Public Places
The morning news affords the usual opportunities - the unprecedented raid on Tory headquarters, Kevin Falcon's lame kvetch to the BC Ferry Board for their huge salary increases - but there is something else on my mind.
I've been thinking since yesterday afternoon about Public Spaces/Public Places.
Unlike every city and village in Italy (and France and so many countries in the world), we have have none here in Vancouver.
Every twenty paces or so, Venice offers if not a piazza, then at least a small neighbourhood campo, where children boot soccer balls, parents compare notes on the prices of real estate and groceries and grandparents sit on benches. I realize I am creating an idealized, romantic image of a society in harmony.
But of late this mud town has been carrying on from every direction at once the noise called "Civil Society."
The usual suspects were hauled in by the Sun to "edit" a special Saturday edition embracing this notion. I was spared these pronouncements from the Mike Harcourts among us by a timely visit to Winnipeg.
If there are no places to stop and chat, if discourse is unnatural and an interruption rather than a daily pursuit, how can we speak of a civility?
What would it take for us to build stopping places - public spaces, mini-parks, breathing places that might even include fruit and vegetable stands or stores and cafes - in this cold, unwelcoming community?
Is this a silly dream of transplantation?
Is this one old culture plopped will-nilly on a newer one?
I'd love to see us try.
2 comments:
You are right, of course, though we do have a lot more parks than anywhere else I've ever scene.
I wonder if the rainy weather lends itself to a lack of public squares?
With that said, let's take a look at the Robson Square Plaza. IMHO this is a well designed place that could have served precisely the purpose you alluded to. But what has it turned into? On the stairs, a place for society's burn-outs to hang out. But walk up to the forested area and you'll find the long since burned out hanging out ... with a needle in their arms.
I agree with pelalusa, there are too many undesirables hanging about that make the city unpleasant to stop.
Just the other day, someone tried to walk off with a couples child, as soon as they turned their back.
Perhaps Vancouver's coffee shops take the place of public spaces.
North Vancouver City has a nice little civic square at 14th street, and also by the Lonsdale Quay Market next to the Seabus. -anonamoose
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