Planning, design and governance of a city play at least as important a role as attitudes in helping convince residents to embrace long, cold winters, says a University of Alberta researcher.
Vanessa Zembal, a master’s student who studied winter spaces, found that big-picture issues like building design, availability of transit and park maintenance play a major part in getting people to embrace their cities, not just in winter, but year-round.
“That’s impacting how people are engaging—or not—with winter. It’s a bigger issue that involves infrastructure. If we just put beautiful winter lights on a building but people can’t get into the building, then the space isn’t as good as it could be.
“We need to be more aware of deficiencies in terms of infrastructure and governance models,” she said.
Continue reading at University of Alberta.
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