attitudes » Ren Thomas

Street eats

The City of Vancouver is one of a growing number of cities concerned about local agriculture and food availability; the City set up a Food Policy Council in 2003. So far, the Council’s interest is confined to homeowners producing their own food (beekeeping and possibly backyard chickens), or producing food for the poor with its Grow-a-Row program. It has not extended its reach to the larger issues: ensuring households have better access to fresh fruits and vegetables (grocery store location) or enabling more local farmers to sell their produce in the city. Another ongoing debate for City of Vancouver planners is whether or not to allow street vendors to operate on busy street corners. While we have the commonplace hotdog/sausage vendors, portable kitchens are not allowed. As Tim Pawsey wrote in the Vancouver Courier, “Zealous health authorities suppress any deviation from predictable food service that might be remotely interesting.”

While Asian cities seem to have the best variety of street food (fresh pakoras in Delhi, sizzling potstickers and skewers of meat in Shanghai), many North American cities offer a variety of quick eats. In New York, there are carts selling pastries, soft pretzels, muffins and bagels; in San Francisco’s Berkeley there’s a giant vending machine with all manner of hot meals available. The City of Richmond is slightly better off than Vancouver, with sizzling meat, Chinese dumpling, and fresh fruit vendors at their weekly Night Market. Hot dog/sausage vendors can always be found at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, but recently Toronto City Hall approved eight new ethnic street food vendors.

Street food has even reached the epitome of high art. The Vitra Design Museum in Basel, fittingly located on Charles-Eames-Strasse and designed by Frank Gehry, is currently hosting a Global Street Food Exhibition featuring all kinds of portable kitchens.

In practice, getting street vendors approved in Canadian cities has proved daunting. Toronto’s process required the vendors to invest $21,000-28,000 for carts and pay an annual location fee of $5,000-15,000. As Vanessa Lu reports in the Toronto Star, a rigorous selection process included scoring for nutrition, food safety, locally produced food, ethnic diversity, taste and an overall business plan. Best of all, the new vendors reflect the city’s diversity: passers-by will be able to choose from Persian, Middle Eastern, Greek, Afghan, Korean, Caribbean, Thai, and Eritrean food at the eight busy downtown locations. This is only a three-year pilot project, but the City of Toronto hints at expanding the program in due time.

While the City of Vancouver still claims health concerns, perhaps Toronto’s pilot project will have some impact on the stodgy minds of the health authorities here.

Suburban nostalgia

Among my colleagues in urban planning, suburbia is seen as one of the most powerful forces shaping our towns and cities. Suburban sprawl, which eats up prime agricultural land, forces residents to drive ever further to widely dispersed retail and employment locations. The suburb has an exclusive history, as many were designed to exclude those of lower socioeconomic classes or certain ethnic groups. In this era of recessionary caution, they are the epitome of wasteful. And yet, they remain the preferred landscapes of the vast majority of people living in both American and Canadian cities.

Like many people my age, I grew up in suburbia and return there periodically. To this day, suburbanites provide me with endless comedic fodder. This is particularly true of those considered to be “average people.” You know, the people you see on sitcoms who live in giant two-storey houses and drive SUVs, who shop at Costco and are completely paranoid (read: boomers like my parents and others of their generation). On the surface, they seem so safe and isolated in their brick-and-aluminum-siding cells; and yet, under the surface lurk nightmarish thoughts.

A couple of years ago on a visit to the ‘burbs, my mom told me to take a large stick with me on a walk around the suburb, as there had been a rash of dog attacks lately (I assured her that a stick would be little protection against an angry Rottweiler, but this did little to placate her). I once said I’d walk to the corner store to pick up milk, and was told that I should take the car since it was too far to walk (15 minutes, the same distance I’d walked to school as a child). One evening, I mentioned I’d go for a walk; my mother looked at the clock in alarm (it was 9pm). On my walk, I saw at least twenty different homeowners out trimming their hedges, mowing their lawns, or gardening; at one house a couple of kids were out playing. My mother shook her head at these convention-flouters: didn’t they know it wasn’t safe to be out after dinner?

My suburbanite friends get their milk at one store, eggs at another, and vegetables at a third, endlessly trolling for deals (and by deals I mean savings of twenty cents). They choose the apples from Chile over the apples from Canada (cheaper). They assure me that nobody could ever live happily in a rental, and wouldn’t I need a yard once I had children? The fact that I’ve been renting for 14 years doesn’t convince them, nor the fact that most kids stop playing in the yard around age 13. They read about greenhouse gases in the daily paper but shake their heads sadly (there’s nothing they can do about it). They rail at the traffic in their city and insist on road widenings; they fume if they’re ever behind a city bus or have to give road space to a cyclist. They comment on every pedestrian brave enough to cross the busy multi-lane collector roads. Nighttime TV consists of CNN, 60 Minutes and The National, to recharge the paranoia levels.

On the other hand, suburbanites have space to compost, space to grow those organic veggies, space to pick local fruits and tuck them away multiple deep freezers. Space to store the 20-lb bag of onions or the cases of mangoes, pomegranates or oranges so easily found at Costco. They get good deals on virtually everything, the costs of food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment being vastly lower than in the city. And then there are the smells: freshly cut lawns, sprinklers, chlorinated pools, beds of carefully tended flowers. While these scents may smack of greenhouse gases, pesticides and non-biodegradable plastics, even a whiff of water from a garden hose transports me back to my childhood; they are oddly comforting.

Suburbanites live in the type of neighbourhoods that we have long been told are good for us: good for families, free from crime, with lots of open space…basically, the landscapes of The American Dream. But to planners, suburbs are more accurately portrayed in films like American Beauty (1999) or Lymelife (2009). My planning friends might be car-free, child-free, renters, and supporters of local farmers. They might support gay marriage, encourage supportive housing in their neighbourhoods, or walk to work instead of driving. But these urban eccentricities are frowned upon in the ‘burbs, and attitudes and behaviour are some of the hardest things to change in planning our communities.

There are glimmerings of environmental awareness in the ‘burbs; even a hint of planning comprehension. My suburban friends have heard of car-sharing programs, LEED-certified buildings and New Urbanism. They understand the benefits of organic gardening, public transit and community development. They just seem to be having a bit of trouble connecting these ideas to their everyday lives. They need to know how much money they could save by growing their own veggies, and how much weight they could lose doing all that gardening. They need information on local agriculture versus buying from vast supermarket chains. They need practical information, maps, schedules, and cycling workshops if they are ever going to transition from two- and three-car families. They need to understand what housing options might suit them best: it may be a condo or townhouse if they really don’t use their yards or live in one- or two-person households. They need to understand their municipality’s Official Community Plan and its social, economic, and environmental impacts so that they can get involved in creating better communities. This is grassroots-level work, the same kind of marketing and promotion that was done in the 90s to advertise composting and recycling, two activities that most suburbanites now do on a regular basis.

Aside from workshops and social marketing, the crux of the matter is that some suburbanites define themselves as drivers, as those who live in large detached houses, as people in the upper echelons of society, even as bargain shoppers. The very ideals that we attack as planners are in fact prized in the ‘burbs. But we should remember that these ideals were created in the 1950s, supported by government funding and policies, and we have the power to create new ones. There is a wave of new developments in the US that includes organic farms in their subdivisions; people who buy homes get access to fresh local produce, which is increasingly appealing for many. In Canada, many people are drawn to smaller homes, neighbourhoods with sustainability features (Greenbrook in Surrey, BC, will derive 10% of its energy costs from solar power) and urban neighbourhoods with access to transit. We need to create neighbourhoods that have the appeals of suburban living but are more sustainable, which can translate into more affordable; in the organic farm suburbs, farmers’ rent is initially paid to the developer, but after all the lots are sold the revenue goes to the homeowners’ association. There are many ways to market sustainable neighbourhoods and communities, and eventually replace the old suburbia with something more socially and ecologically rewarding. More crucial, we need to market these ideals as the hip new trend in housing.

Modern racism in “the most multicultural city in the world”

Most Canadians would deny that theirs is a racist country. Scholars refer to the White Paper (1976) on multiculturalism and the Multiculturalism Act (1988) as proof that Canadians “celebrate diversity.” But there are many sides to this story. While the idea of race has officially been dispelled since geneticists working on The Human Genome Project found as much genetic variation between members of the same ethnic group as between different groups, the idea of difference persists. The Multiculturalism Act encouraged people of every ethnic group to retain their own languages and cultures while integrating into their lives in Canada. Yet there are constant barriers to this in practice.

Structural and institutional racism

Canadian banks may no longer practice mortgage redlining, but there are plenty of other examples of structural and institutional racism in our society. Carlos Teixeira, an Associate Professor at UBC (Okanagan), did a study in 2006 comparing housing trajectories of Portuguese immigrants from Angola, Mozambique and the Azores. He found that black Portuguese immigrants faced significant racism in the housing market compared to white Portuguese immigrants. Robert Murdie, who has now retired from York University, found similar results in his comparison of Portuguese and Somali housing trajectories (2002). There are many studies documenting the difficulties immigrants to Canada face in the labour market: employers will not hire anyone without “Canadian experience.”

While most Canadians with anglo-sounding names would probably urge incoming immigrants to keep their names, in everyday life it is often just easier for Chinese immigrants to go by their English variants, like Josephine for Ji Ling. Indian immigrants often shorten their names to anglo-sounding equivalents: I recently met a Kal who had shortened the considerably lengthier Kalvinder, and a Dee whose full name was Deepali. Indeed, my adolescence and young adulthood was peppered with anglo-ethnic hybrid names. While we were often criticized for “wanting to become white” (by our co-ethnics) or “losing our roots” (by our white friends), in practice it is just annoying to have your name mispronounced and misspelled on a daily basis.

Philip Oreopolous’ study at the University of British Columbia suggests prejudice against ethnic names may be more than just an annoyance. A Professor of Economics at UBC, Oreopolous created 6,000 mock resumés to represent recent immigrants and Canadians with and without non-English names. They were tailored to job requirements and sent to 2,000 online job postings from employers across 20 occupational categories in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s largest and most multicultural city. Applicants with English-sounding names got almost 40% more callbacks from employers than those with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani sounding names. All applicants had at least a Bachelor’s degree, plus any additional qualifications specified in the job ad, and each applicant listed three previous jobs. Changing only the location of the applicant’s job experience, from Canadian to foreign, lowered callbacks by 5-10%. Employers valued Canadian work experience far more than a Canadian education. Oreopolous concluded that there is considerable employer discrimination against ethnic Canadians and immigrants; even when the person evaluating resumes spoke with an accent or had an ethnic-sounding name, they still preferred English-sounding names by a factor of 1.42. Oreopolous points out that this type of discrimination is illegal under the Ontario Human Rights Act. In this case, both the employer and the potential employee lose; the employer has purposely overlooked a potential employee with the appropriate skills and education. Oreopolous’ results cannot help but highlight institutional racism, which is more than a little surprising in the GTA, which is 46% foreign-born; China, India, and Pakistan are the three top source countries for immigrants. In a city and region so multicultural, that has been an immigrant reception center for over a hundred years, there is no way for employers to tell whether a person is a first-, second-, or third-generation immigrant, solely by looking at their name.

Modern racism

While Oreopolous points out the obvious legal implications of this discrimination, many scholars would call this modern racism rather than institutional or structural racism. Modern racism is a slippery concept: the Ontario Human Rights Commission issued a policy in 2005 stressing the subtler forms of discrimination. Examples of modern racism in the workplace are:

Exclusion from formal or informal networks
Denial of mentoring or developmental opportunities such as secondments and training that was made available to others
Differential management practices such as excessive monitoring and documentation or deviation from written policies or standard practices
Disproportionate blame for an incident
Assignment to less desirable positions or job duties
Treating normal differences of opinion as confrontational or insubordinate
Characterizing normal communication as rude or aggressive
Penalizing a person for failing to get along with someone else, e.g. a co-worker or manager, when one of the reasons for the tension is racially discriminatory attitudes or behaviour of the co-worker or manager

Differences in name, accent or manner of speech, clothing and grooming, diet, beliefs and practices, and leisure preferences can bring out subtle acts of racism. Because of language differences, member of various ethnic groups communicate in different ways. For example, in some cultures it is normal to wait several seconds after a person is finished speaking before responding; in anglo-North American culture the pause time is under one second. Those with the longer pause time would think they were being constantly interrupted by those with the shorter pause time. Underlining, or repeating the last few words of a person’s sentence at the same time as they are speaking, is common in some cultures but considered rude by North Americans.

Another common form of subtle racism is co-opting part of an ethnic culture: it is considered fashionable for a white person to wear a sari or practice yoga, but not an Indian person. I would add that in Canada we have the practice of “celebrating diversity” by having silly cultural festivals, yet we do not tolerate difference on a daily basis. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me his daughter was asked to return one day from school because she had henna tattoos on her hands. My friend, a Canadian of Indian ethnicity who is married to a white Canadian, said the school official told him the school did not allow tattoos at school. A few months later, the same official asked if his daughter could bring some sort of Indian food to a school multicultural festival.

Assuming that members of the same ethnicity are all the same is another example of subtle racism. Most of my Indian friends fend off questions about where the good Indian restaurants are, if we like Bollywood movies, and whether we have been to India; yet in most cases, we would have been teased mercilessly for liking Indian food, movies, or culture during our childhood and adolescence. In Outliers (2008), Malcolm Gladwell addresses the assumption that Asians are better at math. We even find examples of racism in terminology: what groups fall under the heading of “Asian”, and can they be grouped together as if they are all similar?

Joe Darden, a Professor of Geography at Michigan State, argues that denial of subtle and institutional racism allows Canadians to avoid changing legislation or monitor practices that discriminate against non-whites. Along with most other scholars, Darden points out that Canada has a long history of racism in immigration policy (The Significance of White Supremacy in the Canadian Metropolis of Toronto, 2004). He suggests that changes in the economy, and not changes in attitudes among white policy makers, were responsible for the removal of discrimination in immigration policy. In the post-war era, the need for skilled workers opened up immigration to non-European countries, while racist attitudes have remained. Like many African American scholars, Darden believes that there has been a transition from overt and institutional racism to subtle racism. Although significant Aboriginal populations have lived in Canada for thousands of years and British Columbia had small Chinese and Sikh populations around the turn of the century, Canada’s racist immigration policies only began to change in 1952. Most non-Europeans in Canada entered the country after 1967 changes to the Immigration Act. Fifty years is not a lot of time to eliminate racist ideologies.

The idea of racism in Canadian society may seem impossible, but various studies have proven there are subtle forms of racism in the housing market, labour market, and in social interactions. Oreopolous’ study shows that racism is present in the most multicultural city in Canada, therefore it must exist in cities with less cultural diversity. Many believe that cross-cultural education is the key to breaking down preconceptions about other cultures, understanding how different communication styles and values. In a multicultural society, cross-cultural training should be offered for all ages, from kindergarten to university, in schools and in the workplace. But Oreopolous’ study, as well as the earlier studies by Murdie and Teixeira, indicate there is also some legislative work to be done, as well as monitoring of employers, housing agencies, real estate agents, and landlords to ensure discrimination is not a factor in hiring, promotion, renting or buying a home in Canadian cities.

Now it’s really over: Margaret Wente says the car-free culture is here to stay

I wrote recently about the end of GM, and noted that many advocates of sustainable transportation were looking forward to a new era of cycling, walking, transit, and reduced car use. While I count myself among these, I also acknowledge the difficulty of this transition for most North Americans considering our economic dependence on oil and the car-dominated spatial patterns of our cities. But when Margaret Wente says the love affair is over (“Object of desire or necessary evil?”, Globe and Mail, Saturday, June 6, 2009), the times they are a-changin’.

Let me explain. Wente is conservative, irreverent, controversial. She’s stirred up so much anger the Globe won’t even allow her column to be read online anymore. She writes from a white, upper middle-class perspective, and often comments on current affairs, politics, social issues, and lifestyles. Her attitude towards people of different cultures came under fire last October when she agreed with IOC Dick Pound’s controversial comment that Canada was a country of “savages” a few hundred years ago. Many of her columns show an insensitivity to the variety of ethnic cultures and religions that make up mainstream Canadian cities. An American and naturalized Canadian, Wente once called Newfoundland “the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world.” As far as social trends go, Wente is regularly surprised by lifesyles of younger people, including Facebook addiction and commitment to environmentalism. She became a climate change convert at the same time as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in September of 2006: very late in the game, when it became a sign of insanity to deny it any longer. Most environmentalists, democrats, and transportation advocates consider her laughable, a symbol of the type of conservative boomer culture that keeps Canada from achieving any real success in enviromental protection, alternative transportation, race relations or tolerance.

Today’s column is a case in point. Wente begins her article profiling people she finds truly unusual: young 20- and 30-somethings who live and work in the city and do not own cars. While this is news to none of us living in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and a growing number of other cities, Wente still finds the lifestyle surprising decades after the terms yuppie (young upwardly-mobile professionals) and dink (double income no kids) were coined. She then moves on to profiling several of these other oddball car-free types closer to her own age: “Fifteen years ago, it was almost unimaginable for a middle-aged, middle-class family man not to own a car. Such a person would have been regarded as mildly eccentric. Now I seem to be surrounded by them.” She writes about the average $8,000 it costs to run an average car each year (the Toronto Transit Commission has been advertising this info on posters for over a decade), the growing popularity of cycling and car sharing (which she feels the need to define) and of course the death of the automotive companies. But halfway through her article, there is a change in tone: Wente, that conservative bastion of right-wing ideology, concedes that “Maybe our love affair with cars is over.” In response to a man who confesses there is freedom in being car-free, she asks, “Isn’t freedom the very thing that cars used to stand for?” Halfway through the article she writes “For most of us, cars aren’t much of a status marker anymore…It’s really just a very big, very costly appliance with cup-holder.” She characterizes cars as shifting from “the wheeled embodiment of outsize ego and swattering masculinity…the product of the American empire at its peak” to representing “arrogance, deliberate disregard for the enviroment, and wretched excess.” While she confesses she still believes cars have the potential for personal liberation, progress and opportunity, “these days there are fewer and fewer who agree with me.”

Perhaps most advocates of alternative transportation would not see much hope in Wente’s article: she’ll probably continue driving until the steering wheel is pried out of her cold dead hands. But considering her personality, socio-economic profile, and personal beliefs, just admitting the times are changing indicates that, indeed, they are. They’d have to be for her to notice.

Toronto does not equal New York

Kramer: What’s today?
Newman: It’s Thursday.
Kramer: Really? Feels like Tuesday.
Newman: Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel, Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel….
Kramer: I feel Tuesday and Wednesday…
Jerry: All right, shut up the both of you!

What makes New York City feel like New York City? Why do some cities feel laid-back and others competitive? Why are people living in some cities friendly, while in others you’d be hard-pressed to get a mere “hello”? How can Seattle and Vancouver, a mere 220 im (137 mi) apart, feel so different? The natural setting of the place helps set the scene, whether it is Calgary’s view of the Rocky Mountains, Ottawa’s strategic place on the Rideau and Ottawa Rivers, or Charlottetown’s charmed seaside position on the sheltered side of Prince Edward Island. But this can’t be the whole story, or all seaside cities would feel the same.

A city’s history undoubtedly plays a major part in its personality. Paris’ glory days of bohemian art, poetry, and strolls on the Champs d’Elysees shaped the city as much as Baron Haussman’s reorganization. Chicago’s Great Fire forced architects to rebuild; it became the Gateway to the Midwest as rail and shipping lines began to converge on the city. Toronto’s reputation as a financial and banking capital was established by the turn of the century, creating an established upper class. Winnipeg’s strategic position among various Aboriginal communities gave it an early multicultural start. Montreal’s establishment in 1642 as a trading, shipping and immigration port lends it a European air. Small towns often provide great examples of history shaping our perceptions; often their names indicate their main historical claim to fame (Petrolia, Ontario; Medicine Hat, Alberta). When cities become known as centers of culture, business, or government, it forever shapes the unique “feel” of the place.

The urban design and layout of city contribute a large part to its social and spatial geography. The famous triplexes, cobblestone streets, granite curbs and irregular street patterns create old-world charm in Montreal. Not only are the triplexes architecturally interesting, they provide the city with a wealth of rental housing; Montreal still has by far the highest rental rate in Canada. Toronto and New York City are often compared; films set in NYC are often filmed in Toronto. It can’t be denied that the two cities share a superficial similarity: both are grid cities trying to reclaim their formerly industrial waterfronts. Both have massive modern skyscrapers in their cores, often shading the streets below for all but one mere hour of the day. Yet the two cities could not be more different. There is a grittiness in NYC that simply does not exist in Toronto, of the type that completely justifies Sinatra’s lyrics. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” really doesn’t apply to Toronto…while the rents are high, they’re nothing like Manhattan’s.

Architectural styles help create a social atmosphere and establish a city’s uniqueness: the colourful clapboard houses in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia could not be found anywhere else. Their bright colours are the perfect foil for the omnipresent fog, and they are indisputably maritime. Chicago is known for its beautiful historic skyscrapers, an effort to re-establish the city as one of culture and influence. Toronto’s Cabbagetown, Chinatown, Rosedale and Danforth may not be nearly as well-known as Manhattan’s Tribeca, Upper West Side and Greenwich Village, which have been explored extensively in film, art, and literature. But they help define Toronto as a “city of neighbourhoods,” and highlight the various architectural styles: Victorian in Cabbagetown; aging Victorian, modern, and postmodern on the Danforth. With these styles come the social archetypes: yuppies (former hippies) in Cabbagetown; the Jewish elite in Rosedale; new immigrants and artists in Chinatown.

Economic circumstances shape a city as well. While Vancouver was becoming established as a natural resource economy, with little pretensions to urbanism, Toronto’s economy was solidly financial and insurance-based. This created a very dense, high-rise financial core in the city decades earlier than Vancouver, which is still reeling from the high-rises established in the 1990s. Vancouverites will likely never have the tolerance for density that Torontonians have; people who grew up within sight of the sea and the mountains cannot stand to be in the city at all. Vancouver has seen only one recession in the past few decades (1981-82), while Toronto has gone through three (1973-75, 1981-82, and 1989-97). Do economic upheavals create a particular social atmosphere? They well might, since competition increases as companies downsize and jobs become scarce. Detroit is now plagued with all the social problems associated with a once-thriving industry gone bust. In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore shows the desolation of Flint, Michigan following the decline of the manufacturing sector. Resource cities and towns have a distinctly different feel than manufacturing, financial, or cultural centers; those vulnerable to recessions have a distinctly depressive atmosphere.

Transportation likely plays a part in setting an urban scene. Chicago’s Loop District is shaped by the L-train, while the city itself grew, finger-like, along its rail lines throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This gives it a unique nodal development pattern compared to cities that grew after the advent of the automobile; its old rail suburbs each have their own unique feel. New York wouldn’t be New York without the subway; its boroughs wouldn’t be so well-established without its rail lines. Many New York stories center around the colourful differences between residents of the boroughs; of the different accents and ethnicities in the city. The character of the commuter was first created in New York. San Francisco’s cable cars and the Market streetcar line are indisputably a major part of the urban fabric; the cable car technology was is linked to the city’s steep topography and the lines divided the city into distinct neighbourhoods. Vancouver’s main streets, including Granville, 4th Avenue and Broadway, still show the legacy of streetcar-stop retail development even though they’ve been converted to electric bus routes. Los Angeles, while it has constructed many new miles of LRT, will probably always be best known as a city of highways. Cities with rapid transit inevitably have a busier, more urban feel than those that rely on buses because their capacities are so much larger and they travel so much faster. That distinct gruff New Yorker is possibly a product of over a hundred years of mass transit, mass crowds and mass competition.

Many would say that it’s people that create a unique social “feel”. But don’t these other factors play a major role in attracting and retaining certain types of people? Each year, artists, fashion designers and writers are drawn to the hip, cultural meccas of New York and Toronto. People averse to risk are unlikely to settle in a city with constant economic upheavals, which may be ideal for those in business or real estate. Those who crave outdoor recreation move to Vancouver, Seattle and Denver; winter sports fans end up in Montreal, Calgary and Aspen. Families are drawn to mid-sized cities with leafy urban neighbourhoods and affordable housing; urban professionals and students may be drawn to areas with older, period housing. Larger cities are more tolerant to members of ethnocultural groups, singles, couples without kids, and gays/lesbians. And let’s not forget those who choose to live urban lifestyles and take public transit, who tend towards Toronto, Montreal, New York and Chicago.

But none of this explains the unique place Toronto has in the heart of Canadians. As the largest city in the largest province in Canada, Toronto is often mocked by the many Calgarians and Haligonians who complain that “Toronto thinks it’s the center of the universe.” Will Ferguson joked in Why I Hate Canadians that Canadians went through stages of hating Toronto, moving to Toronto, wanting to move to Vancouver, and deciding to stay in Toronto. History? Architecture? Economy? Culture? Whatever the reason, Toronto is not Calgary or Halifax; it is most certainly not New York. And that’s probably a good thing.

Act One: Hollywood films featuring planning issues

In 2008′s Wall-E, Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth Class) operates in solitude on a post-apocalyptic Earth. Humans, with the aid of the waste-producing Buy ‘n Large corporation, have destroyed the planet’s soil, air, and vegetation. While they wait in a fully-automated space station for Wall-E and his kind to clean up the planet, generations are born and live out their lives. Seven hundred years later, humans have suffered severe bone loss from a lifetime ingesting liquid food and living in microgravity, are wholly dependent upon technology, and too obese to walk unassisted. When EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetative Evaluator) is sent to Earth, she discovers a seedling sprouting on the planet’s surface. Her directive is to return to the space station and bring news of the planet’s recovery to the humans, who will then return to live on Earth.

This film, doubtless seen by more children by adults, is one of many films featuring important planning issues. Through dialogue, setting, plot and character development, Hollywood films often comment on issues such as environmental degradation, urban form, and transportation. Along with TV, the internet and video games, film plays an integral role in shaping our attitudes and perceptions. For example, is owning a car a symbol of success? Is living in suburbia stifling? What will the future be like?

One of the most common examples is Hollywood’s depiction of typical urban lifestyles. Who could forget Woody Allen’s famous line in Annie Hall (1977) upon arriving in Los Angeles: “What, you mean we’re actually going to walk? My feet haven’t hit the pavement since I got off the plane!” Earlier in the movie, Allen’s character Alvie Singer, a lifetime New Yorker, is shown walking from Manhattan restaurant to analyst’s office, and everywhere in between. When his friend constantly brings up the idea of moving to L.A., Alvie’s response is, “I don’t want to live in a city where the only advantage is you can take a right turn on a red light.” Walking is a theme that runs throughout movies set in New York City. Although When Harry Met Sally (1989) begins when the two main characters drive from Chicago to New York together, they are quickly absorbed into Manhattan’s pedestrian lifestyle. The two spend the rest of the movie meeting, and walking to, landmark restaurants (Katz’s Delicatessen, Cafe Luxembourg), stores (Shakespeare & Co, The Sharper Image), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Washington Square Park.

Urban settings often occupy crucial backgrounds in Hollywood films, commenting on social and environmental planning (or lack thereof). Witness the plethora of urban dystopia films (Metropolis (1927), Soylent Green (1973) Blade Runner (1982), Children of Men (2006), The Dark Knight (2008) to name a few) where the future is bleak, dark, gritty, and urban. These films exaggerate the unfriendliness of large urban centers and project forward to futures where “all is city”: nature, and the positive aspects of human nature, are nowhere to be seen. Wall-E echoes earlier films with an ecological theme such as Silent Running (1972) where a botanist works on a space freighter preserving the only botanical specimens left from earth, and Medicine Man (1992), where a doctor finds a cure for cancer in a particular species of spider, which is subsequently destroyed in slash-and-burn rainforest fashion.

If Earth is doomed to an environmentally degraded, nihilistic future, shouldn’t someone else be in charge? Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Rollerball (1975), THX 1138 (1971) and Total Recall (1981) and The Matrix (1999), examine a future where “society” is maintained through mind and social control. Militaristic states control citizens through their own endless rulebooks, and free will is not permitted; Neo’s attempts to control his own destiny within the Matrix meet with conflict after conflict. A twist on this is Demolition Man (1993), where a cop from the violent past must be awakened from a cryogenic state to catch a dangerous murderer. Police officers in a more peaceful future L.A., where people are fined for everything from swearing to parking infringements, are unable to stop the killer. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, AI (2001) and I, Robot (2004), technology dominates humans in the absence of their own good judgment; I, Robot’s V.I.K.I. uses her army of robots to place humans under virtual house arrest to prevent them from killing each other and destroying the planet. In 2001, extraterrestrial technology is responsible for the species’ development, including the development of language and weapons.

Suburban settings and their social effects have been examined in film almost since their very beginnings. Ira Levin’s 1972 classic novel The Stepford Wives (film adaptations 1975 and 2004) features all-too-perfect suburban housewives, who turn out to be robotic shells of their former selves. This year’s Revolutionary Road (2008), based on Richard Yates’ 1952 novel, offers another look at the stifling social atmosphere and constrained gender roles of suburbia. Some of the best explorations of the conformity and boredom of suburbia can be seen in a trio of films in the late 90s. Who could forget Reese Witherspoon’s question, “What’s outside of Pleasantville?” and the blank stares it engendered? As the two 90s-era teens encourage 50s-era Pleasantville (1998) residents start to think outside the box, they begin to see life in colour. Truman begins to chafe against his too-perfect life (The Truman Show (1998), but is reassured by his 1950s product-placement-spouting wife and his mother, who tries to convince him he should have children. Finally, the masterpiece American Beauty (1999) shows depression, infidelity, bitterness and murder lurking underneath the typical suburban existence.

Transportation modes emerge as plot elements in many films, often placing the film in a particular city. Many action movies feature the characters hopping on trains, buses, and streetcars in pivotal chase scenes. The falsely-accused Dr. Richard Kimble escapes from a bus/train crash on his way to prison and embarks on a cat-and-mouse game that takes viewers through the underbelly of Chicago in The Fugitive (1993). Lieutenant Gerrard tracks him down at one point by differentiating the sound of the train in the background as a Chicago L; Kimble finally catches the one-armed man on the L train. Jason Bourne (Bourne Supremacy (2004)) spends the majority of the film trilogy chasing, or being chased by, CIA agents on subways, streetcars, and high-speed trains throughout Europe. Speed (1994) features a policeman trying to stop a bus that has been armed with a bomb that will explode if the speed drops below 50mph. In 1951′s A Streetcar Named Desire, the name of the New Orleans route acted as a narrative device symbolizing Blanche Dubois’ drive and downfall, as well as a deep longing for the Old South. The entire biography of Forrest Gump (1994) is told as Forrest sits and chats with a variety of people while waiting at a bus stop. The narrative arc is framed by young Forrest introducing himself to the school bus driver, and his son repeating the scene at the end of the film.

Cars are often used in character development, becoming linked to personality traits. The classic Bullitt (1968) features the first car chase scene in a movie, giving audiences a fantastic look at urban San Francisco. The film was also seminal for its linking of cool cops and sports cars, a device that was used in many later movies as well as the TV series Starsky and Hutch and Miami Vice. The James Bond series is notable for its use of luxury sports cars (Lotus, Alpha Romeo) to embody the spy’s dangerous, high-end lifestyle. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) poked fun of this image, featuring Axel Foley, a down-at-the-heels Detroit cop who was known for his “crappy blue Chevy Nova.” On the non-motorized end of the spectrum, Steve Carrell’s 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) was partly defined by his daily bike ride to work. His lack of a driver’s license, along with his virginity and obsession with comic book collectibles, was used to demonstrate his immaturity; the end of the movie shows him learning how to drive, preparing to get married and selling off the action figures. Low-income teen Andie (Pretty in Pink (1986) was defined by her second-hand clothes, unemployed father and absentee mother, but she could still afford to drive her own car to school. The message is clear: if you drive a car you’re a successful adult, and the better the car the better your life!

Like other media that constantly surrounds us and provides us with subliminal (or in some cases, overt) messages, films give us opportunities to discuss and examine our values around the environment, urban form, lifestyle, and their social effects. Films help bring planning issues, such as how to plan more sustainable cities, into everyday conversation. As planners we need to be in touch with film as a media that influences attitudes and perceptions.

Weather and cities

In my visits to other cities, I’ve noticed how much the weather can affect my experience of the place. Whether it was the floods in Venice, the heavy constant cloud over London, or the oppressive humidity of Toronto, my enjoyment of the city is directly related to my ability to get out and comfortably walk around. Naturally it’s easier to wander or meet up with friends if the weather is nice. And there are also the everyday realities of taking the bus in bad weather (it’s more crowded, and the windows invariably fog up, something that doesn’t seem to happen on streetcars or subways).

Waking up to the eighth day of fog in a row this morning assured me that fog also affects our perceptions of the city. I was struck by how isolated UBC campus looks with the heavy fog. Some of my photos could easily have been taken in the countryside…which is actually fitting, as UBC is rather isolated from the rest of Vancouver. At the same time, the fog actually made the campus look more picturesque than usual because it smoothed out a lot of the torn up streets, potholed sidewalks and modernist architecture that seems to characterize the place.

While the campus is located on a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water, it takes some effort to actually see the ocean. It is only visible from the end of Main Mall, and otherwise accessible from several steep paths along the beach (around 250 steps down). The fog is a visual and sensory reminder that we are actually right on the ocean, and the foghorn that sounds regularly adds to this effect.

It is surprising how little we consider the weather when we plan our cities, particularly in Canada. What with the snow in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax you’d think we’d have nice wide boulevards for snow storage, but we don’t. Not to mention the lack of nice broad overhangs for the Vancouver rain (which Seattle, just across the border, seems to have figured out). Luckily, most of our cities have excellent tree cover for the hot summers. I’ve read one book on designing for winter cities (Norman Pressman), but it doesn’t seem that his ideas have filtered down into better building and infrastructure design to help us accommodate our weather. While some aspects of weather (such as fog) are unpredictable, the seasons are not. One notable anomaly is York University campus in Toronto, where there is a real acknowledgement of the very snowy conditions there (a couple of feet while I was there). The central boulevard where buses come in from Downsview subway station is framed by buildings with internal walkways. The walkways included indoor bus waiting areas (similar to those at Eglington subway station) allowing students to move around the main area of the campus and still be protected from snow and cold temperatures. I’m sure there are lots of designers out there who don’t like this idea (I seem to remember proposing a covered walkway way back in my studio days and being shot down), but I thought it worked really well.

We need more than the winter festivals in Ottawa and Quebec City, or the Cherry Blossom Festival in Vancouver. Like multicultural festivals, these are merely token celebrations that do little to integrate different elements into our cities’ social and physical structures. Buildings and infrastructure designed to protect us from the elements might even have the pleasant side effect of making us appreciate our seasons. Occasionally, weather has become a defining feature of a city; those of us who live in Vancouver are familiar with the obsession about rain, since it seems to rain every time our friends and family come to visit! If we had more covered walkways, broad overhangs and stores selling rubber boots, maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable. Of course, Vancouverites would never buy those boots; they prefer thin canvas shoes that let the water right in!

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. (Planning)

Street eats

Modern racism in “the most multicultural city in the world”

Now it’s really over: Margaret Wente says the car-free culture is here to stay

Act One: Hollywood films featuring planning issues

Weather and cities

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