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".

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.

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?

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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.

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.