David Suzuki's Commercial and Sustainable Living... you know where this is going..

"It all starts with me" the tag line from David Suzuki's commercial for Conserve Nova Scotia basically says it all.  If we do not start with me (us) where does it start? 

Living within our means, using the resources we have, and making sure we replenish those resources should be everyones mantra.  Unfortunately, many humans and governments do not follow this sound advise.

Case in point: Urban Sprawl, and underutilization of existing infrastructure within our own municipality.  Halifax Regional Municipality has been sprawling for years and its affecting the municipality's ability to maintain the amenities we all ready have.  Like an elastic band, you can only streatch something so far before it breaks.  Each time a new residential development plan in an unserviced area is approved by Council it costs a huge amount of money for the basic infrastructure such as water, sewage, streets, police, fire, transit,  and schools.  As new areas pop up outside of the urban core, the need to maintain the existing infrastructure within the already established areas still exists. Like any water pipe, recreation centre, street or sidewalk that has been utilized for a period of years, it only has a certain lifecycle and repairs, ugrades or replacement is vitial to maintain a level of service.

Tonight I attended one of the 3 meetings regarding the Peninsula Recreation Centre public meetings.  George Dixon Centre, Needham Centre and St. Andrew's Centre are all under review.  The centres are in need of upgrades, redesigning of programmable space and wheel chair accessability .  All were build decades ago when accessibility was not a standard practice.  Furthermore, Halifax is becoming the home to many different ethnic communities who have certain needs which must be accommodated as well.  The message was clear from the residents, just upgrade what we have.    Losing such assets to a community would be devastating as they are the heart of a community.  HRM By Design also supports complete neighbourhoods and these type of facilities are key components.

Back to my rant.  If we are going to make our municipality a liveable and viable place to live we need to follow a sustainable way of living and stop building our communities which make us reliant on cars.  Walkable neighbourhoods are vital to the health of our residents and municipality.  Reliable mass transit is a must as well but  I'll get into that later as I believe our transit routes are not serving the residents or commuters as well as it could.  Ok, I must rant about this for a few lines...  We have too many buses serving the same areas and are not looking at any change to this by the looks of things.  550+ workers (NSPI), 300+ students (NSCAD), residents of the area (1200+) and those who will be wanting to frequent the future Farmers Market and Pier 21, Cunard Centre, and the Train Station/ Bus Station at the Westin, the students of Dal and SMU, staff of the hospitals and the patients were relying on the Downtown Shuttle to make their lives easier, but the shuttle was not included in the latest 5 yr transit strategy.  Out of Frustration I have started a petition.  Please sign it!

To wrap this up, HRM needs to plan better for the future.  We as citizens need to demand that our government doesn't just think it's sustainable but actually that they lead us by example by retrofitting community centres, re-evaluate our transit strategy and demanding more eco-friendly means for our future.

You need to be aware of what the Municipality is or isn't doing and contact your Municipal Representatives via phone, email, snail mail etc as it does start with you.

Historic Third Ward : Milwaukee IDA!

What the heck?  While walking to the Midwest Airlines Convention Center a gentleman, who was 50 feet away from me started pointing to the sidewalk and saying "This goes on for blocks!" I guess I hadn't noticed the bloody foot print before this....  I was miffed by this left footed foot print that did stain the whole stretch of the sidewalk.  Back to the this story later....

After registering in the Convention Centre, I headed to my first walking tour of the Third Ward.  Yes!  The same Third Ward I discovered last night.  Nancy O'Keefe, the Executive Director, was our tour guide and was very knowledgeable of the area's history, and current operations.  We were dropped off at the Public Market and we walked around the corner to Lela, a trendy clothing store where we met the owners and were provided wth information and breakfast treats.

The owner explained that the space used to be a tomato warehouse and that it took a little convincing to get the space renovated but conceeded.  Lela was holding a fashion show that night and had a huge tent setup in the street in front of the shop.  I checked out the clothes and the were very cool but unforunately like any cool clothes, they were made for some other body type than mine :(

We then went over to the river side to a small park area called the Watershed.  Ths is one of the parks used to house the one of the entrances to the huge sewage tunnel built a few years ago.  Milwaukee built a large tunnel deep under the riverbank and this area has been reclaimed into a small parkette along the rverwalk.

We then proceeded down the Riverwalk within the Third Ward.  Many of the old warehouses have been converted to mixed use. High end condos above specialty pubs, restaurants and other businesses.  My only concern is how do you repopulate an area like the Third Ward with only high scale apartments or condos without including real amenities such as a a grocery, drug store or even corner stores?  I'll explain the pricing of the condos and apartments in an other blog. 

I will mention that you need to diversify your living accommodations to make a community vibrant and the Third Ward could be an awesome place if Milwaukee did have accommodations for the student of the Milwaukee Insitute of Art and Design (MIAD).  In Halifax we have The Nova Scotia School of Art and Design (NSCAD) and many of the students live close to the campuses which are located Downtown.  Their spontaneous happenings, ecological sensivity, and vibrancy make my neighbourhood, and the District a fun exciting place for both the young and old residents.

This is not something I dreamt up.  Richard Florida's Book "Rise of the Creative Class" preaches this ideology.  Creativity breathes life into our communities.  People are attracted to the buzz.  Artists, musicians, dancers all make an area buzzy. Creating affordable accommodations for such a creative class is imperative.

I fear that it will be incredibly challenging for the Third Ward if they do not adopt such a concept and with the economic conditions facing the USA, this may cause their great ideas for rejuventation to stall.

Neighbourhoods need to house the amenities the residents require to live!  Groceries, banks and drug stores need to be part of this area.  While working on HRM by Design this was proven to be an imperative component to urban design.  As Lewis Mumford stated:

"In a neighbourhood, everything that is needed is there and everything that is there is needed".

HRM By Design has 5 campaigns that could aid the Third Ward and all of the downtown areas of Milwaukee with its future in attracting more businesses and residents:

1. A Sustainable City  ( Milwaukee needs to work on this - recycling programs for solid waste)
2. A City of Liveable and Complete Neighbourhoods (Milwaukee must adopt this)
3. A Distinct and Unique City (Milwaukee has great character and is doing a great job of building it!)
4. A City of Vibrant and Exciting Places (Milwaukee has many components - keep it up!)
5. A Beautiful City (Milwaukee does have beauty, keep it up!

Oh!  forgot to finish the story about the "bloody footprint" !  Supposedly there was a shooting Friday night but there was no mention  during the conference.  Moreover the footprint trail was cleaned up by Noon.