Hamilton can become the city of the future if we can bravely face the reality of the future.
By Trevor Shaw
Apr. 30, 2008
Back in 2004, when our meetings and email discussions turned into the website you're reading today, one of main topics of discussion as it related to the City of Hamilton was energy.
Even four years ago, the evidence of peak oil was not as obscure as you may think. There were many books and energy experts warning the world that the current situation and consumption was not sustainable and very nearing a crisis situation.
The mainstream media and the status quo supporters did everything possible to ignore the subject, but the internet - the best thing to happen to democracy since Pericles - contained a wealth of information and a variety of studies from petroleum experts.
Raise the Hammer was born in part from the imminent Peak Oil crisis and the necessary paradigm shift in living and city planning to mitigate the crisis. The City of Hamilton was 'planning' for a future based on cheap oil/gasoline and to some extent still is.
Almost four years have passed and the denial of an energy crisis is still steering the city planning, even with surmounting evidence of present a $120 barrel of oil.
The City of Hamilton still believes that box retail centres with supply chains and business models based on cheap oil will be the employment opportunities that keep the next generation in the City.
Employment land use in Hamilton: new box-store near the Red Hill Expressway.
Much of the status quo denial is finding blame in anything but the obvious - supply not keeping up with demand.
The deniers chose to lay blame in an area of the world that is experiencing 'turmoil', as if the Middle East and Nigeria were ever 'stable' in the 20th century and striking workers in Scotland apparently is a new phenomenon.
Or they point blame to speculators who are driving up the cost of oil, as if capitalism didn't exist in the 20th century.
Or they claim that the tax on gasoline is too high and needs to be lowered to make sure we can continue our lifestyles of happy-motoring in our car-dependent cities.
Any gas-tax cuts will have to made up somewhere else. The best place for taxing gasoline is at the pumps as a user fee, and not another subsidy for automobiles by taxing everyone - including people who don't drive.
I'm afraid that the 'good old days' of $0.39/L or even $0.89/L will not return. No, it will more likely be a return to even older 'good old days' of the milkman, streetcars and walking.
Circa 1935: A milkman chats with a father holding a baby, as he leaves the daily quota of milk on the doorstep. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Ironically, it is the staunchest free-market advocates who are in favour of socialist-style regulations and who lay blame at the oil companies for making too much profit in a capitalist society.
It's time to make the necessary changes to our city now, changes that will include creating higher density, walkable, and mixed-use neighbourhoods (something that is illegal given the City's current building by-laws), light rail transit, and an immediate stop on City boundary expansions and greenfield development.
The City's current layout still has plenty of room to grow upward and inward for many generations. Just visit a European city to see how much further we can intensify Hamilton, resulting in a city that is more livable. Former industrial and underused 'brownfields' are an opportunity, not a blight, for Hamilton to reinvent itself.
Hamilton can become the city of the future if we can bravely face the reality of the future. If we were brave enough to have started planning for this crisis ten years ago, the pain of the adjustment would have been less painful and the paradigm shift more gradual.
Instead, the world's population risks being stampeded off a cliff like the American Bison hunts due to our shortsighted planning. The food-crisis is a domino from the Peak Oil reality and even now mainstream media was quick to say that it won't affect 'us'.
The truth is, this is how things start. They start small and almost seem insignificant until we are over the cliff and wondering what to do next.
By cjwirth
Posted 5/1/2008 9:29:50 AM
This is an excellent article. All governments are ignoring Peak Oil, and they are planning for an ample energy future that does not exist. My report is designed to convince local governments that catastrophe looms, and that most of the problems of Peak Oil will eventually fall on the shoulders of local government. See the 40 page report at Peak Oil Associates. I specialize in informing governments, as I was director of the Master of Public Administration program at the University of New Hampshire for many years and I am now "retired," working and specializing in Peak Oil. I am very convincing about the reality of Peak Oil impacts. It is hard to escape the reports of scientific and government studies.
By shastatodd
Posted 5/1/2008 11:16:00 AM
Here is a simple fact:
Unlimited growth cannot happen on a finite planet.
We are bumping up against those limits now and having overextended the earth's carrying capacity with cheap energy one wonders what will happen to all those people now that we are facing resource decline. This will likely not be pretty.
By flaver flave
Posted 5/1/2008 11:36:53 AM
i just wanna know why can't the govament just take away all cars and give us hybrid cars they got the power to do that booooiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/7/2008 3:51:39 AM
Trevor, that new box store near the Red Hill was a contaminated brownfield before Lowes spend hundreds of millions to locate there. So, don't criticize it. you should applaud it but youre skewed thinking has you criticize every good thing that is happening in this city.
The only thing that is wworse than planning over a hill is exaggerating over the top!
By Bill
Posted 5/7/2008 8:59:34 PM
“that new box store near the Red Hill was a contaminated brownfield”
That new box store is not a box store. It is a “JYSK” store. The 23,000 square feet store located at the Parkway Plaza - 200 Centennial Pkwy at Centenial and Barton. Other major retailers in this shopping plaza are Future Shop and Food Basics. It is where a White Rose store was until they went out of business. It is not a big store compaired to other stores. It has displays all through the store and stuff on the sheives just like any other stores.
By jason
Posted 5/8/2008 9:57:01 PM
sounds great.
now, hopefully my kids will be able to stay in Hamilton when they are older and work at Lowe's or JYSK.
Thank goodness for all that new employment land.
By Ted Mitchell
Posted 5/9/2008 11:23:53 AM
Can somebody pu-leeze put up some pie-chart stats about how much of a consumer dollar spent stays in the community (and country) by development type? Mom and pop coffee shop vs. chain store, local lumbar yard vs. home despot, etc?
This may reveal the solid arguments and the empty ideology.
Without this info, all I hear is static.
By jason
Posted 5/9/2008 5:18:46 PM
actually, I'd rather see a chart that breaks down the annual salary of employees at places like Walmart, JYSK and Lowe's vs. auto assembly plants, manufacturing plants and other highway-related 'prestige' industrial uses like we see along the QEW.
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/12/2008 10:34:51 AM
No, Ted and others. Let's put up a pie chart that shows how the previous brownfield empty for many years was paying people a salary and put up a pie chart on the current Lowes location to see how many people are employed and what their salaries are. While you are at it, add the assessment dollars that are going to the city and calculate what that money is buying compared to what was being collected before.
Also, talk to the people in the neighbourhood to see if they are happier with Lowes or the empty brownfield. Factor that in too in the chart.
On second thought....a pie chart may not be necessary. Maybe removing your side blinkers will do the trick.
By Undustrial
Posted 5/12/2008 11:52:26 AM
So our only choice other than an old brownfield is a big-box store?
Constantly knocking down and rebuilding low-quality structures (or simply expanding urban boundaries and putting them out there) is such a colossal waste of capital dollars that it practically bars all but the market's largest players - Home Depot, Wal Mart or Tim Hortons, etc. In return, the financing needed drains profits from the neighbourhood for years to come, and the company brings the rest home to its head office, usually abroad. Yes, you can still buy hardware, groceries and furniture, and yes, you can still get a (low wage) job, but all of the other economic benefits flee the area like rats from a sinking ship. Ever tried selling products from your local business to a large chain? Fortinos, for instance, will only buy food if you can supply the entire chain, further elbowing small, local producers out of the economy (and meaning that even while organic beets are in season in Flamborogh, the store still ships them in from Peru).
This type of development is economic colonialism. We now operate in homogeneous institutions designed from corporate command centres afar, sending back all surplus profits (rather than reinvesting them locally), leaving us McJobs running only the day-to-day infrastructure like shipping/recieving or cash registers, with next to no meaningful input in either the shaping of our workplaces or communities. And like all empires, it masquerades as the "best" and "most efficient", while simply using the resources it funnels from existing client-communities to smash its way into new ones. Free markets? Yeah, right.
By jason
Posted 5/13/2008 11:13:24 AM
how silly of me to not realize that our entire future must consist of either empty brownfields OR $7.00/hour retail jobs.
That sounds like a recipe for smashing success.
And it also sounds like a great payoff for the billion dollar RHVP/Linc.
Whatever happened to the mighty 'list' of tech/light industry/manufacturing/assembly plants that were literally storming city hall like it was the Bastille?
http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=208
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/13/2008 1:19:07 PM
I just checked out Lowes web site on careers. It might be worth a look, Jason. Careers span from accounting to engineering to HR to assemblers to sales staff and more.
I'll bet each pays more than 7 bucks an hour.
Why I'll bet there are many Hamiltonians that would love the opportunities provided.
Is it the McMaster Innovation park? No. But hey, we need all kinds of jobs.
You must have a great paying job to dismiss the opportunities provided by Lowes. Good for you; but there are many poor hamiltonians that would not be as dismisive as you.
By uncommon sense
Posted 5/13/2008 2:09:27 PM
Let's not kid ourselves. Lowes isn't hiring engineers or accountants at its retail store in a strip plaza.
This is also not a false choice between low-paying jobs for "poor Hamiltonians" and nothing. We can position for low-paying jobs in strip plazas on the edge of town that are hard to reach without a car, or we can position for low-paying jobs in better connected buildings closer to where low-income Hamiltonians live.
We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars making it easy for the strip plaza jobs, but hardly anything to make it easier for the downtown jobs.
Which one do you think is more helpful to poor Hamiltonians?
Now ask, Who benefits from the strip plaza developments?
Do you really think it's about jobs and "opportunities"?
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/13/2008 10:14:22 PM
Uncommon Sense indicated that "We can position for low-paying jobs in strip plazas on the edge of town that are hard to reach without a car, or we can position for low-paying jobs in better connected buildings closer to where low-income Hamiltonians live."
We are talking about Lowes on Barton and Woodward. Hardly the edge of town. And look at the streets around that area...hardly middle class suburbia. At least do us the courtesy of knowing what you are talking about. This store (and it isn't a strip plaza either) is exactly where it will do the most good. And it sure beats what was there before: a pile of rubble. For years and years...and all because of the Expressway...imagine that!
By jason
Posted 5/14/2008 8:50:21 AM
I have 2 friends who just graduated Mac with engineering degrees.
they were going to move to TO and Montreal, but now they don't need to since I told them about the new Lowe's and JYSK stores! How exciting...we get to keep our university grads here now! No more wandering the aisles of Home Depot looking for the in-store engineer (always a pet-peeve of mine).
By uncommon sense
Posted 5/14/2008 9:19:13 AM
Bada Bing,
You're right, I was mistaken about the location. It's not out in the suburbs, though it is a box store, and it is land that was supposed to be for employment.
Jason,
Don't waste your time. Every time he gets proven wrong Bada Bing doesn't admit it, he just moves the goalposts. Notice how he didn't acknowledge how his argument about Lowes hiring engineers and accountants is totally irrelevant to whether we should be putting box stores on employment lands?
By highwater
Posted 5/14/2008 9:47:14 AM
"And it sure beats what was there before: a pile of rubble. For years and years...and all because of the Expressway...imagine that!"
The pro-expressway cabal promised us that the expressway would bring loads of high-quality employment, that there were all kinds of companies who would just love to locate here if only we had an expressway! So what do we do? We smash the largest gash into the face of a UNESCO World Biosphere and destroy the last remaining natural link between the lake and the escarpment, and what do we get? Crappy, low-wage, part-time jobs at a far lower job/hectare ratio than we were promised. That and subdivisions. Imagine that! And this is supposed to be some kind of triumph that proves the pro-expressway people right? It's exactly the opposite. Expressway opponents warned that all we would get for the mountain of debt that our children have incurred is subdivisions and big box retail. It is they who have been proven right so far, not the expressway proponents.
By Ryan | http://www.raisethehammer.org
Posted 5/14/2008 10:03:41 AM
Bravo, highwater. You've expressed the heart of the matter with poignancy and succinctness.
I'll officially start the countdown for someone to post the drearily predictable response that "beggars can't be choosers" - as if the choice was ever between sprawl/big box and nothing.
By Undustrial
Posted 5/14/2008 11:33:32 AM
It's worth mentioning, too, that a very large part of Hamilton's losses of high-quality jobs is due to the flight of manufacturing to the third world. While much of this has to do with trade policies and world economic situations, the link with large corporate retail chains is unmistakable. Take a walk through some of these retail warehouses and check the tags...the only local industry they're supporting is shipping.
By highwater
Posted 5/14/2008 3:04:01 PM
"the only local industry they're supporting is shipping."
That's why we need aerotropolis! You see? It all makes perfect sense!
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/14/2008 4:07:21 PM
I am far from an expressway apologist; in fact I would have done things differently, but I can tell hypocrisy when I see it; and the handwringing that goes on here is amazing. Ryan, stick to light rail. You make sense there. Highwater, you have common sense, even if ideological blinkers. jason, well, you must be a young man and a one trick pony; you will learn with age, I hope. You mimic other thoughts rather than being original. Give the city a chance. Don't pick on the business class and don't discriminate on jobs that you think are inferior to you. We have diversified opportuinities here and should welcom them all. But recognize when good things happen and the road was way overdue...in the wrong place perhaps but way overdue. Congratulations to those with the drive to face adversity and get it done. Would they had been around when there were real options about location.
As for Aerotropolis or whatever....that's a whole other topic.
By uncommon sense
Posted 5/14/2008 4:23:00 PM
What a copout. Bada Bing you just make ridiculous statements and then backtrack when people call you out, moving the goalposts again and again instead of just admitting you're wrong.
"I would have done things differently"
Sure, and the people banging the Iraq war drums "would have done things differently" too once everyone could see that the idea was just as bad as its opponents said it would be.
Face it: Red hill is turning out EXACTLY the way the people who opposed it said it would, a big whack of single family houses on the mountain and a few box stores to service them. No industry. No jobs. No economic development. What a waste.
You are absolutely an expressway apologist. You don't get to duck criticism by saying you were crossing your fingers.
By highwater
Posted 5/14/2008 5:19:01 PM
"Don't pick on the business class and don't discriminate on jobs that you think are inferior to you. We have diversified opportuinities here and should welcom (sic) them all."
Sweet of you to defend our sensitve business class, but no one here is picking on them, only on the leeches putting up residential sprawl and big boxes that take more from the local economy than they give back. In fact, any business person with a positive vision for this city is given near-blind devotion. Witness the Harry Stinson phenomenon.
And you can stop with the notion that we oppose low-quality jobs out of elitism. We oppose them because they are damaging to our long-term economic prospects. Would you like fries with your 'diversified opportunity'?
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/14/2008 6:18:24 PM
Such anger at being disagreed with. Highwater, your opposition to jobs may not be elitism, but it isn't realism either. In fact its nothing more than myopia. Go down and see who works there. As for engineers and other high paying jobs...someone designed the place; someone works in accounting; someone manages it...those are all jobs folks. Wake up and smell the opportunity.
Uncommon Sense: Iraq? Now there is a non sequitur...talk about moving the goal posts..hou have just changed the playing field!
By uncommon sense
Posted 5/14/2008 10:59:00 PM
If people are getting angry with you, it's not because you "disagreed" with them, it's because you're just trolling. I mean, you're trying to say that opening a big box chain store on industrial land somehow creates jobs for engineers and accountants. I don't think even you believe this.
Re: my Iraq comment, it's called an analogy, look it up. You're making the same excuses everyone makes when the idea they supported turns out to be a bad idea. 'Oh, I wouldn't have done it THAT way, so I'm not responsible for the screwup.'
I'm still waiting for you to admit that a big box chain store isn't the industrial jobs the Red Hill shills promised us, that Lowes IS a big box store, that new tax assessment from big box stores will not pay for Red Hill ($20 million a year in debt, operating and lifecycle costs), that there are other alternatives between a brownfield and a big box store, that a big box store will not produce engineering and accounting jobs, and that a big box store doesn't create "diversified opportunities". I guess I'll be waiting a while.
By jason
Posted 5/14/2008 11:01:36 PM
This conversation is quite useless now and going nowhere quick, but just to add my final two cents - I don't "oppose" low paying jobs.
I oppose spending 1 billion tax dollars to subsidize their creation. They can be created anywhere (and are) for much less than that.
Also, I'm no fan of being lied to (which I knew I was) all these years about the huge list of companies waiting to build new factories and real employment centres in Hamilton once RHVP was done.
So far Ryan is correct - the Red Hill opponents are bang on the money.
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/15/2008 6:51:05 AM
I will not be drawn into the Red Hill debate. Search for others. What I'm commenting on mr. uncommon sense is your far fetched analogies trying to compare the red hill with the Iraq war; how insulting to all those who are currently fighting there.
Also, what I began to comment on was the constant complaints about lack of jobs in Hamilton and your insistence that an empty brownfield property was better left empty waiting for goodness knows what. That neighbourhood deserved better and it got better. Admit that, or admit to elitism. I guess I'll be waiting a while too.
Check and Mate!
By highwater
Posted 5/15/2008 8:01:05 AM
That brownfield was better left for all the high-quality jobs that people like you promised us. That neighbourhood deserved better than a big box store. Trying to label people who want the promises of the RHVP fulfilled as 'elitist' is pure nonsense and just shows the weakness of your argument. Like uncommon sense said, I don't think even you believe this.
And how about our Mac and Mohawk grads? Don't they deserve some 'diversifed opportunities' too?
By uncommon sense
Posted 5/15/2008 10:18:47 AM
Bada Bing -> "I will not be drawn into the Red Hill debate."
Bada Bing earlier -> "This store (and it isn't a strip plaza either) is exactly where it will do the most good. And it sure beats what was there before: a pile of rubble. For years and years...and all because of the Expressway...imagine that!"
Guess what? YOU brought up the Red Hill, not anyone else. YOU launched the debate, but now that you're proven wrong yet again, you once again want to pick up your toys and go home.
You don't get to just throw out whatever ridiculous statement you can think of, but then self-righteously cut off debate when the facts don't go your way. People are going to call you out on it.
By Bada Bing
Posted 5/15/2008 8:30:53 PM
Uncommon Sense earlier: "Guess what? YOU brought up the Red Hill, not anyone else. YOU launched the debate, but now that you're proven wrong yet again, you once again want to pick up your toys and go home."
I was only stating fact, not opinion. Lowes is there according to their own press releases because of the convenience of the road. This is not an endorsement or a criticism. It is a point of fact.
you know what I've noticed is that if you don't agree with an opinion you pile on in the most exaggerated way....employment is good; high paying employment is better; face the fact and admit that at least Lowes is better than an empty contaminated lot. It is also not accepting the lowest common denominator. i know someone on Vansitmart who I visited recently. For that family having a nice clean new store near their home is a point of pride. They told me the landfill is being turned into a park and were happy that for once this struggling neighbourhood is getting some notice.
What is wrong with that?
By western guy
Posted 5/15/2008 9:27:50 PM
I used to live in Hamilton but am currently moving to Alberta. I think the hammer has much to learn from Calgary in particular, whereby each new community built is built compete with shopping. This makes walking the preferred option there not driving...woo hoo
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Posted 5/17/2008 2:11:41 AM
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I think we dropped the ball on better communication, and - and we certainly would, um, do that a lot differently in the future." -- Tim McCabe, director of planning and economic development for the city of Hamilton, on the city's handling of the collapse and subsequent demolition of the Balfour Building on King William St.
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By WRCU2 | http://wrcu2.static.golden.net/
Posted 5/1/2008 8:22:05 AM
Excellent write Trevor and great supporting images! You mention (of Peak Oil) that the mainstream media "did everything possible to ignore the subject" and "was quick to say that it won't affect 'us'." And that the food-crisis is "a domino from the Peak Oil reality."
Now what of the other dominoes lined-up in nice neat rose? Are they too thorny I suppose?
Massive mainstream media has an agenda to form, rather than to inform the public. The mainstream news has a chloroform affect and as a result, what's now appearing through the haze, is the more uniform shaped maize of things to come.
It is up to folks like us to reform the shape of that gloomy specter and convince people they're not just seeing a ghost. Doom is a very real apparition we will face as a city if we don't act now.
But there are many hurdles to overcome as status Quo is won of them. Business as usual must be maintained and the mainstream masters that men. We cannot move the hands which place the dominoes down hard but we can shove them aside or shore them up guard.
Food and our waters and our good attitudes
These we protect with our fond platitudes
No matter how many key words there fuse clues
Honorable sirs and respectable ma'ams
Lister carefully of alternative plans
Tell four friends when shaking their hands
We're to build here a cosm of grandeur not small
Not mini, eeny-meany nor remotely micro at all
It macro defacto depends we won't fall
Please don't uninstall!
The bees make us honey
Recollect as in money
Pride as horse ride
Stakes are tall!
Only a chump
Would jump
Y'all
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