Comment 52856

By moylek (registered) - website | Posted December 09, 2010 at 10:32:38

Go live in Portland, Montreal, Vancouver or Amsterdam for a few years and see what it's like to live in a real progressive city.

Sadly (for we who live in and even love this battered old city), this is a little backwards: Hamilton is a very progressive city. From the 50s to through the 80s, all sorts of bold new transformations were implemented here far more thoroughly than in bass-akwards places like Montreal or Amerstam which clung to old architecture, old streets and old ways of thinking.

  • One way streets for fast cross-town access!
  • The visual clutter of little old shops with the signs and windows replaced by a clean down-town mall!
  • Raised plazas for pedestrian enjoyment!
  • Concrete and brick art gallery and convention centre without all those pesky, heat-and-A/C leaking windows!
  • Crazy little streets at the centre of town replaced with a nice, big block of climate-controlled buildings!
  • The hulking Victorian embarrassment that was the old city hall at James N and Market pulled down and replaced by a shiny new marble building for the ages!
  • Spindly overwrought fountain and messy trees in the centre of town replaced by the honest lines and modern forms of an open expanse of concrete!

That's ambitious progressivism for you. What Hamilton needs is a little more regressivism ...

  • streets designed for people, not cars
  • a downtown geared for living and shopping, not driving
  • development which respects and loves its environment instead of thumbing its nose at it

And, in fits and starts, we're getting there. I think.

Comment edited by moylek on 2010-12-09 09:46:50

-- Kenneth Moyle Hamilton, Ontario

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