Abandoned box store

I was back in my hometown of Orleans, Ontario last Christmas. It had been years since I lived there, and so I was flabbergasted by two things.

One, the old edge of suburbia--which I remembered as farmland--had been completely gobbled up by suburban development, going (I am told) as far as Navan in one direction and Stittsville in the other. I knew sprawl had continued apace, but I was shocked to see how far it had gone.

Two, some of this suburban development had already been abandoned in favour of slightly-more-favourable (to the chain store owner) locations two or three intersections away.

Such is the case with this hardware store, built in 1992 or 1993 and now abandoned.


The box store below is in Moncton and it isn't abandoned (at least, not as of this post.) But I like the desolation of it. I had a narrow window of opportunity between the time the place closed (so the parking lot would be empty) and the time the sun moved out of the optimal angle.


(Okay, I did Gimp some distracting crap out of the image, but that's okay. This wasn't intended as a pure art photo, but rather as raw material:)

Suburban versus urban land use

This is a pair of land-use maps I did in planning school back in 2003, based on GIS data from McGill University. They illustrate the land-use pattern on an old, pre-WWII urban neighbourhood (the Plateau Mont-Royal, left) and the pattern in post-war suburban development (the West Island, and more specifically the area around the Fairview Mall, where Pointe-Claire and Dollard Des Ormeaux meet.)

Both maps are at the same scale. They really illustrate the finer grain of land uses in old urban neighbourhoods. (It's worth noting that the actual residential density of the residential parts of the Plateau--i.e. the yellow bits on the map on the left) is much higher than in the 'burbs.

One of the results of this is that the Plateau is much more walkable, and much less dependent on cars.

I'm not going to get into theories of urban design and form here; there's a lot of good stuff out there on the topic. I'm just posting this 'cause you might find it illustrative. (Even though I've stated a copyright on the above image, feel free to use it for non-profit purposes e.g. education, advocacy, or otherwise persuading the powers-that-be to quit building suburban sprawl. All I ask is that you credit me and let me know you'vre used the image. I do have an ego that needs stroking from time to time...)

Because Hummers are for weenies!

I can never remember.

Adventures in inking...

I hate inking. It's really hit and miss with me--sometimes it turns out well, but a lot of the time I just end up ruining a perfectly good pencil drawing. This is one of the few times I've been happy with how it turned out.