LBTQ Womens’ Group It Gets Better

An article interviewing members of the LBTQ Women’s Group about their “It Gets Better” vide

Density Bonusing and Development in Toronto

Height and density bonusing is a planning tool that municipalities in Ontario have authority to use by virtue of Section 37 of the provincial Planning Act, which allows a municipality to grant a developer bonus height or density beyond that allowed by prevailing zoning restrictions in exchange for the provision of community benefits. In Toronto, a major building boom has brought more than a decade of high-rise construction, mostly for new condominium towers and to a lesser extent new office buildings. Rising land values, a buoyant real estate market, and population and employment growth have created an ever-increasing incentive for developers to seek approval to build buildings taller and denser than envisioned by City Planners, local politicians, and the public at large. In order to obtain some degree of public benefit from this private development boom, the City of Toronto has extensively applied Section 37 to secure community benefits such as parkspace improvements, public art, and funds for new daycare facilities and affordable housing. To date, the City of Toronto has secured over $350 million through Section 37 agreements, as well as hundreds of in-kind benefits that likely double the total value of the City's Section 37 revenues to approximately$700 million. Although density bonusing policies have been in place in Ontario since 1990, this planning tool continues to be fraught with criticism that such bonusing opens the door to "let's make a deal planning" between developers and municipal actors, and permits community opposition to be silenced through legalized bribery. Furthermore, the nebulous logic of the Ontario Municipal Board, which makes planning decisions that trump the authority of municipal councils, has given rise to an increasingly prevalent trend of negotiated settlement; under such an arrangement a developer obtains expedited approvals in exchange for agreeing to the local Councillor's Section 37 demands, and revising their initial proposal to mitigate the most vociferous objections of City Planning staff and community actors. My major research paper contributes a new perspective to the limited existing literature on Section 37 agreements in Toronto, by undertaking distinct analyses four distinct actors: developers, local ward Councillors, City Planning staff and community actors. The broad objectives of my paper are as follows: first, I provide a detailed overview of the provincial and local policies that govern height and density bonusing; second, I examine several prominent development projects to analyze the effectiveness of past Section 37 agreements; third, I undertake separate analyses of each actor in Toronto's urban development process; fourth, I conduct case studies of bonusing practices in three Toronto wards, and; lastly, I discuss my findings, highlight patterns and trends, critique particular elements of Toronto's bonusing regime, and offer some recommendations regarding how it might be modified to function more effectively, consistently and equitably

Student Protest Article

An article from the magazine Quadangles covering a sit-in protest regarding homophobia on campus and lack of support for the GLBT Cente

El concepto de diseño en Ciencias de lo Artificial

El objetivo de este trabajo es desplegar manifestaciones del concepto de diseño en las Ciencias de lo Artificial, utilizando a Herbert Simon como marco conceptual, a John Holland como marco operativo, y a la Vida Artificial como un derivado joven donde podremos observar la potencialidad del uso del concepto de diseño sobre una plataforma computaciolnal que nos permita acceder al estudio de fenómenos puntuales desde una perspectiva artificial

An appraisal of the development of Seventh-Day Adventist mission in South Africa : a missiological evaluation.

Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.July 1997 marks the 110th anniversary of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church's existence in South Africa. During this time the denomination has augmented both organizationally and numerically. Notwithstanding the expansion in these dimensions though, a thorough perusal of the denomination's history and present modus-operandi makes it clear that all is not as it should be within the denomination. In an attempt to discover the fundamental causes for the malaise that exists within the denomination, chapter one begins by succinctly tracing the growth of apocalyptic and millennial thinking. Beginning from the Maccabean era it reveals not only the numerous transformations that took place in millennial discernment throughout the subsequent centuries, but also demonstrates how these oscillations prepared the "soil" which allowed the emergence of the Millerite Movement - the immediate forerunners of the SDA church. Chapter two unveils the emergent movement in America initially opposed to to the formation of any formal organizations and hesitant to commission any missionaries to foreign lands. This period was destined however to also be an era of maturation. In the wake of the doctrinal consolidation that eventually took place, came not only an evolvement of missionary consciousness but also the successful development of a unique tri-lateral missiological approach that the denomination would employ' with great success on the world's mission fields.In July 1887 the first SDA missionaries stepped onto South African shores. Chapter three reveals this emergent church greatly stirred by the organizational, institutional and missiological developments experienced by the church in America, looking set to rapidly emulate both the missionary paradigm and numerous accomplishments of its mother church. Chapter four discloses however, how this once dynamic, intrepid, missionary-minded church very quickly became bogged down in a quagmire of difficulties. Many of these occurrences and other serious issues that followed in the ensuing years of the twentieth century were indisputably detrimental to the church, seriously affecting both its missionary expansion and its development in this country. As the denomination in South Africa stands on the brink of the twenty first century there is no question, that unless some drastic measures are taken, that it could very soon find itself under the sword of Damocles. This impending crisis is augmented not only by its almost total lack of involvement in crucial social issues, conspicuous inconsistencies present in its organizational structure, and its manoeuvre from a once dynamic evangelistically orientated movement to an institutionalized organization, but also by the fact that indispensable facets of its missionary strategy are at the present moment no longer in evidence in its continued operations. There is no question that the denomination is faced not only with a missiological identity crisis but also with the very sobering question whether it is indeed fulfilling the missionary mandate it ironically still preaches and still so strongly believes in

Alcohol-related problems and self-help groups: the situational construction of self-image

The construction of self-image constitutes a process that accompanies the individual throughout the entire duration of their personal existence and is considerably influenced by the contexts in which the individual lives and grows. The existence of a stigma related to a form of behaviour, for example, in the case in question here, alcohol-related problems, emerges as a central element in the definition of self-image, both from the point of view of public opinion and private feelings. The aim of this study is to analyze whether and, if so, how the self-image of a person with alcohol-related problems changes, both in the public and private sphere, when they join the self-help group of the Club for Alcoholics in Treatment, i.e. when they begin to form part of a context that \u201clabels\u201d the condition the individual and their family unit find themselves in a different way