Quote:
Originally Posted by Beedok
Hamiltonians also tend to view a minor stumble as a city ruining blunder that proves nothing good can ever happen though. I think there's a mix of a lot of pessimists and a few optimists, with a sever shortage of realists.
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A fair assessment, to a point. I tend to think of myself as belonging to the latter two camps but as a longtime resident of the city it's difficult to escape the undertow sometimes. Consider successive councils' investment/policy around files such as walkability, cycling or transit over the last 20-30 years and it's bound to influence how you approach claims of a "massive injection of… progressive city planning," for example.
Edited to add...
A not-dissimilar "Hamilton has turned the corner" narrative was wheeled out 44 years ago in the painfully folksy introduction to
Pardon My Lunch Bucket, which praised the era's downtown building boom, arts community, green space, walkable core and diversifying economy.
An extract:
Now you were asking about Hamilton? Well, you see, a few years back this town had what you might call a bad case of inferiority complex. A real bad case. It was always 'Toronto's doing this, Buffalo's doing that and we're doing nothin'.
You know, things like that. Down-in-the-dumps talk. Well, all of a sudden some of the boys downtown and the boys at city hall got talking and decided they were sick and tired of wearing Toronto's hand-me-downs.
There was nothing wrong with the city that a new spirit and a few new buildings wouldn't cure... say a new downtown core... somewhere where the people could go and shop and look around, a place where they could take their friends from out of town with a little pride.
And some new housing to get rid of those old decaying buildings in the north end, an urban renewal project, something that would perk up the people of the area yet would cause very little relocation.
The city already had acres and acres of gardens and parks... things that the citizens knew about but that the casual visitor seldom saw. And they're going to get more. Before you know it, this'll be the finest city for taking your family out for a stroll in the whole of Canada.
Now with this Lloyd Jackson Square project, the tall buildings, the pedestrian malls, separating pedestrians from all the traffic and such, the new stores and expanded old ones, well Hamilton is putting on a new face.
Did you know this city has the same growth rate as Montreal's – 28 per cent every 10 years – one of the highest in the land? And it's got Boris Brott and the Hamilton Philharmonic, and the art gallery and McMaster out in the west end.
Sure we've still got pollution but they're spending $75,000,000 on cleaning it up. Why one of these days, you'll be able to swim out in the old bay.
The old Hamilton, the grimy old town, is disappearing. What you're seeing now is new money coming in, new people from abroad settling and bringing their cultures with them – and getting us interested in them as well.
The people are slowly changing their ideas about the old town. A few years back, they'd admit they were from Hamilton all right, but only if you pressed them. Kind of apologetic-like. But not now. That attitude is changing to one of pride…
People are getting out and taking a second look at their town, rediscovering it if you will, finding places and things they never knew existed. A lot has changed in the last few years and all for the better.
Change one or two of the reference points and you could be reading brand-new City-issue boilerplate.