Many familiar with Halifax politics are quick to blame City Council for our civic ills. While cynicism towards Canadian urban city councils is not uncommon; in Halifax our Council is often regarded as a barrier to the implementation of progressive ideas, a rival in civic-minded endeavour and an ineffective mechanism useful only to political stair climbers.  But as political participation has waned extra-political citizen engagement has spread; though this alone will not be enough to ...

The Halifax Harbour has become a barrier to part a of the downtown core: geographic, political and psychological.  This barrier has become division; and Dartmouth an estranged sister.  However, Dartmouth has considerable desirable atrributes that should be recognized and embraced for the benefit of HRM as a whole.  In order to do this these barriers must be reframed as opportunities.