Comment 23098

By nobrainer (registered) | Posted May 14, 2008 at 15:57:23

OK I'll bite.

Basic Services - Downtown infrastructure is pretty decrepit, old sewers, epic potholes, etc. Public transit is low-order like you'd expect in a town, not high order like you'd expect in a city. schools are pretty good though we keep losing community schools and building "big box" schools in the burbs.

Beauty and esthetics - are you kidding me? We let are beautiful old buildings fall apart and don't do anything about the negligent owners. Whole swaths of the city --especially the north and east end --hardly have any trees left and the city rarely bothers to replace trees when they die, so streets look bare and harsh under the sun. Too many ugly parking lots, one story strip malls, big box stores, cookie cutter prefab houses, five lane highways cutting neighborhoods in two. We fail on beauty.

Openness - I'm a working class white guy, so I'm maybe not the best person to call this one, but I know a lot of gay people and they seem to be able to live openly, and I see a people from a lot of different ethnic groups where I live and work. The bus is awesome when it's full, because I can hear like ten different languages spoken all around me. The city is shitty for college graduates - no opportunities and we don't want all that newfangled thinkin' to go puttin' idears into peoples heads.

Physical and economic security - hit and miss. Some nieghborhoods like Westdale and Kirkendell are safe and prosperous but other parts of the city are really depressed. No jobs, no beauty, no hope. many people who live in Hamilton have good jobs, but not enough of them are in Hamilton.

Leadership - safe to say that our political and business leadership is mostly made up of people who just keep doing the same thing overa nd over again hoping for a different result. Posivie, forward-looking, accountable, effective? Fat chance.

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