Notebook on Cities and Culture
(Formerly The Marketplace of Ideas.) Colin Marshall sits down for in-depth conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene all around Los Angeles and beyond.

Near Toronto's Danforth, Colin Marshall talks to Dylan Reid, senior editor at Spacing magazine, former co-chair of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, and co-founder of Walk Toronto. They discuss whether the term "pedestrianism" has become as unappealing as the term "classical music"; the nature of the Danforth and its Greek roots; spatial ways to think about one's walks; the quintessentially Torontonian things he's noticed only while walking; the controversial practice of "façadism" and what it offers the city; the slow process by which Toronto offers up its joys, none of which seem apparent across the rest of Canada; what someone eager to grasp Toronto will find when they open Spacing; how to photoblog in a "not obviously beautiful" city; how he got to know Toronto by talking group walks by night, seeing such sights as a still-active slaughterhouse; how the city represents, in some form or another, every current of the modern conversation about developed-world urbanism; how Spacing got its start in the argument around an anti-postering bylaw; walking as the fabric that connects all modes of transportation; what Toronto's lately ever-more-robust downtown population has meant of walking; what makes him ask "Why is this here?" and who he asks for the answer; the fifty objects that symbolize Toronto; the city's relative lack of empty spaces and "dead zones"; what walk to take that can help you most quickly understand Toronto; and why one might visit Toronto Island.

Direct download: NCC_S4E56_Dylan_Reid.output.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:44pm UTC