Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
It really is a branding challenge, yeah. I've been to both cities and, although obviously I'm biased, I would say Saint John is like a prettier, slightly largely St. John's BUT after the apocalypse. There's no people. Even their downtown streets feel like our rowhouse residential ones (which, given some reading this have never been here, are MOSTLY deserted. Downtown is lively in summer, but the rowhouse areas, you could sit on your front step for an entire day and see less than 10 people who weren't just dashing out their door to their car a metre away).
Saint John has a beautiful, big, meaty core. I'd describe it the same way I'd describe St. Pierre - it doesn't look like a city of its size, it looks like a few blocks carved off a city many times larger.
Also, like us (we stagnated from the 70s-2000s), nothing much was happening there while popular Canadian cities destroyed their cores growing and modernizing. So by chance it was preserved until the general public realized this stuff is worth saving. Saint John could and should be the Boston to Halifax's New York. It's that relatively comparable, impressive, and different in ways that are subjectively superior to a minority of tourists (i.e. the nonsensical knotted mess of Boston's streets always makes me feel happy and home compared to New York's grid, which just FEELS suburban to me, I can't help it. Might as well a Smart Centre parking lot).
So yeah. You guys have A LOT to work with. And I hope you do. I visited HFX recently and fell in love (it's all newcomers now, none of the provincialism, cunty rudeness, I encountered all the other times I was there). It's genuinely... satisfying, enriching, admirable, aspirational. It's a great city. And Saint John can easily be as well. Just needs... life, especially downtown. People, culture, things going on, sense of self, sense of place, artists painting it, musicians singing about it, on and on. That's what, from my perspective, it is missing and needs.
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It really is a branding challenge. The whole reason I even started this thread was to do with the idea for a combined Fredericton-Saint John airport... I mentioned it would also have an added benefit of Saint John's airport no longer being mixed up with St. John's airport... and I was swiftly told how no such confusion even exists. right...
The confusion and branding challenge mostly impacts Saint John, not so much St. John's. Though I was surprised a google image search for "St. John's Skyline" was overwhelmingly images of Saint John, NB.
I think your description of Saint John is pretty accurate for the most part, I feel like we really do feel like a micro-chasm of Boston, especially the buildings with the rounded brick facades, but we lack vision and lack a strategy to bring life back to the urban core. We should be building high rises within the urban core, yet most of the new projects are all 6 storeys or smaller. I somewhat take issue with your apocalyptic vibes regarding Uptown, not that it's totally off, it's just not the part of town that feels the most post-apocalyptic. Saint John's most post-apocalyptic area would be the North End.
The remains of Main Street in are especially post-apocalyptic.
This building, one of my favourite remains of the past, looks like something straight out of Fallout 4.
Main Street in the North End in the 1960s:
(The since demolished Art Deco, SJ General Hospital in the background)
Main Street in the North End after Urban Renewal:
(A once lively street, pretty well devoid of life... nothing going on here except some office parks and empty spaces.)
Truly grim how "urban renewal" was allowed to happen the way it did, as "good intentioned" as it was claimed to be. In hindsight, it was an utter disaster which destroyed an entire core area of the city.
Other amazing buildings were torn down since the 1960s too, of which
the Custom's House was perhaps the most egregious loss, but Union Station and The Saint John General Hospital come damn close too. I also think it's pretty sad New Brunswick built over 6000 wooden ships, and we have a freaking wooden ship on our flag, but we don't even have a single wooden ship left floating in Saint John Harbour. We also used to have a ship to Boston, daily flights to Boston, and an overnight train to Boston... now we don't even have a bus to Boston, or even a bus to Maine for that matter. The best option we have is to either drive all the way there, or drive to Bangor, ME or Bunswick, ME and take a bus or train to Boston.
I made a compilation of some of the amazing buildings that have been demolished in Saint John over the years. Have a look and you might be surprised at how much amazing architecture we lost as a city, what you see today pales in comparison to what stood in 1960.
We absolutely do still have a lot to work with, and a lot of truly amazing historic architecture remains... we just need to do a much better job strategizing ways to build up the city centre in novel and interesting ways, to make it a more desirable, more livable place. Some neo-art deco mid rises and high rises could go along way in achieving that goal, but we need to do a far better job attracting property developers to ever make that happen. Saint John's the 5th largest coastal city in Canada with one of the busiest and most strategically located ports in the country, it shouldn't be
that hard to attract outside investment to build nicer buildings in Saint John... land is cheap here, and Canada is continuing to bring in record numbers of immigrants each year. Unfortunately, provincialism absolutely remains an issue here in the Saint John Region, and a lot of our newcomers will just move out to Quispamsis once they have a decent enough job. Making living in the urban core a more attractive option needs to be a far higher priority.
Following Halifax's lead with amalgamation would also be crucial to deal with those provincial attitudes holding the city back, as it would make it a lot easier to fund improvements and infrastructure needed to make Saint John not only a more livable city, but a more prosperous and lively city as well (as the outlying suburbs currently do not contribute anything close to their fair share towards the city budget) Also, it would be the perfect opportunity to go with a new name for the amalgamated regional municipality, which could lessen the ongoing branding challenges caused by Saint John's name being so similar to St. John's. Saint John would still be the name city at the centre of the region... but calling the Region Wolastoq, Fundy, or anything else really, would certainly help market the region better, and not just for tourism, but for immigration and economic development as well.
I've only made it to St. John's once... when I was about 12 years old, and it was during the winter.
I really need to go back sometime in the summer and see it properly. One of my best friends is coming to visit me from Ireland next year, he's a Cork person, so I'd really like for us to be able to see NFLD together and see him trip out about the accents. Probably won't have the time when he comes to NB, but he's moving to Vancouver to work in the construction industry, so hopefully we'll make a visit to St. John's together in the next few years.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
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