Urbanphoto votes!
SUNDAY,
JUNE 27, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : WOMAN ON THE BACK
BALCONY
MONTREAL, 20.06.04 : WATCHING A STREET
PARTY ON PARC AV.
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : WOMAN AT
ST-LAURENT STREET FAIR
MONTREAL, 18.06.04 : 'MAIN MADNESS' ON
ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : FOOD STAND AT
ST-LAURENT STREET FAIR
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : OLD MAN AT DULUTH
AND ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : REFLECTION AT THE
MAIN'S STREET FAIR
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : DJ ON ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : TRYING ON JEWELRY
ON ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : KIDS AND MOM ON
ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 17.06.04 : 7PM, ST-LAURENT
AND SHERBROOKE
MONTREAL, 18.06.04 : CHECKING OUT
CLOTHES ON ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 18.06.04 : COUPLE AT
ST-LAURENT STREET FAIR
MONTREAL, 19.06.04 : HANGING UP GREEK
FLAG ON PARC AVENUE
MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : MOTHER WITH
BABIES, JEANNE-MANCE PARK
Never has five weeks felt
so long. After a nasty and muddled campaign, Canadians will
finally head to the polls tomorrow and cast their ballot in
the federal elections. Who's going to win? Nobody knows. Even
this late in the game, it's way too close to call, with the
Liberals and Conservatives tied at about 30 percent in the
polls, followed by the NDP at 20 percent. It's expected that
many people won't make up their minds until the ballot sheet
is staring them in the face. The only sure bet, really, is
that the Bloc Québécois will sweep Quebec, giving Gilles
Duceppe the power to make or break a minority government.
And what about cities? In a
campaign that has lacked focus, cities did manage to get a bit
of play in week right after the writ was dropped. Royson
James, the Toronto Star's city columnist and perennial new
deal crusader, pointed out to me that the cities agenda was a
big-ticket item for at least two parties. The Liberals would
give 5 cents of the gas tax to the municipalities within 5
years and a bunch of new money for affordable housing and
infrastructure. The NDP promises 5 cents on the gas tax right
away and even more money for infrastructure and affordable
housing. The Tories, on the other hand, didn't even bother to
release a cities platform, issuing instead a vague promise to
give cities a few cents on the gas tax and more attention from
Ottawa.
Some might wonder why
cities are important in the first place. Crumbling
infrastructure, however, hurts a city economically and
socially. It affects us personally, too, since the vast
majority of Canadians live in cities. Poverty is another big
issue: more homeless than ever live on our streets; more
immigrants live in poverty now than twenty years ago. Even
though immigration is essentially an urban issue
―
the
overwhelming majority of immigrants settle in the biggest few
cities
― cities have little say on how the federal government sets
immigration quotes or how provincial governments manage
integration and language courses. Big issues like health care
can be linked to grassroots urban concerns, too: car-clogged
Toronto, for instance, saw a record number of smoggy days last
summer, which exacerbates respiratory illnesses.
So who will best stand up
for cities in the next Parliament? As I noted in my Urban Eye
column on
cities and the election, the Liberals' plan is ultimately
watered-down and hindered by their tendency to, well, renege
on their promises. Cities barely even register on the Tories'
radar while the Bloc, despite being pro-environment and
supporting sustainable development, would bristle at a cities
agenda that compromised provincial power. That leaves the NDP,
whose platform is generous and promises immediate action. But
here's the catch: there's no way in hell the NDP will form the
next government. That was reason enough for the pro-urban
Toronto Star to support the Liberals' cities plan over that of
the NDP.
I'd be willing to agree
with the Star if there was a chance of waking up to a majority
government on June 29, but that ain't gonna happen. The NDP
won't get a chance to implement their cities agenda, but I
doubt the Liberals will, either, since they'll be too busy
fighting for power. Unlike the Liberals, though, the NDP is
pro-cities even beyond its platform. Led by Jack Layton, a
long-time Toronto city councillor, former president of the
Federation of Canadian Municipalities and, perhaps most
appealingly, someone who lives in an inner-city neighbourhood,
doesn't own a car and gets around on a bike, the NDP would be
a strong voice for cities regardless of its position in
Parliament.
In sum? On June 28, when it
comes to cities, the NDP gets our vote.
Discuss this post on our discussion forum
Head over to the archives for
last month's posts
The rustbelt's last best chance
WEDNESDAY,
JUNE 10, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF
MONTREAL, 14.05.04 : WINDOWSILL PHONE
CONVERSATION
MONTREAL, 15.05.04 : MILITARY CADETS
ON BLEURY STREET
MONTREAL, 16.05.04 : CPR TRACKS ON THE
PLATEAU
MONTREAL, 14.05.04 : SPRING ON MCGILL
COLLEGE AVENUE
MONTREAL, 15.05.04 : CORNER OF PARC
AND BERNARD
MONTREAL, 18.05.04 : DOWNPOUR AT PARC
AND BERNARD
MONTREAL, 16.05.04 : WAITING FOR THE
BUS, BÉLANGER STREET
MONTREAL, 18.05.04 : GRANDMA, DOG AND
KID ON JEANNE-MANCE
MONTREAL, 18.05.04 : OLD MAN ON
ESPLANADE STREET
MONTREAL, 19.05.04 : SOCCER IN
WESTMOUNT PARK
MONTREAL, 22.05.04 : CROSSING
MAISONNEUVE STREET
MONTREAL, 16.05.04 : GLORIOUS
TACKINESS, BÉLANGER STREET
MONTREAL, 20.05.04 : EXPRESSWAY IN
LITTLE BURGUNDY
MONTREAL, 22.05.04 : NEON CLOTHES IN
VILLE ST-PIERRE
MONTREAL, 22.05.04 : PHONE CALLS ON
STE-CATHERINE
MONTREAL, 30.05.04 : ELECTION CAMPAIGN
BEGINS, PARC AVENUE
This week I'm turning over
the proverbial microphone to two of
the café's regulars: erstwhile editor and Columbia student
Chris Szabla, and intellectual extraordinaire Leonard Machler.
Both touch on ways to reverse the declining fortunes of many
cities in the American rustbelt. Szabla, pointing to an
article in the Washington Post,
expounds on the importance of immigration to a city's economic
and social vitality:
As Michigan
spends millions revamping its autocentric economy in order to
lure such "creative class" designates as graphic designers and
software engineers to such unlikely habitations as Flint and
Lansing, a second group with far more economic potential also
awaits in the continent's expensive, overcrowded cosmopolitan
centres: immigrants.
The correlation between immigration to cities and their
resultant economic success is astounding. As the article below
relates, the cities which have been considered the most
resurgent over the past decade have been those with high
foreign-born populations. "The New York City region was
renewing itself (and avoiding total population decline) with a
71 percent rise in its foreign-born. Chicago gained 91
percent, Boston 66 percent. Denver had a 258 percent increase;
Portland, 217 percent; Minneapolis-St. Paul, 197 percent,"
reports the Washington Post. By total contrast, the
foreign-born population "sank 26 percent in Buffalo and its
environs. In Pittsburgh, the decline was 23 percent; in
Cleveland, 11 percent."
Indeed, there is the classic conundrum: was immigration the
cause of economic success, or did economic success
consequently attract immigrants?
Continue reading...
Machler, for his part,
wonders why so many American towns and cities within spitting
distance of burgeoning Canadian urban areas are struggling
with economic depression. He proposes something innovative,
intriguing and definitely radical:
Buffalo has no choice but to
become a player in Toronto's city region. While progressive
cities that straddle major European borders have managed to
metastasize their influence over several countries (look at
Lille-Tournai, Basel-Mulhouse ... heck, even in the early days
of Deng Xiaoping it was pretty clear where Shenzhen's growth
stemmed from), American cities within spitting distance of
some of the most vigorous Canadian regions are mired in
complete obsolescence - there is a dam effect along the border
and it extends from backward mining towns in northern
Washington next to BC's affluent Okanagan Valley to listless
Vermont farming villages half-an-hour from sophisticated
Montreal. It is contemptible that a vinyl-sided bidonville
like Kitchener-Waterloo grows feverishly while stately
Buffalo, equidistant to Toronto, with its venerable
neighbourhoods and Frederick Law Olmsted trimmed parks slides
further into oblivion. There is enough to entice both
immigrants and the members of burgeoning Toronto's creative
class to relocate to the Buffalo area rather than spilling
into mundane, sleepy bedroom communities like Barrie or
Cobourg. Certainly, the American department for Homeland
Security does no favours; the average waiting time for a
border checks has increased since 9/11 and measures are in
place now to make it even more asinine.
I propose a system similar to what awaits gringos leaving
south from Tijuana. Entrance to Buffalo from Fort Erie will
allow holders of an approved Us-Canada border EZPass free
access over a tire-shredder and a toll booth. Further out of
Buffalo on all routes, cars will be subject to more intense
border checks similar to what is currently de rigueur. All
Buffalo area merchants should be able to take Canadian
currency at par, similar handgun laws to what is acceptable in
Ontario should be the rule for Erie county and Canadians will
not be subject to tariffs for transactions within the Buffalo
Security Region.
Of course much of this is highly unrealistic, but how long can
Buffalonians - or perhaps most jarringly, people of Niagara
Falls, NY - afford to stare across the border at this sort of
unbridled growth while they themselves are locked in a
self-imposed periphery that thwarts their only chance at
economic success?
For more on the topic of
immigration, growth and sustainability, check out the
discussion forum.
―――
At long last, I'm extremely
proud to present Colin Kent's Dos
Días en La Habana, a collection of 117 photos taken in the
gorgeous Cuban capital. Photographs of Havana, Colin notes in
his introduction, too often depict a sort of ghost city, "aesthetically
unique but empty and impersonal, left to crumble, anticipating
some scour of archeologists and amateur European and Canadian
photographers." Colin and I hope that this photoessay captures
the real essence ― that is, the humanity ― of one of the
world's most fascinating metropolises.
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Head over to the archives for
last month's posts
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