Map of the Week: The Star's neighbourhood map, version 1.0

TORONTO STAR FILE

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Thank you for your comments last week. Many have found their way on to the new version of the map.

Along with some changes of colour to sharpen contrast (and getting rid of a grey that was too close to the Google Maps default grey), here are the changes:

1. Extended Corktown down to King, then Eastern, Jarvis to River

2. Rexdale and The Elms: divided with diagonal hydro line, not straight north-south line

3. Leslieville extended west to Booth, south to Eastern, stopping at Gerrard on the north, instead of the CP tracks. Blank triangle created in the area of the Gerrard Square Mall is now in Riverdale

4. Bloor West Village extended east to Clendenan

5. Created Jane and Finch: Jane to park, Shoreham to Grandravine

6. Created Northwood Park: Finch on the north, Keele to the east, Sheppard on south, Black Creek on the west

7. Created Church and Wellesley: Bloor to Carlton, Yonge to Jarvis

8. Created Tam O'Shanter: VP to Kennedy, 401 north to Huntingwood

9. Removed line between Christie Pits and Seaton Village

10. Created Pleasantview: VP, Sheppard, 404 and Finch

11. Don Mills extended west to creek

12. South Annex becomes Harbord Village

13. St. Lawrence entended north to King, west to Yonge

14. Created U of T St. George Campus, with boundaries as shown

15. Created Seven Oaks: Ellesmere and 401, Morningside to creek on west

16. Dublin Heights shrinks, with Sheppard as the northern boundary

17. Created Bathurst Manor: Sheppard, Dufferin, Finch and Don River

18. Flemingdon Park extended east to the Don

19. Leaside: Added business area to the east

20. West Don Lands created. Borders as shown

21. South Riverdale separated from Riverdale at Gerrard.

Map of the Week: The Star's neighbourhood map (beta version)

TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR

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After the 1998 amalgamation of the six former cities of Metro Toronto came a debate about geography - like many other things, it could be blamed on Mike Harris.

To some, referring to former cities like Etobicoke and Scarborough (especially Scarborough, for some reason) was an anachronism to be avoided. 'Toronto's east end,' once the area of the former City of Toronto east of the Don, was now the entire metropolis east of Yonge St. as far as Pickering. Somewhere there was a 'north end,' but where the east was more north than east was never completely clarified.

This system rarely seemed to be followed to its logical conclusion, locating Queen and Spadina in the ‘south end,’ (or Ward's Island in the 'southmost end') which was probably just as well.

For a time, the Star was influenced by this, banning the mention of Scarborough in crime stories,  although we have also freely referred to former towns in the 905, like Thornhill and Port Credit.

Public Editor Kathy English tackled the issue recently:

This policy is well-intentioned. But the reality is that the Star's newsroom has been inconsistent in applying the policy, leading to charges of unfairness from some Scarborough readers. Other readers are confused by the various ways in which Star writers try to locate crime in Toronto without referring to those historic geographic areas that, while officially dissolved, live on in the hearts and minds of many readers, and indeed, in institutional names like the "Scarborough Hospital."

… Does any ban on using those historic Toronto place names serve readers? If Toronto is indeed a city of neighbourhoods, should we aim to cite those more exact locations? Is Scarborough indeed "east Toronto?" Is Etobicoke "the west end?" While a map of Toronto indicates that, many long-time residents define east Toronto as the eastern reaches of the old City of Toronto. In their minds, east of that is indeed Scarborough.

For those who have forgotten where the six pre-amalgamation cities were, a map is here.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that there is a limited relationship between communities and municipal governments. Brooklyn, for instance, hasn’t been a city in its own right for more than a century, but I have yet to hear of anybody referring to ‘New York’s mid-south end’. The idea that a recognizable area like East York can never be referred to, like Alsace and Lorraine after 1870 (‘Speak of it never – think of it always’) seems extreme, and doesn’t reflect the way residents think about their city.

But bringing back the pre-1998 cities for style purposes doesn’t solve the problem. The cities of Scarborough and Etobicoke were recognizable chunks of the map, but the borders of the former City of York (at left) were very eccentric. And the former City of Toronto poses its own problems – are we really supposed to spend the next twenty or thirty years referring to ‘the former City of Toronto’?

However, there is a third way – using the city’s rich tradition of neighbourhood names (Swansea, for example, or Agincourt) in a way that everyday urban culture recognizes.

With this in mind, feature writer Kenneth Kidd recently literally went back to the drawing board on the neighbourhood issue, carving up the city into 158 areas with a marker on an enormous laminated map. It’s in beta, and we’re posting an online version this week to find out what you think.

It’s in the nature of a map like this to be fluid and debated. Many trees could be killed, or electrons rearranged, over the Beach(es) alone: the Beach or the Beaches? And where is the northern boundary: Queen, Kingston Road, or as hopeful real estate agents would sometimes have it, the Danforth or points north?

So this week's map is to a large extent about the comment thread, particularly for those of you living in the 416. (A 905 map is planned.)

- If you live in the Toronto megacity, what do you call your neighbourhood?

- If you live in a shape on the map, does the name match the one you would use? If not, what name would you use?

 - If you live in a part of the map not covered by a shape, what would you call your neighbourhood?

The map is here.

Maps elsewhere: Outed

Thanks to colleague Brandie Weikle for pointing this out: an anonymously authored mashup based on the list of donors to the campaign to pass California's Proposition 8, which revoked same-sex marriages in that state when it succeeded.

Some on the list object. The Times explains:

... Supporters have filed suit in Federal District Court in Sacramento seeking a preliminary injunction of a state election law that requires donors of $100 or more to disclose their names, addresses, occupations and other personal information. In particular, the suit seeks to stop the final filing for the 2008 election, which is due Jan. 31. That filing includes donations made in the closing days of the campaign, when the proposition surged to victory.

James Bopp Jr., a lawyer from Indiana who filed the lawsuit on the behalf of Protect Marriage, said the harassment of Proposition 8 supporters violated their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.

“The cost of transparency cannot be discouragement of people’s participation in the process,” said Mr. Bopp, who has argued several prominent cases challenging campaign-finance laws in California and other states. “The highest value in the First Amendment is speech, and some amorphous idea about transparency cannot be used to subvert those rights.”

My own view is that public records are public records and that information wants to be free, but it's interesting to see modern tools make facts that once would have been buried in obscure files (I remember long afternoons spent in the Commission on Election Finances reading room, poring over heavy tomes) instantly made public in sophisticated, interactive ways.

Eightmaps.com itself is registered through this outfit, which does create the appearance of wanting to have it both ways.

Street racing (part two): Ontario's top 20 and the GTA's hot zone

PAWEL DWULIT/TORONTO STAR

This week's map, showing Ontario's top 20 postal areas for street racing suspension rates, looks very different from the drunk driving map from a few weeks ago.

The drunk driving map was rural, small-town and northern, while the street racing map is strongly centred in the GTA. Only three communities on the street racing top 20 list are outside the GTA and Dufferin County: Petawawa, Aylmer, and Hanmer, north of Sudbury. (The only community to appear on both maps is Petawawa.)

There is a very strong pattern of high street racing rates in an area stretching northwest from Vaughan, covering all of Caledon and Orangeville and stretching into Dufferin County. Only part of this pattern was visible last week.

The street racing age graph is different from the drunk driving graph, with its two peaks in early adulthood and middle age - it simply peaks at 21 and declines.

17% of the drivers suspended for street racing were female, about the same proportion that we saw with impaired driving. Unlike drunk driving, the age graph for female street racers looks more or less identical to the age graph for male ones.

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I omitted FSAs with fewer than five suspensions during the period. For the record, here are the areas dropped from the top 20 list:

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Map of the Week: Street racing (part one)

AARON LYNETT/TORONTO STAR

Licence suspensions for street racing, September 30, 2007 to September 12, 2008, per 1,000 by postal area.

In the Greater Toronto Area, street racing (map) seems to be centred in the area of Peel between Orangeville and Brampton, spilling over into nearby areas of York Region around Kleinburg and Woodbridge.

The one standout exception to the general pattern is M5J, the postal area that takes in the waterfront condos downtown. This is, I hope coincidentally, the neighbourhood across Yonge St. from the Toronto Star. M5J has the third-highest rate in the GTA, and (not to give away next week's map) the fifth-highest rate in the province.

Other than M5J, there is no clear concentration in the 416 area code, other than M2L, in the Bayview and York Mills area.

One interesting thing is that this map doesn't have very much in common with the GTA impaired driving map. Accused street racers seem concentrated in one area, mostly, while impaired drivers are spread all over the GTA with higher numbers in more car-dependent areas.

Low-population L0L, along the 404 in Whitchurch-Stouffville, had only three suspensions during the period but is included on the map out of consistency.

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Information was obtained from the Ministry of Transportation under access-to-information legislation.