Mend: Engaging a Divided City

Abstract

At the behest of industrial and government demands in the 1960s, Saint John [NB] engaged in an urban renewal initiative to increase transportation effi ciency and remove urban blight. The resulting impact was a congestion of infrastructure between the North End and South End which severed pedestrian traffic and engagement between the two neighbourhoods after a near two hundred year history of connection. The construction of the Harbour Passage trail has begun to erode the existing separation created by infrastructure but has the potential to be developed further into a connective public landscape through the addition of buildings and landscaping tools which take advantage of the site’s qualities. These interventions involve engaging the interstitial terrain vagues created by the infrastructure and developing programs within physical landscapes that encourage citizens from both the North and the South to intermingle through the advancement of democratic public spaces.