We're wrapping up the week-long launch of our new SUMMER SHORTS series by giving the last word to the executive director of Jane's Walk, Jane Farrow. Spacing contributor Laura-Louise Tobin tagged along on Jane's tour of the east-end Toronto neighbourhood she calls home. A pajama-clad gardener and dog racing were just a couple of the topics of conversation.... Starting next week, every time we have a story to tell we'll continue to post it at the blog and put it out on iTunes. Sometimes you'll get one a day or a few a week. Full-length programs will be back in the fall, but in the meantime, enjoy Spacing Radio, in small doses.

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• Jane’s Walk: East-End Wander - shortcuts, pet portraits and bungalows
• Jane’s Walk: Jane’s Walk Team

Toronto's Exhibition Place used to be one of the top spots to be, and to be seen, in the summer. Its reputation as a hotspot may have suffered over the years but its heritage buildings have withstood the test of time. Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone led a tour of the grounds for this year's Jane's Walks. Spacing contributor Laura-Louise Tobin tagged along.

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• Jane's Walk: Exhibition Place - Heritage Buildings
• City of Toronto: Deputy Mayor/Councillor Joe Pantalone

SUMMER SHORTS is on the air! To launch our summer season, all this week we're featuring Jane's Walks. In this SHORT, reporter Sarah Bridge takes us to Jane/Finch to explore the Toronto neighbourhood through the eyes of some of the women trying to get us to look beyond the street names. One particularly well-known pedestrian, Mayor David Miller, also tagged along.

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• Jane's Walk: Jane and Finch walk - From Young Women's Eyes
• Guided by Women's Leadership Conference group: WORC IT (Women of Race Climbing It Together)

photo by Jesse Colin Jackson

To celebrate the launch of our new SUMMER SHORTS series, all this week we're bringing you the sounds of this year's Jane's Walks. Today we ask: what does a wandering rooster say about a neighbourhood? And what exactly does the term 'neighbourhood' refer to anyway? Spacing reporter Andrew Walsh went along on the Neighbourhoods 101 walk, led by social activist Diane Dyson, through Toronto's Greenwood Park community.

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• Jane's Walk: Neighbourhoods 101 walk
• Diane Dyson's Blog: Belonging Community

photo by Kevin Steele

Spacing Radio is back! For the summer we are changing things up a bit and so over the next few months we're going to give you a lot more to listen to, but in shorter doses. Every time we have a story to tell, we'll post it at the blog and put it out on iTunes. Sometimes you'll get one a day, or a few a week. It's a reflection of the season, when most of us are following a less structured life. Full-length programs will be back in the fall. To kick off our SUMMER SHORTS series we bring you a week's worth of walks around Toronto. First up, reporter Andrew Walsh tagged along on Councillor Adam Vaughan's tour of Toronto's John Street corridor.

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• Jane's Walk: John Street Corridor walk
• City of Toronto: Councillor Adam Vaughan's homepage

We begin this episode of Spacing Radio in Toronto’s Alexandra Park, where Spacing producer Todd Harrison speaks with Jane’s Walk executive director Jane Farrow about this weekend’s upcoming Jane’s Walks and how the event — and the discussions it inspires — has evolved both at home and abroad. Up next, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes us to Cleveland, Ohio where she meets up with local newspaper critic Steven Litt, to discuss the drawbacks of the city’s Public Square and what one group is proposing to do to reinvent the space. In Montreal, reporter Adam Bemma visits the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex to discover how a former limestone quarry-turned-landfill-site is being transformed into one of the city’s largest public green spaces. And finally, we get a glimpse of one of Toronto’s oldest and most unlikeliest parks - Mount Pleasant Cemetery - when reporter Pattie Phillips takes a tour of the grounds with cemetery manager Nathan Johnson. Music on this edition of Spacing Radio can be found on Broken Social Scene’s forthcoming release, Forgiveness Rock Record, in stores May 4th.

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• Jane's Walks: website
• Cleveland's Public Square: Steven Litt's blog, Project for Public Spaces, Field Operations and their work on NYC's High Line
• Montreal: Saint-Michel Environmental Complex and La TOHU
• Mount Pleasant Cemetery: Friends and Neighbours of Mount Pleasant and some notes on the cemetery from Parks Canada
• Broken Social Scene: official site and mySpace

NOTE: This edition of Spacing Radio represents the finale of our first season. We're going to take a bit of a break. Look for another podcast in a couple of months.

Join us as we listen in on a handful of the 117 walks Torontonians led and attended as part of this year's Jane's Walk.

In this podcast, we'll travel to Bloor and Lansdowne, Kipling and Steeles, the Lower Don Lands, and the Geary Avenue hydro corridor. Also, host David Michael Lamb talks to organizer Jane Farrow about how this year's Jane's Walk events played their part in documenting and celebrating what Jane Jacobs (for whom Jane's Walk is named) famously called "the complexity of the sidewalk ballet."

Plus, we'll hear music by local independent band Hooded Fang.

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• Jane's Walk: the website, and the list of Toronto walks
• Jane Jacobs: her Project for Public Spaces bio and Wikipedia entry
• Mayor's Tower Renewal: the project's official site
• Lower Don Lands: redevelopment details on the WaterfronToronto website
• Hooded Fang: the band's MySpace page, CBC Radio 3 page, and Zunior.com catalog entry