Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain
East coasters themselves are very self-deprecating about the place, to the point of irrational negativity, as we've discussed on this forum. But people who haven't been steeped in that cultural baggage (say it now, "culture of def...") are much quicker to see the positive, even if it is a bit idealized or romanticized.
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Culture of defeat is true, but I think it stems from a larger culture of negativity here. The news media deserves much of the blame for that, I think, by giving every activist, every victim real or otherwise, every person with an axe to grind a platform. It is seen in things like the planning conference underway this week where all of the social media about it was basically "we should do THIS (whatever the THIS may be) because what we have now is so awful".
Now, I have been a constant critic of HRM and the many things they waste money on, and also have been a long-time skeptic of the usefulness of urban planning as practiced here. But recently I had occasion to check out Durham, NC, which is not too much different in population than Halifax. It is the home of Duke University, part of the Research Triangle area around Raleigh, and I expected much of what I had seen in similar southern cities, a vibrant streetscape, a bustling downtown, etc.
While there is a lot of economic activity and development going on, and there are pockets of lovingly-restored old buildings that put many of ours to shame, the city was hit hard by the decline of the tobacco industry and a lot of the property in the older part of the city that was devoted to that for warehouses, factories, etc. still lies dormant with run-down old housing still found nearby. In addition they seemed to have undergone some extensive but very poorly executed urban renewal in the '80s or '90s that was astoundingly bad. Lots of parking structures with no presence at all at street level, or surface parking lots servicing industrial-park style office buildings set well back from the street that got nice brick-and-iron fencing next to the sidewalk but which are still parking lots. The downtown also has a surprising number of 1960s single-floor commercial buildings with drive-up access and surface parking. The older buildings in downtown have a mix of the usual restaurants, boutiques and cafes but many if not more are either vacant and run-down or used by low-end commercial like tattoo parlors or head shops. I was astounded by how poorly it came off. We gripe about car-oriented development here but Halifax is a shining star in that regard by comparison, yet we seldom seem to hear that kind of thing.
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