city building : Featured Stories

Wexford used to be a village and though now found in the middle of Scarborough, it still is, but it might not look like you expect it to. Part of our series on neighbourhood strips, take a tour of a Wexford stripmall with Yonge Street's Bert Archer and Tanja Tiziana in words and pictures.

A Different Booklist is one independent bookstore that's flourishing by being a community centre for Toronto's Caribbean diaspora.

Interest in Toronto's urban forest is booming, and so are the businesses involved in taking care of it as new programs and companies sprout up all around the GTA.

Church Street sure was in the news this past week. Let's revisit Yonge Street's investigation of Church that ran a year ago by Bert Archer and Tanja-Tiziana. For decades the street has been the centre of the region's gay and lesbian communities, but as the rest of the city becomes more gay and gay-friendly, what does that mean for the Church Street Strip?

Beyond 3:30, an after school program introducing preteens to architecture and art, turns schools into community hubs and hopes to get a whole new generation of kids thinking about architecture as a career, especially young women.

Toronto's Bloor West Village Business Improvement Area recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. A world's first in 1970, BIAs have since spread across the city, country and around the world. The Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas' John Kiru explains how the idea started and spread.

Eduardo Castro's work with youth, mental health and addiction is all about building long-term relationships and his recent appointment to the Toronto Board of Health is his latest achievement in his civic-minded career.

As Toronto's self-employed laptop-lugging workforce grows, new coworking spaces like Camaraderie in St. Lawrence Market give independent workers a place to be around colleagues and cure their cabin fever.

After years of dodging security guards and watching their sport go into hibernation each winter, Toronto's parkour community has found a place to crash - literally - at The Monkey Vault, athlete-entrepreneur Dan Iaboni's new gym-playground hybrid.

Jo Altilia founded Literature for Life in Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood and is fostering both a love of reading and a sense of leadership and capability in young mothers.

In the first of our series looking at some of Toronto's evolving neighbourhood strips, Yonge Street's Bert Archer and Tanja-Tiziana Burdi explore the changing face of Bathurst Street. Along the way they found good buildings and a linear community of entrepreneurs that keeps the strip together.

When Azmi Haq arrived in Toronto from Pakistan he found people here a little too polite, so to get people chatting about the city and country, frankly and openly, he started Salon Camden in his home. Here, he shares his thoughts on conversation and the immigrant experience in Toronto.

She's chased pigs through manure and cooked at the Four Seasons. Now celebrity chef Lynn Crawford has returned to Toronto from New York to open her new neighbourhood place, Ruby Watchco, on Queen East.

Heather Dubbeldam left the safety of one of Canada's premier architecture firms to follow her own path and start an independent and expanding green design company.

What happens when a retailer sets up shop in an up-and-coming neighbourhood only to find the area is not quite ready for prime time? For Liloo's co-owners Sapna Alim and Amanda Steele the answer was simple: rely on a whole lot of neighbourliness.