Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Hoping that someday people will give directions such as “turn left at the tea pot,” Jeremie Deschene discusses the role of public art in downtown Ottawa and elsewhere by taking a look at some of the pieces recently added to the public collection and what they reveal about just how much art enhances the urban environment.
As part of ongoing civic election coverage Nick Farnhall challenges candidates to break from the traditional aversion to election time policy talk. Lamenting the lack of engagement occurring at a prime stage for fermenting ideas, Farnhill discusses how candidates could better engage voters to develop their platforms.
The saga of how to replace to the Turcott interchange got even more interesting this week as Devin Alfaro explains in a piece profiling the City of Montreal’s counter proposal to that proposed by the Provincial Ministry of Transportation. The City proposal involves a circular design, similar to one found in Shanghai, and dedicated bus lanes. Importantly the City’s proposal would actually take up less land, and prevent the proposed expropriation of demolishing of an existing neighbourhood.
In Halifax, Jake Schabas looks at what a bottlenecked pedestrian/cyclist passage says about the city’s transportation priorities. The bottleneck, which chokes an important passageway between the north and south parts of the city is causes merely by a chain link fence.
While many Atlantic Canadian cities have traditionally lacked the density to spawn infill housing projects, Halifax’s Wright Avenue is an example of how effective dense infill housing can be at plugging holes in the urban fabric with attractive and efficient spaces.
Sean Micalleff explored the timely topic of the weather in his psychogeography column this week. Quoting Leanord Cohen’s famous lines about the obscenity of Spring as bare skin is revealed and the collective celebration of our winter survival, Micalleff discusses how attitudes this Spring reflect a maturing awareness about public space in Toronto, as a place where the revival of Spring truly plays out.
The question of how to bring effective public transit to the suburbs is as interesting as it is important. Spacing’s Sean Marshall travelled to his hometown of Brampton this week in a post highlighting some of the public transit changes that are coming to the city. The city’s new Zum high order bus service and the Hurontario/Main St LRT project are profiled and discussed.