By Meg Campbell

Photo by Mandeep Flora | mandeepflora.com from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

• Dancing, beer, bratwurst: a recipe for having fun and nearly falling down. This photo shows the scene at Steam Whistle Brewery this past Saturday, when they hosted their first-ever Oktoberfest event. Some people find it confusing that Oktoberfest happens in September, but we think it’s deliciously quirky, nein?
• ClimateSpark‘s Social Venture Challenge is offering $500,000 worth of grants, loan funds, and equity investment to Toronto “social ventures” in hopes of uncovering 10 climate-saving ideas. In order for a venture to qualify as social, it must involve at least one non-profit partner. And, here’s the tricky part, the solutions they offer must be financially viable. A panel will ultimately choose the winner, but the first stage of the challenge is judged by the public, in part. Anyone can register to review contestants’ proposals.
• When you’re flying over a city, can you guess the welfare of its residents based on the geometrical patterns of its roadways? This article on Atlantic Cities argues that you can, and all those suburban cul-de-sacs are far inferior to the dense, interconnected patterns of older urban areas. Says Scott Bernstein, president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, about the development of the urban grid in the US: “It happened everywhere, it happened brilliantly, and we threw it away.”

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