City Space
30 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsHow do we make our cities more livable? We want them to be more affordable, walkable and meet the needs of a tech-powered society. So, how do we actually reach those ideals? City Space is an urban living podcast from The Globe and Mail that seeks to answer those questions. Join host Irene Galea as she speaks to global experts and those close to home to learn what our cities are doing right and what we could do better. From accessibility to housing to transit, episodes will consider what truly makes a city run well, look to our global neighbours on what they’re getting right and deliberate on how to make the best cities we can.
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Episodes
Will the cost of hosting the FIFA World Cup pay off for Toronto?
April 16, 2024 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBThe men’s 2026 FIFA World Cup is coming to Canada. Out of 106 games, Toronto will host just six. The city is facing a bill of $380 million or more for things like security and a stadium expansion. Huge sporting events like this are sold as being good for the hosts, boosting tourism and local business while also leaving a legacy of better transit. So does hosting a successful sporting event mean accelerated city building? What kind of legacy makes hosting worthwhile? We’re asking what Toronto ...
Can Chinatown, Vancouver, survive the neighbourhood's revitalization?
April 02, 2024 09:00 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBCanada’s largest Chinatown has been under siege for over a century: first by race riots, then by poverty and most recently by the threat of development. We’re telling the story of why Chinatown, Vancouver, is one of Canada’s most resilient neighbourhoods, forced to evolve and adapt in the face of horrific racism. The future of Chinatowns everywhere should be in the hands of the people who live, work and find community there. So what does the future hold for a neighbourhood constantly in flux?
Prohibition's 100-year hangover in a Toronto neighbourhood
March 19, 2024 09:00 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBAt the turn of the 20th century, a murder, a bar brawl and a sermon led to a 100-year ban on booze in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood. The Junction was Toronto’s last “dry” neighbourhood — meaning no alcohol was allowed to be sold — until 2000. While other nearby areas saw business booming as bars and restaurants opened, The Junction declined and became known as “The Junkie Junction.” We’re telling the story of the Junction’s prohibition — and how it got its bars back. Today it’s a rapidly g...
Halifax is now allowing homeless encampments in its parks. Should other cities do the same?
March 05, 2024 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBOn August 18, 2021, downtown Halifax made international news when the city erupted in a sprawling protest against the removal of illegal homeless shelters from a park. Compared to other Canadian cities, Halifax’s homeless population has tripled in the last three years. Emergency shelters aren’t doing enough. Building new housing takes time. It takes policy changes — and money. Until that’s in place, is leaving people to camp in parks really the best a city can do? We’re telling the story of p...
Halifax is allowing homeless encampments in its parks. Should other cities do the same?
March 05, 2024 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBOn August 18, 2021, downtown Halifax made international news when the city erupted in a sprawling protest against the removal of illegal homeless shelters from a park. Compared to other Canadian cities, Halifax’s homeless population has tripled in the last three years. Emergency shelters aren’t doing enough. Building new housing takes time. It takes policy changes — and money. Until that’s in place, is leaving people to camp in parks really the best a city can do? We’re telling the story of p...
Does heritage preservation stand in the way of housing?
February 20, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40 MBThe Van Horne Mansion was a classic greystone house in Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. It was the home of Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, the man who built the Canadian Pacific Railway. Despite public outcry, the mansion was demolished in 1973. This lit a fire amongst conservationists, thus initiating the heritage conservation movement in Canada. Today, heritage conservation is an important part of city planning. But what tradeoffs can we afford as the housing crisis in cities across the coun...
Was the Spadina Expressway a crisis averted or a missed opportunity?
February 06, 2024 11:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBThe Spadina Expressway was one of five urban highways that were nearly built in Toronto in the 70s. The plan would have bulldozed neighbourhoods so that suburban commuters had a direct route to drive downtown. But campaigners like Bobbi Speck and Jane Jacobs stopped it, saving iconic neighbourhoods like The Annex. Today, Toronto is one of the worst cities in the world for traffic. Should the expressway have been built anyway? We tell the story of the grassroots movement to stop Spadina with t...
Coming soon: Season 4 of City Space
January 23, 2024 11:00 - 1 minute - 1.61 MBWho decides what progress means to a city? In the new season of City Space, join host Irene Galea as she delves into the stories of changing cities and how they're holding on to their identities in the face of 21st century problems. Season 4 will tell stories of progress and preservation — and look for common ground in city spaces across Canada.
Who are city festivals for?
June 20, 2023 10:00 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBFestivals can transform cities by making space for overlooked people and cultures. Cities all over the world are facing major crises — from mounting inequalities to climate emergencies. And arts and culture have a surprisingly critical role in tackling these urban challenges. How do we make sure festivals remain authentic and true to their communities? In this episode, we hear from Mischka Creighton, the CEO of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, one of the city’s marquee events. Adrian also spe...
Tell us what you think about our show!
June 08, 2023 22:44 - 32 seconds - 513 KBCity Space is now in its third season and we’d really love to hear how you feel about our show and what we can do to make it better. Visit cityspace-survey.ca and fill out the brief survey to give us more info. As a token of our thanks, you’ll be entered into a draw to win one of three online retailer gift cards worth $100.
Will Canada be able to house all the immigrants it hopes to welcome by 2025?
June 06, 2023 10:00 - 28 minutes - 26.5 MBLast year, the federal government set an ambitious new immigration target — to bring in half a million permanent residents a year by 2025. While the country is already dealing with a pretty profound housing crisis, it’s likely everyone will feel the housing crunch even more as a record number of immigrants move to Canadian cities in the near future. Where will all these newcomers live and whose job is it to make sure the country is prepared? In this episode, we hear from Mike Moffatt, the Se...
Urban wildlife: How humans and animals can better coexist in cities
May 23, 2023 11:00 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBWhether we really think about it or not, cities are habitats for animals. Beyond a flock of pigeons or dogs on a leash, cities are home to all manner of wildlife - depending where you are, you might have bats, coyotes or even bobcats roaming around. How can cities better accommodate the land we share with our beastie brethren and what might be some potential benefits if we get better at it? This episode we’re joined by Peter Alagona, a professor of environmental studies at the University...
How can cities prepare for a rapidly aging population?
May 02, 2023 11:00 - 23 minutes - 21.7 MBWe’re now in our third season and we’d really love to hear how you feel about our show and what we can do to make it better. Visit cityspace-survey.ca and fill out the brief survey to give us more info. As a token of our thanks, you’ll be entered into a draw to win one of three online retailer gift cards worth $100.
Why are ER wait times so bad in Canadian cities?
April 18, 2023 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.1 MBBurning hours in an ER waiting room has long been a fact of Canada’s public health care system, but that wait time is starting to spike. Now, in Ontario it hovers at around 20 hours on average. And our cities, home to more people and more various determinants of health than anywhere else in the country, bear the brunt of it. In this episode, we’re looking at some issues that impact the growing hospital emergency room wait times: What factors are contributing to the problem? And can anything ...
Are smart cities really such a smart idea?
April 04, 2023 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.1 MBThe smart city movement — driven by the idea that we can leverage data and technology to optimize life in our cities — is attractive for many reasons. But critics say that smart cities may not be so wise, and in some cases, they’ve proven to be dangerous for democracy. In the first episode of season three, we’re doing a deep dive into this very concept: What are smart cities, and who are they for? Where has smart-city technology helped, and when does it start to wade into surveillance-capita...
Coming soon: Season three of City Space
March 29, 2023 15:24 - 53 seconds - 838 KBCanadian cities are evolving – and quickly. City Space, The Globe and Mail’s future of cities podcast, is back for another season to make sense of it all. Join host Adrian Lee over the course of six episodes as he speaks with global experts and those close to home as we learn what our cities are doing right and what can be improved. Up this season: the pros and cons of a smart city, what we can do about our overwhelmed ER departments and how we should be planning for an aging population. Lis...
Supply alone won’t fix our housing crisis. Here are three other factors
July 19, 2022 10:00 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBIf we want great cities, people from all walks of life need to be able to live in them. But even with experts predicting that rising interest rates will drive national housing prices down by as much as 23 per cent by the end of this year, most of us would still consider those adjusted prices totally unaffordable. While most of the housing crisis conversation has centered on supply — just build build build — there’s a lot more going on that’s causing the problem. In our last episode of the s...
How online shopping is changing our city streets – and what comes next
July 05, 2022 12:00 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBWith e-commerce largely replacing brick-and-mortar stores, how we shop is having real, physical effects on how our cities work. So in this episode, we’re looking at all things retail: As consumers, have we become addicted to convenience? How are businesses able to offer us even quicker delivery times than ever before, sometimes within even 15 minutes – and what is that doing to our main streets? What is the “last mile,” and why is it so important for making sure we’re taking care of the envi...
Hybrid work is here to stay. What will that mean for our downtown cores?
June 21, 2022 11:00 - 26 minutes - 23.8 MBIf you’re a white-collar worker, chances are your office setup looks different than it did before the pandemic. After our two-year-long global experiment with remote work, many employees say there’s lots to like about it, with a number of companies now offering hybrid workplaces. All that empty office space is going to have an effect on the rest of our cities. In this episode, Jennifer Barrett, a senior planner with The Canadian Urban Institute outlines three ways that vacant offices coul...
From tipping to farming: How we should change the way we think about food
June 07, 2022 11:00 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MBCities are filled with seemingly endless options when it comes to food. But we’re also increasingly disconnected from what we eat and how it makes its way to our plate. In this episode, we’re taking a look at how the pandemic has given us the opportunity to rethink our relationship with food, both in terms of the restaurant industry and farmed food that fills our fridge. Adrian speaks to Corey Mintz, a food writer and critic about his new book The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants As We Kne...
How can cities prepare for climate change?
May 24, 2022 10:00 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBClimate change isn’t just coming, it’s here. And cities are uniquely susceptible to its effects because of their population density and infrastructure. So how can they better prepare for the increasingly devastating impacts of the climate crisis? In this episode, we explore the concept of climate resilience — how prepared are cities to anticipate, prepare for and respond to natural disasters? We hear from Thaddeus Pawlowski, an urban designer, professor and managing director at the Center...
How protests put Ottawa’s capital-city flaws on display
May 09, 2022 04:00 - 22 minutes - 20.3 MBFrom late January, when the first protesters’ trucks and cars piled into downtown Ottawa, to mid-February, when the Canadian government enacted emergency laws to remove them from the streets, Canada’s capital city of Ottawa was locked down. But it turns out, the reasons why the protests proved uniquely disruptive to the people who actually lived there were actually baked into the city’s very design. In the first episode of City Space’s second season, we look at how we design and choose capit...
Coming soon: Season two of City Space
May 02, 2022 04:00 - 1 minute - 1.09 MBThe Globe’s podcast about how to make our cities better is back for another season. Join host Adrian Lee over the course of six episodes as he speaks with global experts and those close to home as we learn what our cities are doing right and what can be improved. Up this season: the real purpose of a capital city, the future of our downtown cores and how a city can prepare for looming climate-change disasters. Listen to our trailer and catch up on season one now.
How do we build better public transit?
December 07, 2021 23:00 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBPublic transit is essential to the well-being and growth of a city, but as we all know, it’s hard to get it right. Enrique Peñalosa , a former mayor of Bogota, Colombia once said that “a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” And while that’s definitely something to strive for, how achievable is it, really? On the last episode of this season, we explore what conditions are necessary to create a thriving public transit syst...
How unaffordable rent is pushing out the people our cities need
November 23, 2021 05:00 - 22 minutes - 20.9 MBSoaring rent costs is a global phenomenon — and the problem is officially in Canadian cities. In 2020, the average price of rental housing in Toronto was more expensive than it was in San Francisco, London and New York. How did we get here? In this episode of City Space, we explore how the crisis in rental housing happened, how it’s affecting the people we really need in our cities, and what we can do about it. Adrian speaks to Raquel Rolnik, urban planner and former UN Special Rapporteur ...
Who are public spaces – like parks or transit systems – designed for?
November 09, 2021 05:00 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBPublic spaces are often the best parts of a city. But during the pandemic, many of us started to realize how our public spaces, like parks, weren’t quite working for us. In this episode, we hear from three experts: Adri Stark, project manager at Park People and one of the authors of the 2021 Canadian City Parks Report; Leslie Kern, the author of Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World and Anna Zivarts, the director of the Disability Mobility Initiative Program in Washington. In conv...
Cars vs. bikes: What do cities actually need to be safe and accessible?
October 26, 2021 04:00 - 27 minutes - 24.8 MBThe battle for road space between bikes and cars is a well-known one in many cities. But conversations about being a “bike person” or a “car person” tend to skew more towards identity politics than what the data tells us about how to make a city safe and most efficient for all citizens - no matter how they choose to get around. So why can't we get past our emotional response? Peter Norton, an associate professor and author of "Fighting Traffic", as well as the new book, "Autonorama: The Illu...
Can we break the middle class of their addiction to sprawl?
October 12, 2021 04:05 - 23 minutes - 21.1 MBA generation ago, a middle-class income could buy you a detached home in a big city. Now? Folks are finding they need to set their sights further and further away from any downtown centre if they want to hold fast to that dream. But as populations and climate emergencies rise, experts tell us that urban densification is the necessary path forward. So what do cities have to do to retain the middle-class? And how, exactly, does the middle-class break their addiction to personal space and redef...
Should all Canadian cities be 15-minute cities?
September 27, 2021 04:00 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBThe 15-minute city is an urban planning concept that would see neighbourhoods designed so that day-to-day amenities are always just a short walk or bike ride away. And after living 18+ months of pandemic life, where most of us were forced to stay in our own neighbourhoods, it seems like implementing this idea in as many cities as possible will pay nothing but dividends. But while it’s popular in other parts of the world like many European cities, can we really just cut and paste the idea in ...
Coming soon: City Space
September 06, 2021 04:00 - 1 minute - 1.77 MBA new podcast from The Globe and Mail about how to make our cities better. Join host Adrian Lee over the course of six episodes as he speaks with global experts and those close to home as we learn what our cities are doing right and what we’re missing.