Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRitsman
I think for the beginning, many people will still commute unfortunately, but once the population of the downtown increases, businesses will begin to see potential, and open an office in Hamilton. I am sure many who work in Toronto, that live in Hamilton will jump at the chance to work in downtown Hamilton closer to home. They just need that basis of people.
I keep saying this and I find it falls on deaf ears, but Hamilton really needs to work on a few little things as well. Having well designed garbage cans at regular intervals in the downtown. Maybe hire some of the homeless to pick up garbage, because many see the downtown as just dirty. Look at somewhere like Burlington, Oakville, or even Toronto, where the streets are clean and things are not falling apart. Hamilton needs to work on this.
This development and others like it will push for this type of improvement. I always say gentrification is not good or bad, it is neutral. It can be made good by smart gentrification. New businesses and more wealth can be done in a way that doesn't push out the poorer. Higher wealth people also have the expectation of cleanliness and will moan to council about it. When the rich take the bus, the bus gets better for the poor. Ensure Hamilton doesn't displace its current residents, but make room for the new people. There are ways to do both. Fight for smart gentrification rather than fighting back altogether.
We will see I suppose, I am excited for this development as it reminds you of Hamilton's growth on your way out of Hamilton.
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The rich don't take the bus in hamilton - there is a huge stigma about not being associated with the "plebians" of hamilton.. and in some ways I can't blame them.. as someone who takes the bus everywhere there is a very distinct "flavour" of people who take the bus - esp. comparing the downtown residents to the suburbian residents on the mountain.
Heck growing up even "I" was taught that hamilton was dirty and that hamiltonians were dirty and uneducated (I lived in stoney creek, and we did NOT call ourselves hamiltonians)- if I said things like "I says to him" my mother would scream at me to stop talking like a hamiltonian. She used to fear when I was downtown late at night that I would be attacked. Things have changed but a lot of that stigma still remains the same, esp. from people who don't live in the core of hamilton.
Hamilton has always had the dirty image - dirty factories, grimy falling apart buildings, and creepy degenerate looking grizzled downtown people with matted hair and missing teeth who are dirty or smelly. Whether those are crackheads, retired factory workers, or just homeless people..
I would like to see more businesses come downtown, but hamilton still has a long way to go to erase the past 60-70 years of perception, degeneration and decline back to the golden age of hamilton where prestige, class and opulence were the hallmarks of the downtown - where people - not just young people - but everyone, dressed up to go downtown.
I am seeing great progress, families and young people with money frequenting the downtown, but I am also seeing the old degeneracy of hamilton creeping back into the downtown again - crazy people on the streets, people begging along king william st where they KNOW people have money..
I want to feel sorry for these people, except that my mother used to work for the sisters of downtown hamilton - the convent, doing their bookkeeping, and also used to volunteer at hamilton out of the cold - a place people can go for shelter and to be fed - so I KNOW these people aren't as bad off as they try to make themselves off to be, and I KNOW they don't want food - they want money for drugs, which they shoot up with in the back alleyways along king st.
THIS is something that still needs to be addressed. This scares new people, as does the anti-gentrification movement where people are being encouraged to smash windows, glue locks on buildings and overall just vandalize new establishments. When you let the rot remain in hamilton that rot will try to corrode anything new that goes into it. Hamilton has been left to rot for FAR too long, and it's going to take a while for that resistance to go away.
And it is imperative that poorer people arent pushed out, but also that these people get the help and are pushed to change. You have generations of people on welfare - people who have never worked, and never intend to work, and that should NOT be our responsibility, nor should we feel the need to keep these people stay here, and remain the way they are.
The poorest areas of hamilton are cannon st and barton st - where those entire stretches have long been considered the seediest parts of hamilton, crackwhores, skinheads, gangs thugs drugs dealers - one has to ask themselves if things keep getting better what is our plan for where these types of people are going o go - does hamilton HAVE a plan for that?
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The downtown really needs to have a whole fleet of police just constantly scouring it - it needs to have security cameras at every corner, in every back alley, monitoring the degenerate areas 24/7, and have some concrete plan of what to do with the people once they find them.
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