Culture branded neighbourhoods
 

It's a given that Canon and Vine Sts. between James and Bay should be officially designated Chinatown.

Recently i discovered that just east of where Barton Village ends, it could easily be branded Little Poland or Little Warsaw. Barton St from Sherman to Gage.

There's a Polish Credit Union, Polish Catholic Church, Ukranian Othordox Church, Polish School, Polish Veterans Legion Hall, Polish Food store, and a Polish Social Club.

i think its a great idea

What about James St North? Little Italy? I'm sure the Portuguese will be ticked. Little Portugal? I'm sure the Italians will be ticked as well. Little Europe?

Even Toronto's Little Italy is more Portuguese now. They just made Little Portugal a little further down on College. Interesting that that's what has happened here too.

That was my thought as well... I think with the street names (e.g. Corso Racalmuto) and the slightly stronger connection, that section's still "Little Italy".

There's some strongly Portuguese areas along Barton as well with grocers and restaurants and other shops.. they'd be Little Portugal in my opinion.

So you'd designate a Little Portugal from James east along Barton?

Toronto and other cities aggressively brand neighbourhoods. I don't know why Hamilton doesn't do it more? Modern land developers realize the importance (value) in giving a development a brand. ie Meadowlands.

We have; Chinatown (Vine/Canon), Fabrictown (Ottawa), Antiquetown (Locke), Little Italy (instead its called 'Jamesville'), Little Poland (Barton East), Little Portugal, Corktown.

'International Village' to me is a nothing name. I don't know what that means, and I don't know what to expect, or what it promises?

And... I'm know i'm going to take a hit for this but..... "James North" could've been branded (named) something stronger in regards to art. Sorry with all due respect, and with all the success James North and the art crawl have had, I always just wished it was branded something better. But I guess if a brand-name works then who cares what the name is?

I'm excited for Wee Britain... although Little Israel and Little Jamaica should be fun as well.

Five years ago. Now that business seems to be migrating to Ottawa North.

Locke is becoming more Salontown. Not to be confused with Saloontown (Hess).

Would love to have an Uptown for the Mountain. Perhaps a redeveloped Limeridge Mall area or Upper James with BRT or LRT A-Line.

Ok. That's the second time this week you've made me LOL.

Watch out for the Poppins.

For Little Portugal, I was thinking of a couple areas along Barton further east than James with several Portuguese businesses (e.g. wentworth area)

But since James is already known for being Little Italy (as far as I know, that's the more established label, and that seems to be better-known) then better to establish a Little Portugal in a distinct geographical location, especially one that would benefit from the branding.

And here's a geographical parallel: NYC’s Mulberry Street is familiar to fans of the Godfather (the Don’s assassination attempt in I was filmed on Mott as a stand-in for Mulberry, which appears as itself in III) and Donnie Brasco (Pacino's Lefty Ruggiero, "Lefty from Mulberry Street").

Hamilton should brand the Polish area on Barton. It even has two churches and a community centre.
I've always found it strange that Hamilton, with over 70,000 Italians, doesn't have a Little Italy. Ottawa even has a Little Italy with only half the Italian population of Hamilton. Though I haven't explored it fully, Ottawa's Littly Italy doesn't seem very Italian (I noticed some Thai restaurants and British pubs). It doesn't take much for Ottawa to brand a neighbourhood, they have a "gay village" that appears to consist of a bookstore and a nightclub. On the other hand, Ottawa's Chinatown looks decent.

I remember Sheila Copps tried hard to designate neighbourhoods in Hamilton when she was Heritage Minister. But obviously that got nowhere.

Designating neighbourhoods helps to define an area and spurs interest. Which leads to development and a strong focus to improve the area.

Does everyone really think branding parts of the city based on ethnicity is the way to go?

I mean we already have areas branded without mention of ethnicity, i.e. Locke, Westdale, Concession, James North. Why would we want to fall into the trap of ethnicity.

Can't we just brand neighbourhoods based on their attributes and diversity? Start calling it Barton Village, or BV East, or whatever, all the time. Never mention just Barton, or anything else, just talk the brand. Develop a buzz, a cachet, visit the nicer establishments frequently, walk the street, take people there, and perhaps it will thrive.

I agree that, without a compelling logic/history, there's a fine line between profiling and branding. That was the point of my earlier joke.

This highlights the problematic nature of such designations. The majority of the neighbourhood's businesses (landmarks like the Sieu Thi and Tan Thanh markets, Ben Thanh and Pho Dau Bo restaurants, the banh mi shop, D’s Café, Kim Hoa BBQ and businesses continuing up York as far as Locke) are Vietnamese as far as I can tell (yes, possibly even the Chinese BBQ), and if that's the case, calling it "Chinatown" is misleading at best.

Again, James North has its share of ethnic history (thanks in part to the train station) but if you established branded areas by resident population, you’d probably find Little Italy and Little Portugal in the suburbs. (As long as we’re profiling communities, most of the city’s Catholic schools are east of the Red Hill and south of the Linc.)

Yes.
It's a celebration of culture. It's offensive to call it profiling. Saying most catholic schools are east of Red Hill and south mtn is profiling. Ethnic brand neighbourhoods are tourist destinations.

Where do you go when you visit Detroit? Greektown. Or why bother going all the way out to Toronto's Greektown, if not for the branded culture of the area. When you visit NYC, one has to visit Hells Kitchen and Little Italy because they are part of the tourist destinations. Just take a bus tour and see where it goes and what it says about the areas.

I think branding a neighbourhood has economic benefit as long as it's based on an element of truth. Unlike what was mentioned about Ottawa's ethnic areas. That's funny about O-towns Gay Village... one bookstore and one nite club and its contrived Little Italy.

And as far as the brand goes, make it mean something. What does 'International Village' mean to anyone? It might as well be called 'Mustard Village'. The brand doesn't HAVE to be ethnic based, Ottawa and Locke are good examples. But an ethnic brand usually works the best. Restos, cafes, food stores, sport/social clubs and lesser retail and maybe a church usually only make up the neighbourhoods non-residential. How many Italians live on the side streets off College? Probably not a lot. The shop keepers probably live in Woodbridge.

I agree that there can be a destination appeal to a branded area, but what I was getting at (painted most broadly in my "as long as we're profiling" aside) is the tricky matter of who decides what's called what. Would a "Little ____"/"___town" be conferred by the city or invoked by the community? In either case, what would be the criteria for suggesting/reviewing/approving the designation?

This one has always bugged me. Could never understand using a business that's in another neighbourhood (in this case, GS Dunn on Park North & Vine) as the highlight of your BIA's social calendar.

Their name is pretty bland, yeah, but like most Hamilton neighbourhoods, the International Village BIA has changed its business/residential constituency with every generation. That's a hurdle in branding -- having a stable population in a single neighbourhood over multiple generations makes it easier to reach consensus on a snazzy name.

I think districts emerge on their own and become part of the public conscience and that cities shouldn't have to brand them. I think Hamilton tries too hard to brand its neighbourhoods. I mean, Main West Village? What a joke. I'm not against the idea, just don't think it's necessary.

i agree with the futility of over-branding areas like that -

but I do wonder if there is an advantage in branding areas like Little Italy that have a stable history and local recognition as that area, so that people recognize them as a destination.

It's actually Main West Esplanade, which only underlines your point.

People love to think they don't buy into branding and brands. But the truth is it works.

It means something to people when they say they live in Westdale, Meadowlands, Locke, Ottawa St etc. It's marketing and it makes a destination. Think of Little Italy, or Greektown in Toronto. It's a destination, and visitors can expect a different experience.

Not disputing that quality branding works, but it helps if you spend hundreds of millions putting your message across. (And despite the familiarity of Coca-Cola's slogans, they spend millions changing them and rarely keep any for more than a few years. Like Hamilton’s "Reach. Dream. Rise. Shine.")

It's called "restaging" [the brand]. To give it new relevance to new people. People go through a new lifestage all the time. Realize that within only 5 years every single student in a highschool has changed. So a restage of a brand is necessary. One year you're buying a power boat, 10 years later you're buying a retirement residence. That same person is paying attention to different brands all the time. Changing the relevance of the message, but not the 'brand promise' every few years is about right.

Dollars spent is relative to the amount of people you're trying to reach.
Coke needs to spend billions bc it's trying to reach every person on the planet. Hamilton only needs to communicate with a regional catchment. Only about one million people to tell them a certain neighbourhood is there. One media buy on one tv station, one newspaper and two radio stations, and one website will reach those people.

Who can forget when Tomi Swick helped brand Ontario?

more for the Little Poland.... just saw a Polish Travel agent and a Polish Banquet Hall (part of another church across from Stadium Mall). There's some kind of ethnic bakery too but I've yet to determine what.... sign is in Jamaican colours. I think the Polish eagle looks cool. that would be a sweet graphic for banners.

Will be nice when Hamilton has a gay village, haven't as yet "sought out my people" in this city, mainly because all the ones I'd want to meet go to Toronto when going out and the two venues in this city have poor reputations.

I wonder if making a "steel street" or "smokestack street" would be a good way to embrace Hamilton's history, it could be cool looking too.

St Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the one at Barton & Balsam. The colours sound like Belarus... neighbours with Poland and Ukraine on the old bloc.

You can go out further, but Barton from Sherman to Lottridge is like a greatest hits package.

I think a more appropriate name for the the area from James to Wentworth be more to the tune of "CrackTown" or "HO-Town" .

Don't ya think?

And do stay for the Poppuns!

I wonder if there aren't divisions within Hamilton's Italian community that make a "Little Italy" difficult. Part of it is geographic -- yes, there's a Corso Raculmuto near the CN tracks, but there's also a Racalmuto Street near the top of the Red Hill. As is true of many immigrant communities, it has become suburban over generations. Look at the connect-the-dots social calendar of Festitalia and you can start to put together a map. There are possibly North/South regional divisions within that community as well (the Venetian Club caters to Northern Italians while the Donnici Club caters to Calabrians... and then there are the Sicilians, the reason for those Racalmutos). Not really sure and not qualified to do more than guess.

But... in the process of poking around, I turned to Hamilton: A People’s History, where it’s noted that St. Ann’s (built in 1910 at Barton & Sherman) and St. Anthony’s (built in 1912 at Barton and Leinster) were two of the earliest hallmarks of the city’s Italian community. "Little Warsaw," in other words. This overlap might have something to do with why there has been no formal designation.

What about "Little Indy 500" along Main St East? :shrug:

The historic little Italy in Hamilton always was the Barton-Sherman area. During the 60's and 70's alot of the Italian community migrated East to Stoney Creek. We used to call it Tony Creek referring to the large Italian community. Don't hear that reference to often anymore though since the community has mostly assimilated at this point. Italian immigration hit it's peak in the late 60's. So most of the Italians we see now are mostly second and third generation Canadians. There really isn't one specific area where that group still congregates. The Polish shared much the same areas along Barton but they were more to the East of Sherman while the Italians were West of Sherman.

^ I agree.. Sherman was the border. Italians west, Polish East.
I've noticed many Italian neighbours, of course they've lived there since 1948 and their children live in Stoney Creek.
Even better when ethnic neighbourhoods share a border. Barton Village ends at Sherman so the stretch east is open for a designation. I like Little Warsaw better then Little Poland. Sounds more like Little Kiev in NYC.

The problem nowadays though is that neighborhoods are more ethnically diverse than they were in the past. There just isn't as much ghettoization as there was in the past. So trying to identify neighborhoods through ethnic ties would be much more difficult. If we want to use the historic ethnicities of neighborhoods to identify them then how far back would we go. Some neighborhoods can be identified with more than one ethnicity. It all depends on what time frame we are talking about.

historically wouldn't be as difficult as you're saying. 100 years ago to present. IT would be obvious. And it doesn't matter about the diversity now. They culture has left a mark. And they would become tourist destinations. The Italians on College I mentioned live in Woodbridge now, but still maintain an ethnic business in Little Italy. If we designated a Little Warsaw, who's to say that Polish immigrants and their children born here wouldn't open an ethic business out of heritage and pride? Did you see College st after the World Cup. Not all those Italians live in the area. But it was a place for them to go and celebrate the win and their heritage.

Corktown is still called corktown. How many irish live there now?

I just did a photo tour of Ottawa's Chinatown, it's fairly small but surprising for a city like Ottawa:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=171883

'It's like little India in some places'
South Asian community is at home here

April 30, 2010
Denise Davy
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/760877

When Indu Singh came to Hamilton from India 20 years ago, the South Asian community wasn't as large or as cohesive as it is now.

It was difficult to find the ingredients for Indian food and heritage celebrations were non-existent.

Since then, thousands of families have moved here from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and surrounding countries.

Today they make up Hamilton's largest visible minority group, numbering 21,000, and are expected to grow to 56,000 by 2031.

Singh has witnessed the evolution of Hamilton from a place she says once tolerated diversity to one that celebrates it.

"It's like little India in some places," said Singh, president of the South Asian Heritage Month Planning Committee.

Sujatha Suresh, also from India, agrees.

"You don't miss home at all because we've got so much multiculturalism here," says Suresh.

Suresh and Singh are among the many volunteer organizers who will bring their rich Asian culture to life next month to celebrate South Asian Heritage Month.

A centrepiece of the month is a festival tomorrow that will feature authentic Asian foods, classical Indian dance and songs plus poetry recitations, with a special tribute to Bollywood.

Singh and Suresh say the festival's growth from six years ago is an example of how Hamilton has opened its arms to diversity.

It began in the downtown library with a small fashion show and this year's show at Westdale High School is expected to draw more than 500 people.

That welcoming environment is something they see every day.

"The food shelves in Fortinos are stocked with Indian food," said Suresh. "Even snacks."

On Sunday the family goes to the Hindu Samaj Temple, which was destroyed by an arsonist after the 9/11 attacks on the United States but has been beautifully rebuilt.

"In some areas of town you see women wearing the traditional Indian dresses," says Singh, who celebrates the religious and cultural holidays of India, including Diwali. The national Indian celebration is also known as the festival of lights.

Suresh, a dance teacher who moved to Hamilton four years ago, has been working with the dancers for tomorrow's festival.

Jesmin Haq, who also volunteers, said the festival is hugely important to Hamilton's community of South Asians.

"It's not only about celebrating our culture," said Haq, who moved to Hamilton from Bangladesh 20 years ago and works as an educational assistant for the Hamilton Board of Education.

"It's an important way to show other people how we live and what we eat."

McMaster University professor emeritus Dr. Harish Jain said, "It's important because there are so many people in this community from South Asia."

Jain was the first South Asian recipient of the Governor General's Award. As keynote speaker at the festival, he plans to address some of the problems they still face.

"Our diversity is not always well represented, like in the boardrooms and in the senior ranks of the police and firefighter and city staff," said Jain.

"But I think (immigration) is going through much better than I had anticipated."

I am of south-asian as well but i do not know of any places in the city called 'Little India', there's some areas where there's a small concentration of indian stores but not like the asian town on cannon.

Here's my attempt at documenting neighbourhood 'types' in Hamilton.
If you can think of any, please let me know:

Google Maps

They're not all 'ethnically' based, but you get the point :)

There's another Little Italy bordering your mentioned Little Warsaw between Sherman and Sanford (Barton Sherman Gang was a local Italian gang) and between Canon and Barton.

Definitely that's a Caribbean neighbourhood where you said. More barber shops per square km. And the stores stock lots of Grape Soda and Rotis.

I'm going to add a huge swath of the east mountain. Fennell, Ottawa, Limeridge and Sherman... call it "Steelworkers Town". Even if you extend it south to Rymal there is a complex called 1050, after the Union.

And you might even compare the Meadowlands to Woodbridge. Afluent 2nd and 3rd generation Italians.


Good map DC

I forgot one more. North Westdale. Little Jerusalem, or whatever name you'd give a Jewish neighbourhood. There's a temple, B'nai Brith Center and Shalom Village, a very wealthy area.

You might as well call "Locke" "Toronto Ville"

I think Hamilton is awesome with it's multi-ethnic population. It makes it a real city.

You could probably include the industrial northend as a neighbourhood. not many residences, but it definitely has a unique 'flavour'.

Another odd area that is not so much cultural but more architecturally unique is on the West mountain along Scenic Drive: http://goo.gl/maps/oOWb

The streets all have a spanish naming to them and I've driven through a few times and some of the houses have light coloured stucco and slate roofs. It's very interesting, like something out of Sandiego or southern California.

Ah, the 'San' neighbourhood. Ya I've been there b4.

Lol @ steelworkers village! And ya I forgot about the Jewish population in west ale I'll def add that.

I was thinking about Sherman/Barton as a lil Italy but don't know if there's that high of a concentration any more? Def Wood-caster though!

I think Hamilton is awesome as well, but why must a city be multi-ethnic to be awesome? My friends in Toyko have a pretty awesome city which they love, and it is certainly not multi-ethnic there. So is their city not a real city?

Stating that a city is "not real" sounds a lot like it's somehow inferior because the majority of the population is homogeneous. Based on that statement, such cities as Moscow, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Oslo are not "real cities", either, because of their homogeneous demographic make up.

Sorry to hammer the point, your comment just sounds really discriminatory towards any city that isn't made up of other ethnicities, and in turn, the only way a city is "worthy" is if it's full of immigrants.

I think realcity's thinking in a North American context, where the population was built up by immigration, with the most diverse settlement occurring in the largest cities. The prototype is New York and it's many ethnic enclaves. I doubt anyone would try to argue that the big cities in older countries with more homogeneous populations are any less real.

I see... the way I read it, it sounded very much like a back-handed comment. Something along the lines of "If you don't have waves of immigration/new immigrants, how can you, as a city, possibly be worthy of being taken seriously?"

Thanks for clearing that up, flar. Lot's of superiority floating around there, I was just making sure someone wasn't taking some cheap shots on some of my favorite cities/people merely because of their ethnic make-up.:cheers: