HALIFAX - About one month ago, I wrote an article for the Dalhousie Gazette on the updated campus master plan [PDF], which is in the final review stages before being implemented. Dal has made some effort to get good public feedback — they've set up a blog dedicated to the plan as well as an official page on the University website — these discussions haven't gotten much press or sparked too much attention, on or off campus. This is too bad, since the plan will have a big impact not only on Dal students but the wider community. Included in the proposals are separated bike lanes, a pedestrian plaza, massive new buildings and a transit terminal on LeMarchant Street. While my article mostly focuses on the changes in store for Studley Campus, my hope is that re-positing it here will bring a little more attention and generate the much needed discussion these important plans deserve. Master plans are always exciting documents, and Dalhousie’s updated Campus Master Plan is no exception. Full of colourful diagrams, maps and tables, plans give us the rare opportunity to shape the future landscape of our communities to better reflect the goals and values we think are important. Judged from this perspective, there’s much to praise in Dal’s new plan. Students’ cries for improved active transportation and public transit infrastructure have finally been heard. The master plan proposes putting bike lanes along University Avenue and turning the now vacant corner outside the Student Union Building into a “landscaped transit terminal.”

HALIFAX - Last week, Metro Transit launched an online GoTime schedule and departure feature for every one of its 2200+ bus stops, bus and ferry terminals.  Encouraging as this is that Metro Transit is cluing into the fact that in this age of iPhone carrying, Blackberry BBMers, putting useful information online is the way to go, I can’t help but wonder whether this new GoTime system won’t suffer the same problems as the phone schedule system. A far bigger, more important step up would be to switch from simply conveying static schedules and moving up to a system that actually told you when the bus was going to come. This would mean having checkpoints or sensors that would actually chart the position of the buses themselves so that information like heavy traffic, bus breakdowns and other incidents that delay the buses would somehow be conveyed to those people waiting. I’m a real sucker for the GoTime phone call service. I love calling my local stop and route number in as I leave my house (I have the number saved into my phone) just to check and see if I technically have the time to linger a moment longer before heading out. But too many times have I called and heard that I have ten minutes only to find out my bus showed up two minutes later and left without me to trust the seemingly authoritative words of the always cheerful automated phone woman.

HALIFAX - Dear Bell Aliant, I know you well. Not only do we meet whenever I do anything with phones and internet, but your massive, oddly-oriented building is impossible to ignore. I see it every day, and I'm not alone. I know you're big, I know you advertise and I know those ads have gone hand-in-hand with your domination of all things telecommunication out here. But — and it's a big BUT — that doesn't mean you should be allowed to dominate Barrington Street with your obnoxious projector ad. Walking along Halifax's main drag, I shouldn't ...

HALIFAX - Last Thursday, Tim Bousquet wrote a great article on the potentially damaging impact of the ‘tax reforms’ proposed by HRM's Tax Reform Committee. The general thrust of the piece exposed how the tax reform plan essentially hopes to replace the traditionally progressive notion that the more your home is worth, the more you pay in taxes, to the more urban-friendly idea that property tax should be based on “the cost of the services actually received by the property owner.” I like to think of myself as an urbanist — someone who believes that healthy and vibrant cities hold the key to a better future for us politically, socially, environmentally and culturally — so seen through this lens, making suburbanites pay for the strain they impose on civic infrastructure through sprawl, car-based transportation, etc. holds its appeal.  I think to myself, maybe that’ll be the kick in the pants they need to finally leave their McMansions and move downtown? But we no longer live in the 1970s. This is no longer the era of “white flight” where the suburbs are populated by middle and upper-class Caucasians fleeing the blight and increasing multiculturalism of urban centres. When we refer to ‘inner city’ struggles today, issues like gentrification, condoization, historic preservation and public space debates are generally what come to mind, not topics like violent crime, poverty and racialized ghettos — problems which peaked in the downtowns of cities decades ago and have since slowly receded into the background, often literally.

With the Copenhagen Climate Summit kicking off today, we over at Spacing Atlantic thought it only appropriate to take part in this truly international media scrum on environmental issues that some are describing as "the perfect storm."   Aside from being recognized as one of the most important meetings in the last few decades, Cop 15 is also an important moment for bloggers, twitterers and other members of the non-mainstream media who will easily outnumber those coming from the more mainstream press agencies. We are all a part of the global community, and despite not being one of the 15,000 attending the meetings, we very much hope that by engaging with local urban spaces in Atlantic Canada, we play a part (however small) in working towards accomplishing many of the same goals underlying the climate talks currently underway in Copenhagen. On that note, as these talks continue over the next two weeks, we will shine the spotlight on some local initiatives of city-dwellers in Atlantic Canada who are working towards making our urban landscapes more sustainable, environmentally friendly and green. To kick off the two weeks, we'd like to post 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgement on this generation,' an international editorial co-written by the editors of more than 20 major newspapers around the world.  This editorial is under a creative commons license and is free to reproduce. Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

ST. JOHN'S - Who would've known there's more to a lick a' paint than meets the eye in St. John's? While many cities in Atlantic Canada have brightly coloured houses, in St. John's, painted houses are a matter of historic importance.  For the last few years, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador has had a paint chart in effect that sets the standards and guidelines for house painting along supposedly traditional lines. Based on the paint chart, Newfoundland's traditional pallete includes colours like Misky rain (a beige colour), Mussels in the ...

HALIFAX - Ninety-two years ago this Sunday, as the First World War was raging across the Atlantic, the SS Mont-Blanc munitions convoy and the SS Imo collided in the Halifax Harbour, setting off an explosion of unprecedented force that leveled much of the city.  Few events have so drastically impacted the future life and built form of a city in so singular and tragic a moment as the explosion, which literally blasted the small city of Halifax onto the world stage at the cost of over 1,900 lives and much of the city's north end. Today the Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower stands on the top of Fort Needham Park overlooking the site of the explosion in commemoration to those whose lives and homes were destroyed by the blast.  Yet other less obvious reminders of the explosion abound in Halifax.  With the aid money that poured into the city following the blast from places as diverse as China, New Zealand and Boston, over 3,000 houses were repaired within the first seven weeks. The unique architecture and layout of the 328 Hydrostone houses are also the product of rebuilding efforts. The Nova Scotia Archives has just completed an extensive online virtual exhibit featuring photographs, documents and other material showing life in Halifax before and after the explosion.  For those interested in learning more about these and other stories, a number of events are taking place this week to mark the 92nd anniversary of the Halifax Explosion.

HALIFAX - With the cold weather here to stay, the Halifax Public Gardens has closed its gates for the season. As sad as this is, you won’t find tears in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I really do like the Public Gardens, I just wish it didn’t steal so much of the spotlight away from my favourite downtown green space: Victoria Park. With the gardens now closed, Victoria Park can take back the limelight. Existing in the shadow of HRM’s most well-known urban park, you’d think it would suffer from neglect, vandalism or any number of a whole host of problems. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Victoria Park is teeming with life. Full of benches, monuments to old Scottish poets and gathering spaces, the park attracts people day and night (despite technically closing at 10pm), summer and winter like few other places in the city. Part of this has to do with how the park relates to its immediate surroundings. With bus stops on its north, east and south sides, a bike lane running along its eastern edge (one of the few in downtown Halifax) and criss-crossing pathways for pedestrians cutting diagonally through the park, Victoria Park is a model for multi-modal transportation.