To crush the slumlords, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their investment portfolio managers.

It is both sad and riotous to imagine letter scores for New Albany's rental properties.

Should Landlords Be Licensed?, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

Toronto is considering an experiment that would give landlords and apartment buildings restaurant-style grades.

Last week, a Toronto City Council committee voted unanimously to endorse a new licensing regime for landlords. The proposal would institute a system for grading landlords of buildings of a certain size for conditions such as mold, bedbugs, working elevators, water cleanliness, and working air conditioning. If the full council proceeds with the idea, landlords will be subject to licensing and, potentially, grades that they will be required to post in building lobbies—the same way restaurants do in some cities.

While some of the details have yet to be determined, the bill would require landlords of rental buildings of three or more stories or 10 or more units to pay a licensing fee of $12 to $15 per unit, per year. The fees would defray the roughly $3.5 million cost for executing annual audits. The program would call for detailed building management plans from landlords; currently, inspections typically follow complaints. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) supports landlord licensing, while the Greater Toronto Apartment Association opposes it.

Toronto Mayor John Tory has expressed some doubts about whether licensing landlords is necessary or workable. But to some extent, that question has already been answered. Rentlogic, a Canadian company that uses open data to provide a better rental market for prospective tenants, has built a tool, LandlordWatch, that ranks the worst landlords in Toronto, based on the number of investigations into the condition of their buildings and resulting violations.

In Toronto: "It’s time to let street parking go." In New Albany: It's time to talk about streets.

Once again, it is my suggestion that merchants and other downtown stakeholders familiarize themselves with concepts of urbanism.

Grow up, Toronto. It’s time to let street parking go, by Marcus Gee (The Globe and Mail)

... There is one major barrier: our lingering attachment to easy street parking. Some merchants on Bloor are already complaining about how their business will suffer when the city takes out a lane of parking to make way for the cyclists. This sort of backlash can be expected whenever the city proposes to remove street-parking spots for any reason.

Some motorists seem to consider it their Charter right to pull up right in front of their neighbourhood hardware store to buy a box of screws. Some shop owners consider it a threat to their very existence if customers can’t park more than a few steps away. It’s a reasonable attitude if you live in Cornwall or Gravenhurst. In the increasingly dense and busy centre of Canada’s biggest city, it’s absurd to expect such a Corner Gas way of life.

Rob Ford, huffing rock, and "do it yourself" urbanism.

Obviously, there is no crack cocaine scandal in New Albany, at least in political terms. But setting aside the druggie aspect of this story from Toronto, there is a major nugget of wisdom therein.

Why You May Want a Crack-Smoking Mayor, by Stephen Marche (guest post at the Esquire politics blog)

... The lesson of Rob Ford may not be one that urbanists particularly want to hear: Having an utterly paralyzed and embarrassing government may not be that bad a thing. Nobody expects City Hall to do anything: Since Ford came to power, if you wanted the little park in your neighborhood to look good, you and your friends were going to have to organize it. If you wanted more green space, you were going to have to figure out a way to make that happen. Toronto is the one city I know of where the hipster kids in the parks and the billionaires in penthouses share mostly the same values and goals, at least in regards to the city they want to live in; since Ford, both groups have had to think of themselves as city builders. And they are proceeding to build the city. They know they have to build it themselves because the mayor is, uh, otherwise engaged.