Urbanism
My Ottawa Citizen column this week was inspired by the announcement, from the City, that the busking program was going to make a comeback on the LRT. We knew this was coming. It had been floated earlier as a way to bring back riders. And after I was done rolling
Urbanism
I live, as you may have heard, in Westboro. Earlier today I had to drive downtown to rescue two of my favourite teenagers from the teeth of springtime weather and I noticed new signs at the corner of Island Park and Scott. I don’t know how long they’ve
Urbanism
I love speed cameras because they make people angry for getting caught doing the wrong thing. Yet they are easy to avoid, unlike a speed trap on the highway. They don’t move, for one thing. And they’re not hiding. There are several big signs announcing their presence, and
Urbanism
It was just an irritated tweet of the kind I throw out into the world every single day. But this one hit a nerve. Why we always do the wrong thing is beyond me. https://t.co/NrCiqIEz8u — (Mx) Brigitte Pellerin, they | them | iel 🏳️🌈 (@bpellerin) January 26, 2023 At the
Urbanism
It was an email I’d been expecting. We all knew Catherine McKenney would take a little time to rest from the gruelling mayoral campaign and come back with a different project to carry forward their vision of what a good city looks like. The announcement happened at Impact Hub
Urbanism
My column this week is about smells and how we’d describe Ottawa with our noses. I offered a few suggestions and asked readers to submit their own. We had some fun on socials — with many picking up on exhaust pipes, pets, the smell of pet waste in the spring
Urbanism
It started innocently enough with a Boxing Day 10km run I thought would be decent enough given the time elapsed since the December 23 storm. I’d gone out the day before for a jolly 6km, and the sidewalks then were very messy. Surely one extra day would be enough
Urbanism
Not everybody knows this, but I drove for Uber and Lyft for about a year and half in 2018 and 2019. I drove and took notes and then wrote a book about the experience. Actually, two books. One in French, and one in English. By far the most awful part
Urbanism
When the city of Medicine Hat in southeast Alberta decided to opt for a radical approach to end chronic homelessness, there were a little over 1,100 personsexperiencing homelessness, including a little over 200 children, in a city whose population was, at the time, about 61,000. These people were
Urbanism
The reason there aren’t tolls on most roads is that most people consider roads to be a public good. And indeed they are. The public uses them to go places. Get stuff delivered. Have emergency vehicles reach those in need. We don’t make every single person pay a
Urbanism
Every single time anyone mentions the need to remove cars from the roads for the benefit of human beings not in private vehicles you get the same complaint: But how will businesses survive without parking spots right outside their door? World’s. Tiniest. Violin. I’m old enough to remember
Urbanism
When you take transit to go to work, are you using active transportation or not? Some people define active transportation as “anything that’s not riding in a private car”. I’ve used that definition myself, probably more than once. But is it really accurate? Would it not be better