City Building : Featured Stories

With politicians trying to find every dollar of savings, high-tech research methods can help our urban forest survive and thrive. Ryerson University's Andrew Millward's tools of choice: maps.

In one of an occasional series of articles looking at how other North American cities wrestle with their challenges, Minneapolis-based writer Michelle Bruch examines how public input helps the bottom line as much as it helps build places where people want to be.  

Join us on Thu., Oct. 27 for the second in our Speakers Series line-up. This time, we're focusing on building community leadership and a sense of belonging in our city. The Yonge Street Speaker Series is sponsored by the Toronto Community Foundation and Waterfront Toronto.

Con mucho gusto! Yonge Street's new managing editor introduces himself with a story about how a trip south taught him a lesson about his own city.

The inaugural event in the Yonge Street Speakers Series, taking place on Sep. 22, will examine how Toronto's public spaces shape our lives in ways both dramatic and subtle. The series is sponsored by the Toronto Community Foundation and Waterfront Toronto.

The Riverdale Hub is a social innovation co-working space with a difference: its mission is to empower minority communities. Along the way, a renovation and a bold new presence on Gerrard Street in Toronto's Little India neighbourhood may help speed area's revitalization efforts and test a new funding model for non-profits at the same time.

Sketch creates art-making opportunities for young people who are street-involved and homeless, giving them new career choices. Unexpectedly, there's also a green thumb element to their brand of creativity. Take a peek at our video and watch what's going on.

When people think of affordable housing, they don't always think of accessible housing, even though experts say the disabled make up huge swaths of low-income people. In Ontario, the numbers are jolting. Almost two million Ontarians are disabled. People like Danielle Svec are negotiating the slowly-improving system.

By bringing together many of the city's strengths under one roof, Toronto's Fire & Emergency Training Institute (FESTI) has become a melting pot for fire fighters around the world.

Launched in January 2010, the Ontario Social Assistance Review Committee is taking a penetrating look at the province's support structures, and the implications for Toronto are big, says former United Way CEO, Frances Lankin.

Poverty and marginalization are persistent forces in the lives of Toronto's new immigrants. Carol Wilding and the Toronto Board of Trade put forward a series of strong recommendations in the 2010 local election. Where's the progress? And what still needs to be done?

Toronto's Imperial Oil Building on St. Clair is being converted into The Imperial Plaza, a residential condo project that is preserving much of the mid-century design and art elements of this iconic building. Read about what's coming and see Yonge Street photographer Tanja-Tiziana's slideshow of some of the details that are being preserved, and the last vestiges of its office days.

For the first three years of its existence, the Black Daddies Club was a pilot project that aimed to build community and family in Malvern. Now, the group is moving into a new phase, with new programming, new research models, and a new neighbourhood at Jane and Finch.