public engagement & the urban place
exploring what makes great public spaces in our cities
A city’s buzz is highly associated with the liveliness of its plazas – the shared outdoor spaces adjacent to buildings and parks, whether privately or publicly owned. To celebrate Jane’s Walk on May 4, The Places Project hosted a walk that explored a variety of plaza spaces in downtown Victoria (BC, Canada) and the curious [...]
Every North American city has arterial roadways. Every city also has residential neighbourhoods with schools, homes, parks, playgrounds and other walking destinations. The challenge is how to manage the intersection of arterials and neighbourhoods. In an earlier blog post, we talked about the issues of arterials and our observations from The Places Project community walk [...]
How does a neighbourhood that is intersected by a number of arterial roads tie itself together to create a livable, walkable community? Are arterials just a necessary evil that have to be tolerated, as is, or are there adaptations that can allow for real communities to flourish along them? Those were some of the questions [...]
Telling the story of a city one house at a time. That’s the theme of my art show, currently running at the Madrona Gallery in downtown Victoria (BC, Canada). The gallery owner, Michael Warren, describes my work this way: “Nancy Ruhl paints the aspects of neighbourhoods that are often overlooked, elevating the everyday to the [...]
Spanish colonial power in the Americas from the 15th to 19th centuries destroyed dozens of rich societies and decimated some of the world’s most sophisticated cities. However, one fortunate carry-over from the Spaniards’ grand plans in the western hemisphere was the urban plaza. Designed originally as open space bordered (typically) by a cathedral, governor’s mansion [...]
When we step into new places we step with feet shaped by our familiar spaces and places. Our eyes, at first, see only variations on the scenes of our homeland. I step out of our rented casa in central Mexico onto cobblestone streets. Rough cobblestone, black rocks of all shapes jammed into hard soil, rutted [...]
In Australia, a new policy implemented at a local level could be viewed as the latest iteration of cultural planning. This policy, known as a Social Activations Program, is responding to local culture without the long standing confusion of ‘what is culture?’ Its focus is on people, hence the ‘social’, and connecting these people with [...]
On a run recently, I passed a narrow residential street featuring a traffic sign that was welcomed – but should be unnecessary. Of course, one can make the case that most or all traffic signs should be unnecessary. If people using our streets would exercise common sense, fewer speed limits, parking restrictions and directional signage [...]
It’s great to see young engineers starting to look at urban streets as places where pedestrians and cyclists are a good thing, rather than a dangerous inconvenience. Recently, a group of Engineering students from the University of Victoria (BC, Canada) filled council chambers at Victoria City Hall with creative explorations of cycling issues that included [...]
Walkability is so popular in urban planning conversations that it risks becoming a buzzword without meaning. Have you seen an urban plan recently that didn’t make at least token reference to walkability? Walkability is also becoming a marketing feature, especially in real estate sales. Realtors are jumping on the bandwagon with ads touting their properties [...]
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