Downtown Eastside - Old Town - Corktown : Featured Stories

We may not have our own Japantown, but the GTA has more than 700 Japanese restaurants in the region. Now, with eastern North America's first sake brewery, Toronto may become a leader in a new, hungrier breed of Japanese culture. 

The Distillery District is one of the city's historical gems and just one of many areas gearing up for Doors Open Toronto. We explore what makes its history so rich while gliding around the neighbourhood on Segways. 

Toronto's most holy burger joint is set to be the newest addition to what could be considered Toronto's burger corner, Queen and Spadina. Despite competition, this burger empire continues to grow. Its secret: traditional burgers, fresh ingredients, and a devout following.

Has grandmother gotten out of bed at her usual time? Is she finding it harder and harder to reach the light switch? Good Robot's Internet-based household robotics could make life easier for seniors—and their caregivers. 

The abundance of private development projects in the core has captured our imagination. But it’s the public spaces—where the big buildings aren't—that create the urban fabric that makes a city great. Yonge Street's Development Editor Bert Archer picks his five favourite public spaces.

With this year's focus on music, Canadian Stage's annual Festival of Ideas and Creation offered a glimpse of how sound, words and performances can pack a punch when combined with artistry. Yonge Street's managing photographer Tanja-Tiziana Burdi caught some of the magic on and off stage.

As part of the revitalization of Regent Park, the Centre for Social Innovation is creating a new hub to help emerging entrepreneurs, community-builders and place-makers realize their dreams. Unlike CSI's first two locations, the new space will not be "community agnostic."

Lara Bazant's ethical jewelry business is the perfect combination of intricate design, fair trade materials and chemical-free processes. With a varied background and extensive travel, she also chose Toronto to set up her growing business.

In May of each year canoeists take to the Don River and paddle 10km through Toronto's urban wilderness from Don Mills to the Keating Channel. Yonge Street's videographer Darren Alexander floated along for the ride, and so can you.

A chic Adelaide Street salon cuts its electricity bill by half, eliminated chemicals and reuses hair clippings, all without sacrificing any fabulousness and encourages other salons to do the same through the burgeoning sustainable salon movement.

Everything old is new again at Klaus on King Street East; from the business model to the designs, which blend international names with Toronto-made classics manufactured by Nienkamper, the family name that has become synonymous with timeless quality. They'll be part of the Interior Design Show opening on Thursday.

Diaspora Dialogues is creating a Toronto (& Canadian) literary scene that reflects one of the world's most diverse cities, helping its writers tell new stories that allow us understand ourselves better. At the same time, the program is feeding new kinds of work into the ever-growing body of Canadian Literature.

Toronto developers like Streetcar and BSaR are building residential buildings across the city that fill in the gaps. They aren't super-tall towers, and they aren't single family homes -- but they are the buildings that will tie this city together.

Green is the new bling: while building Regent Park's first multi-use residential building, part of a massive renewal and rebuild of the neighbourhood, The Daniels Corporation overturned conventional assumptions about what would sell in Toronto's condo market.

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.