City Space
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City Space
How 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 s...
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37 Episoden
Solving mini city mysteries
This week on City Space, our team attempts to unravel a few puzzling urban enigmas. Can anything be a street name? Does a patch of grass qualify as a...

How Frederick G. Gardiner shaped modern Toronto, for better or worse
If you drive in Toronto you know the name “Gardiner”. The waterfront expressway was named after the man who dominated Toronto politics at a crucial po...

How an Indigenous-led development is forcing Vancouver to face tough questions on reconciliation
Across Canada, more and more First Nations are turning to real estate and housing development as money makers, shaping the future of Canadian cities....

The Parisian Calgary that could have been
In 1977, a 100-page hand-painted plan for a white, stone, European-style Calgary was discovered in the walls of a garage. The illustrations show a tot...

Is expropriation the solution to a housing crisis? The majority of Berliners think so
Is expropriation, or forcing corporations to sell apartments to the government, a way to ease the housing crisis? Berlin seems to think so. In a landm...

Pedal politics: How Toronto’s bike lanes became so divisive
Study after study shows that bike lanes make roads safer for everyone and have a minimal effect on traffic congestion. Yet, in Canadian cities, they’r...

Coming soon: Season 5 of City Space
The decisions that cities make now - on housing, transit, and development - will shape how we live for decades to come. These aren't just policy issue...

A conversation with Justin Trudeau on Canada’s housing crisis
Earlier this month, the City Space team met Prime Minister Trudeau for a sit-down interview to get his thoughts on the biggest challenges facing our c...

Will the cost of hosting the FIFA World Cup pay off for Toronto?
The 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...

Can Chinatown, Vancouver, survive the neighbourhood's revitalization?
Canada’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 developmen...

Prohibition's 100-year hangover in a Toronto neighbourhood
At 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 w...

Halifax is allowing homeless encampments in its parks. Should other cities do the same?
On August 18, 2021, downtown Halifax made international news when the city erupted in a sprawling protest against the removal of illegal homeless shel...

Does heritage preservation stand in the way of housing?
The 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...

Was the Spadina Expressway a crisis averted or a missed opportunity?
The Spadina Expressway was one of five urban highways that were nearly built in Toronto in the 70s. The plan would have bulldozed neighbourhoods so th...

Coming soon: Season 4 of City Space
Who 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 an...

Who are city festivals for?
Festivals can transform cities by making space for overlooked people and cultures. Cities all over the world are facing major crises — from mounting i...

Tell us what you think about our show!
City 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-s...

Will Canada be able to house all the immigrants it hopes to welcome by 2025?
Last year, the federal government set an ambitious new immigration target — to bring in half a million permanent residents a year by 2025. While the c...

Urban wildlife: How humans and animals can better coexist in cities
Whether 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...

How can cities prepare for a rapidly aging population?
We’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...

Why are ER wait times so bad in Canadian cities?
Burning 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 Ontar...

Are smart cities really such a smart idea?
The 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....

Coming soon: Season three of City Space
Canadian 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...

Supply alone won’t fix our housing crisis. Here are three other factors
If 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 wi...

How online shopping is changing our city streets – and what comes next
With 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...

Hybrid work is here to stay. What will that mean for our downtown cores?
If 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 experi...

From tipping to farming: How we should change the way we think about food
Cities 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...

How can cities prepare for climate change?
Climate change isn’t just coming, it’s here. And cities are uniquely susceptible to its effects because of their population density and infrastructur...

How protests put Ottawa’s capital-city flaws on display
From late January, when the first protesters’ trucks and cars piled into downtown Ottawa, to mid-February, when the Canadian government enacted emerge...

Coming soon: Season two of City Space
The 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...

How do we build better public transit?
Public 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...

How unaffordable rent is pushing out the people our cities need
Soaring rent costs is a global phenomenon — and the problem is officially in Canadian cities. In 2020, the average price of rental housing in Toronto...

Who are public spaces – like parks or transit systems – designed for?
Public 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 qu...

Cars vs. bikes: What do cities actually need to be safe and accessible?
The 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” t...

Can we break the middle class of their addiction to sprawl?
A 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...

Should all Canadian cities be 15-minute cities?
The 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 bi...

Coming soon: City Space
A 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 glob...