In The News

Tom Ryaboi must not be afraid of heights. 

"It's in my blood. When I was a child one day, my dad came home from work and found me sitting on top of the fridge. They had no idea how I had got there, but obviously I just liked climbing things," explains the thrill-seeking photographer.

 

The Toronto-based photographer has caught the attention of the Daily Mail and with one glance at the images it's easy to see why. Ryaboi is part of a photography movement known as rooftopping, which involves, as the Daily Mail describes it, "daredevils climbing to the top of city skyscrapers, hanging off the edge and taking pictures of the spectacular views around them." 

 

Ryaboi's photos feature other members of the rooftopping movement dangling their feet off the edges of some of the city's tallest buildings and standing on the ledges while peering over the vast Toronto skyline. These photos are not for those faint of heart—nor are they for those with a fear of heights. The images capture the height well, encapsulating the daredevils in time, thousands of feet in the air.

 

To reach such great heights involves a little creativity. Ryaboi tells the Daily Mail that he often dresses the part, describing himself as a businessman or construction worker in order to get up to the tops of the buildings. 

 

"I've been on the top three tallest buildings in Toronto. But I often tell people it's not really the height the matters," he says. "The coolest views are often from lower buildings nestled in between the tall ones."

 

Read the full story and view the gallery here.  

Original source: Daily Mail

Toronto-based hospitality chain Four Seasons is set to operate four hotel properties in India by 2018, according to an article that ran in the Economic Times. 

 

"We have been looking at India for a long time. Now we have one under construction property at Bangalore, one in Delhi-NCR and the third one is in planning and development stage in Goa. So, we now are looking at four tangible projects in India," says Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Asia Pacific Hotel Operation President Chris Hart in the article.

 

The Mumbai property has been in operation since 2008. Bangalore is the next one, set to open in 2015. 

 

Four Seasons will be working with North India realty firm the 3C company for the mixed-use project called Delhi One. Aside from being a 5-star hotel in Noida, the article reports Four Seasons will also offer "180 branded residences in this project, which will be sold by invitation." Twenty-seven of the company's 92 hotels spread across 38 countries contain residential components. 

 

"India has a growing middle class, its population is increasing. Also, the number of outbound travellers from India is increasing. So we need our brand presence here. When people travel abroad they would like to stay with us," Hart said in the article.
 

Read the full article here. 

Original Source: The Economic Times

Tal Dehtiar was in Sarnia earlier this month to describe how his company, Oliberté, became the world's first shoe company to be Fair Trade Certified by Fair Trade USA.

 

It all started when Dehtiar, then in his twenties, met a shoe salesman at a market in Liberia. A passion for business and a penchant for curiosity, Dehtiar asked him how business was. "Not good, the man replied," as the Observer describes. Local shoe salesmen were losing out to free charity handouts and couldn't survive, not even on low prices. 

 

Dehtiar later launched Oliberté Footwear, which manufactures its shows in "leather shoes with rubber soles in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, providing its workers with more than double the country's typical minimum wage and helping lift native Ethiopians out of poverty," according to the article. 
 

"We build our shoes in one of the most difficult parts of the world," Dehtiar is quotes as saying to about 75 people at the keynote presentation as part of Sarnia-Lambton Business Week. 

The company's factory opened last year and currently employs 70 workers. It's now a multi-million-dollar company in "a part of the world that was largely foreign to him." However, "Owning the factory means the company determines how its workers are treated."

 

"We'll never be the biggest shoe company in the world, but we'll always be the most ethical and the best," Dehtiar says in the article. "Hopefully other companies will follow.

 

Read the full story here. 

Original Source: The Observer

Daniels Spectrum has been named the best new venue for meetings and events in Canada, according to the first National BizBash Event Style Awards.

 

The winners of the inaugural awards were announced last Wednesday at the BizBash IdeaFest in New York. The awards honour "the best ideas, strategies, products and venues across North America" and are given to "entries that demonstrated innovation, quality of execution, effectiveness, and an influential impact on the event and meeting industry."

 

Located in Regent Park, Daniels Spectrum is a cultural hub and features office and event space, community programming, meeting rooms, and various other amenities. 

 

Here's what BizBash said about Daniels Spectrum.

 

 

View the full slideshow featuring all the winners here. 

Original Source: BizBash

For the second year in a row, the Intelligent Communities Forum (ICF) has named Toronto as one of the world's 21 smartest communities. ICF looks at communities around the world and grades them based on how broadband infrastructure and IT builds economies and improves the lives of local citizens. 

 

The list will be whittled down to seven finalists to be announced in January. The winner will be announced on June 6, 2014 at a ceremony in New York City.

 

Toronto secured a spot in the top seven last year, but it was Taichung, Taiwan that came out on top. 

 

"One of the major reasons for Toronto’s claim to the title is because of Waterfront Toronto, which has launched several intelligent community programs," said an article that ran on itbusiness.ca. The article cites Waterfront's various accomplishments including building a cloud-based community platform that allows businesses and residents access to data "they can use it to make decisions about daily commutes, residents' health, energy, and water use."

 

In addition to Waterfront Toronto, the City of Toronto also named digital programs such as Kids@Computers and Connected For Success, as well as the Centre for Social Innovation and the Digital Media Zone at Ryerson University in its application. 

 

Read the full story here. 

Original Source: IT Business

 

The votes are in and Porter Airlines has been named the world's best small airline, according to Condé Nast Traveler's 2013 Readers' Choice Awards. 

 

Nearly 80,000 people took part in the annual survey—the most in the survey's history—casting 1.3 million votes for cities, islands, hotels, resorts, cruise lines and airlines. 

 

Toronto was also named the fifth best city in Canada. Condé Nast readers called Toronto "truly an international city with a wide range of tourist attractions," a "cultural gem," a "vibrant city" with "creative architecture" and "an amazing harbor." However, we lost points for traffic congestion.

 

Toronto fared well when it comes to Canada's best hotels as well. The Hazelton Hotel was voted the second best hotel in the country with a score of 94.9 out of a possible 100. The Trump International Hotel & Tower scored seventh place, the Ritz-Carlton eleventh, the Four Seasons fourteenth, and Hotel Le Germain was voted the seventeenth best hotel in Canada.

 

Read the full list of airlines and see the additional awards here. 

Original Source: Condé Nast Traveler

The Toronto-based Leading Edge Group, an international company that offers lean consulting among other things, has teamed up with the Durham-based University of Ontario Institute of Technology to offer online and instructor-led education Lean Thinking certification to organizations, businesses and individuals across Canada.

 

The programs are designed to "help strip wasteful activities and optimize resources in both the public and private sectors," according to an article that ran on durhamregion.com.
 

"The partnership will offer the first full suite of academically-certified Lean programs in Canada," it continues. 

 

"The Lean methodology has become hugely important as a core competency recognized and required across industry so being able to provide entire spectrum of Lean education programs -- from beginner to advanced -- means we will be able to meet the needs of all organizations and individuals, regardless of where they are on their continuous improvement journey," says Dr. Tim McTiernan, UOIT president and vice-chancellor, in the article. 
 

The agreement allows the two organizations to work together to provide education and certification. Leading Edge Group has offices in Toronto, the United States and the United Kingdom, but is based out of Ireland. This partnership will help Leading Edge Group continue to grow in the Canadian market. 

 

Read the full story here.

Original Source: Durham Region

 

Macleans has released its annual university rankings pitting the country's schools against each other and ranking them based on an intense methodology that places 49 of Canada's universities in three categories: comprehensive universities, primary undergraduate universities, and medical doctoral universities. 
 

Universities are ranked on six broad areas based on performance indicators: students and classes (20 per cent), faculty (20 per cent), resources (12 per cent), student support (13 per cent), library (15 per cent), and reputation (20 per cent).  These indicators are broken down into 13 performance measures for primary undergraduate and comprehensive universities, and 14 for medical doctoral universities.
 

The University of Toronto ranked third in the country for medical doctoral universities, maintaining its position last year. Macleans says the school used to "dominate" the charts, but this year's results suggest capital is shifting. McGill was ranked the number one spot in this category, followed by the University of British Columbia. 
 

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology, located in Oshawa, ranked 13th place in the primary undergraduate category, which focuses on schools that provide predominantly undergraduate education. The institution was up two spots from last year. 
 

As for the comprehensive category, which measures programs based on the amount of research activity as well as a wide range of both undergraduate and graduate level programs, including professional degrees. Ryerson places 10th in the country, up to places from 12th last year.

 

Full results and descriptions can be read in the official Macleans guide, currently on newsstands. 
 

Read the full story here.

Original source: Macleans

 

In September, Canada became on of the first countries internationally to launch a Social Stock Exchange, a program that originated in the UK to connect socially driven business with investors. 

 

The UK has taken note. In an article profiling Canada's Social Venture Connexion (SVK)—which is lead by Toronto's MARS Centre for Impact Investing—the Guardian points out that although the Stock Exchange programs are similar, there are some key differences. Unlike the UK's Social Stock Exchange and Asia's Impact Investment Exchange, neither are actually social stock exchange programs. Canada's is considered a "global first" though we're hesitant to admit it.

 

Describing the work of the UK's Social Stock Exchange, [MaRS' Adam] Spence explains that rather than directly connecting social ventures with investors they are an information website that focuses on assessing the social impact of these currently listed companies.
 

"This is not to say that the work of the SVX is better than what is going on in London or Singapore, as they are doing great work. But they are all different."

 

Read the full story here. 

Original Source: The Guardian 

A new study that measured the reputations of 100 international cities has declared Toronto as the second most reputable city in the world. 

 

Shadowed only by Sydney, Australia, Toronto scored well amid feedback from 22,000 respondents from G8 countries who rated the cities based on "trust, esteem, admiration and respect, and perceptions on attributes such as financial stability, safety, beauty and cleanliness, entertainment and dining, standards of living, and effective government," an article the appeared on CTV summarized.
 

New York-based consulting firm the Reputation Institute conducted the survey, which took place online last January and February. Last year's most reputable city was Vancouver, which dropped to 14th place this year. The top U.S. city in this year's study was New York in 21th place.

Read the full story here. 

Original source: CTV

Toronto's first ever community-backed rooftop solar installation has begun generating clean and renewable energy. Known as the Goodmark Project, the 100 kW installation operates via a partnership between two of Canada's powerhouses: "Bullfrog Power – a 100% green energy provider; and SolarShare – who have installed 20 community-backed solar units in Ontario," an article that ran in PV Magazine reports. 

 

"Community participation is the crucial difference between Goodmark and the typical Ontario renewable energy project," said SolarShare president, Mike Brigham, in the article. "Citizens who are eager to promote green energy but may not have the means or the rooftop to install their own projects can pool their resources and finance community projects, earning a financial return from project revenue."
 

Community-backed power is becoming more common and in a variety of ways. Earlier this year we told you about the Toronto Zoo's new community-backed biofuel plant that will begin converting animal waste into energy by next summer.

"Seeing the Bullfrog Power and SolarShare communities come together is what we are all about – supporting the development of new renewable energy projects that people can see in their communities," said Josephine Coombe, Bullfrog Power’s Vp for sales and marketing, in the article.

Read the full story here. 

Original source: PV Magazine

When Detroit filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it forced many cities to reevaluate the economics of their regions. The Martin Prosperity Institute has compiled the first of many reports to come comparing Detroit, Toronto and Chicago.

The institute is "the world's leading think-tank on sub national factors—location, place and city regions—in global economic prosperity." It operates out of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The reports will look at a variety of attributes. The first explored household incomes across the cities and was released last Friday ahead of the Toronto-Detroit symposium, an event that looked at Detroit and Toronto as Drivers for Healthy Cities. 

 

The report analyzes the three cities in terms of areas where household income falls below the national average (red) and areas where it is above the national average (green).

Here is a key finding from the report:

 

"From first glance, it is clear that fewer tracts within the Toronto metro have an average household income lower than the national average, especially when compared to Detroit and Chicago. Despite this though, there is once again a reoccurring trend, in which most of the tracts with average household incomes below the national average are found within the city itself. Outside of the City of Toronto there are almost no tracts shaded red. As in Chicago, many of the tracts with below average household incomes are in the inner suburbs, and take up a large amount of space geographically. The red tracts in Toronto make up for 36% of the total land in the city. This is a significant amount of the city, but not as large as in Chicago and nowhere near the same amount as in Detroit. As this map presents, the Toronto metro and City of Toronto are generally better off than the rest of Canada, and although income inequality in Toronto has been discussed to great lengths, this map displays that in relation to the national average, Toronto performs much better than other large cities."

We will continue to report on key findings from forthcoming insights.

 

Read the full report here. 

Original source: Martin Prosperity Institute

 

Nuit Blanche, the annual city-wide art exhibition that ran from sunset to sunrise on October 6, received international attention in part due to one major exhibition: Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei's Forever Bicycles.

 

Located at Nathan Phillips Square, the installation features thousands of stainless steel bicycles shipped over the Pacific via special containers, according to an article that ran in Gizmodo. The installation is one of six Scotiabank Nuit Blanche projects that will be extended in Toronto until the end of October.  

 

"As the centerpiece of this year's Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night contemporary art event that takes over city streets, 3,144 bicycles, the most Weiwei has used of this work to date, were stacked 100 feet in length and 30 feet in height and depth in Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. This was the first time the installation has been displayed in an open air, public space. Since this was a night-time festival, it was spectacularly lit up with pink and blue lights," the article reports.

 

But, as Wall Street Journal points out, Forever Bicycles has additional meaning for the city of Toronto in the form of tourist dollars. "The Nuit Blanche has become a big money maker for Canada’s largest city. Last year, it drew 38 million Canadian dollars ($36.9 million) to the city’s coffers, with over 1 million people checking out its exhibits," the article reports. "This year is expected to top that, thanks largely to Mr. Ai."

 

Justine Palinska, a spokeswoman with Toronto's economic development and culture department, told the Wall Street Journal that, "It's definitely the most important festival we’ve done, thanks to the Ai Weiwei exhibit."

 

Although Nuit Blanche originated in Paris, it continues to be a profitable event for Toronto. The article continues, "Last year, 170,000 people came from out of town alone, with many arriving in Toronto from the U.S. Mr. Ai’s international renown means this year’s event is expected to bring in yet more visitors from outside of the city."

 

A photo of the installation, taken by managing photographer Tanja-Tiziana, can be seen in this week's masthead image slider. 

 

Read the full story here.

Original source: Wall Street Journal

The University of Toronto has once again climbed into the top 20 of the World University Rankings after a brief dip in 2012. 

 

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings judge "world class universities across all of their core missions—teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The top universities ranking employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balances comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and government," according to the rankings' website. 

 

The University of Toronto was the only Canadian university to make it in the top 20.

 

In a message from the university posted on the rankings website, it says, "The 2012-13 Times Higher Education ranking groups the University of Toronto with Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Michigan as the only institutions in the top 27 in all 6 broad disciplinary areas."

 

The first Times Higher Education World University Rankings was issued in 2010, where the University of Toronto placed 17. In 2011, the school dropped to 19 before falling out of the top 20 to the 21st position in 2012. Crawling back into the top 20 reaffirms the school's prestige and reputation on a global level.

 

Data is collected via the "world's largest invite-only survey of academic opinion." This year's research featured information collected from 16,639 responses from 144 countries. On average, respondents had been working in academia for 17 years. Respondents come from a variety of disciplines, with a slight majority in social sciences, engineering and technology.

 

Read the full story here.

Original source: Times Higher Education

Though the Vital Signs report suggests Toronto needs to focus on its brand, the world sees our city differently. Toronto was named the eighth best city in the world based on the appeal of brand image, according to the bi-annual Anholt-GfK City Brands Index (CBISM), up five places from last year's ranking. 

 

When it comes to friendly people, Toronto ranked second internationally with Sydney taking the lead. Toronto was ranked the fourth best city when it comes to feeling safe and the fifth best city (tied with Melbourne) when it comes to fitting in with culture.

 

In an article that appeared in Yahoo, Mark Keida, senior research director on the City Brands project, said Toronto scored well among Americans and people from India, the UK and France. But what held the city back from earning higher rankings was "its climate and lack of international buzz," the article says.

 

"Toronto is seen as a great place to move and live and make friends and get a job - as more of a long-term destination," says Keida in the article.

 

Here are the top 10 best cities as identified by brand:
 

1. London (2 in 2011)

2. Sydney (3)

3. Paris (1)

4. New York (4)

5. Rome (6)

6. Washington, DC (7)

7. Los Angeles (5)

8. Toronto (13)

9. Vienna (9)

10. Melbourne (8)

 

The Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index "measures the image of 50 cities based on more than 50 questions related to perceptions of their Presence, Place, Pre-requisite, People, Pulse and Potential," the survey data says. For the 2013 study, 5,144 people were interviewed from countries including Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Indie, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data was collected online earlier this year from May 8-23.

 

Read the full report here. 

Original source: GFK