Exhibition:
9 AM – 5 PM, Oct 4 – 31, 2017  (Wed 9 AM – 8 PM and Mon – Closed)

Location:
Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History
1747 Summer Street,
side entrance, bottom corridor
https://naturalhistory.novascotia.ca

Opening Reception:
Wed Oct 4th, 5 PM – 7 PM

Canada’s Endangered Places Committee (EPC) has added hundreds of Halifax homes on the brink of extinction to its List of Endangered Places. Corridor Wasting Disease (CWD), an infectious disorder introduced and spread by the Halifax Centre Plan, is responsible. Using abstract frameworks and inflated population projections, the Centre Plan will grow a dozen+ streets into “Corridors” to better accommodate cars and buses.

Highly contagious, CWD will spread by increases to height limits from 2-3-storeys to 4-6-storeys along designated streets. Once contaminated, symptoms such as property-owner-neglect gradually lay waste to small-scale affordable housing and commercial properties, trees and habitat. CWD can incubate in parking lots or may erupt as glass and concrete real estate for urban elite. Adjacent streets can suffer side effects including parking lots, dumpsters, wind, shadow or general ugliness. CWD may also be linked to political campaign contributions.

The Centre Plan has failed to adopt preventative therapies such as retaining height limits, creating incentives for building on vacant land and automotive dealerships. Healing remedies such rail, transit, cycling and walkability are under funded. A comprehensive demolition permitting policy based on a sustainability check-list is the highest order solution against CWD. This would first consider waste reduction through renovation/repurposing for immediate health benefits such as creating twice as many jobs but using half as many materials as new construction, ensuring ecosystem diversity to accommodate multiple dwellers/users and, addressing climate change by reducing energy consumption.

Corridor Wasting Disease: Robie Street, a Case Study is an exhibition of endangered homes along the western edge of the Halifax Common at risk of extinction (sample population ~100). It is part of the Species Survival Public Education Plan to alert citizens to the dangers of CWD. All of us can help protect these treasured species by becoming better informed, and by taking better care of the city, the Halifax Common, or other habitat where we live. Historic buildings have cultural, social, environmental, and economic value that common citizens share. In cities as in nature everything is connected.

Please write to HRM Councilors to express your concerns; clerks@halifax.ca.