Since we've been spending a lot of time discussing the policies of Toronto's mayor, we wonder: does he use toilet paper? Like most North Americans he probably does, but a story in today's BBC.com made us do a double-take. A new York family decided to spend a year living as close to a zero impact life as they could. One of the steps they took was to not use toilet paper. The story's headline? "US family tries life without toilet paper" Catchy.

Here are some of the other ways the Beavans suggest reducing our environmental footprint:

1. Turn off your electricity - no fridge, washing machine, or dishwasher

2. Don't drive - bicycle

3. Wash clothes by hand

4. Use only natural cleaners like borax, vinegar, and soda

5. Buy second-hand merchandise only

6. Take a hamper to the food market - no plastic bags

7. Put a solar panel on the roof to power a laptop and one light

8. Use a crank up radio

As the Beavans will tell you, going cold turkey on all aspects of modern life is probably not the answer. In fact, one advantage that the Beavins had came from living in a big, modern city:

"But the fact is that it is actually easier to live an efficient life in this city, and this is well documented. Here in New York, we emit about a third of the carbon per member of the population of the rest of the country, and it's because of the efficiencies of scale of this city."

Want to know more about this family's epic journey into the no-impact zone? Here is their blog.

With Toronto's budget woes as a background, Charles Landry of "The Creative City" fame - and advisor to our own Mayor Miller - was in town yesterday talking to a Bay Street crowd over lunch. In case you don't know it, Landry's meta-message goes something like this: Rethinking the city can create better places to live, work, and play. While a full review of Landry's talk will have to wait he did get me thinking about my friends at http://www.newmindspace.com and what they've been up to in their poetic reuse of the public realm.

This video tells the story of one of their projects from 2006 - enjoy:

Image from Flickr - Sabocracy

To say all corporations are evil because of their single-minded pursuit of money, is as erroneous as saying that all not-for-profits or public institutions are noble and pure. People with enough experience in the world will agree that any institution conceived of and run by people is inherently capable of a spectrum of different moral and ethical outcomes - the shades of grey argument - from good to bad. Look at the checkered history of governments for example.

Given that context, when a corporation - General Mills for example - offers the city a donation to improve an important public space, how should informed citizens react? Should we question their motives? Should we take the money and run? Or, should we set up an office in City Hall that facilitates such donations?

According to today's Globe and Mail, the City of Toronto is doing the latter. Mayor David Miller calls the approach, " public interest partnerships." The purpose of this office is to create a way for the private sector to pay for costly infrastructure projects that the city cannot or will not fund. Okay. Let's assume the inherent nobility of these offers to the city. General Mills' offer to contribute $15,000 to improve one of the city's most public spaces - the ferry docks at the foot of Bay Street - is an example of this new corporate investment mechanism. The city is matching the gift. That means at total of $30,000 will go into improving the space.

Anyone who knows the docks also knows that $30,000 will only buy some very superficial improvements but hey, something is better than nothing, right? I'm tempted to say wrong just because we are entering into some very complex means and ends issues with these relationships. After all, is the improvement of our public spaces driven by the specific interest of corporations? Of course not. However, that said, why don't we use this mechanism to make some much-needed changes to the city's infrastructure?


Ghost bike memorial - Avenue Road

For example, city hall has failed - uniquely and horribly - to build cycling infrastructure in the city. People have died as a result of this willful negligence. Why don't cycling activists (that sounds too radical, cycling activists in our definition are those people who own bicycles who would use them to commute if they had safe ways to do so - in Toronto that equates to hundred of thousands of people) go to major bicycle manufacturers and distributors to get them to contribute to the city's infrastructure.

Imagine how far a gift of $1,000,000 would go to force the anachronistic politicians at city hall to build those promised hundreds of kilometres of cycling routes. It would energize the movement towards sustainable transportation in the city, and it would save lives.

Forget about that big Nathan Philips Square makeover for a year or two (sorry PLANT - sustainability issues have precedence here). Invest in a cycling infrastructure that will (...read more...)

The Economist city liveability rankings came out last week. You may have seen the results: Vancouver ranks number 1 and Toronto number 5.

In the past I've had felt a certain pride with these results. After all, Toronto as a city is unique in its ability to provide a net for so many of the world's different cultures. We also remain a relatively safe city to live in - in spite of the recently surge in killings. Even better, "Creative Class" guru Richard Florida has become a permanent resident of the city and is now a professor at the Rotman Business School. His move cuts through the deepest cynicism about Toronto's place in the world.

In spite of all this good news, I am starting to lose faith in the city. If we shift the criteria used to judge what makes a livable city then Toronto's rating plunges dramatically. A report by the Pembina Institute will be released today criticising the city's suburban sprawl. According to the Toronto Star's Andrew Chung, the city ranks number one in the province in terms of its sustainability while our edge suburbs in the 905 region are the least sustainable places to live.

We continue to eat up once productive farm lands in order to perpetuate unsustainable visions of the ideal Canadian lifestyle. You know what it looks like. There is the obligatory swimming pool. Three cars sit in the driveway. No one walks. Even if they wanted to walk the closest store is a kilometer away. Those areas of Toronto have populations growing at alarming speed while the so-called sustainable core of the city grew less than one percent in the last five years.

Meanwhile, Toronto continues to fail in its accommodation of the city's cyclists. This bureaucratic negligence over something so obvious and simple kills people. It also means more commuters are forced to drive to work in the city. That causes more congestion and more pollution.


One of Copenhagen's urban squares. Bicycles are an essential part of that city's transit network.

Meanwhile, our federal government says there really is nothing that can be done to reduce our ever increasing production of greenhouse gasses. Cut back! Are you kidding?? We are a world leading exporter of hard to produce, oil sands derived oil. That means conforming to our Kyoto emission agreement is impossible so we won't even try.

So, let's take a moment to review the city's performance under these new criteria. Toronto (and Vancouver) while in the top five of the Economist's city rankings, represent urban lifestyles that cannot be sustained in the mid to long term. We are in denial on every real measure of sustainability. We enable the unsustainability of other industrial economies by providing cheap, "externality" blind oil. Rather than celebrating our Economist ranking, Torontonians might be better off using it as a warning that dramatic action is required. If we don't, we run the risk of quickly sliding into the world's has-been civilizations that were promising but at (...read more...)