Glasstry news

In the wake of a dispiriting Toronto municipal election, it's bitter-sweet to read Dusty Bookcase 's exploration of a 1967 book that projected what Toronto could be in 2067 . This would be a city of skyscrapers measuring up to a mile in height, many built on artificial islands formed by dumping landfill into Lake Ontario. Each of these buildings would be self-contained communities, McLorg called for covering 145-square miles of Toronto with 2300 transparent fibreglass and plastic cupolas. These would be held aloft by internal air pressure, and tethered to the ground by hollow cables that would drain off rainwater and melted snow [Torontonians] will be able to grow oranges in their back gardens, watch roses bloom in December and cherry trees blossom in February; when they can play golf and tennis all winter, count on the same fifteen minutes to get to the office in January that it takes in July, buy a topless convertible for their wives, laugh when the heating bill arrives, and ...

Toronto historian planning historian Richard White considers   An Enduring Wilderness by photographer Robert Burley, and how the parks and wild spaces Burley presents in his work are the products of a long history of deliberate planning initiatives. Like many Torontonians, I know these ravines as an occasional walker of their paths. But I know them also as a planning historian. And these ravine parks are unmistakably the product of planning, having been conceived by Metropolitan Toronto planners in the 1950s as the city expanded out into its rural hinterland. Their planning pedigree has long been obscured by the ineradicable urban myth (thankfully, not repeated by Wayne Reeves in his essay in the book) that they exist on account of Hurricane Hazel, the storm that inundated the Toronto region with nearly a foot of rain over two days in October 1954, to devastating effect. The storm certainly expedited implementation of the parks plan. It prompted the local conservation authority to...