I'm in Winnipeg this week attending the Fringe Festival; it's a captivating 10-day event that hosts over 150 theatrical productions from around the world, and it centres on the wonderfully-preserved and revitalized Exchange District and Old Market Square. I grew up here in the 60s and 70s, and in those days no one I knew ever went to the Exchange District; in fact back then the area didn't even go by any name at all and unless you were employed by one of the mid-century businesses that still valued the low rent and central location the district – fur storage, typewriter repair, offset printers, that sort of thing – you had no reason to show your face along the grimy streets just north of the famous corner of Portage and Main. Really, the district had been in slow decline since a short period of boom in the 'teens and twenties when the civic fathers imagined that their role in  the Western Canadian grain trade would soon turn the city into "The Chicago of the North".

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SPACING RADIO PODCAST Sometimes exploring a city means just shutting your eyes and listening. In this soundscape, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes you underground into the Glasgow subway system. Affectionately known as "the Clockwork Orange" because of its orange subway cars and circular route, Glasgow's underground dates back to 1896 making it the third oldest in the world. Recently, the city was considering shutting down parts of the system ...

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