One neat thing about Halifax is just how big the inner city is. The areas on the peninsula that are not covered in trees are a mix of pedestrian-oriented pre-war buildings and modern infill (the apparently forested areas are "streetcar suburbs"; detached houses, some rowhouses, and little apartment buildings with some storefront retail on main streets). There's maybe 12 square kilometers of inner city on the Halifax side (and 1-2 on the Dartmouth side), which is not enormous but far more than you'd expect given the size of the metropolitan area and what other Canadian cities are like. This happened because Halifax was relatively large early on and grew relatively slowly. By 1930 it already had 100,000 people (and during WWII the peninsula alone had over 100,000 people), and even back then the urban area was unusually old. The relatively big inner city area creates a lot of good opportunities for infill.
The city went through a low period from about 1870-1930, which is precisely when the rest of North America was doing well, so the style of development is fairly unique. There are neighbourhoods with landmarks from the 1700's and early 1800's mixed in with modern glass buildings and only a bit of stuff from circa 1900. Cities like Charleston have analogous heritage buildings but they don't have the modern construction.
It is too bad that the city never quite fit the geography though. Halifax wasn't really constrained by the geography of the peninsula until the 1950's. It's like if the island of Montreal were 1/2 as large, or Vancouver's downtown peninsula were 12 times as large. The hills and Citadel add a bit to the constraints too but not as much as water would have. The topography on the peninsula is a lot simpler than on the nearby mainland, which made development easier but maybe less interesting. If downtown Halifax were like Armdale or Bedford it would probably have ended up with 19th or even 18th century funiculars and tunnels. Even the canal ended up in Dartmouth. If Halifax had been 3-4 times bigger the peninsula would have been tightly packed with apartments, Dartmouth's canal would be surrounded by big Victorian factories, and the hills on the mainland would provide San Francisco type photo ops, with Edwardian detached houses and rowhouses on steep streets.
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Originally Posted by q12
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