

David Grant is passionate about Toronto’s trees. He’s particularly fond of the majestic silver maple that stood outside his Cabbagetown home. But he had never thought much about how to care for it – until three years ago when the ice storm hit.

Surveying the downed branches in his own yard and along his street, Grant wondered about the millions of other trees across Toronto. Did his fellow homeowners know how to care for them in the wake of such a damaging event?

Soon after, Grant met Sandy Smith, a professor in the Faculty of Forestry, who had an interesting idea: students from Smith’s graduate class in urban forest conservation would work with Grant and other Cabbagetown residents to devise a long-term plan for the care of their community’s trees. Residents themselves could then follow the preservation plan.

“It was like a dream come true,” says Grant.

Now, he is looking to replicate the success of Cabbagetown Releaf – the non-profit association he founded to carry out the plan – in other communities. And, once again, he has enlisted Smith’s help.

Early in October, Smith and a colleague, Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, spent the day training about 25 Torontonians in the basics of forest management at an event organized by Cabbagetown Releaf. The hope is that these newly trained “citizen foresters” will fan out across the city and set up urban forestry groups in their own communities.

“This is David’s vision to educate and build awareness, so the average person knows about the health of trees,” says Smith. “Governments can’t afford all the work that needs to be done.”

Smith likens “citizen foresters” to “citizen scientists,” a movement that has gained steam in recent years to involve members of the public in science projects, ranging from counting butterflies to tracking bird migration. A citizen scientist group in Toronto monitors the health of the Rouge River in Scarborough. Citizen foresters would do something similar for the city’s trees.

The effort aims to protect a valuable investment. A 2014 report by the TD Bank Group estimates that Toronto’s 10 million trees are worth about $700 each, or $7 billion in total. According to the report, the urban forest provides Toronto residents with more than $80 million worth of environmental benefits and cost savings each year, or about $125 per household.

These benefits include improved air quality, better storm water management, reduced flooding, and cooler homes and businesses. Trees also absorb carbon dioxide, which helps to slow climate warming. The study didn’t put a dollar value on less tangible benefits, such as the enjoyment people get from parks, but Grant sees these as no less important.

“Nature helps people de-stress,” he says

Learn more about Smith's urban forestry efforts

Looking ahead, Grant has no shortage of ideas about how to expand the program. He wants to encourage community members to grow trees from seeds and then have an annual seedling giveaway. He thinks there’s good potential for working with schools to have students grow seedlings and share these with neighbourhoods that need more trees.

He hopes that one day Toronto might be home to a small army of citizen foresters tending to the urban canopy.

“We need to protect what we have,” says Grant, “and to start doing things for future generations.”

Learn more about the Citizen Foresters

(This story originally ran in U of T Magazine)

U of T Art Museum presents history of Toronto told through its artists

Romi Levine — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 13:07:31 +0000

U of T Art Museum presents history of Toronto told through its artists

Romi Levine Fri, 09/30/2016 - 09:07

Cutline

All photos by Romi Levine

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Subheadline

Form Follows Fiction covers 50 years of art by local artists, curated by Luis Jacob

Toronto’s art scene is as diverse and fragmented as the city itself.

You’ll find the work of local artists scattered across the city in small galleries and large institutions alike – all offering a different perspective of the place they call home.

Rarely, however, are these works brought together under one roof. But that’s what artist, U of T alumnus and visiting professor, Luis Jacob, has set out to do with the Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto exhibition at U of T’s Art Museum.

The exhibition, curated by Jacob, explores the way Toronto artists have visualized the city over the past 50 years through the themes that connect them.

Form Follows Fiction runs from now until December 10.

Find out more about the exhibition here

U of T News spoke with Jacob about the exhibit and why it’s important to tell Toronto’s story through art.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

How did Form Follows Fiction come about?

The exhibition is a product of a long conversation of Barbara Fisher, the director of the Art Museum. She’s also a very important curator in the city. For many, many years we’ve had this ongoing conversation about Toronto and the particular forms of culture that have been developing here. Something I’ve felt for a long time is that there’s obviously a great deal of artistic activity in Toronto – lots of artists, lots of exhibitions, lots of galleries. So there’s a sense of vitality that’s a discernible quality of art in Toronto. But something I think we don’t do so well is connect the dots between artists of one moment and another moment, generations of artists, even different aesthetic practices. In part, the exhibition is trying to connect the dots.

What can we expect at the exhibition?

The premise of the exhibition is that certain themes connect works that might at first appearance look quite different from each other. There are many threads in an exhibition like this but I’m trying to look at how these themes have something to say about this place we call Toronto.

One of the interesting themes that is explored in the exhibition is the theme of the vacant lot. The idea of the vacant lot as a kind of metaphor or allegory or figure that artists adopt in order to say something about Toronto as a specific place.

We have this historical document called a Toronto purchase. It documents the agreement conducted between the Mississaugas of New Credit first nation and the British crown about the terrain we now call Toronto. Something I find fascinating is that the British surveyor who made the document rendered the land as a kind of blank page. The drawing is quite striking. It was made at the end of the 18th century and yet it also looks like a work of minimalist art or conceptual art from the 1970s.

Today’s Toronto is definitely marked by the question of real estate, the value of real estate, the process of gentrification and so I think this idea of treating what exists as something waiting to be exploited is something that has a prevalence today which one can trace its roots to the colonial founding of the city as a kind of vacant lot. So this 18th century idea of Toronto of the land as a vacant lot waiting to be exploited does influence our contemporary relationship to the environment. Gentrification is simply another version of that kind of an impulse.

Why is it important to present work from Toronto artists in one place?

To bring together works from different generations shows us the things that change over time and the things that remain the same. What are the themes, the ideas, the imagery and the allegories that remain the same although obviously the city itself changes over time, artistic practice changes over time.

The city right now is undergoing very rapid change and that provides a good opportunity to reflect on what artist have been telling us about this place we call Toronto.

Toronto’s art scene tends to take place in smaller galleries across the city rather than in large art institutions like in New York City. Do you think it’s an advantage that Toronto’s art scene is so decentralized?

That’s a great observation that there’s something about the mechanics in Toronto that emphasize decentralization in contrast to other cities like New York that operate very much in a kind of centralization and subsequent hierarchy. There’s something to the mechanics of culture here in Toronto that is suspicious of hierarchy and hierarchy that’s produced by centralization. That’s another theme the exhibition does explore.

There’s one room where there’s a juxtaposition of paintings. There’s a painting by Lawren Harris called “Pyramid” which obviously relates to the idea of hierarchy and centralized power with another Group of Seven artist (Arthur) Lismer who made a painting called “Undergrowth” which is looking down rather than up, looking at weeds and the great proliferation of life that happens right on the ground rather than on the rarefied pinnacle.

That juxtaposition talks about decentralization or interest among artists in Toronto to not assume the centralized, hierarchal model is the most desirable model to adopt.

You moved to Canada from Peru when you were a child. Do you think that’s influenced your perspective of Toronto?

In some way my experience as an immigrant is very typical of Toronto in that Toronto is largely made up of immigrants. We talk about the multiculturalism of the city. I think that’s part of the DNA of the city by now.

At the same time, even those of us who are born in the city, unless we are of Indigenous descent, we are also immigrants to the city even having been born here in the sense that we are acculturated with settler patterns of inhabitation. How all of us negotiate the colonial reality of this place we call Toronto, the memories and histories that are told and narrated and those that are silenced or overlooked, how we negotiate these things is part of what we call the culture of this place.

U of T Forestry expert warns of dry summer's effect on trees this year

ullahnor — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 20:21:08 +0000

U of T Forestry expert warns of dry summer's effect on trees this year ullahnor Thu, 09/01/2016 - 16:21

Cutline

With a dry summer, leaves have begun yellowing and browning sooner (Photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Author legacy

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Subheadline

“Water your trees”: Sandy Smith tells Toronto homeowners

Water your trees.

That's the message that University of Toronto Forestry professor Sandy Smith wants Toronto homeowners to heed this year, after a hot dry summer. Trees are in such bad shape that Smith thinks the city of Toronto needs to put out an alert advising residents to water their trees and cautioning them that the dry spell can lead to dying branches falling off, as happened when a large branch fell in Trinity Bellwoods Park in June, killing a man below.

U of T News spoke to Smith about what is taking place both above and below ground and how it’s manifesting itself into earlier than normal yellowing and browning leaves.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How is the drought affecting trees?

These hot dry summers have huge impact on trees. It’s not as catastrophic as an ice storm, but it’s basically the same over time. It’s a slow burn, not a fast burn. And drought can affect trees up to five even ten years later.

The trees where the owner has watered or if there’s irrigation, those trees are doing much better. But the other trees are really struggling. They’re starting to shut down. When it’s really dry, the trees close the pores of stomata in their leaves because they can’t lose water. The leaves start to shut down because there’s no energy being stored there. So you start to see die back and no nutrients being shunted down to the roots. The roots start dying back because they’re not getting water. The more peripheral the roots, those that are way out there, they start to die back, which produces a domino effect back up to the top of the tree. So next year you’ll see dead branches where the tree shut down because it’s lost part of its roots.

Without water, the tree is forced to shrink back on top and bottom. The roots die off. The branches die off. They stop sending sap there. The living parts die. So what you’re left with, you’ll see trees with just branches with nothing on them. Next year, you will see more dead branches than you would see in a normal year.

You can’t see below ground, but it’s happening below ground as well. If you look at the roots, you’d see the same thing.

What are the signs that we can see?

I think you can see it through wilting and yellowing of the leaves and browning. You’ll start to see leaf burn, so the edges of the leaves and the tips of the leaves start to turn yellow and then brown-red. Yellow means their dying. Brown-red means they’re dead because of all of the chlorophyll being pulled out or being broken down. The longer the drought carries on, the complete leaf dies, not just the edges and tips. Then, the whole branch dies. So this summer you can see the yellow browning.

What trees are most affected?

The horse chestnuts are going through it. The oaks don’t look so good. When you have a couple of years of really wet moist conditions and all of a sudden a dry summer, this is really hard for trees.

Horse chestnut is a European tree that was planted a lot in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Those are larger trees that are always susceptible to hot and dry conditions. They’re the ones that you see the first signs. The others that are not doing well are ash. In a summer like this, they’re doubling their rate of mortality. Next summer you’ll see even more dead ash. Most of the ash will be dead and almost dead because it was a warm winter and the Emerald ash borer did really well feeding on them all winter, longer than it should have. And now it’s a hot dry summer, which means the trees can’t defend themselves. They don’t have enough sap to pull up and drown these beetles. Next year the ash will be in particularly bad shape with lots of dead branches, Bad shape meaning dying and dead with dead braches and maybe whole trees standing dead.

So what can we do?

The one thing you can do is water your tree. In a summer like this, it’s almost essential. Wherever prossible, the city needs to increase its watering program. The city should also be sending out an alert, raising awareness for everyone. The city should put alerts out for people with trees on their property that drought creates stress on their trees, and they need to look at their trees, not just assume they’re always going to stand there like the hydro pole. They are living things. They are living entities that need water.

Next year, city parks and street trees should be checked. The city needs to increase its vigilance, surveillance of this, to see what the impact of the drought was. After a hot dry summer you should be alerted to potential risks out there like dead branches and trees dropping branches on people.

Parks, planning and public spaces: Toronto can learn lessons from Jerusalem say U of T students

katie.fong — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 14:19:41 +0000

Parks, planning and public spaces: Toronto can learn lessons from Jerusalem say U of T students katie.fong Tue, 06/07/2016 - 10:19

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A pirate-themed public park in Jerusalem. The city actively involves children in park design. (Andrew Althouse photo)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

“Jerusalem is a city of neighborhoods.”

“Only deputy mayors are paid in Jerusalem. What is the impact of city councillors being unpaid? Who can afford the position?”

“How to design public space - who is using it? Fence or no fence?”

“Unique street art creates aesthetically pleasing urban environments. Toronto, take note!”

Those were just some of the social media posts from Shauna Brail and nine U of T students during a recent trip to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. (Scroll to the bottom of this story for more tweets about the trip.)

Brail, an associate professor (teaching stream) in urban studies and U of T’s presidential adviser on urban engagement, led the undergraduate and graduate students – mostly from departments in the Faculty of Arts and Science – through different neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, studying urban regeneration, inclusive public spaces and place-making. The six-day trip, hosted by Hebrew University’s Urban Clinic, was funded mostly through the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University endowment fund. The students did not receive academic credit for the trip.

Brail said she has been to Jerusalem many times, but learned a lot by seeing the city through the eyes of the U of T students. “They were just terribly insightful about challenges and issues. I was impressed with their maturity but also with their ability to understand.”

Back row: Michelle Kearns, Nathan Stuart, Andrew Althouse, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Tamir Nir, Shauna Brail, Jonathan Chow, Mark Fox Front row: Ella Gil (Hebrew University Urban Clinic), Izabela Molendowski, Tiferet Nashman, Jessie Ji Huang, Eliza Eaton

Michelle Kearns was one of those students. A master’s student in planning, Kearns said she was struck by how well organized and clean Jerusalem was. “Bike lanes are always protected; pedestrians are completely separated from traffic, the LRT system was easy to use, and traffic lights are specific – with separate signals for pedestrians, cyclists and traffic.”

Despite the many differences between the two cities, Toronto can learn from Jerusalem, Kearns said. “I would like to see Toronto take more risks with planning for transportation.” She gave Jaffa Road, one of Jerusalem’s major streets as an example.

“A few years ago, the entire street was redeveloped and turned into an LRT-only street, with an integrated pedestrian network. The curb separating traffic and pedestrians was levelled and the street turned into an open, flat, public space with the occasional bike and LRT running through. The planner we met spoke of huge opposition to the plan, since all parking and private cars were removed from the street. However, after the transit-only street was built, it turned into a huge success with businesses experiencing improved sales and many more people on the street.”

Eliza Eaton, an urban studies undergraduate student, agreed that Toronto can learn some lessons from Jerusalem. In particular, she said, Jerusalem is good at planning for local residents. “We saw a lot of neighbourhoods and public spaces that really took into consideration the people who live there as opposed to just putting in something for the general population. The planners really considered the local populations in the neighbourhood.”

Jerusalem is also better than Toronto in creating spaces for children, Eaton said. In Jerusalem, children are actually involved in planning playgrounds, she noted. “Kids are the real experts of public space.”

But Jerusalem can learn from Toronto’s experience in turn, Brail said. “We are definitely ahead of Israel in the way we treat our public housing,” Brail said. While in Jerusalem, she gave a public lecture about Toronto’s success in transforming public housing in Toronto’s Regent Park. “In Jerusalem, they are also struggling with an aging , declining stock of public housing. When public housing sites are redeveloped, residents are forced to either pay higher rents or find alternate housing in another location. Some of them were a little unbelieving that public housing residents were guaranteed equivalent housing at the same rental rate when Regent Park was redeveloped.”

Both Eaton and Kearns said they were glad they went on the trip. “I would go back in a heartbeat,” Kearns said. “I still have so much to learn in Jerusalem. It's a place of an incredibly complicated history and tension and I just barely scratched the surface during my time there.”

Scarborough students need and deserve better transit, municipal expert says

sgupta — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 08:58:37 +0000

Scarborough students need and deserve better transit, municipal expert says sgupta Mon, 02/08/2016 - 03:58

Cutline

“Students are commuting extremely long distances and we know that their academic experience is shaped by their ability to reach campus,” Siemiatycki says (photo by Jason Krygier-Baum)

Alan Christie

Author legacy

Alan Christie

Topic

City & Culture

Features

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Siemiatycki: proposed stop at UTSC “has the potential to really change the way the campus functions”

The new transit plan that includes a stop at the ��Ƶ Scarborough will be a major “boon for future students” Associate Professor Matti Siemiatycki says.

The long commutes today’s students must endure to get to school negatively affect their academic experience, the expert in municipal infrastructure says.

Siemiatycki, who teaches in the department of geography and planning, helped design an unprecedented survey of the transit needs of Toronto university students. The results will be released in a few weeks.

City

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Read more at The Varsity

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Transit expert Michael Schabas says Toronto must recognize transportation is a business, not just a service

Carding controversy: U of T faculty members speak out

Mayor Tory’s Gardiner, DVP toll good for Toronto, says U of T’s Enid Slack

U of T helps launch an army of tree lovers

Learn more about Smith's urban forestry efforts

Learn more about the Citizen Foresters

U of T Art Museum presents history of Toronto told through its artists

Find out more about the exhibition here

U of T Forestry expert warns of dry summer's effect on trees this year

Parks, planning and public spaces: Toronto can learn lessons from Jerusalem say U of T students

Scarborough students need and deserve better transit, municipal expert says

Read more about the StudentMoveTO survey