Homecoming reflections (TO, Mtl, Hfx)

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Exciting location for them (if DoFo doesn't cancel the plan!). Interesting idea as well to co-locate other francophone institutions.

Apparently the new administration is commiting to l'Université de l'Ontario Français:

https://news.ontario.ca/maesd/en/201...niversity.html

And I agree, a beautiful and exciting location!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Exciting location for them (if DoFo doesn't cancel the plan!). Interesting idea as well to co-locate other francophone institutions.

I believe the ultimate permanent location has changed or at least is now "undetermined".

The partner institutions I gather will be Collège Boréal (a community college whose home base is in Sudbury) and the French language counterpart to TVOntario, TFO.

Doug Ford's Minister for Francophone Affairs, Caroline Mulroney, has indicated that she is totally supportive of the project, so for the moment it doesn't appear to be in danger.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

It's interesting how Stockholm is attractive and an important business centre at the same time. A lot of Canadians believe that you need to choose one or the other, that being too particular about how buildings or neighbourhoods look will drive away business and turn a city into some kind of Disneyland. On top of that Stockholm is prettier than a lot of our supposedly-optimized-for-prettiness places in Canada.

In Stockholm's case the archipelago settings helps a lot, although it has the drawback of being more challenging to deal with infrastructure-wise. You have to build a lot more bridges and tunnels at greater expense in cities like that.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Zeej

I'd agree with this. I'd go so far as to say Montreal is probably even a 9 on a regular day-to-day basis, with occasional flare ups (the failed charte des valeurs debate) bringing it temporarily down to a 7 on such a scale.

I was thinking that too, but hesitated to include it in my post.

I mean, Quebec is a long way from stuff like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ebate-timeline

or this

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-d...-idUSKCN1IT1EO

And yet no one would refer to places like Denmark or anywhere in western Europe as fascist, repressive states.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by someone123

A lot of Canadians believe that you need to choose one or the other, that being too particular about how buildings or neighbourhoods look will drive away business and turn a city into some kind of Disneyland.

Do they? This sounds like a bit of a strawman to me - I've not heard a single person make this argument - either on SSP, in the media or academics, or in person. A lot of Canadians are cheap, and might consider aesthetics an unnecessary frill, but that's not the same thing as actually considering them to be detrimental to prosperity.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Do they? This sounds like a bit of a strawman to me - I've not heard a single person make this argument - either on SSP, in the media or academics, or in person. A lot of Canadians are cheap, and might consider aesthetics an unnecessary frill, but that's not the same thing as actually considering them to be detrimental to prosperity.

This is kind of a boring angle anyway. Maybe lots of people do and maybe they don't. I encounter this attitude a lot, usually in the form of people arguing that heritage preservation and public frills are not economically viable or a good use of money. More generally this is an extremely common conservative talking point; we have to cut back in order to spur on investment and be successful. Your province just elected a premier based partly on this line of thinking.

The wider point is that Stockholm seems to do pretty well by following a strategy of heavy heritage preservation and lots of investment in the public realm. Not just heavy utilitarian investment. To some degree this is a luxury afforded to what is arguably Scandinavia's largest business centre but I don't think it's so privileged that they could follow any horrible strategy without chasing business away to some other place. And Sweden doesn't really have any specific windfall sources of great wealth either. Natural environment wise, Scandinavia is very similar to Atlantic Canada.

[Nouvellecosse]

I've long been somewhat fascinated by Stockholm, and the thing I admire most about the urban form is the scale. The dense urban neighbourhoods extend for several km from the city center with tightly packed, multiple level apartment buildings, few or nor surface parking lots, and with buildings directly meeting the street with no set backs, which makes it seem very solid and urban for its size. Yet it seems to have next to no highrises or skyscrapers even within the contest of Europe, being mostly low and midrise. In terms of its "prettiness" it has a sort of quaint, cutesy beauty in the sense that you can take a picture of many areas and convince people it's a smallish medieval town and they'd have no idea it's a large multi-million person metro area. From what I've seen, it's also extremely groomed and polished. I personally don't this as aesthetically attractive overall as a city with more a more varied form like Montreal, but I do wish our inner cities tended to be as solidly urban.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Do they? This sounds like a bit of a strawman to me - I've not heard a single person make this argument - either on SSP, in the media or academics, or in person. A lot of Canadians are cheap, and might consider aesthetics an unnecessary frill, but that's not the same thing as actually considering them to be detrimental to prosperity.

Well, the classic argument can be summed up that if you force companies X, Y and Z to locate in old buildings downtown that they have to renovate to suit their needs (with or without heritage subsidies to help pay), then that's worse for business and our economic competitiveness than simply letting them build a cheap(er) utilitarian facility on a greenfield on the edge of town.

If that's not at the heart of the issue, then what is the explanation for allowing anyone who wants to to build so much unattractive crap?

Is it simply that we have no taste?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I've long been somewhat fascinated by Stockholm, and the thing I admire most about the urban form is the scale. The dense urban neighbourhoods extend for several km from the city center with tightly packed, multiple level apartment buildings, few or nor surface parking lots, and with buildings directly meeting the street with no set backs, which makes it seem very solid and urban for its size. Yet it seems to have next to no highrises or skyscrapers even within the contest of Europe, being mostly low and midrise. In terms of its "prettiness" it has a sort of quaint, cutesy beauty in the sense that you can take a picture of many areas and convince people it's a smallish medieval town and they'd have no idea it's a large multi-million person metro area. From what I've seen, it's also extremely groomed and polished. I personally don't this as aesthetically attractive overall as a city with more a more varied form like Montreal, but I do wish our inner cities tended to be as solidly urban.

I don't know if you've ever been there, but Stockholm does have a lot of tower blocks - they're just not in the central, attractive affluent core of the city.

Not sure if you've ever heard of the Swedish Million Programme: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/sw...ncy-stockholm/

You definitely do see lots of towers like this if you explore Greater Stockholm.

They were initially built in a low-immigration era, so at first the residents were mostly lower income Swedes, often people from rural areas who migrated to the cities. But over the past few decades they've become dominated by newcomers to Sweden originally from foreign countries.

This pattern of less aesthetic tower blocks (almost "banished outside the city gates", medieval-style) is common in quite a few European cities, whereas the historic central core remains largely free of them, and any tall buildings tend to be more prestige skyscrapers.

The classic example of this in my mind is Paris.

[shappy]

Originally Posted by Acajack

This pattern of less aesthetic tower blocks (almost "banished outside the city gates", medieval-style) is common in quite a few European cities, whereas the historic central core remains largely free of them, and any tall buildings tend to be more prestige skyscrapers.

The classic example of this in my mind is Paris.

This pattern of tower blocks in the suburbs is common in many Canadian cities (i.e. "commie-blocks"). We emigrated from Paris and my parents have often stated this similarity.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Do they? This sounds like a bit of a strawman to me - I've not heard a single person make this argument - either on SSP, in the media or academics, or in person. A lot of Canadians are cheap, and might consider aesthetics an unnecessary frill, but that's not the same thing as actually considering them to be detrimental to prosperity.

There's a guy on the Halifax forum who argues almost exactly this (i.e., that well-preserved heritage is antithetical to vibrancy and creates sterile cities). it's endlessly frustrating. I've also encountered it, usually in people who assign blame for urban decline to the buildings, rather than social and economic factors.

[mistercorporate]

Stockholm was an imperial capital for centuries, allowing it to invest heavily in the public realm, and outside the polished touristy center there are a number of commie blocks and stucko homes. Our 3 major cities are mere babies but are capable of standing toe to toe with many of the greatest Old World cities such as Berlin, Bangkok, Cairo, St Petersburg, Manchester, etc. Give us another few decades and we'll blow those stagnant cities out of the water. We just need more streetlife in Vancouver, more infill in Montreal and better public transit in Toronto.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I was thinking that too, but hesitated to include it in my post.

I mean, Quebec is a long way from stuff like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ebate-timeline

or this

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-d...-idUSKCN1IT1EO

And yet no one would refer to places like Denmark or anywhere in western Europe as fascist, repressive states.

A long way?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montr...uly1-1.4724863

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

There's a guy on the Halifax forum who argues almost exactly this (i.e., that well-preserved heritage is antithetical to vibrancy and creates sterile cities). it's endlessly frustrating. I've also encountered it, usually in people who assign blame for urban decline to the buildings, rather than social and economic factors.

That argument comes up from time to time, to be sure; but to be fair, the quote I was responding to was "Stockholm is attractive and an important business centre at the same time" - which isn't necessarily the same thing.

Heritage preservation is of course important, but one could also make the argument that the scale of historic buildings in Stockholm is better suited to modern needs & economics than the more modest heritage buildings of Canada.

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

Stockholm was an imperial capital for centuries, allowing it to invest heavily in the public realm, and outside the polished touristy center there are a number of commie blocks and stucko homes.

There hasn't been a Swedish Empire for 300 years. A number of grand buildings were built in that time, some of which still exist, but for most of its history since it hasn't been at the centre of a particularly powerful nation. Its history probably doesn't hurt, but most of the quality of today's public realm comes from more deliberate, recent choices.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

A long way?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montr...uly1-1.4724863

Yes. A long way. This article does not disprove my argument. It actually supports it.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

That argument comes up from time to time, to be sure; but to be fair, the quote I was responding to was "Stockholm is attractive and an important business centre at the same time" - which isn't necessarily the same thing.

Heritage preservation is of course important, but one could also make the argument that the scale of historic buildings in Stockholm is better suited to modern needs & economics than the more modest heritage buildings of Canada.

There hasn't been a Swedish Empire for 300 years. A number of grand buildings were built in that time, some of which still exist, but for most of its history since it hasn't been at the centre of a particularly powerful nation. Its history probably doesn't hurt, but most of the quality of today's public realm comes from more deliberate, recent choices.

There is a value to legacy infrastructure and building stock. We started basically from scratch, they just needed to add to what was already there. There are many old cities with poor economies and dysfunctional governments that have fabulous public realms and building stocks.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yes. A long way. This article does not disprove my argument. It actually supports it.

Because the court struck it down? I suppose you could read it that way. The way I read it is that politicians in Quebec, reading public sentiment, attempted to implement a face-covering ban. Even if it was struck down by the court, nothing like this was even attempted in other provinces.

I'm not critiquing Quebec here, either, just say the motivations of such a move in Quebec and in Europe are rooted in a cultural conservatism/protectionism and the impulses are not a million miles apart.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Because the court struck it down? I suppose you could read it that way. The way I read it is that politicians in Quebec, reading public sentiment, attempted to implement a face-covering ban. Even if it was struck down by the court, nothing like this was even attempted in other provinces.

I'm not critiquing Quebec here, either, just say the motivations of such a move in Quebec and in Europe are rooted in a cultural conservatism/protectionism and the impulses are not a million miles apart.

My point was more that the measures taken by a host of European countries go quite a bit further than anything proposed by Quebec, and they aren't stigmatized as evil pariah nations as a result.

And that Montreal/Quebec are still potential medalists at the Openness to Diversity Olympics, even if it doesn't always seem that way because they're in the same country as the Usain Bolt of the phenomenon.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Acajack

And that Montreal/Quebec are still potential medalists at the Openness to Diversity Olympics, even if it doesn't always seem that way because they're in the same country as the Usain Bolt of the phenomenon.

Good analogy!

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Because the court struck it down? I suppose you could read it that way. The way I read it is that politicians in Quebec, reading public sentiment, attempted to implement a face-covering ban. Even if it was struck down by the court, nothing like this was even attempted in other provinces.

I'm not critiquing Quebec here, either, just say the motivations of such a move in Quebec and in Europe are rooted in a cultural conservatism/protectionism and the impulses are not a million miles apart.

The PQ lost the election because of the charter. The population rejected it.