Victorian row houses on Tupper Street, in Shaughnessy Village.
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Posted by Devin Alfaro
Categories Architecture, Downtown, Housing / Habitation, Photo du jour, Shaughnessy Village, Spacing Montréal
Every Saturday, we highlight recent posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region.
• The opening of the The Halifax Urban Greenway’s (HUG), first path has been bittersweet for the city’s cyclist community . As Spacing’s Mark Lasanowski explains, while cyclists have been campaigning for the new multi-modal path for nearly a decade, the presence of signs stating that “cyclists are required to dismount at all intersections” makes it an impractical options for many riders.
• Sparked by a Dalhousie School of Planning conference, titled Play! Spacing’s Alison Creba attempts to unpacks what “play” really means in an urban context. Creba discovers that the concept is not as easily understood as one might think as “..it requires a discussion of the types of activities that engage individuals, and demands that we honestly consider what playful acts look like, what enables them, and how they manifest themselves”.
• A short colour film, shot by Montreal streetcar operator Lucien Dauphinais in the late 1950s, follows Ottawa’s old streetcars as they navigate the city’s roads and avenues. Check out Spacing Ottawa for this glimpse into the city’s transit past.
• Spacing Ottawa’s Tonya Davidson looks at Canada’s centennial celebrations and the urban legacy left behind. From monuments, to arenas to UFO landing pads, Davidson shows how the country’s extravagant 100-year birthday forever changed the shape of our cities.
• As part of an ongoing collaboration with the NFB, Spacing Toronto has posted an Oscar-nominated animated short from 1966 entitled “What on Earth!”. The short film, the work of Les Drew and Kaj Pindal, shows Earth through the eyes of visiting extraterrestrials who, confronted with automobiles everywhere they look “understandably assume they are the dominant race”.
• Spacing contributor Marcus Bowman examines a report released by the Clean Air Partnership that challenges the commonly held assumption that bike lanes on arterial roads are bad for business.
• McGill Urban Geography student Daniel Rotsztain writes a guest column on how the city’s unusually mild winter and the associated rise in all-season cyclists revealed weaknesses in the city’s bike path program. Rotsztain argues that inflexibility of bike lanes in the face of winter conditions and inadequate all-season maintenance worked to create a hazardous environment for the city’s winter riders.
• Spacing’s Jacob Larsen takes us through yet another development in the ongoing battle over the future of Montreal’s Turcot interchange. In response to citizen objections the MTQ has revised the original plan saving 60 dwellings on the rue Cazelaiswill from demolition.
photo by Mark Lasanowski from Spacing Atlantic
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Posted by Kat Snukal
Categories Spacing Saturday
This post is a special submission from Daniel Rotsztain, a student of Urban Geography at McGill University. Also see his previous post on Spacing Montreal entitled Natural Paths.
With just a light dusting of snow this January and February, our ability to rationally negotiate Montreal’s bike paths seems to be completely paralyzed. While I acknowledge that some bike paths become legally void during the winter months, this year an absence of snowbanks that typically deter winter cycling has meant that an onslaught of cyclists have hit the streets, and end up sharing the same routes as pedestrians. These hazardous conditions are direct consequences of a lack of clear demarcation, winter bike path maintenance and flexibility.
Two examples come to mind: at Ave du Parc and Rachel, where the bike path typically bends east in the summer months, cyclists have been forced to continue north toward ave Mont Royal, sharing a cramped path with pedestrians whose vision is considerably hindered by their furry parkas. Another mix-up occurs just south, at Parc and Pins: where the bike path and sidewalk weave in and out, sometimes separate and other times apparently merged.
Despite these confusions, this year’s relatively mild winter has shown us that winter biking in Montreal is indeed a reality. And clear, flexible cycling bylaws throughout the year would lead to increased usership and the increase the adoption of cycling as a viable, year-round transportation alternative, rather than merely a recreational summer activity.
The confusion seems most extreme along rue Rachel. As I was cycling east along on a sunny Saturday morning, I noticed that elements of the signage that formerly denoted a bylaw stipulating the bike path’s existence from 1 April to 1 November had been removed. Whether officially by the city, or illegally by the public, I don’t know, (though I’ll assume it’s the latter, as the metal poles that typically separate bikers from the traffic in the summer were absent, removed by the city at the beginning of the winter season).
Either way, uncertainty has ensued. For many blocks, cars respect the path, parking several metres away from the curb. But on other blocks cars park directly beside the curb, forcing cyclists to swerve off the path into oncoming traffic. Stretches of Rachel that feature a concrete divider as opposed to metal poles serve as a much safer way to alleviate the confusion, perhaps representing the most effective design.
The bike path on Rachel is technically closed for winter. Hoewver, on some blocks, drivers spontaneously chose to respect the bike path while on others, cars were parked next to the curb.
Nevertheless, concrete barriers, such as those along downtown’s Boulevard de Maisonneuve are major, rigid investments. Acknowledging that the mildness of this winter is not representative of more typical years, (other winters proving that snow-biking is not always this easy), exposes the need for Montréal’s urban design to be clearer, and above all, more flexible.
What I interpret as an organic (as opposed to legally enforced) respect for the Rachel bike path shows that many Montrers are able to negotiate the law in a sensible manner, flexibly reacting to the weather to best accommodate our transportation needs. A city does not have to be so rigid in its urban form. If Montreal invested in clearly demarcated flexible bike paths that could adapt to mild winters, more people would be inclined to use them, leading to better circumstances for cyclists and ultimately, more functional urban space.
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Posted by Spacing
Categories Cycling / Cyclisme
Un printemps sur le campus de l’Université de Montréal.
Au coin du boulevard Édouard-Montpetit et de l’avenue Louis-Colin
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Permalink for Photo du jour : Time for some spring cleaning
Posted by Émile Thomas
Categories Environment / Environnement, Photo du jour, U de M
By Marcus Bowman, cross-posted from Spacing Toronto
An unprecedented collaborative report mapping the concentration of artists in Canadian cities was released last month. The study was a result of the collective effort of the cultural departments of the cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Published by Hill Strategies, and based on data from the 2006 census, the report paints a fascinating picture into the make-up of Canada’s artistic and creative communities.
Each city has its own trends in the way its artistic and creative communities have located. Vancouver had the highest overall percent of artists at 2.3% but has its artistic community spread widely throughout the city. Toronto has by far the largest artistic community; it is home to one in six Canadian artists. Toronto has also seen its artistic neighbourhoods shift slightly since to 2001 to different areas of concentration. Montreal has perhaps the most densely located artistic community and is home to three of the country’s top five artistic employment postal codes. The Montreal neighbourhood of the H2T postal code (northward from avenue du Mont-Royal to avenue Van Horne between St-Denis and Jeanne-Mance) is the most artistic in Canada with artists accounting for 7.8% of its workers, ten times the national average. Ottawa and Calgary have artist concentrations closer to the national average, interestingly they also both have the largest income gaps between artists and the rest of the workforce and the largest percent of female artists. Maps of these trends are shown below.
…continue reading Artists in the Canadian urban fabric
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Posted by Spacing
Categories Art & Culture, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver
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