First Principles

If we understand how healthy cities work, the citizens of Hamilton can revitalize our wonderful city.

By Ryan McGreal
Published May 16, 2005

Editorial

Here's a list of the core principles that we believe govern urban life. By understanding and applying these principles, the citizens of Hamilton can revitalize our wonderful city. These principles aren't in any particular order.

Cities are not suburbs, towns, or villages. The great benefit of cities is their complexity, diversity, variety, anonymity, and privacy.
The normal comings and goings of various individuals in the city generate neighbourhoods, local nodes, and distinct characters. This complex process cannot be duplicated in the laboratory or manufactured.
When a city tries to deny its true nature as a dense, complex urban ecosystem by micromanaging, regulating, and separating its various functions, it begins to kill itself. "Rationalizing" the city is like clearcutting a rainforest to plant wheat. After a few years, everything starts blowing away.
The downtown core is the heart of the city. Without a healthy core, the city as a whole cannot function.
The public life of the city is in its streets, or it's nowhere.
Public policies (tax and regulatory) should not subsidize sprawl or car-based transportation. If people had to pay the real price of living in the suburbs, fewer people would do so.
When a city tries to let everyone drive everywhere, it begins to turn into a massive suburb, with roads and parking crowding everything else out.
The built environment should support a vibrant street life: wide sidewalks, street walls, street-level businesses, and mixed uses.
Regulations should be as simple as possible, and they should encourage open, diverse, creative development within a coherent framework that supports street life.
To encourage good streets: build to the sidewalk, make buildings compatible with their neighbours, open directly onto the street, let owners decide how to use their buildings, and never put parking between the sidewalk and the door.
Buildings should face out, not in. Plazas, parks, and atria are insincere attempts to transform city blocks into pastoral theme parks. They also display a contempt for the fabric of city life that make them immediately suspect.
Streets are for everyone, not just drivers. Two way streets, lower speed limits, and market priced curbside parking can slow the cars, make it easier for cyclists to share the road, and make sidewalks safer and more relaxing for pedestrians.
One way streets are de facto expressways right through the city. No one wants to walk, stand, or sit next to an expressway.
It looks very much like cheap energy is soon going to be a thing of the past. Our transportation infrastructure should reflect this fact, emphasizing and promoting the least energy-intensive ways of getting around.
Developments that are small-scale, localized, and idiosyncratic are better than developments that are large-scale, centralized, and dull.
Everyone deserves a decent place to live, and dreary housing projects, decaying ghettoes, and park benches do not qualify. The best way for cities to assist low income residents is simply to help with their home payments (even better is to require that employers pay a living wage).
Mixed housing is a good way to avoid both ghettoes and quasi-gated communities.
Public mega-projects are almost always a bad idea, costing too much and delivering too little. They demolish neighbourhoods to bolster politicans' egos.

What elements of healthy cities did we miss? Please send your ideas to principles@raisethehammer.org or post them to the comments form at the bottom of this page.

Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a programmer and writer. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. He is also is the city editor for H Magazine. Several of his essays have been published in the Hamilton Spectator.

Ryan also maintains a personal website.

6 Comments

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By grahamia (registered)
Posted August 14, 2006 15:45:05

I agree with the principles, but would like to see what relocalization movement has to contribute. see for example Folke Gunther's work from Sweden on ruralization. see RURALISATION A POSSIBLE WAY TO ALLEVIATE OUR CURRENT VULNERABILITY PROBLEMS Folke Günther Holon Ecosystem Consultant Kollegievägen 19 224 73 Lund S URL: http://www.holon.se/folke/ E-mail: folke@holon.se

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By Say WHAAAA?!?!? (anonymous)
Posted October 30, 2008 03:20:30

Ryan McGreedy, who died and made you Karl Marx?!?!

Where is personal responsibility and personal choice in your equation? Roads ARE made for cars. When you are 18 you are an adult. You are responsible to support yourself, your family and to not be a burden on society.

I particularly find #16 offensive. I dont make much $$$$ but it is NOT a RIGHT to have free housing. If you cant afford your housing then dont have kids, budget yourself, get a second job and, if necessary, get more education. As globalization occurs there is going to be a massive shift in wealth away from the North America and Europe to 5 billion other people. People who the US and Europe have been providing aid to for decades and who ppl who responded in kind by pumping out 7 kids per woman. More mouths to feed! More potential criminals to destabilize societies. Wonderful. At a certain point you need to stop feeding the pigeons or you are going to get covered in guano.

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By Anonymous (anonymous)
Posted November 26, 2008 14:27:43

Some of these points are great, while others are guaranteed to cause decay. I don't say that with passion, but with observation.

4. While we love to hold onto this concept, I am afraid it is an outdated one. The reasons why downtown has decayed over time are complicated and myriad, but I believe our lower city suffers because we have separated it as such. True, downtown holds its own life and distinct properties, but all the negative properties of downtown are distinctly associated with it because we have failed to do anything but call it "downtown" in idea and mind. To bring new life to downtown we must treat it as we treat the other prosperous Hamilton neighbourhoods -- with a new attitude. This old attitude of "being the heart" is a reasoning for its decay. Downtown must stand its own feet, so to speak, as the rest of the city does.

6. Strongly agree.

16. Involving a mandated living wage would cause more harm than good. Businesses are to carry the highest tax load, so that individuals can afford to live with lower property taxes and higher quality of life. Mandatory regulations of wages in Hamilton would cause a double-take on any business that were considering Hamilton as a destination. It could also cause eventual job loss and incur even more damage as those who are effected could end up accepting social services which creates even more burden on the city.

Most other points are A+ material.

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By Glenn (anonymous)
Posted January 15, 2009 13:40:45

Mr. Ryan,
This is my first time reviewing your site.

Find it interesting that you seem to view those of us who have chosen a lifestyle different from your own as woefully lacking in accounting abilities, and or more.

My choice was to live where I live, my choice was to run businesses and hire people and pay taxes accordingly.
No time in my past life was I not cognisant of my chosen path and the requirement to pay possibly more taxes or not know that it would cost more for what I had chosen to do.

To state that fewer people would live in an urban suburban or rural envoirnment because as you intimate they have less intuitive skills than you is offensive.

Sincerely,

Glenn

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By Ryan (registered) - website
Posted January 15, 2009 14:37:01

Glenn,

Thank you for your comment. I think you misunderstand me: I'm not suggesting that people live in suburban areas because they somehow lack intuitive skills.

Rather, I'm suggesting that subsidizing suburban, car-dependent living through a variety of means - including fully-funded "free" roads and highways, "free" parking requirements, low-density single-use zoning, externalized costs of driving including pollution and health effects, subsidies for the oil industry, and so on - has created a demand for suburban living that is far higher than it would be if people had to pay the full costs of their choices.

In fact, it's only sensible that more people choose to live in car-dependent communities when the cost of owning and operating a car is subsidized. It's hardly insulting to suggest that someone would take advantage of a huge price incentive.

However, these structural subsidies have produced a living arrangement that is simply not sustainable. I'm not opposed to spending public money to incentivize desirable activities, but I must oppose spending that money on activities that are harmful - that destroy farmland, that consume non-renewable energy, that produce air pollution and greenhouse gases, and so on - especially when better alternatives exist and are in working display in cities all around the world.

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"Common sense is that which tells us the world is flat."
--Stuart Chase

By LL (registered) - website
Posted January 20, 2009 17:54:05

Say Whaaaa?:

Roads are not just for cars. If you look into the history of North American cities, you'll find that paved roads first came into being as a result of the demand for bicycle use.

And contrary to popular misconception, drivers do not pay for roads. Municipal roads are payed for out of property taxes, which people pay even if they don't own a car.

I use a bicycle year-round as my primary mode of transportation. So if you ask me to pay for your roads and then expect me not to use them, aren't you kind of recieving social assistance from me?

And then you have the nerve to criticise subsidized housing. So much for personal responsibility.

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LL believes that the problems of the city reflect deeper social contradictions

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