Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

Victoria City Council passes bylaw to borrow $63million

It took them less than 5 minutes to pass 3 “readings” of a bylaw to borrow $63million – and this was done at nearly 1 a.m., with no press, no media in Council Chambers at the time. The only people there was a little band of die-hard policy watchers (including me).

I shot a video with my pocket camera. The visual quality is quite poor, but the audio is good. The dissenting/ questioning councilor is Geoffrey Young. Dean Fortin is in the mayor’s chair.

The video is available for viewing on Picasa here.

It’s about 14 1/2 minutes long, which makes it too long for Youtube right now. Will figure out how to get it on YT later.

Busy blogging elsewhere (mostly about the Johnson Street Bridge)

Sorry about the lacunae here, but I’ve been busy blogging on our site, Johnson Street Bridge, where I posted Lovin’ the interwebs: corrections on comparisons tonight; earlier today, I wrote  Johnson Street Bridge news continued… (a ‘curation‘) for MetroCascade; and right after that, a related entry on MetroCascade’s blog, New curations interface thingy on MetroCascade homepage.

Local Johnson Street Bridge discussion heats up

I’ve been busy over at JohnsonStreetBridge DOT org, the website created by Mat Wright, Ross Crockford, and me. My contributions have run mainly to writing some blog posts and brainstorming with Mat and Ross. The latter produced a brilliant letter, delivered to Mayor and Council on Tuesday. It’s four pages long and asks all the right questions – I encourage interested Victoria-area stakeholders to read it (available as PDF, too).

Mat is brilliantly pulling everything together in his role as webmaster and social media engineer. As a result, the site is looking pretty damn good, if I say so myself. We have links to the blog, to a poll, to subscription to a newsletter, to a photo page, to a culture page, to a history page, a video page, and tons of external links to help people get informed.

There’s now also a link to download PDFs of a beautiful color poster (or, alternately, the same poster in greyscale). The photo is by the talented Benjamin Maddison of Victoria Daily Photo. Thanks, Benjamin!

Bridging obsessions

Given my recent obsession with a local bridge – Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge, a bascule bridge designed by Joseph Strauss (see my article, Blue Bridge blues) – it makes sense that I’d be enthralled by manager magazin.de’s article on Hamburg’s storied bridges.

Granted, Victoria has nothing on Hamburg in the bridge department: the latter is, as the magazine puts it, Europe’s most “bridge-rich” city, boasting a total of 2500 bridges. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century alone, 1000 new bridges got built (and presumably nearly as many destroyed by 1945, which is conflated to “mid-20th century” by the magazine article…)

One might also add that, given Victoria’s relative bridge-paucity as compared to a city like Hamburg’s bridge-richness, it seems all the more relevant to preserve the storied bridge we have, right? Our civic leaders, however, apparently don’t feel that way and say, “bombs away!” and “buh-bye Blue Bridge.”

Anyway, the magazine article provides illustrations from an exhibition now on view in Hamburg at the Museum der Arbeit, Hamburg und seine Bruecken – Baukunst, Technik, Geschichte bis 1945. The exhibition documents some amazing bridges. Here are a couple of them:

This amazing structure (from 1872) combines rail and automotive transport. According to manager magazin.de, the photo was taken in 1950, but I’m not clear if the bridge still exists.

Here’s another one:

This photo is from 1915 and it looks as though this bridge is having some work done to it. Again, no idea if it’s still extant.

Finally, this one:

It shows a Portal (1884-87) to what looks like the same bridge we see in the previous photo, except that the portal is a delirious Victorian-Gothic work of imperialist architecture, behind which a sort of Rapunzel-like stream of riveted steel flows abundantly …and meets another foreboding portal on the other side.

It makes Post-modernism look like a walk in the park – and us moderns like unimaginative Dilberts.

New site: Johnson Street Bridge DOT org

I’m involved with Mat Wright and Ross Crockford in a new website, Johnson Street Bridge. Please check it out.

And please take a look at my first blog post there, Bad Reason, 1, subtitled “Bad reasons to spend money on JSB replacement.” I worked up some steam about what I consider bad civic leadership around here, too.

Bottom line regarding my argument in Bad Reason, 1: Whether ugly (”a brute”) or beautiful, the Johnson Street Bridge is interesting – and that’s the most important thing for a creative, urban economy. Just take a look at the amazing photos on Flickr, tagged with johnsonstreetbridge, for an inkling of the bridge’s ability to offer up interestingness.

Nothing is worse than boring – that’s what the suburbs are for. Whatever will replace the Johnson Street Bridge will be massively and blightingly boring, and therefore an affront to Victoria’s urban character.

One wonders why our civic leaders are so intent on suburbanizing this city.

Below, a photo by Victoria flickreena ngawangchodron (hope she doesn’t mind being referenced by me like this, but it’s such an evocative shot):

Another hat: curator

As some of my readers know, I’m a co-founder of a Victoria-based venture called MetroCascade, which aims to evolve into a go-to site for news, events, and information about Victoria BC. We’re doing this by first of all providing a platform for blogs and news sources (and events). That’s only the start, but it’s already proving quite interesting.

Why? Well, the blogs and news sources have grown quite rapidly. We have over 200 sources (see the Authors page) and for now several bucket Categories (which aren’t fine-tuned enough and therefore not really satisfactory).

It seems clear to me that, if we want to add value to all this stuff we’re aggregating (and we do), there has to be some level of curation. Hence, my new hat.

I’m still testing this out – right now via our blog (which isn’t currently hosted on MetroCascade, but I hope soon will be). To date, I’ve posted five “curations”: the first one (called A First Curation!) was really long, the second (Highlights from the firehose) shorter, and the third (The Uncategory…), fourth (Lifestyle is a many-splendored thing), and fifth (The Parenting Environment) I wrote tonight, one after the other, with a kind of resignation in the face of content onslaught: there were 15 pages of archives to mull through since the last curation 2 days ago.

I’ll let readers know how this continues to work out. Right now it seems a bit daunting, but maybe I’ll develop a system.

Guerrilla Sharrows in the mist

A few days ago, Victoria, BC activists related to O.U.R.S. (Other Urban Repair Squad, eg.) painted sharrows (Shared Lane Markings) on several streets in the city. The local paper ran an article (City crews obliterate guerrilla road marks) and Victoria Indymedia published OURS’s press release, Cycling Activists Take to Streets Over Slow Expansion of Bike Lanes. One of the City of Victoria’s councilors (recently elected John Luton) is supposed to be a cycling advocate, but was quoted in the local paper (the Times-Colonist) as follows:

“I question whether these are bike advocates or just anarchists who ride bikes,” he said.

“More responsible bike advocates work with municipalities to advance their cause. This sort of thing creates more problems than it solves.” (source)

The Times-Colonist has started publishing letters to the editor on the topic. I have to say I really agree with the first part of this one, Bike-lane painters are doing a good deed. The author (Marty Hykin) writes:

I am thinking about the midnight bike lane painters whose work was destroyed by city crews the next day. It is reported that the cycling group “followed Canadian guidelines for road marking to a T” and that their admirable motivations were entirely concerned with promoting road safety.

City councillor John Luton, a cycling advocate, dismisses the actions of these civic-minded volunteers, calling them “anarchists.” He states that the work must be done “within the city budget and priorities.”

Yet the city appears to have plenty of money in its budget to shift priorities in the blink of an eye, sending crews out to paint over the markings. Where did that money suddenly come from?

There are a variety of problems in this city that are handled in part or in whole by volunteers. Volunteers work as school crossing guards, feed the hungry, house the homeless and guide tourists. People put up road signs warning drivers to slow down in residential streets where children might be playing. I don’t hear the city harrumphing that those worthy people are “anarchists.”

Why can we not accept the cycling group’s generous gift of free paint and free labour? Perhaps the city might even reciprocate by providing a few road safety cones or a person to direct traffic around the activity.

While I’m not sure I want volunteers to take over too many duties, I think Hykin nails it when he points out that the city never ceases to remind taxpayers and residents that it has no money to address pressing problems, yet somehow managed, in the blink of an eye, to find the crews, the paint, the funds to obliterate the sharrows – which had been painted in part as protest over the delays in implementing cycling infrastructure improvements, delays supposedly stemming from lack of funds.

I live near one of the intersections (Cook and Fort Streets): even though I’m really familiar with those streets, I had no idea there were itty-bitty signs on Cook Street between Fort and Yates that indicate to drivers and cyclists that the latter are allowed, encouraged, even obliged, to take the center of the lane.

So, are we waiting for some cyclist to get knocked over by a car driver who thinks he’s “in the right” in not sharing the road, or do we continue to put up with cyclists on the sidewalk endangering pedestrians?

Before anyone flames me for not wanting cyclists on sidewalks: I don’t know about your municipality, but it’s illegal here for anyone over 12. I feel about cyclists on sidewalks the way cyclists feel about being on roads that drivers don’t want to share: it’s not a good mix. From the pedestrian’s point of view, a cyclist is heavier, has much greater velocity, and can really do some damage to the person on foot …just as a car (heavier, greater velocity) does damage – will do more damage, but damage is damage – to anyone on a bike …or on foot.

The main point, however, is money: how come the City has no money to paint sharrows, yet has the funds to paint them over, lickety-split? Is this part of the bureaucracy malaise (silo thinking), and have new councilors bought into it already?

(Photo source: Follow the Sharrows on Urban Photo)

The island tax

In keeping with the title, this post has no links, no names, nothing: it’s an island subject.

The story: I have an opportunity to attend an interesting sold-out event in a very nearby city on “the mainland” (the US mainland, actually). One of the panelists at the event is offering to get me into the event – all I have to do is show up. Would I like to go? You bet – the event itself, the opportunity to network with the people there, and most of all the opportunity to meet the panelist (who happens to be a very interesting person) is enough to make anyone with half a brain want to go.

I think I have more than just half a brain, so…

Yet I won’t be going because it’s too expensive and logistically difficult to get there.

The island-ness of our island-ness is really hitting me hard these days, and I’m not liking it.

When we first moved back here, I scoffed at the notion of a fixed link (that is: a bridge to the mainland) because (I thought), why let everyone else have easy access to this place?

Alas, it works both ways: easy access also means …easy egress.

And that means circulation: entry and egress. I really believe in circulation. Lately, however, I’m at a stand-still. There’s no easy on or easy off here.

If I still lived in Boston and wanted to go to New York City, I could hop in a car and drive there, attend an evening event, and drive back. The stress of driving ~8 hours there and back in a single 24-hour period might take a year off my life, but financially it wouldn’t cost me more than gas. And it would be eminently do-able. (I did it once while studying for my connoisseurship exams at Harvard – I wanted desperately to see an exhibition at the Guggenheim, so the spouse and I set out at 5am for NYC, saw the show, and drove back. Easy-peasy, sort of.)

Here, to go to a city that’s actually closer (in mileage) than the Boston-New York City run, I’d have to figure out complex ferry schedules (and accept fares which run to a couple of hundred dollars, return fare, and otherwise involve many hours of travel time) or consider even more expensive airplane flights – either sea-planes or regular planes. In either case (planes and ferries), it’s impossible to go to a late evening event and come back that same night because the planes and ferries don’t run that late, so now we have to factor in hotel accommodation on top of the already significant travel costs.

If you plan a trip several weeks ahead of time, you can do it for a not entirely painful amount of money, but if it’s something that comes up unexpectedly, you can only do it if you’re prepared to throw money at it liberally. And so, unless you have money to throw at a thing, you don’t circulate. You stay put.

Do this for …oh, seven years or so (as I have) and you start to grow moss. And before you know it, you’re totally and utterly stuck.

Work and city planning

There’s a new exhibition at Victoria’s LegacyGallery, a UVic-affiliated downtown art venue. It’s called From a Modern Time: the architectural photography of Hubert Norbury, Victoria in the 1950s and 60s (the link goes to the Legacy Gallery’s “Upcoming” page – no specific web info otherwise).

On Vibrant Victoria, a forumer posted a pointer to the exhibition, with the following info:

A retro Victoria comes alive through the work of architectural photographer Hubert Norbury, on display at the Legacy Art Gallery and Café this summer.

Norbury succeeded in documenting a building boom that transformed Victoria from a sleepy retreat to a vibrant city, rejuvenated by progressive town planning, a new university campus, and an international airport. His photographs serve as a rich and detailed record of a unique era in Victoria’s architectural history when modern ideas and new building technologies were embraced by its architects and increasingly accepted by the general public. (link)

Curators need to write texts that accompany exhibitions, but I have a problem with the way they (or he or she) framed this one.

First a caveat lector: What follows is by no means a completely baked post. It’s in the category of “thinking out loud” and “place-holder for more.”

Here are some problems I have with the blurb that presents the exhibition…

It claims that Victoria was transformed in the 50s and 60s from a “sleepy retreat” to a vibrant city? Hm… Through building projects? Double hm and “really?” Just take a look at Centennial Square…

I’m not sure why UVic’s curators would insist that the fifties and sixties were some Golden Age of city planning in Victoria. If anything, lots of built heritage was destroyed, the urban fabric torn asunder by so-called renewal (things like getting rid of “old junk” and making the city more car-friendly). The idea that the renewal undertaken at that time was beneficial really needs to be challenged. UVic certainly isn’t challenging it. It’s reinforcing it.

Furthermore… I really don’t believe anymore that if you build it, they will come. Something else has to happen first – or at least concurrently… Otherwise you do that “rejuvenation” thing through “progressive town planning” and end up with not that much.

At some level, some parts of our planning department seem still to subscribe to the “build it and they will come” agenda. And some of our councilors are “aesthetes,” idealists who think it’s possible to conjure up some kind of City Beautiful by fiat.

But what would a materialist say, someone who pays attention to work, to production, to economics?

I don’t think that buildings by themselves can change a city (Bilbao notwithstanding). There has to be a readiness for a new way of seeing and experiencing the city, otherwise buildings mean nothing. A starchitect edifice might help nudge new ways of seeing and experiencing, but those new ways can’t take hold if there isn’t some larger material fact underpinning that process already.

In most cases that larger, material underpinning is work, labor: how people make a living and sustain themselves. Do they work (and yes, consume) as factory workers, or in head offices and corporations, or as government bureaucrats, small business people, farmers, or entrepreneurs, or in the service industries, as retirees, or in the cloud? Are they experiencing disruption – at all levels – or are they staid and cut off from what’s going on in the global economy? Do they matter at all, are they producing matters of significance, or are they punching the clock …or already retired?

Victoria has had a varied history when it comes to work. Most of it centered on resource exploitation – from seals and whales to tourists, and every other resource in between. Some people think it’ll be IT – get-rich-quick and then blow off work to enjoy the island Lotus Land with its plentiful access to nature: hiking, golfing, kayaking, and so on. (Victoria must be one of the few places I’ve ever lived where it’s cool for 20-somethings to play the old man’s game of golf …and they can do it all year ’round here.)

The curatorial blurb I referenced at the beginning of this post says that Victoria was a “sleepy retreat” before the urban renewal schemes of the fifties and sixites. Yet that leaves out a whole swathe of prior history, including a prior of history of vibrancy and non-sleepiness.

Victoria may have been dead as a doornail in 1950, but it was a vibrant city in the late 19th and early 20th century – why?, because back then the city still mattered as a point of reference. Once the railroad linked Canada and terminated in Vancouver, however, Victoria began to die off because we weren’t that important anymore in the global world of work. Vancouver became the new reference point. The nature and value of how work was done here changed, and so did people’s perceptions of the place. No longer proud, and proudly the capital, more likely the slighted lesser city, where government only stayed by virtue of the infrastructure …which, admittedly, was and is a building. If the impressive Legislature building hadn’t already been here, I bet we would have stopped serving as the provincial capital long ago.

But the decision to make Victoria the capital was made first, and acted on first, and then the Legislature got built. The decision was acted on because of the way things were going: back then it seemed that Victoria could work.

Today, it’s like we haven’t figured out how to make this city work in ways other than boom-and-bust. You can build all the fancy new buildings and plazas and what-nots you want, but unless there’s a concomitant change in how people perceive the city (a perception that’s influenced at both ends, by the material stuff and by ideals) and in how they can work here and get ahead, public plazas and buildings alone won’t be able to generate the change(s) for the better.