Where Have All the Cities Gone?
I have just returned from a 2 week stay in Victoria.
I rented a flat in a very modern, very chic new condo building right on the waterfront on the Inner Harbour.
Sounds good so far, yes?
No.
For all around the building were drug addicts and the homeless.
Practically attached to the condo were several social service agencies, including a shelter.
Every day, I walked the gauntlet of bug-eyed crazies. What fun.
But this is not some isolated issue confined to one short street.
The entire downtown core - other than the perennially shiny Government Street, which is given entirely over to tourists and I am sure has not seen a Victoria resident in 20 years -is a sewer.
The Hudson's Bay building will soon be condos. Douglas and Blanshard and Quadra, once the main strolling and shopping areas, are occupied by ugly, scruffy, directionless young thugs.
Oh yes, there are still beautiful old areas to be found in Victoria and even a few lovely new districts, as there are in Vancouver and other cities. But the downtown, the former lifeblood of the city, is a fetid stinking mess.
A few days before I went over to Victoria, I drove to downtown Vancouver on a Saturday for a couple of silly errands.
Same experience.
Robson Street west of Burrard still has all the Japanese tourists and Korean ESL students.
But everything else, everywhere else is ugly, scruffy people. Nobody is buying. You don't see people with full shopping bags like you do in the center of Seattle or San Fransisco on a Saturday morning.
So my question is this: What have we done to our cities?
Did we actually believe that communities and neighbourhoods can survive on condos and chai lattes alone?
I'm sure it's all very nice for Bob Rennie and his Marketing Systems, but what's it got to do with Real Life?
It's not just the DTES. It's Granville and Georgia that are deserts. I won't be going downtown again soon. Will you? Do you?
Vancouver and Victoria have HUGE planning staffs at their respective city halls. What are we getting for our money?
5 comments:
David, you have struck a chord with me with your observations. We are fortunate enough to reside on a small Gulf Island. Not that many years ago, when all the "city folk" came to "get away" to our piece of Paradise, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I used to play "tourist" in Vancouver and/or Victoria. We would stay in Hotels, dine, shop, and sight-see, 2 or 3 times a year. We don't do that anymore. And we never will again. And you hit on the very reasons why we don't. It is an absolute shame.....and we represent so many.
Vancouver is a hell-hole, cannot drive into downtown comfortably, cannot park, if I find parking in one of the multi-stories the place is filthy and smells of piss. Tried public transit - get to ride with the unwashed, cel phone screechers, and personal music-player drones, don't wear decent clothes on the bus the single mother's kids just used the seats as their personal gym. I am doubly lucky, I live in North Burnaby and get to see the sub-human display that is the downtown east-side. (good luck all you progressives who invested in the Woodwards welfare gulag, that area is looking fine)
So I get downtown, the walk along Coal harbour is pleasant, Stanley park as always is refreshing, but the city has no attraction, grim faced inhabitants, capri pants, uncombed hair and shoulder bags - de rigeur, over priced restaurants, garbage, garbage, garbage (pre-strike). Shopping -not so good, art gallery-don't make me laugh, theatres-occasionally when they are not recycling Cats or Miss Saigon.
World class, don't think so.
I love Vancouver. It makes me cry.
All this is based on two core ideas that are utterly faulty:
1) "Illicit drugs are benign". The thinking goes that if we can just deal with the HIV and homelessness that are associated with them, all the addicts will be okay. But no one in power (except Harper) is taking a serious stand against the drugs themselves.
2) "If we're nice to the criminals, they'll be good". So we have the honour system on Skytrain and now buses, the mayor's "Civil City" initiative, sentencing 10 to 20 times lighter than in the States, and a federal policy on crime that has explicitly stated that the rehabilitation of the criminal takes precedence over public safety (yes, you read that right).
There's a bunch of other issues, political pride, the idea that the state is the best at administering charity, money taking precedence over human safety, corruption in the justice system, et cetera et cetera.
But at the core is the idea that drugs and criminal activity really aren't all that bad, in fact, they're rights of the individual.
So here we are with a crime rate 5 times higher than the US, a marijuana industry as big as forestry, and more people smoking dope than smoke tobacco.
And I live behind bars.
Vancouver is pleasant enough outside of the 'center' or 'downtown'...sigh.
Ground zero, Main & Hastings has gotten worse than when my wife and I moved out of the city and back (for me) to Vancouver Island. Back when I had to work in/thru that area, I always took great care to lock the vehicle or at least scour it before hand so that *when* (not if) the thief go into it there was little to be had, I also made sure that some 'visible' change was in the glove box or a pop can or two was on the floor (it worked for my old t-bird as they (the thieves) did not break any windows or slash my seats/tires like they did to the 20 or so other cars parked along the street with me).
The harsh reality of the real-estate boom is now starting to roost...there will be no 'gentrification' if there is nothing worth buying in the area!
Those foolish enough to own there will either rent for what they can get or use thier armored cars to 'transit' the outside when needed. Simply put the basics of life can now be delivered for minimal costs (almost none if you arrange it right) and 'going out' shopping will simply not be happening as much as it did in the past...
This will mean that shopping centered regions, that are not a balanced mix of residential, light industry, commercial and services (like schools? are there any in coal harbor?) must be in the plan.
as far as what is being paid for in the current city hall in vancouver...a lot of lattes I'm sure.
David,
I read your excellent posting and had lots to say but then read Steve's and Murdock's posts. You have some very astute new readers, sir, and there's nothing more brilliant to be said than has already been said by them!
Robert
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