Direct Action – Things Are Good

In Vienna Anyone Can Build a Park

A picture of an urban small public garden / sitting space. Grätzloasen

To make Central Park in New York City they rated entire neighbourhoods and forcibly moved people, today in Vienna you don’t need to push anybody out of the way or destroy anything to get a park. Vienna, like most cities, has a lot of room for new playgrounds, patios, performance, and whatever else you can use open space for. To make use of this space the city has opened up the ability to make a parkette to anyone, so if you want a new park in your area just go ahead and do it (ok, after you fill out some forms). These new small-scale parks even get a weird name: Grätzloasen.

This is a great initiative and I hope that other cities take the same approach.

“While we were building it, I remember there were a few people looking at it very weirdly. A few days later, we had neighbours say: ‘Why would you take away a parking space?’” Jana says.

But they seem to have come around. This spring the grätzloase saw more construction as they installed a retractable sunroof. “We had a weekend of building together. Everybody that walked by said: ‘Oh! This is so nice.’”
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Building parklets could be one way of warming people up to the idea. Sabrina Halkic, the managing director of Local Agenda 21, describes them as an example of “tactical urbanism” – low-cost, often citizen-led improvements to the built environment. She sees the grätzloasen as a gateway to further changes.

Protecting Canadian Privacy and Sovereignty

Peace Tower at Parliament Hill in Ottawa

The Canadian government has made it clear that Canada is all in on AI for better or for worse. Amongst many concerns with the AI approach is the protection of both Canada’s sovereignty and its people’s privacy. Unfortunately the government has opted to not protect privacy and to spy on every Canadian to the point where privacy-first companies are saying they can no longer operate in Canada if the bill passes. Thankfully there are organizations like Open Media that are championing the rights of Canadians and you can help them by signing their recent petition. You cannot have political sovereignty without individual privacy.

Privacy regulators, election experts, and the public have all consistently told the government we need privacy protections to apply to political campaigning. Even Parliamentary and Senate committees say permanent party exemption from privacy law is unacceptable.

But the federal Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP have not only refused to permit any meaningful oversight of their activities; they’ve worked together to thwart it!

Over the last few years, they’ve initiated court challenges and forced through legislation, most recently Bill C-4, that effectively excludes them from normal privacy obligations that would otherwise apply under provincial laws. They’ve even granted themselves immunity from past violations of these privacy laws—going back to the year 2000.

Privacy is not partisan. With AI already supercharging voter micro-targeting, we need real privacy oversight over all party activities in place today. The basic integrity of our democracy depends on getting it right.

Take action now!
Read more.

A Blender Can Improve Your Garden

A small vegetable garden is good for your health, your neighbourhood, your sense of self, and even your pocketbook. In many backyard gardens a simple composter is usually enough to refresh the soil and keep the plants happy. If you’re limited in space you can still make use of your kitchen scraps in a garden using the power of a blender. A household blender can speed up the decomposition process by chopping up food waste into a slurry that will quickly be consumed by all those nice little microbes. When you do this don’t go easy on the water and don’t dump all the slurry in one spot – spread it out for best results.

Blender compost can be made out of any blendable kitchen scraps that you’d normally throw into your compost pile, such as vegetable and fruit peels and cores, cooked pasta, eggshells, coffee grounds, and loose-leaf tea. If you don’t mind a bit more mess, you can also blend in premoistened paper towels, cut flowers, and dried autumn leaves. Just like with any compost, steer clear of blending meat or dairy waste, which attracts pests.

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!