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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Spacing Saturday: Artscape, Machine Space and Philly’s Waterfront

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Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.

Alanah Heffez posts the results of Spacing reader’s reaction to Bixi Bailout and finds the split to similar to the actual council vote. Heffez argues that this shows how Montrealers consider the service beneficial to the city.

Guillaume St-Jean continues the Montage de Jour series, this week looking at the changes in the corner of Sherbrooke West and Metcalfe between 1967 and today.

New contributor and Memorial University Professor, Josh Lepawsky applies Ronald Horvath’s 1974 idea about ‘machine space’ to the University’s St John’s campus for a fantastic visual representation of the space devoted to automobiles. Lepawsky then asks the questions about how this information about delegation of space could be used to further the university’s sustainability goals.

Crystal Melville profiles a number of exciting events and projects taking place across the Halifax region this week including growth tours, bike week kickoff, community art and live performance.

Through another installment in the Headspace series, Luca De Franco interviews Tim Jones, President and CEO of Artscape, a Toronto based non-profit that creates live-work spaces for artists. Jones discusses past successful projects such as the Wychwood Barns and gives some details about exciting new projects including the community arts centre in the new Regent Park and the conversion of the magnificent century old Shaw Street School.

Alex Bozikovic reflects on the disheartening waterfront talk coming from the Fords in City Hall by highlighting the success that Philadelphia is finally having on its waterfront after decades of stalled mega-projects. The lessons being learned in Philly speak to the importance of improving infrastructure and public space.

In response to Adam Bentley’s fantasy transit map, Clive Doucet uses his column to advocate that the thinking on transit shift from fantasy to reality. Using examples from the Turkish cities of Istanbul and Ankara, Doucet makes the case that critical parts of the fantasy map could easily become reality.

While street meat may be an iconic part of many North American cities Emily Sinclair uses to two recent debates on outdoor patios and food carts to make the case of how food can play an essential role in creating vibrant, healthy public spaces.

Photograph by: Daryl Mitchell

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