Archives /// Politics

HALIFAX - Life in a post-amalgamation world. This seemingly perpetual challenge lingered in the realm of subtext during Wednesday night's public meeting on Halifax Regional Municipality's Governance and District Boundary Review. Poised for completion by Dec 2010, the Review aims to assess and improve our municipal governance structure, looking primarily at the number of electoral districts; their size and boundaries; and the size, number, and scope of power of Community Councils. What this really means: how many councillors should make up Regional Council, what population of HRMers each councillor should represent, and how the geographic structure of their governing authority might shift. Chaired by Mayor Peter Kelly, Wednesday's meeting— the fifth of seven meetings taking place across Community Councils through mid-March — gave HRM residents and representatives of the business community the opportunity to voice their opinions, musings, and concerns about the current governance structure and make a case for change.

HALIFAX - Leading up to the 2012 election, The Governance & Boundary Review Committee of Council is undertaking a review of the polling districts and boundaries, hoping to address key questions around how Council can work better for HRM citizens. The first of the public meetings took place last night, with six more to follow across the different HRM districts through March 10th. Discussion topics include the size of electoral districts, the role of district councillors, and the decision-making power and size of Community Councils and ...

The [Re]Presenting Halifax series revisits historical and contemporary maps, diagrams and other interpretive readings of the Halifax region. See my first post for the full aims of this project and more information about contributing to the series. HALIFAX - In 1957, University of Toronto planning professor Gordon Stephenson released a report titled A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jointly funded by the City and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), this study was commissioned after a series of unsuccessful slum clearance and redevelopment proposals for the peninsula in the early 1950s. Stephenson’s study, widely-known as The Stephenson Report, was a manual for urban renewal and regeneration achieved through slum clearance. Armed with "evidence" from the Report’s statistical surveys of social conditions, the city razed 16 acres of dense housing (more than the 8.8 acres recommended), displacing 1600 people and relocated them to the newly constructed Mulgrave Park housing project. The cleared land sat empty until the construction of Scotia Square in 1967.

HALIFAX - Interested in turning your urban yard into a rural idyll? Always wanted a piece of the country right here in the city? On Wednesday at Halifax Hall, city staff are hosting a public information meeting regarding backyard laying hens and a proposed amendment to the Peninsula Land Use By-law. Following this meeting, the proposal will undergo a detailed review and staff will prepare a report to be tabled at Peninsula Community Council. If you're interested in the growing urban farm movement, this is the place to make yourself heard. WHAT: Public information meeting ...

The Nova Scotia Archives is pleased to share photos showcasing the changing faces of urban centers in Nova Scotia. You can learn more about the archives and explore thousands of photos, textual records, maps, art, and more on their website. Bird's eye view of Africville, showing its location on Bedford Basin, with north end Halifax and the Narrows in the background. Selections from Bob Brooks' Photographic Portrait of Africville in the 1960s. Bob Brooks created his photographic record of Africville, mostly in black and white, between about 1962 and 1965. His work appeared in Time Life, The Star Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, McCall's, Harper's, Maclean's, Chatelaine, The London Times, Paris Match and National Geographic.

HALIFAX - Last Wednesday January 20th, HRM staff presented the plan “Improvements to the North Common” [PDF] to a full house, where there were more people in attendance than there were chairs. The presentation of the plan lasted an hour, and although only 30 minutes was set aside for input from the public, the question period ended up continuing for over an hour and a half, until only a handful of people were left in the room. In this new century, we are facing a different kind of threat to public space— not one of disuse, but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity. - Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space & Cultural Diversity There was clear support for certain aspects of the plan that fostered walkability, safety and passive enjoyment of the park, which include wider pathways, a redesigned fountain, diverse seating and an increase in trees in the park. The debate that ensued was not centered around the fact that the City is proposing improvements to the Common - that point was well-received and echoed by those in attendance. The more controversial elements of the proposed plan were those that cater to the facilitation of concerts: the removal of a baseball diamond in the southeast corner, a 'special events plaza', and a permanent power supply housed in a new building proposed for development.

CHARLOTTETOWN - I had a nasty case of déjà vu last week when the City of Charlottetown announced that another Big Box development was coming to town.  PlazaCorp is already responsible for 300,000 square feet of strip malls in Charlottetown, complete with their upfront parking lagoons, but this new development ratchets the insult and degradation of Charlottetown to a completely new level. The threatened site, which can be seen embedded in this Guardian article, sits just north of the Charlottetown Mall, south of the Arterial Road, west of University and east of Mount Edward Road.  A review of the map provided by the Guardian shows heavily sloped land and a watershed on this property which, from an environmental perspective, set off alarm bells in my head.  Currently being used as farmland, PlazaCorp is proposing turning a juxtaposed agrarian landscape into yet another cookie-cutter Big Box asphalt lagoon. Perhaps those alarm bells are why council has decided to refer the issue to public consultation, a process that is likely to divide the city into the "we want more shopping" and "local is better" camps so typical of this age of transformation.  Ironically, this battle is patterned after a debate that is still taking place in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario.  In spite of starting the discussion more than two years ago when Jenny Coco, fittingly a local paving company magnate, wanted to build a development next to federally protected prairies, the development on the border of Windsor and Lasalle has not broken ground.  Back then I was writing for a local blog and advocacy group, Scaledown.ca, where our thoughts, failures, and rants are still lurking online.  Even the Ontario Municipal Board, the final authority on all things development in Ontario, has pushed back on the CocoBox complex (as we so lovingly dubbed it) in recent weeks.

CHARLOTTETOWN - When the Charlottetown folks involved with SpacingAtlantic got together late last year, we decided to engage in some good old fashioned brain-storming to get the creative juices flowing.  What transpired was a wonderful, engaging session full of optimism and pride in the city most of us called home.  At the end of our two hour session, it was clear to many of us that if Charlottetown was going to change, a new climate of openness and transparency would have to emerge. There are two keys to an open and transparent democracy -- information and accountability.  One of the greatest criticisms of our democratically elected government is the premise that we can only hold them accountable once every four years.  The inability to sway the direction of political policy, without the benefit of money, either promised or proven, has disenfranchised the younger electorate.  Without accountability nobody can fail, but, more importantly, nobody can succeed.  Building accountability is essential, but letting governments hold themselves accountable is a recipe for disaster. In order to hold elected officials accountable, we have to know what they are doing, and whom they are doing it with.  If politics are conducted in the back rooms of historic restaurants, in hushed whispers, or in the case of PEI, in clandestine meetings in Victoria Park, the perception continues that politicians are above, or perhaps better positioned, below the law.  The problem extends beyond simple political negotiations or funding scandals.  The root of the issue is access to information, sans the redacted documents so common to the Access to Information Act.  Enter the open data movement. (Yes, I linked to Wikipedia --- get over it!)