SAINT JOHN - It’s official. The City has finally implemented a new municipal plan to replace the outdated 40 year-old plan whose policies have ransacked the city. Sprawl, encouraged under the old municipal plan, has shifted the population around, outside the city’s borders, and created a doughnut hole where a densely populated city once stood. Of course, this is an easy conclusion to reach with hindsight at our disposal but, to be fair, I’m sure the Council, city staff and consultants of the day had the best interests of the city at heart. In the prevailing 40 years, however, the trends and practices in urban planning have made a massive about-face. No more of this idyllic “city-country” state, the suburbs, but a focus on density, walkability, and sustainability. The residents of Saint John appear to have sensed the impact of these old outdated policies and have begun rejuvenating the city even in the absence of a new municipal plan. The city is seeing a natural resurgence and the new crowd-sourced municipal plan will be a fantastic guiding document and development tool reaffirming the direction the city is already heading in.

SAINT JOHN - PlanSJ, Saint John's community exercise to produce a new Municipal Plan, is coming under criticism from the region's airport for being 'unnecessarily restrictive' and threatening the airport's long term viability. To survive, the airport hopes to diversify its revenue sources by also becoming an industrial park, and fears that PlanSJ may prevent such development. Deputy Mayor Stephen Chase sounded the alarm bell by suggesting the airport may close in five years if action isn't taken. The presentation to Common Council on Monday is available here [PDF], page 185.

HALIFAX - This Monday will launch an exhibition of black and white photos dubbed "Culture Not Convention" to be featured at The Khyber all week. The work is a collective, community-based response to plans by all three levels of government to spend up to $375 million in tax dollars on a proposed high rise convention centre in the downtown core. It also includes two water colours by Kyle Jackson. Borrowing its name from a previous fence weave project, the photo initiative started back in December, when an ad-hoc group of ...

SAINT JOHN - In early 2010, the City launched PlanSJ to develop a new Municipal Plan to guide development over the next 25 years. We've been following it closely from the beginning and now, it’s almost here. A draft Plan is being introduced to the public with an Open House today. It's available here [PDF] for your reading pleasure, all 150+ pages of it. Here's an excerpt: Policies contained in the Municipal Plan will help guide: Capital expenditure and investment decisions by the City; Decisions about where and ...

SAINT JOHN - In early 2010, the City launched PlanSJ to create a new Growth Strategy and to develop a new Municipal Plan to guide development over the next 25 years. We profiled the launch of PlanSJ here. Now that the Growth Strategy [PDF] has been unanimously endorsed by Council – ‘where do we want to go as a city’ - it’s time to help develop Municipal Plan policies – 'how do we get there’. PlanSJ is hosting an open house workshop today, Putting the Plan on Paper. Topics to ...

HALIFAX - Ka-Ching. With a $13 billion dollar debt in NS (cleverly illustrated by Hugh Pouliot), how can we not talk about value? It is ironic really, that HRM with its past spending habits, has not fully assessed the value(s) of, and in, the HRM Regional Municipality Strategy Plan. Thankfully, on Saturday, March 12, 2011, a panel consisting of IMAGINE conferences' key-note speakers - Bruce Tonn, Hugh Millward and Patricia Gordon, as well as city councillor Jennifer Watts - talked about planning values in relation to the HRM's Regional Municipal Strategy and long-term planning, in general. Despite spending a significant value in, on and for HRM in the past, the conference revealed that money rather than planning took a priority in the 25-year Municipal Strategy plan. Millward suggested that a lot of smart growth ideas were watered down in the actual HRM plan; he assumed that it was a result of municipal resources, specifically financial. He also attributed the watering down to the fact that "the plan had to be sold as a package", which may be why certain topics had less of an impact. Watts pointed to the fact that there was and is no conversation about water, despite the fact that there are 46 watersheds in Nova Scotia with a majority of them in the HRM area. Watts suggested that "It would be important to address water and understand the implications of water. I've been hearing lots of land-use planning, but what is our relationship to water? Again though, planning water is really expensive." Gordon indicated that "the scope of any municipal plan is hard to address." When Gordon was working for the City of Calgary, during ImagineCALGARY, they reduced their municipal plan to two key areas that would shape the plan and long-term planning - Energy and Water. Gordon felt that both were missing from the HRM plan and both are really important and necessary to assess now and in the long-term: "To me if you don't have energy (in the plan) you have a problem ... you are going nowhere without energy." Tonn expressed surprise that NS still relied heavily on fossil fuel energy, when the province had access to other sustainable resources. But Tonn also indicated that a challenge of transitioning to sustainable energy resources is that, as evidenced in the USA, the traditional grid energy infrastructures are not capable of distributing the new and long-term energy technology. Watts quipped in indicating that "it is a hard slug and that hands are tied to what we can do." She did indicate however, that council has hired legal teams to write new charters. What is clear though, is that planning is expensive or at least it is under the current bureaucratic (debt) structure.

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.”

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.