By Whitney French, Writing in a Tree
As promised, here’s a recap of my first article I wrote for the Annex Gleaner. I had the pleasure to interview Himy Syed, founder of the Toronto City of Labyrinths Project. This initiative is to create enough labyrinths in the city so that every Torontoian is within walking distance of one. Syed also ran for mayor in 2010, the former Executive Director of Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association, is the Founding Editor of Torontopedia.ca, a city wiki emphasizing neighbourhoods AND a remarkble …

City of Labyrinths Project (Toronto, Ontario)

Toronto, where Jane lived during the latter half of her life, will be the setting for more walks than any other city during the weekend; still, several stand out. This walk on the 5th, organized by a group that aims “to place a semi-permanent labyrinth within walking distance of every Torontonian,” celebrates the city’s existing sidewalk mazes, and explores the history of labyrinth design.

The Toronto City of Labyrinths Walk offers a unique perspective of city-bound labyrinths. Himy Syed, founder of the Toronto City of Labyrinths Project, leads this walk for the second time. Beginning at Christie Station, Syed discusses the origin of labyrinths, their trans-cultural nature and their contemporary relevance, despite the fact that they have been used for centuries.

By Joanna Lavoie, InsideToronto
For his latest “outstallation” project, a giant labyrinth in the form of a three-leaf clover, West Toronto resident Himy Syed uses the Beach as his canvas.
Syed’s Triskelion Labyrinth can be found on Woodbine Beach, just east of the Donald D. Summerville Outdoor Pool.
He started the project about a week ago and had hoped to finish it by St. Patrick’s Day, but life got a little busy and he’s now hoping to wrap up the project in the next few days.
Creating large-scale public art …

From Condo.ca
One of Toronto’s most famous citizens, Jane Jacobs died in 2006, but her legacy lives on in many ways, including the annual Jane’s Walk that takes place this weekend in Toronto and in 68 cities around the world. It’s a fitting way to remember the great urban theorist—the date is chosen to coincide with her May 4 birthday—who believed that the health of cities depended on the involvement of citizens in the life of their neighbourhoods.
Way back in 1957 when urban planning in …

Title: Tr_ns_tC_ty – Toronto Missing Urban Strategy
Starts at: Sunday, 3 p.m.
Meeting Place: Finch Bus Terminal, northeast corner of Bishop Avenue and Yonge Street

Rob Ford’s first action as mayor was to tell someone that he planned on killing Transit City in favour of building subways. While Ford’s position has caused considerable furor, the debate over transit in Toronto has been raging for decades, encompassing issues like the role of bike lanes and choosing between subways and streetcars. This hour-and-a-half-long walk promises to analyze the current political questions regarding Toronto’s transit system, and will also provide contextual background about public transit in Toronto dating back to the 19th century.

By Derek Flack, blogTO
Founded in 2007, Jane’s Walk, the annual celebration of urban theorist and advocate Jane Jacobs, has grown into an international event that takes place in 68 cities across the world and involves over 400 guided walking tours. As the city where it all started, Toronto thankfully leads the way with over a 100 walks scheduled for the weekend of May 7 and 8th. Needless to say, there’s a lot to choose from. With that in mind, I’ve put together some of …

By Melinda M., Ossington Village
This weekend, May 7-8, you’ll be seeing a lot of groups of people walking around Toronto as part of Jane’s Walks 2011. We participated in a few of the walks in our area last year, and despite bouts of rain, we enjoyed ourselves, learned a lot and met some interesting neighbours.
This year there are over 170 free walking tours planned for the GTA, and we are exploring those within walking distance of us. The titles alone demonstrate the diversity of …

By Roberto Baca, RobertoBaca.net
The second part of the day began with a very interesting talk by Brian on the psychology of websites and how our inner mechanisms can be used to build trust and get people to like us, read more of our content, or buy from us. It was a basic talk that didn’t try to delve too deep on the subject, an impossible task since he only had 45 minutes and he also had to keep it accessible to everyone.

I was then off …

By Lance Gleich, Way Out In The Margin
TORONTO, ONTARIO – This week’s update to my photo site features the second day of Jane’s Walk weekend, Sunday, 2 May 2010.
Walks I participated in were the “Skyscrapers of the Financial District” with Kristine Williamson, “The Laneways of Runnymede” with Madeleine McDowell, and “Dark Age Ahead–The Wizard of Ossington” with HiMY SYeD.

Dave Meslin leading City Idol contestants on a tour of City Hall’s second floor in May 2006.  Photo by HiMY SYeD.
By Jonathan Goldsbie, Spacing
An A+ way to sheepishly admit something of which you’re not proud is to put out a release at 4:16 on a Friday afternoon.  Hence, we can infer that the City is not terribly keen on the press picking up on the draconian new measures taking effect in just over a week’s time that will fundamentally alter the way that the public — advocates, lobbyists, …

By Ted Sherk
Here are my notes from the walk, along with a few pictures and videos. They’re a bit fragmented, but coherent enough to be interesting I hope.
Retracing Stop Spadina

HiMY, Andrew, Antonio, Christina, Tristan, Adrian
Genesis of Spadina Expressway. 50-60-70 yrs, private transpo companies provided public transit in Toronto. There was very little quality control. The streetcars would run out to the suburbs and end on “squatter’s land”, not actually squatters land, just inexpensive real estate. So workers would tend to buy land at the …