{"id":2161,"date":"2009-03-08T16:15:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-08T20:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2009\/03\/08\/how-others-folks-see-the-city\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:02:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:02:55","slug":"how-others-folks-see-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2009\/03\/08\/how-others-folks-see-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"How Other Folks See the City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Last fall, I had a friend visit from Rimouski. I knew he wasn’t a city boy, and yet I was convinced that when he saw my spacious old NDG flat, when he discovered the joys of biking across town for live music in the Mile End, once he’d tasted midnight bagels and greasy breakfast at Cosmos, he couldn’t help but be seduced by urban living.<\/p>\n

While we were out walking one day, we passed along the stretch of road pictured above. I mentioned that was thankful not to live in the apartment whose front door practically opens into the intersection of Saint-Jacques and D\u00e9carie. My friend laughed and said that, to be honest, he didn’t see much difference my place and this one.<\/p>\n

I was dumbfounded. I live on a tree-lined residential street where kids build snow forts in tiny front yards during the winter and play street-hockey in the spring. I’m half a block from fairly lively main street with a great diversity of restaurants, groceries store and services.<\/p>\n

To me, the contrast could not be more obvious, but to a guy from Rimouski it made no difference: the traffic was bad, the parking was worse, and you couldn’t see the stars at night.<\/p>\n

\"first<\/a><\/p>\n

The Inuit famously have 29 different words for snow, when most of us can probably only differentiate between the powder and the wet stuff. Of course, when snow is your construction material, transportation infrastructure, and weather report, when it regulates your food supply and daily work load, it stands to reason that you’d develop a keen awareness about the stuff.<\/p>\n

By the same logic, city dwellers – at least those who pay attention – have an acute awareness of subtle differences in the urban form. Aside from those who specialize in urban planning, most of our knowledge about the city is\u00a0 informal. Many of us have a feeling for what works – what elements of neighbourhood design are practical, interesting, safe, and aesthetic, but few would consider this an expertise.<\/p>\n

My friend from Rimouski is an intelligent, university-educated guy. Seeing the city through his eyes made me realize to what extent this understanding is neither innate nor obvious. The difference between an ideal neighbourhood and a desolate wasteland is, in the end, a very fine line – so subtle that to some people it is imperceptible. Learning the vocabulary to express these distinctions is empowering, but words alone will not build a neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

I can imagine suburban-bred developers scratching their heads about what these urban folks want. Pedestrian-oriented development? Does that mean sidewalks? Local commerces? Ok, throw in a Club Price or something… And residents getting increasingly frustrated with “evil” developers who lack an experience with the urban form that would allow them to respond to citizen’s requests in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n

We have all seen the result: buzz-words like smart-growth, human-scale<\/em>, and mixed-use,<\/em> get picked up by developers and applied as marketing tools rather than first principles.<\/p>\n

What is the solution? Jane Jacobs wrote “No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at … suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities. You’ve got to get out and walk.<\/p>\n

There has been a strong push for environmental education lately – what about the urban environment? It is as complex, and as crucial in terms of sustainability, as the rural environment and the hinterland that supports it. How do we implement it? That will have to be a question for a whole other post.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, feedback on these Sunday-afternoon musings would be much appreciated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last fall, I had a friend visit from Rimouski. 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