Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
Ottawa is not going to be a Paris or Tokyo but I think Canadians often undersell their country. We have one of the biggest economies in the world and only a few major cities. We could afford nicer landscaping in Ottawa, and just a few hours down the road Quebec City looks nicer. I'd guess that most of the shortcomings have more to do with nuts and bolts of how the NCC/feds, municipality, and province operate, and what the norms of the public realm were like in Canada from about the 80's up until recently. In most of the country this wasn't on the radar, and cities were busy retrofitting their cores with quasi-suburban road infrastructure. It still seems to me like most Canadian cities don't invest in high quality street furniture, finishes, and other visible infrastructure, even for areas that have become considerably more developed (e.g. you can find a row of highrise condos, assessed at hundreds of millions, with basic utility and light poles, suburban style street lighting, signals, and signs, crumbling concrete pavement and curbs, etc.). I think part of this has to do with cities using income from new development to subsidize homeowners. The City of Toronto get huge amounts of cash from the condo towers but they don't result in commensurate improvements to the areas where the towers go in; they are probably used to keep the taxes on $3M homes at $7,000 instead of $10,000 a year.
|
This.
We grow up next to the world's dominant super power. Lots of Canadians view their country as subordinate, periphery, then assume that 2nd/3rd rate is all Canada can/should aspire to. It's absolute rubbish, of course. Arguing that our capital or other Canadian cities can't have top shelf design because we're the smallest G7 nation or not Paris makes no sense at all. It speaks to a deep rooted inferiority complex. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Dutch don't argue that Amsterdam must except a lower standard than London or DC.
Canada is one of the wealthiest nations on earth; wealthier than the UK I might add. Accepting less has zero to do with money and everything to do with the mindset of Canadians. Like you said, Canadians undersell their country. They shortchange themselves/Canada in the process. Sadly, I suspect that mass immigration will be the only thing to turn that around. Immigrants like myself, don't have the same subordinate mentality prevalent amongst Canadian born.
If the US does something, I don't expect less. My expectation is to match it or do one better. Its a very British/European mindset and one born from Empire. Those empires are long gone but the mindset remains. Canada is famously self-deprecating. It needs to stop.
Prev
That made me want to jump and cheer. Have always thought that but couldn't have put it better myself. The built-in inferiority complex *absolutely* comes from the fact that we were at first subordinate to an imperial power and now in the modern day our media and our economy are both nearly completely dominated by another country, though that was decided through policies of weak governments. Our future does not have to look like our past. 
Linear Mode
