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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Spacing Saturday: Beaver Barracks, Electoral Reform and Hybrid Taxi

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


Beaver Barracks is Ottawa’s first sustainable rental housing complex. Spacing asked the group behind the project, Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, to talk about the innovative new building and why it is so important for the city.

Vicky Smallman reflects on a week that opened up that the Ottawa Mayoral Election and highlights some some of the ways community groups are also becoming involved in the campaign.

Lauren Oostveen dives into the vaults of the Nova Scotia Archives to find some fantastic images of the Province in the early 1960s.

Matt Neville continues the fanstastic [Re]presenting Halifax series which aims to explore the city through visual exploration. This time the focus is on built form and open space.

The Joe Beef series concluded this week with the story of Beef’s death, populist funeral and contested legacy as well the as the traces he left in modern Montreal. 

Hilary Best reports on the growing movement for municipal election reform with some fascinating ideas tried elsewhere in the world that could improve dismally low voter turnout rates and overly high incumbency success rates.

In 2007 Toronto began a plan to convert all of its taxis to hybrid technology by 2015; to date it the city only has 40 hybrid taxis. Adrian Lightstone reports on the progress and impediments of greening a taxi fleet.

Photo by Alex Pierre

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