Direct Action – Things Are Good

Women Changing Cities

A new book has come out to celebrate Women Changing Cities for the better. Cities around the world are dealing with climate change, inequality, and an assortment of local issues and often we forget that these cities can do more than react – they can lead. This book takes a look at 19 women who are leading our urban fabrics into the future to ensure a better locally life and, in some cases, shaping the globe.

The book spans 11 geographies, profiling 19 women in leadership: mayors, civil servants, entrepreneurs and advocates who, through their work, are fundamentally reimagining how cities can and should function. A brief preview of some of their stories are below. What unites these women across wildly different cultural and political contexts are five recurring themes: a commitment to listening and empathy; an intersectional, long-term vision; care as a social value; the power of coalition-building; and the courage to prioritize having an impact over holding on to power and pushing through the opposition.

It’s Toronto Climate Week!

View of downtown Toronto from a drone shot above U of T

Toronto Climate Week is back and you should be attending. The list of events has grown to include everything from AI clean tech to using discarded plastics to make crafts. There are sessions for sustainable investment and sessions for how to clean the air in your home. Some parts of TCW are about global issues while others are focused on the individual, so no matter your level of interest you will likely find something that relates to you.

Toronto Climate Week (TOCW) is where Canada meets the global climate conversation — a city-wide series of events, rooted in the heart of Toronto, bringing together innovators, business leaders, policymakers, researchers, artists, and community members to accelerate real climate progress.

It was born from a bold grassroots vision: to create a Canadian platform that unites climate action with culture, innovation, and community. Its mission is to position Toronto and Canada as a globally recognized climate hub.

Find events at the official Toronto Climate Week calendar at tocw.ca/events

Check it out!

Tiny Gardens Everywhere: Let’s Get Growing!

When times get tough it’s time to get gardening! Actually, even when times are easy it’s time to get gardening. Even a small plot of land can produce a lot of benefit for you, your community, and improve where you live. Historian Dr. Kate Brown recently published a book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City about how little plots of land made bog changes in our modern cities.

After hearing or reading what Dr. Brown has to say I’ll bet you’re going to start plotting out your plot.

From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban gardening: nurturing health, hope, and community.

This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned.

Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, too: in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership.

Check out the book here.

Local Man Allowed to Keep Garden

Biodiversity loss is a large issue around the globe and there’s a small action that everyone can take to help biodiversity survive: grow native plants. Even a small plot of land can provide a refuge for pollinators and birds that are at risk, yes small plots in an urban environment are a big help. A man in the suburban city of Mississauga was fined by the city because of the biodiversity on his lawn and he fought back and won! No anybody in the city has a clear right to provide a safe place for tiny beings.

“I felt that this is something that I could do personally, in order to address the problem of biodiversity decline and global warming,” he said.

On Tuesday, Ruck won a self-represented case against the City of Mississauga, challenging part of a weed control bylaw that prohibits growing grass over 20 centimetres and growing certain plants. Ruck was seeking $2.46 million in damages and other relief, but he was not awarded any money, according the ruling.
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Ruck says that after some time of leaving parts of his lawn uncut, weeds were growing from seeds that had blown in from the wind, in line with his goal of encouraging biodiversity and pollination.

Civic Searchlight: A Tool to Fight Disinformation

Picture of Vancouver City Hall

Canada’s National Observer as seen that journalists are feeling the years of budgets cuts and the lack of institutional supports and decided to do something about it. The National Observer has released a fantastic new tool to help Canadian journalists research and identify issues in municipalities throughout the country. The tool known as Civic Searchlight makes it easy to track issues and find what’s being discussed at the local level across Canada, and they are adding more towns and cities!

In at least one municipality — Cochrane, Alta. — reporting based on Civic Searchlighthas been instrumental in providing the council with the information it needed to stay in the net-zero program the town had been part of for more than 20 years. Canada’s National Observer’s reporting was the deciding factor in the town remaining in the program — that’s according to the group that targeted Cochrane with climate misinformation to try to convince it to leave. “We would have won in Cochrane if that hadn’t happened,” the group’s organizer said in a meeting.