Participants in one of the Jane's Walk events pause in the grounds of CAMH on Queen Street yesterday.......

Today is Jane Jacobs Day in Toronto, marking the date of her birth. If you hurry, you might still catch a walking tour honouring our celebrated urban thinker. Much like Janus—the two-headed Roman god capable of seeing both past and future—Jacobs's writings on urban development were considered visionary. Just as Janus represents change or transition, Jacobs was a force for change. She helped stop the Spadina Expressway proposal, and her ideas influence urban planning......

We hope you’ve got your Jane Jacobs cards written and that your presents are all wrapped and sitting under the Jane Jacobs Tree, because this May 4 is Jane Jacobs Day in Toronto. In honour of the urban visionary who died in 2006, May 3 and 4 this year will see the second annual Jane’s Walk held throughout Toronto. Jacobs was born in Pennsylvania but made Toronto her home in 1968, having declared it......

For anyone who missed this year's Massey Lecture last Friday at U of T, don't fret. The City of Words, by celebrated writer, essayist, novelist, and anthologist Alberto Manguel, will be broadcast on CBC Radio One's IDEAS each night at 9:00 p.m. beginning Monday, November 5 running to Friday, the 9th. As a new feature this year, each of the five lectures (unedited and complete with audience discussion) will be available for download starting......

A mystery is afoot in Riverdale. The residents of Cambridge Avenue near Broadview & Danforth have grown familiar in recent years with the roaming gangs of monkeys—a dozen at last count—that dangle from the utility wires above the street. They move about only under cover of darkness, stealthily assuming new positions every few nights. By day, they prefer to remain motionless, silently watching passersby far below. Aping the inclusive character of their neighbourhood, the......

OpenCities was a weekend-long unconference that took place on the 23rd and 24th of June. Many excellent conversations came out of the weekend, and this is one of them. You can read notes from the rest at OpenCities.ca. The late Jane Jacobs asserted that a great public space should attract different people for different reasons at different times of day. Why, then, have we forgotten the last part in our planning—and our thinking? Torontoist......

The Spadina Expressway was probably the most high-profile megaproject in Toronto that was never built, but it's also just one of many. For his OCAD thesis project, David Kopulos has detailed a host of construction projects that were planned for Toronto, but that never materialized—both the reviled (such as the Expressway) and the intriguing—on his website, Toronto Pending. Each entry explains what the proposed structure would have been and why it wasn't built, alongside......

June Callwood, the journalist and social activist dubbed by the CBC as "Canada's Conscience," succumbed to cancer this morning at 82. Callwood is entrenched in Toronto's history as one of our most important and powerful social crusaders. She co-founded AIDS hospice Casey House (named for her late son) and more than fifty other social organizations, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, PEN Canada and Yorkville's Digger House youth hostel. Raised amidst early family instability and......

Photo by Shaun Merritt That's all folks! As Torontoist's March Madness wraps up, it's clear that Kensington Market reigns supreme (final tally: Kensington Market, 296 votes; Toronto Islands, 191 votes). Having defeated such Toronto icons as Jane Jacobs, Yonge Street, the 501 Queen streetcar, the Toronto islands, and David Miller’s hair, we should ask ourselves what makes this part of the city so special.......

Every weekday, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Some highlights: Kensington Market turns out the lights on Nuit Blanche (118 - 95): Dizzy from the smell of fish, Nuit Blanche stumbles in this epic battle of nocturnal versus somnambulant. Al Waxman named MVP of Kensington for numerous slam dunks. IllegalSigns.ca revokes Dufferin Grove's permit (109......

Each weekday for the next two weeks, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Today's matches, Region I + II, 2nd Round: The Giambroney vs. St. Clair ROWCN Tower Ice vs. ParkdaleThe Beaches vs. Toronto IslandsJane Jacobs vs. Gas-Fired Power PlantWest Side Lofts vs. Condo Boom416 vs. Queen WestYonge Street vs. Anagram MapMiller's Hair vs. ROM......

Each weekday for the next two weeks, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Some highlights from yesterday's matches: Jane Jacobs makes Yonge-Dundas look square (107-95): The usually untouchable Jacobs was thrown off her game early on by anti-gun rallies, massive video billboards and a late-game PR stunt by a chewing gum company, but pulled ahead......

Each weekday for the next two weeks, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. March Madness begins today! View the current ladder here. Suggestions for next year will be recorded! Today's matches, Region I, 1st Round: The Giambroney vs. One Cent Now St. Clair ROW vs. York Subway The Gardiner vs. CN Tower Ice Starbucks vs. Parkdale The Beach vs. The......

Because there are only a handful of Canadians in the NCAA, (and who really cares about college basketball, anyway?) we thought we'd cook up a little March Madness of our own - Toronto style. We have created a tournament ladder of recent memes, blog drama and local news and for the next two weeks, you will decide the winner of each match. Sure beats betting on Kansas State. You can view the ladder full......

Last week, we covered the Ontario Municipal Board's approval of a plan to build several condo buildings in the area of the Queen West Triangle. The plan has been controversial from the beginning, and has been strongly opposed by a residents group called Active 18. One point that has some particularly saddened is the teardown of the structure at 48 Abell, a one time industrial building converted to lofts which are used as live-work......

As the summer slowly makes way for what seems to be an early fall, pretty soon we'll all spend more time huddled around the fireplace for the... holiday season. That's right... Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa are just around the corner, and the family is coming over to your place for dinner. They will come by and sit in your living room as you pass around some celebratory glasses of wine or nog. How......

We have not one but two civics related events tonight in Toronto. At Trinity St. Paul's church just near Bloor and Spadina we have Jane Jacobs: A Public Celebration. There have been plenty of smaller celebrations for the life of Jane Jacobs but one more never hurts. Anne-Marie MacDonald and John Sewell are among some of the readers and to lighten things up we have music from Caitlin Broms-Jacobs and friends, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer......

In honour of Jane Jacobs CBC Radio One's Ideas will be re-airing their programs on Dark Age Ahead, her last work. The book describes how cultures decline and dead end and why our society might be sliding into a dark hole that might not be so easy to get out of. Part one of the the program airs tonight at 9:00. Half an hour later in Newfoundland (we don't get to say that often on......

At Friday night's City Idol event, Torontoist's own contestant recited a poem by Denis Lee titled, simply "Spadina." The poem, from Lee's (sadly out of print) 1974 Nicholas Knock and Other Peopleis a jaunty celebration of the success of the Stop Spadina Campaign that is being fondly remembered in the wake of Jane Jacobs' death. The poem goes: Sparrows sniffed the air, and hung Like humming-birds with bubble gum Doing pushups in the sun......

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for......

From all the online and offline tributes it's been pretty clear that the city has the utmost respect for Jane Jacobs. While we know that she did not like academic honours bestowed upon her we think that she'd appreciate having a street named after her. Especially considering what a huge role she played in saving so many of the streets in downtown Toronto. Torontoist would like to propose that Albany Ave., the street she lived......

It is with great sadness that Torontoist reports the death of Torontonian Jane Jacobs. The 89-year old writer and urban critic passed away this morning. Most famous for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs had been a resident of Toronto since 1968, immediately became involved in important city activism, she was instrumental in the "Stop the Spadina Expressway" campaign (we got the Spadina subway line instead), and she supported......