Calgary’s Urban Renaissance?

In January, I wrote about Calgary’s seemingly unstoppable sprawl into the countryside. Although I outlined some positive developments, it was by and large a negative portrayal of what’s happening in this city of just over a million inhabitants.

Thankfully, the story is a bit different in the inner city. Given the age in which Calgary has grown, its inner areas mostly lack the rich urban fabric possessed by older centres. Indeed, there are only a handful of true “urban” neighbourhoods in the city. Recently, though, these areas have seen an unprecedented wave of development, adding new vibrancy to central Calgary. But this boom is not without its downsides: the inner city is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

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Creating the Surreal in Kansas City

Today, I wafted about the western portion of Kansas City, Missouri’s downtown loop, giddy and elated at the proposition of indulging in my guiltiest pleasure—high dynamic range photography, or HDR. Actually, what I’ve done is more properly known as tone mapping. To put it simply, these tone-mapped photos have been digitally manipulated to reveal as much detail as possible. The effect is somewhat surreal.

In this place photographed dwells the main Kansas City Public Library, converted lofts and condos, office uses, and the occasional fine (and sometimes not so fine) restaurants.

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This City Was Built on Urban Sprawl

It’s a snowless December night in Calgary and there’s just a hint of chill in the air as I wander down quiet streets, jacket open. I’m on my way to Broken City, a deliberately ramshackle bar on Eleventh Avenue where I’ve arranged to meet a handful of people from the Calgary Urban Initiative (CUI), an upstart group of young Calgarians concerned with the development of their city. There’s a first-year university student, a real estate agent, an art school slacker, even an orchestral musician who plays bass for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.

Then there’s Josh White, a master’s student in urban planning at Queen’s University and the group’s founder. “I started CUI to give more voice to citizens of Calgary who want to help push it in a more urban, diverse and cosmopolitan direction,” he explains to me. The Calgary that White envisions is one that is high-density, transit-friendly, pedestrian-oriented and architecturally sophisticated. His hometown, he says, “is at a critical juncture. Either Calgary will simply grow and become an unremarkable place, or it can develop into an extremely livable and interesting city.”

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The City in One Street

The past few months haven’t been kind to St. Laurent Boulevard, known locally as the Main. Work crews have been haphazardly tearing up the street, doing their best to scare away anyone in the mood for a light-hearted stroll. The local business association cheerfully warns its members to expect a twenty percent drop in business until the construction is finished next year.

By than, hopefully, the Main will have spacious and elegant new sidewalks, the better to accommodate the throngs of people who flock to Montreal’s consummate street, the long, straight artery that has been the scene for immigrant dramas, artistic revalations and drunken all-nighters. Over the next several weeks, look forward to a special focus on the history, culture and streetlife of the Main.

Kansas City’s Garment District

The Garment District, in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, is a geographically small part of downtown, but nonetheless exudes an enjoyable glimpse into the city’s architectural history. In this area, formerly used for clothing manufacturing, one now finds a Folger’s Coffee plant, among other industrial uses, plus lofts, offices, bars, restaurants, and a jazz club.

Check out the entire set.

The Age of Chinese Laundries

Chong Sing Laundry, Notre Dame Street

The Chinese laundry seems like such an inexplicable stereotype. References to them still exist—witness Abercrombie and Fitch’s infamous “Wong Brothers Laundry Service” t-shirt from several years back—yet Chinese laundries long ago vanished from the North American landscape. There are no indications today why Chinese people would ever be associated with the laundry trade.

Sixty years ago, the link was more evident. In 1949, Montreal was home to 231 Chinese laundries and they were a fixture of every neighbourhood and every commercial street in the city. Twenty years before that, the number was even higher: 405 Chinese laundries in a city with less than a million people.

Over at Coolopolis, Kristian and J.D. Gravenor—authors of the indispensable book Montreal: The Unknown City—have been digging up all sorts of great material on Montreal’s Chinese laundries, including a fascinating interactive map that charts the location of every single one of them. (The densest concentrations were in the east end of downtown, around the old Forum, near the Main and in Mile End.) These laundries—not to mention the very history of the local Chinese community—are an oft-overlooked facet of Montreal’s past.

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Waiting for the Bus: Vancouver

The Other Side of Goa

Most people’s image of Goa involves a combination of beaches, drugs, all-night raves, and burnt out hippies. Few come here to take in the Portuguese heritage of Panaji, its capital city. This is the side of Goa that captured my attention.

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Gung Hay Fat Choy: Notes from Vancouver

Candy-apple pig’s heads in a chocolate shop in downtown Vancouver

For a Montrealer, visiting Vancouver in mid-February is eerie, at once a glimpse of the future and a visit to some alternate dimension. Fountains gurgle, people sit in sidewalk cafés and flowers are starting to bloom—it’s strange to experience this without having to pass through customs or change currency. No wonder why Vancouver is seen by many Canadians as something akin to our own Hawaii.

It seems fitting, then, that the weather was so springlike as Vancouver rang in the Lunar New Year, also known in Chinese as the Spring Festival. More than anywhere else in North America, the Lunar New Year here is mainstream. A decade ago, it was an essentially ethnic celebration, like in most other cities. Now, it has been fully integrated into the cultural and economic life of Vancouver, just one indication that this city is becoming like Hawaii in more ways than just as a destination for escape. Like the American state, Vancouver is transforming into a multicultural, majority-Asian society.

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The Subway Every Day

F train, 8:40am. Photo by Travis Ruse

Whenever I try to read on the bus or metro, my eyes invariably slide up and over to the other passengers on board. Considering I will never see most of them again, reading their faces is far more interesting than whatever book or magazine I have in front of me.

It would seem I’m not alone. For more than two years, photoblogger Travis Ruse has been haunting the subway tunnels of New York, documenting the people on his daily commute. What stands out is not his subject matter—subway life has been documented by photographers going all the way back to Walker Evans in 1938—but his unique ability to capture, on a daily basis and with surprising intimacy, the human richness of New York mass transit.

R train, 6:35pm. Photo by Travis Ruse

In the Neon Glow of Granville Street

When Fred Herzog hung out on Granville Street in the late fifties, it was one of those ballsy main streets that people most often associate with film noir and hard-boiled detective stories. The view down Granville from Robson Street revealed a seemingly endless procession of classic neon signs, their soft glow a welcome sign of colour and warmth in the Pacific drizzle. Granville’s slow decline into sleaze mirrored that of many other Great White Ways, not the least of which was the original Great White Way itself, Times Square.

In the late 1990s, when Vancouver city planners were looking for ways to revitalize Granville, they sought inspiration from its own past. Teaming up with heritage activists and business owners, the city ambitiously promoted the restoration of vintage neon signs. More modern forms of glitz and illumination were added, like the giant video screens on a new retail complex at the corner of Robson. Granville has since been revived as an entertainment centre were bars are allowed to stay open until 4am.

Although you’d expect this to homogenize the street, turning it into just a cheesy collection of bad bars, Starbucks and Urban Outfitters, Granville’s gritty character has proven tenacious. For all of that hard scrubbing, there’s still a lot of dirt left behind the ears.

Disneyopolis

New development in Orlando. Photo by David Burnett

“Everything happening to America today is happening here,” writes T.D. Allman in the latest issue of National Geographic. He’s talking about Orlando, the sprawling urban region in Central Florida that is most famously home to Disney World. For Allman, Orlando represents the next generation of American cities, a vast and diffuse cornubation that is truly a manufactured landscape. His article is an intriguing and unsettling look at the future of urban America.

Allman starts by sketching a brief history of Disney World, without which, a local saying goes, “the Orlando region would be called Ocala, a rival town up the road.” It is a history as murky as the water in Orlando’s sludge-filled lakes, made possible by a “sweetheart deal with the state legislature” that places the Magic Kingdom “above and beyond the law.” State safety inspectors cannot examine Disney’s rides and the people who live on Disney’s property—in the faux-historic subdivision of Celebration, or in time-share condos—have no say in how it is managed. Everything about Disney World is carefully designed and controlled, a legacy of Walt Disney’s consternation over the dreary suburban landscape of motels and strip malls that quickly engulfed his original Disneyland in California.

Visiting or living in the Magic Kingdom is an experience beyond reality. In a way, the same can be said of Orlando. Allman certainly makes his case. “The most telling theme park in Orlando isn’t even Disney’s,” he writes.

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Black Watch, Secret Smile

Quebec City Tour: Rue Couillard

One of my favourite streets in old Quebec is rue Couillard. It is narrow, mostly residential, and less than 0.2 km long. The street lies on a wavy tangent off the main tourist strip. There are surprises around every bend: New France cottages built in the 1600s, Victorian-era monasteries, and early 20th-century apartment buildings. Let’s go for a walk.

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