The Parallels are Erie

This article ripping Dubai's city planners' work apart seemed oddly relevant to Edmonton, most especially in regard to the skewed cars-to-pedestrian ratio and oil-financed infrastructure spending...but really, the Jane Jacobs' reference forced me to post it here. Unavoidable, really.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/613885

No More Newspaper?

At the Writer's Panel, I asked Todd Babiak if he thought the Journal had a hope of succeeding in an increasingly paperless world, and if that side of the Edmonton institution was doomed to evaporate or just diversify. His answer was a mixed-bag; largely, he said niche-oriented information outlets would gain prominence, such as periodicals about the Edmonton LGTBQ community (I think thats the right order for the acronym...). Also, and more alarmingly, he focussed on the fact that these sources of information about Edmonton and its happenings would necessarily be greatly slanted towards specific viewpoints, and more frighteningly, the only source for vital political information on our city's legislators and elected representatives would become well-spun stories from right and left-wing polarized blogs and sites (HuffPo and The Drudge Report being the American examples used). The one critical thing this rather dystopian future is missing that the Journal currently provides is then a mostly-impartial forum, where no letters to the editor are censored and stories are reported regardless of their impact on a political party. Long blog short, we need a way to maintain this function, as the fast news and increasing fragmentation of the communication-blessing that is the internet leaves us ever the more isolated, and paradoxically, drives what remains of the Edmonton community further apart.

Same Street, Different Place

In a crisis, people rally around each other to defeat a common goal, if every movie I've ever watched is evn slightly correct. 'The Garneau Block' captures that perfectly, with an interesting and dynamic plot of character extremes that bring down their individual barriers just enough to accept each other's dark insides to attempt to resist the invaders, and I can't help but compare it to a perfect little community in 50's america banding together to fight a Red invasion for some reason. While it makes for stimulating reading, my only question is if thats realistic; whether or not the proposed demolition of Millwoods or my quaint idyllic town of Beaumont would even elicit anything close to that sort of reaction. When did we lose that particular neighborhood-survivability gene, and what can we do to get it back? excluding those of you that live in high-rises. Then, it will take the daunting prospect of escape from complete capsize of your building, Poseidon Adventure-style, to even create a response from your neighbors that elicits anything more than polite nods.

Adhesive Legends

So, post-Alice Major and Erin Knight, I started thinking about the mythology of cities, and what it means to them. Mythology, to me, means a group of stories about heroes-made-to-be-superheroes, demi-gods, and other, largely infallible beings. Individuals like Hercules and Romulus or Spartan titans like Cleomenes are common ground the people of yore would bond around, secure in their fellow hero worship. A city needs, or needed, these archetypes,these 'perfections', to prove their validity as a people and as survivors of whatever terrible struggle or affliction that could be cast upon them. Without them a city seemed tenuous, impermanent, and vulnerable. Fast-forward to the modern age, and we still have that desire for ideals, but without an institutional ignorance to basic physics and lacking a traditional system of oral history, we simply can't conceive them anymore. So, we fill the top-spot in our social-hierarchy role model system with people like Nellie Mcclung and Wayne Gretsky, who, while being really amazing humans, still have faults one can easily identify, introducing far too much doubt into the equation. This weakens, or severs all together, the common glue of hero worship, leaving us alone and quite scattered, forced to pick and choose the attributes of our leaders and idols we think are virtuous, and thats a dangerous formula indeed.

Communication and You

Researching my Edmonton-in-the-depression project, I was stunned by the lack of distance exhibited between people of the day, a closeness increasingly magnified by the hardened economic times. Beyond even the artificially-brightened fuzzy lens one often views the 'good ol' days' with, a certain sense of shared responsibility existed, an element largely excised, or at least deeply repressed, in our current system. Modern communication and global travel have almost completely destroyed this feeling, as many no longer feel paramount allegiance to any particular nation, location or culture. At the risk of sounding like an overly PC 'FAMILY AND COMMUNITY VALUES ARE DISINTEGRATING' atavist, we need that feeling, for at least a couple more generations. 'The Garneau Block' was an evocative example of this rally-around-each-other sentiment, though any observer can agree that it seems a far departure from the Edmonton standard. Forced anonymity of the crowd/neighbors becomes a shield, from behind which not many can truly empathize. Stories of starving people getting foodstuffs from neighbors, not underfunded centralized foodbanks, were a revealing statement on society, about how person-to-person familiarity breeds social stability, or at the very least, weaves a safety net we can all fall back on. So, in essence, talk to that person beside you on the bus, or in the next apartment. You never know if he'll be the one with all the potatoes next depression.

Perspectives

After Dallas mentioned my-also-favorite story of the Eskimo miracle at the '54 Grey Cup in class today, I started to think about how important an individual's viewpoint is to the processing of an event. To young-version Preston Manning, a dream comeback in slow-motion proved to him that with enough fight, underdog's can and frequently do overcome the odds (an ideal that I'm sure helped him decide to be a politician). To other Edmonton fans, a short-lived burst of elation at their team's victory would have been the only effect of the game. To a Montreal fan, the message would have been more 'don't count your chickens until they hatch' etc etc, or to an Eskimo player, it could even represent the culmination of a lifetime of effort and sacrifice. Same field, same game, different impacts. Of course, there exists a common experience everyone shares; it just gets taken in a multitude of directions. So, the best way to envision history then becomes to garner a plethora of viewpoints, to paint the most complete picture possible, because even if you're there, a single person can only view the situation from a single angle.

Painting History

So, class today brought up some fascinating ideas, the most relevant of which I found to be 'history'. Looking at it from the concept side of the equation, and from our extensive discussion, it does essentially define subjectivity. I think it was Churchill who said 'History is written by the victors', and that definitely highlights an extremely important consideration when assessing any historical narrative or data; the power of interpretation, and selective omission, is given solely to the writer. That being said, someone has to record what happens, and that someone is going to be human, usually. So from the outset its a flawed process, meaning that, past ensuring no overly malicious or slanderous motives on the part of the author, minor issues of emotionality and inconsistencies should be a moot point. Linda Goyette goes to great pains to cover every facet of D'edmontonia, not just the shiny ones, and her slight biases did nothing to contract from my total immersion into the stories and experiences. I believe that's called 'making history come alive', but thats a rather extreme way of throwing it down. I'll just say I liked it.

Who Protests Anymore?

So, reading the article about 'the streets as democracy', a question took root in my mind, foreign amongst all the movie highlights and dead baby jokes. What does it take to get a person of our generation to leave their house/apartment/box and actually take to the streets? A lifetime of guaranteed security, food, and cold, pseudo-reality entertainment, for the large majority anyways, has left us inured and apathetic to global or local issues; whatever primal protest urges that might still surface are satisfied neatly by joining a facebook cause, chipping in a couple dollars, or, in extreme cases, venting about it in one's blog. To take a recent example, Restricted Access garnered 400 attendants out of a student body of over 35 000, and maybe 50 of those were people like myself who only showed up because it was mandatory in order to get points for a Lister tower competition. Though perhaps thats more an indicator of the strength of that particular cause, what will we do when a real, dire, nation-building or crisis cause presents itself? The hunger rally of '32 related to us in class seems distant, and Edmonton hasn't seen anything like the Depression since, well, the Depression. Protests are always represented as being started from a spark, a catalyst, of some sort; one must also realize fuel, such as long-felt communist oppression or widespread shortages, is a far more necessary ingredient to the cake of protest. In the immortal words of Tyler Durden, 'our generation has no great war, no great depression. No purpose, no place'. Maybe thats something to be proud of...but humanity defines itself in adversity, and we, specifically Edmontonians, have no adversity to speak of. Except, perhaps, the possibility of the Oilers not making playoffs.

Does North America have too much space? yes, yes it does.

After absorbing that Rebecca Solnit excerpt, I started thinking. Quite obviously, she had a deep infatuation with Italian cities, and the pedestrian wonders they've managed to evolve, but more than that, she'd fallen in love with the community that had to grow up in such circumstances; every packed street forced interaction with all elements of society, no matter how unscrupulous or arrogant. North Americans building cities grew up inside a different paradigm, with the dominant theme being to fill space, settle the west, claim new land, etc etc, and we live in the remnants of that expansionist dream, perhaps even its carcass; people are constantly afraid of being stuck 'between' places, on a stretch of highway between one's home and Walmart for example, and what results is not a continuous spectrum of changing scenery and people, but a discrete set of destinations one achieves in a day, with a minimum of human interaction, usually from the safety of a personal motor chaffeur. Even in suburbia, people are seen as potential sources of harm, instead of feeling the shared camaraderie of forced neighbors. When I went to Italy (yeah, you can feel the irrelevant personal epiphany coming... wait for it...) I was struck by the same elements; cars were treated like aliens intruding on a pedestrian's world, not the other way around, and its far enough back in my memory so that I remember people as being more polite/courteous than your average Edmonton SUV owner. A city that had walking as the primary mode of transport is going to feel more personal and less cold than one from the post-Ford age; even streets in the same city from the two different periods prove it (walk down Whyte and then walk down the Whitemud). Shared experience versus hermetically-sealed vehicular isolation. But where does this lead to? As the world becomes increasingly smaller, and people/dwellings/amenities start to stack up Blade Runner-style, care must be taken to foster that community feel, or else before we know it, its pre-Guiliani New York all over the globe, with everyone fending only for themselves.

Hamlets to Villages To Towns to Cities

Across the known world, there is no universal literal definition of a village, town, or city. It is most often a designation assigned by the people of a place, and often has little to no bearing on population, geographic size, or facilities. For example, Sherwood Park is still classified as a hamlet, the same as the 600 person locale my mother taught band class in, and it counts 50 000 individuals inside its borders. Historically, the presence of a chapel transformed one's humble hamlet or village into a town, and a cathedral elevated one to city status. But, such definitions fall short as communities increasingly stop defining themselves around a common faith, so one finds oneself needing a new paradigm to benchmark these characteristics, or even begin to discard them completely. Edmonton can, with reasonable faith, call itself a city, a city of champions even, but what defines that? Hopefully, not just numbers or the presence of a hospital.

The Disease of Nostalgia

Going against my instincts here, I'm going to use this first post to relate a highly personal story pertaining to Edmonton, hopefully not losing you in so many mundane details like these diatribes always seem to end up in. Ok, commencing...I was a mere whelp, one of a litter of four in my family unit, growing up on my parents' farm just south of Beaumont, and one of our favorite activities was to explore the massive forest behind our house. Once one passed through the forest, a large, steep hill greeted you, and after one climbed that, the greatest spot to horse around for a small child presented itself, giving me and my siblings countless hours of youthful joy. Where this rambling narrative becomes relevant is a particular of the view; namely, the shiny, far-off monolith that is downtown Edmonton. Rising out of the flat, green farmland like some kind of Camelot, it represented a world completely different from my far too rural roots, a conception only heightened to my impressionable child brain by the occasional trip into the Coliseum to experience a hockey game. And so it remained, ideal and wonderfully foreign, until the magic dulled, from both age and gradual habituation to its effects. Hopefully, this class can bring some of that back. End emotional trainwreck monologue.