"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 ...

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.

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 ...

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="Earthquake evacuees on Carling Avenue"][/caption]

[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] -------- CITY HALL Mayor to reveal election plans June 29 (Ottawa Citizen) -------- DEVELOPERS Eco-friendly condo to be non-smoking (Canwest News ) Empty excuses for an empty lot (Ottawa Citizen) -------- HISTORICAL/TOURISM "It was a seedy and shockingly violent town" (Montreal Gazette) -------- LANSDOWNE Public-private partnership not best for Ottawa (Metro Ottawa ) Park plans worry Mayfair (Ottawa Citizen) -------- Photo by Justin Van Leeuwen

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.

[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]

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 ...