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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Spacing Saturday: Grafitti Removal, Autoroute 25 and Pecha Kucha

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

Devin Alfaro looks questioningly down the 401 and wonders if a Rob Ford figure could ever be elected in Montreal. While his quick answer is no, he offers many musings about the political differences and similarities between the two cities.

As the new extension of autoroute 25 between Montreal and Laval approaches completion Alanah Heffez looks back on the shortcomings of the process which lead to the prioritization of new highway infrastructure and the future of the lands around the new highway.

Eric Darwin talks about the details and neighbourhood dynamics of sidewalk snow clearing including reflections on good samaritans, local kids and how to get the City on the case of snow dumping offenders.

Following the announced move of the Ottawa Folk Festival to a new venue at Mooney’s Bay, Spacing weighs in on the benefits of holding such festivals in areas where they won’t bother residents versus being close to public transit.

How far should planners look into the future? Hugh Pouliot reports from the opening address of the IMAGINE Conference at Dalhousie University where Professor Bruce Tonn considered the merits of planning for the next hundreds to thousands of years.

Crystal Melville profiles some of the dialogue from a Pecha Kucha event in Halifax themed around Architecture’s snub of the suburbs and suburban apologists.

Jessica Lemieux takes a look at the Portlands and the complexities of the soil remediation efforts taking place there. The post examines why the process is necessary, how it works and what surprises have been found as the earth is recycled.

Graffiti removal was a theme this week with Dylan Reid comprehensively delving into the issue of how the City should approach an area that has ideological issues for both sides of the political spectrum and subjective questions of what is worth saving. Shawn Micallef responded by showing some graffiti that the Mayor may not want to remove.

Photo by Samuel Bietenholz

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5 comments

  1. Small suggestion – subtitles are needed for the Spacing Saturday photos. I’ve reread the various story headers for each city and I still have no idea about whether this photo is connected with any of them. The photo could provide a visual lead-in to a related story if I could figure out how it was related.

    But maybe I’m just missing the obvious this morning.

  2. They don’t seem to be related to any story, but they’re much better than the random nature scenes that started to pop up for a few weeks some time ago.

    This one is taken from the Wallace Avenue Footbridge in The Junction. A piece of land that was heavily contaminated from the paint factory that used to stand on the site is being decontaminated in the photo. The work ended a few years ago, but no redevelopment has happened yet.

  3. The picture is related to Jessica Lemieux’s piece about soil remediation.

    I’m surprised that this picture drew comment because as A.R. points out some pictures in past have not been tied to an article but have instead reflected a Saturday leisure theme or something related to the time of year. Spacing Saturday appears on all four blogs that it summarizes so I try and find a picture that doesn’t replicate something recently posted on any of them.

    In the future I’ll try and toss in more subtitles, thanks for the comments.