WHAT: Spacing's 2nd national issue release party WHEN: Friday February 3rd, 2012, 9pm-1am WHERE: Canvas Lounge (99 Powell St. in Gastown) HOW MUCH: free! (mag costs $5) RSVP: Let us know if you can come at our Facebook event listing The editors of Spacing and contributors of Spacing Vancouver are excited to announce that the magazine will host a release party at the Canvas Lounge in Vancouver to celebrate the publication of the newest national issue. We will have some fun activities and a few door prizes. This event is held in conjunction with the annual conference for the Canadian Association of Planning Students (CAPS).

Today, the Spacing family would like to welcome our newest sibling: Spacing Vancouver! The editors and contributors of Spacing Vancouver will take a critical look at how Canada's third largest urban region is building and designing its city. Cities across Canada have a lot to learn about how Vancouver is designing one of the most livable and beautiful cities in North America. Spacing is lucky to not be starting this Vancouver blog from scratch — we've absorbed the wonderful team at ...

By Marcus Bowman, cross-posted from Spacing Toronto An unprecedented collaborative report mapping the concentration of artists in Canadian cities was released last month. The study was a result of the collective effort of the cultural departments of the cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Published by Hill Strategies, and based on data from the 2006 census, the report paints a fascinating picture into the make-up of Canada's artistic and creative communities. Each city  has its own trends in the way its artistic and creative communities have located. Vancouver had the highest overall percent of artists at 2.3% but has its artistic community spread widely throughout the city. Toronto has by far the largest artistic community; it is home to one in six Canadian artists. Toronto has also seen its artistic neighbourhoods shift slightly since to 2001 to different areas of concentration. Montreal has perhaps the most densely located artistic community and is home to three of the country's top five artistic employment postal codes. The Montreal neighbourhood of the H2T postal code (northward from avenue du Mont-Royal to avenue Van Horne between St-Denis and Jeanne-Mance) is the most artistic in Canada with artists accounting for 7.8% of its workers, ten times the national average. Ottawa and Calgary have artist concentrations closer to the national average, interestingly they also both have the largest income gaps between artists and the rest of the workforce and the largest percent of female artists. Maps of these trends are shown below.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Some Spacing Atlantic readers may not be aware of this, but Spacing hosts a bi-weekly podcast called Spacing Radio (you can subscribe to the show via iTunes or follow the links on the right sidebar). It has primarily been focused on Toronto, but the last few episodes have seen us cover other cities, which we will continue to do. This episode has a feature on Halifax's recent 4 Days conference. This episode of Spacing Radio challenges listeners to think about public ...