Places · ottawa-lens

Place lens: Ottawa

A federal capital: government work, contractors and hospitals run on office clocks, credentials and appointments, alongside ordinary neighbourhood life. Buses, cycling, cars and winter vary with the place and the season; a route that works in July is a different trip in January. Crossing the river or the provincial line matters only when a real route and a real story call for it. Money is Canadian dollars and the police are the city's own service; a contact may switch between English and French naturally, and nobody is assigned a language by the game. The city reaches far past its core into farmland and villages with their own arena, garage and one road in. Across the river Gatineau is another province: its own police service, its own rules for cannabis and work, French as the everyday language, and plenty of people who cross the bridges to work and back every day. The streets: Centretown and the Glebe are red brick houses from before the First World War with wooden front porches, under apartment towers of raw 1970s concrete and newer glass condos; Vanier and Lowertown are brick duplexes and triplexes with metal stairs out back; the suburbs (Kanata, Barrhaven, Orléans) are curving streets of near-identical townhouses, a garage and two cars to each, a bank of community mailboxes at the corner; Old Hull keeps a few narrow wooden houses with steep gables between the federal office blocks. In deep winter the snowbanks along a side street stand taller than a person until the city hauls them away.

• Precinct edge service annex
• City Centre area service exchange
• Kanata mobility node
• Market service docks
• Civic services building