On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

If anyone's got recommendations re: Canadian coursework along similar lines, let me know.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/11-001j-introduction-to-urban-design-and-development-spring-2006

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/11-027-city-to-city-comparing-researching-and-writing-about-cities-spring-2006

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/11-204-planning-communications-and-digital-media-fall-2004/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/11-302j-urban-design-politics-spring-2010

In case anyone's wondering about those:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Stowe
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/emilyjenningsstowe.html
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/physicians/030002-2500-e.html
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/emily-stowe

If anyone would like to suggest additional sources...?

I already have Kate Ascher's The Works, so small surprise that I'd like to have this new book of hers to go with it. Useful for both illustration and writing reference, I suspect.

Maybe someday. One more reason to keep looking at the job boards...

More on other topics later in the day.

So...this amuses and pleases me tonight. It also gives me hope for the future.

So. I just read a comment on my own Livejournal from thebitterguy - whom I owe a proper birthday greeting to! - about this piece about how Ottawa the City as a whole sees itself on OpenFile Ottawa. Also, it's part of how the news columnists of our city's newspapers shape that perception and that argument.

Matthew Kupfer's article runs through a list of those complaints and ideas in point form, and some of them do sing to me in a number of keys.

I don't understand why the Kuwaiti and Saudi Embassies to Canada have the same placement as the American Embassy along Sussex Drive, although the paranoid cynic in me has one theory that might work. Something about the line of sight to the Centre Block on Parliament Hill...but again: that's my paranoid cynic's side talking.

As to the NorTel Campus decision of the federal government: I remember an issue of Sovereign Seven, Chris Claremont and Dwayne Turner's creator-co-ownership experiment with DC Comics that opened with a running firefight inside what could only have been the Westin Rideau Hotel. One of the supporting characters involved in the firefight made the joke that only Canada would put its military HQ right next to a major shopping mall.

I don't know how many Canadian generals or admirals were reading anyone's comic books back then, but Chris Claremont must have gotten the idea for that dialogue from somewhere here in Ottawa. And I'm wondering if that meme that reached our veteran comics writer didn't also sting a few soldiers and politicos along the way.

And in the end, "Ottawa the verbal shorthand name of the Federal Government" doesn't really have to care about the consequences of its decisions for Ottawa the City, despite the truth that the employees of the former are the citizens of the latter as well. If OC Transpo and the city's transportation department have to scramble over the next year or three to cope with the consequences of a DND decision, so be it.

The idea of unifying public transit in Ottawa and Gatineau is, in my personal opinion, a good one. I can see the reasons for getting it done, and the reasons why it will therefore be fought by Ville de Québec if not by Queen's Park as well.

I've already spoken to the idea of a new main branch for the city library.

I don't know what to think about reworking Metcalfe Street yet. The proposed enclosure of Sparks Street is intriguing but also requires additional thought.

I would love to see the Senators playing in a rink inside the Greenbelt if not in Centretown proper. But I've no idea where to put the rink that wouldn't gouge more than a few semi-sacred cows, some of them my own.

I do like Andrew Cohen's push for more public art across the city. St. Joseph Boulevard, to pick an example relatively close to home, could use some more of the same love that Wellington Street West and Preston Street have rightly been getting in the last couple of years on that score.

As for that last bit from Liam of the Unknown Surname from Toronto about self-loathing being one of Ottawa the City's biggest problems? There's some truth to it. It might even explain some of that "lack of outrage" complaint.

But.

I would argue that the culture of the nation as a whole has long been trained to encourage hatred of "Ottawa the nickname of the Federal Government" to the point where it's become as much a unifying force as Toronto-hatred, and about as toxic to Ottawa the City as to Toronto.

We have to cure that toxic meme too.

I just started this group up yesterday: Flickr: Ottawa-Gatineau Street Signage

Seemed like it was time, given the stuff I'm up to over at Spacing Ottawa again. More on that anon, I promise!

So some stuff's been happening while I was fixing up the sidebars here at this here LJ...

( Read more... )

The first instalment of actual content in the Street Signs series for Spacing Ottawa went live yesterday!

http://spacingottawa.ca/2010/07/16/street-names-wellington-byward-and-by/

And while I'm promoting Spacing's online content...here's something on the alleyways of Montréal. I can't take credit for it...but I can use it as a springboard to ask about the alleyways of your cities and towns.

Do you have a favourite alleyway?

I stumbled across something today on Wikipedia that struck me as Interesting...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_revolt

Does anyone here have any memories or recommended reading on the subject on or off-line?