November 5th, 2010
Poble Sec, Barcelona
Je viens de quitter Madrid, après un passage à Barcelona au préalable, question de me faire une opinion sur ces villes. Et quel regard : pas celui du citadin qui connait trop bien – et donc déforme – sa vision urbaine d’une cité. Plutôt celui du voyageur, curieux et anthropologue, qui n’a que le passage et l’insouciance pour se faire une idée – un cliché au sens photographique – et dessiner une esquisse de la ville.
Déjà lorsqu’on débarque à Barcelona, au coeur de Poble Sec, à un jet de pierre du vieux Barrio Chino – El Raval – et du port industriel, poussiéreux, de l’antique cité maritime, l’on élimine tout les stéréotypes qu’on rêvait à l’écoute de l’Auberge Espagnol (Klapisch : 2002) et autres Vicky Christina Barcelona (Allen : 2008). Exit la musique, l’innocence et les courtisans, guitare à la main. Exit la ville balnéaire à l’insouciance légendaire. Nous sommes davantage dans le monde noire et migratoire de Biutiful (Iñárritu : 2010).
Barcelona, au sens du rêve, n’existe pas dans le réel, et prend forcément son ancrage dans le désir et la volonté pour la culture catalane de s’exprimer en terme de mondialisation et d’internationalisation.
Barcelona, ville encore plus désirable, de par sa substance réelle, pauvre et industrielle, riche et balnéaire dans une certaine mesure, et certainement une terre d’accueil pour les chercheurs d’asile et de refuge.
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November 1st, 2010
On this morning 255 years ago, Lisbon was one of the richest cities in the world. Wealth had been flowing in from Portugal’s colonies ever since the great wave of Portuguese exploration began in the 1400s. A new palace and opera house had recently been completed, and the 300,000 or so residents were observing one of the biggest feasts of the church calendar, All Saints Day.
Then disaster struck in the form of a massive earthquake, estimated to be about 9 on the Richter scale of intensity (by comparison, February’s Chilean quake measured 8.8 while Haiti’s one a month earlier was 7.2). Fires and a tsunami followed, and by the time fires had burned themselves out, the waterfront and much of the sumptuous new construction was gone.
But the city was rebuilt quickly, under the guidance of a man who was, in effect, probably the greatest urbanist of his day, the Marquês de Pombal. Evidence of his leadership can be seen still in the lovely centre of Lisbon.
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, a portion of London’s centre was rebuilt along lines suggested by Christopher Wren. In the early part of the 1700s, Turin had also been expanded beyond the city walls, following plans which featured squares and streets laid on grids. Pombal, acting as the king’s right hand man, and his engineers looked to both these major changes in urban structure for ideas, but in the end forged ahead to plan a new city center that was the largest urban reconstruction project ever undertaken until Napoleon III hired Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann to remake Paris more than 100 years later.
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October 3rd, 2010
It was just one night but it seems most people in Hong Kong could not go without air conditioning. Last Wednesday, about 50,000 households switched off their air-con units for Hong Kong’s first No Air Con Night, an event organized by the eco-group Green Sense to raise awareness of the environmental impact of air conditioning.
But for the remaining 2,285,000 homes in the city, it was business as usual.
“I tried to sleep without the A/C on, but it was too noisy to keep the windows open and the room heated up so fast,” one Mongkok resident said.
In just a few decades, Hong Kong has evolved into an air-con dependent city, with most people spending their days in housing estates, shopping malls and office towers that become furnaces without the cooling systems. The dependence continues at night as temperatures soar in our high-rise, heat island homes. So much so that air con accounts for 60 per cent of the city’s power consumption in summer.
When it comes to air conditioning, we seem to have built ourselves into a corner. Now, some are looking for a way out.
“Even in the 1990s, schools were not air conditioned, many buses had no air con and there were not as many shopping malls,” said Gabrielle Ho, the project manager of Green Sense. “Now the first thing people do when they get home is switch on the air con. Everywhere is so air-conditioned, people have gotten used to it.”
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September 22nd, 2010
Sidewalk fences at a typical corner in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon
Earlier this month, a pair of pedestrians tried to push their way through a crowd of people on Dundas Street, one of the most crowded streets in Hong Kong’s most crowded neighbourhood. One of them cast a withering glance on the grey metal fence that lined the sidewalk, preventing him from stepping into the road or crossing the street. “What a hassle,” he said to his friend. “That thing is such a pain.”
Every day, more than 200,000 pedestrians pass through the centre of Mongkok. At peak hours, the footpath on Dundas Street, between Sai Yeung Choi Street and the Tung Choi Street Ladies’ Market, becomes so crowded that many people choose to dodge cars and minibuses instead of walking on the packed sidewalk.
In June, the Highways Department hoped to put a stop to that unruly behaviour by installing a long, impermeable fence along the entire length of the sidewalk. But the barrier seems to have had the opposite of its intended effect. On a recent Thursday evening, hundreds of people could be seen walking in the roadway, outside the fence. At one point, there were more pedestrians in the street than on the sidewalk.
“The fence has been bad for business because people can’t easily cross the street to get here,” said the owner of a dispensary located halfway down the block. He said he had not been consulted before the fence was installed. “When the government wants to do something, it just does it,” he said.
Nearby, a man was leaning against the fence while browsing Facebook on his iPhone. “The only reason it’s here is so the government can cover its ass if there’s an accident,” he said.
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September 1st, 2010
Dubai feels like it was designed by a five-year-old boy. What kid doesn’t get excited about the BIGGEST BUILDING EVER, or the WORLD’S BIGGEST MALL? And then there’s the idea of a SEVEN STAR HOTEL. Wow!
A real kid’s drawing would have these elements laid out side-by-side, in two dimensions. Drawings by five-year-olds generally don’t have much perspective or depth. Dubai’s recent urban planning efforts seem to lack them as well. Where else can you visit a city that actually implemented all those dumb ideas you thought were cool in kindergarten? And that laid them all out as ineptly as you would have when you were five?
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August 27th, 2010
Ste. Catherine Street. Photo by Kate McDonnell
Two years ago, when Ste. Catherine Street in the Gay Village was pedestrianized for the summer, it was organized like a festival, with a corporate monopoly on outdoor beer sales and over-the-top decoration (and not in a fabulous way, just in a tacky commercial one). Even worse, the Village is not the liveliest place on weekday afternoons, so the street felt a bit forlorn before the sun went down.
But the enjoyment of experiencing a street free of cars outweighed all of the drawbacks. The Village’s summertime pedestrianization was successful enough that it has continued for the two summers since.
Now it has spread to other streets. This year, for the first time, St. Paul Street in Old Montreal was closed to traffic, something that should have been done a long time ago. Despite being one of the narrowest commercial streets in the city, and despite the tourist crowds that throng it all summer long, most of the space on St. Paul was taken up by cars. Walking along it meant a choice of squeezing past fanny-packed day-trippers on the narrow sidewalk or dodging cars on the street.
St. Paul Street. Photo by Kate McDonnell
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July 15th, 2010
When Montreal’s Turcot Interchange opened in 1966, no one had seen anything quite like it. Floating one hundred pillared feet above the ground, its concrete spans swirled and swooped through the air, finally coming together in a knot of jaw-dropping proportions. It comprised over seven kilometres of road and spanned an area of seventeen acres. Underneath its four levels of overpasses and elevated ramps, boats floated on the Lachine Canal and trains chugged with freight. In an especially futuristic touch, two continuous bands of fluorescent lights glowed from the highway’s walls. Driving on it, the city unfolded before you: a skyline studded with smokestacks and steeples and the slow blink of the Farine Five Roses sign. More than a mega-project, the Turcot was a Modernist victory cry.
The Turcot still inspires, but, like any relic of a bygone era, its sheen has worn away. The railyards that once spread out from the interchange—and from which the Turcot took its name—were closed by Canadian National in 2002. Ordinary highway lights replaced the space-age illuminations when the aluminum wiring decayed. Winter road salt has soaked the structure in a corrosive brine, inflating steel reinforcement bars into rusted balloons ten times their original size, causing concrete to fall off in chunks.
In 2007, the Ministère des transports du Québec (MTQ) proposed tearing the whole thing down and building a new ground-level interchange in its place. According to the renderings, vehicular capacity would be increased by 20 percent, but the new interchange—projected to cost $1.5 billion over seven years—would require the demolition of two hundred homes, including an entire street of walkup apartments and a large loft building that housed more than four hundred people. Its embankments would cut off links between St. Henri, Côte St. Paul and the other working-class areas adjacent to the interchange.
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May 16th, 2010
In Baishizhou, five yuan will get you an hour of pool and a big bottle of strong beer. This is one of Shenzhen’s largest and liveliest urban villages. Pool is one of its favourite pasttimes.
The village is hard to navigate, with aimless roads and dark, foreboding alleyways, but I’ve come across a few outdoor pool halls in my wanderings there. My favourite is one that exists where an alley widens ever so slightly as it meets a larger street, a tributary joining its parent. It’s a simple operation, with a half-dozen tables and a beer cooler. The last time I went, with a few friends, the hours slipped by unexpectedly, and it was nearly 1am when we left, wandering back into streets that were only marginally quieter than when we arrived. Compared to Hong Kong, Shenzhen sleeps early, but this is not true of the villages — they stay awake all night.
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April 21st, 2010
When I returned to Montreal last fall, I spent much of my time riding around the city on Bixi bikes, which was the closest I’ve ever felt to complete freedom in a very long time: a bike, a city and nothing holding me back from just riding around aimlessly. It gave me a chance to cover more ground than I ever would have if I had stuck to my own two feet.
I came across this new public square at the corner of McGill and Wellington near the Old Port. When I left Montreal, it was still under construction and there were few indications of how it would turn out. (Considering Montreal’s excellent track record of recent square-building, though, my hopes were high). I wasn’t disappointed. Instead of paving over the entire square, or covering it unimaginatively with turf, wild grass was planted, similar to what was done with the median of Morgan Avenue in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
Montreal is a windy city and wild grass like this looks particularly romantic when it is blowing in a breeze. It softens the square and defines the space without making it feel cloistered, which would have been the case if shrubs had been planted, or overly precious, which would have been the case with flowers. It’s also looks vaguely rural, which works strangely well with the industrial modernism of the condos that have been built next to the square — a subtle evocation of the weedy decay that characterized the neighbourhood just 10 years ago.
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April 13th, 2010
I dislike footbridges on principle, because they represent an abhorrent, machine-like view of the city: cars here, pedestrians there and never the twain shall meet. The city is reduced (like the Internet) to a series of tubes through which different modes of transportation travel as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s soul-destroying.
But in a city as crowded and densely-populated as Hong Kong, I have to admit, footbridges do have some advantages. Though the motive behind their construction is still reprehensible — let’s get those people out of the way so that cars and trucks can go faster — they inadvertently create another layer of urban space where pedestrians have free reign. As a result, footbridges begin to mimic the atmosphere of a lively street, with protest banners, musicians, touts and (if the police are looking the other way) hawkers.
In Wan Chai, the busy footbridge leading from the MTR station to the office district north of Gloucester Road is popular with Falun Gong protesters. In Central, the footbridges around Exchange Square are filled with Filipina women on Sunday; the footbridge that links the MTR with the ferry piers is where someone named Law Fong writes bilingual treatises on the topics of the day and pastes them to the bridge’s pillars.
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April 4th, 2010
The biennale of architecture and urbanism that took place in West Kowloon earlier this year was underfunded and underattended, but it was also an example of what shape Hong Kong’s future “cultural district” could take. The official plans call for museums, concert halls, public squares and other well-defined, well-regulated spaces, but what the biennale showed was that the most successful and imaginative uses of space are often those that are planned the least. By scattering installations along a waterfront promenade and using an overgrown vacant lot for artistic interventions, film screenings, forums and outdoor concerts, the biennale created its own ad-hoc cultural district, one that was far more thought-provoking than any government-imposed cultural centre could ever be.
Alas, big buildings make for better photo-ops than scruffy fields, so West Kowloon will eventually be dug up and turned into something more respectable. This summer, Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaus and local architect Rocco Yim will unveil three new proposals for the district. Originally, the cultural district was conceived as a tourist attraction, but after it was revealed to be little more than a property-development boondoggle — a single property developer would be given the multi-billion-dollar contract to build the whole thing — it was sent back to the drawing board in 2006. Since then, it has ignited a wide-ranging discussion on the state of the arts in Hong Kong; whatever happens now, it seems clear that public pressure is on the government to ensure that the cultural district exists for the benefit of Hong Kong people, not just for property developers and the businesses that profit from tourism.
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March 25th, 2010
Ce mois de mars. Incroyable par sa fraicheur, déroutant par sa chaleur inopinée. Frébilité perceptible. Émotions intenses.
Je parcours le campus de l’Université McGill, en plein coeur du centre des affaires de Montréal, à la recherche d’une place apaisante où lire ce journal pris à la course aux portes du métro. J’adore ces petits endroits, le jardin généreux, où il est possible de se promener sans empressement, avec pour seul objectif la détente et l’évasion.
McGill est un Éden, downtown Montreal, comprimé entre les tours cristallines des avenues et les broussailles en pente du Mont-Royal. Architecture variée. Élégance victorienne. Châtelets aux tourelles inusitées. La visite de l’université me donne toujours un petit frisson nostalgique, le regard en balade sur cette grisaille burinée d’abondantes formes fantaisistes.
Jeunes en rut. Ethnies au garde-à-vous. Le printemps s’annonce précoce, les regards sont alertes. Je me retire de la foule compacte et repère une place mi-ombre, d’où il est facilement possible de jouir de la scène agitée tout en respectant mon rôle de spectateur.
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March 18th, 2010
Froideur intellectuelle
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December 13th, 2009
There is not much to indicate that the rundown shophouse on Shanghai Street in Mongkok houses anything but a pawn shop.
On the third floor, however, is Tong Saam, an unmarked space that has positioned itself on Hong Kong’s creative vanguard. Since it was opened earlier this year by three friends interested in music and art, it has hosted film screenings and performances by underground folk singers such a Beijing’s Zhao Yiran.
“Normally, you’d only be able to find this kind of space in an industrial area,” says one of Tong Saam’s founders, Charlie Wong Liang-yih, a freelance designer. “It’s the perfect size and even has a balcony. Being in Mong Kok makes it even more special because it’s so central and we’re part of a real neighbourhood. Places like the Cattle Depot [Artists' Village in To Kwa Wan] are like warehouses for artists. This is more like a community space.”
For all its ambitions, though, Tong Saam might soon be redeveloped. Shortly after they moved in, Wong and his partners heard rumours that the Urban Renewal Authority was planning a new project on the street. Even if that did not turn out to be the case, it was likely that other URA projects in the area would drive up prices and encourage owners to sell their properties to developers, he said. “We’re surrounded by redevelopment projects,” Wong said.
Tong Saam is not the only new venture to open in a neighbourhood targeted for redevelopment.
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Déjà lorsqu’on débarque à Barcelona, au coeur de Poble Sec, à un jet de pierre du vieux Barrio Chino – El Raval – et du port industriel, poussiéreux, de l’antique cité maritime, l’on élimine tout les stéréotypes qu’on rêvait à l’écoute de l’Auberge Espagnol (Klapisch : 2002) et autres Vicky Christina Barcelona (Allen : 2008). Exit la musique, l’innocence et les courtisans, guitare à la main. Exit la ville balnéaire à l’insouciance légendaire. Nous sommes davantage dans le monde noire et migratoire de Biutiful (Iñárritu : 2010).
