Raise the Hammer

St. Laurent in Monteal is one way north. St. Urban, two blocks over is one way south. Clark, in between, is one way, sometimes north, sometimes south. St. Laurent has been one of the livliest streets in Montreal. It is currently well along the way to condo-ized gentrification. Rene Levesque, on the other hand is two way, and it must be somewhere around 8-10 lanes. Can't say for sure. I seldom walk there, and then only to cross it. When I drive I'm too busy working my way through traffic to count lanes. Mostly, when in Montreal, I drive, park for the duration and use the metro or walk to get about its many, great communities.

I don't think I've been panhandled in downtown Hamilton as much as I have in other cities: Montral, Chicago, Ottawa or Toronto (I'm not widely travelled, as you can see.) I've felt annoyed, uncomfortable, but never threatened. My impression is that in Hamilton we don't much like our fellow citizens. It's a form of self loathing that came forward in the recent Royal Cannot discussion. Folks who might need a little help with the rent were "the wrong type of people" for the downtown.

Now the downtown BIA doesn't like panhandlers, who essentially represent, to the BIA I suspect, anyone who congregates downtown but doesn't shop in their stores. On my last stroll through Gore Park I saw people of all ages socializing on the busy park benches, people ride up on bikes to greet friends, a family taking pictures of their kids chasing pigeons around the fountain. No panhandlers at that moment, though I've no doubt someone somewhere was doing something questionable. I just didn't bother to question it.

Here's the thing, as I see it: there are still some downtown business people who think the area's future hangs on bringing people in from the suburbs to shop. To accomplish this the people who live or come downtown now must be gotten rid of, somehow, because they create a bad image that scares outsiders away (nevermind that some of those scary folks might be the outsiders' own kids.) But, as someone has pointed out above, since the urban renewal of the '70s, what is there that's sold downtown that isn't sold in a suburban shopping mall, where, despite two murders at Limeridge Mall for instance, many still feel safer than downtown? What's sold downtown that's not sold in suburban malls is perhaps the art in galleries on James St. N., but I suspect that draws the sort of clientelle that frightens many suburbanites and the downtown BIA. However, that district does serve a number of people who live in the area. Not all, but many.

It is my belief that in the current, post-renewal, and now post-industrial economy, cities have become increasingly centralized at the same time as they have become fractured into different communities of interest. So downtown for Southern Ontario folks who enjoy theatre might be King St. E. or W. in Toronto. Downtown for South Ont. sports fans would be the areas around the Rogers Centre and that Air Canada place. Downtown for South Ont. gamblers is Niagara Falls. The central financial area is still Bay St., but that is drifting. Shoppers split between Eaton Centre and Bloor St. Other communities, whether they be the Bloor West Village, or Locke St. South, Ottawa St., The Beaches or Old Oakville, thrive by serving their nearby residents first, and then developing a commercial mix, even specialties, that draw shoppers from further away. Sometimes the balance is destroyed and locals move away, such as in Niagara-On-The-Lake.

The old Hamilton downtown is never going to be the urban centre of the city that it was fifty years ago, the place where everyone went for financial services, legal help, big department stores, major sports and theatre, etc. The city is now 500,000 and stretches from almost Grimsby to almost the 401 to almost the Grand River. The old downtown is just one small segment of the old city, but as we've realized when it comes to transportation routes, all roads in South Ont. connect to central Toronto. You can get to Yonge & Front Streets as fast from downtown Hamilton as you can from Scarboro. More to the point, you can get there as fast from downtown Hamilton almost as fast as you can get to downtown Hamilton from Carlisle or Binbrook.

Still, central Hamilton can be a stimulating and enjoyable urban environment in which to live, play, and work, with some interesting, funky shops and pubs that the locals use and visitors occassionaly find to enjoy just as they have found Locke St. Bagels, Bryan Prince Bookseller, Ottawa St. interior design shops. But this happens only if there are enough downtown residents, and they're not driven away by a lack of businesses that will serve them, or the imposition of facilities (such as stadiums) in their midst that are meant to serve almost exclusively people from outside the area at the expense of residential quality of life.

They key is not whether the streets are one way or two, or even if there's a balance between the two, but whether they first serve area residents. There's nothing so bad about the people in Hamilton, downtown or in the suburbs, that they don't deserve decent places to live.