Quote:
Originally Posted by Hali87
I disagree, on a national scale, Halifax isn't any more land-use segregated than other cities, and I would say that it's actually considerably more integrated than most.
If you want to see real land-use separation, check out London or Oshawa, ON, or a prairie city like Edmonton.
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Agreed. To me, Halifax's peninsula feels similar in walkability to central Toronto (approx. High Park to The Beach, Eglinton to the lake). In some ways, it's more walkable—like, a much greater share of the central population being able to commute on foot into the downtown core in a reasonable length of time, simply because the city is smaller.
There ARE too many suburban-style developments in central locations, though that, again, is fairly common nationwide. (Some cities are well ahead of us on discouraging that stuff, though,so we shouldn't get complacent.)
And yeah, prairie cities are the worst for ultra-orthodox, SimCity-esque land-use segregation. Edmonton is especially terrible. It has about three real neighbourhoods, one of which is kind've given over to nightlife and bars, and one of which is downtown, which is still hugely lacking in terms of amenities for residents.
Of course, with their young, urbanist mayors, etc., Edmonton and Calgary are starting to turn a corner in this regard, but there's still about 75 years of "this goes here, this goes there, never the twain shall meet" development to overcome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by portapetey
Urban streets should have storefronts cozied right up to the sidewalk (parking in the rear!); they draw the eye to the sides, pulling you down them. They make you want to walk down and explore.
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I agree with that, which is why I'm thrilled to see modestly-scaled infilling, to re-urbanize the gaps we created over the past few decades. There's no reason Barrington, for example, can't be an unbroken row of storefronts from Duke to Inglis. (Or one day, post Cogswell, north of Duke as well.)