Thaddeus W. Sherlock

Also applicable to urban planners, we're in this together!

I'm hoping to use this platform more often; microblogging's admittedly hard to readjust to; getting out of a busy spell, but I hope to do it in a way that has me less anxious about what to write.

Whether as 1, 2 or 3 states.

Coming back to this again. I take for granted my friends and colleagues know this IRL, but as I have few posts here, I would like to make clear I don't support Hamas' attacks nor ideology. I hope from recognition, we see ceasefire + free/fair elections for Palestinian civilians and I/P coexistence.

Though the U.S. is hegemonically culturally Christian, the more time for which I have been an atheist, the more I feel that fabric is not intuitive or "just how it is". I particularly struggle with Manichean duality and mononormativity's immense weight, among other tenets.

I also saw a few days back that Trump tried to make my (ir)religion illegal, among many other bids to turn America into a Christian theocracy. As an avid student of passive secularism and the First Amendment, I would like to politely say "Fuck that shit." in communion with my non-Christian siblings.

This is the call that I urge: Free the October 7th hostages, free Palestine, free the Sumud flotilla hostages.

There are Palestinians and Israelis both; Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze who oppose Israeli state occupation and who will rebuild, plan and co-govern in peacetime recovery one day; alongside allies from near and afar. These are the people we ought to support and will need to come to.

Your identity or your origins may be helpful to talk to your family, friends, coworkers or community about this issue in a way that connects with them.

That said, a coalition is a community. We need all hands on deck to stop the Palestinian genocide and the attack on Gaza City; Please Write To Or Demonstrate Against Your Representative(s)! Either of the electoral or activist routes are worth pursuing, but both are important.

Very late update to cap off this thread and I originally would have discussed the Toronto bubble by-law in geopolitical context, but things have so rapidly changed over the last few months in such a way that dwarfs or alters the context of the by-law.

It's absolutely mind-boggling to think people are still prioritizing parking over people in 2025, but as someone knowledgeable about this site, it is ostensibly motivated by classism, racism and cultural inertia around drug use and how people live and build their communities in suburbia.

I'm asking a rhetorical question here, but what's so scary about aiding our neighbors instead of privileging parking and drivers?

To me, the More Neighbor call has been to limit harmful forms and externalities of community consultation and to respect folks' dignity through obtaining housing.

I find people's eyes glaze over a bit when I talk capital budget so I'll try and make this a little more compelling. In 2024 in Toronto:
-$80 million budgeted for new shelters was not spent.
-$384 million for new affordable housing was not spent.
You can debate why but it happens every year.

I walk a rhetorical path manyfold tread, but I commend @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social for his NYC Democratic mayoral primary victory. He, like others before/after him, finds his strength in a place liberal establishments don't: advocating for policies reflecting intersectional working class needs.

Housing Day is not over yet! All of these motions are still coming to City Council next week for review by all Councillors! I'm anticipating opposition will try to poison pill #sixplexes and other measures to achieve gentle density. Make your voice heard!

I've never understood this.

Everyone wants less congestion, safer streets, & a nicer living environment -yet taking common sense steps to do this is regularly demeaned as "woke."

What's so bad abt breathing cleaner air, having less noise & creating safe routes for your kids to walk/bike to school?

Also shouting out a public consultation I'm dropping into. Collaborating with @moreneighboursto.bsky.social to get people to come out for supportive #housing in #Toronto. Will host a social event after.

We need to build all parts of the housing continuum more than ever.

lu.ma/4przixaz

I was glad to attend the presentation the #geo_uoft team put on in April - their project is an insightful and sobering look into the opportunity costs of running public parking.

It's astounding that I can get $5/day ($150/mo) rent if I were in a car when most housing goes for $1800+

San Antonio Express-News ® @ExpressNews Sen. Rafael Edward Cruz, who uses the preferred name Ted, has introduced a bill to limit the use of preferred names and pronouns.

headline construction masterclass

Alt text because I was too fast to the trigger:

A view of the Bloor-Danforth subway tracks looking east from inside a subway car around Resurrection Rd. A subway car is stopped in the westerly direction and another is stopped ahead of me in the eastbound direction. The signal lights are lit red.

Really odd TTC boondoggle today; took 6-7 minutes to get from Kipling to Islington eastbound on the Bloor subway. I wonder if signal issues at St. George are percolating this far west.

Humans are weird and can do immense good from places some people don't always expect; he and Sarah were deprived of that.

That's the take-away I think is most relevant to urban planning and is why broad-base coalitions are important to build. More to come this week on I/P & planning in Toronto.

Coming back to this, I would have likely disagreed with some views that Yaron held; but the reprehensible thing is that he was stochastically targeted as a Jewish person that night.

...the pretense of this exact kind of violence, vigilantism will not deradicalize people. It will only serve to foment chains of generational conflict and tribalism, play further into fascists' hands and beget genocide rather than end it.

Them having been staff members at an Israeli embassy does not make that violence any more okay. We are already in a rising tide of anti-Semitism, in the U.S. and many other places, that I and we need to fight.

Speaking from a city that just passed a free speech zone by-law under...

I would like to condemn the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. They were both involved in humanitarian aid and coalition-building work and were deprived not only of their own agency, but the ability to enact future change in/through their respective institutions. May they rest in peace.

This seemed to be a pesky omission when discussing Bell v. R [1979] in our planning law class. I hope we can go that distance and end proxies to people zoning as well.

Thank you! The motion is being heard tomorrow; Toronto seems to be looking at a similar policy direction to Seattle. As someone also trying to maximize both housing/trees, the response is appreciated.

Coming back to this thread because I'm writing a letter on a pending motion in Toronto to increase tree protections in its zoning code. May I ask to include these drawings in the letter to demonstrate tree cover benefits for point-access blocks?