Tel Père, Tel Fils

La Rochelle, France

Montreal, Quebec

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Little England in India

If only the bus were a little more red and a little less boxy, I could have sworn I was in South Kensington or Knightsbridge in London rather than in Mumbai. The double decker bus, the Victorian Gothic architecture — a common inheritance of the British empire that is at once familiar and strange. I did not spend long enough in Mumbai to explore further the lingering British influence and how it had been adapted to local circumstances.

I wonder if people on their first visit from Mumbai to London have that same mix of feelings of déjà vu and novelty.

Language in Toulouse

Toulouse is a large, cosmopolitan but relaxed and laid back southern French city. It feels like it has as much in common with nearby Spain as with northern France.

The bilingual street signs here are a tantalising reminder of how the city’s history could have been different. Had Occitanie remained a distinct culture and society from that of Northern France, Toulouse would have been its capital. Perhaps the street signs would have Occitan on top, and might not even be accompanied by a French translation.

In fact, you will not see Occitan on commercial signs, or hear it spoken on the streets (or, at least, I did not) in Toulouse — after French, Arabic and English predominate. And yet, the bilingual street signs serve as a reminder that, although clearly integrated for a long time into the French Republic, there is something distinctively Toulousain. This is an example of the use of language as a common shared heritage, a cultural signifier, if you will, rather than simply as a means of communication.

Riga: Language and the City

Having travelled in other parts of Eastern Europe when younger, I was excited about my first trip to Riga, Latvia, a few months ago. I was not sure exactly what to expect but had an idea that it would feel more developed than other parts of Eastern Europe while still bearing quite some traces of its communist past. The prosperity of the city surprised me – it feels like a wealthy Scandinavian city and, indeed, it has many cultural and business ties to Scandinavia. I did not feel during the course of my week there any hint of a communist inheritance.

I was also curious to see how the ethnic Latvians and ethnic Russians co-existed in this Baltic city. Having read up on Riga before my trip, I knew that Riga is about 42% ethnic Latvian and about 42% ethnic Russian, and thus was not surprised to hear quite a lot of Russian spoken in the streets. It did not take me long to find out that there is indeed some antagonism between the two groups.

What I was not prepared for, however, was the complete lack of any signage in Russian. I do not know what the law is there, but it does not appear to consist of having a Latvian sign at least twice as big as a Russian sign. I saw plenty of English signs. Russian was most noticeable for its absence.

I cannot decide if this is a good or a bad thing – the Latvians were unwillingly taken over by the Russian-dominated Soviet Union, and their culture almost destroyed. Independence provided them with a precious chance to protect and restore their culture. On the other hand, Russians are, unless they are willing to Latvianise, clearly treated like second class citizens. I met one Russian who used a Latvianised spelling on his business cards, but used his native Russian spelling to sign his e-mails.

I sympathise with both groups and cannot help but compare and contrast the situation in Riga with that in Montreal, which it seems to resemble more greatly than that in other bilingual cities such as Brussels. Is it the difficulty in reconciling the conflicting demands of justice for a minority within a minority?

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Finding the Light in Tokyo

On my last trip to Tokyo I could not help but remember how important it was when living there to choose an apartment with sufficient light — something I now take for granted since I moved to Los Angeles. When I first moved to Tokyo, I looked at an apartment in the building on the left, on the second floor, the second apartment in. The balcony, which is barely visible, provided the only real source of light. Needless to say, I did not take that apartment.

But other buildings do more to maximize natural light. In the photo below, which I took from my hotel room on a recent visit to the city, note how the taller buildings have a graduated set back as the floors go up, thereby increasing the amount of light available to those on lower floors. I am not sure if this set back is mandated by planning codes and, if it is, whether that has always been the case.

Parking in the City, At What Price?

It would be nice if everyone got around by public transport, but the reality in North America is that a majority of people in most cities get around primarily by car. This is true even in Montreal, which has the continent’s highest per-capita rate of public transit ridership. Accommodating the car, then, has always been a tricky balancing act. This is especially true for parking, much of which falls under the direct control of the government. How much should be provided—and for how much?

A couple of days ago, an article appeared in the New York Times by Donald Shoup, author of a book called The High Cost of Free Parking. In order to cut down on the traffic caused by drivers’ circling around waiting for street parking to free up, rather than paying for more expensive private garages, he argues that congested cities should raise parking rates. “A national study of downtown parking found that the average price of curb parking is only 20 percent that of parking in a garage, giving drivers a strong incentive to cruise,” he writes. In other words, cities are subsidizing street parking, which discourages motorists from seeking out market-rate garage spots.

Recently, Montreal decided to increase the price of downtown parking, presumably guided by this logic as well as a desire to increase its revenues. New York may be a case in point but, in Montreal, shoppers have not only a choice between driving or taking public tranport downtown, but also a choice to avoid downtown entirely in favour of suburban shopping malls with ample amounts of free parking. Can tinkering with the prices address the fear of a downtown decline?

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Typographic Tokyo

Korean snack stand in Tokyo. Photo by Yohei Morita

My wife and I lived in Tokyo from 1992 till 1998. We spent a week here in 2000 and I am now back here for a week in 2007. It is a tantalising experience—it seems familiar in so many ways and yet subtly different, like a Star Trek teleportation that did not quite fully work!

Before, as a foreigner in Tokyo, I rarely drew as much attention as I did when I travelled outside Tokyo. This time, though, I am really struck by how many people here have grown up used to seeing foreigners. We no longer seem to be an issue. People no longer express surprise at a white person speaking Japanese—it is simply seen as the common language of communication, much as French is in Montreal.

I have been particularly struck as to how I now see signs in both Chinese and Korean. Over and over, I have been told that co-hosting the soccer world cup with Korea broke the ice between the two historic rivals. Noticeable Chinese and Korean investment in and around Tokyo may also be part of it.

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What Language Does Your City Speak?

That a metropolis is multilingual is often taken as a given, but multilingualism takes many forms.

Usually, multilingualism comes from recent immigration, as first- and second-generation immigrants continue to speak their ancestral tongue. In that regard, such multilingualism may be seen as a challenge to the existing norm. In Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley, just east of downtown Los Angeles, the population is mostly of Chinese descent and, as one might expect, most commercial signs are in Chinese. Every so often, the language of signs in the valley becomes a political issue, as the area’s longer-established non-Chinese residents wonder whether signs should be required to contain English or even be English-only.

I recently visited Dublin, which was very homogeneous when I grew up there but which has recently received many immigrants from eastern Europe. I was a little surprised, when wandering around, to see café signs advertising IHTEPHET (Russian for “internet”). Clearly, commercial signs follow bottom-up demand from the local inhabitants, since the signs are there to cater to them and to attract their attention.

Vying with this natural use of language is a more top-down form of language planning. This may be done to foster use of an official language seen as being under threat, such as French in Montreal, or Gaelic in Dublin, where, for example, all buses headed downtown bear the sign An Lár (“the centre”), even though nobody would use that in normal English speech. Although I largely support this use of language planning, this may be seen as action by a government which does not trust that the official language can survive commercial competition.

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Los Angeles vs. Orange County

When they think of Los Angeles, people outside Southern California probably think of urban sprawl and freeways. In fact, although historically low rise in its built form, Los Angeles is quite densely populated. Nevertheless, when I moved to Los Angeles from central Tokyo in 1999, my first impression of life here was that Los Angeles conformed to the stereotype: vast, suburban and not very cosmopolitan.

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