I haven’t exactly made up my mind on what I think of the proposal to position London as a transportation hub. [As an aside, what's with this $10 article?]
On one hand, all you’ve got to do is look at a map of Southwestern Ontario and you get a sense that, ya, London’s smack dab in the middle and ought to be a transportation hub. It’s a no-brainer that London is naturally positioned to be a regional centre.
Also in the pro column is the fact that any city ought to work really hard at developing and maintaining an efficient transportation system. Planning a system to route commerce and industrial traffic in and out without interfering too much with the lives of folks who live there is one of the things all municipalities strive to do.
Those two facts alone would seem to make the issue a non-debate — and make me wonder why we should even have to remind ourselves…
But on the other hand, what makes me pause is that the concept of a trade/trasportation hub does not necessarily gel with the qualities that make London a distinctive and desireable place to live.
The quality that London possesses above all is livability. It’s the selling feature through which we have the best opportunity to cultivate sustainable competitive advantage. While London cannot be a great city through “livability” alone, it is the one value we absolutely must not undermine if we want to have a distinct position in the larger economy and society.
Having a great airport and road system (and the jobs that those attract) can certainly complement London’s livability, and are important elements of a livable city, but they might also turn out to be sufficient for destroying some of London’s livable qualities and undermining the city’s competitive advantage.
Wthout careful, deliberate, long-term planning and foresight, infrastructure initiatives and industrial ambitions can take on a life of their own — and next thing you know there could be people urging the city (and the province and feds to help) turn Oxford St. or Wellington Rd. into elevated expressways (as extreme examples), making the city less hospitable with little to distinguish it from, say, Markham or Oakville or Cambridge or Brampton or Barrie… — but without the benefits those cities have being so close to Toronto.
I’m not anti-growth or anti-development. I’m not calling for limits on progress — nor “moderation, regulation, and control”; I’m calling for “organization, discipline, and focus” (I know I might seem to be a little pedantic here — but I prefer to think of it as being disciplined)… What I mean by these distinctions is a discussion all its own (to be continued)…
As with most of my writing about London (so far) I’m not really committing to any position. I don’t know enough to presume to have any particular authority – nor do I really know who else to ask.
But while I don’t know much about the specifics of the case, I do know a fair bit about how people (as individuals and groups) tend to think about challenges and where we tend to go wrong. The irony here is that while I tend to think and work abstractly, what I’m trying to do here is prevent London’s decision-makers from doing the same.
Let’s remember that before there were any cities or highways in the province — before there was even a country — “London Ontario” was an abstract idea conceived by John Graves Simcoe before he (or any permanent resident) had ever set foot on the site. He looked at a map and saw the river forks at the geographic centre of the wilderness bordered by three Great Lakes, more or less equidistant between two existing British posts, at Newark (Niagara) and Detroit. He thought it would be perfect for a captital — an economic hub.
The city began as a hub dream – a product of designer’s ego – an over-idealized marketing strategy.
Simcoe imagined that “London” — the intended capital of Upper Canada — situated on the “Thames River” would attract British Loyalists from the newly independent, former American colonies and grow to become “the metropolis of all Canada” (in the words of Simcoes’s adjutant) and the heart of a thriving economy-of-the-future.
Of course the plan would depend on transportation, which meant building roads — or a road, Dundas Street — from Lake Ontario to the proposed interior capital.
But the road didn’t get built — at least not for a generation — and it took over three decades before anything was really built at the London site. Resources where needed elsewhere (for really pressing concerns, as well as serving the arbitrary or self-serving commands coming from higher offices).
Meanwhile, Simcoe needed an immediately accessible location from which to run the administration of Upper Canada. He found a nice natural harbour on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Don River, they called it York, and the rest is history.
What happened to London? Reality happened: as is almost always the case, doing what they could with what they had where they already were (sort of) turned out to be most feasible strategy.
Never let a map distract us from seeing real circumstances already around us – and never base a long-term strategy on political promises that are subject to changing priorities and affiliations.
[History source: Simcoe's Choice: Celebrating London's Bicentential, edited by Guy St-Denis. Dundurn Press, 1992.]
{ 3 comments }
Wonderfully said. It's kind of funny how conventional 20th century approaches to urban planning have left us with an all-or-nothing perspective on how a city must evolve. This entry gives us some hope that we can have our cake and eat it, too. There's no reason we can't be more powerful economically while we retain the things that have made London such a great place to live in the first place.
We'll leave the rampant “successes” of places like Toronto to, well, Torontonians.
Thanks Carmi. I'm inclined to dwell on your remark about 20th century approaches but I'll end up going on and on. For now I just like the idea of calling it 'The All-or-Nothing Century.'
Thanks Carmi. I'm inclined to dwell on your remark about 20th century approaches but I'll end up going on and on. For now I just like the idea of calling it 'The All-or-Nothing Century.'
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 3 trackbacks }