Urbanism
Every time a right-of-centre “sensible” politician suggests burning trash I want to scorch the garbage bag that held this putrid inanity. Like, the fuck. We don’t need to burn garbage. We need to make less of it. Why do we still have to explain this in — checks notes — 2023?
Urbanism
You know Ottawa has its ridiculous moments, but I never thought they’d go through with this … idea? [Source, because even I can’t make this shit up.] It’s clear we no longer have any fucking clue what to do to revive the desiccated corpse that is downtown Ottawa.
Urbanism
Ottawa is experiencing a housing and homelessness crisis. We’ve known that for a while. Years, even. It’s not just the people who can’t afford a home at all. It’s also the people who struggle to make ends meet even though they do have stable jobs with
Travel
Not to boast, but the other day I crushed a flex post with my car. I didn’t mean to, of course. I was in downtown Detroit on my way to the Delray neighbhourhood for a little bit of blightseeing when, attempting to make a right on Cass from Bagley,
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