Dubai, Hamilton and a hurricane named Hazel
Dubai, the city of the 21st century, is a city of superlatives — the tallest building, the most modern metro, the busiest airport, the most innovative museum. You get the picture.
Among these over-the-top phenomena is something called The Frame. It’s a picture frame all right, but it’s 30 storeys tall, made of an elaborate, gold exterior frame. The centre part — the place where you’d put your wedding picture, or the shot of the kids on their first day of school — is open to the air. Looking from the east, you see the new, highrise downtown, the spire of the impossibly-tall Burj Khalifa piercing the sky. From the west, you see the old city framed, and its low-rise, desert-coloured sandstone buildings. They’re modest, even a bit seedy. Fifty or so years ago, the old part was all you’d see.
What did it take to get them from the old to the new? Construction of course. At one point, Dubai held more than a quarter of the world’s cranes (not the bird kind). I counted 200 of them once. It has luck and location, too. And oil, yes, definitely. But of all of the elements of a successful city, it was vision that carried the day. Yes, vision.
Dubai is far away. Let’s bring the image closer to home. We could talk about the vision that Canada offers the world, though I must say that government-by-platitude offers not much more than a carefully crafted marketing piece — thousands of words and pictures, though a slightly different reality. Governments are good at words. We could talk about Ontario, but I’m not certain that the vision of building on top of the green space, and a straining-at-the-seams health care is what we’re aiming for. I can just see our new licence plates — Ontario: Privatized, Paved and Proud.
Even closer to home, Hamilton, with its fractious history, its shift from steel to everything else, its multiple problems (just read The Spec), and its new mayor and council allows us lots of opportunity to talk about vision.
To start with, where’s our frame? For my money, I’d pick the view from Sam Lawrence Park at the top of the Jolley Cut, where you can easily see that Hamilton, bless its heart, isn’t idle. You can count multiple cranes, even one in sleepy little Dundas, another one in Ancaster. (You do have to stand on your tip toes though).
Here’s the really big question: who and what will define our vision for the future? For sure, we’ll do it our way. I see us squabbling of course (we’re a family, what did you expect?). I see us expanding our boundaries to take in some of the province’s green space, but preserving it as the Hamilton Greenbelt (we could name it the Doug Ford Conservation Park; he might never touch it). I see us building highrises along the LRT. I see us housing the homeless in tiny buildings and in structures like those that Indwell builds. I see lots of infill. I see an ambitious city, set on capitalizing on the new economy, the new world of the 21st century. I see a huge opportunity.
One thing I don’t see though? An articulate, assertive local vision.
We don’t have to look 11,000 kilometres away to see the successful city that an active vision has created: Mississauga, much closer than Dubai. Incorporated in 1974, the city has grown to three quarters of a million people (seventh in Canada), from its incorporation at one-third that size. It boasts a hugely diverse population and industrial base, a university campus, a major airport and lake port. Pretty similar to Hamilton, right? What’s the difference?
Vision, activism, and oh yes, a hurricane named Hazel. Mayor for 36 years, she was (and is) a perfect role model for Hamilton: articulate and assertive, energetic and committed, visible and visionary.
Here in the 23rd year of the new century, in a city that is full of potential, we could use her example, and her spirit. We seem, my friends, to be lacking it.