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On wildness: Community and control in urban green space

Photo credit: Kristen Fahrig

The city is a structured place. Roads and sidewalks follow mainly straight lines, while houses, apartment buildings, offices and shops march dutifully alongside them, one after the other. Many of us live structured lives within our concrete, highly controlled world, following the schedules, routines, and norms of our workplaces and leisure activities. Urban green space is often no different -- processions of trees stand on manicured turf and garden beds are filled with neat lines of annuals. Community use of park space is defined and limited by a stifling array of municipal policies, bylaws, permits and red tape.

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community gardens community building seed saving design for democracy urban gardens Toronto parks arts programs

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Columnists

'To Change Everything, We Need Everyone': A Canadian goes to the People's Climate March

Photo: Elizabeth Littlejohn

As a child, I listened to the great songs of the civil rights movement -- "We shall Overcome" and "Sinnerman" -- and as I grew older, and studied Martin Luther King's speech, "I had a Dream," and rallies against the Vietnam War, I had no idea that my principles would be put to the same test of integrity in my lifetime. On September 12, I was reeling from the news that Prime Minister Harper had ratified FIPA, and that we were on the verge of losing legal recourse to protect our own environment, trumped by China's right to invoke secretive tribunals to determine investor-state relations above our own Constitution.

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Climate Change Harper government design for democracy climate action People's Climate March

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Design for Democracy: Hope begins at the ballot box

Photo: Elizabeth Littlejohn

"Hope is coming."

- Tim Hudak, televised leaders' debate on June 3

Tags:
Climate Change Ontario Politics public services tim hudak spending cuts civic engagement design for democracy job cuts Ontario election 2014

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Design for Democracy: Mayor Ford, the media and democracy

Photo: Elizabeth Littlejohn

"He's going to be the greatest mayor this city has ever, ever seen as far I'm concerned. Put that in your pipes you left-wing kooks."

- Don Cherry, Mayor Ford's inauguration, December 7, 2010

Tags:
Toronto politics toronto city hall Toronto island airport Mayor Rob Ford design for democracy Porter Airlines canadian democracy

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Design for Democracy: Parks over planes, planes over people

Photo: Melissa Goldstein

"The island and our waterfront are public assets, and we must not turn over these public assets to narrow private interests -- not to a casino, not to a mega-mall operator, and not to an expanded industrial-scale airport."

- Trinity-Spadina MPP Rosario Marchese

One of my great theatrical delights is to watch the cast of councillors hash out the most pressing issues of our time in Toronto's City Hall.

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pollution environmental destruction Toronto island airport Toronto city council design for democracy Porter Airlines Toronto Island lake ontario

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Cancelling the Ontario Northlander: Transit derailed and denied

Looking out dome car. Photo: Elizabeth Littlejohn

"It is not a subsidy, it's an investment. Public transportation should not be seen as a subsidy but an investment for the betterment of society."

- Linda Savory Gordon, a member of the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains

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transit train travel trains National Transit Strategy ontario northlander New Deal for Northlander design for democracy

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