EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is kindly cross-posted from the Halifax Media Co-op. Check out the original here. Also, Spacing Atlantic has created a Facebook Event to easily notify and inform others of the Public Meeting on Bayers Road Expansion, please help us get the word out! https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114181238686810 HALIFAX - There's no way to get around it.  Metro needs better transit. Fortunately, the It's More Than Buses group have big ideas of how to fix that. After several public meetings,  this week they unveiled a proposed High-Frequency Public Transit Network [PDF] and a set of guiding principles. It's an exciting and promising approach led by the Planning and Design Centre (PDC) in Halifax in partnership with Fusion Halifax.  More than 100 members of the urban and suburban public participated in the meetings.  Also present were Eddie Robar, the new head of Metro Transit,  and Richard Butts, HRM's Chief Administrative Officer.

Captivated by the landscape of Canada's east coast cities? Obsessed with the beauty of a public space, the dirty grime of a back alley, a sidewalk's everyday dramas or the evolving skyline of your hometown? Spacing Atlantic wants your urban photos. Please add them to our photo pool and we will select the best photos to be featured on our blog in our articles and in our Atlantic Snapshot series. Expose yourself and shoot away Atlantic Canada (and don't forget to focus!). Sorry, couldn't help myself. ...

This article is kindly cross-posted from the Halifax Media Co-op. Check out the original here. HALIFAX - Bedford’s gain will be Bayers Road’s (and the taxpayer's) pain. And the pain will be considerable. This was the warning that the HRM Peninsula Community Council provided at a public meeting at City Hall on Monday night.

"Machine Space, or territory devoted primarily to the use of machines, shall be so designated when machines have priority over people in the use of territory" - Horvath, Ronald J. 1974. "Machine Space." Geographical Review 64 (2): 167-188. Photo by Danny Cornelissen, Creative Commons ST. JOHN'S - Writing almost 40 years ago, Ronald Horvath wanted to translate technological questions into questions that were explicitly spatial and political. Today linking technology, space, and politics may not seem so strange, but even with Lewis Mumford’s writing preceding Horvath’s, this was still heady stuff at the time. What Horvath does so well is to give our taken for granted assumptions a good shake: the car is not just a technical object, a mere tool to get us from point A to point B. The car is urban North America’s sacred cow, he writes, but “[would] an Indian imagine devoting 70 percent of downtown Delhi to cow trails and pasturage, as we do for our automobiles in Detroit and Los Angeles?”. The language of the comparison might seem a bit anachronistic now – and Delhi's machine space has exploded since the 70’s – but students at Memorial University (MUN) in St. John's, where I teach Geography, love it. Suddenly the technology of the car becomes a lively thing suffused with meaning, symbolism, and myth as well as its own political and economic geographies: “Each year we sacrifice more than 50,000 Americans to our sacred cow in traffic accident fatalities. In search of fodder to perpetuate the existence of our sacred cow, we support despotic governments in oil-rich lands”, writes Horvath.

HALIFAX - Forty years after its inception, the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) is still fighting to make Nova Scotia an environmental success story. To mark the occasion, the EAC is undertaking a “40 Days of Action” campaign that kicked off with a picnic next to the Cogswell Interchange in Halifax today. The site was selected because it too is celebrating 40 years. The interchange was to be part of Harbour Drive, a highway to run along the waterfront, much like in Boston. The Harbour Drive project was halted thanks to the efforts of concerned Haligonians, while Boston’s went ahead only later to be moved underground. Forty years ago, Brian Gifford was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Ecology Action Centre. “I feel very proud”, states Gifford. “I’m amazed at all the energy that has been put in to the Ecology Action Centre”. The EAC was founded on the need for a recycling program but has since branched out into seven committee focus areas—energy, wilderness, food, built environment, transportation, marine and coastal. Gifford continues, “It’s good to celebrate but things are more serious now. There needs to be more action.”

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 - Metro Transit is hosting four public consultations today and tomorrow to aid a consultant's review of HRM's public transit system as part of its Universal Accessibility Planning Study. The sessions will consist of a short presentation followed by a question & answer period. Metro Transit states: This includes reviewing Metro Transit’s existing infrastructure (vehicles, terminals, bus stops, shelters, etc.), and evaluating the overall business processes and products, such as accessible customer information (directional signage around service areas); communication; website; and policies & practices for accessible customer service." While Metro Transit is to be lauded for commissioning a study aimed at improving 'the overall accessibility' while inviting residents to participate in these discussions, my disappointment lies in the distinct lack of reach to the community or ridership itself.

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.