people plan toronto continued

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Across1 Dancing in drag is risqué? (6)4 Heard about an occasional

worker's efforts (8)9 Dad's taste of dessert (6)10 Tori & Erin redesign space

within walls (8)12 Getting to hurting again? (8)13 Tablet shattered during

struggle (6)15 Clyde & Ian cope, using

reference material (12)19 Error is here, in loop —

symbolizing something (12)22 Tea set broken in family

home (6)23 Snoop ate, using kitchen

implement (8)26 Day of the week when Stu took

in article and rearranged yard (8)

27 Aha! Wii is scrambled in thisstate (6)

28 Put down flower duringcrisis? (8)

29 Measure of distance for merestchange (6)

Down1 Dear Edward picked up Page

and left (8)2 Investigation methods somehow

scare her (8)3 Heading a little downtown, or

thereabouts (5)5 Style or sound that's specific to

Northeast (4)6 Happiness involves couple of

evenings at altitude (9)7 Heard young ruler doesn't use

cursive? (6)

8 Thoroughfare where saintdisplayed greenery (6)

11 Sir, do no dancing inside thehouse (7)

14 Fearsome as lesions,harboring disease (7)

16 Jagged fissure in remedies foranimals (9)

17 Extinct beast is around,somehow (8)

18 Siege can disrupt some clientservers, perhaps? (8)

20 One hundred backed off—and stopped altogether (6)

21 Best at useless situation,for the most part (6)

24 Lose drink? (5)25 Call for piece of paper? (4)

THE COFFEE SHOP CRYPTIC CROSSWORDBY KIMBERLY DARLINGTON

Solution on Page 23

37 funds should only go towardscapital facilities. But since there is nolonger money in the city’s budget forheritage conservation district studies,communities need funds from Sec-tion 37 to ensure heritage zones willbe protected, according to SandraShaul, member of the Annex Resi-dents’ Association and the city’spreservation panel. Preserving theAnnex as a heritage district is as im-portant to its residents as building abasketball court at Jane Street andFinch Avenue is to its residents, shesaid.

Heritage enthusiasts in the Annexare content because they already se-cured $70,000 of Section 37 fundsfor the current Bloor Corridor Vi-sioning Study from the One Bedforddevelopment, but under the new pro-visions the city would not direct themoney to heritage studies.

Summit participants spent muchof the day discussing how the OntarioMunicipal Board (OMB) should nothave ruling authority over planningdecisions made by the City ofToronto, and discussed alternatives tothe controversial provincial board.

“One of the solutions is to havesome kind of planning committeethat has an overview and isn’t just in-volved to mediate issues,” saidHoward Cohen, former city planner,whose private Context Developmentbusiness worked on numerous con-dominium developments inToronto.

“The way to protect neighbour-hoods is to get the developmentwhere you want it, not to stop it,” hesaid. There’s an increasing demandin Toronto for three- or more bed-room condominiums for families,and as a result, developers are shiftingto meet those market demands, headded.

Cohen spoke about the impor-tance of communication betweendifferent groups because most coun-cillors share an unspoken pact toavoid interfering with issues in eachother’s wards. It’s also important forresidents to understand how difficultit is for professional developers to at-tend community meetings becauseresidents are often hostile towardsthem and eventually developers canbegin to believe the groups, accord-ing to Cohen.

“It’s like being kidnapped; peoplebegin to fall in love with the kidnap-per,” he said.

Matthew Blackett, publisher ofSpacing magazine, addressed specificways the city can help engage a widervariety of residents, especially ayounger generation who will becomethe next urban leaders.

“I firmly believe the city planningdepartment needs to become a mul-timedia producer,” he said. Heshowed Councillor Adam Gi-ambrone’s (Ward 18, Davenport)Facebook page as an example of howto inform young residents aboutcommunity issues and showed stillimages from the video game SimCity to illustrate how someone canlearn about urban planning througha creative medium.

“I think it’s much easier now be-cause of technology to reach out topeople, especially those with disabil-ities who use the Internet as theirmajor source of communication,”Blackett said. Traditional means ofcommunication, like paper flyers inthe mail, may not reach people whorent or struggle to read English.

“If there’s a higher rate of tenantinvolvement and they’re considered astakeholder in this, you’re going to beinvolved in a wider range of socio-economic and diversity [issues],”Blackett said.

Although many summit attendeeswere tenants, the vast majority werewhite, which Cohen pointed out isnot reflective of Toronto.

PPT organizers tried to invite anassorted panel of speakers and areconfident its membership will diver-sify as residents throughout the citynetwork and inform others of thegroup and its mission, according toShaul.

“We’re not going to put in a quotasystem where you have to have xnumber of people of x number ofshades in there, but what you have tohave is people go back to their neigh-bourhoods and get more people outto these meetings and make morepeople active,” Shaul said.

The next step for PPT is to organ-ize a database website for networkingand information sharing so residents’groups will no longer feel isolatedand members from different wardswill unite to support individual bat-tles, Shaul added.

PLAN, cont’d from page 1

18 T H E A N N E X G L E A N E R J U N E 2 0 0 7

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