I’ve been clearing out my old files, and I came across an article given to my me a couple of years ago by walking activist Helen Riley: “Neighbourless Hoods“, by Paul Kingsnorth, first published in The Ecologist magazine.
This article puts its finger on an issue that I’ve been thinking about for a while, but which I’ve found hard to articulate: the loss of a sense of “place” in a lot of modern urban development (both suburban and downtown). So many new urban spaces are built and occupied in a way that could be anywhere. They don’t reflect the environment, building materials, history or culture of their specific location, and thus become dully generic. In the author’s words:
Put simply, the things that make our towns, villages, cities and landscapes different, distinctive or special are being eroded, and replaced by things that would be familiar anywhere. It is happening all over the country [Great Britain, but it applies in North America too] — you can probably see at least one example of it from where you’re sitting right now. The same chain stores in every high street, the same bricks in every new housing estate, the same signs on every road, and the same menu in every pub.
The article is reasonably thoughtful about this issue, and aware of the need to accept change and avoid nostalgia. New developments can reflect a sense of place, if they try — for example by relating to their immediate environment, shaping buildings and landscape to deal with specific local weather conditions, or using local materials. And a sense of place can evolve in any area — there are multiple examples across Toronto where unexceptional locations have taken on an identity, for example as a focus for a specific culture such as the “Indian Bazaar” on Gerrard East. People are becoming more aware of the issue, as the recent trend towards eating locally-produced food demostrates. There’s no way to dictate a sense of place, but there are many possible ways to make it easier for one to emerge, and to nurture it when it does. It’s worth thinking about.
Photo by Sam Javanrouh.
19 comments
*you’re* worth thinking about.
When the suburbanites return to downtown, bringing their condos with them, this is what happens.
protegenes> I think you’re simply flaming here, but I’ll take it at face value and say “What on earth are you talking about?”
If anyone’s interested in further investigating some of the published literature on this topic there’s Ted Relph over at U of T Scarborough who’s published prolifically http://www.geog.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/relph/outline-tr
Tim Cresswell is another good bet
…the same bus shelters all over the city…the same garbage bins all over the city…etc…
I’ve written about this some myself, and I couldn’t agree more. Suburbs depress me because they’re so “same-y”, with limited exceptions. I want to be able to intuitively know where I am, but I almost never get that feeling in suburban areas because I always feel like I could be anywhere.
Look at Toronto Archives photos of new houses in the 1920s in what are now “identifiable” downtown neighbourhoods … the houses all lined up in rows, looking identical (“same-y” with limited exceptions). Street after street of the same-looking semi-detached houses (particularly in East Toronto), or those tall bay-and-gable Victorians. People thinking about these issues 85 years ago might have thought the exact same thing, lamenting the loss of individual, owner-built cottage homes and commercial blocks, being replaced by mass-built houses and identical blocks of storefronts. It’s all a matter of perspective. Today’s “boring” suburban areas may become extremely interesting as demographics shift and different people move into those areas and alter them, with newer “mid-density urban blocks” becoming the new boring-same housing of the future.
The sameness and uniformity of suburbia (by and large)is certainly one its leading, though not its only drawbacks. That this has also spread increasingly to city-core areas via greater chain retail, and propensity for condo towers which share a certain pre-cast concrete sameness is most unfortunate.
However, we should not say this is all new, or merely a product of land use decisions or local planning of recent times.
Our beloved Union Station was made of Indiana limestone; apropos of our fair City, I know now how.
In times past Toronto has erased much of its distinctive ravine topography. Even though we are lauded for preserving far more than many places…. we have lost the hills and dales of so many creeks and valleys, most notably Garrison Creek.
A sense of place is about so many things; from local material palates (Toronto’s would be bricks made locally; or locally quarried stone, or the use of White Pine,or Sugar Maple woods). Its about the preservation of local geography (leave the hill there please and go around it). Its about view corridors connecting your City to its horizon, its hills, its Lake and so on.
Of course its also about not building everything at once; and allowing organic evolution of place. About originality and the input of local citizens (including architects and designers); and its about the local culture reflected through design, business, the orientation and organization of society, as reflected through place.
Hopefully we will return an age where these things of a greater value, so each place is not like the other.
If you extend the thinking it adds greater need and value to Heritage Designations of all types to preserve the character of all distinctive parts of a city.
Now if we could actually get intelligent, experienced and UNpolitically motivated people to work at Heritage …
Chain stores and restaurants are not necessarily a bad thing… diversity is the key to the success of commercial districts, people need choices and that includes chain stores. If people are forced to leave an area to find their morning Tim Hortons then they are forced to leave, their money with them… You can’t make the ethical, environmental, local ect. choice if there isn’t a choice to begin with.
Just one small thing, not that it really matters because I make typos all the time: “I came across an article given to *me* a couple of years ago.”
How nice to stumble upon this refection on sameness. I’ve spent most of my life living in one Montreal apartment or rowhouse or another and, as Rob L. commented, these were all built at least 100 years ago and one house generally looked the same as the next.
Yet, generally speaking, today’s city-lovers find this type of housing charming, functional and efficient (in terms of space, energy and the potential for community solidarity). Of course, over the century, much has been done to distinguish many of these houses, one from the next, through colour of paint, landscaping (as much as the little bit of streetside land permits), fire (and subsequent new construction), the building of additions, etc.
Still, I don’t think its just these touches of individuality that create the feeling of warmth that seems to lack in new housing developments, whether urban or suburban. I think it’s punctuation that creates that feeling, the number and distribution of corner stores, small parks, commercial streets, cinemas, schools, community gardens,places of worship, community centres, neighbourhood pools and ice rinks, etc. — i.e. the public places where people gather — that create that feeling.
When I walk in the suburbs, what I sense is loneliness, due to the lack of people in the public spaces. I also feel a certain sensual boredom due to the lack of variety of sounds, terrain, visual and olfactory punctuation in the architecture and landscaping, etc.
Recently, walking in a new inner city development of townhouses, I had a similar sensation and asked myself why. Again, it was this absence of people in the streets and parks and no breaks in the architecture and the function of buildings.
Of course, things change with time and there’s nothing preventing the burbs or new developments from adopting the spaces and places that foster warmth and inspiring human interaction. It does seem a pity, however, that the questions of scale, space and distances easily covered by foot or two wheels don’t seem to be automatically considered in the design of new housing arrangements.
Don’t forget the other half of a sense of place – the memories and experiences of people, formed individually or collectively. For instance, when I was younger and barely went downtown, when I would finally have the chance to go I couldn’t tell you if I were in the Annex or on the Danforth or in Bloor West Village. To me, the houses looked the same, and yes even though there was a variety of different individual stores that variety looked the same to me too. It’s only when I started visiting these places often and forming memories there that I began to differentiate between them.
The same can be said about the suburbs. I’ve lived in the suburbs my whole life so far, and yes on the surface it looks like it’s the same all across the GTA. But I can point to a number of places across town and tell you a story about something that happened there. It’s those things to me that make a space have a sense of place.
As Ted Relph notes in one of his books, sense of place is both an innate and learned skill that helps people to carefully observe and understand the spaces they encounter. So what the landscape and built environment does play a role, but we shouldn’t push aside the role of people themselves.
These are very thoughtful comments – thanks everyone.
Excellent points Rob L. When people say “suburbs” where exactly do they mean? I grew up in the burbs of North York and frankly I loved it although I have friends who grew up nearby who hated it. The burbs of North York to me are way better than the burbs of say Maple. Ultimately the cool hoods we like only represent a tiny fraction of the city. I would add that I would not have called Gerrard “unremarkable” before it became a “little India”.
I have learned that one has to be careful to not project ones own alienation onto to areas that A) other people live in, and B) may enjoy.I visited a newish cookie cutter burb at the top of Brampton last year and it was 100% not the place for me; the nearest store was miles away. But to my host and his family this represented a fresh start and new life in a home his parents could never have dreamed of. There was warmth and fun and a different sense of community, this too based on Indian roots, and any well meaning suggestion that it was an alienating place would have been received as an insult. Despite what we may feel about them, the burbs are loved by many people.
While the author makes himself unlikeable to me by being snobby, shortsighted, and illogically indecisive and sentimental, I can still relate to him at some level. I remember thinking, after seeing pictures of the Greece kerfuffle, with that one of the boy who was shot standing outside a Starbucks, and those with the protesters all dressed in Nike, Adidas, Puma and Gap, that “this could be anywhere” (also the title of an excellent Dead Kennedys song).
That same emotion is expressed in this article. However I don’t like the article because, after reading this article, I get the sense that “this could be anytime”. The author fails to convey why this replacement by something blander, more manufactured, more placeless and less human-scale is any more important now. For example, “palatial Victorian houses – all dark red brick and long thin gardens,” which is characteristic of every town of similar economic importance of that era is good, while “the same chain stores in every high street, the same bricks in every new housing estate, the same signs on every road, and the same menu in every pub” is bad. The article doesn’t work for me because the author doesn’t anaylse critically the criteria he deems relevant and takes them as good in and of themselves. The author foresees criticism of this kind and doesn’t like the labels “nimby” and “reactionary idealist”, but sadly offers no defense for why they are incorrect.
I’d pin ‘why the suburbs don’t feel right’ on primarily three things:
1) The way suburbs are zoned. Strictly segregated zones with four square km of detached housing and a few gargantuan SmartCentres dotted about with a square km of lowrise office parks a few km away is inherently isolating.
2) Property setbacks. Having buildings further away from the road and further away from each other might seem like a good idea for fire prevention reasons, but walking down Queen St. you feel like you’re practically inside the buildings as you walk by them; the buildings in the suburbs are distant and unconnected to you.
3) Road widths. St. Clair (the parts on which the streetcar ROW hasn’t been built yet) feels considerably more isolated to me, but the density of the buildings doesn’t seem to that different. The huge chasm across sides of the road is the difference. A lot of streets in York Region feel like the grand canyon with six or more lanes.
“There was warmth and fun and a different sense of community, this too based on Indian roots, and any well meaning suggestion that it was an alienating place would have been received as an insult.”
ScottD, Are you saying that being a viz-min makes it somehow beyond reproach to mindlessly live the north american consumptive suburban lifestyle? Or that being non-white somehow makes one immune from its negative impacts?
How do we build “communities” when the suburbs are owned by mega-roads, mega-malls, mega-parking lots and mega-distances? With good political leadership.
When everything in the suburbs is so spread apart(*ie. poor infrastructure), the only relationship you’re going to form is with your car!
I have nothing against people who want to leave our busy and expensive cities. I would too! But not until developers and city planners get their asses out of the toilet and build cities and towns with character(soul), history and reliable transportation. Only then will the suburbs be looked at as places of beauty and places to live(*for me anyway)
I like the phrase “progress and economic rationalism”. It’s totally conservative and wonderful because you can marginalize all opposition and justify everything by simply saying, “it’s the economy, stupid”.