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.

[caption id="attachment_7701" align="alignnone" width="580" caption="Charlottetown 3 kms from city centre: nary a fence in sight"][/caption] This article by Erin O'Connell was originally published on Spacing Ottawa Do good fences really make good neighbours? We’re into the depths of winter and for those of us who love being outside without 14 layers of clothing puttering about in their gardens, spring is just around the corner. The planning profession is well represented in Spacing's readership, so I suspect that many others share my love of lists and ‘projects’ including improvements to outdoor spaces. Now is the time for staring longingly out to the yard/patio/balcony with hands wrapped around a big mug of hot liquid in lieu of the summer time beer. So what project is being pondered for my own back yard that might hold larger implications, you ask? Well – that project would be fencing. There is a chain link fence that wraps around two lot lines of our rear yard. Not the most attractive feature, although it does have certain advantages such as transparency and durability. I can only assume that the fence was erected as part of a larger project by the former owners that included gates on the other side and enclosed the yard so as to allow the numerous pets to hang around outside. The intent of the fence was to “wall in”.

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.

HALIFAX - About 25 people gathered in front on the Halifax Farmers' Market last Saturday to take part in Halifax's Jane's Walk. This year's walk, "Change of (s)Pace," wandered through the downtown, stopping to muse about all kinds of transformations the city is undergoing. photo by Alison Creba Hosted by Spacing Atlantic contributors, we followed the participatory principle that everyone is an authority on their community.  Anyone interested was given the opportunity to share thoughts and knowledge on their neighborhoods and city, taking up the megaphone whenever the urge arose.

A series that examines urban and architectural issues in Halifax by way of unbuilt proposals authored by different designers, this week featuring a project by graduate architect Paul Zylstra for a bus shelter at the intersection of Spring Garden Road and South Park Street. All drawings and images courtesy Paul Zylstra. Text by Dustin Valen HALIFAX - Criticism of public transit risks becoming a proverb for indignation. Notwithstanding long waits, bad moods, and iffy weather, public transit remains a necessity for many people. Languid discomforts taint our perception of public transit and sidetrack discussions about sustainability, the right to mobility, and the importance of economic diversity in our city. Not the least bit helpful is the searing objectivity that has inspired the design of our existing curbside bus shelters. More insidious than the status quo, these buildings do little to inspire the imagination and underscore the lack of value we invest in our public transit system. A more inspiring discussion surrounds a provocative first year studio project by graduate architect Paul Zylstra who, by creating a pragmatic connection between public transit and public space, transforms the humble bus shelter into an artful paradigm. A bus shelter personifies a community, signifying a place where people choose to live, work, and shop; a map of public transit across Halifax and its regional municipality reveals the densest and most frequented places in the city as well as daily routines of thousands of commuters. Although individually modest, each bus shelter is part of a vast network that is traveled in small segments by thousands of people every day — tiny outposts that safely negotiate passengers from streets to sidewalks.

HALIFAX - Wright Ave is the kind of place that makes Atlantic Canadian cities so great. An almost entirely hidden street in downtown Halifax, many people walk by it all the time and never even know it's there — a laneway-looking road leading off Morris Street full of family-sized semi-detached houses. Backing onto Fort Massey Cemetery, the houses seem as if they were all built at once. Their uniform shape and cladding, big wooden decks and similar paint jobs seem to point to the fact that some developer likely spotted this unused bit of land right smack in downtown Halifax and decided to throw up some houses.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="The three buildings that would be demolished under the Fortis proposal"][/caption] ST. JOHN'S - Newfoundland and Labrador has seen great economic benefit from offshore oil and gas developments in recent years. For the first time (since Confederation), Newfoundland is a 'have' province. With the province awash in oil money, Premier Danny Williams assures us that investments will be made with a vision for the future, and that we will come out of the oil boom stronger then ever before. In St. John's, the hub of the province's oil driven economy, the lasting legacy of oil will come from the development which occurs during the boom. Long after the jobs and prosperity brought by oil leave, the buildings they helped construct will remain. Fortis Properties, one of the largest companies in Newfoundland, has recently made a proposal for a redevelopment in downtown St. John’s. Fortis currently owns a 12-story building on the corner of Water street and Harbour drive (pictured below). The proposal includes plans to demolish the three buildings next to their exiting building to construct a 15-story tower. The proposed site for this new tower is in the closest block to the harbour, which makes many worry about its potential effect on views in the downtown, and the St. John's skyline.

HALIFAX - Who knew a plywood Oompa-loopma could cause such a stir? Since the City adopted the Temporary Sign By-law [PDF] in 2006, which placed strict regulation on street signage, sandwich boards have been an unprecedented source of contention in Halifax. Dedicated fans have rallied behind Freak Lunchbox, whose hand-painted signs are a beacon of creativity (and candy) on Barrington St — there was even a Facebook group created in defense of the candy store's then Oompa-loompa-themed sign. But beyond the Oompa-loompa hoopla lies a real debate about the control of public space in the city. Perhaps in response to this public objection, for the last three years enforcement has been purely complaint driven. But with the By-law now under review, small businesses are nervous about the impacts if the policy were to tighten up. Amendments proposed to Regional Council in November, would crank up enforcement of the By-law's complex licensing requirements for temporary signs, imposing strict — in some cases inhibiting — limitations to the size, style, and placement of the all important sandwich board.