EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on feedback from an earlier post on urban density, Spacing Atlantic will feature one of the top five dense residential neighbourhoods in Atlantic Canada each week. Previous neighbourhoods: Quinpool Road Halifax, Nova Scotia; North End Halifax, Nova Scotia; Uptown Saint John, New Brunswick; Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador. So, why density? Residential density, the number of people living in a given area, is one of the most important characteristics of urban areas. High densities create vibrant streets, support main street commercial areas, and encourage walking, biking and transit use. But how dense should our neighbourhoods be? What types of buildings create high densities? What do high density neighbourhoods look like? Hopefully this series encourages people to look around their neighbourhood and ask: how does density affect the quality of my neighbourhood? Without further ado...on to number one!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on feedback from an earlier post on urban density, Spacing Atlantic will feature one of the top five dense residential neighbourhoods in Atlantic Canada each week. Previous neighbourhoods: North End Halifax, Nova Scotia; Uptown Saint John, New Brunswick; Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador. So, why density? Residential density, the number of people living in a given area, is one of the most important characteristics of urban areas. High densities create vibrant streets, support main street commercial areas, and encourage walking, biking and transit use. But how dense should our neighbourhoods be? What types of buildings create high densities? What do high density neighbourhoods look like? Hopefully this series encourages people to look around their neighbourhood and ask: how does density affect the quality of my neighbourhood? Without further ado ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on feedback from an earlier post on urban density, Spacing Atlantic will feature one of the top five dense residential neighbourhoods in Atlantic Canada each week. Previous neighbourhoods: Uptown Saint John, New Brunswick and Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador. So, why density? Residential density, the number of people living in a given area, is one of the most important characteristics of urban areas. High densities create vibrant streets, support main street commercial areas, and encourage walking, biking and transit use. But how dense should our neighbourhoods be? What types of buildings create high densities? What do high density neighbourhoods look like? Hopefully this series encourages people to look around their neighbourhood and ask: how does density affect the quality of my neighbourhood? Without further ado ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on feedback from an earlier post on urban density, Spacing Atlantic will feature one of the top five dense residential neighbourhoods in Atlantic Canada each week. Last week's neighbourhood: Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador. So, why density? Residential density, the number of people living in a given area, is one of the most important characterisitcs of urban areas. High densities create vibrant streets, support main street commercial areas, and encourage walking, biking and transit use. But how dense should our neighbourhoods be? What types of buildings create high densities? What do high density neighbourhoods look like? Hopefully this series encourages people to look around their neighbourhood and ask: how does density affect the quality of my neighbourhood? Without further ado ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on feedback from an earlier post on urban density, Spacing Atlantic will feature one of the top five dense residential neighbourhoods in Atlantic Canada each week. No case of the Mondays here! So, why density? Residential density, the number of people living in a given area, is one of the most important characterisitcs of urban areas. High densities create vibrant streets, support main street commercial areas, and encourage walking, biking and transit use. But how dense should our neighbourhoods be? What types of buildings create high densities? What do high density neighbourhoods look like? Hopefully this series encourages people to look around their neighbourhood and ask: how does density affect the quality of my neighbourhood? Without further ado...

SAINT JOHN - Many characteristics affect the look and feel of urban neighbourhoods. Two very important characteristics are building height and density. They can be related, but people often speak as if tall buildings and high density are the same thing. So what's the difference? Height is easy: a building is so many stories or so many feet tall. People easily understand how big a 16 storey building is. Density – the number of people or housing units in a given area – pardon the pun, is less concrete.

HALIFAX REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY - In early April, Halifax Regional Council approved a two hundred and fifty million dollar expansion to Bayers Lake Business Park, which will be built on eighty hectares (one hundred and ninety seven acres). Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) will sell the land to the developer, Banc Developments. Almost doubling the Park's retail space, a project this big deserves careful consideration and public consultation. Instead, Council approved a quarter-billion dollar development in a private meeting, with no public input. Bayers Lake was originally planned as a light industrial park, similar to Burnside Industrial Park in Dartmouth. Lacewood Drive was extended to Bayers Lake to encourage retail development and big box stores like Costco were soon tenants. Retail space grew beyond expectations, creating huge traffic problems that Bayers Lake's roads simply can't handle. To relive congestion a new entrance to Bayers Lake is currently under construction, the Washmill Lake underpass. The high cost of the Washmill Lake underpass partially explains why Council approved this new expansion. The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) Business Park Plan for Bayers Lake recommends that "HRM should maximize development potential of the remaining lands in Bayers Lake to provide income for necessary transportation upgrades". The road upgrades in Bayers Lake are necessary only because of poor planning and inadequate transportation options. A municipality shouldn't have to rely on income from new development simply to provide appropriate infrastructure in an already built-up area.

SAINT JOHN - Nostalgia is powerful in cities, especially old cities. Saint John is an old city, where the past is preserved in the original street grid and hundreds of old brick buildings, many of which were constructed in the 1870s. Physically, parts of Uptown Saint John – including the Trinity Royal Heritage District, Orange Street and the south side of King Street – have changed little over the last hundred years. Uptown contains some of Canada's greatest streetscapes. The heritage districts are a unique mixture of buildings: elegant stone and brick office buildings; narrow three-storey townhouses on tree-lined streets; many small churches and a few large cathedrals; flats, homes on small lots and walk up apartments. The blocks are short and the streets are narrow. Some buildings have stores, restaurants or offices on the ground floor and few buildings are taller than five stories. Garages and parking are mostly hidden in backyards. This is good urban form: compact, walkable, densely built, mixed use and human scaled. This looks like the places Jane Jacobs studied and championed in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But it's not exactly that type of place, not anymore. The buildings and streets are the same but the city has changed, sometimes dramatically. The south side of King Street is lined with historic storefronts and brick and stone mid-rise office buildings, but the north side of the street is composed of modernist office towers and a hulking concrete shopping mall. Other changes are less obvious. Factories and workshops, once the base of Saint John's prosperous industrial economy, have left the City centre. The streetcars that ran up King Street are also gone. Some buildings have been torn down and replaced by other buildings or parking lots.