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Tent city, Olympic city MONDAY - AUGUST 25, 2003 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF VANCOUVER, 04.06.03 : ENGLISH BAY BEACH VANCOUVER, 06.06.03 : DENMAN STREET VANCOUVER, 06.06.03 : COFFEE ON DENMAN STREET VANCOUVER, 06.06.03 : NUMBER 5 BUS, DAVIE STREET VANCOUVER, 07.06.03 : KOREAN CAFE ON DENMAN VANCOUVER, 07.06.03 : HOT HOLES, GRANVILLE STREET VANCOUVER, 07.06.03 : DAVIE AT PACIFIC VANCOUVER, 07.06.03 : ROBSON AT THURLOW VANCOUVER, 07.06.03 : ON ROBSON STREET VANCOUVER, 08.07.03 : ALLEY OFF CORDOVA A few years back, the writer Douglas Coupland published a book called City of Glass. It's about Vancouver, Coupland's hometown, and it examines the city through witty little entries on, well, everything from the "Grouse Grind to glass towers, First Nations to feng-shui, Kitsilano to Cantonese," as the back cover puts it. The thing is, though, the book lacks any sort of structure or theme; Coupland simply organized the entries alphabetically. Whether he did so with purpose or not, it hints at Vancouver's inherent fragmentation. Vancouver, you see, is many different things to many different people. Sure, every city differs according to personal experience, but most places have a relatively clear identity that unifies each of those experiences. Vancouver is more ambiguous. Recently, a friend complained that Vancouver was too ghettoised, as it were -- the Downtown Eastside is 100 percent poor, Richmond is 100 percent Chinese, Davie Street is 100 percent gay, and so forth. It's a gross exaggeration, but you get the point. In Vancouver, the sum of the parts doesn't always equal the whole. If anything, a large part of Vancouver's identity revolves around being the West Coast end of the line, a new-beginnings sort of place. Just like California, Vancouver is the culmination of a westward migration, away from the struggles, history and limitations that bog down the East and, if you go far back enough, Europe. Interestingly enough, it's this force that shaped both the city's West End and its Downtown Eastside. The West End crowds around English Bay, an oceanside end point. It's a relaxed neighbourhood with a diverse array of people, including a large and vibrant gay population. Most notably, the West End is dominated not by the hundreds of concrete towers built to house the westward pioneers of the 1950s and 60s, but by thick foliage and an eerie sense of calm. A handful of blocks away, however, is the Downtown Eastside, the original downtown core centred around the intersection of Hastings and Main. Some of the most splendid commercial architecture in Western Canada is now the skin and bones of its poorest neighbourhood. Over the past half century, the Hastings Street corridor has become a skid row, a sort of refuge for the down-and-out who migrated westward like everyone else. Addiction, unfortunately, defines the neighbourhood: according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 drug addicts live in the Downtown Eastside, many of them suffering from HIV and Hepatitis C. The contrast between the healthy Vancouver of the West End and the sick, decrepit Vancouver of Hastings Street has been particularly obvious over the past year. Last fall, Eastside addicts, homeless and activists occupied the vacant Woodward's department store to bring attention to the plight of Vancouver's homeless. Woodward's, which was abandoned in 1993 when the department store chain went belly-up, was bought by a developer who wanted to convert the building into market-rate condominiums. After public outcry and community demonstrations, the city eventually bought Woodward's. It was slated to be turned into social housing, but, in 2002, the newly-elected Liberal government scuttled the plans and put the building back on the market. Since then, tent cities have sprung up around Vancouver like mushrooms in the rain; while the Woodwards squat was dismantled in December, a new tent city popped up in July, in nearby Victory Square. After those protesters moved on, two more encampments arose in front of the train station and on the port. What makes this all the more interesting is that, in July, Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics. A decade ago, Expo 86, the 1984 decision to hand Hong Kong over to China and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre sparked a massive boom in Vancouver, as well-off Hong Kongers poured into the city, bringing their money with them. My memories of visiting Vancouver in the mid-90s feature frenetic construction and a giddy boomtime atmosphere; when I visited last June, the ghost of fortunes past hovered over the city. The Olympics are expected to turn Vancouver's fortunes back around. The big question, though, is whether or not the Olympics can offer Vancouver a bit of cohesion, a clear vision that includes the disenfranchised and marginalized Downtown Eastside. ――― "Vancouver has been herded to the fringes of civilization by elements well beyond its control: all those egocentric East Coast folk, those nefarious mountains, pragmatic politics in the form of funding and that blasted center of the universe, radiating the word 'Toronto' across the nation. Or has it stumbled to the edges of the world and found itself without direction still?" So writes Kristen Keerma in her new essay, When Will the West Be One: Fragmenting Vancouver. A third-generation native of Toronto, Kristen recently moved to Montreal where she is studying at McGill University. Enjoy her work. (And, if this isn't too shameless, remember that we're always looking for contributions: give us a shout!) Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for previous posts Backyards and blackouts SATURDAY - AUGUST 16, 2003 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 11.08.03 : VEGGIES AT THE JEAN-TALON MARKET MONTREAL, 17.08.03 : VILLENEUVE AT JEANNE-MANCE MONTREAL, 16.08.03 : CHERRIER AT ST-ANDRÉ MONTREAL, 11.08.03 : MOVIE SHOOT AT ST-LAURENT/ST-VIATEUR MONTREAL, 16.08.03 : IN THE PARC LAFONTAINE MONTREAL, 16.08.03 : IN THE PARC LAFONTAINE MONTREAL, 16.08.03 : IN THE PARC LAFONTAINE Last week, a reader emailed me about a short essay I wrote about a year ago on the so-called Not In My Backyard syndrome. He objected to a particular passage about the restoration of a streetcar line in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighbourhood. In 1985, the trolley service along Boston's Centre Street was suspended indefinitely. "Since then," I wrote, "residents have campaigned to have trolley service restored along its main street ... immediately, however, business owners along Centre Street opposed the future trolley, voicing concerns over possible reduction of parking." The reader thoughtfully pointed out that, although he likely favours the return of the trolley, opponents aren't just parking-happy businessmen. They have legitimate concerns; cyclists fear for their safety if the trolley returns, for instance, and locals don't want the congestion that comes with a trolley. Okay, I admit it: the Jamaica Plain trolley was a bad example of NIMBYism and selfish yuppies; maybe it wasn't even true NIMBYism at all. Luckily, in this week's edition of the Montreal alt-weekly Hour, columnist Martin Patriquin supplies me with one particularly absurd example. A new condo owner in Montreal's Plateau district is unhappy with the smoky air around his condo. The culprit? Not car exhaust, or factory smoke... but Portuguese roast chicken. The particular section of the Plateau where the condo guy lives is Montreal's Portuguese neighbourhood. It boasts a handful of roast chicken joints, some dating back 30 years. While long-time residents cherish the little restos, the condo owner was so peeved he filed a complaint with the city, noting that the smell of Portuguese chicken "is highly disagreeable," especially in the afternoon. "All of a sudden, one condo person moves in and decides he doesn't like the air outside his house, so he hauls in the city," fumes Patriquin. "He seemed to have forgotten that he chose to live there, no doubt delighting in the urban hipster zoo that is this chunk of the Plateau." Patriquin goes on to supply an even more disturbing instance of insidious NIMBYism: his apartment building, filled with refugees from the quickly-gentrifying Plateau, sits in the midst of a somewhat rough-around-the-edges neighbourhood, Centre-Sud, a gritty "purgatory" between the Gay Village and Plateau Mont-Royal. Used needles and condoms litter some of the gutters and you can't escape the sight of sad, saggy prostitutes lurking at many corners. His neighbours' solution to these problems? A nine-foot, deadbolted iron fence around his building. This isn't uncommon. In his 1996 book The New Urban Frontier, anthropologist Neil Smith writes, rather opaquely, that "the social meaning of gentrification is increasingly constructed through the vocabulary of the frontier myth." What he means is that gentrifiers see themselves as pioneers -- the first brave souls to tame the urban wilderness -- and, accordingly, erect boundaries between themselves and the wild frontier they've just settled. In a sense, gentrifiers are the western settlers and old-time neighbourhood residents are the Indians. Smith looked at Manhattan's Lower East Side, the site of violent gentrification struggles, in particular. As the Lower East Side gentrified in the 1970s and 80s, it experienced something of a devitalization, as new, wealthier residents retreated within their elaborately renovated homes. Bars were put up on windows and the new folks weren't prone to hanging out on their stoops. Of course, the Plateau is hardly the Lower East Side. Deep down, though, Smith's idea of a frontier mentality applies to Montreal. As the Plateau gentrifies, it loses a lot of what makes it such a vibrant, special place. In Centre-Sud, when new residents isolate themselves from their neighbourhood's problems, it begets tensions and hostility.  People have a right to be satisfied with their surroundings, but the type of reactionary NIMBYism sparked by gentrification goes overboard. It isn't hard to accept your surroundings and integrate, rather than isolate yourself. Roast chicken, anyone?   ――― What to say about Thursday's gigantic blackout, which swept across the northeastern United States and southern Ontario, knocking out power to over 50 million people? Well, not much. At least, not anything that hasn't already been covered by Big Media in their relentless coverage of the disaster. Those images of thousands of pedestrians reclaiming Manhattan streets were heartwarming, to say the least (and they show where we'd be without subways). It's also nice to see that New York is more laid-back and tolerant than it was in 1977, when a summer blackout plunged the city into violent chaos. In Toronto, the media was resplendent with stories about good citizens directing traffic with a newfound sense of humanity. The sense of helpfulness didn't extend to all, though; on a discussion forum, some New Yorkers observed that, while mom-and-pop stores stayed open, selling food and water and letting people pay on the honour system, chain stores promptly closed the shutters and locked the cash when the lights went out. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for previous posts Mile End MONDAY - AUGUST 11, 2003 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 24.06.03 : ST-VIATEUR PARTY, MILE END MONTREAL, 24.06.03 : ST-VIATEUR PARTY, MILE END MONTREAL, 04.08.03 : DÉPANNEUR ON PARC, MILE END MONTREAL, 06.08.03 : NAVARINO BAKERY ON PARC, MILE END MONTREAL, 09.08.03 : KEUR FATOU RESTO, MILE END MONTREAL, 24.09.02 : HASIDIC MAN ON ST-VIATEUR, OUTREMONT Mile End feels like Sesame Street. That's a good thing: this is one of the few places in North America where that happy combination of crumbling brick, multiethnic children playing in the street and a warm, welcoming vibe exists. (Large yellow birds and cookie monsters, alas, are absent -- although the latter is debatable, considering my eating habits.) That Mile End exists in Canada, where the Canadian version of Sesame Street is the decidedly bucolic Sesame Park, is somewhat ironic. In a country with too many ho-hum, white bread cities, Mile End is a shining example of multiculturalism at work. It was more than 120 years ago when the village of St-Louis-du-Mile-End sprung up around a train station exactly one mile from Montreal's city limits. By the turn of the 20th century, immigrants were pouring into the village as the city spread northward, the ethnic ghetto climbing up St-Laurent Boulevard. By 1909, the City of Montreal had annexed the town and a Jewish community was becoming well established. This was the north end of the famed Jewish ghetto, thrust into literary fame by, among others, Mordecai Richler. Richler grew up on St-Urbain Street and many landmarks from his novels -- Wilensky's Light Lunch, for instance -- remain. But Mile End's ever-changing. As he notes in his semi-fictional memoir The Street, "To come home in 1968 was to discover that it wasn't where I had left it -- it had been bulldozed away -- or had become, as is the case with St. Urbain, a Greek preserve." The Jews came first, followed by Italians, Greeks and Portuguese, among others. After the original Jewish population moved on, more and more Hasidic Jews planted themselves in Mile End and neighbouring Outremont. While many have moved on, Parc Avenue remains a sort of downtown for Montreal Greeks, with countless Greek bars, social clubs and restaurants. Recently, a significant number of Latin Americans have made Mile End their home. Mile End city councillor and Plateau Mont-Royal borough president Helen Fotopulos reflects on her Mile End upbringing in a 1999 Montreal Gazette column: "I was born and raised in Mile End," she said. "There were eastern Europeans, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Greek, some Polish. I didn't speak English until I went to school." Of course, ethnic diversity isn't Mile End's only quality. Part of Mile End's charm is the fact that you never know who your neighbour will be; it could an old Greek granny, a Hasidic family, a young, hip couple with two toddlers or maybe a grad student. The Gazette reports that, while keeping its ethnic roots, more and more boho types -- not to mention bohos with kids -- are settling down in Mile End: "The special ingredient to the Mile End stew, differentiating it from, say, Park Extension, has been the 'counter-culture' element prevalent since the 1970s: painters, writers, musicians or just plain artistic personalities, attracted by the diverse ethnic groups and, of course, the cheap rent. ... At the Social Club on St. Viateur St., for instance, they might be sipping lattes at one table, while Italian men play cards at the next, as they have done for 26 years; it's not unusual to see two Hasidic women, wearing thick black stockings, crossing paths with the owner of the African crafts shop." Linguistically, Mile End is a hodgepodge, too: a little under half of Mile Enders speak French, 20 percent speak English, 5 percent Portuguese, 4.5 percent Spanish and 4 percent Greek. Mile End exudes a friendly charm, both passive and natural (as opposed to forced and cringingly artificial, like in Boston's uberwealthy Beacon Hill). It lends itself to that comfortable feeling of home -- people of different ethnicities and lifestyles share the neighbourhood without claiming it as their own. This hits you as soon as you cross Parc Avenue into neighbouring Outremont: while Mile End's Hasidim get along well with their diverse neighbours, Outremont has suffered from several well-publicised clashes between mostly wealthy, white francophone residents and the significant Hasidic minority. "Ah, Outremont," wrote local journalist M-J Milloy, "the borough of leafy boulevards, comfortable living and polite bigots." Among other conflicts, Outremont Hasidim have tussled with their neighbours over synagogues, eruv -- the placement of string outside an apartment during shabbat -- and a Hasidic bus service between Outremont and New York. Diversity doesn't make Mile End a perfect neighbourhood -- far from it, considering it doesn't have metro access and the bars suck -- but it's a pretty nice one.  Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for previous posts Down with cars TUESDAY - AUGUST 5, 2003 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 22.06.03 : PHONE CALL ON ST-LAURENT BLVD. MONTREAL, 15.07.03 : CORN ON ST-HUBERT STREET MONTREAL, 29.07.03 : ST-DENIS STREET IN THE LATIN QUARTER MONTREAL, 29.07.03 : STE-CATHERINE AT SANGUINET MONTREAL, 01.08.03 : "GREEN MT-ROYAL AVENUE" DEMO MONTREAL, 01.08.03 : "GREEN MT-ROYAL AVENUE" DEMO MONTREAL, 01.08.03 : "GREEN MT-ROYAL AVENUE" DEMO Last Friday, around 300 cyclists pedaled down Montreal's Mont-Royal Avenue. Some held placards, others chanted "Avenue du Mont-Royal, sans voitures!" At issue was the avenue itself, a busy two mile long artery that cuts through the Plateau Mont-Royal, one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Canada. Last year, a band of Plateau residents, fed up with the smelly, squealing traffic that clogs their main street, formed a citizen's coalition called Mont-Royal Avenue Verte. Its goal is to ban cars from Mont-Royal -- or, as its website proclaims, establish "a carfree street with public transport." From its beginnings at the foot of verdant Mount Royal to its rather humble end amidst the roaring traffic and industry of Frontenac Avenue, Mont-Royal teems with cafes, groceries, shops, restaurants and -- above all -- lots of pedestrians. It's one of the most desirable streets in Montreal -- in April, the daily La Presse published a feature describing the street's quick gentrification and soaring rents -- and, most importantly, it lies at the heart of what is probably the most thoroughly urban neighbourhood in Canada. Over 100,000 people are squeezed into the Plateau's few square kilometres; Mont-Royal Avenue's business development corporation estimates that a full 80 percent of Plateau residents go about their daily business by foot, bike or public transit. Essentially, Mont-Royal Avenue Verte's plan is to close Mont-Royal to private vehicles. Emergency vehicles and, as far as we can tell, taxis would still be permitted on the street. Cars would only be able to cross the avenue on several key arteries; residential sidestreets would be off-limits to residential traffic. The street is already well-served by public transit, with a metro station and two bus lines. Presumably, any pedestrianisation would include an upgrade to transit service; renderings on the coalition's website prominently display a light-rail tram running down the middle of the street. Activists insist that the impact of cars rerouted from Mont-Royal to parallel streets wouldn't be too severe, since Mont-Royal only carries ten percent of the Plateau's east-west traffic.  The problem, however, is that the debate over pedestrianising Mont-Royal Avenue is still in the vague rhetorical stage. Nobody has yet presented a concrete plan or design scheme for the avenue. Many seem to imagine a pedestrianised Mont-Royal would entail nothing but pedestrian traffic whatsoever, like some sort of permanent summer street fair. Shop owners along the avenue worry that, without auto access, suburbanites who shop on the street simply won't come. In an editorial that ran last year in La Presse, Plateau borough president Helen Fotopulos raised another valid concern: without cars, the street will seem empty. Empty streets, of course, mean less security, and less security discourages people from visiting the street. As Paul Lewis, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Institute of Urbanism, notes in a La Presse feature, "Even with thousands of people, the street would seem empty. Shoppers hate empty streets." However, as we noted last time we covered the subject, the Plateau is dense enough so that there will always be people doing their daily business on Mont-Royal Avenue. Lewis and Fotopulos have extremely legitimate points, though: a pedestrian Mont-Royal wouldn't work with only pedestrian access. But it's ridiculous to assume that Mont-Royal could be pedestrianised by simply putting up barricades and cutting off all vehicular traffic. There would need to be a very frequent, reliable form of transit -- a streetcar, for instance, like the one in the coalition's rendering, or perhaps electric, articulated buses -- and taxi access. In fact, a better solution might be to follow the lead of San Francisco's Market Street and not ban cars at all. Steve Boland, the editor of San Francisco Cityscape, explains to Urbanphoto how pedestrian and transit improvements to San Francisco's main street have tamed the beast of the automobile. "It's just [Jane] Jacobs' attrition of the automobile in action," writes Boland. "Make it harder to drive by design, drivers naturally avoid the place, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy." Market Street boasts wide sidewalks, a single lane of moving traffic and, most importantly, a busy streetcar line running down the middle. (Cars aren't allowed to turn left, for obvious reasons.) If Mont-Royal were to improve its transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to the point Market Street has, drivers would be forced to proceed slowly or simply avoid the street altogether, while still being able to access shops and amenities if they really wanted to. So far, over 18,500 people have signed Mont-Royal Avenue Verte's petition to pedestrianise Mont-Royal Avenue. Media coverage has been excellent. Whatever the outcome of the debate, at least public interest in the quality of Montreal's urban environment has been piqued, and, if anything, it's refreshing to know that grassroots urbanism is alive and well. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for previous posts Urbanphoto lives FRIDAY - AUGUST 1, 2003 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 23.07.03 : BERRI STREET IN A DOWNPOUR MONTREAL, 23.07.03 : PARK ON RUE ST-CHRISTOPHE MONTREAL, 23.07.03 : LAURIER STREET MONTREAL, 23.07.03 : PARC AND LAURIER MONTREAL, 21.07.03 : SHERBROOKE STREET AT BERRI Whew. We've pulled one of our infamous disappearing acts again. (Remember the last one?) In a way we must be like some drunk uncle who disappears for months at a time, only to show up unexpectedly with a new suit and promises to go sober. Anyway, we're back with our spiffy new clothes and a new address: hello, urbanphoto.net, goodbye, urbanphoto.org. It's a long story. About four months ago, we had a bout of server trouble. When the server was restored, it turned out our site wasn't there anymore. Well, it was there, it just wasn't accessible through our domain. As it turns out, thanks to an innocent mixup, our registration of urbanphoto.org had expired and it was scooped up by an unscrupulous search portal. After figuring out whether or not we could recover urbanphoto.org, we decided we'd be best off moving on to the next best thing -- a new domain. To go along with the new address is a slightly new look and an entirely new focus. We've decided to shift Urbanphoto's emphasis away from big city galleries towards photo features. (The galleries will stay, although they're current offline while we upgrade them.) These photoessays give us more flexibility and more room for guest contributions, like Mike Clarke's Tokyolife. They'll be added on a pretty regular basis, about every month or so. If you're a photographer and you want to contribute, give us a shout. As you can see, we've also reconfigured the main page to be more of a photoblog. (For inspiration, we owe a lot to Clarke's excellent Hunkabutta.) A couple times per week, myself or one of my fellow editors -- Chris Szabla and Colin Kent -- will add new photos for you to enjoy, along with our usual news and commentary, which will be given in shorter and more frequent doses. A word of warning: until we're fully settled, some sections of the site will be undergoing maintenance. Some links and images may be broken and the city galleries will be offline for the next while. For now, we hope you spread the word that we're back up and keep coming back to enjoy the photos. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for previous posts