The name “Mesopotamia” derives from a Greek term meaning “land between the rivers.” The Royal Ontario Museum’s latest major exhibit, which opens on June 22, takes this literally, as visitors flow between painted representations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the floor.

Presented by the British Museum and rounded out with pieces from institutions in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World covers 3,000 years of human development in the cradle of urban civilization. Most of the 170 artifacts on display have never been shown in Canada.

There are a lot of chefs in the kitchen for the Canadian premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a triptych set in three time periods that tells the stories of amateur actors (played by real actors) involved in staging performances of the story of Christ. Three different Toronto independent theatre companies, all with reputations for innovative staging and creation in their past work, each tackle one of the three acts. Ordinarily, such a complicated arrangement would be to a show’s detriment, but not in this case. While you need to be prepared for a marathon of theatre (the show runs four hours, incluing two intermissions), you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth.

“A cross between Woodstock and the Algonquin Round Table,” is what Michael Redhill called it. Dorothy Parker grinding out an electric cover of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Well, not quite. Rather, Redhill, the literary curator for Luminato 2013, was describing A Literary Picnic, the annual festival’s celebration of storytelling, creativity, and the written word.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

Photo by {a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinwhite/225710484/sizes/z/in/photostream/”}kevbo1983{/a} from the {a href=”http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/”}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

The 1990s and onward, with economic growth and the amalgamation of Toronto proper with its five adjoining boroughs, brought about dramatic changes to city planning. Suddenly, city planners were forced to cooperate with a number of different mindsets—“a much bigger city with much different interests.”

“Amalgamation helped us all learn,” Wright recalls. “There’s lessons learned from everywhere, doesn’t matter whether it’s in Scarborough or Etobicoke or North York. Now we find the commonality of those languages, the commonality of those structural changes that we work with all the time. So, we think differently.”

Apart from the geographic growth of the city as a result of its expanded boundaries, Wright points out the concentration of downtown development as a trend to keep tabs on, particularly the ongoing residential growth happening south of Front Street. He thinks this is a positive step for invigorating the city’s core, and is dismissive of complaints regarding a glut of highrise construction.

“We don’t need to tell the tall buildings story anymore,” he says. “There’s just a whole variety of development trends in the city. As we’re going to see, there’s a considerable amount of mid-rise development happening on our avenues. There are small townhouse developments. There’s a whole range of development trends that have happened, and are happening, in the city.”

What does worry Wright is an intangible: the widening income disparity apparent throughout the city, with high-income populations concentrated along the city’s inner core, low-income populations relegated to the city’s northeastern and northwestern shoulders, and middle income populations rapidly ceasing to exist.

“We can’t solve income inequality problems through planning renewals,” Wright admits, “but we should be thinking about how we attract investment, potentially, to parts of the city that don’t have investment now.”

Wright sees income disparity as a planning issue because of its effect on social cohesion. “One of the reason Toronto works well is that there’s a fabric of social cohesion,” says Wright, citing recent riots in London and Paris as examples of what happens to a city when that fabric begins to tear. “What I’m concerned about is that, over time, income inequality is going to affect social cohesion. It’s something we have to think about, and we need to be informed by these things.”

Looking forward, Wright sees citizen engagement and collaboration as essential for city building—the harnessing of social cohesion for momentum.

“We live in a very interesting, complex, interactive society in which all different kinds of people and influences make us think about where we’re going next,” he says, citing the necessity of fostering collaboration between developers, activists, businesses, politicians, media, and philanthropists in order to foster positive, and effective, growth.

“Cities need to reinvent themselves in terms of their development. They need to reinvent themselves in terms of the civic institutions, and they need to also think about how they reinvent themselves in terms of governance, because societies change. How people interact with cities change.”

He adds, with conviction, “Citizens matter.”

CORRECTION: December 9, 2011, 9:55 AM This post originally said that three boroughs were involved in Toronto’s 1998 amalgamation. There were actually five. We regret the error.

photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtunney/3282585763/"}Michael Tunney{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}

After several polls showed Rob Ford and his plans for Toronto are becoming deeply unpopular with citizens from all areas of the city, the mayor came out to say that he was going to “stay the course.” But what exactly is that course, and is it the right one for the city? Does Toronto have a vision, or has it stumbled blindly into a dark spot? And maybe most importantly, how do we get out of it?

This question was put to four city builders yesterday at an event organized by the Canadian Urban Institute and hosted by the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre. The panel consisted of Geoff Cape of the Evergreen Brickworks, University of Toronto professor David Hulchanski of “the three cities” fame [PDF], Julia Deans of Civic Action, and John Van Nostrand of planningAlliance.

There has been much hand-wringing over the state and direction of Toronto during the last 10 months since Rob Ford stood in the front of the council chamber and officially became mayor. During this time it seems many people have gathered at events, much like the one put on by Canurb, to basically ask the question: “How the hell did this happen to us?”

One of the answers to that may be found in something that former mayor David Crombie said at a discussion of the work of Jane Jacobs last week when he spoke about the gap in dialogue between the old City of Toronto and the newer amalgamated city with all its suburbs. One can’t help but reflect on this gap after attending several of these events, which all happen to take place in the downtown area and are attended mostly by downtown residents. “There’s a real need to get to know each other’s city,” John Van Nostrand said. In fact, several of the panelists at yesterday’s event spoke of the need to provide spaces for discussion in suburban areas, where members from across the city can gather to share exactly what kind of city they want. Or, in other words, talk about that vision thing.

Many times at these events it’s easy to come away with the unsatisfying feeling that, although many interesting things were discussed and debated, real, practical solutions remain slightly out of sight. Sure, it’s great to speak about the need to create wider dialogue and spaces to connect, but when the inevitable questions arise during the Q&A period about how to actually achieve these things, the discussion becomes a lot more difficult.

However, two ideas emerged, not from the panelists, but from audience members during the question period, that present a real, practical way to work toward building a new vision for the city. One was presented by a member of the Annex Residents Association who said the ARA hopes to “twin” with another residents association, such as one in Scarborough, and will hold several joint meetings in both neighbourhoods. This idea has enormous potential to get residents from different areas of the city to meet and share.

The second idea, which built on the first, came from a woman who wondered how to engage Toronto’s youth from across the city. She suggested a similar “twinning” program for school classrooms, where downtown classes travelled to meet with classes from suburban areas and vice versa. David Hulchanski spoke about the need to create spaces where ideas can happen, spaces of compromise and discussion. This “twinning” could be one way to create such a space.

Visions are not something formally bestowed upon a city from above; they come bubbling up from underneath, from the, as Geoff Cape put it, “patterns of actions” of different communities.

We are at a perfect point in Toronto to discuss the vision thing. Rob Ford has done much for civic engagement in this city by forcing many people who perhaps don’t engage often in civic issues to become deeply involved in things like the core service review, or the plan for the waterfront, or the TTC. We are gathering and discussing and debating big civic issues almost monthly. And this engagement will hopefully continue now that the City’s Official Plan, the document that sets out the course of development in the city over the long term, has come up for its five-year review.

Over the next few months, Torontonians will be meeting across the city to discuss exactly what kind of Toronto they envision. Planning is done best when it’s done not just by “experts” at the top but through facilitating discussion with the very people who live in communities all around the city. John Van Nostrand said yesterday that “we have a potential plan lying beneath us.” We just need to all figure it out together.

CORRECTION: September 22, 2011, 2:10 PM This post originally stated that the ARA had already “twinned” with a residents association in Scarborough, when in fact the idea has not been formally adopted by the association.