By now, Nuit Blanche should need no introduction. Begun in Paris in 2002, the "free all night contemporary art thing" expanded to Toronto in '06 and quickly became a surefire early-autumn highlight, causing record numbers to crowd the streets, more than 100,000 tourists to flock to Toronto, and (future ex-) Mayor David Miller to use the phrase "world-class city" more times than we can handle. Now in its fourth year, organizers are taking every step to make the 2009 edition (Saturday, October 3) the safest, most accessible, and most fun event yet.

Many of the changes may seem intuitive, but are helpful nonetheless. For starters, projects will be closer together, making the event more walkable and allowing pedestrians to see more in a shorter period of time (perhaps even getting some rest before the break of dawn). If you're a driver, you may want to leave your car at home; Bay Street from Gerrard to Front, McCaul Street from Grange to Dundas, and Liberty Street from Dufferin to Pirandello will all be closed to cars.

As always, public transportation is your best option, and this year the TTC has amped up its service for this long white night. A special $9 Nuit Blanche TTC Day Pass will be made available for up to two adults and four children. It will be valid from Saturday, October 3 until 9:00am on Sunday, October 4. The greatest improvement this year is the addition of 24-hour TTC service on the Bloor-Danforth Line (Keele to Woodbine) and the Yonge-University Line (St. Clair West to Eglinton). Hopefully next year it'll be as free as the art exhibitions, but this is a great start.

So you can get around, but how will you know what to see? Well, as we've suggested before, you could embrace a geographic area and explore the hell out of it, but you're better off choosing a few exhibits or installations that you want to see beforehand and using it to plan your route. We'll have a handy list of suggestions for what to take in, but if you need to do some prep work yourself, the organizers have done everything they can to make it as easy as possible.

The Nuit Blanche Web Site offers both an itinerary planner and personalized map functionality and is available in a low-res version for mobile devices. For the more technologically inclined, Nuit Blanche has developed a free "Night Navigator" app for both iPhone and Blackberry users. Users will be able to rate exhibits, get GPS-fuelled site-specific recommendations, and discuss with other Nuit Blanchers. There will also be good old-fashioned "paper" booklets, but we can't speak to that since we've forgotten what paper looks like.

Now that you've taken all the details, all that's left is to decide what to see (check back for our recommendations), stay "hydrated" (check out our guide to late-night Nuit Blanche eating and drinking), and peruse our handy survival guide.