Archives /// July, 2010
November 11th, 2009
Art form, bike function: Bank Street bike racks
By Kate Wetherow // 4 Comments
I stood near the corner of Bank and Somerset one day, puzzled, as I watched a woman struggle to lock her bike to a fence that protected one of the newly planted ash trees, while a brand new bike rack stood vacant, less than 4 feet away, with no bike to call it’s own.
This year I have watched with interest at the discovery and use of the new Bank Street bike racks and wondered how long it will take to for people to really make the connection.
Public engagement with new community art is always a slow process.
Last year the City of Ottawa put out a call to local artists to submit graphic drawings that would be used as templates for steel bicycle racks. This was part of the long overdue Bank Street North rehabilitation project between Laurier Avenue and the Queensway. It is one of many public art commissions the City currently has underway along central neighbourhood streets, such as Preston and Wellington.
November 14th, 2009
Counting down for safer crossings
By Kalle Hakala // 5 Comments
Perhaps you have noticed that you now have to beat the clock when crossing at some intersections around Ottawa. These are countdown timers, and they are starting to crop up at intersections throughout the city. Often counting down from the number 10, they can have the connotation of a NASA launch or a MacGyver-style bomb defusing, at least for some users who appear to be a little anxious the first time they encounter the new signals.
The signals consist of a digital display showing the number of seconds left to cross the street, and accompany the familiar “flashing orange hand” that is supposed to mean not to start crossing or to finish crossing if you have already started to do so. Although already in widespread use in many other cities, including on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River, pedestrian countdown timers are new to Ottawa, with the first only appearing in 2009. According to the City of Ottawa, these devices will be installed progressively over the next 10 years starting with priority locations, such as near schools and seniors homes, wide and busy streets, and during street reconstruction projects.
November 17th, 2009
Is Corktown a bridge too far?
By David McClelland // 1 Comment
[videofile width="600" height="516"]http://homepage.mac.com/evan.thornton/Sites/corktown/soundslider.swf[/videofile][videofile][/videofile][videofile width="600" height="516"][/videofile]
Spanning conflict: from Kettle Island to Big Joe Mufferaw
By Tonya Davidson // 1 Comment
Three years ago, the City of Ottawa held a christening ceremony for a long-awaited piece of civil engineering. The Corktown Bridge was named in honour of a 1830s-era settlement of Irish canal-diggers. This pedestrian bridge crossing the canal and joining Somerset Street in Sandy Hill to Somerset Street in Upper Town is of such design strength it won an urban design award presented by the associations of Canadian architects, urban planners and landscape architects. Corktown was the name of the region near the canal where many canal workers – navvies – lived. Most of them hailed from County Cork, and in remembering them, the bridge is a recognition of Ottawa’s labour history and the estimated one thousand canal builders that died of malaria when building the canal.
November 18th, 2009
Opinion: Lansdowne is a key city-building project
By Alain Miguelez // 13 Comments
What better topic to kick off Spacing Ottawa than with Lansdowne Park? It has attracted a great deal of controversy and misinformation, but in looking at the future of this important municipal asset, I have sought to steer clear of the rhetoric and asked myself a few basic questions about what the city ought to consider as it ponders Lansdowne’s future. The answers I give here are my own, as a citizen of Ottawa and one who is ambitious about the evolution of this city.
What should Ottawa seek to achieve at Lansdowne?
Lansdowne was never intended as a park in the strict sense of the word. It has always been, and should continue to be, a magnet for people and a place of intense activity revolving around sports and commerce.
November 20th, 2009
Public Space and Private Gain: What’s ours is yours, for a price
By Michel Frojmovic // 1 Comment
The “public-ness” of public space is a loose concept. Public sidewalks are – in principle – meant to be accessible to and enjoyed by members of the public. That’s pretty simple. However, we are less likely to appreciate that the public right-of-way extends well beyond the edge of paved roads and sidewalks. A good portion of your front lawn is probably not exactly “yours”.
Municipalities put in place carefully-worded by-laws and regulations to minimize or prevent the obstruction or privatization of sidewalks. Yet, in a higher-density, inner-city commercial mainstreet environment, these rules seem to create as much tension as they resolve.
Public space is regularly used for commercial gain. For-profit places of business regularly “use” public property, both restricting its use to paying customers, as well as profiting from the use of property it does not own. At the same time, the result is often a lively animation of the street and a general enhancement of the overall street experience.
A tour of Wellington Street West illustrates the variation in the use of public space.
Placing a couple of tables and a few chairs on the sidewalk is a relatively innocuous use of public space. The absence of a railing or permanent patio and the obvious transitory nature of this use make it quite benign. In this sense, it is a simple and harmless way of enhancing the street and adding to the level of public interaction. However, without the appropriate permissions and fees, it is also an illegal encroachment of pedestrian access to sidewalk space, and an unfair commercial gain at the expense of public property. It is worth regulating this type of use?
November 23rd, 2009
JOHN LORINC: Paul Goldberger on why architecture matters
By John Lorinc // No Comments
In an era pre-occupied by "starchitecture" and the dominance of global cities, New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger makes a persuasive case for the importance of workaday structures and the limitations of urban planning.
"I don't buy the notion that you can draw a clear line between great architecture and ordinary buildings," he said Friday during the Canadian Urban Institute's Designing Cities symposium. "Each structure has something to say about the culture that built it."
Goldberger has just released a new book entitled, "Why Architecture Matters" (Yale), in which he sets out to mine the meaning of Winston Churchill's famous aphorism, "We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us."
Architecture, observed the Roman builder and engineer Vitruvius, encompasses "commodity, firmness and delight," and Goldberger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, cites this enduring definition to point out the paradox at the core of the most visible of all art forms. A building has to be "both useful and the opposite of useful," he says. "It makes sense to think of architecture as both great masterpieces and daily experiences... Sometimes, it is the average [building] that tell us the most."
The current recession, he said during an interview with me on Friday (the full conversation will be available on Spacing Radio on the December 7th episode), has dampened demand for good design. "In the very short term, we're going to struggle to have architecture at all."
Looking beyond the recovery, however, Goldberger feels the next wave of architecture will focus on the need for highly flexible design that recognizes the changing nature of family life. He also predicts that sustainable design "will become so taken for granted that we'll stop talking about it."
Goldberger further argues that bold experiments such as New York's High Line, Broadway's new "piazza" and the West Toronto RailPath mark a distinct trend in the way cities are thinking about the purpose of open space. "We've viewed public space as being about stasis — it's where you sit and don't move."
With cities lacking both money and space to create new Central Parks, they are looking instead to linear parks as a means of re-claiming waterfronts or aging infrastructure. "Cities are about movement and circulation as much as anything else," he observes. "We're looking at places of movement as being public spaces."
November 24th, 2009
Prime time busking in the market
By John Carroll // 4 Comments
Not surprisingly, one of the very best spots for Ottawa busking is in the Byward Market.
It's at the corner of George and William, in front of the patios of what used to be Oregano's and what is now the Aulde Dubliner. It has a large space for building a crowd, and a pretty steady traffic flow, especially in the evenings. Another advantage is that the people on the patio are usually quite appreciative of the "free" entertainment, and will often tip generously.
This spot is the favourite of itinerant buskers from other parts of Canada and the world, especially those doing "circle" shows, which are the types of shows where the performer does acrobatics, juggling, magic, fire-breathing etc. etc., and rather than getting tipped from people walking by, they build a crowd and then "pass the hat" at the end of their performance.
November 25th, 2009
Six steps to better memory: Lansdowne digest by Apartment 613
By Apartment613 // 1 Comment
-Editors note: Our colleagues at Apartment 613 will be guest blogging on Spacing Ottawa every Wednesday; the following is the first post in this series.
As guest bloggers for Spacing once a week, we thought that it would be prudent, given what has transpired with a certain large piece of city-owned land lately, to compile the observations our writers have made on the debate that has polarized viewpoints across the region.
Lansdowne Park is the spark that has lit up a Hindenburg-sized blimp of public opinion on how choices about the city are made and who should decide these outcomes. From power-driven city councilors, to concerned citizens, to sports fans, to eager developers (and everyone in between), it is clear that the people of the City of Ottawa are craving something new and exciting to revamp, revitalize and reclaim an area of our beautiful city centre.
Video: Spacing Launch at Cube Gallery
By Evan Thornton // 1 Comment
[vimeo width="600" height="450"]http://www.vimeo.com/7815938[/vimeo]
Our friends at Dawghaus Studios were at the Cube last week to cover our launch and we are thrilled that they were; these guys are masters at capturing the energy in a room, and as you'll see there was plenty of that to go around. If you need to show someone what Spacing Ottawa is all about, this video is a great place to start!
World Wide Wednesday: Transit fares, bridges and Dallas’ newest park
By Matthew Blackett // 1 Comment
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Dallas, Texas, long-known for a lack of green space and an overabundance of parking lots, is taking bold action to change its reputation and transform its downtown. Last week, ...
November 26th, 2009
Street furniture for smokers: an Ottawa success story?
By Evan Thornton // 5 Comments
They are the least-thought out public spaces in Ottawa and yet they are used hundreds of thousands of times in a day. Many people spend more time in and around them them per day than they do with their families. The spaces are all improvised on a case-by-case basis yet every building has one, and no two are the exactly same.
They are, of course, the smoking areas. Arising as a necessity from mid-90s legislation that first banned smokers from federal government buildings and later from any workplace in Ontario, they cropped up in front of and behind buildings across Ottawa.
Butt-filled and foul smelling, not too many even thought about the demands the improvised spaces put on the public sphere.
How would a National Housing Strategy impact our cities?
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
by Emma Feltes, cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic
HALIFAX — National Housing Day was first marked on the calendar by a team of Toronto housing advocates on Nov 22, 1998. But this year, more than a decade later, it was infused with new meaning.
Housing is back on the national agenda, with proposed Bill C-304 calling for the development of a national housing strategy designed to ensure safe, adequate, accessible, affordable housing to all Canadians. The Bill, seconded by Halifax MP Megan Leslie, has deep implications for Canadian cities, and the diversity of housing challenges they face. “Housing impacts the health of communities," says Leslie, who is the NDP critic for housing and homelessness. "It’s not just about putting a roof over someone’s head, it is about the health of a community general — the physical health, the mental health, the economic health of a community.”
The need for a national strategy was made amply clear at yesterday's National Housing Day events in Halifax. Gathered at St. Matthew's United Church, a crowd of over 100 marked the opening of the Out of the Cold emergency shelter for a second winter. A collaborative community initiative by the Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, Community Action on Homelessness (CAH), St. Matthew's, and a dedicated team of volunteers, the shelter provides 15 beds for men and women.
A panel consisting of members of the organizing committee, housing advocates, and community members shared stories on why initiatives such as this one are so important in a city like Halifax, wrought with its own unique set of housing challenges. However, the grassroots, community-based strategy provokes conflicted feelings for many of those involved.
November 27th, 2009
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
URBAN & CITY DESIGN
• Ottawa in the year 2050, Architects, designers share their vision of Canada’s capital (Ottawa Citizen)
• Development 'is not a bad thing' Reflect on process, urban-issues critic (Ottawa Citizen)
COUNCIL WATCH
• Committee Rejects Donation Ban (CFRA.com)
• You're stuck with it: Budget news goes from bad to worse (Ottawa Citizen)
• City Government for the people (Ottawa Citizen)
• City Council approves LRT as Ottawa’s rail technology choice (OttawaStart.com)
• Why they voted the way they did on Lansdowne (Ottawa Citizen)
photo by Jonathan Crowe
SPACING: come to our Toronto release party
By Matthew Blackett // 1 Comment
WHAT: release party for winter 2009-2010 issue of Spacing
WHEN: Wednesday, December 9, 2009
WHERE: Toronto Reference Library, The Appel Salon, 789 Yonge Street
HOW MUCH: $10 (includes copy of mag), $5 for subscribers
ATTENDING?: RSVP to our Facebook event
If you're in Toronto, make your way to the Toronto Reference Library (7pm-midnight) on Wed. Dec. 9th, to take part in Spacing's 16th issue release party and holiday party. We'll have some games and activities, plus the music to dance to thanks to our resident DJs Track Meet.
Come check out the Reference Library's new event space The Appel ...
November 30th, 2009
Angels in the City
By Tonya Davidson // 1 Comment
Walking around Ottawa, with eyes directed only towards the city’s 70-plus statues and monuments the heroism of Canada, can seem overwhelming. A knight, Sir Galahad, welcomes visitors at the gates of Parliament Hill while countless Fathers of Confederation populate the lawn. Twenty-two figures of gallant bravery charge through the arch of the National War Memorial, while just down Sussex Drive, three more contemporary soldiers stand (and kneel) on the Peacekeepers’ Memorial.
What is striking about this parade of heroes is its unquestionable masculinity. Sure, there is a woman in the Peacekeepers’ Memorial despite the protests of the Department of National Defense who argued, at the time of its designing, that no woman had performed that role making the design not historically accurate. There are also two female nurses at the end of the charge of soldiers through the National War Memorial. However, what is celebrated in Ottawa are male leaders and heroes, though there are a few women celebrated in Ottawa: the Famous Five, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, and Laura Secord. However, women more commonly are featured as allegorical figures representing a virtue or the nation.
December 1st, 2009
Public access to waterfront in Port of Spain, Trinidad
By Michel Frojmovic // 2 Comments
Become a fan of Spacing Ottawa on Facebook
By Matthew Blackett // 1 Comment
Spacing Ottawa has created a fan page on Facebook. If you're already a Facebooker, you should consider becoming a fan so that we can make you aware of our upcoming events and you can see some of the stuff we're writing about. Any notices we send out will be sporadic, so don't worry about us filling up your inbox.
December 2nd, 2009
Beyond the urban horizon
By Apartment613 // 2 Comments
Back when there were only two licensed restaurants in all of Ottawa (in the 1960s, or so the old-timers tell us ) a cabinet minister from Quebec used to fulminate that the "only good thing about living in Ottawa was the 5.00 PM train to Montreal". There would be no shortage of proud Ottawans to dispute that kind of slander today, but contained within his snide bon mot was the germ of something true, not just for Ottawa but for any city. Part of urban life is contingent on what is close by; that which we can experience without feeling that we are roaming to0 far from our home base.
One advantage of urban life in the nation's capital is that things don’t always actually have to be so urban. Ottawa is situated cheek-by-jowl to farmland, small towns, rivers, campgrounds and parks. For the new resident who fancies local produce and Saturday-morning-only small-town charm, Ottawa’s location can come as revelation. Fifteen or twenty minutes in a car can bring many of us deep into the sort of natural splendour residents of Toronto or Montreal are an hour or more from even getting close to.
For Apartment613's guest blog this week, we want to highlight some of our favourites from this unique zone of proximity, and reflect on what lies just beyond the urban core.
World Wide Wednesday: Las Vegas, Dubai and Mecca
By Matthew Blackett // 1 Comment
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• CityCenter, Las Vegas' newest mega-project, debuts to the public next week. Designed by 8 notable architects to function as a city in-itself, the $8.5 billion, 67-acre, glass-and-steel structure is home ...
December 3rd, 2009
Photo of the day: Byward
By Editor // 1 Comment
Interior, Byward Market Square.
photo by Justin van Leeuwen
December 4th, 2009
The sign of the fish: Ottawa sewer grates
By Evan Thornton // 3 Comments
Are the patterned openings to these storm sewer grates trying to tell us something? Some people look at them and see an odd jumble, others think a man's necktie is being evoked for some strange reason, and still others see a fish in the middle of the pattern right away.
Of course, once the fish is pointed out, most people will see it that way from then on. Then the next mystery is why? Again, it's a head-scratcher for some, while some intuit the reason right away. The fish symbol alerts us to the fact that however murky the flow of water below us might look through these grates, the ultimate point of outflow is directly into our rivers, either the Ottawa or the Rideau.
So the symbol is trying to tell us something. But does the City of Ottawa itself ever explain the meaning of its lovely fish grates?
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
COUNCIL WATCH
• 'Everybody loses’ in bus strike with city’s tally put at $5.9M (Ottawa Citizen)
• Let's end parochial municipal politics (Centretown News)
• City Government for the people (Ottawa Citizen)
• Luxury Spending (Ottawa Citizen)
DESIGN & PUBLIC SPACE
• City hears plea to buy former school (Ottawa Citizen)
• Tim and Pat Murray: From Alcan to the Pope (Ottawa Citizen)
ENVIRONMENT
• The green bin mile (Ottawa Citizen)
• Clean river a costly proposition (Ottawa Citizen)
• Ottawa Columnist Argues HOV lanes Hurt the Environment (CityCaucus Blog)
photo by ...
December 7th, 2009
Urbanist’s diary: when mainstreet comes to our backyard
By Chris Henschel // 1 Comment
This is the first of a multi-part series that will follow environmentalists Chris Henschel and Allegra Newman as they share their first-hand experiences dealing with an intensification project directly affecting their own residence near Island Park Drive.
I live with my wife and baby daughter in West Wellington. We got rid of our car when we moved into the our house last year and we love to walk to all that this wonderful neighbourhood has to offer. Neighbourhoods like this are being encouraged in Ottawa through planning guidelines aimed at creating ‘traditional mainstreets,’ which the City defines as:
mainstreets developed primarily before 1945. They generally present a tightly knit urban fabric, with buildings that are often small-scale, with narrow frontages and set close to and addressing the street. This results in a strong pedestrian orientation and transitfriendly environment. Land uses are often mixed, with commercial uses at the street level and residential uses on the upper levels. [http://ottawa.ca/residents/planning/design_plan_guidelines/completed/traditional_mainstreets/traditional_mainstreets_en.pdf]
Development and intensification are integral parts of creating traditional mainstreets, and we support this.
This support in principle is now being challenged in practice. We live directly behind 1451 Wellington Street, the corner lot at Island Park Drive - current home to Pro-Shine car wash and subject to a condo development proposal by Springcress Properties.
The proposal for the condo presents a list of concerns for us: a winter-long shadow on our house; increased traffic and a parking entrance off our dead-end street; a proposed parking lot and underground garage along our backyard; and, a loss of privacy for our home described by all visitors as a piece of country in the city.
December 8th, 2009
Places we like: three blogs about buildings and streets
By Evan Thornton // 2 Comments
A supportive ecology is crucial to any organism, and Spacing Ottawa is no different. But whereas in many cities in North America our recent splash landing in the middle of the local blogosphere could have seen us washed us up on some very barren shores indeed, in Ottawa we were blessed to find ourselves surrounded by a rich variety of like-minded blogs from across the city.
The water is warm here; we pan to bob along with the current and share what we see along the way. For this first passage through Ottawa's blogging archipelago, we want to highlight three sites that get right down to street level, and revel in what they find.
Charles Akben-Marchand is a Centretown resident, neighbourhood activist, and superb observer of change in downtown Ottawa. His "Images of Centretown" blog is focused on the way memory attaches itself to buildings and other elements of our streetscape, and he carefully documents those moments of transition when a street changes forever, one iteration of a particular address or streetcorner giving way to the next. Here's Charles himself on what he does:
December 9th, 2009
Ottawa’s architectural gems – from this weekend’s Apartment613
By Apartment613 // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="320" caption="Photo courtesy of Qardash on Flickr. "][/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="259" caption="Courtesy of Spotmaticfanatic on Flickr. "][/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="261" caption="Courtesy of amydawnrose on Flickr. "][/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="260" caption="Courtesy of fieldtripp on Flickr."][/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="320" caption="Courtesy of matthew palmer on Flickr. "]...
December 10th, 2009
Seventeen years and counting for abandoned Ogilvy’s
By Chris Warden // 9 Comments
Getting off the bus on Rideau Street located in front of the Rideau Centre you are confronted with the former Ogilvy's department store. The five story buff brick building sits as it has been for the past 17 years, empty, deteriorating, while still distinctly marking the corner at Rideau and Nicholas. How did it reach this point, and what is possible in the future?
Ogilvy’s is important both from a historic perspective and an urbanistic perspective. The building in its current incarnation started life in 1907 when Charles Ogilvy constructed a modest three story story structure on the site extending halfway through the block with architect W.E. Noffke. As business improved the building more than doubled in size filling out the remainder of the block now occupying the site from Rideau to Besserer; again designed by Noffke in 1917. The building was further expanded, receiving the fourth story in 1931 and the fifth and final story in 1934. With the fifth story it became one of Ottawa’s largest department stores; the square footage was a clear indication of the success that Ogilvy's enjoyed during the first half of the twentieth century.
December 11th, 2009
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
CLIMATE CHANGE
• Our Cities Are Hotbeds of Climate Action (TheTyeee.ca)
COUNCIL WATCH
• City Council Environmental Report Card (Ecology Ottawa)
• City of Ottawa plans cut to buy-local program (CBC)
HOUSING
• Ottawa, provinces huddle to get housing cash spent (Ottawa Citizen)
MUNICIPAL PARTIES
• Parties can pump new blood into city politics (Ottawa Citizen)
URBAN DESIGN & LANSDOWNE
• Seven members of Ottawa's design review panel resign (Ottawa Citizen)
• Frustrated architects dump panel: Hope en masse resignation will ‘humiliate’ City Hall into designing a better Ottawa (Ottawa Citizen)
• Councillors debate weight of public feedback on Lansdowne Park decision (EMC ...
December 12th, 2009
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Public space activists in Toronto cheered this week as City Council voted to implement a new bylaw and tax on commercial billboards.
• Spacing Toronto's Shawn Micallef writes about the "overwhelming" experience of visiting Richard Serra's hidden and mysterious "Shift" sculpture unusually ...
December 14th, 2009
Urbanist’s diary, Week 2: lobbying in two places at once
By Chris Henschel // No Comments
Spacing Radio 013: Albino Squrriels, Paul Goldberger, and Transit Investment
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
CHECK OUT THIS WEEK'S SPACING RADIO PODCAST: To coincide with the release of Spacing magazine’s new issue on urban animals, Spacing Radio sent our producer Mieke Anderson on a quest to find Toronto’s elusive albino squirrel (who is also the star of the magazine’s cover) with Jane Farrow (an albino squirrel know-it-all). Spacing’s contributing editor John Lorinc sat down with noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger to discuss the outlook on building cities in a difficult economic climate. We also sent our new contributor Sarah Bridge to an international transit conference to find ...
December 16th, 2009
View from the Hill: it’s a jumble out there
By Tonya Davidson // 8 Comments
I was walking with my out-of-town friend around Ottawa, when, at Parliament Hill my friend remarked that while the Parliament buildings were nice, Ottawa as a city had no sense of cohesion. I was shocked and defensive at first, but he gestured towards the cityscape in front of us and I had to swallow my civic pride. The south side of Wellington is a jumble of architectural styles. Snuggled together is the Second Empire style 1880s Langevin Building, a contemporary National Capital Commission INFOcentre, the 1930s neo-Classical Bank of Canada, enlarged with 1970s glass towers, and peaking out behind these buildings is the Ottawa Marriot with Ottawa’s one revolving restaurant.
Certainly, this skyline is influenced by policies beginning in 1910 that prevented buildings in a designated distance from Parliament to exceed the height of Parliament’s Peace Tower. Policies didn’t however regulate for architectural consistency.
World Wide Wednesday: Streetcars, Subways and Bikes
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• An ongoing bike-lane-battle in Brooklyn New York just got more heated as two "vigilante" cyclists were arrested for repainting lane lines that had only days before been sandblasted away by the ...
December 17th, 2009
After the thaw: could this be a farm by next spring?
By Kalle Hakala // No Comments
As an apartment dweller living in close quarters, sometimes I appreciate open or unused spaces simply for the fact that they are not built upon. But in other cases, I lament upon what seems like wasted space around an office or apartment building, or even an extra-deep front yard. Perhaps it is the fact that I have no yard of my own that makes me yearn to make use of some underused land for my own personal garden.
At least one other Ottawan feels similarly. Urban farmer Jesse Boynton Payne has started a new type of Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) initiative that partners with homeowners to use their yards to grow organic vegetables and fruit. Instead of looking out at a yard that you have to mow, or planting a garden that you really don’t have time to weed, you can partner with Jesse's service --The Vegetable Patch -- and he will cultivate your yard for you. Similar services exist in many U.S cities; closer to home another variation is Toronto's Young Urban Farmers.
In payment for use of your land, you get periodic vegetable baskets throughout the growing season, from both your own and other gardens around the city. It's this "in-kind" payment of free produce that makes Jesse's service different from traditional CSA models, where the customer buys a share in the harvest before the season starts. But like a traditional CSA, Jesse's customers are aware of what he intends to plant early in the year, and the actual produce that is delivered depends on the season and the success of the crop. The users of the service are participating in the risk of agriculture; if there is a bad weather season, or a pest infestation of a certain crop, the harvest – and the food box – suffer. Equally, in a good year, there is extra for all.
December 18th, 2009
Where in Ottawa?
By Chris Warden // 1 Comment
Spacing's motto is "understanding the urban landscape". Buildings and streets are major components of that landscape; they are the big picture. Within their frame, often specific elements will come to the fore and become the common image associated with a structure or specific location; the Peace Tower standing for all of Parliament Hill, or the frozen canal under the arch of the Laurier Avenue bridge becoming the default image for the 200 kilometer length of the Rideau Waterway. But this process of forming a collective mental picture often crowds out other important details to ...
December 21st, 2009
Suburban home: a place for poets?
By Trevor Tucker // 1 Comment
A previous version of this article appeared in e-architect.co.uk/
They say of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Romantic poet and famous opium addict, that he was prone to digress into his illustrations. He had a far-searching mind that just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Defining sustainable community would have given him hours of fun.
Renewable energy. Ten percent of Germany’s roofs now green. Ten-thousand solar rooftops in LA. Stockholm suburban houses that one can heat with a hair dryer. Leed-certified box stores. Most of the press on the subject suggests that sustainable homes mean technologically savvy and energy efficient. But the marketing and attention given to eco-gadgetry overlooks a couple vital human needs.
Every day I drive through the vinyl sea that was once a novel garden city en route to our little three-acre plot north of Kanata. I scan the streetscape for attempts at architectural beauty: gothic signifiers in a hotel fit for Batman; the preservation of the hundred-year-old March House (soon to be dwarfed by a box store neighbour); a stylish renovation to a bungalow now a dental clinic (with stonework outside that reminds me of crooked teeth in need of straightening). But, I have to look hard. Most of the time I think I could be on any suburban street in Toronto, Seattle, or Vancouver and not know the difference. I’m not a fan of suburbia.
But suburbia is where I grew up. My pastoral playground was the bungalow-ville of the seventies. Its developers, too, had paved over valuable farmland. My neighbourhood was far from the modern density ideal.
December 22nd, 2009
The Gréber plan: A ghost of Ottawa past
By David McClelland // 6 Comments
In the late-1940s, Ottawa was a vastly different place from the city we know today. In spite of being Canada's capital for 80 years, the city was still relatively small (just over 270,000 people on both sides of the river) and retained much of its industrial roots—especially its position as an important centre for the logging industry—and maintained a haphazard collection of poorly-built “temporary” office buildings to house a civil service that exploded in numbers during the war.
Several plans had been prepared throughout the first half of the 20th century to beautify Ottawa, but all wound up falling by the wayside, due to the First World War, Great Depression, and changes in the winds of political favour. It wasn't until 1950, after several years of study, that a plan that would ultimately lead to the transformation of Canada's capital would appear: the Plan for the National Capital General Report, more commonly known as the Gréber plan, after its chief architect, Jacques Gréber.
December 23rd, 2009
World Wide Wednesday: Buffalo, Los Angeles and Palma
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Construction of a major Canal side redevelopment plan in Buffalo could begin by June of next year according to Buffalo's Business First Magazine. The $300 million project (funded ...
December 25th, 2009
Tis the season…
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from the editors of Spacing.
photo by Dave Ripdaskull
December 26th, 2009
Chinatown Arch
By Editor // No Comments
Photoshopped representation of the new arch expected for Chinatown in March of 2010; thanks go to West Side Action for the update.
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc assesses the candidates and the playing field in light of Toronto's upcoming mayoral election.
• The winning design for Toronto's Fort York Visitor Center was announced last week. Check Spacing Toronto's flickr page for photos of the winning design.
• ...
December 28th, 2009
More blogs about buildings and streets
By Evan Thornton // 3 Comments
A couple of weeks back we wrote about some excellent Ottawa blogs that take an urbanist point of view with them as they explore our city's streets and structures.
Today we've got three more that are well worth adding to your RSS reader; Spacing Ottawa checks these ones on a daily basis to see what new gems have been brought to light.
We'll start with the photoblog Wawtawa Life maintained by photographer Robin Kelsey. Robin tries to post one image every day, and though he's slowed off that pace a bit recently he still manages to be one of the most regular photobloggers around. Based near Somerset West, his eye for the telling detail is superb as he chronicles the fascinating streetscape of Chinatown and adjacent downtown districts. He's a clever man with his photoshop, but for our money he is at his very best when he employs composition or perspective to tell a story. One mild criticism; it would be great if Wawtawa included a thumbnail gallery to make navigating the site a bit simpler. Still, clicking on a text description instead of a thumbnail image does add to the surprise factor.
December 29th, 2009
Opinion: Transit Tunnel is no Turkey
By Eric Darwin // 11 Comments
Editor's note: the following article originally appeared in the author's own blog, West Side Action, on December 28. Comments and updates are viewable at that location.
The usual suspects are carping about the transit tunnel, again. Did the province provide funding? Apparently no good news is good enough -- they didn't provide 15-25% more than was asked for ... so it's disaster time. Ring-a-ling. Ding-a-ling. It's disaster time in the city ...
So what might happen if the tunnel portion was cancelled? Critics are quick to attach huge price tags to the tunnel portion. But these won't disappear if the tunnel is cancelled. After all the tunnel includes tracks (won't these be needed for the surface rail?); it includes stations and platforms (which will be needed at the surface too, and may have to be located on what is now private property that may have to be acquired by the city); signalling (which will be way more complex and expensive on the surface as it will have to accomodate private cars, trucks, and bus movements too), etc.
December 31st, 2009
Orleans Town Centre Cinema – A Possible Future?
By Dwight Williams // 1 Comment
[caption id="attachment_1373" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="The former home of Empire Theatres' Orleans theatre between St. Joseph and Centrum, now closed for business"][/caption]
Some east-enders may have noticed changes at the Orleans Town Centre this past week.
The six-screen multiplex that's been standing there for nearly twenty years is now shut down. Originally planned as the proposed third floor of the expansion plans for the Place d'Orléans Mall of the latter half of the 1980's, instead it somehow got built as the second floor of a separate building across the street and about a block away down Centrum Boulevard. It was initially owned by Cineplex Odeon and then passed on to Empire Theatres some years ago.
January 2nd, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Alanah Heffez examines Montreal's various encounters with pedestrian only streets and the opportunities and challenges they bring. Her account begins in the Summer of 1970 when the city opened its first pedestrian mall on Mount Royal Avenue.
• A look through The Gazette's archives gives ...
January 6th, 2010
Ottawa Graffiti: A Photo Exposé
By Apartment613 // No Comments
Tattooed onto the concrete skin of the city, graffiti plays an ambivalent role in the aesthetic of the urban spaces. While the sprayed, drawn or painted markings often rise to the status of art form, adding life and color to dull gray surfaces, they can also make a street corner into a darker, less humane space. The difference may lie in the intentions of the creator. When graffiti is an act spontaneous self-expression or communication, their effect is to transform a generic structures into unique and meaningful landmarks. When graffiti is intended ...
World Wide Wednesday: parking garages, private streets and carbon-neutral cities
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• An ambitious plan from landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations aims to connect four distinct quadrants in the heart of downtown Cleavland to create one cohesive park. Currently ...
January 7th, 2010
Where in Ottawa? The answer…sort of
By Chris Warden // 3 Comments
We've had no correct answers to our first Where in Ottawa contest. even after two times of asking, so it's time to move on!
The building in question is the Former Bank of Montreal Building at the corner of O’Connor and Wellington (through to Sparks Street). This 1932 RAIC Gold Medal winning building was designed by Ernest Barott of Barott and Blackader out of Montreal in 1929. Barott is also known for designing the Aldred Building in Montreal on Place D’Armes which was designed during the same time as the Former Bank of Montreal.
Hartman’s slowly dissolves its brand & community
By Ian Capstick // 4 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="800" caption="Hartman's Piano Lounge in happier times"][/caption]
January 8th, 2010
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
CITY HALL
• Committee gives Ottawa South pedestrian bridge the go-ahead (ctv.ca)
• Green bin collection gets rolling (Ottawa Citizen)
2010 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
• Cullen announces intention to vie for mayor’s chair (Ottawa Citizen)
• Gauthier joins race, will Watson follow?(Metronews.ca)
CYCLING
• City considers segregated bike lanes (cbc.ca)
• Doucet peddles new cycling plan for city (Ottawasun.com)
NCC
• Feds pour $35M into NCC for Ottawa-area facelifts (Metronews.ca)
photo by Simon Pulisifier
January 9th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Suffering from ill-repair and chronic under-use, the future of the Quinpool Education Center (formally Halifax's St Patrick's High School) is in doubt. Jake Schabas muses on what could be done to invigorate the building which has been a Halifax landmark since it opened its doors to students in ...
January 12th, 2010
Abandoned bikes: where do they go?
By Kathryn Hunt // 9 Comments
On my way from the bus to the Rideau Centre doors one morning last month, just after the first real snowfall of the year, I passed a bike that had been left locked to the railing. It was up to the pedals in snow, half buried, and had clearly been there since before the snow came down. To me at least, it looked as though the basket still had some things in it – but then maybe it was just that passing pedestrians had been sticking coffee cups and flyers and other trash in the basket.
I had no way of knowing how long that bike had been there, but I kept an eye out for it, and when I passed a few days later, there it still was. And I started wondering. Whose bike was it? Why had it been left on the bridge? Why hadn’t its owner returned for it? How long had it been there, and how long was it going to stay there before someone removed it… and for that matter, whose responsibility was it to move the thing? What would happen to it?
January 13th, 2010
The Apartment613 Blogger Consultation on Budget 2010
By Apartment613 // No Comments
World Wide Wednesday: Virtual billboards, sprawling cities and the world’s tallest building
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• An art project in Columbus, Ohio, asks residents to consider the role of parking lots in the city's development. The piece, called Audio Dwelling, consists of two ...
January 14th, 2010
Swaps not squats: a blueprint for investing in the arts?
By Kate Wetherow // 5 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="Former site of Goldstein's Supermarket on Elgin; still vacant"][/caption]
January 16th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• A look back into history reveals that the story of Montreal's Plaza Saint Hubert and "its distinctive glass awning" began almost 40 years ago "when the Saint Hubert Merchants Association wanted to convert the commercial street into the world's biggest shopping centre".
• Montreal’s City Council tabled the 2010 ...
January 18th, 2010
Urbanist’s diary: human scale and a ticking clock
By Chris Henschel // 5 Comments
[caption id="attachment_1643" align="alignnone" width="557" caption="Detail from "City of Ottawa Urban Design Guidelines for Development Along Traditional Mainstreets""][/caption]
This is the fifth of a multi-part series that will follow environmentalists Chris Henschel and Allegra Newman as they share their first-hand experiences dealing with an intensification project directly affecting their own residence near Island Park Drive.
This week gave birth to both rumours and official documentation of Springcress's plan for the condo. One of our neighbours heard some good news in a phone call to the City about the developer's parking plans; I'm still trying to confirm this before writing publicly about it.
The Developer also made a formal application for variance for the building. He is seeking three variances (italics added for explanation):
• To increase the building height limit from 18m to 22m above average grade (from 6 stories maximum to 7 stories maximum;
• To reduce the required front yard set-back from 2m, above 15m in height, to 0.5m (reducing the depth of the 'step-back' designed to reduce the 'canyon effect' of large buildings);
• To reduce the required corner side yard set-back from 3m to a height of 15m and 5 m above, to 0m (no setback from property line on the west side).
January 19th, 2010
Photo of the day: fire in the Glebe
By Editor // 2 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Yesterday's fire on Glebe Avenue as seen from Bronson and Carling"][/caption]
photo by Justin Van Leeuwen
Where in Ottawa? – Round 2
By Chris Warden // No Comments
First of all congratulations to Charles A-M aka Centretretowner for correctly identifying the former bank’s likeness in the central carved panel above the Wellington Street entrance. As you'll recall our first round was a two-part question:
I am a building, and I just may be the only one in the downtown core to include a depiction of myself on my exterior. Who am I, and where on me do I feature this image of me?
The first part of the question drew a blank from everyone, but once we named the building as a further clue, Charles found the depiction, located under the rays of “Thrift” up on the edge of a bluff ( see image below). It is a rather heroic likeness, but there is nothing wrong with a little artistic license now and then.
Spacing Radio returns for season three!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing is happy to announce the launch of Season Three of our biweekly podcast Spacing Radio.
You can listen to the episode on the Spacing Radio web site or subscribe to the podcast (free!) through iTunes.
Episode 014 kicks things off with Marc Glassman (the owner of the now-defunct Pages Books) interviewing critically acclaimed filmmaker Atom Egoyan, who discusses his decision to cast the oft-overlooked Toronto as itself in his latest film, Chloe. Will Alsop, the renowned British architect whose work (including the Ontario College of Art ...
January 20th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Hong Kong, Moscow and Port-au-Prince
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Since July of last year Petaluma California has been known as "the city without planners". The decision to dissolve the official planning department in favour ...
January 21st, 2010
Monumental Monuments
By Apartment613 // No Comments
[caption id="attachment_1694" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Courtesy of meaghan.walton"][/caption]
As the national capital, Ottawa is in the somewhat unique position of housing many of the country's significant and historical monuments. For the folks who live here it means that often our daily commutes or routines can end up including references to the country's history, falters, apologies and successes. In many ways we Ottawans are responsible for the nation's collective memory.
Today apartment613 is lucky to have a collection of photos from Meaghan Walton-Perreault exploring this theme. Take a look and let ...
A daytime date with Mr. Dark
By Evan Thornton // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Courtyard behind Sussex Drive"][/caption]
When you're getting to know someone you think might have prospects it often a good idea to spend some sunshine hours with them before moving on to dinner and a movie and whatever might come next. Going for a walk can be a great strategy. Let them choose the route, maybe end up somewhere for a coffee, and spend a while with them where you can get a sense of who they are before there are any expectations.
One person we thought Ottawa needs to go on a daytime stroll with and get to know of a little better is George Dark, chair of the Strategic Design Review and Advisory Panel. That's the panel charged with making sure the design of the new Lansdowne will do Ottawa proud. How important is that? Well, some argue that Lansdowne Live might be the biggest city-building project we've seen in decades. So this thing we've started with George might be very serious, indeed. But beyond getting paid for it, we wondered -- why should a Toronto landscape architect care what a long-neglected site 400 kilometers away from his office really ends up looking like? Why should we trust him to care about us?
January 23rd, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Sidewalk sandwich boards--a creative tactic for small businesses to attract customers? A way to add vitality to city streets? Or commercial intrusion on public space? These are some of the questions being asked as Halifax's 2006 Temporary Sign By-law--a measure ...
January 24th, 2010
Urbanist’s diary: a side street “closed longer than anyone remembers”
By Chris Henschel // No Comments
This is the latest in a multi-part series that follows environmentalists Chris Henschel and Allegra Newman as they share their first-hand experiences dealing with an intensification project directly affecting their own residence near Island Park Drive.
Everyone in the neighbourhood received a letter from Ottawa's Committee of Adjustment this week to inform us that the Committee would be ruling on the developer's application for three variances on February 3. I went with a neighbour to check out the plans.
The plans confirm that the developer is now proposing vehicular access from Wellington Street (instead of our dead-end side street) and only underground parking (removing the need for an above-ground parking lot that would create all sorts of nuisance for us). Good news!
Except it seems the City may not yet be onside. The local councilor Christine Leadman has expressed support for a Wellington Street access, but the City staff may not agree. We've been told there will be a meeting with the developer this week to discuss this issue and that the City will likely request an adjournment of the Committee of Adjustment's hearing on the proposed variances as they consider the plans.
January 26th, 2010
The history of the Ottawa subway
By Alain Miguelez // 21 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Subway tunnels, Seattle-style. We've been talking about getting our own since 1915."][/caption]
As Ottawa takes decisive steps toward giving itself a downtown subway, it is fascinating to find that this is actually the fourth time that plans for grade-separated downtown transit have been proposed. This is typical of growing cities that have had to tackle such a major investment in transit. Montreal, for instance, first proposed a subway in 1910. It would be over half a century before the métro finally opened, in 1964. Likewise, Toronto’s first subway plan dates back to 1909. It took until 1954 to see the first trains roll. Even cities like Paris first discussed subways as early as 1854, and had to wait several decades until the first line was put in service in 1900.
In Ottawa, the first subway plan dates back to 1915. In a report to Parliament, the Holt Commission noted the severe congestion of Sparks Street and arteries leading up to it, including Bank and Elgin Streets. As the drawing below illustrates, it recommended placing streetcars in a subway between Bronson and Rideau Streets, with southbound lines on Bank and Elgin. The portals would’ve been at the escarpment on the western edge, the Rideau Street intersection with Sussex at the eastern edge, and at about Laurier Avenue for the southern edges of the Bank and Elgin lines.
January 27th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Portland, Detroit and Port-au-Prince
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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January 28th, 2010
Where in Ottawa, Round 2: time for the cheat sheet
By Chris Warden // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Canadian Museum of Nature: Victorian, haunted, under renovation, and *not* the answer"][/caption]
No one has correctly guessed the correct answer to last week's puzzler. To refresh memories, here it is again:
While I currently sit unassumingly at the base of the city, stripped down, but encased, I once played host to spectacles and even the Prime Minister. What structure am I?
So it's time to break out the cheat-sheet and make with the extra hints:
I am not the Musuem of Nature (Victoria Memorial Building)
I am located in the northern ...
January 29th, 2010
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // 1 Comment
CITY HALL
• Council passes budget, 3.77% tax hike. Bus routes, tree trimming slated for cuts win reprieve, but at cost of higher transit fares (Ottawa Citizen)
• City seeks citizens' ideas for Lansdowne urban park (MetroNews Ottawa)
• Committee introduces new anti-poverty strategy (CBC Ottawa)
DESIGN
• Key Carleton landmarks circled for major facelift. Updated master plan urges replacement of Paterson Hall among other recommendations (Ottawa Citizen)
CYCLING
• More cyclists brave elements to commute year-round (Ottawa Citizen)
MUNICIPAL ELECTION
• Hume is the man to watch. If he runs for mayor, election will be ...
January 30th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• A redevelopment plan for downtown St. John's calls for the destruction of three buildings to make way for a new 15-story office tower. According to Spacing's Andrew Harvey, the destruction of the low-rise buildings (currently occupied by small businesses) would transform both ...
February 2nd, 2010
Mayoral Ottawa: from Fun Frank to Fisher’s Folly
By Tonya Davidson // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="489" caption="Birkett Castle, now the Hungarian Embassy --photo by E. Thornton"][/caption]
When it was recently announced that Jim Watson would be joining the mayoral race, I began to think about mayors and their stamps of the city’s built environment. In a capital city that duly celebrates ‘nation-builders’ where can we find the ‘city-builders’? When I started to dig a little it turns out that Ottawa’s mayors — particularly those from the first half of the 20th century — haunt the city everywhere, in street signs, bridges and hospitals they advocated for, decadent ‘castles’ they lived in, and swimming pools.
Lyon Street is named for the mayor who had the honour of celebrating Confederation — Robert Lyon was the mayor in 1867 and was a serious man, most notable for having a family full of famous characters, and the longest beard in Ottawa’s mayoral history.
February 3rd, 2010
Opinion: a reborn Union Station could hold our history
By David McClelland // 10 Comments
Editor's note: an earlier version of this post appeared in Spacing Ottawa contributor Dave McClelland's Ottawa Project blog
Ottawa’s Union Station: it’s a majestic building, a half-scale replica of New York City’s old Penn Station, and painfully underused. Since 1966, when the National Capital Commission removed rail from downtown, the building has served as a government conference centre, rather than a hub for rail travelers. However, if mayor Larry O'Brien isn't just floating the idea for the fun it, it seems that trains might just return to Union Station, in the form of a downtown stop on the new light rail system—taking the place of the Rideau/Sussex station in the LRT proposal.
As its stands right now, the interior of Union Station is unknown to most Ottawans. An occasional conference centre for First Minister's meetings and other high-level discussions, its grand hall and spacious passageways are usually roped off to the citizens who walk past it each day. But as the main hall of a transit station, commuters would have cause to use the public space on a daily basis.
World Wide Wednesday: Moscow, Vancouver and America’s high-speed rail
By Kat Snukal // 1 Comment
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• A big transit news week as the Obama administration announced the benefactors of the $8 billion investment in high-speed rail. Time Magazine ran an in-depth piece on ...
February 4th, 2010
A river runs near it: re-orienting the Carleton quad
By Chris Warden // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="The Rideau river near the Herzberg Building, Carleton University"][/caption]
Every five years or so, Carleton University revisits its master plan. The most recent draft edition was released in September 2009. Though the campus has long failed to take advantage of its spectacular setting, its administrators have always understood the power of the site, as most brochure shots of the institution are traditionally taken from the air. From this perspective you get a sense of the way Carleton relates to both the Rideau River and the Rideau Canal. On the ground the visual effect is much different. The site is heavily insulated with ring roads and parkways which separate the campus from its natural setting. There have been sporadic attempts to connect portions of the campus to the surrounding waterways, but in the end, the powers-that-be have always judged that the ring road was of more importance than, for example, allowing the Loeb Building to reach out to the banks of the Rideau River.
February 5th, 2010
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Carleton O-Train station -- set to see more users soon?"][/caption]
2010 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
Ottawa council needs new blood: advocacy group (CTV)
Watson officially enters Ottawa's mayoral race (Centretown News)
Peggy Feltmate retires (Ottawa Citizen)
URBAN DESIGN
The dukes are up (Ottawa Citizen)
TRANSIT
Student group hails transit pass plan (CBC)
LANSDOWNE
NCC not interested in buying Lansdowne (Ottawa Citizen)
Architects named for Lansdowne redesign (Ottawa Sun)
photo by Earl Andrew
February 8th, 2010
Intensification, Smart Growth and Density Bonusing
By Allegra Newman // 4 Comments
As condo after condo is planned in the Wellington West neighbourhood, intensification is seen as an inevitable by many local citizens. City of Ottawa planners and councilors promote intensification all the while musing on the increased tax base a new seven storey condo will provide. Citizens begrudgingly accept that the new condo development, whether in their backyard, on their street, or in their neighbourhood will increase traffic but they also hope that the new developments may encourage new businesses and increase public transit and community services. But what really is driving this move to intensify our cities?
The promotion of urban intensification, or densification or infill as it is otherwise known, can be attributed in part to the popularization of the urban planning theory of Smart Growth. Smart Growth theory promotes the construction and reconstruction of compact communities in the center of the city, as a more sustainable approach than continuing urban sprawl. Smart growth communities are transit oriented, bicycle and pedestrian friendly and promote local jobs and services.
February 9th, 2010
Machismo – the vital accessory for vehicular cycling?
By Kathryn Hunt // 2 Comments
Editor's note: As the video above will show, cycling the winter streets in Ottawa is clearly not for everyone. It helps to be young, male, and a little bit aggressive about claiming your space on the road. In fact, as this article from Scientific American suggests, those descriptors are associated with the majority of urban cyclists across North America, in any season. The article makes the case that if authorities wish to measure the success of safe cycling initiatives, they need only look to see if women make up an equal share of cyclists on the road. Female cyclists are "indicator species", it is argued, and when we see them represented equally we are looking at streets and pathways that are safer not only for women, but for everyone on two wheels.
With this context in mind, we join Spacing Ottawa contributor Kathyrn Hunt of the Incidental Cyclist blog as she discusses her experience going against the statistical trend to become a four-season "vehicular" cyclist.
A reader commented on a recent post on my blog, saying that danger spots like the Queen Elizabeth/Queen Elizabeth intersection — where the city path and NCC path don't meet — are what keeps her off her bike.
Awkwardness — that's what really bothers me about such intersections. There's a learning/acclimatization curve to urban biking. I grew up in rural New Brunswick. When I moved to Ottawa for college I brought my bike and I used it a lot — but only on the sidewalks. It was way too scary just trying to cross major intersections with the bike, let alone ride in the street. I slowly learned how to use the side streets, but I would do anything not to have to be on Bank Street dodging the #1 bus. And eventually I gave up on riding for the most part. The bike in question was lost in the shuffle when I moved out of the country for a couple of years.
February 10th, 2010
Apt613 Photo Essay: Lesser Known Buildings
By Apartment613 // No Comments
Ottawa-the national capital, often overshadows Ottawa-the place to live. This is particularly true in architecture, where institutions like parliament, the Museum of Civilization and the National Art Gallery of Canada grab all the attention. Today, Apartment613 is featuring a photo essay by photographer Steve McCullough that explores some of the structures that - while not national treasures - help to give the city its unique style.
Steve uses his camera to bring out the extraordinary in the everyday, even capturing the infamous City Center in an attractive light.
Frequently voted the ...
February 12th, 2010
If you love someone, buy them Spacing
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
Between now and Vanetine's Day on Sunday, you can buy the love of your life a discounted subscription to Spacing.
For only $25, the man or woman that loves Toronto as much as they love you can receive six issues mailed to their home for nearly 50% off of our newsstand price. This deal is also $4 off of our regular subscription rate.
photo from Toronto Archives: fonds 1257, series 1057, item 6980
“Where in Ottawa?”: a cinema, stripped bare
By Chris Warden // 2 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Popcorn and a Prime Minister: the old home of Place de Ville cinema"][/caption]
The answer to last week's quiz is the Podium Building at Place de Ville. It seems it was a tough one; we had no right answers.
Place de Ville was once home to the Place de Ville Cinemas operated by Famous Players. The theatre opened in 1971 and closed in 1996. It opened as one of the replacements for the Capitol Theatre, which once graced the corner of Bank and Queen, a short distance away.
The old cinemas are hidden behind office space which now encircles them. This allows the offices access to the natural light provided by the windows, while the cinemas are encased, an arrangement which reduces their perceived bulk. The Place de Ville Cinema is unique in the city as the cinemas are piggy-backed. Cinema II accessed from the ground floor had 437 seats and Cinema I had 751 seats. The primary feature of the multi-story foyer was a mural of images of the old Capitol Theatre which rose up next to the multi-level escalator.
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // 1 Comment
CITY HALL
Winds of change in air for new council (Ottawa Citizen)
City gets $780Gs back for fuel it did not use (Ottawa Sun)
Expand Lansdowne jury, adviser urges (Ottawa Citizen)
CYCLING
More cyclists brave elements to commute year-round (Ottawa Citizen)
SCHOOL BOARD
Board again tackles alternative school issue (Ottawa Citizen)
URBAN ART
Cozy up to a lamppost and some urban art (MetroNews)
photo by Justin Van Leeuwen
February 13th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• The centrally located Halifax Commons has become a hub in the daily commute of many Halagonions. Making the Common cyclists friendly is thus essential to creating a bike-friendly city. ...
February 16th, 2010
Opinion: Lansdowne deadlines are illusory and artificial
By Tim Lash // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="Winter at Lansdowne: the season to gather opinion"][/caption]
February 17th, 2010
The return of food
By Emily Sinclair // 1 Comment
Kalle Hakala’s December 17th post ("After the thaw: could this be a farm by next spring?") brought to mind the relationships between food production, consumption and urban landscapes. Community gardens, community-shared agriculture (CSA), farmers’ markets, patios, street vendors and even Ottawa’s new green bins are among just a few examples of the presence of food in public and private spaces of the city. The following post by Emily Sinclair is the first of series in which she will examine the impact of food issues on the experience of urban space.
Easily dismissed as an antithesis to modern city-building by planners and other urban administrators at the turn of the 19th century, issues of food production and consumption have helped shape the physical form and social content of the modern city. Activities relating to food production – the messiness of soil, pests and livestock; the rural nature of labour for food cultivation – contradicted the cleanliness and modern appeal of urban life. Through zoning and land development, food production was banished from city parks and lawns to the rural countryside where it was deemed a more “appropriate” use of land. On the other hand, activities relating to food consumption, and in particular the decidedly urban pursuit of food retailing, quickly became the realm of private enterprise. The regulation of food consumption was assumed almost entirely by private market forces and surfaced only as a social concern in the narrow contexts health and welfare agencies.
February 19th, 2010
Week in review: the headlines
By Patty Barrera // No Comments
CITY HALL
I'm no Marxist proposing living wage (Ottawa Citizen)
City to study living wage policy, East end councillors split on issue ( Orleans EMC)
LANSDOWNE
Ottawa residents have chance to weigh in on Lansdowne plans (Ottawa Citizen)
TRANSIT
Transit-riding parents set to fight for stroller space (Ottawa Citizen)
DEVELOPERS
Councillor seeks to revisit boundaries (Ottawa Citizen )
OTHER IDEAS/OTHER CITIES
Urban Food Strategy Unveiled (Globe and Mail)
photo by Kona Gallagher
February 20th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• Jenn Casey examines the details of the recently approved five-year Metro Transit plan for downtown Halifax, including provisions for increased service to outlying areas, a streamlining of bus coverage in the core, and a year-round downtown shuttle.
• The Shannon Park military barracks in Dartmouth is a dilapidated eyesore with huge potential — as a new-thinking, sustainable neighbourhood, land for the the ...
February 22nd, 2010
Mayor’s race: “I’m not Larry” isn’t going to cut it
By Vicky Smallman // 1 Comment
Editor's note: Voting day is still eight months away, but with candidates such as Jim Watson and Alex Cullen already in the running for the mayor's chair and several long-time councilors announcing plans to leave office at the end of this term, interest in October's civic election has already started to build.
Spacing Ottawa is launching our commentary on the 2010 municipal election with this post from veteran blogger -- and former candidate for Kitchissippi Ward -- Vicky Smallman. Vicky will share our CityVote column with commentator and media consultant Ian Capstick.
What is it about a municipal election that makes the campaign seem so long? Well, it's not just a feeling; municipal elections are a drawn-out process. Candidates can register starting in early January, but nominations don't close until September 10. From a candidate's point of view, the jockeying for attention starts from the moment of their announcement, but most of the action (debates, canvassing, and media attention) occurs between the close of nominations and election day, which is October 25.
But that doesn't mean there's nothing to write about right now. Take the mayoral campaign. Nine candidates have registered so far, including veteran councilor Alex Cullen and former mayor Jim Watson, who resigned his position as Municipal Affairs minister and Member of Provincial Parliament to seek the mayoralty. Incumbent Larry O'Brien says he'll make up his mind in June. Homelessness advocate and 2006 candidate Jane Scharf is also running. As for the others, there is not a lot of information about them at this point in the campaign.
February 23rd, 2010
Baseline + 25
By Dwight Williams // 2 Comments
I was visiting Baseline Transitway Station recently and had that sudden feeling of dislocation you get when what you see in front of you is very different than what your eyes have been trained to expect. In a flash a new fact was driven home: the place is no longer what it was when I first visited in the fall of 1985.
Nor is it anything like what it is expected to be in a year's time.
Right now, it's a great deal of open space.
From April to November, that may yet be a good thing. But in the dead - or perhaps not so dead in these days of fears of climate derangement? - of an Ottawa winter, such a space may seem more desolate than it truly is.
World Wide Wednesday: Vancouver, Lisboa, and Shanghai
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games will eventually end. The athletes and spectators will go home but the infrastructure built to accommodate them will remain. Fastcompany looks at the built-form ...
February 25th, 2010
Living on the street? Unfortunately, there’s a map for that.
By Evan Thornton // 5 Comments
For most of us economic conditions wax and wane with recession and boom, but for the past 20 years one indicator of social-economic well-being in urban centres has shown no improvement whatsoever. That is the number of homeless people living in our cities. in 2008, that number was estimated by social sector organizations to be in excess of 300,000.
To find out why, studies are commissioned and ignored and then other studies are initiated to study the previous studies for clues that may have been missed. However, for many Canadians of a certain age, the answer seems linked to a policy change in the early 90s. At that time the federal government withdrew support for the social housing sector, and within 18 months of that many of us started seeing people regularly "sleeping rough" on our streets for the first time in memory.
The response from various levels of government has been a patchwork of policy and small measures that have done little to even recognize the scope of the problem, never mind address it any meaningful way. The public has gotten used to the once-horrifying sight of people sleeping on the streets – it's the new normal, except that after two decades it's not even that new anymore.
February 27th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• A long-anticipated bike lane along Jarvis Street in Toronto has finally been given the go-ahead at City Hall. John Lornic looks at why mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi has decided to turn the proposal into a contentious election issue.
• Spacing's Sean Marshall looks at Disco Road--the road the city forgot. The a four-lane industrial road, contains signs never converted to metric....
March 1st, 2010
Soundscape: Market and Rideau Centre
By Evan Thornton // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="image by Google maps"][/caption]
As an experiment, this past weekend I brought an omni-directional microphone with me during a walk through the Byward Market and Rideau Centre. Starting beside the Highlander at the foot of the William Street Mall, I walked along seeing what sounds might leave a strong enough "audio footprint" to identify when I played the file back.
In the first segment I managed to pick out the sounds of Karen Carpenter thumping the life out of a tinny speaker outside a candy store, then the tuneless plucking ...
March 2nd, 2010
SPACING RADIO: City budgets, ferry rides and Olympic legacies
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing Radio 017 is on the air.
It's budget-time in Toronto and while City Hall is busy at work approving the final numbers, host David Michael Lamb sits down with Spacing contributing editor John Lorinc to talk about the pitfalls of having to pay the bills. Producer Mieke Anderson stows away with the crew of the Toronto Island Ferry Ongiara to discuss the realities of operating the ferry throughout the winter months and, in the process, discovers one of the city's best-kept secrets. Meanwhile, nearly 3,500 km away in Vancouver, reporter Pattie ...
March 3rd, 2010
World Wide Wedneday: Los Angeles, Denver and Mumbai
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• In 2004, the City if Denver committed $4.7 billion to an ambitious transit project called FasTracks, to be completed by 2017. Supported by thirty-two regional mayors, FasTacks included provisions ...
Needed: feet on the street
By Editor // 5 Comments
This week on Ottawa Morning the CBC's Julie Ireton is taking an in-depth look at Ottawa's dysfunctional Sparks Street mall, the national tourist attraction that doubles as an echo chamber from October through April.
In this segment she hears ideas on how to revitalize the street; the concepts include a dedicated vintage trolley system, on-street parking, and dropping in an "anchor store", or maybe even two.
With ideas to share like Kate Wetherow's on how to make vacant buildings come to life -- combined with some pot-shots at the federal bureaucracy -- Spacing's ...
March 6th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Spacing Montreal’s Adam Bemma has produced an informative mini-doc on a contentious Montreal proposal that would see a bus corridor run through the city’s historic Griffintown neighborhood. Check out Spacing Montreal for the fascinating video where Bemma speaks with engineer ...
March 8th, 2010
Community collaboration: the real catalyst for change
By Ian Capstick // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Reserved seating: commitment-phobes only?"][/caption]
Ottawa is a change-averse city. Or is it our elected leaders who are holding back change? Our current city council has been dragging their heals on fundamental debates and decisions about transit, infrastructure, and urban development for over a decade.
This on-again, off-again relationship with decision making has turned city council into the cliched commitment-phobic boyfriend. Just as you’re sure council is about to propose a great solution, one of them steps in to break up the near-deal and send debate careening off into committee hell for another six months.
When asked if we want change, citizens in Ottawa respond with a resounding “yes!” Until, that is, it’s time to actually vote. Then we return our incumbents to their squabbling and bickering.
March 9th, 2010
Trees and grass with that playground? Swap you for it.
By Allegra Newman // 4 Comments
View Larger Map
Listening to the repetitive clanging of machines boring through bedrock it can seem that the condo developments along Richmond and Wellington Roads are never-ending. But along with the noise and dust, urban infill can also mean exciting possibilities, and can be used as a creative opportunity for changes within a community. Most recently, development options are being proposed for the Soeurs de la Visitation convent at 114 Richmond Road. This large, cloistered, very green looking area stretches from Richmond Road to Byron Avenue and is a mystery to local residents who have only air photos and glances at buildings and hundred year old trees to identify the heritage and natural value of the site. Immediately adjacent to the site is Hilson Public School with its treeless schoolyard separated from busy Richmond Road by a chain link fence. These two properties, side by side, green space and concrete. According to the current proposal the green space will be developed and the concrete will continue to be a children’s playground. Imagine if this could be different.
March 10th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Exit signs, China’s golf obessesion and the decade’s most expensive transit projects
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Planning a bike trip using Google Maps is about to get much easier as the company is set to launch a new bike trip planner service in 150 US ...
March 13th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• Growing customer dissatisfaction with the with the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and the looming municipal election have led to earnest conversations on how the fledgling city agency can be overhauled. One idea on the table is to integrate the TTC into the larger regional transit organization Metrolinx. Spacing Toronto hosts a debate between contributors and transit experts, John Lorinc and Steve Munro, ...
March 16th, 2010
The ‘Last Good Year’: Revisiting the Centennial Craze
By Tonya Davidson // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Did Montréal get the best Centennial legacy of them all?"][/caption]
1967 was a good year— the “last good year” according to Pierre Berton. Canada’s centennial sparked centennial-project craze across the country.
I first started to think about the lingering legacies of Centennial celebrations on a visit to St. Paul, Alberta. I was on a little road trip checking out ‘big things on the side of the road’ and stopped in St. Paul to visit the town’s UFO landing pad. Reading the accompanying plaque I discovered that the UFO landing pad was a centennial project. For the citizens of this Albertan town, welcoming out-of-planet visitors was the perfect way to celebrate Canada’s birthday and Canadian hospitality. While countless arenas, community centers and parks were built in honour of the Centennial, Berton outlines other more extraordinary celebratory acts. Men grew ‘centennial beards,’ one man attempted (unsuccessfully) to lead a dog team from Tuktoyaktuk to Edmonton, and a team of paddlers embarked on a canoe trip/ race following the historic route of the Voyageurs from the North Saskatchewan River to Montreal, all in celebration of the nation’s birthday. Berton also noted this more anarchist style ‘centennial project’: “It almost seemed that every man and woman in the country was determined to mark the anniversary with a personal effort, even if to somebody it meant throwing a hammer through the window of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto. A note from the anonymous vandal attached to the hammer announced that this was his centennial project” (39).
Spacing Radio 018 is now on the air
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
This episode of Spacing Radio is all about rules. In support of Spacing magazine's upcoming issue, our contributors examine the dos and don'ts of the city. Host David Michael Lamb talks to publisher Matthew Blackett about how millions of Canadians were given permission to break all traffic laws when Sidney Crosby scored the overtime winner at the Winter Olympics. Monika Warzecha examines the drinking laws of Halifax and why the city is afraid to close downtown streets. And ...
March 17th, 2010
Streetcar elegy
By Spacing Ottawa // 7 Comments
Between Tonya Davidson's post on the Centennial year and the above video of Ottawa's old streetcar system, it seems it is History Week here at Spacing Ottawa. It was Eric Darwin from West Side Action that first drew our attention to this amazing colour video, mostly shot in the late 1950s, of streetcars plying Ottawa's roads and avenues. The segments are haphazardly joined together, but as you'll see, the route took the cars through Confederation square, along ...
March 18th, 2010
Canadian artists in the urban fabric
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
By Marcus Bowman, cross-posted from Spacing Toronto
An unprecedented collaborative report mapping the concentration of artists in Canadian cities was released last month. The study was a result of the collective effort of the cultural departments of the cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Published by Hill Strategies, and based on data from the 2006 census, the report paints a fascinating picture into the make-up of Canada's artistic and creative communities.
Each city has its own trends in the way its artistic and creative communities have located. Vancouver had the highest overall percent of artists at 2.3% but has its artistic community spread widely throughout the city. Toronto has by far the largest artistic community; it is home to one in six Canadian artists. Toronto has also seen its artistic neighbourhoods shift slightly since to 2001 to different areas of concentration. Montreal has perhaps the most densely located artistic community and is home to three of the country's top five artistic employment postal codes. The Montreal neighbourhood of the H2T postal code (northward from avenue du Mont-Royal to avenue Van Horne between St-Denis and Jeanne-Mance) is the most artistic in Canada with artists accounting for 7.8% of its workers, ten times the national average. Ottawa and Calgary have artist concentrations closer to the national average, interestingly they also both have the largest income gaps between artists and the rest of the workforce and the largest percent of female artists. Maps of these trends are shown below.
March 20th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• As part of an ongoing collaboration with the NFB, Spacing Toronto has posted an Oscar-nominated animated short from 1966 entitled "What on Earth!". The short film, the work of Les Drew and Kaj Pindal, shows Earth through the eyes of visiting extraterrestrials who, confronted with automobiles everywhere they look "understandably assume they are the dominant race".
• Spacing contributor Marcus Bowman examines a ...
March 22nd, 2010
1% for public art on Ottawa streets
By Kate Wetherow // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Can "one percent" bring art to streets beyond the national gallery? "][/caption]
When you see public art projects on Ottawa streets, do you wonder how they get there? Who pays for it?
Many Ottawans don’t realize that every new Ottawa street re-vitalization project is subject to the City’s “1% for public art” policy. The idea of “percent-for-art” programs has been around for a while and is contingent on a mandated allocation from government (or corporate) initiatives. As it says on the City of Ottawa’s website: “One percent of funds for new municipal spaces is put aside for public art in order to beautify the space and make art accessible to everyone.”
For example, the Community Design Plan for the Wellington West road reconstruction has a $25+ million price tag for capital improvement. 1% of that budget, approx. $250,000, is intended for commissioned public art. Other such projects include Bank Street, Preston Street and in the future, streets like Sussex Drive.
Does the 1% always get directed to public art? No, but 1% initiatives are becoming more visible due to the strength and persistence of Ottawa’s vocal community groups who are starting to hold the City to its funding policy.
March 23rd, 2010
Learning from others
By Vicky Smallman // 2 Comments
As I write this, I'm enjoying a family holiday in Vancouver. Travelling always makes me feel a little wistful, especially when I come across great public spaces or city services we don't see much of in Ottawa. Sure, it's easy to be envious of the big things – great parks, great transit, and so on. But what gets me going are the little things. Like public washrooms in playgrounds... open ones! In March! Or fenced dog runs tucked into unexpected spaces. Or street signs that ...
March 24th, 2010
Hop on board with a deadman for another “Where in Ottawa”
By Chris Warden // 1 Comment
With last week's post on the old Ottawa streetcar system fresh in out minds, this edition of Where In Ottawa tests your knowledge of Ottawa transit history:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Can you solve this week's streetcar puzzler on your own, or will you rely on the kindness of strangers?"][/caption]
I am looking at the area that once contained one of the trickiest one-two combinations in the city's streetcar network. You had to run the gauntlet and avoid becoming a deadman. Where am I?
As well as sending us your guess, you can also ...
March 27th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // 1 Comment
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Toronto's Cabbagetown, known for it array of independent businesses, artistic community and Victorian homes has undergone a number of reincarnations over the years . Once one of Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods its been gentrifying steadily since the 1970s. Spacing’s Ryan Bolton looks at neighbourhood change ...
March 30th, 2010
Spacing Radio 019 is on the air!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
The new episode of Spacing Radio continues with our look at the Rules of the city (to complement the release of our new magazine issue) as producer Mieke Anderson examines the arcane permit process in Toronto. Reporter Sarah Bridge sits down with internationally renown architect Jack Diamond to discuss the success and failures of renovating Toronto's Union Station. And Montreal correspondent Adam Bemma explores the Berri Square (see series of posts on SpacingMontreal.ca), one of the city's most socially ...
March 31st, 2010
Two zloty to ride the red rocket
By Evan Thornton // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="802" caption="click on image to launch full-size viewer"][/caption]
April 3rd, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing's blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• Carol Coletta, CEO of CEOs for Cities, recently spoke at a sold-out Halifax luncheon on "cities as engines of economic prosperity". Responding to Ms. Colett's emphasis on the importance of developing a Halifax brand, Emily Richardson ...
April 6th, 2010
Bread and circuses: ampitheatre a boon to summer in the city
By Kate Wetherow // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Even spectres congregate at World Exchange ampitheatre "][/caption]
It’s the time of year for renovations and construction projects, getting ready for the onset of the busy Ottawa tourism and “good weather” season.
One of the renovation projects I have been keeping an eye on is the World Exchange Plaza Ampitheatre.
In downtown Ottawa, the World Exchange is a well-utilized mixed-use facility. The property is managed by Bentall LP, known for their “responsible property management,” comprehensive green programs, and integrated approach to real estate.
Office towers above, a mall on the main floor and free public parking below, the Exchange is perhaps best known for the Empire Cinema at its heart. The cinema is busy throughout the year, drawing people from Centretown, Lowertown, the Glebe, Sandy Hill and users of the transitway.
Finding such “draws” is something that Spacing Ottawa has been actively talking about lately, especially on the issue of how to create that energy on nearby Sparks Street, where tumbleweeds have been seen rolling through the silent corridor at night.
World Exchange has been sprucing up its outdoor pedestrian garden and popular lunchtime seating area (bordering busy Metcalfe, Albert and Queen), and enhancing its outdoor performance space.
April 7th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Is smart growth the future of American cities?
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• According to a CNN report the American urban landscape is undergoing a transformation--sprawling suburbs are on their way out and sustainable, urban-centric development is on its way in. The ...
April 8th, 2010
Reclaiming common sense for our revolution
By Ian Capstick // 5 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="596" caption="Sidewalk lake downtown: a taste of what pedestrians get for their taxes?"][/caption]
Common sense.
For a lot of people who live in Ontario, I suppose Mike Harris and his right-wing “Common Sense Revolution” ruined those words. But taking a page from progressive movements, I say let’s reclaim “common sense.”
It's the essential trait missing among the many elected people on city council who can’t see past the boundaries of their own ward. Perhaps it’s a leadership deficit, forced amalgamation or simple political rivalry that keeps these ...
April 9th, 2010
Playing hardball for the convent: power politics emerge from the cloister
By Chris Henschel // 6 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="598" caption="Crane looming over Byron: are there more to come?"][/caption]
Editor's note: the following article is cross-posted from Spacing Ottawa contributor Chris Henschel's personal blog, Bestboro, Best Wellington
My wife Allegra and I wrote a series of posts for SpacingOttawa.ca that chronicled our involvment in a condo development on Richmond Road, behind our house.
The project ended up falling through, but the experience of working with the developer was largely positive. Though I believe that the City's height restrictions are too liberal (especially for the north side of a 'traditional mainstreet'), the developer was more or less happy to stay within City bylaws, with minor variances. He was also a nice guy and was listening to what people were saying: we didn't like parking at the back, so he put it all underground; we didn't want an access off a dead-end sidestreet, so he proposed moving it to Wellington.
Economic concerns doomed the project. Residents were relieved. But our ongoing experience with the redevelopment of the Soeurs de la Visitation Convent currently being proposed by Ashcroft Homes inspires a more sober perspective: what might happen behind us if this style of developer comes knocking.
Ashcroft's proposal for the Convent site doubles the permitted density and height prescribed in the City's Official Plan and Secondary Plan. It crowds and overbears the historic convent building. It cuts a private access road through the Byron Linear Park. It has no useful public space and it threatens to gridlock traffic on Richmond Road (the City's figures show that the proposal would push the neighbourhood to within a breath of its 2031 density targets).
The residents on surrounding streets that were invited to pre-consultations on the proposal see no trace of their input. The developer has filed with the Ontario Superior Court to quash a recommendation for heritage designation of the whole property that could strengthen the City's hand when reviewing the plan.
April 10th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
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 into how the area has regenerated. 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.
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 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 today but as the inadequate slum it was to a generation of immigrants yearning for something better that it was during his father's childhood.
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 has seen many of the increasing health ailments affecting 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.
April 13th, 2010
The Line of Parting: Ottawa’s Two Sublimes
By Daniel Velarde // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="267" caption="Voice of Fire: the template for curatorial controversy since 1989"][/caption]
You might remember the ink spilled several months ago over Maria Cook's Ottawa Citizen article revealing plans for a 10-storey Roxy Paine sculpture, a kind of giant stalagmite atop Nepean Point. Online commentators quickly lashed the New York artist's Hundred Foot Line, and in the tradition of taxpayer critiques, ridiculed the commission as yet another foreign and aloof New York abstraction pushed onto the "suckers" at the National Art Gallery. Not to be outdone, the curatorial establishment rallied to defend the installation, apparently eager to assume the role of a cultural bastion desperately resisting the philistine masses. (A Mount Carmel complex which says a lot about the gallery's PR doctrine and its evolution since the early 90s, but let me concentrate for a moment on what seems vital.)
These art controversies may strike us as naive, foolish, or ridiculous, but I believe they present some otherwise unavailable clues or code outlining larger processes in Ottawa's historical development. More specifically, these public art installations are likely the latest phase in Ottawa's well-known spatial mutation, beginning in the 1950s, when the horizontal city — the "Edinburgh of the West" whose only towers were the spires on churches and on Parliament — burgeoned into the familiar vertical experience of glass and concrete, the stunted mockery of Toronto or New York. (With all that came packaged: wild architectures; kaleidoscopic visual stimulation, etc.)
April 14th, 2010
Spacing Radio 020 is on the air!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
On this episode of Spacing Radio producer Mieke Andersen takes you on a walk with Cindy Rozeboom through the east end of Toronto, along the Danforth, to explore the potential of empty storefronts. In other cities, street food is a major component of public life, but in Toronto food vendors don't seem to get any respect from city hall, BIAs, and urban designers — reporter Pattie Phillips talks to Marianne Moroney of Toronto's Street Food Vendors Association. The release of the new book "Rediscovering the Wealth ...
World Wide Wednesday: Parks, bikes, and cable cars
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Luud Schimmelpinnink--one of the activists behind the 1965 White Bicycle Plan in Amsterdam--has envisioned the bike ...
The laneways of West Wellington
By Evan Thornton // 5 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption=" Laneway art installation in Melbourne, Australia"][/caption]
This week the Citizen's David Reevely ran an excellent post on Ottawa's neglected laneway system, which has largely been allowed to disappear via generations of encroachments, though it is still visible as a series of thin lines on certain old maps of the city. Reevely identified the West Wellington area as the "big kahuna" of the old back alley network, and I was reminded of a piece I wrote for a print publication several years ago about the West Wellington laneways. The following is that article, slightly edited. - Evan Thornton
It was a green dumpster plopped down in a patch of weeds; but something near to it had my friend acting weird. He was around the back, muttering; I heard phrases like “right through here” and “just where the map said it was”. Now he had me curious, and I tip-toed through the muck to join him. In front of us was a bizarre little structure sticking out of the back wall of the bowling alley like a carbuncle; imagine a plank-sided out-house grafted onto a cinderblock wall. A rich growth of weeds below almost convinced us it was an old privie; boarded-up, but still doing its bit to fertilize the soil below the cracked asphalt of this miniature urban wasteland.
April 19th, 2010
Idea-shy mayor’s race: playing for time, or putting us to sleep?
By Vicky Smallman // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="In lieu of fresh thinking, will candidates rely on the old stand-by?"][/caption]
It's true that elections are no time to debate policy – between the hot button-pressing and the sound bite speaking, no one seems to want to do any actual big-T Thinking. But municipal elections are slightly different than their provincial or federal counterparts. Candidates can register as early as ten months before election day, so they can start spending money and get their message out to prospective voters.
With six months to go, it's still early, so it's not too surprising we haven't seen much from the front-running mayoral candidates about their vision for Ottawa. But perhaps it's time they started throwing out some ideas. Six months is long enough to get people talking. By the time September rolls around, schedules become packed, the media starts paying more attention, and candidates have less control over the debate. So why not get ahead of the game and set the agenda while you still can?
April 21st, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: New York, Shanghai and Pajarito Mesa
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Good Magazine has devoted its newest issue entirely to neighbourhoods. Check it out online for tips on starting a community garden and strategies for throwing an amazing block ...
April 22nd, 2010
Turn left at the teapot: corporate sculpture in Ottawa
By Kate Wetherow // 8 Comments
In the dense forest of corporate buildings in downtown Ottawa, wouldn’t it be nice to distinguish one corner from another? Too many offer only the pre-requisite coffee shop or dry cleaner tucked inside a big glass wall.
One solution that enlivens urban centres is investment in corporate sculpture.
When I was young, I had the chance to go to Chicago on a school field trip. To an art student, downtown Chicago is the epitome of cool. It’s a city that appreciates art and urbanism. We took architecture walks down streets lined with architecture by the likes of Louis Sullivan and Mies van der Rohe and you couldn’t help but notice the large commissioned sculptures that proudly sit in front of many of the city’s big buildings.
It’s commonplace to give directions by saying: “Turn left at the big bat.” The “bat” being Batcolumn, a monumental grey skeleton of a baseball bat by pop artist Claes Oldenburg. Not only that, but people love the bat, gather and eat lunch in its shadow.
April 24th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
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 Ave 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.
April 27th, 2010
WWJJD? Centretown through Jane Jacobs’ eyes
By David McClelland // 3 Comments
Editor's note: How powerful is the written word? Sometimes to gauge the impact of a writer we have to imagine what our world would be like without their contribution; without Jane Jacobs it is possible to imagine that there might never have been an urbanist movement in North America. In New York there probably would have been a six lane road instead of Washington Square, in Toronto an expressway right through the Annex, and in Ottawa, perhaps a 17-lane freeway instead of Laurier Avenue, as was on the drawing books of our road planners in the mid-1960s (see above). That these neighbourhood–killing projects never came to pass is still in large part credited to a discourse that began with Jacobs' stinging critique of post-war urban planning.
Certainly without Jacobs there would be no Spacing Ottawa blog, and so to mark this week's launch of Ottawa's third season of Jane's Walks we asked contributor David McClelland to consider the Jane Jacobs legacy from the point of view of an Ottawa neighbourhood. He chose Downtown/Centretown.
When it comes to urban thinkers, there are few names that are quite so revered as Jane Jacobs. She's cited in nearly every passionate debate about urban issues in North America, and The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her 1961 attack on modern urban planning policies, is still required reading at countless universities around the world. And though she died in 2006, her legacy lives on: Jane's Walks are held around Canada and the United States, which celebrate urban life and her passionate, incredibly observant view of cities.
But in spite of all this, many people do not seem to be familiar with what exactly her ideas were. Many know the gist of what she writes about in Death and Life, but aren't as certain in their knowledge of the ideas that underpin them. And while it would be nearly impossible to summarize all of the ideas in the book (as, while very readable, it's also densely packed), one section of the book is on the four conditions that make for diverse neighborhoods. So to better understand the ideas of Jacobs, why not take a look at downtown Ottawa through the lens of these four conditions?
“1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.”
To anyone interested in cities today, this seems obvious: a good neighborhood has mixed uses. But when Jacobs was writing in the 1950s and 60s, this seemed less obvious. It was widely believed that a healthy city was a segregated city—people should live in one place, work in another, and be entertained in a third, and so on. However, Jacobs didn't buy into this, realizing instead that the more services a place could offer, the more attractive it would be, both as a place to live and a place to visit. Simple, but revolutionary nevertheless.
Thankfully, downtown Ottawa generally features a good mix of uses. The very heart of the CBD is far too dominated by government offices, of course (and this has a great deal to do with why Sparks Street is so dead outside of the business lunch rush), but it is still surrounded by residences, condos, shops, bars, and so on. So while it could be better, it could be a lot worse—one only needs to look at Tunney's Pasture to see the effects of a strict, single-use area.
Spacing Radio 021 is on the air!
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
We begin this episode of the Spacing Radio podcast in Toronto’s Alexandra Park, where Spacing producer Todd Harrison speaks with Jane’s Walk executive director Jane Farrow about this weekend’s upcoming Jane’s Walks and how the event — and the discussions it inspires — has evolved both at home and abroad.
Up next, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes us to Cleveland, Ohio where she meets up with local newspaper critic Steven Litt, to discuss the drawbacks of the city’s Public ...
April 29th, 2010
Preview: Jane’s Walk this weekend
By Evan Thornton // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Jane's Walk 2009 in the Byward Market"][/caption]
With 35 captivating neighbourhood-based walks on the program, this year's edition of Jane's Walk promises to be the most deliciously diverse version of the festival yet.
We don't have the space to preview all of the tours on offer this weekend, but we do want to draw our readers' attention to several of the walks with a strong Spacing connection.
From the outset of this blog, the people behind Apartment 613 have been huge supporters of Spacing Ottawa and it is no surprise ...
May 1st, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Spacing's Jake Schabas takes readers to the campus of Dalhousie University for a tour of the school's relationship with its modernist architectural heritage. Schabas compares the buildings constructed during the boom of the 1960's and those built during the campus's recent boom times today. It is a comparison that finds some favour in the designs of the past, and presents a case for caring these concrete buildings into the future.
As G8 development minister convened on Halifax this past week, protesters took to the streets to shine light on Nova Scotia's problems with affordable housing. Emma Feltes discusses some of the startling comparisons the protesters made between the economic thinking of the G8 and the gentrification of Halifax's North End. As the province turns affordable housing projects over to the private sector questions are raised about who's interests are really being served.
Understanding how public transit and the broader issue of mobility truely affect a neighbourhood is a fascinating and critical part of the debate on how to get more transit built. Mile Thomas explores issues of mobility in the Montreal-Nord borough. Describing the area as exiled from the rest of the city, Thomas breaks down the real trials mobility presents to area residents and considers how such isolation has been allowed to happen in an advanced, developed country.
John Lorinc used his column this week to continue the evolving discussion over the future of the Transit City project, thrown into turmoil by the Provincial Government's decision to 'delay' funding. Lorinc explores the reactions of a spectrum of candidates for both the mayoral and Provincial elections, to seek there true intentions and speculate about the future of the project's funding.
The Hot Doc's documentary film festival kicked off this week. With so many films to choose from, Jaqueline Whyte Appleby offers a guide to the urbanist films being screened.
May 3rd, 2010
Opinion: tomorrow’s rapid transit will support today’s urban sprawl
By Chris Bradshaw // 8 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Prowling the depths: best left to auto traffic?"][/caption]
Chris Bradshaw is the co-founder of Vrtu-car, and was co-owner until 2006. He is also a co-founder and long-time (1988-2000) executive member of Ottawalk. He is now a member of the Ottawa Seniors Transportation Committee. Chris and his wife live car-lite in Sandy Hill.
Originally submitted as a comment, the following is Chris's response to an earlier Spacing Ottawa post ("The History of the Ottawa subway") wherein author Alain Miguelez outlined his reasons for supporting the City's plans to build a transit tunnel underneath downtown Ottawa.
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The history related by Alain Miguelez shows that the wonderful 'moment' we have today is partly thanks to the procrastination of previous generations of planners and politicians; otherwise, we would be stuck with yesterday's technology and problematique. It is sobering to consider whether the plan now waiting for funding and environmental assessment will suffer the same fate. I expect so.
I start with the premise that people belong at the surface of cities. Let vehicles with their power and speed use the subterranean spaces. For instance, downtown auto users are either passing through or destined for an underground parking garage. Why don't they go underground, instead of people? And the proposal's enormous number of very long escalators should simply be strung out horizontally for moving sidewalks to connect two super stations at either end of downtown, like Denver does (linked for decades by free electric buses on the surface).
May 5th, 2010
Spacing nominated for Best Single Issue in 2009
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
Spacing is happy to announce that the summer-fall 2009 issue of the magazine was nominated for Best Single Issue by the National Magazine Awards. This is the second year in a row that we've been nominated in this category. Many thanks to our cast of contributors who made this one of the 10 best issues in Canadian magazines in 2009. We'll find out June 4th just how good of an issue it was.
World Wide Wednesday: Greenways, maps, and a railway run by children
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• The National Council of Research in Rome is generating innovative ideas on city building by looking at the urban environment through the eyes of children. As explained on ...
May 6th, 2010
The burning city
By Evan Thornton // 2 Comments
This year it seems a week can't go by without another major fire in the news. The crowd-sourced echo chamber that is twitter no doubt adds to that perception that fire is all around us, as with Tuesday's blaze in Kanata -- captured here in a tweetphoto of such intensity it looks like the iPhone that took it is starting to melt --or last weekend's controversial blaze at a scrapyard on Sheffield Road, tweeted within minutes of breaking out. Of course when fire struck Merivale Road in February the news didn't need even need twitter to spread around quickly; CJOH losing its home of nearly four decades was instant headline news all by itself.
Fire seems to be a perfect subject for the immediacy of social media and the aftermath of a blaze seems an especially popular subject for Ottawa photo-bloggers.
Spacing Ottawa contributor Justin Van Leeuwen has the knack for being close the scene for the fires that seem to bedevil his West End district, and has recorded the destruction superbly in shots like this Chinatown panorama or the shattered windows of this dream home on St. Francis near Gladstone that recently caught on fire on the last day of construction. This pit of rubble is a burned-out convenience store not far from Bronson.
Spacing’s next stop: Carleton Place
By Spacing Ottawa // 1 Comment
This Friday Spacing Ottawa will be traveling to the banks of the Mississippi River in Carleton Place to test out a new commuter bus line that was launched earlier this week.
Unlike most commuter bus services in the Ottawa valley, Lanark Community Transit is offering a return service that will allow passengers to go "against the flow" and actually travel to an outlying town in the morning and return later in the afternoon. Other commuter lines typically disgorge their passenger load in downtown Ottawa in the a.m. and park the bus until the afternoon ...
May 8th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
How well a city invests in transit is reflected in the priority it places on public transportation. In Halifax, Dustin Vallen continues the 'City Unbuilt' series to showcase a graduate architecture project for a bold new bus shelter at a prominent corner in the city.
Halifax's Jane's Walk was a great success as a good crowd showed up to tour through some of the areas of downtown that are on the verge of some significant change. Spacing Atlantic this week featured a review of the walk, so that anyone can experience at least a little taste of what they may of missed.
As the dust settles on our 2009 tax returns, now is a good time to look at the significance of some of the numbers. Spacing's Alanah Heffez breaks some aspects of her return for readers and in doing so reveals a fantastic illustration of a fundamental problem with Canadian Federalism: the underfunding of municipal government.
Is Stephen Harper using the G8 summit to punish urban voters in Toronto? After reading Matt Blackett's summary of the Orwellian security measures that will be imposed on the city during and leading up to the summit, you may think so.
Toronto is a city defined by its undefinedness and has long had troubles properly marketing itself to the world. On the eve of a trip to Manchester, Spacing's Shawn Micallef reflects on that city's success at defining its image and compares its marketable attributes to our own, wondering why there has been such a difference, and what causes some city's to a clearer collective image of themselves than others.
May 10th, 2010
Opinion: time is right for teenage transit to grow up
By Alain Miguelez // 6 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Bumper-to-bumper on our BRT - growing pains on the way to adulthood?"][/caption]
Reading my friend Chris Bradshaw’s recent Spacing Ottawa opinion piece on rapid transit reminds me of the challenges of a growing family. Canada is a family of cities of various ages and therefore at various stages of maturity. Montreal and Toronto are the “older children”. They were the first ones to go through the growing pains of passing through the stages of development that children experience as they move through their teenage years and into adulthood. Because they are older, they always thought of themselves as the “bigger kids” and, like most first-borns and second-borns in large families, they were the ones who had to learn from mistakes, rather than benefit from the teachings of older siblings they never had.
Ottawa, on the other hand, is one of the family’s younger children. It was cuddled and sheltered more than its older siblings and, accordingly, was spared some of the mistakes made by its older brothers and sisters. It has more green space than its older siblings. It has fewer of the harmful effects of some of the more misguided urban interventions tried by their larger siblings. It has fewer scars as a result.
But just as we don’t imagine children growing from newborn to toddler to big kids while still drinking milk from a bottle or using diapers, so cities grow out of the more junior arrangements that come from the days when they were smaller. And children usually do resist, at first, things like potty training, picking up after themselves or doing their homework after school. It’s hard to grow up. It’s also unpleasant at first. And children aren’t equipped to see the richer life that awaits them once they learn new skills and take responsibility for themselves.
May 11th, 2010
Spacing Radio 022 is on the air!
By Matthew Blackett // No Comments
In this episode of Spacing Radio — the last of season 3 — our cast of contributors explore the theme of how we get around cities. First up are a handful of clips from Jane's Walk, the yearly festival of walking tours in Toronto and over 60 other cities across North America. Then Spacing magazine's senior editor Shawn Micallef takes listeners to Yorkville to discuss the ethos behind his new book Stroll. Our new reporter Katie Harris examines the impact the ...
May 12th, 2010
Tripling the damage
By Evan Thornton // 1 Comment
It turns out it wasn't just our imagination; Ottawa is experience a mini-boom in fires. According to Ottawa Fire Services, there were 98 fires causing $50,000 or more in damage in 2006; by 2009 Ottawa experienced 143 fires in that category.
Definition of "structure working fires" = $ loss is equal to or greater than $50,000
Year # # of structure working fires
2006 ...
World Wide Wednesday: “Tesco Towns”, security cameras, and the world’s greenest buildings
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• What would a socially equitable city look like? The Polis Blog sheds some light on this complex question in a fascinating series entitled "The Just Metropolis". ...
May 14th, 2010
“Green corridor” takes you car-free to Carleton Place; NCC the only bump in the road
By Evan Thornton // 1 Comment
Last Friday I had the opportunity to try out the commuter bus line offering return service to downtown Carleton Place that was launched earlier this month. As I wrote in the preview post:
Unlike most commuter bus services in the Ottawa valley, Lanark Community Transit is offering a return service that will allow passengers to go "against the flow" and actually travel to an outlying town in the morning ...
May 15th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Community activism is changing in the information age and we are just beginning to see what can be accomplished by the trend of increasingly open access to public data. Emily Richardson profiles a number of initiatives and programs in place both in Atlantic Canada, and throughout North America.
Alanah Heffez talks about a new initiative by the STM to put green roofs on select bus shelters throughout the city as part of slick new marketing campaign. The campaign is a window into the broader green initiatives of Montreal's transit operator.
Shiny new streetcars are coming soon to the streets of Toronto and this week the TTC began preparing for their launch with a campaign to build excitement by eliciting rider input. Spacing Editor and TTC Customer Service Review Panel member, Matt Blackett talks about the initiative and gives some suggestions on how the names of the new cars can be used to sell them to riders.
In a very provocative piece, Nicole McIsaac speculates about a future of open source government and what it could mean for civic engagement. While other Cities are quickly hoping on this bandwagon by releasing their immense date basses to the public where the data can be organized according to need, and widely disseminated.
May 18th, 2010
CityVote takes a visual turn
By Ian Capstick // 2 Comments
This half of CityVote is taking a decidedly visual turn for the next little while. I’ll be blunt: I was having trouble breaking out of my “rant mode” with written text. It comes too easily. CityVote and this space needs to be a conversation and my role is to provoke that. I’ve had some amazing people ask me to help them tell their stories. I can’t think of a better way than to teach them how to do it themselves.
Making the invisible visible will be the theme of the audio/video project. My team at ...
May 19th, 2010
So, about that federal LRT funding…
By Spacing Ottawa // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="579" caption="Is it all just pie in the sky without the feds?"][/caption]
Editor's note: the following article was written by Peter Raaymakers, Executive Director of Transit Ottawa. It originally appeared on the Public Transit in Ottawa website.
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The City of Ottawa is still waiting to hear the federal government announce their intentions to match (or hopefully exceed) the provincial $600M funding pledge for the city's $2.1B light-rail transit plan. Queen's Park made its pledge back in December, and the general understanding was that a similar announcement from Federal ...
World Wide Wednesday: London, Bangkok, and New Delhi
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Though still incomplete, New Delhi's subway system is already being hailed as "a runaway success". According to the The New York Times not only is the Delhi Metro "scrupulously ...
May 22nd, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // 1 Comment
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
In the Plateau neighbourhood, recently elected Project Montreal has put forward a new plan to deal with restaurant terraces on area sidewalks. The plan calls for terraces to be moved off of sidewalks and onto the street to improve pedestrian flow. Businesses in the area have taken a number of issues with the plan and threatening to close their terraces all sumer in protest.
Allanah Heffez reports on the sombre mood surrounding cyclists in Quebec following the recent tragic deaths of four cyclists on a rural highway. While silent vigil rides dubbed "tour de silence" are taking part across the province police in Montreal have fallen back on the classic blame the victim approach stepping enforcement on cyclists but not motorists.
The question of whether or not Toronto is really a world class city has finally been definitively answered. Thursday morning city officials gathered on the Waterfront to unveil Toronto's first public pay toilet, complete with friendly female voice, and soft waterfall music. Nicole McIsaac satisfied her curiosity about the new street furniture with a visit and shares her observations with readers.
Moving on from the disappointing failure of the University Ave bike lanes proposal, cycling advocates were out in front of Queen's Park this week to push for intelligent new safety laws requiring drivers to leave at least three feet of space when passing cyclists. The new law could help address the main barrier keeping more people from cycling: safety.
Responding to speculation that roundabouts may soon be coming to the streets of Halifax, Steve Bedard gives a ringing endorsement of the plan by reflecting on observations of how well the round arrangement works in Europe. Bedard notes in particular how well the French use roundabouts to manage traffic efficiently and promote shared roadways.
As St John kicks off the celebrations of its 225th birthday, Abad Khan reflects on the city's priorities as demonstrated by the two year closure of one its most important pedestrian routes to facilitate bridge construction. Would the city have closed a road as well?
May 25th, 2010
On LRTs and architecture
By David McClelland // 8 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Light well, Outrement Station, Montréal Metro"][/caption]
As rail-starved Ottawans wait for the latest attempt at light-rail transit to creep slowly towards completion, one question remains unanswered: who will design the stations? Admittedly, this has little to do with the actual nuts and bolts of the proposed system, or to do with the all-important dilemma that is funding its construction, but it is an important question nevertheless. After all, this system will be used by tens of thousands of people every day, so it seems only logical that stations should be pleasant and interesting places to wait for a train, right?
The current Transitway system seems to be the antithesis of this philosophy. Right now, stations range from dank and unpleasant (St. Laurent), to utilitarian (the majority, like Hurdman and Lincoln Fields), to mildly pleasing (Dominion comes to mind). Transitway stations betray their 80s heritage at a glance: concrete abounds, and the ubiquitous red tubing and glass that makes up nearly every shelter quickly becomes depressing and repetitive.
Commuting snapshots across the Spacing map
By Spacing Ottawa // 3 Comments
Source: Statistics Canada
By Emily Richardson – cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic
Despite dramatic differences in population, density, infrastructure, and growth, there is remarkable consistency between commuting patterns in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax, particularly when it comes to traveling by car. And incidentally, when it comes to getting us out of them, we seem to find buses and bike lanes unconvincing. A closer look at our most recent census data raises some surprising – and some predictable – findings about the way we get to work and how preferences change as our cities grow.
First a few words on sources and statistics: All data in this article, with the exception of bike lane information, is based on the 2006 census of Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal's census metropolitan areas with trends from the 2001 census. I will be the first to concede two important shortcomings in the data. First, neither the number of cities nor the number of data points within each city is sufficient for any analysis to be statistically significant (in other words, proper analysis requires more, and more robust, data to hold up to scrutiny). Second, the data is a static snapshot in time, and it lacks any context that might explain why the upcoming 2011 census might paint a vastly different picture.
But despite these drawbacks, the census data does highlight some consistencies between cities and concerns about the economic, social, and environmental implications of our commuting habits. It remains to be seen whether erratic fuel prices, transit-pass tax incentives, and growing bike-lane networks over the past four years will meaningfully influence our commuting habits by 2011. In the meantime, comments and observations are welcomed in response to this anecdotal food for thought.
May 28th, 2010
Week in review: the headlines
By Spacing Ottawa // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="800" caption="Horticulture Building, Lansdowne: immovable object?"][/caption]
May 29th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
As the Place des festivales nears completion, Montrealers are getting a look at one of the most striking new public spaces in Canada. Spacing's Allanah Heffez reviews the new space bringing up both good and bad about the realized version of the square.
Setting the stage for future investments in public space, the council of the Plateau neighbourhood recently announced interesting plans to expand a park in an area lacking in green space by closing off a street that runs beside it. The street has already been closed to car traffic and will be use the space to establish a farmer's market.
Steve Bedard promotes the Halifax Open Street Party, happening this weekend in the city's North Commons. The event is hosted by the Halifax Cycling Coalition and The Bike Week Planning Council.
In his weekly column, John Lorinc finds some cause for optimism about the future of Transit City despite cries from the Mayor's Office that the province will not carry through with the plan. Lorinc examines the Mayor's claim that the Eglington line will run from Leaside to Forest Hill and contrasts it against the recent actions of Metrolinx and his forecast for the Province's political future.
In a call to action Hillary Best advocates the idea of 'Complete Streets' as was discussed during a recent conference held by the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation. Best shows that the more we understand the idea of complete streets, the more apparent becomes their necessity to the future vitality of the region.
June 1st, 2010
New blood versus same old faces: who should prevail?
By Vicky Smallman // 4 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Knowing the ropes: do voters give it too much weight?"][/caption]
Much has been written about the need for fresh faces on Ottawa's city council. From community coalition Our Ottawa to the high profile residents behind Fair Chance, from columnists like Randall Denley to bloggers like Blake Batson, the call for change at City Hall has been loud and clear.
There's no question that Ottawa's pattern of re-electing incumbents is not exactly healthy for our local democracy. But is a clean sweep what we need? What are the pros and cons of supporting incumbents versus voting in new faces and new voices?
Incumbents:
On the pro side, incumbents have no learning curve. They know the ropes, they know the rules of order, they have relationships with staff and know how to answer constituents' issues and resolve problems. There's no waiting while they set up an office and hire staff – they're ready to go as soon as they take office. They also know what to expect – they understand the pace of a councilor's lifestyle, so there's no adjustment period while they get used to the evening meetings, the event-after-event weekends, the reduced family time and the lack of privacy.
But incumbents get tired. They might get lazy, or take voters for granted. They may resist new ideas, or ignore some communities in favour of the constituents that voted them in. Some are quite parochial in their approach, focusing on the narrow interests of their ward instead of the city as a whole. Some get defensive when challenged by residents (Gord Hunter, for example, is notorious for his quick email trigger).
June 4th, 2010
City plans to widen Centretown’s great divide
By Evan Thornton // 7 Comments
The always-excellent West Side Action is two parts into a 5-part series on Bronson Avenue. Bronson was designated as an arterial in the 1970s as part of the Centretown plan, and bears the brunt of north-south automobile traffic in a wide swath of Centretown, from Kent/Lyon in the east to Booth in the west. Factors like noise, dust, narrow sidewalks, and limited pedestrian crossings make Bronson a real barrier for foot and cycle traffic, separating Chinatown from points east and discouraging development along Bronson itself.
Bronson is slated for reconstruction in 2011, and, astonishingly, the City presented a plan to the neighbourhood that would see engineers actually widen the roadbed, facilitating even greater traffic speed along the road.
June 5th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Its election year in a city where both traffic and transit development are gridlocked so mayoral front runner George Smitherman's release of his transportation platform this week inspired critical examination from both John Lorinc and Jonathan Goldsbie. While Lorinc focuses on the political motivations for Smitherman's plan, Goldsbie looks specifically at the cycling initiatives to see if they hold sway, or a merely paying lip service.
On a lighter note, the hording finally came down last weekend on renovations to the historic John Street Roundhouse near the base of the CN Tower. Spacing's Nicole McIsaac visited the new National Railway Heritage Centre built into and around the roundhouse and the public space surrounding it and profiles some its exciting features, including restored steam locomotives, historic buildings and a miniature railroad.
Katie McKay reports from Halifax on the success of the May edition of the city's Critical Mass Bike ride which for the first time crossed the MacDonald Bridge over the harbour, closing a lane of traffic in the process. The success of the event was not in obstructing motorists, but in strengthening the breadth of the Halifax cycling community.
Spacing contributor and McGill School of Urban Planning researcher, Jacob Larson introduces readers to the issue of integrating cycling into a broader new vision for transportation in North America. Readers are invited to take a survey on multi-modal connections in the Montreal Region.
On the Lower Main, Alanah Heffez showcases an interesting temporary fix for the unsightliness of the buildings awaiting revised redevelopment plans involving a graffiti bomb by thirty different artists organized by the Corporation de développement urbain du Faubourg Saint-Laurent and the Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles.
June 7th, 2010
Spacing Radio is back for the summer in shorts
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
Spacing Radio is back! For the summer we are changing things up a bit and so over the next few months we're going to give you a lot more to listen to, but in shorter doses. Every time we have a story to tell, we'll post it on the blog and put it out on iTunes. Sometimes you'll get one a day, or a few a week. It's a reflection of the season, when most of us ...
June 8th, 2010
Photo of the day: Balcony of the Aga Khan
By Spacing Ottawa // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Photo taken by Gordon D. Bonnar during this past weekend's Doors Open tour of the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, on Sussex Drive"][/caption]
June 9th, 2010
Light rail funding: now the real wait begins
By Peter Raaymakers // No Comments
Editor's note: Peter Raaymakers is the executive director of the Public Transit in Ottawa portal (TransitOttawa.ca), and tries to encourage constructive discussion on transit in the city on that site. He is also the managing editor of the Journal of Public Transit in Ottawa, the community-reviewed journal on pressing transit issues in the city.
The City of Ottawa has been anxiously waiting for months to hear what John Baird announced yesterday: A federal pledge to share the costs of the city's light-rail transit plan. Not a full share of the cost, mind you; ...
World Wide Wednesday: The World Cup, bike gadgets, and the fastest train in the world
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• The BP oil spill, which continues to wreak havoc on the United States' Gulf Coast, is just one more reminder of the perils ...
June 10th, 2010
Surface parking targeted in design plan for Centretown
By Evan Thornton // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="An all-too-common Centretown streetscape"][/caption]
They're ugly when full, desolate when empty, and they promote unsustainable commuter practices. Unfortunately, surface parking lots disfigure the streetscape all over Centretown, tearing large holes in the urban fabric and making the built form of Canada's capital city often resemble a small town in the middle of the prairies.
So it's no surprise that the team charged with delivering a cohesive Community Design Plan for Mid-Centretown have parking lots firmly in their sights as they begin the planning process that will make the area between Kent and Elgin ready to receive its share of the 10,000 extra residents Centretown is expected to attract by 2031.
The .pdf of the slides the planning team presented to a Community Open House held this week is available on the planning team's blog site or you can click here for a direct download. It's a fascinating document, and one of the most telling visuals in the slide deck is the one reproduced below.
Caring about Carling
By Eric Darwin // 1 Comment
Editor's note: this post originally appeared on the author's own West Side Action blog.
Last night was the first Public Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting for the Carling Avenue reconstruction project from the O-Train to Bronson Avenue. Scheduled for 2011, its for a complete rebuild of the street: new sewers, water mains, dozens of cable and gas pipes, curbs, sidewalks, lighting...everything.
The handout emphasized the following priorities in this order: pedestrian, cycling, transit, vehicle. Of course, the the Technical Adisory Committee (TAC) had first whack at the project and they specified two through lanes in each direction, a bus lane, a cycling lane,very generous turn lanes, etc etc all of which exceeds the available right of way. Now, which elements do we guess might get dropped? No points for the correct answer: car lanes, bus lane, bike lane if room, "2m sidewalk (where feasible)". So much for ped priority. And for streetscaping ... to be added in at the end on the leftover spaces.
So, I spent the evening in pleasant dialogue with the city planner and his consultants, educating them as to local pedestrian desire lines, questioning them on traffic volume assumptions, and suggesting the ideal Carling-Avenue-according-to-Eric plan.
June 12th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Taxi's can be unique and identifying feature of a city that play an important part in the street-scape. As Montreal moves towards implementing its bylaw allowing advertisements on Taxis, Alanah Heffez reports on efforts to create an attractive design promoting the city. The new bylaw is also inspiring some grumbling amongst taxi drivers who report some cabs with the new signs have been mistake for pizza delivery cars.
Spacing Montreal is inviting readers to take part in its first ever reader survey of favourite parts of the city. Categories focus around civic initiatives, public personalities and hidden corners of the urban fabric.
Spacing editor Sean Micallef generated a great discussion this week about taking the cycling movement to the next level in Toronto. In an appeal to cyclists, Micallef advocates that riders acknowledge the political nature of everything they do and that accordingly they must approaching sharing the roadways as part of a sensible dialogue with drivers. Is there an onus on cyclists to promote better behaviour amongst fellow riders?
Major changes are coming to Toronto's iconic St Lawrence Market as the winning design was announced this week for the redevelopment of the 1960's era north market building. Spacing's Nicole McIssac covers the announcement and showcases the exciting new plan.
As part of an always great events series, Veronica Simmonds profiles World Naked Bike day and public consultation on the Halifax Central Library.
The Atlantic Snapshots feature this week focused on another distinctly Atlantic scene, this time in Saint John.
June 15th, 2010
Ottawa’s election: still no narrative
By Ian Capstick // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="510" caption="Watching paint dry: a better story than our mayor's race?"][/caption]
At just over 130 days away from the ballot and it’s barely registered to most in the city that an election is around the corner.
Sure, incumbents are slowly rolling out sleepy reelection campaigns. A few upstarts are getting their cars wrapped and shiny new social media profiles in order.
But, the mayors race only seems busy because Jim Watson keeps an inhuman pace. A long standing Ottawa joke is that Watson will attend the opening ofan envelope. It follows that if Watson is the hare, the Alex Cullen team is currently the tortoise. A sleeping tortoise. Which, I suppose is fair considering one of them actually has a full time job right now.
f you missed what passes for bluster in the 2010 election: Watson is fretting about costs on the LRT project. O’Brien called him a “little old lady” on CFRA. The media failed to really engage in the misogynistic comment or the issue at hand. Plus ca change.
June 16th, 2010
Photos of a landmark withered away: 50 years of Lansdowne inertia
By Marie-Judith Jean-Louis // No Comments
Editor's note: The following post first appeared in Marie-Judith Jean-Louis's Modern Ottawa (MOOT) blog. Passionate about modern and innovative design, Marie-Judith is Ottawa-based interior designer and owner of M2JL STUDIO | modern interiors. In addition to MOOT, she writes regular blogs for M2JL STUDIO and occasionally writes for the Ottawa Citizen. She teaches decorating classes at La Cité Collégiale.
There's a lot of debate going on about the future of Lansdowne Park. A couple days ago, I heard a conversation on the radio about the future plans for Lansdowne and the new proposed designs. The hosts were arguing as to whether or not anything would eventually happen. Apparently, debates about Lansdowne have been going on since the 1980s.
Proposed subway stations get platform preview
By Spacing Ottawa // 2 Comments
Public Transit in Ottawa's Peter Raaymakers has previewed the four main types of station platform for Ottawa's proposed new subway. The artist's conceptions were recently displayed for public inspection at the main library on Metcalfe Street. Raaymakers comes out in favour of the "Centre Platform" option shown above; for images of the other three designs, along with useful commentary on the process, check the PTIO post here.
June 18th, 2010
Headlines: The week in review
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="City Centre Building: "surely one of the ugliest buildings in town" ('Empty excuses for an empty lot', below)"][/caption]
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CITY HALL
Mayor to reveal election plans June 29 (Ottawa Citizen)
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DEVELOPERS
Eco-friendly condo to be non-smoking (Canwest News )
Empty excuses for an empty lot (Ottawa Citizen)
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HISTORICAL/TOURISM
"It was a seedy and shockingly violent town" (Montreal Gazette)
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LANSDOWNE
Public-private partnership not best for Ottawa (Metro Ottawa )
Park plans worry Mayfair (Ottawa Citizen)
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Photo by Justin Van Leeuwen
June 19th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
From the Rock, Andrew Harvey writes about the cycling culture in Canada's eastern most city: St John's. In a city, where cycling is currently a character building endeavour, the city hall is pushing forward with a scaled back, yet still promising bike lane infrastructure plan.
In light of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission's new campaign to get people telling stories of their experiences downtown, Rachel Carolin Derrah writes an excellent piece discussing just what kind of collective story the city is telling about the needs of its downtown for the future.
Citizens targeted by a CP Rail security blitz on a well trafficked informal rail crossing between the Mile End and Petite Patrie neighbourhoods are fighting back with a protest and petition. While the petition is calling for a formalized level crossing in the area, many are content with the status quo, minus the $150 fines.
In the year 2000 the Quebec Government tasked the municipalities of Greater Montreal to create a coherent land-use strategy for the region, a project that sat in stalemate throughout the decade. In a new bill passed recently, the Province has sought compromise by lowering expectations and extending the deadline further. Alanah Heffez discusses the troubles and promises of the new move.
John Lorinc used his column this week to explore a different aspect of the transit question. Focusing on the issue of Car Sharing, Lorinc criticizes Toronto's sluggish progress thus far. He also illustrates the improvements that candidates should be promising to bring Toronto in line with other North American cities and recognize car sharing as the cost-effective transportation solution that it is.
Spacing editor Shawn Micallef launched a new feature this week profiling the work of students from his third year class at the Ontario College of Art and Design. By posting the work on Spacing, Micallef hopes that Spacing readers will challenge the student's and put their ideas to the test.
June 21st, 2010
Street names: the stories behind the signs
By Dwight Williams // 2 Comments
Anecdote, urban legend, sometimes even myth: we don't usually associate such descriptors with the street map of our city, but there is a story behind each and every street name we encounter in our daily navigations.
And with over seven thousand of them now in use, there is a rich store of narrative to be revealed by exploring the history behind Ottawa's street names. They are a unique insight into what the builders of our city held most dear, and a lens through which we can see how our civic culture has ...
June 22nd, 2010
Opinion: Bits and pieces tactic masks the real goal of Landsowne plans
By Tim Lash // 3 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Bank and Holmwood corner as seen in OSEG proposal"][/caption]
Editor's note: The following opinion piece by Tim Lash takes the form of an open letter to decision-makers and the general public in advance of the June 28 council vote on the OSEG proposal for the renewal of Lansdowne Park.
re: Visual Resources for Civic Lansdowne Decisions, and a Request
Dear Ottawa residents, councilors and mayoral candidates,
OSEG and City staff have split up their design and publicity about Lansdowne's future into separate parts: (1) the major part faced by Bank and Holmwood that would be given to OSEG for private development, (2) the stadium and Ottawa Civic Centre, (3) the remaining public space near the canal (which might include an "overlap" area north of the Aberdeen Pavilion).
The parts have been put forward out of sequence, partially, with shifting goal-posts and assumptions. The split hides the significance and impact of what would be given over to private development. It would be wrong to make a legal commitment on this basis. Please don’t.
To be right, Lansdowne has to be shown whole – what it is now, and what’s proposed. Only so can everyone concerned
• consult honestly and make civic decisions that are good socially, economically and environmentally
• plan and design coherently so objectives for Lansdowne Park are met in reality, and won't cancel each other out, or let one subvert another, and
• achieve a place that works with people’s surrounding activities, places, and facilities.
June 23rd, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Flip bridges, sewer diving, and the death of starchitecture
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• In Hong Kong they drive on the left side of the road, in mainland China on the right. This simple difference creates an complicated engineering dilemma. How do you ...
Opinion: Renaming Wellington Street would be an act of historical amnesia
By Immanuel Giulea // 6 Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="328" caption="Should Ottawans know who this man is?"][/caption]
Editor's note: Immanuel Giulea is the Founder and Executive Director of the Société Macdonald-Cartier Society.
Ottawa’s civic holiday in August is known as Colonel By Day. City Council reaffirmed that as recently as June 9--a decision that underlines the intimate connection between the City of Ottawa and its founder Lieutenant-Colonel John By.
In recent weeks, Bob Plamondon has created some publicity around the idea of renaming our venerable and historic Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill. Those in favour of renaming the street argue that the Duke of Wellington never set foot in North America and had no connection to the city. Instead of honouring a relatively unknown figure, they argue, why not pay tribute to our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald?
June 25th, 2010
Headlines: The week in review
By Spacing Ottawa // 1 Comment
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="Earthquake evacuees on Carling Avenue"][/caption]
June 29th, 2010
Lansdowne vote: dark day, or a new dawn?
By Evan Thornton // 4 Comments
In a 15-9 vote last night Ottawa City Council approved the Lansdowne Live partnership. While Spacing Ottawa took no position on the redevelopment — our contributors and commenters were split on the issue — over the course of the debate and the public consultation process we ran strong arguments both in favour and opposed to the OSEG proposal, starting with an impassioned "pro" editorial on our very first day from Alain Miguelez, who called it a key city-building project and argued that:
There should be more people at Lansdowne. There should be more ...
June 30th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Transit maps, subway stations, and monorails
By Kat Snukal // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We'll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Should private corporations be allowed to purchase the naming rights of public subway stations? The Transit Politic Blog muses on the answer as the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation ...
July 2nd, 2010
The meeting of the mega-projects: A tunnel for Bank Street
By Dwight Williams // 16 Comments
Editor's note: Many commentators have noted that the decision by Mayor O'Brien to run again in this fall's municipal elections means that he can campaign by claiming two significant achievements: spearheading the decision to build an East-West LRT that includes a downtown tunnel, and backing the proposal to redevelop Lansdowne Park. So far, the two major projects have been presented as "stand alone"; here Spacing Ottawa contributor Dwight Williams suggests a way to link them.
In the months since the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) brought forth their proposal for redeveloping Lansdowne Park, ...
July 3rd, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
In Halifax, Katie McKay shows how the public space of the Halifax Common was recently utilized to host the largest Pow Wow ever held in Atlantic Canada.
Rachel Carolin Derrah profiles the Neighbourhood Earth Project launching this summer in parks throughout the North End of Halifax. The project aims to educate about local landscapes and urban ecology.
Alanah Heffez talks to skateboarders in Montreal's Peace park about their perspective on the uses of public space and the failure of the city to address the needs of a significant and active community.
Devin Alfaro talks about famous urban thinker Jane Jacob's lesser publicized opinions on the issue of Quebec sovereignty. Contrary to what you may expect, Jacobs considered sovereignty a practical idea when viewed objectively.
As politicians continue to ignore demands for an independent inquiry into the failures of the police at last weekend's G20 Summit, Spacing played host to a number of attempts to bring some sense about how the legacy of the G20 weekend will forever change Toronto. Jonathon Goldsbie is scathingly critical of Mayor Miller's complicit response. Matt Blackett discussed the most important questions to be asking in the wake of the incidents. Dale Duncan reflects on the need to question police tactics on large event crowd control. Emma Feltes talks about how police used features of the public space against the populace.
In the immediate aftermath of the weekend, Spacing also featured excellent reports and unique perspectives on what happened on the city's streets. Matt Blackett highlights some of the most powerful footage of the protests while Nicole McIsaac shared observations from a weekend amongst the protests, and reported on the mood of the street following the weekend.
July 5th, 2010
Revisiting the front porch
By Spacing Ottawa // 7 Comments
In many neighbourhoods in Ottawa, front porches seem like holdovers from another age. They are so rarely used, it's almost as if residents are now embarrassed to be seen on them. Their long decline as a social space may have started as far back as the 1950s; the above video is from a Disney picture in 1963 and seems to be hearkening back to an era the filmmakers felt was already slipping away.
Do you have a front porch? Is it a welcoming space to ...
July 6th, 2010
Good will on our streets: The Art of Swap
By Spacing Ottawa // 3 Comments
A few years ago little wooden boxes started appearing, nailed to telephone poles across Ottawa. Inscribed with the motto "Take something - Leave something" the cheerful little cubes – always whimsically decorated – were seen by thousands of Ottawans every day. They were a mystery to some, a source of delight to others, and in time new "Swap Box spottings" became a coffee-shop topic throughout the urban core, and a point of reference in the local blogoshere.
Probably no blog celebrated the Swap Box phenomena more than the excellent Knitnut, by Zoom. In fact, clues as to new locations of Swap Boxes were sometimes left as comments below KnitNut posts.
There aren't as many swap boxes as there used to be; rain and wind have taken their toll, as have vandalism, bylaw enforcement, and souvenir hunting.
July 7th, 2010
Future of interprovincial transit looking good – on paper
By Peter Raaymakers // 3 Comments
Editor's note: The following post originally appeared in Public Transit in Ottawa; it is published here by the author's consent.
On Tuesday evening, I stopped in to the public consultation on the National Capital Commission (NCC)-led interprovincial transit study. Attended by about 30-40 people (at least when I was there, from 6-7 p.m.), the consultation represents the fourth step in the overall process, the results of which will help the strategy team come up with a recommendation for integration of the national capital region's transit infrastructure--in short, better connecting Gatineau with Ottawa through public transit.
July 9th, 2010
Focus on food hurting City’s vision for farmers’ markets
By Emily Sinclair // 1 Comment
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Last month’s unseasonably warm weather has had me looking forward the 2010 farmers’ market season. While cautious in my own gardening habits – I did not plant early lettuce, beans, peas, radishes etc… - I have been patiently waiting for the arrival of fresh spring vegetables after a winter’s worth of rather tired greens, canned tomatoes and heavy root veggies. A great thing about Ottawa is that many neighbourhoods within the City’s urban core are well-served by farmers’ markets (Parkdale/West Wellington, Mainstreet/Old Ottawa South, the Glebe). These markets offer opportunities to buy fresh produce, often grown by people within the Ottawa valley. However, recent debate over the “value” of one of the City’s markets – the Ottawa’s Farmers’ Market located in Parking Lot #4 of Lansdowne Park – raises some questions about just exactly how the City sees / understands the role of the farmer’s market in the modern city. Specifically, recent staff reports and Council decisions heavily emphasize the economic role of the farmers’ market rather than broadly interpreting the market as a public good.
July 10th, 2010
Has the O-Train made its mark?
By Evan Thornton // No Comments
In the midst of the ongoing debate about the future of Light Rail Transit it Ottawa it can be easy to forget that we've now had LRT rolling through our city for nine years thanks to the O-Train "pilot project" launched along an old CP rail corridor in 2001.
That's getting a little long in the tooth for a test run, which seems to be why the City has announced a 5-week haitus in service this summer so that "lifecycle maintenance" can be carried out to carriages and track. The shut-down starts this Monday, the 12th, and the train will be replaced with a special service for the duration.
As a pilot project running along a largely out-of-sight length of track with limited integration with the rest of the transit system, the O-Train has been derided as the "train to nowhere". Yet when Carleton U is in session -- and that is pretty much year around nowadays -- the ridership is up around 10,000 per day, twice what the estimates projected.
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
Veronica Simmonds profiles a fascinating public space art project taking place this month in the Halifax Common. The Common: For as Long as You Have So Far takes its participants on a personal journey through the natural history of the area using a fictional story about one's ancestors and future decedents.
Steve Bedard reports from Halifax on the troubles facing a proposal to build new infrastructure for active transportation on a short stretch of Herring Cove Road. As usual, the opposition is coming from local businesses who view the plan as potentially harmful to their business.
Despite being a wonderfully vibrant and lively area at all times of day, Downtown Montreal is a place lacking in the sense of community amongst its residents found in many other parts of the city. Devin Alfaro reports on the Quartier en mouvement street festival, a coordinated effort to change the change the situation by hosting a block party on a closed off street during select days in July.
Results are now being posted for the Montreal Top Spots Survey which asked Spacing readers about their favourite things in Montreal. This week Spacing published the results for the best of the city and for best of municipal politics.
While the year 2010 hasn't left us with the moon bases we were once promised, at least we are finally starting to make progress on Jetson's style Personal Rapid Transit. Adrian Lightstone continues the Ideas For Toronto series by looking at a PRT pilot project which is about to begin in Stockholm, Sweden and points to how the transit mode could become an efficient and feasible feeder for higher orders of transit. It all begs the question of where this could work in Canadian cities.
As Toronto moves forward from the G20 summit, tempers and emotions are cooling enough so that practical questions can move to the forefront. In his weekly column, John Lorinc creates a list of 1o questions a G20 inquiry should address. With his characteristic pragmatism, Lorinc focuses on issues of how the police policy was established, who was behind it, and what grounds it was established.
July 13th, 2010
The strategist and the policy wonk – at last a contest for both
By Vicky Smallman // 2 Comments
What a difference a few weeks make. It seems we have a mayoral race.
It wasn't much of a surprise when Mayor Larry O'Brien announced his intention to seek re-election. With the passage of Lansdowne Live, he likely concluded he had accomplished enough to run on his record. Sure enough, that was the focus of his re-election announcement (as awkward as it was). O'Brien declared that he wants the election to be about leadership, which he says is about “getting things done”. “We've finally gotten over the constipation of amalgamation”, he said.
It's an odd statement to make for a mayor who leads a fractured council that often split along urban/suburban/rural lines, that has flip-flopped on multiple decisions, that cost taxpayers millions by canceling the former light rail contract, and that unnecessarily prolonged a bus strike. Yet when it came to budget time, the council seemed to be able to get things done in spite of the Mayor. But is it a more functional body than when Larry O'Brien took office? Hardly. And as others have pointed out, O'Brien is quick to claim the credit for projects that were started well before his time or which have been spearheaded by someone else. And as for those voters who have been paying closer attention, he is counting on a certain number of them overlooking the flaws, and focusing instead on the promises he has kept.
July 16th, 2010
Street Names: Wellington, ByWard and By
By Dwight Williams // 3 Comments
In recent weeks, we've witnessed a debate over whether or not one of the central streets of the downtown core should be renamed. As a result of that debate, we've also gotten a civic history lesson or two on the founding of Ottawa.
In truth, the names of Wellington and By should be forever linked in the minds of Ottawans for one reason: the city as we know it today could not exist without either of them.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="194" caption="Source: Wikipedia Commons"][/caption]...
July 20th, 2010
Vacant Lot wanted
By Spacing Ottawa // 5 Comments
"Hyperallergina" is an artist from Montréal who has obtained a small grant to work with a vacant lot in Ottawa to try to give it more visual appeal. The grant came from the Awesome Ottawa Foundation, and though we are not talking about a lot of money – the foundation has as its motto "Forwarding the interest of Awesome in the universe, $1,000 at a time." – we think it is a worthy cause, and look forward to following the progress of Awesome as it disburses its modest but joyful awards through the city. Here is Hyperallergina in her ...
PODCAST: Listen to Spacing’s 5-part series on G20
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
It has been over three weeks since the G20 Summit left Toronto but the actions of protesters and police are still lingering.
Spacing Radio's podcast team was on the streets during the tumultuous weekend recording sounds and reactions to the ongoing events. Our contributors have also sat down politicians, journalists, and human rights advocates to discuss the complex issues of policing and protesting an international summit. You can also read the posts by Spacing Toronto's writers for more ...
July 21st, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: The US edition (plus parking)
By Hilary Best // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
• The hull of ship from the 1700s was found last week at the World Trade Centre site in Manhattan, reports CNN. Archaeologists suspect that the ship was sunk to retain and add precious land area to the island.
• Looking for a recession proof industry? The Globe and Mail reports that parking lots continue to pull in record earnings in Canadian cities. With supply limited by increasing real estate development in our downtown cores, the price of parking has increased 233 per cent in Calgary and 130 per cent in Toronto over the past ten years. While some bemoan the dent this has made in their pocket book, Spacing's Shawn Micallef calls this the "universal price of great urbanism" .
• As New York City cracks down on illegal advertisements, Treehugger reports that some of the city's guerilla gardeners are "turning billboard blight into pop-up planters".
July 22nd, 2010
SUMMER SHORTS PODCAST: Riding “the Clockwork Orange”
By Spacing Ottawa // No Comments
LISTEN TO TODAY'S SPACING RADIO PODCAST
Sometimes exploring a city means just shutting your eyes and listening. In this soundscape, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes you underground into the Glasgow subway system.
Affectionately known as "the Clockwork Orange" because of its orange subway cars and circular route, Glasgow's underground dates back to 1896 making it the third oldest in the world. Recently, the city was considering shutting down parts of the system ...
July 23rd, 2010
Winnipeg: the long slow victory of the Exchange District
By Evan Thornton // 2 Comments
I'm in Winnipeg this week attending the Fringe Festival; it's a captivating 10-day event that hosts over 150 theatrical productions from around the world, and it centres on the wonderfully-preserved and revitalized Exchange District and Old Market Square.
I grew up here in the 60s and 70s, and in those days no one I knew ever went to the Exchange District; in fact back then the area didn't even go by any name at all and unless you were employed by one of the mid-century businesses that still valued the low rent and central location the district – fur storage, typewriter repair, offset printers, that sort of thing – you had no reason to show your face along the grimy streets just north of the famous corner of Portage and Main. Really, the district had been in slow decline since a short period of boom in the 'teens and twenties when the civic fathers imagined that their role in the Western Canadian grain trade would soon turn the city into "The Chicago of the North".
July 24th, 2010
Spacing Saturday
By Marcus Bowman // No Comments
Spacing Saturday highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
What does your choice of favourite buildings say about your personality? Continuing to digest the results from the reader survey of the best of Montreal, Spacing contributor Justin Boulanger speculates about the personal traits of the readers of who selected the top three favourite buildings and laments that the Sci-Fi nerds were not organized enough to get Olympic Stadium onto the podium.
In a landmark public space ruling the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled this week that the City of Montreal's anti-postering bylaw is unconstitutional. Christopher DeWolf reports on the story of how the law was challenged and speculates what the city will do to accommodate postering in the future. The post also includes a fantastic gallery of posters from around the city.
As part of the Ideas for Toronto series Adrian Lightstone brings up the issue of using referendums to gauge public support for new revenue tools for transit funding. Citing that referendums having fallen out of style in Canada, Lighstone points out they are frequently used in American cities and other places around the world and have even been used in Toronto.
Mayoral Candidate George Smitherman walked Eglinton Ave all the way across Toronto this week suggesting his interest in urban walkability. Spacing's Todd Harrison caught with him during part of his walk for a discussion about how he would promote walkability as Mayor and put the discussion on Spacing Radio.
On the transit file, the weekly Monday Musings column this week generated discussion on how the proposed service cuts to bus routes around Halifax will affect the city. Additionally, Lauren Oostveen delves into the Halifax archives to look at the city's public transit history.
Spacing Atlantic is launching a photo contest challenging readers to encapsulate their city in a single photograph. Read more about the specific criteria and how to enter.
July 27th, 2010
Street Names: Works of Fiction
By Dwight Williams // 1 Comment
The above photo was taken at a street corner in the far eastern reaches of Orléans; an obscure intersection, but of course its pop-culture reference is anything but. Yes, it's that Mulder & Scully, the duo from The X-Files. The story of how these two nondescript suburban thoroughfares got their televisual nomenclature has been told elsewhere but their existence does raise the question – are there other Ottawa streets named after fictional characters?
Well, the fact is that the practice of naming Ottawa streets for famous fictional characters has been going on, albeit sporadically, since as far back as 1899.
This was borne out in the pages of Ottawa Past and Present by one A.H.D. Ross, published back in 1927. In Volume II of that work, there is a list of the streets and parks running ten pages in total. In those ten pages are at least three examples that predate Mulder and Scully.
July 28th, 2010
World Wide Wednesday: Maps, Trains, Trikes and Three Million in the A40
By Hilary Best // No Comments
Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
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• Time's Michael Grunwald took the train ride from Miami to Orlando to consider the Obama administration's $8 billion investment in high speed rail. The US President aims to create 13 national high speed rail corridors to relieve road and air congestion, reduce carbon emissions and highway deaths, create jobs and jump-start the domestic manufacturing industry. The stimulus funding is a great first step but at 1/8 of last year's spending on highways, there is much more work to be done.
• The New York Times reports on the growing trend of cargo-hauling tricycles in New York City. The bespoke "industrial trikes" transform bikes from personal transportation devices to child-carrying, grocery-hauling complete car alternatives. Users even reported a positive change in their interactions with cars and trucks when using the device.
July 29th, 2010
Gender and the City: parity still eludes us
By Vicky Smallman // 5 Comments
Apparently there are a record number of candidates running for municipal council this year. For those looking for some alternatives to the status quo, this is good news. Only one candidate is running unopposed, and several incumbents are retiring – so no matter what, we'll see new faces on council this year. And it's good for our local democracy to have a lot of people show their interest in serving their community.
In the coming months, we'll have a chance to look at the ward races in detail. Folks are still launching campaigns, so the field is shifting. I'm reluctant to step in and start analyzing each race at this point.
But as someone who has a keen interest in seeing more women in elected office, I couldn't resist doing a little calculation. According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, women make up 13.9 per cent of mayors and 23 per cent of councilors – pretty much on par with other levels of government, and contributing to Canada's dismal international rating for women's participation in politics. FCM wants to raise Canada's average to 30%, and have been running campaign schools and workshops across the country for a few years now. Local councilors Marianne Wilkinson and Jan Harder held a campaign school for women here, which from all reports was well attended.
July 30th, 2010
Headlines: The week in review
By Evan Thornton // No Comments
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Landfill in Los Angeles: next stop for Ottawa waste technology?"][/caption]
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CITY LIVING
Gen Y trading suburban space for urban convenience (Ottawa Citizen)
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ENVIRONMENT
Moodie Drive Landfill --Plasco lands $110M cash infusion (Ottawa Citizen)
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MUNICIPAL ELECTION
Record number of candidates for Ottawa vote (CBC Ottawa )
Moment Doucet Campaign Caught Fire (Ottawa Citizen)
2010 election will be Ottawa's most accessible (EMC Ottawa )
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PEDESTRIAN SAFETY
Pedestrians, cyclist reported on 416, 417(Ottawa Citizen)
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PUBLIC ART
New Barrhaven transit station will boast public art, on the sheep(Ottawa ...
