[flickrslideshow acct_name="spacing" id="72157627287468666"] Click here for non-flash views Imagine a cafe with a perfect view of a lively street corner from all its windows; smack downtown, it's also in the middle a lively arts and cultural district. In the morning you can pop by for a morning latté and WiFi session; in the evening you can go there for a pre-show drink.  It's  around the corner from city hall and the main police station, so it's busy during the day serving city staffers, lobbyists, and journalists who need to be close to the City Hall beat. Audio-visually it is fully equipped for use as a performance stage or for presentations and public meetings. It hosts debates and discussions on public issues; debates which are very likely to be covered by the city's biggest newspaper, very likely, because it is the newspaper itself that runs the cafe.

[flickrslideshow acct_name="Spacing" id="72157626213380852"] ______________ Readers and contributors from three Ottawa urbanist websites - Apartment 613, Open File Ottawa, and Spacing Ottawa got together for a social evening at Imperial Food and Beverage on March 3, 2011. Spacing Ottawa photographer Justin Van Leeuwen was there to record the fun. If you were there and would like a print or a higher-resolution version, you can contact Justin here. Justin also has alternate takes for many of the photos.

Date: Thursday, March 3 Time: 7.30PM-9.00PM Place: Imperial Food and Beverage, 329 Bank (near Gilmour) Spacing Ottawa is joining with the talented writers and editors from Apartment 613 and OpenFile Ottawa to host a social evening at Imperial Food and Beverage. It's a perfect opportunity for contributors to -- and readers of -- three of Ottawa's urban-oriented websites to meet up and put some faces to some names. And to get the evening off on the right foot for one sharp-eyed Spacing Ottawa reader, we promise a free "beverage" (wink-wink) for a first-time commenter (there ...

Monday night's lunar eclipse was the first in centuries to coincide with a solstice. Much to my disappointment, the cloud cover in Ottawa was too heavy to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon. But I was not alone. Online, Ottawans flocked to Twitter to share their misfortune. The eclipse exemplifies the idea that new media is contributing to the breakdown of physical boundaries. Twitter united people across North America Monday night through the sharing of excitement, photos and observations of the eclipse. At the same time, the event reaffirmed our connection to the physical geography of our planet. The regions where people could and could not see the eclipse, due to weather or geographical location, were recorded on Twitter. Twitter and other new media are changing the way we perceive place.