Yesterday morning I went for a swim at the new Regent Park Aquatic Centre. I used to swim regularly when I was in grad school in the US, but it fell off when I moved back to Toronto and there wasn’t a convenient place for me to walk to. Having to drive to a gym or to a pool can really cut hurt how often you’re able to go.
In any case, the pool was fantastic. On the west side of it are glass sliding doors that face the park. And since yesterday was such a beautiful day, they were all open while everyone was swimming lanes. The wooden ceiling also gives the space a nice, warm feel.
The biggest surprise for me though was the universal change rooms. I had never been in a co-ed change room before – or one that was completely open and visible to the pool (there are small private rooms so you can actually change). For families, it makes a lot of sense. Everyone can go in together and it’s easy to watch your kids in the pool from within the change room.
After my swim, I rode my bike around Regent Park and tweeted this out:
Posterity will say: Did you know that Regent Park used to be shitty? No way. Way. #athiscity #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/VSgFwLc8NI
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
What’s happening in Regent Park is incredibly exciting. To me, it feels like a return to the fundamentals of city building. They’ve reconnected the old street grid – which had previously been removed to create the old “towers in a park” scheme – and they’re clearly working towards a proper urban neighborhood with retail at grade and buildings pushed right up against the street.
A big measure of success, though, will be how animated the streets become and how well the retail does. Because all of that isn’t quite there yet. But we’re on our way. And already I feel like we’re about to forget what the old Regent Park used to be like. Toronto may have lived with that neighborhood for over 60 years, but future generations will barely know it existed.
Image: Shaigil
New York photographer Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York next month called Assembled Realities. I just heard about it through CityLab.
Here’s a bit of background on his work:
Pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary photography, Liao (b. 1977) creates large-scale panoramas by combining multiple exposures of the same location taken over the course of several hours. The resulting composite photographs are often fantastical; complex, hyper-real views that no single shot—or the eye—could capture.
And here’s two more of his photos:
For higher resolution versions, click here.
I love how his photos begin to distort reality and how they focus your attention – in many cases – on New York’s vibrant street life. I thought you might all enjoy them as well.
Yesterday, I discovered a Jerusalem-based Italian photographer by the name of Vittoria Mentasti. She has an ongoing project called “A Woman With Two Names”, that’s exploring the identity of Canada’s Inuit community in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Click on the photo below to see the entire gallery.
Here’s her language on the project:
"Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, is a city of 7000 people surrounded by tundra and the sea. The only way to get in or out of Iqaluit is from the air. I was interested in the cultural identity shift the Intuit community is experiencing and its consequences. The community, especially its younger members, are trapped between two worlds; they are losing touch with their past and are headed towards an uncertain future.
The process of forced assimilation carried out by the Canadian Government and the Church during the first half of the 20th century, deprived the Inuit of their social and spiritual customs. The transition away from their nomadic roots to modernized living has led to alcoholism, domestic violence and unemployment; symptoms of a society that is floating between its past and present.
Photographing off-moments of everyday life, I was looking to depict the sense of isolation, their ancestral connection to a harsh land, and the feeling of not belonging to “The South”, the way Inuit refers to the rest of the world.”
As one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the world, it’s easy to overlook what’s happening here in our country. But there are real problems in our north. In 2011, the Globe and Mail published a Focus Feature on Nunavut where it asked: Is Nunavut a failure of Canadian nation building?
"The rate of violent crime per capita in Nunavut is nine times what it is in the rest of Canada. The homicide rate is around 1,000 per cent of the Canadian average."
I’m not an expert on this matter, but it seems like everybody is picking up on the same phenomenon. We’ve created an in-between society. A society that’s completely ill-equipped to compete in the modern world, but that’s too far removed from its roots to turn back now. They were nomads and now they’re not.
This is hugely problematic and it’s only going to get worse. Already we’re seeing rising income inequality within “The South.” The returns to being smart are being amplified and twenty somethings with a killer app are turning down billion dollar acquisition offers.
What do you think this does to the north? I’d bet it makes it much worse.