HALIFAX = To celebrate one of the Ecology Action Centre’s (EAC) first successful campaigns that stopped plans for a four lane highway plowing through downtown Halifax,  there will be a picnic and demo at the Barrington Street Bus stop across from Scotia square overlooking the Cogswell Interchange today, Friday, April 22nd from 11:30am to 1:30pm. The picnic and demonstration at the monstrous Cogswell Interchange will recall the EAC's struggle to prevent a four lane highway from obliterating downtown Halifax and most importantly the event will collectively imagine a brighter future for the existing monstrous Cogswell Interchange. WHAT: EAC's 40th Birthday Picnic and Demo WHEN: Today - Friday, April 22nd (Earth Day), 11:30am – 1:30pm WHERE: Barrington Street Bus Stop, across from Scotia Square overlooking the Cogswell Interchange HOW  MUCH: Free Today's event celebrates one of EAC’s earliest victories and kicks off the organizations 40 Days of Action celebrating their 4o years of operation. “We wanted to do something really big to celebrate forty years of action,” said Policy Director Mark Butler.  “We are organizing special events around the big issues in Nova Scotia: food, energy, water, and our coasts, climate change, environmental racism, forests, fisheries, sprawl and sustainable transportation.  There’s something for everyone.”

HALIFAX - Join the Point Pleasant Park Advisory Committee (PPPAC) for their monthly committee meeting today. The PPPAC meetings are open to the public and all are welcome. Do you have a park-related issue you would like to discuss? Please also feel free to contact the PPPAC. WHAT: Point ...

ALL CITIES - The city is in constant conversation. Amidst important discussions about its streets and people, it also engages in the day-to-day talk of the weather, business, and what’s-for-lunch. It relays the events of its days and offers itself to the future. And while there are serious matters to be dealt with, it is important to listen closely to the habitual hum of the city, by reading signs of its livelihood and well-being. This is the cities 'urban vernacular'. The concept of urban vernacular considers the correlation between the aesthetic and the cultural (historical, geographical) patterning of a place. The term further suggests that a silent conversation exists in the city, where changing conventions are archived in building design, but signs also speak of place - in text, material and font. We may read into this dialogue as it takes place through visible textures, materials and characters in urban architecture and infrastructure. With due attention to both form and content, we may gather greater insight into the subtleties of local culture and geography. The following compilation of photos considers the way in which roadside marquee signage speaks of the city, within the city. For, the signs nod to similar notions of cultural geography, personal expression, the flux of economics in the abundance (or lack) of resources.

HALIFAX - For the 3rd annual Mayor’s Award for Excellence & Innovation in Planning competition, eligible  post-secondary students living in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) were challenged to conceptualize how cities will function in 100 years. Applicants were provided a selection of questions as imagination foder for their entries - questions like,  how will we get from point A to point B? What will our homes look like? What will we eat? And, where will our food come from? The annual competition became a fixture at the recently past IMAGINE conference at Dalhousie University's  School of Planning. In line with the mandate of the conference, the Mayor’s Award was an opportunity for aspiring planners to get creative, to imagine what life could be like in the city in 100 years (or more), and to illustrate the importance of long-term planning. Although only post-secondary students were eligible to submit, the criteria was otherwise wide open, and could include any combination of words and images, hand-made or digitally constructed. The award, worth $500, was solicited by the School of Planning and the Mayor of Halifax, with submitted entries a focal point of discussion and interaction, during the IMAGINE conference. Conference organizers and participants were asked to vote on the most innovative idea, with the award going to Kourosh Rad, whose winning entry is illustrated above.

HALIFAX - “What kind of community do you want to live in? What do you want Halifax to look like?” Jen Powley asked these questions to a packed auditorium in the Ralph M. Medjuck Building located at the Dalhousie University School of Planning campus on March 11th, 2011. Despite the diversity of her audience—students and seniors, the able-bodied and the handicapped, Nova Scotia natives and recently transplanted residents—Powley guessed their answers may be more similar than different. She’s also confident an HRM Greenbelt would solidify a common ground. On the second day of the Dalhousie School of Planning’s Imagine conference, Powley proposed the implementation of an HRM Greenbelt to strengthen the components of the Regional Municipal Planning Strategy.  The conferences intent was to assess long-term planning in general and to review specifically, the Regional Municipal Plan: the 25-year strategy plan is under review this year and is seeking consultation from the public. The HRM Regional Municipal Plan was ratified in 2006 and lays out a strategy for sustainable growth in the HRM that simultaneously preserves the environment and fosters a strong economy. It touches upon what Powley refers to as the three key pillars of future planning: society, economics and the environment. It also addresses them in urban, rural and suburban contexts. While Powley agrees with this approach, she describes the Plan as “130 pages of dense, dense document. I use the image of oatmeal,” she says. “Really, it’s kind of bland.” Powley’s joke isn’t far off-base. According to a recent survey, 53 per cent of polled HRM residents rated the success of the Plan as five or lower, on a one to ten scale. “It’s a good plan,” says Powley. “There’s lots of good stuff in it, but it hasn’t attracted the imagination of the population.”

This article was originally published on Spacing Ottawa. The harrowing images coming to us from across the Pacific are heightening the sense of dread felt around the world about the final tally of the death toll in northeastern Japan; at the time of posting authorities were advising the number of people killed by the quake and the subsequent tsunami could well exceed 10,000. The Flickr pool shown above -- which also includeds video clips -- is ...

HALIFAX - Once Queen Elizabeth High School is demolished, the land is to be used in the interim as an urban farm - a novel use of the land for the time being (it's slated to be used for expansion of the hospital in the future). The idea to turn the area into an urban farm spawned when Capital Health and the Dalhousie University's Cities and Environment Unit organized a public consultation on November 21, 2010. Spacing Atlantic covered the public consultation and offers ...

HALIFAX -  In 2005, Halifax's north end collective consciousness came together to sprout Imagine Bloomfield in an effort to renew and preserve a nexus of history, community and cultural activity relevant to the needs of the area. Since 2005, needs assessments have been conducted, consultants hired, volunteers amassed and finally in 2010 a MasterPlan for redevelopment of the site was tabled and accepted unanimously by Halifax Regional Council. Recently, Imagine Bloomfield reported that “an implementation process report is expected to begin being acted upon in 2011.” Without saying, Imagine Bloomfield is an incredible project which has been inspired by the the passion and dedication of a group of people and has successfully inspired city planners to imagine new ideas for their property to move a little quicker to get this development off of the ground. Based on my own observations and experiences of developments and planning in Halifax for the last 9 years, the skeptic in me still wonders when this project will in fact bloom. Seriously - IMAGINE - planning in Halifax. From March 10- 12, 2011, Dalhousie University graduate students from the School of Planning have organized a conference titled IMAGINE. The intent of IMAGINE is to explore long-term planning through speakers and activities to create an understanding of how long-term planning should and can influence how cities are planned today. The conference will facilitate the sharing of ideas and lessons learned between professionals, academics and the community, while exploring a combination of initiatives and ideas from a wide range of speakers with diverse backgrounds.