By Eric Darwin
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WALKSPACE: Drowning the Good Neighbour
The weather was atrocious. Mind you, the design of our streets doesn’t help. Our carefully engineered sidewalks deliver the wetfoot experience to every...
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WALKSPACE: Gunning it to Greely with Ottawa’s traffic engineers
Faithful readers will recall the many posts on Bronson Avenue. How it is so poorly designed for motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. And how it blights...
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Small Downtown Moves
Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was posted earlier this week The City of Ottawa “Downtown Moves” process has a number of fine sentiments...
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Inside Downtown Moves
The City is running a study to produce an integrated urban design and transportation strategy for the future of downtown Ottawa streets. The triggering...
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DARWIN: City takes tact lesson from the NCC
Recall the kerfuffle about the NCC closing and then reopening the Preston “Extension”, and then closing it again, then tossing he blame to the City, then...
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ParkMobiles: a perfect fit for winter cities
Quick, time to employ your detective powers! Just what is shown in the above picture? Do you see two people sitting on a bench built into a planter? Look...
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How condo developers are snubbing the public street – with help from the City
Large property development firms are seldom compared to little domesticated birds. But in some ways they are canaries in the coal mines of the urban...
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Trip hazards and visual clutter: boxed in by the grey intruders
The City is the prime controller of the pedestrian environment. It can make it better, a little bit at a time, and we will eventually end up with a...
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A second chance to walk it right
If you ride the transitway along Scott Street you will pass through Westboro Station. It looks pretty ordinary. But if you go up the stairs to the Scott...
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City’s blind eye to street furniture is a blessing for pedestrians
Our cities do provide some benches. They are often found in designated parks. In Ottawa, the NCC provides lots of benches in its riparian green spaces...
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DARWIN: it’s time to demand better sidewalk experiences
A lot of civic money is spent installing and maintaining landscaping along some major city roads. This is particularly noticeable in post-1960 areas where...
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The Airport Bikeway is already here – the City just doesn’t want you to know it
In the last few weeks, I’ve had reason to head out to Ottawa’s MacDonald-Cartier Airport, not once, not twice, but three times. And back. Being a cheap...