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.