Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• Jenn Casey examines the details of the recently approved five-year Metro Transit plan for downtown Halifax, including provisions for increased service to outlying areas, a streamlining of bus coverage in the core, and a year-round downtown shuttle.
• The Shannon Park military barracks in Dartmouth is a dilapidated eyesore with huge potential — as a new-thinking, sustainable neighbourhood, land for the the Millbrook First Nation, or, as Lizzy Hill reports, potentially both.
• Devin Alfaro profiles the city’s two longest-serving councillors, and examines how Montréal’s party-based municipal politics affect incumbency, especially given that “every few election cycles a party will win an lopsided victory that more or less wipes the slate clean.”
• The three Boulevard Saint-Laurent buildings in the controversial Lower Main redevelopment have been scaled down in their budget and design, but are now facing major delays — making it more crucial than ever, says Alanah Heffez, that citizens mobilize to save the neighbourhood from neglect.
• Emily Sinclair begins a series of posts that, as she writes, aim to be “an effort to better understand how food issues shape, and are shaped by, Ottawa’s urban landscape.” She’ll examine the city’s historical relationship to agriculture, the rise of modern farmers’ markets, and growing initiatives ranging from balcony plantings to urban farming.
• Sustainability strategies consultant Tim Lash argues in an op-ed that the Lansdowne Park design competition should be restored, and the “illusory and artificial” deadlines be set aside.
• There’s a lot to like about the new GO Transit website and trip planner, says Marcus Bowman. But GO’s use of Google Maps for the planner, and the TTC’s reluctance to release its data to Google, leads to some downright bizarre routing suggestions.
• In the latest installment of his GTA Lost Villages series, Sean Marshall takes a journey to Brougham, a community rife with vacant and boarded-up houses because of a 1972 decision to build a huge airport in the area — a project that is still far from becoming reality.
photo by Gary Soup