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Fall 2024

A changing Chinatown

What do shifting demographics mean for the neighbourhood's long-term identity?

Michael Koy

In Toronto’s Chinatown, an average morning goes on as usual, with longtime business owners setting up shop and elderly residents chatting loudly in local bakeries. But underneath the mundanity lies change. When onlookers enter the Chinatown landmark, the famous Dragon City Mall, the sight of its empty shops and corridors with the occasional elderly passersby […] More »
Fall 2024

No place like home

How land trusts build community

Dominique Russell

In 2021, the Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT) did an astonishing thing. After a protracted renoviction battle over the Toronto neighbourhood’s iconic Mona Lisa building, the KMCLT bought it from the would-be evictors. The rumoured plan to turn it into a cannabis hotel was foiled and the tenants of the 12 residential and five […] More »
January-February 2020

Memories on the margins

A relationship ends against the backdrop of a changing city

JP Larocque

After the break-up, I walked Yonge St. at night. I didn’t understand this compulsion, but the circuit remained the same: a few drinks at a village bar and I would wander the corridor between Bloor and Dundas, peering into closed stores or sleepy bars, stopping in at a late-night bookshop to peruse the dusty shelves […] More »
September-October 2016

Canadians need to stop improving gentrifying neighbourhoods

It's our opportunity to put the brakes on run-away real estate prices

John Lorinc@johnlorinc

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »