Car Free Day! TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF VANCOUVER, 09.08.04 : SUNSET ON ENGLISH BAY BEACH MONTREAL, 14.08.04 : SUNDAY ON THE MAIN VANCOUVER, 09.08.04 : SUNSET ON ENGLISH BAY BEACH MONTREAL, 14.08.04 : PIGEON-FILLED PARK NEAR CONCORDIA VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : CORNER OF DAVIE AND DENMAN MONTREAL, 10.08.04 : MCGILL COLLEGE AVENUE VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : DAVIE STREET IN YALETOWN MONTREAL, 14.08.04 : TAXI DRIVER ON ST-LAURENT VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : JAPANESE KIDS ON ROBSON STREET MONTREAL, 14.08.04 : HOUSE ON ST-DOMINIQUE STREET VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : HOUSES NEAR MAIN STREET MONTREAL, 10.08.04 : LINEUP OUTSIDE SCHWARTZ'S DELI VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : LUCKY 8 GROCERY, MAIN STREET MONTREAL, 14.08.04 : COFFEE ON THE MAIN Tomorrow, September 22, is worldwide Car Free Day. More than a thousand cities will close streets to vehicular traffic, hitting home the message that cars are responsible for making our cities dirty, noisy and dangerous. Some major cities aren't participating, probably for varying different reasons. Some, like Atlanta, simply could not exist without cars. Others, like Tokyo, get along so well with extensive public transit, millions of pedestrians and thousands of bicycles that every day is a sort of de facto Car Free Day. Still, plenty of places big and small will be celebrating car freedom in some way or another. After a roaring (or rather, pavement-pounding) success last year, Montreal will be holding its second "En ville, sans ma voiture!" event. Downtown, Ste-Catherine and all sidestreets will be closed between McGill College and St-Urbain; on the Plateau, Mont-Royal Avenue and all sidestreets will be closed between Berri and De La Roche. In Toronto, no streets will be closed but round-table discussions, speeches and concerts will be held throughout the day. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for last month's posts New Deal dead? Not really WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF VANCOUVER, 09.08.04 : ENGLISH BAY BEACH VANCOUVER, 09.08.04 : NIGHTTIME IN THE WEST END VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : VANCOUVER ART GALLERY, GEORGIA ST. VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : GIRL WITH UNICORN TATTOO VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : VIEW FROM HASTINGS AND MAIN VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : WOMAN ON PENDER STREET VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : GORE AND GEORGIA, CHINATOWN VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : HOUSE AND DELIVERY TRUCK, WEST END VANCOUVER, 10.08.04 : SUNSET ON ENGLISH BAY VANCOUVER, 14.08.04 : MORNING IN THE WEST END VANCOUVER, 14.08.04 : BLOCK PARTY IN THE WEST END VANCOUVER, 14.08.04 : CHINATOWN NIGHT MARKET VANCOUVER, 14.08.04 : CHINATOWN NIGHT MARKET VANCOUVER, 14.08.04 : CHINATOWN NIGHT MARKET In today's Globe and Mail, columnist Lysiane Gagnon argues that the much-vaunted new deal for cities is dead. The Martin government, she writes, has successfully diluted the issue by transforming it from help for big cities to help for "all municipalities, large or small." Money that should be used to fix public transit and fight poverty in Toronto and Vancouver will now be spread over every town and rural municipality in the land. Urban activists like Toronto's mayor, David Miller, are left shouting at the wall. This isn't any great revelation. The transformation of the New Deal for Cities into the New Deal for Municipalities-Large-and-Small was evident as far back as February, when the Liberals were gearing up for a tight election. Besides, anyone who knows Paul Martin's track record of firm, unwavering positions on issues dear to his heart should have seen this coming. Any kind of urban renaissance in Canada will have to come from the ground up. The political hype over the New Deal stemmed mostly from Toronto, but there's no reason to believe it won't catch on in Montreal and Vancouver. If Ottawa isn't going to listen, as Gagnon suggests, the best thing to do is to support local activists and organizations that promote urban interests. Recently, Montreal saw the birth of a new political party devoted to promoting sustainable development and a higher quality of life. Projet Montréal, which will be officially launched in November, hopes to turn Montreal into "the North American prototype of urban renewal." If parties like this can garner enough support in cities across Canada, provinces and the federal government  will listen. ――― Colin Kent sends us a message from Shanghai. Although Colin is now back in Montreal, we might hear from again this fall as he sifts through his photos and memories from his pan-Asian trip. Shanghai promises too much and by most measures fails to deliver its own hyped implications. Expectations are of course and always a burden; we are, we were told too many fantastical things, many in retrospect we should have suspected. I arrived in the city with the vague hope of proving wrong those friends of mine who at a distance bemoan the city's incoherent trophycase urban design, but, disappointed, have found those derrisions irritatingly fitting.  Of which Shanghai do I speak? the foreign-designed Asian-Bombay in the centre (-west) or the brand new Nonsense to the east and around the edges?  This complicates matters because the Bund and its European-sleaze environs, larger than perhaps given credit for by those who readily dismiss it as a tourist backdrop of minimal urban significance, is impressive. It is unlike New Urban China in nearly every way, which to some is probably its major appeal. True, its waterfront promenade is disturbingly wide but it was always so; the streets within are not such and the scale, in contrast with the postmodern-designed China one becomes naturally accustomed to here, verges on claustrophobic. This is a Shanghai (with infinite exceptions beyond) of haute cuisine and humane culture, if part of the greater capitalist beacon so self-exaggerated. The Pudong New Area (named quite literally, and for the time being, accurately) is so absurdly unlike its father across the river that one initially wishes to praise the surreal combination. With time this becomes impossible. Standing outside Lu Jia Zui metro station at the centre of the already-famous glass circus (spaceballs glowing on the right, twenty-storied commercials projected onto skyscraper facades on the left), a friend suggested that the towers circling -- generously spaced apart with extravagant nothing in between; the most expensive gaps in the history of urban design if I were to bitterly guess -- represent 'the Stonehenge of the modern day'. This is to give it far too much credit. The first restaurant we patronized in the city, our first night coming in from Xiamen, has for me become a microcosm of what we would subsequently observe. The design was almost painfully stylish, an imitation of something genuinely elegant, one at times and in ways rather successful, if lacking intangibly. Sleek if nothing else, problem is that there truly was nothing else: the owners had opened up their new money-making venture (presumably a renovation of something previous), had hired interior designers and installed avant-garde lighting without giving the menu a passing thought. It was we could only assume the same crumpled plastic sheet which had served the old customers. Perhaps this is Shanghai's makeover, if so large a generalization is to be tolerated: modern and unquestionably expensive, but ultimately substance-free. It is not a walkable city, save for certain exceptional neighbourhoods. Highways rip through every possible area and regular streets feel almost as intimidating. It is not bus-able either, the system in disarray. Bikes have been relegated in many places to sidewalks where they clash violently with pedestrians. One can metro around with relative ease, but the subway is childish and nearly-useless compared to Hong Kong's or, for that matter, even Bangkok's. If you could manage not to move anywhere, ever, the city would surely be more pleasant, but that being unlikely, which is to say, as long as you want to do attempt to, who knows, 'go places,' you are resigned to a horrible stress and frustration difficult to match anywhere. Not even Delhi, the subcontinent's mess of a capital can compete with Shanghai's convoluted facelift so abruptly thrust upon the city by Beijing in a costly and obscenely superficial effort to usurp Hong Kong of it! s glory and create a powerhouse for the mainland. Technically this endeavour on the part of the PRC will work, but, and perhaps this is pig-headed, it is tempting to conclude that Hong Kong will always make more sense in this role. It will always be more original, more of a genuine place and less of a fabricated themepark for glorious egos. Then again conclusions of this sort might be imprudent, especially considering the pace of change in Shanghai. If Jinmao is any indication, it is certainly possible to (at least occassionally) achieve artistic and aesthetic sophistication simply with money and will (both of which Shanghai has in copious amounts). So maybe, given time, this crass sloppy conglomeration can fill in its wounds and pull itself together. Until then you have to hate it to enjoy it and even then you're bound to leave with that feeling you inevitably obtain by spending a nauseating amount on something probably not worth it: empty and agitated. 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