A New Way to Eat the City

Over the holidays, the Tyee, a Vancouver-based webzine, published a series of twelve “New Ideas for the New Year.” Here’s one that really caught my attention: planting fruit trees on city streets.

While the benefits of greening the city are well-known — street trees provide shade, suck up storm water, remove carbon from the atmosphere and reduce the urban heat island effect — the notion of actually eating the things we plant in our streets is still quite novel. By doing so, however, we would gain an important local food supply and a way to bring people together.

That has been the experience of the Edible Campus, a container garden on McGill University’s downtown Montreal campus that I wrote about last November. Over the course of last year’s growing season, it produced one third of the food needed by Santropol Roulant, a meals on wheels service, and drew together a diverse group of volunteers who helped maintain the garden.

What really struck me, though, was the way that ordinary passersby used the garden. People make a point to pass through what had previously been an barren concrete space between a Brutalist highrise and the entrace to underground lecture halls. They stopped to examine the plants, sat on the benches near the garden, and walked through a wood archway that had been erected in the midst of the containers. Little kids were especially delighted when they ran around the garden, which must seem more like a forest when you’re three feet tall.

Fruit-bearing street trees could have a similar effect. Cultivation would be a communal activity; imagine a neighbourhood apple-picking festival. The Tyee goes even further by suggesting that fruit trees could reinforce neighbourhood identities and immigrant cultures, much in the same way that community gardens allow people to plant varieties of fruits and vegetables that are hard to find in Canada.

In Vancouver, the parks commission has already started planting 600 fruit trees in city parks; community groups will harvest the fruit when it’s ready in three to five years. Meanwhile, the Fruit Tree Project arranges with homeowners to collect fruit from under-picked trees on their property. The harvested fruit is donated to community kitchens and people in need.

Here in Montreal, there is a far more limited variety of fruits that could be grown. Still, climate would not be as much an obstacle to fruit trees as the risk of neglect and mistreatment. For years, street trees weren’t given enough space to grow, and many sidewalk planters were left unprotected by grates, as anyone who has tripped into one can attest.

Since it passed a “Politique de l’arbre” in 2005, the city has cleaned up its act, but Montrealers haven’t: hundreds of trees are killed each year because of vandalism.

West End Dusk

Over the bridge and into Vancouver’s West End.

Indo-Fijians, Filipinos and Romanians

Winnipeg: it’s a long way from the Philippines. Photo by Jezz

I’ve been pouring over the new 2006 census data on language and immigration released by Statistics Canada last week. Nationally, all of the attention is being paid to the fact that one-fifth of all Canadians are foreign-born, one of the highest rates in the world. Here in Montreal, the focus is on both a surge in immigration (especially from North Africa and China) and the changing linguistic makeup of the city.

Francophones — people whose mother tongue is French — are now a minority on Montreal Island, thanks mostly to high levels of immigration from non-francophone countries. The number of anglophones, meanwhile, has increased for the first time in 30 years. Arabic, Spanish and Chinese have become the fastest-growing non-official languages in Montreal.

But enough with the big picture news; it has already been dissected ad infinitum in the media. What interests me are some of the odd, surprising and overlooked trends in immigration that are having an impact on Canada’s cities.

Indo-Fijians in Vancouver

Looking through the census data, I wasn’t surprised to see that nearly 17 percent of Vancouver’s population now speaks a Chinese language, and I certainly wasn’t surprised to see that China and India were its top sources of immigrants. I was a bit surprised, however, to note that there are more than 17,200 immigrants from Fiji who live in Vancouver. Most of them arrived before 1991, but enough came between 2001 and 2006 (1,670) to make the tiny Pacific island Vancouver’s fifteenth-largest source of new immigrants, after Mexico and before Afghanistan.

People from Fiji have been immigrating to Canada since the 1960s and most of them have landed in Vancouver. The vast majority are Indo-Fijian and they have a distinct sense of cultural identity, not unlike other immigrants of Indian descent from countries like Guyana.

Filipinos in Winnipeg

Winnipeg is not normally a major draw for immigrants, yet it has become one of the principal centres of Filipino immigration to Canada. Winnipeg is home to Canada’s third-largest Filipino population despite being the eighth-largest city (even then, at 694,000 inhabitants, it has only a couple of thousand more people than Hamilton). 6,885 Filipino immigrants arrived in Winnipeg between 2001 and 2006, more than three times as many people as the city’s second-largest source of new immigrants, India. One-fifth of all immigrants in Winnipeg, or roughly 25,000 people, come from the Philippines.

The reason why so many Filipino immigrants settle in Winnipeg is obvious: friends and family who are already there. That’s the case for most immigrants across Canada, whatever their origin and wherever they choose to live. But what is especially notable is that Winnipeg has maintained such a large Filipino community despite continually losing people — both native- and foreign-born — to other provinces.

More

New West and the Fraser River

Like the Saint-Laurent, Vancouver’s Fraser is a workhorse of a river. Industrial islands and seemingly endless log booms make for an interesting and active landscape, very different from the bulk of imagery one typically sees of Vancouver’s waterfront. These photos were taken from above in November, 2007.

Steps

The Vancouver Art Gallery’s steps on Robson St.

It would hardly be an original observation to point out that a simple set of steps can become a well-used hangout. One of the world’s most famous public spaces is, after all, known as the Spanish Steps. But for all their ubiquity, only some steps become popular places to sit. What makes some gathering places and others just passages to somewhere else?

There are at least three key elements to making a successful set of hangout steps. The first is openness: no matter how wide they actually are, the steps must feel and appear accessible. People should feel comfortable sitting on them, which won’t happen if they’re getting in the way of passersby. The second element is location: the steps need to be located in a high-traffic area where people would actually want to sit down. Finally, the steps must have a view: there’s no point in sitting somewhere if there’s nothing to look at.

The steps in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery are one of Vancouver’s favourite gathering spaces precisely because they fill all of these criteria. They don’t actually lead anywhere — the entrance at the top of the steps has been sealed off — so they serve no purpose other than as seats in an urban amphitheatre. Similar are the steps at Montreal’s Place des Arts. Their panorama view of busy Ste. Catherine St. and the city beyond attracts a lot of people, but they’re broad enough that sitting on them doesn’t impede access to the second-storey plaza to which they lead.

In London, the steps around the statue of “Eros” (actually the “Angel of Christian Charity”) in Picadilly Circus and the sundial at the Seven Dials are popular gathering spots (even if, in the last case, there are only two steps on which to sit). Quite possibly my favourite set of steps, however, are those in front of the Arts Building at McGill University, from which the entire city seems to unfold.

McGill University’s “Arts steps” in downtown Montreal

A Night Market in a Suburban Parking Lot

You can’t find an urban tradition more firmly rooted in Asia’s cities than the night market. Since emerging in Tang dynasty China, about 1,200 years ago, they have become a quintessential part of the urban experience in Taiwan, Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, night markets are so firmly rooted they have spawned an entire cuisine of street foods known as xiao chi, or “small eats.”

Now, just as Chinese immigrants brought the night market tradition to other parts of Asia, they have taken it across the Pacific. The largest night market in North American can be found in Richmond, a flat, sprawling suburb of Vancouver about a twenty minute drive south of downtown. Since it first emerged in a shopping mall parking lot in 2000, the Richmond Night Market has grown into a 400-stall behemoth that draws up to 35,000 people per night. It is held every weekend between May and October, from 7pm to midnight. Although most of the people who visit the night market are Asian, including many Chinese — all of the announcements over the PA system are in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and signs on nearly all stalls are in English and Chinese — it still manages to attract a fairly diverse crowd of Vancouverites, especially as it has gained attention in the English-language media.

Unlike its Asian counterparts, the Richmond Night Market does not take place in the confines of a street. Instead, it’s held in a vast open space, sandwiched between the Fraser River and an industrial park, accessible only by car. But the stalls are arranged in rows, creating the illusion of a crowded lane. Despite its distinctly suburban setting, it offers a kind of outdoor space of interaction that is normally foreign to the suburbs. This is especially true in the most crowded part of the market, around the food vendors. Amidst the odd scent of curried fish balls and miniature donuts, thousands of hungry people munch red bean pancakes, barbecued squid, noodle soup and tong shui.

Despite its popularity, though, the night market’s future is threatened. Earlier this year, its landlord decided not to renew its lease, perhaps seeing development opportunity in its waterfront location. Even with strong support from City Hall, the Richmond tourism bureau and the local chamber of commerce, the market has been unable to find a home for its upcoming 2008 season. It would need at least 15 acres to operate, but finding such a large chunk of open space in Richmond is a huge challenge.

Recognizing the market’s potential both as a tourist attraction and an incubator for small businesses, one Richmond city councillor proposed creating a permanent market space underneath the guideway of the Canada Line, an elevated railway that will link Richmond to Vancouver in 2009. “When I was in Beijing, I saw markets under the roadways and overpasses. They utilize any available space,” he told the Richmond News.

While the councillor’s proposal would do nothing to solve the night market’s immediate need for space, it is a brilliant long-term solution. Not only would it reduce the need for parking, it would create a hub of activity around the Canada Line, which is already attracting new high-density development. Wouldn’t it be fitting if the Richmond Night Market, so suburban until now, ultimately ended up resembling its more urban counterparts across the Pacific?

More

Through the Door

Toy surname association, East Georgia St.

Single room occupancy hotel, East Georgia St.

Greeting card and lai see shop, Pender St.

In a Shop Sign, An Evocation of Home

I was a bit surprised, earlier this year, to see what appeared to be the Fairwood logo while walking along Ste. Catherine St. in downtown Montreal. Fairwood, you see, is a well-known fast food chain in Hong Kong, one that serves cha chaan teng-style food. Its distinctive orange logo looks like a cross between a paint splotch and someone jumping.

It turned out that the logo — or at least a close approximation — was part of a sign for Damao, a new Chinese restaurant. It reminded me of other, similar references to Hong Kong businesses I’d seen across Canada. In Calgary, at the corner of Centre Street and 3rd Avenue, there’s a Chinese bookstore named PageOne — which also happens to be one of Hong Kong’s largest bookstore chains. In Richmond, just outside Vancouver, where even big box stores have Chinese signs, Staples’ name is rendered as Seung mo — not coincidentally, the name of a large stationery store in Hong Kong.

It’s clear that these names deliberately evoke those of well-known counterparts in Hong Kong. Rather than simply being knock-offs, they are probably meant to draw customers by associating themselves, quite explicitly, with the quality of an established brands. I wonder, though, is this a phenomenon unique to Hong Kong Chinese in Canada, or does the same thing happen in other immigrant communities?

Rebuilding Woodwards

For as long as I have been visiting Vancouver, the abandoned Woodwards department store has loomed over the Downtown Eastside, a hulking reminder of the neighbourhood’s long decline into commercial and social oblivion. For more than a decade, developers and government squabbled over what to do with the site. In 2002, an organized squat took control of the building, demanding that it be converted into social housing.

The next year, the City of Vancouver purchased the building and started a public consultation project that eventually led to a unique $300 million redevelopment plan. Most of the building was demolished, except for a chunk at the corner of Hastings and Abbott, and it is in the process of being replaced by a large mixed-use complex that will incorporate 536 units of market-rate housing, 125 units of social housing for singles, 75 units of social housing for families, a supermarket, a drug store, retail space, government offices, a daycare, space for non-profit organizations, Simon Fraser University’s new art school, and green space.

For the most part, Woodwards has been hailed by many as an example of what can be achieved when the community comes together with public and private sectors to shape urban development. I’m inclined to agree: it serves as a model for future development on the Downtown Eastside, one that will reconcile market interests with those of a community riven by deep social problems.

The challenge now is how to deal with spinoff development, to ensure that enough social housing and social services are provided to counterbalance the effects of new market-rate condo construction.

The Concrete Charm of Joyce Station

It was a dull, overcast day when I decided to take the SkyTrain a few extra stops east to Joyce Station, in the East Vancouver neighbourhood of Collingwood.

I’m not sure what I expected, but I wasn’t entirely disappointed. I emerged from the station onto Joyce Street’s commercial strip, dominated almost entirely by Chinese and Filipino businesses. This part of Joyce, and indeed the whole area next to the SkyTrain tracks, is an odd mixture of low-slung postwar buildings and much newer condominium towers, built in the 1980s and 90s as part of a strategy to create high-density nodes around transit hubs. It still feels oddly suburban, despite the highrises, but there’s enough of a streetlife near the station to compensate for that.

The station, in fact, is pretty striking. It is beautiful in its functionality, a utilitarian structure that resembles nothing so much as an electrical substation. There’s something eminently appealing about this kind of simple, unassuming architecture, unafraid to serve as a backdrop to the posters, newspaper boxes and other bits of urban life that manifest themselves around train stations.

More

Vancouver Decorates Its Sidewalks

Don’t talk to my friend Sam about sidewalk decoration. He’ll snort and expound upon the many ways in which it’s useless. I take a more sympathetic position towards it: I think it enhances the pedestrian experiences, especially if the decoration combines aesthetic or artistic value with practical or historical information. At its best, it creates a sense of place and yet another interesting detail in the urban fabric.

On many downtown Vancouver sidewalks, the shape of leaves have been stamped into the pavement beneath a street tree. There’s something playful and childlike about them; I find it hard to imagine roughneck construction workers actually taking a moment to draw fallen leaves in the wet concrete they just poured. I especially like the fact that a variety of leaves are represented.

Elsewhere around town, twelve mosaics created of Vancouver scenes by local artists have been installed in the sidewalk as part of an Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association initiative. Some of the mosaic images are a bit cliché — no doubt the BIA had a hand in picking the themes — but some are nice homages to overlooked bits of Vancouver heritage, like a collage of Vancouver’s most notable architectural features and a jumble of famous neon signs.

Two more features that caught my eye in Vancouver: in Chinatown, the Chinese versions of the neighbourhood’s street names have been inscribed in gold-plated characters on the sidewalk and on the base of lampposts.

On busy streets like Burrard, the word “LOOK” has been stencilled into the pavement to prevent pedestrians from stepping into curbside traffic. With its green backdrop and owl eyes, it’s far more eye-catching than the “Look Right” signs found throughout London and Hong Kong.

Vancouver Furnishes Its Sidewalks

Downtown Vancouver has an abundance of high-quality new street furniture, thanks in large part to a proactive planning department that gives developers density bonuses in exchange for public amenities. So far, developers have paid for countless water features, a good number of parks, social housing, a permanent home for the Vancouver International Film Festival and even a new elementary school. But they have also shelled out for some small but important pieces of street furniture. Montreal could learn a few lessons.

The strange-looking bike rack above is a nice example. I found it on Davie Street near the corner of Seymour, just outside a large new condo complex. It is both attractive and functional, which is something that cannot be said for the woefully misguided bicycle rack design that is the standard across Montreal.

Like Montreal, Vancouver does not maintain street recycling bins. Unlike Montreal, though, it has come up with an ingeniously simple way to make sure that bottles and cans are recycled nonetheless. Many garbage cans in the city feature a “recycling rack” with room for five containers; put your bottle there and, soon enough, someone will take it to the bottle depot to cash its deposit. Vancouver has a virtual army of men and women who scour garbage cans for anything with a deposit value so these recycling racks are never full for long.

Many newly-developed residential areas in downtown Vancouver include superbly-designed parks and plazas. One of these, George Wayburn Park, includes a row of permanent metal sunchairs that face False Creek and the afternoon sun. It’s a nice touch that adds a bit of playfulness to its surroundings.

There are few legal spaces for postering in Montreal. You can stick a poster onto any construction hoarding, but these are monopolized by an advertising company called Publicité sauvage. There are also a handful of poster boards in the Quartier des spectacles and outlying boroughs like Lachine. In the most heavily trafficked places in town — exactly where legal postering space is needed the most — people are forced to glue their posters illegally to mailboxes, lampposts and other surfaces.

Vancouver is far more accommodating: hundreds of lampposts around the city have been fitted with casts to which anyone can stick a poster. City workers clear them every Tuesday.

Five Minutes at Burrard and Robson

Robson and Burrard, Vancouver’s busiest corner

Home Sweet Flophouse

A single-room occupancy hotel in Vancouver

Today’s Guardian features an article on a new generation of Japanese — most of them young men — unable to afford homes. They spend their days either unemployed or working at menial jobs; at night, they float between 24-hour internet cafés and capsule hotels.

“According to a recent government survey of the people the media has dubbed ‘net café refugees’, 5,400 people spend at least half the week living in cafés such as Manga Square, though most have little or no interest in the internet,” the Guardian reports. “Instead, they are attracted by the low cost of a night’s accommodation, an expanding array of services and the sympathetic attitude of café owners.” A night at a net café costs about $8.70 per night — double if you include dinner.

In some ways, living in an internet café is really just a novel take on an old standby: the flophouse. These cheap “cubicle hotels,” along with their slightly more upscale cousins, the single-room occupancy hotel (SRO), have traditonally offered low daily rates for a modest amount of private space. They flourished in North American cities until the 1960s, when they slowly began to disappear, with no tears shed from municipal authorities who saw them as a blight.

New York’s Bowery was especially famous for its flophouses. In the 1930s and 40s, up to 25,000 “Bowery bums” spent their lives on the street, many of them residing in its 100 flophouses. Today, just a few of those hotels remain; the rest were long ago purged by housing reform, urban renewal and gentrification. In Vancouver, an abundance of SROs has been whittled down to a mere handful as they have been converted into hostels, hotels or condos.

More