About Spacing

Spacing

Spacing is a Toronto-based magazine about urban affairs and the public realm, launched in December 2003. Focusing on issues affecting public space in Toronto — and, in special issues, nationally — it was originally published in-house by the Toronto Public Space Committee and spun off as a wholly independent magazine after its first issue. Published three times a year, it has been critically acclaimed by the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Utne Reader, which nominated it as best new title at its independent magazine awards in 2004. In 2006 it won a Canadian National Magazine Award for Best Editorial Package for its "History of Our Future" issue.

Overview

Each issue of Spacing is organized around a theme affecting the public realm, with the cover carrying a prominent headline announcing it. Past themes have included pedestrians in public space, street postering, public art, public transit, the future plans for the city that were never built, the top ten public space issues for the 2006 municipal elections, profiles of Toronto's intersections, water, the car and the city, winter, animals, the hungry city, and Canadian public spaces. The cover-line sequence — from "The Fight to Save Postering" and "Everyone is a Pedestrian" through "The History of Our Future," "Searching for the Better Way," "What Kind of City Do You Want?," "The Car and the City," "City Hall," "Winter," "Canadian Public Spaces," "The Hungry City," to "The National Issue" — reads as a chronicle of Toronto's urban debates across two decades.

The magazine is known for its street-scene photography: Toronto photographers Matt O'Sullivan, Rannie Turingan, Miles Storey, and Sam Javanrouh are known for the images featured in its issues. Its publisher and creative director is Matthew Blackett, a co-creator of the magazine; senior editor Shawn Micallef — Toronto Star urban affairs columnist and author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto — has been a central editorial voice.

History

Spacing was launched in December 2003 by the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC), an activist group concerned with the city's public realm. The TPSC published the first issue in-house, then spun the magazine off as a wholly independent publication; the two organizations have supported each other on occasion since. The first issue's theme, "The Fight to Save Postering," announced the magazine's activist DNA: it began as an intervention in a specific urban debate — the city's attempt to restrict the postering that animates Toronto's streetscapes — and grew into a standing forum for the city's public-space conversations.

Critical recognition came quickly. The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post all acclaimed the young magazine, and Utne Reader nominated it as best new title at its 2004 independent magazine awards, nominating it again in 2006 for Best Local Coverage and Best Design. In 2006, Spacing won the Canadian National Magazine Award for Best Editorial Package for the "History of Our Future" issue — remarkable for a small independent title.

The magazine expanded its footprint in the late 2000s and 2010s. In 2009, it announced the launch of Spacing Atlantic, a blog going live that October, joining Spacing Montreal and the Toronto site in a three-pronged network, with Ottawa and Vancouver blogs to follow — publisher and creative director Matthew Blackett describing a deliberate strategy of city-by-city expansion. In 2010, senior editor Shawn Micallef launched Stroll City, a Twitter-feed project in partnership with the Onestop Media Group's TTC network of digital displays on subway platforms: Micallef tweeted via the Stroll City account, his messages appearing on subway platform screens, with commuters invited to reply and see their responses displayed — a public conversation about the city conducted in the city's own transit system. The project's inspiration was Micallef's book Stroll, and the magazine's election issue was released at the Toronto Word on the Street Festival that September.

The magazine also established a physical presence: a Spacing store at 401 Richmond Street West in Toronto, described by visitors as the city's best bookstore about Toronto — stocking books on the city's history, architecture, and social change alongside TTC-themed merchandise — giving the brand a retail home in the heart of the downtown arts district.

Content

Each of the three annual issues is a themed package: long-form articles, photo essays, and commentary organized around a single aspect of urban life. The magazine's subjects are the physical and social fabric of the city — sidewalks, transit, parks, water, winter, food, animals, rules, spectacle, and the institutions of City Hall — treated with a mix of advocacy, journalism, and visual storytelling. Its election-issue tradition gives readers a public-space lens on municipal politics, rating the issues that matter to the city's shared spaces — the top ten public space issues for the 2006 municipal elections being an early example of the form.

The magazine's digital extensions — the city blogs, including Spacing Atlantic, Spacing Montreal, and the Toronto site — carry the conversation between print issues, while projects like Stroll City have taken the magazine's urbanism into the streets and subways themselves. The brand's content, in all its forms, is unified by a single question: what kind of city do we want? The cover-line archive, running from the first issue's "Fight to Save Postering" through "The National Issue," shows how the magazine's agenda expanded from local activist intervention to a national conversation about Canadian public space — including dedicated issues on water, winter, and the country's shared spaces.

Coverage & Audience

Spacing is a Toronto magazine with national reach — its themes are rooted in the city's streets but its "National Issue" and city-blog network extend the conversation across Canada. Its audience is the city's engaged urbanists: planners, architects, activists, journalists, and citizens who care about the public realm. The magazine's critical acclaim in the national press and its National Magazine Award attest to an influence beyond its print run.

The Spacing store at 401 Richmond gives the brand a physical gathering point, and the magazine's events, election coverage, and transit-system interventions make it a participant in the city's civic life, not merely an observer of it. Publisher Matthew Blackett's advice to small publishers — host events, offer targeted editorial content, sell merchandise related to the magazine's focus, seek sponsorships, team up with other businesses — describes the playbook Spacing itself followed: the store, the blogs, the Stroll City subway project, and the festival presence are all extensions of a magazine that treats the city as both subject and venue.

Ownership

Spacing is an independent magazine, spun off from the Toronto Public Space Committee after its first issue. Its publisher and creative director is Matthew Blackett, who co-created the magazine. Senior editor Shawn Micallef has been a defining editorial presence.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, spacing.ca, anchors a network of city sites and blogs that extend its print coverage online. Its history — from the TPSC's first issue through the spin-off, the award wins, the blog network expansion, and projects like Stroll City — is documented in its Wikipedia entry and in trade press coverage from Masthead Online, which has followed its launches and initiatives for more than a decade. The Toronto Public Space Committee's own records preserve the origin story: a three-times-yearly magazine on the city's public realm, published in-house for one issue before becoming wholly independent.

Recognition

Spacing is a Jane Jacobs Prize-winning magazine, a distinction noted in co-founder Shawn Micallef's University of Toronto biography. The prize, named for the urbanist who championed lively, walkable neighbourhoods, suits a title devoted to the public realm — the streets, transit lines and public spaces that were Jacobs's own subject.