{"id":6596,"date":"2011-08-30T00:01:53","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T04:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=6596"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:07:20","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:07:20","slug":"the-city-as-machine-or-the-city-as-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/08\/30\/the-city-as-machine-or-the-city-as-citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"The City as Machine or the City as Citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Parisian public enjoying a Unesco World Heritage Site<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/span>If I was still a city councilor and traveling around Europe \u2018au frais de la princess\u2019 (at public expense), I would be with a group of other city officials and we would be earnestly studying \u2018best practices\u2019. In Sweden, we would be looking at the \u2018waste treatment and heating systems\u2019\u00a0 In Amsterdam, it would be bicycle transportation. In Bordeaux, it would be their new surface rail.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the city as machine approach to running a city. Find out who does what best (best practices) and then come home with a recommendation to copy it. This is how change usually happens. Innovation rarely happens by invention, it is transmitted mostly by imitation. People have run cities this way from the beginning of time. The phonetic alphabet was invented in a couple of small Sumerian cities in modern day Iraq and within a couple of generations, the concept of the phonetic alphabet had spread to Egypt and throughout the eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

We see exactly the same thing happening today with something as mundane city bicycle rentals. It began in Lyon and a year later was adopted by Paris and within a few more just about every city in Europe was rushing to bring in their own versions. But I\u2019m no longer a city councilor and no one is paying for my travel time but me. I don\u2019t have to rush back to Ottawa on a red-eye flight and write a report up on the \u2018best practices\u2019 of Stockholm, Barcelona or Bordeaux.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just hanging out in cities, going where I want, when I want, talking to who I want: Buskers in the subway, the guys cleaning and sweeping the streets, a young mother diapering her baby on a park bench. It\u2019s not the travel of \u2018best practices\u2019, but it is how a city lives and breathes. And it\u2019s a very different place from the city as machine vision that I spent so many years fighting at Ottawa City Hall.<\/p>\n

For most city councilors managing a city is an accounting exercise. \u201cHow do I keep the \u2018machine\u2019 of the city going for the cheapest, possible price?\u2019 Will a bicycle reduce my transportation costs? And if so how and by how much? Everything is always reduced to an accounting exercise. When I was fighting the Lansdowne Park conversion to a mall, I was told over and over again, \u201cClive, don\u2019t talk about civic values or heritage or grass versus a parking lot, talk about costs \u2013 that\u2019s what council and people care about.<\/p>\n

But when I travel in European cities, what I see is all the physical stuff is quite similar from Istanbul to Paris. Some cities have slightly better water treatment systems than others, some have better bus service or rail and so on, but what really varies from the Canadian scene is the vision of a the city as citizen. You see this in Paris in spades.<\/p>\n

At Paris city hall, you can pick up brochures on free legal advice, summer in the city for seniors, sports in the city for the young. Paris City Hall funds 50 student\/municipal projects. In Ottawa, it took more than 10 years of city hall opposing students request for a universal transit pass before a temporary one was approved. The oldest, most photographed and most important part of the city is something that was built back in 1833. It\u2019s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The heart of Paris, the Seine is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but what an exceptional difference in the way the citizens of Paris approached their world heritage site and the way Ottawa has. Paris city hall is now in the process like Ottawa is of redeveloping the banks of their most important and famous site, the river banks of the Seine. Their redevelopment features nine different projects \u2013 all public \u2013 and the purpose of which is to better integrate the pedestrian uses and the park spaces with the river.<\/p>\n

The Tuileries, a park about the size of Lansdowne Park is now cut off from the Seine by a broad and busy highway. The project will integrate the park with the Seine by taking part of it right down to the river\u2019s edge. The roadway is going to be reduced in size. In Paris, the public space beside the Seine is going to be increased to improve the local and tourist access to and use of the banks of the Seine.\u00a0 Compare this to what is happening in Ottawa where the public space of Lansdowne is being dramatically reduced through a conversion to consumer and private use.<\/p>\n

How do you account for such a dramatic difference between the two capital cities? I don\u2019t think you will find the answer in \u2018best practices\u2019. They do it differently in Paris because Parisians see their city as something more than a collection of functions harnessed to credit and debit columns. They see Paris as their home and they want their home to be beautiful and comfortable as possible.<\/p>\n

From Paris to Barcelona, Berlin to Copenhagen, you will find one common threat that unites all these cities and it won\u2019t be the \u2018best practices\u2019 machinery of running the city.\u00a0 It will be civic pride. It will be the sense of being a Berliner, a Barcelonan, a Parisian. There is a stone in front of Paris City Hall which is engraved with a message from Charles DeGaulle.\u00a0 The General want it recorded in stone that no one liberated Paris including his troops. The Parisians liberated themselves with their own blood, and though that\u2019s not a best practice anyone can record and take home for their city council to copy with a new by-law, it\u2019s no less real. <\/em><\/p>\n

photo by Mathieu Marquer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/dl>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I was still a city councilor and traveling around Europe \u2018au frais de la princess\u2019 (at public expense), I would be with a group of other city officials and we would be earnestly studying \u2018best practices\u2019. In Sweden, we would be looking at the \u2018waste treatment and heating systems\u2019\u00a0 In Amsterdam, it would beContinue reading “The City as Machine or the City as Citizen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5302],"tags":[1725,3881,982,2704,3877,3215,1364,3882,485,963,3878,2897,1055,865,1812,733,3875,3879,3403,1922,3885,3872,3883,394,2338,973,3880,1972,3884,1000,2089,3874,3873,1282,3876],"class_list":["post-6596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-amsterdam","tag-at-paris-city-hall","tag-barcelona","tag-berlin","tag-bicycle-transportation","tag-bordeaux","tag-by-law","tag-charles-degaulle","tag-clive-doucet-on-cities","tag-copenhagen","tag-eastern-mediterranean","tag-egypt","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-general","tag-heritage-site","tag-important-and-famous-site","tag-iraq","tag-istanbul","tag-lyon","tag-machine-vision","tag-machinery","tag-mathieu-marquer","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-city-hall","tag-paris","tag-paris-city-hall","tag-princess","tag-seine","tag-stockholm","tag-sweden","tag-transportation-costs","tag-travel-time","tag-united-nations-educational-scientific-and-cultural-organization","tag-water-treatment-systems"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe City as Machine or the City as Citizen - Spacing Ottawa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/08\/30\/the-city-as-machine-or-the-city-as-citizen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The City as Machine or the City as Citizen - Spacing Ottawa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If I was still a city councilor and traveling around Europe \u2018au frais de la princess\u2019 (at public expense), I would be with a group of other city officials and we would be earnestly studying \u2018best practices\u2019. 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