Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto

Description

Winner: 2011 Toronto Heritage Award of Merit What is the ‘Toronto look’? Glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine. Shawn Micallef has been examining Toronto’s streetscapes for a decade. His psychogeographic reportages, some of which have been featured in EYE WEEKLY and Spacing magazine, situate Toronto's buildings and streets in living, breathing detail, and tell us about the people who use them; the ways, intended or otherwise, that they are being used; and how they are evolving. Stroll celebrates Toronto's details – some subtle, others grand – at the speed of walking and, in so doing, helps us to better get to know its many neighbourhoods, taking us from well-known spots like the CN Tower and Pearson Airport to the overlooked corners of Scarborough and all the way to the end of the Leslie Street Spit in Lake Ontario. Stroll features thirty-two walks, a flâneur manifesto, a foreword by architecture critic John Bentley Mays, dozens of hand-drawn maps by Marlena Zuber and a full-colour fold-out orientation map of Toronto. Table of Contents Foreword Flâneur Manifesto The Middle Yonge Street The Toronto Islands Harbourfront The CN Tower Nathan Phillips Square and the path System University Avenue Yorkville Metro Central YMCA Westish Dundas Street Pearson Airport Markland Wood Alderwood and Lake Shore Boulevard The CNE and the Western Waterfront Bathurst Street Dupont Street Northish Spadina St. Clair Avenue Eglinton Avenue and the Borough of York Yorkdale Mall The Sheppard Line The Finch Hydro Corridor Eastest Rouge Park Kingston-Galloway and Guildwood Village Scarborough City Centre and Bendale Dorset Park Thorncli¤e, Flemingdon Park and Don Mills Eastish The Danforth and Crescent Town Downtown East Side Zigzag Castle Frank and the Brick Works Gerrard Street The Beach The Port Lands and Leslie Spit