Raise the Hammer

On untangling the muddle of Walkabilty, Talkabilty, Shoveabilty and two-way human realtionships which give birth to two-way streets:

Every once in a while you stumble upon a real gem, which makes you step back and say... Yes!

Here is once such Yes! moment I experienced today. I hope there are others here who share my joy of this simple discovery:

"The environment attractive to the mobile creative class is actually attractive to everybody. If a city caters to it’s own poorer classes in a way that encourages them to start their own businesses, it will almost certainly create a favourable environment for the creative class. For the most part creative class people can take care of themselves – being well educated, driven, and mobile. It is the people who lack these advantages that cities must strive to help."

"Conventional economic wisdom cites such factors as infrastructure, education, crime rates, labour mobility and lack of corruption being determinants of economic success. By these criteria, all medium sized Canadian cities would score very high, in fact much higher than large cities. Yet, these cities are not growing…"

Have you ever wonder why the poor and marginalized never speak of Walkabilty? guess, for them it is a fact of life that they are struggling hard to distance from. They do try to seek two-way streets all the time, but of an entirely different kind.

It would be interesting to start a tour for the poor on King Street. Get them onto mini-buses and drive them to Locke Street for a day out. Once there, guide them into the fine art of 'walkabilty'.

The looks alone on the faces on both sides of the spectrum could teach us an entirely new approach to urban design in our times.

Is walkabilty a class issue which is being candy wrapped as an urban redevelopment tool? I think the looks on the faces of people on the emerging patios of Locke would point us to the answer.

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2012-05-17 12:27:48