Raise the Hammer

Normally I'm the first to argue against exceptionalism - there are a lot of post-industrial cities similar to Hamilton that are doing things far better than us, and we should learn from them. But I think a small tourist town is sufficiently different it's worth highlighting those differences.

Collingwood is a tourist destination since it's in a cottage country, near Wasaga Beach, and the ski slopes.

Tourist destinations have synergy with showing off beautiful old buildings. And with its small size, you can see a much larger proportion of the town devoted to this.

Many small Ontario towns have their own tourism niches carved out that makes it similarly profitable for the city to invest in architecture this way - Stratford has Shakespeare, Niagara on the lake has wine and Shaw, etc.

But then go to small towns that do not have a tourism resource and you see things looking a lot like Hamilton.

I don't think Hamilton can build a similar tourism industry off of our art scene and waterfalls. At least not one that blankets the entire lower city.

The better cities to point to are the ones that have successes in spite of sporting similar problems to Hamilton. Guelph has a vibrant downtown with old buildings in spite of no single major tourism draw, and its downtown is about as far from the university campus as Hamilton.

Brantford's downtown is every bit as run-down as Hamilton's and then some. But still, downtown Brantford has some successes that are worth noting. It's far more pedestrian-friendly for example, with no one-way highways or crazy intersections, even though the Grand River bisects the city in a similar manner to our Escarpment. Highway-ramp corners exist but they're marked with big blinking-yellow-lights and YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS signs.

So I totally think we can learn from other cities... but it's fair to say that downtown areas of Collingwood and other tourist destinations have a very different economy from Hamilton, and heritege protection gives them better dividends.

That said, it does speak to the idea that heritage should also consider the relationship to the local economy - having a pretty building facing the Gore is a lot more important to the city's success than having a pretty building next to a small school on Sanford.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2013-03-07 20:29:13