Spacing Saturday

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

As part of the ongoing ‘Spokes People’ series, contributer Steve Bedard discusses the importance of building Halifax’s crosstown connector bike lane from the perspective of someone with an education in nursing and who has seen first hand many of the increasing health ailments effecting people as a result of inactive transportation.

Inspired by the way many European cities integrate their historic monuments into the modern city to maintain functionality, Jake Schabas takes a look at Halifax’s Citadel Hill and the potential to do some modernization on the site to make it less removed from the city.

Ottawa is getting a potentially exciting new public space with the ongoing renovations of the popular pedestrian gardens outside the World Exchange Plaza. The plaza redesign and the new amphitheatre it will include are profiled.

Ian Capstick discusses the need to reclaim the term ‘common sense’ from its Harris-era connotations for the upcoming municipal election. Talking about a variety of problems plaguing the city, and the mood of the people, common sense and realistic plans will be something the electorate is seeking.

Alanah Heffez provides some background on the work of contributer Andrew Emond who along with Michael Cook was arrested this week while exploring the Garrison Creek sewer in Toronto. Emond has been featured on Spacing, amongst other media outlets, for his fascinating work on mapping and photographing some of the spectacular, yet unsung infrastructure at work beneath Montreal.

Inspired by thinking about how other people view the same area of a city, guest contributer Daniel Rotszain recalls the experience of walking through the Mile End neighbourhood with his father. To his surprise his father saw the neighbourhood not as the height of urbanity many consider it today, but as the inadequate slum it was to a generation of immigrants, including is father’s family, yearning for something better.

Spacing’s Sean Marshall follows up a piece in the latest edition of the magazine talking about Toronto’s ubiquitous “12-8-8” yellow traffic lights and their negative aesthetic affects on the city’s urban landscape.  Pointing to examples of how lights are designed in other cities and even in some special areas throughout the GTA, Marshall discusses how to improve the aesthetic value of traffic signal while working with safety requirements and the Ontario Traffic Manual.

As part of the ongoing building stories exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel, David Wencer uses the old Canada Linseed Oil Mills building, abandoned since the late sixties, as a window into exploring the industrial history of the area along the CPR lines and how the area has regenerated since de-industrialization. While the site beside the building has been turned into a Park, the building itself remains fenced off, despite having been purchased by the city in 2000. Local residents hope to tap the building’s potential to become a dynamic community space.