Greening Greater Toronto is the name of a report released today by the Toronto City Summit Alliance. It has been mentioned in media reports (keep reading below) leading up to its release and will be made available online by the TCSA.

In a gesture of political support, the plan's launch was announced today at the Steam Whistle Brewery by Mayor David Miller.

The document is a plan put together collaboratively between local politicians, the business community, and major NGOs, to make Toronto "the greenest urban region in the world". The Greening Greater Toronto coalition will be releasing more recommendations in coming months but has started by identifying these major goals:

1) reduce GHG emissions;
2) improve air and water quality;
3) increase sustainable land use with more green space;
4) implement waste reduction that makes sense.

City planners have nixed the Berkeley Playing Fields, a sustainable design meets Toronto condo development project. The striking and imaginative design would have offered a modern counterpoint to the historic Berkeley Church, which was to remain standing (and protected!) under the new building.

"Make no little plans," celebrated Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham once remarked, "they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized."

Apparently the opposite is true in Toronto, where un-magical condo after condo goes up - I can hardly tell one from another - and a stunning project like this only stirs the ire of city planners.

Snow storms are long gone, but over the last few weeks we've seen a barrage of wild spring storms. Torrential rain, thunderstorms, and even a rare tornado watch last week have had us wondering (as usual) whether or not these weather patterns are normal.

During the past relentless winter, city snow removal crews collected massive amounts of snow and debris from city streets and deposited it in a few locations, one being in a lot near Toronto Police 22 Division, not far from Kipling Station.

Back on April 1st, I posted a for-fun contest to see who could come closest (without going over) to guessing the date that the massive snow mountain would reach complete melt. On May 17th I provided an update and more photos. Most people guessed complete melt dates in May and early June, but the big brown mountain is still around.

Above is how it looks today, and below is a composite image that shows the melt progression from April 1st, to May 17th, to today. It looks like those guessing July or August may right after all.

Art exhibitions don't often catch my attention but FishNet's "The Great Lakes Craft & Release Project" certainly did.

I guess I'm a sucker for pictures of kids holding fish.

Students from local elementary schools were armed with life-size models of fish species from the great lakes, to create a walkable hatchery with over 1000 fish hanging from the gallery ceiling. It's called the "Release Phase" and is meant to be a virtual underwater tour of the Great Lakes including details of Great Lakes history and ecology.

Photo taken and question posed by guest contributor Steven de Sousa.

Sometimes a photo is worth a thousand words, and sometimes a photo very poignantly asks a very direct question. What are your thoughts on the commonly observed yet rarely addressed problem of recycling sorting (not just on the TTC)? Is it a problem of illiteracy, apathy, or ignorance?

Green buildings and LEED certification are virtually synonymous in North America. But green buildings and Toronto are not. The city is failing to embrace the "green revolution" in building design, which takes into account sustainability criteria such as energy efficiency, materials, indoor environmental quality, and water use.

According to the CaGBC's data (the LEED authority in Canada), Toronto only has 8 certified buildings, which puts us well behind smaller cities like Vancouver (15 buildings) and Calgary (11 buildings).