Miramichi, New Brunswick photo by axealot

WESTERN CANADA - Most references to superior cycling infrastructure tend to default to the Netherlands, Portland, and — largely thanks to Gil and Enrique Penalosa — occasionally Colombia.  While international models like these provide enough cyclist envy to fuel tense debates in a lagging city like Halifax, I have sometimes wondered why — outside of Montreal's Bixi program — comparatively little celebration is made of Canadian cities' own cycling victories... however small they might seem. In the last three months I've been traveling Western Canada, my limitations as a non-driver have fluctuated between debilitating and a non-issue. Surprisingly, however, this fluctuation does not always correspond to city size. In even the most unexpected places, I've discovered bike-friendly features (albeit sometimes minute) that we'd benefit from across the country. Here's a smattering of simple solutions we might learn from the West.

SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo. I know I'm stating the obvious when I say this: parking a vehicle downtown, in Halifax or any city, can be a challenge if not entirely frustrating. But the parking policies of a city go a long way in determining how a city is experienced at street level. For instance, the city of Prince George, BC has nearly 50% of its entire downtown area covered in parking lots. The downtown of many Canadian cities ...

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SUMMER SHORTS 017 ON SPACING RADIO You know when you're exploring a city for the first time and you turn a corner only to stumble upon something completely unexpected? This is what happened to Spacing producer Mieke Anderson on a recent trip to London, England. Initially, it was only a faint sound barely within earshot. Then suddenly she was face-to-face with the St Mary-le-Bow Church and consumed by the ringing of its famous bells. Wandering the streets of London you'll still hear ...

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SPACING RADIO PODCAST Sometimes exploring a city means just shutting your eyes and listening. In this soundscape, Spacing producer Mieke Anderson takes you underground into the Glasgow subway system. Affectionately known as "the Clockwork Orange" because of its orange subway cars and circular route, Glasgow's underground dates back to 1896 making it the third oldest in the world. Recently, the city was considering ...

HALIFAX - Over the past couple weeks, Halifax has been investing time in analyzing the feasibility of adding roundabouts to our transportation "toolkit". Although this seems like a new idea for HRM, Sydney's Alexandra Street Roundabout has been ushering traffic through since December, and in other parts of the world, roundabouts are quite common. The summer of 2007 was when I started biking again after a decade-long hiatus, and it happened in the most unlikeliest of places: Northern France. After months of talking about a France trek with some friends in London, England, we came to one important question regarding transportation: what is the cheapest way we can travel while seeing as much of France as we can? The answer was clear, and in May of 2007, after 10 years of relying on transportation modes requiring some form of internal combustion, I left the tiny town of Arras on a 300km tour to Paris. It was the best decision I've ever made in my life!

What information would you need to solve the problems and nuisances of city life? Because if you live in San Francisco, you can probably find it. As reported by Fast Company, with the mid-2009 launch of DataSF.org, Bay-area Californians can now pour over information on everything from parking spaces to local fires, from water quality at beaches to the demographics of city employees. Not only is the information freely available, it is also posted in formats that can be read by computers. And if computers can manipulate the data, it can be handily whittled into city-enhancing iPhone apps. The trend toward urban open-data initiatives is flourishing. Examples abound suggesting that by providing constituents with the raw material to address concerns and irritations of city living, they will find ways of shaping it into tools that can alleviate the cost needed to resolve them internally. San Francisco's initiative, for example, has resulted in at least 30 apps on everything from crime rates to recycling facilities.

HALIFAX - On Thursday, March 25, the Chronicle Herald and the Greater Halifax Partnership presented a sold-out luncheon talk by Carol Coletta, CEO of CEOs for Cities, on the topic of cities as engines of economic prosperity. CEOs for Cities describes itself as “a national cross-sector network of urban leaders from the civic, business, academic and philanthropic sectors dedicated to building and sustaining the next generation of great American cities”, and Ms. Coletta undoubtedly demonstrates a forward-thinking and conscientious approach to urban issues. She compellingly challenged Richard Florida’s assertions on the economic value of art in cities and rhymed off statistics with the familiarity of someone who obviously crunched the numbers herself. Greatly to her credit, Ms. Coletta had clearly done her homework on Halifax; she was well aware of the region’s post-secondary institutions and it was news to me that Halifax represents 46% of Nova Scotia’s GDP.