Hamilton must unify urban and suburban
THE SPECTATOR’S VIEW
At the very least, the statement lacked diplomacy. At the worst, it was just plain dumb. But it illustrated again the two solitudes — urban and suburban — that make up Hamilton and so many other cities. It is a challenge we must all take seriously. In a conversation recently with Steve Paikin on TVO’s “The Agenda,” Terry Whitehead, the Ward 8 council member representing Hamilton’s west Mountain, criticized the proposed route of Hamilton’s $1-billion light rapid transit system:
“You’re going from McMaster to nowhere. Most successful LRT systems go from destination location to destination location.”
His fellow panellist, Ward 3 Coun. Matthew Green, representing those in the east end of the lower city, took immediate issue: “To nowhere? If you want to call the hottest real estate market in southern Ontario nowhere then do that. I know my neighbourhood, for instance, has an 8.9 per cent increase in assessment just last year.”
Green reminded Whitehead, Paikin and the television audience what most of us already know: Hamilton is increasingly recognized in the national media as a hot market and a destination for millennials and others: “They’re not going to nowhere,” said Green.
Indeed, many are going to his ward, and others across the city.
We can only hope a lower-city politician would not label a Mountain neighbourhood or elsewhere as “nowhere.” What kind of backlash might that generate?
But many people, both on the Mountain and downtown, think exactly that about their urban or suburban or rural cousins, and it doesn’t help that some politicians encourage or condone it.
It is divisive and counterproductive, and another sign that the city should redraw ward boundaries.
The best way to do this is carve up the city like wedges on a pie rather than pieces on a square cake, so that all council members represent both urban and suburban residents. It is done in other cities, and it encourages co-operation on council about city-wide challenges and goals, and educates everyone, politicians and voters, about what is best for the city as a whole.
Meanwhile, it helps unite a community of communities such as Hamilton, at a time when unity is clearly becoming more important. Increasingly, voting patterns in all cities reveal deep splits between those downtown and those further afield, and not just in municipal elections.
The problem is writ large in the results of the election of Donald Trump, for example, or the Brexit vote.
If we are to be a united people, in a community of city builders in a country of nation builders, redrawing ward boundaries is an appropriate first step.