This week, the first ever international street art festival will be taking place in Toronto. It’s called A Love Letter to the Great Lakes and it is running from June 20 to June 25, 2016.
The goal of the festival is to use public works of art to get people thinking about our water resources and, more specifically, about the Great Lakes. Together, these Lakes represent 20% of the world’s fresh surface water.
So this week, 21 local and international artists will be painting giant murals in 3 different areas of the city: Queen & Ossington, Queen & Spadina, and at the mouth of the Don River.
The collaborators for the event include Tre Packard (Pangeaseed Foundation), Jason Botkin (A Love Letter to the Great Lakes, En Masse), Jaqueline West (Herman & Audrey), developer Jeff Hull (Hullmark) and Devon Ostrum (Friends of the Pan Am).
Below is one of the works already in progress. It’s by Jason Botkin and it’s located on one of the bents of the Gardiner Expressway East at the mouth of the Don River.
This event caught my attention for 3 reasons.
First, I think the city is going to be left with some rad looking murals. Here is one from a similar event in Cozumel, Mexico called Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans in Cozumel:
Second, like many others, I care deeply about the environment. But until we put in place the right economic incentives / disincentives, we need all the awareness building that we can get.
Third, seeing Jeff Hull on the list of collaborators reminded me that there’s a new breed of real estate developers emerging in our cities. The big bad developer is sometimes (often?) thought to be greedy and insensitive to local communities. But I think the next generation sees itself quite differently. They see themselves more as city and community builders.
So if you’re in Toronto this week, get on your bike and head over to one or more of the mural sites. Tweet me if you decide to go and maybe we can connect.
A reader recently sent me a New York Times article talking about Chinese buyers flooding into the US residential real estate market. This is something that I’ve written about before, but I liked the “graphic” section called The Roots of China’s Real Estate Rush.
Here are two of the graphs:
The second chart shows you just how much more significant Chinese buyers are compared to the next biggest foreign customer of American homes: Canadians. And with the Canadian dollar where it is, it is no surprise that we are trending downwards. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the Chinese.
I have a soft spot for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s a beautiful town and, out of all the places I’ve snowboarded, it’s easily my favorite.
That’s why I was excited to learn that Jackson is currently building one of the first vertical farms in the world (and in a cold ski town at that). Using a vacant site in the middle of town, a new venture called Vertical Harvest is building a three storey, 13,500 square foot hydroponic greenhouse. It’s being done as a public/private partnership.
The business will operate year round and supply fresh produce to the local community – replacing food that was previously being shipped in from Mexico and California.
The site itself is 1/10 of an acre, but it’s expected to have the same output as a 5 acre piece of land using conventional agriculture methods. 95% of their product is already committed through pre-purchase agreements.
Here are some of the businesses that have jumped onboard:
Rendezvous Bistro
Il Villaggio Osteria
Q Roadhouse
The Kitchen
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s five restaurants
Snake River Brewery
St. John’s Medical Center’s Refuge Grill
What makes this project even more exciting is their commitment to employing members of the local community with disabilities. This is apparently a growing concern in Jackson, and so Vertical Harvest will be doing their part to address that.
If you’d like to learn about the design of the facility, check out this article by Fast Company. The team was was very methodical in ensuring that this facility would consume less energy than the status quo of shipping in food from out of state.
The go-live date is this fall (2015). I should probably plan another trip to Jackson.
Images from Vertical Harvest