Piggybacking on the worldwide 350.org actions (see page 8), the Friends of the Halifax Common plan to chalk
out the boundaries of the original Halifax Common, an area more than
three times the Common’s present-day area.
“The degradation and disappearance of the Halifax Common is a
metaphor for the degradation of the global Common,” the group writes in
a press release. “Without truly integrating our ecology and our
economy, we will continue to create larger and larger deadzones.”
The chalking takes place Friday, noon-2pm. The line will stretch
from Cunard Street, down Robie to South, over to South Park, north to
Bell Road and around the back side of the Citadel back to Cunard.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.
Tim, post a map showing the original boundary and do the same for the Dartmouth Common.
The open space rapists, past and present should be ashamed.
Agreed, post a map please.
The Halifax Common was, and to this day, still is, not chartered to be used exclusively as open space. Rather, it was chartered for common use.
The HRM government acknowledges the entire track of land defined from Cunard Street in the north, South Street in the south, Robie Street to the west and North Park/Ahern/Bell Road/South Park Streets to the east, as part of the current Halifax Commons. Some of it has been put to institutional use, such as hospitals and universities. Some of the land was granted to private ownership to encourage growth of the city. Overall, 200 of the total 235 acre grant that comprise the Commons are still under public ownership and put to use for the public benefit.
From what I’ve read, a large part of the original reason why the North Common was not developed was because it would interfere with the firing lines from Citadel Hill and thus the military objected to their development.
ggosnaargh – the public cannot ‘use’ Citadel High, only certain members of the public can wander the premises.
The public cannot wander around the premises of CBC and the QE2, in both places you have to pay to park.
The public cannot wander around the Natural History Museum unless they pay to enter and also pay to park there at 8 pm.
Public benefit & public use are two entirely separate concepts.
Halifax and Dartmouth have used public space as a cheap landbank. When will they stop ?