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News Roundup for September 6, 2024
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Joe Pantalone's plan to empower community councils

I'm all for a type of de-amalgamation along these lines. Hell, I'd even go further and create several more boroughs. I don't think Rexdale, for example, has all that much in common with the rest of Etobicoke, and Scarborough is way too big as it is.
 
Ford says he'd "empower them" but not allow them to spend any money. Smitherman says he'd appoint John Sewell to head a commission to look into it - something Rossi rightly denounced as a patronage appointment. Sewell is good on this stuff (and police issues), but he was quite the authoritarian at Citizens for Local Democracy. He endorsed Miller in '03 but then turned sour on him.

I kinda wish Joe had announced this earlier. Most bold policy announcement he's made.
 
In his early days, Sewell did a lot of great stuff. He was quite principled and courageous in taking on the police and for gay rights when he was mayor.
 
Sewell was non-conformist as one of the reformist greats. He was non-conformist when it mattered in his early days. At a time when clearing Victorian neighbourhoods for what were often ill-conceived Modernist projects was normal, he went against the grain and saved a neighbourhood. Sewell was to only one opposed to the demolition of Union Station on a board of councillors who handled the Metro Centre development. In many ways, he helped shape our experience of the city today with so many Victorian neighbourhoods intact and a fine railway station that's vibrant.
 
That's a bit of a whitewash.

I don't think many Victorian neighbourhoods would be gone had Sewell not been mayor. Nor would I describe Union as "vibrant". The hall, the best feature of the station, is sterile and underused. Certainly, I'm glad we still have Union (it's one of my favourite spaces in Toronto), but it isn't vibrant.
 
Earlscourt_Lad said:
I don't think many Victorian neighbourhoods would be gone had Sewell not been mayor. Nor would I describe Union as "vibrant". The hall, the best feature of the station, is sterile and underused. Certainly, I'm glad we still have Union (it's one of my favourite spaces in Toronto), but it isn't vibrant.
Click to expand...

Union is one of the busiest railway stations in North America and ending neighbourhood clearance projects was an important legacy of the reformist era of the 1970s. No one had to stand up for reform; neighbourhood clearance and replacement with generic apartment buildings was profitable and council was quite lax when it came to new development in the 1960s. Heritage buildings were freely demolished, development was seldom critiqued by councillors, and entire streets were given up for development with minimal concessions.
 
adma said:
Though the point here pertains more to the Great Hall (i.e. the busy parts are inordinately in the banal lower GO level)
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True, but I seldom see the Great Hall empty. It would be better used with better intercity rail services (i.e. high speed rail). The important thing is that it's still standing and serving a lot of people, that it's not a museum, and that there's a chance at remedying the issues.
 
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