Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[WhipperSnapper]

LMAO. Tents in Nathan Phillips Square would conveys a pointless message. The municipal government is fully aware of its situation as with most municipal governments. The cause is federal policy matters to which municipal finances can't provide solutions.

Tents in front of the Trudeaus houses that goes viral globally will illicit a response but, probably not one that would be of any benefit to those living in tents in city parks. His government just needs to go.

[rbt]

Originally Posted by giallo

Tents have started to creep into my local park, and it's a bummer. It's not the actual tents or even the open drug use that concern me, it's the loads of trash, human feces and needles left behind when they move on to another location. Mounds of these soiled materials and fabrics dot the parks, sidewalks, alleys and off ramps of Vancouver these days.

I've sometimes wondered if it's better to accept some level of homelessness will exist and invest in free public showers, washrooms, laundry, and full time cleaners for those facilities and surrounding areas.

Shelters have communal showers (stalls with curtain) but no easy way to protect your stuff while you're in the shower (theft is frequent), and almost never have laundry facilities so often they end up climbing back into dirty clothes again.

In old community centres you can slip into the change room to clean but new downtown centres like St Jamestown make that virtually impossible: pool showers are public facing for gender neutrality.

It's really hard to actually get clean and presentable even with a strong effort using resources currently available, especially if you don't have a change of clothes.

[ScreamingViking]

Not long ago Hamilton was planning to pilot "tiny homes" for people without permanent housing. There was a home provider lined up, plans for communal bathrooms and a kitchen, and a property owner offered a site they were not planning to develop for several years.

Local residents complained, so it's all in limbo now.

The site is in one of the lower city wards that is already home to shelters and many social services, so that was part of the reasoning I read about from a number of residents. Others were flatly against it being close to their homes and families. But have any of the other city councillors stepped up to offer to work to find a site in their wards? Ha.

Meanwhile, at one park (and perhaps others) summer programs for kids have been curtailed because of the presence of tent-dwellers, open drug use, and related trash.

When the police have "removed" tent camps, the people living in them just end up somewhere else, though many of their belongings are thrown out.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Which is a legible belief, but one that also contains a perverse incentive structure, as it implies that the presence of such circumstances reflects a virtuous tolerance while their absence hints at repression.

So shantytowns end up meaning you're a good guy.

I don't actually think that's true, at least for the vast majority of people. For most people, seeing unhoused people is like having pain. It's something that's hard to ignore when it's there but something you don't really think about otherwise. You don't walk around a place thinking, "Hmm, it's weird that the place isn't filled with encampments" any more than you wake up in the morning and think "I wonder why I feel fairly normal rather than having a terrible headache." Well, unless you're used to being in pain I suppose. And if people do notice they're more likely to think it's because there aren't many homeless people rather than that they're being repressed.

On the other hand, not allowing them to be swept under the run does incentivize policy makers to ensure everyone is housed because even small numbers of unhoused people would be very visible and reflect poorly on them.

[someone123]

Pain for whom though? I am not sure about Halifax but generally wealthy areas are less affected and rich people tend to own larger private properties that insulate them more from the issue. We don't actually have a free-for-all in Vancouver; I have not seen tents around Point Grey. East Vancouver or Surrey are acceptable with the DTES being the sacrificial lamb, much like how in Halifax services were concentrated around Gottingen and trailers got built nearby (not nearly as bad but it's the same process).

American cities have a more advanced version of this with the wealthy being more separate. I think that is a more likely eventual conclusion from tents in parks than a political transformation that fixes the homelessness issue. Los Angeles has been like this for a long time.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Pain for whom though? I am not sure about Halifax but generally wealthy areas are less affected and rich people tend to own larger private properties that insulate them more from the issue. We don't actually have a free-for-all in Vancouver; I have not seen tents around Point Grey. East Vancouver or Surrey are acceptable with the DTES being the sacrificial lamb, much like how in Halifax services were concentrated around Gottingen and trailers got built nearby (not nearly as bad but it's the same process).

American cities have a more advanced version of this with the wealthy being more separate. I think that is a more likely eventual conclusion from tents in parks than a political transformation that fixes the homelessness issue. Los Angeles has been like this for a long time.

The rich are also disproportionately affected by cities having less prestige, poorer reputations and fewer visitors because they own more businesses and have more profits to make or lose. If they can keep problems hidden or delegated to certain areas that are easy to avoid (just stay out of X district) then they have little incentive to care.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The rich are also disproportionately affected by cities having less prestige, poorer reputations and fewer visitors because they own more businesses and have more profits to make or lose. If they can keep problems hidden or delegated to certain areas that are easy to avoid (just stay out of X district) then they have little incentive to care.

I think this amounts to a kind of progressive accelerationism. It is more likely that the sentiments of the working to upper middle classes will harden as the disorder continues, and at some point will force/permit the ownership classes to bring out the bulldozers or whatever similar level of force is needed.

On the most basic level, you can't set up camp in Mariatorget, Stockholm, for the same reason that you can't do it in the public places of Tirana, Harare or Pyongyang: because some guys will come. That tech is always the same, even as more distant, longer-term things addressing addiction, homelessness and inequality may differ. I don't think there is any society that relies entirely on the latter for the maintenance of its parks and squares.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I think this amounts to a kind of progressive accelerationism. It is more likely that the sentiments of the working to upper middle classes will harden as the disorder continues, and at some point will force/permit the ownership classes to bring out the bulldozers or whatever similar level of force is needed.

Sure. There's no guaranteed way to force people to be nicer to each other. It's like if someone said, "We should put up more lighting at this intersection so it's easier to see pedestrians trying to cross" and someone replied that simply seeing pedestrians doesn't guarantee that motorists will stop or drive carefully near them, and if anything seeing too many pedestrians will make them less likely to stop since they'll be so sick of the delays. People often 🞵🞵🞵🞵, but all we can do is try.

Originally Posted by kool maudit

On the most basic level, you can't set up camp in Mariatorget, Stockholm, for the same reason that you can't do it in the public places of Tirana, Harare or Pyongyang: because some guys will come. That tech is always the same, even as more distant, longer-term things addressing addiction, homelessness and inequality may differ. I don't think there is any society that relies entirely on the latter for the maintenance of its parks and squares.

We didn't have this problem to any significant degree in Halifax before the current housing crisis of the last few years. There was always the odd homeless person but no encampments in public squares and parks. It seems more likely to me that the problem is the underlying housing issues rather than not having stern enough law and order policies unless such policies were suddenly changed recently.

[J.OT13]

Ottawa, July 2023.


https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/photo-galleries/photos-of-the-day/photos-of-the-day-july-2023-1.6466970

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by esquire

I would add that it's a recent North American thing. 10-12 years ago, it would not have been seen as problematic to have police clear out homeless camps from parks, etc. It is now.

Eventually, the pendulum will swing back the other way. This decade reminds me a bit of the 1970s - a stagflationary hangover decade of the excesses of the late 1960s. Movies like “Taxi Driver” and Charles Bronson in “Death Wish” seemed to capture society’s thirst for some vigilante justice that the authorities abandoned.

When it comes to things like this, progressives tend not to know when to stop and push things too far, too fast. In terms of cycles, displeasure with the right wing way of doing things usually takes a slow 50 year cycle to tip over, but steadily increasing progressive experimentation usually has the voting public hitting the panic button in less than 10.

[905er]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Ottawa, July 2023.


https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/photo-galleries/photos-of-the-day/photos-of-the-day-july-2023-1.6466970

Where exactly?....

cool lightning strike.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by 905er

Where exactly?....

cool lightning strike.

If you zoom in and squint reeeeaaaaaaly hard...

I've seen the skyline from that general area in the past. It's more impressive in real life.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

When it comes to things like this, progressives tend not to know when to stop and push things too far, too fast. In terms of cycles, displeasure with the right wing way of doing things usually takes a slow 50 year cycle to tip over, but steadily increasing progressive experimentation usually has the voting public hitting the panic button in less than 10.

I'm not sure when this cycle is supposed to have started but it already feels like it might have peaked around 2021-2022. It is hard to separate out covid lockdown impacts from the longer-term trend. Life was a bit crazier during the covid years.

I wonder how these ideas will age:

- Highly optimized global supply chains will make everything better and we are marching toward one big global economy that will eventually bring dissenting nations on board through an inevitable march of economic and social progress.
- Climate change lives outside of normal policy debates because it is either all-encompassing and apocalyptic or not real.
- People who cause problems in public should be left alone because they are a symptom of underlying causes we must fix while avoiding the evils of incarceration or institutionalization.
- High asset and home prices are a primary economic goal and are a good vehicle for broadly building prosperity for all Canadians.
- Racism, sexism, and other similar -isms and -phobias directed at identity groups are major live political issues in Canada that are often more important than material concerns and public accusation and punishment is a good way to eliminate the problems.

[someone123]

Northwest Arm and 7177 Quinpool Road in Halifax. The crane is going to get a couple more segments soon (final height?):


Source

More aerial than skyline shot but this is Gottingen Street looking north toward downtown. The parking lot in the lower left is the Navy Lane construction site.

This area still has lots of small holes and room for improvement but it has some architectural gems (the round church on the left is from 1800, designed by Prince Edward when he lived in the city). It has a complicated old block and lot pattern that's coming alive again as the empty lots get filled in (like with Navy Lane; there's a tiny public pedestrian-only path there that isn't really noticeable when it has a large parking lot next door).


Source

[giallo]

Panorama -------->

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

I wonder how these ideas will age.

Ever since the wide scale adoption of the internet and social media, I don’t think we live an era where there’s universal acceptance and a lack of scrutiny of any new idea. Of course, no idea was 100% accepted as gospel by the entire population, but there were many where people who expressed dissent were a tiny minority- say, less than 5% of the population and confined to esoteric circles. These days I feel like an idea or movement has an acceptance ceiling of about 80% - even that might be generous.

That also means these ideas you list will always have some adherents, no matter how impractical or even absurd they end up being, but I think technological developments, demographic change and geopolitical shifts (as opposed to domestic politics) lie upstream of all these and chip away at their popularity.

[Coldrsx]

https://twitter.com/CMHC_ca/status/1686119894608150528

[905er]

Very unremarkable even a tad unflattering pic of Hamilton, but Hamilton is one of the cities I'm most excited to see in the next 5 yrs or so... some big changes coming! Really like what's going on there.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

This is a big part of it. I noticed what we might call expansions of latitude for the upper- and underclasses and restrictions on the middle.

In Rosedale, I heard a lot of really idealistic talk on this issue that kind of presupposed that any solution would require positive, root-level social changes that no country in the world can really yet be said to have achieved.

In Cabbagetown (east of Parliament), I still got the strong sense that this was the polite, approved view, but some of the local dads would mutter "lock 'em all up"-style things over alley beers. There were a lot of police patrols along Sumach and Sackville streets that really seemed designed to draw a line at Parliament; Riverdale Park has none of this while Moss Park and Allan Gardens are basically shantytowns.

It would be unthinkable to have tents in Mariatorget or Kungsträdgården. They would be cleared out instantly and even Södermalm media/culture types would look the other way. This really is a North American thing.

The culture of individual liberty runs deeper in North America.

The framing: One can be anything they want to be; social mores and context were/are evil impositions by societies determined to oppress for nefarious purposes to the benefit of a greater power.

It's great as a conceptual theory, anyway. The problem arises from the fact that the too-smart-for-their-own-good social monkeys are generally destructive when left in a spiritual vacuum. There's a reason public intoxication was dealt with by humiliating punishments in the past.

Which leads to interesting contradictions. You can have Pride parade through Allan Gardens. Government can justify inaction via the individual liberty defence: It is immoral to institutionalize people against their free will, regardless of their destructiveness to themselves/others. Law enforcement is anti-liberty, hence illegitimate.

The 'good guys' society of complete liberty for the individual without the necessity of context and order for human behaviour eats itself just as much as an extremely rigid hierarchical social order does. It just does so in a different way. Hippiedom died in a blaze of excess in the 1960s; Slouching towards Bethlehem was prescient.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by thewave46

There's a reason public intoxication was dealt with by humiliating punishments in the past.

It's funny that you mention that. The "old order" still applies to alcohol. If I go to a local beach with some friends and a 12-pack under my arm and crack one open on the beach, you best believe I will be getting a stiff open liquor fine. That happened to one of my friends many years back... it wasn't cheap, it was hundreds of dollars.

But if I go to a random patch of urban green space, build a lean-to, and pass my days consuming meth, stealing bikes and fighting, no one will disturb me. And if the authorities hassle me and try to make me leave, then there is no shortage of advocacy groups well practiced in the art of outraged indignation willing to go to bat for me.

It's weird.