[caption id="attachment_4277" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="They come by night: workers removing a parking meter in Chinatown"][/caption] Editor's note: this first appeared in author Charles Akben-Marchand's own Images of Centretown blog. The last couple weeks, the City of Ottawa has been removing parking meters as part of their plan to switch to Pay & Display parking, and convert some parking meters to ring-and-post bike racks. Unfortunately, despite various assurances, there won't be enough racks to replace the lost meters. Pictured above is a shot of the City workers removing racks on Somerset street at Arthur: As was ...

Photo by Jeremie D.

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 ...

[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

photo by Justin Van Leeuwen

Photoshopped representation of the new arch expected for Chinatown in March of 2010;  thanks go to West Side Action for the update.