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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...