Shaping the Cogswell District Experience

Halifax’s Cogswell Interchange was an urban renewal mistake from the 1960s that displaced residents, isolated neighbourhoods, and prioritized vehicles before people. Fifty years later, plans are underway for the Cogswell District, a new neighbourhood that will re-connect the North End and Downtown. 

Our Planning Team at FBM was hired to design and lead an in-depth engagement process for refining the Cogswell District's final design. This work formed a path forward for Halifax Regional Municipality to continue to engage with stakeholders and residents, and to incorporate feedback from a wide range of community members.

We produced a scale model, information boards, videos, presentations, and workshop exercises to facilitate the engagement. There were multiple consultation avenues offered, including an online survey and pop-up events around the region - as well as stakeholder and focus-group meetings to reach specific communities, allowing us the opportunity to engage with over 1,500 community members.

The engagement culminated in a multi-day design charrette that was facilitated by FBM in concert with the municipality. The charrette included a kick-off event, site tour, six design sessions, and an expo to present the design highlights.

Our team worked with municipal staff to see this engagement process from conception through implementation, and resulted in thousands of comments being synthesized into a robust and actionable set of design directions.

The work of FBM's Planning division helped to make sure the wider community was aware of the project, and could see their aspirations reflected in the design.