Eight articles make up a series comparing the climate rhetoric and reality of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and its nearest comparable American neighbor, Portland, Maine.
The question you might ask is, “Why care about either?”
In short, the comparison illustrates how two different cultures can produce very different outcomes in terms of development and the environment. And as the series illustrates, emissions reduction and quality of life go hand in hand.
But why these two cities? Well, in part, we write about what we know.
I went to planning school in Halifax, and my wife and I moved back there from Washington, DC, in 2007 for quality-of-life reasons and to raise a family. Eighteen years later, we left because what we valued had been erased for reasons described in the series.
All the while, we visited Portland on a semi-regular basis and watched the city become a better version of itself. Their achievements, however, may now be in jeopardy for reasons also covered in the series.
The climate series focuses on culture, planning policies, development practices, mass immigration (i.e., in Canada), and more. Some of this material may appear to be better suited to be categorized under The Human Scale, Governance, or Society.
Yet everything covered here ties back to four preconditions a municipality would need to establish to meaningfully reduce emissions. In doing so, they’d also be pursuing the end goal of Good Human Habitat, which is to increase opportunities for middle-income families to live at the human scale.
You can read the series here.
