Though I was raised in the suburbs, I have come to love cities. I have lived in several, ranging from those with extreme urban sprawl and poor public transit, to those with walkable mixed-use development, to those with transit service so frequent that I never bothered to look at a schedule.
The wide variety of places that I have lived over the years made me realize how “public transit” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Though I had once been told to stay away from bus centres by my elders, I came to view them as a desirable resource to live near, a representation of my freedom of movement.
My experiences with a variety of urban designs have led me to become passionate about urbanism, and about making better places for people to live. So much so that I wanted to start documenting my thoughts on the subject, and I figured that I may as well share them with anyone who would like to listen.
What’s in store?
I won’t pretend to be an expert on any subject. I’m not a former urban planner like CityNerd. I don’t have a huge list of facts memorized about trains. But I love cities, and I feel like sometimes it’s easy to despair when we don’t see transit and pedestrianization projects in the news every day. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t happening — just that we aren’t hearing about them, because nobody is reporting on it.
So that’s what I intend to do: report about the positive changes I’m seeing on the ground in my community, and bring a little hope to the lives of whoever reads this blog. I’ll also write about my hopes for progress in the city, and report on any outreach and advocacy that I engage in.
I already have several posts drafted about a variety of topics: from documenting my progress on OpenStreetMap, to reporting on proposed pedestrianization projects around Montréal. I hope that you will find some of them interesting. Thank you for reading, and with any luck, you’ll be hearing from me soon!
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