[URBAN NOTE] Unbuilt Toronto

Over at the National Post, Peter Kuitenbrouwer wondered why it was so hard to get into Union Station.

On a lovely weekday afternoon at rush hour, I am standing on the cracked plaza in front of Union Station, watching the crowds bunched up and tripping over one another on the narrow sidewalks of Bay and York Streets, then scurrying like rodents into the little openings at the extremities of the train station. I am thinking about what might have been.

In 1911, the Civic Improvements Committee of the City of Toronto had a radical idea: cut a new street through downtown Toronto, called Federal Avenue, linking a proposed Union Station on the south side of Front Street to a proposed site for a New City Hall, north of Queen Street.

The railways did build Union Station, in 1927, in accordance with the plan, and after World War II the City of Toronto bought the land north of Queen Street, which eventually became Nathan Phillips Square. But city officials didn't have the stomach to expropriate the land they'd need for Federal Avenue.

The 1911 proposal clarifies the dysfunction of downtown Toronto today. I always wondered why it's so hard, as a pedestrian, to get to the main entrance of Union Station: you have to walk forever from the corner of York Street or Bay Street. Turns out we only got half of our Civic Improvement.

As Kuitenbrouwer explores later in his article and as John Barber writes in The Globe and Mail, Mark Obaldeston's new book Unbuilt Toronto gives Torontonians (others, too) insights into the paths that Toronto did not take, at least in respect to architecture and urban planning.

Future historians with similar interests, digging through today's news stories as Mr. Osbaldeston did yesterday's, will remark on how many new schemes are introduced not with enthusiasm but with a blunt reminder of the notorious failures that preceded them. The waterfront, centuries-old focus of such dreams, dares not speak its name in 2008.

And the ghosts multiply: To add to the 33 abandoned visions documented in Unbuilt Toronto, the Toronto Society of Architects asked its members to empty their own bottom drawers "to uncover visions of the Toronto that could have been." A selection from both sources will be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum, beginning this week.

[. . .]

Consider the notorious first proposal for the Eaton Centre: three chilly towers on a windy plaza, Old City Hall gone. The ultimate result is far more urban and accommodating, but its key elements, including three towers, are all in place.

One can say that Metro Centre, an unpopular Brutalist scheme to demolish Union Station and redevelop hundreds of hectares of abandoned railway lands, was abandoned. But is it unbuilt? The visionaries who imagined it would be amazed to discover, 40 years later, how much of their allegedly rejected dream had become real.

Unbuilt Toronto shows enough evidence of purist projects vastly improved in their messy implementation to abolish most nostalgia for what might have been. It also makes the undoubted achievements seem less remarkable: As the author attests, there was a lot to like about the conventional city hall scheme a profile-hungry city rejected in favour of Viljo Revell's wild expressionism. With buildings and the square handled alike in each, style is the only substantive difference.

[. . .]

Toronto would be different, but easily recognizable. Even such well-killed ghouls as the Spadina Expressway, if built, would have fit right in. They are old familiars, with close relations everywhere around us.

Thus the city that might have been becomes a mirror image of the city that is, ghosts and all.

Unbuilt Toronto has received coverage from sources like the Toronto Star, Spacing, Art Daily, and Quill and Quire. I'll come up with one myself when I get my hands on a copy.

[BRIEF NOTE] President Obama won't matter nearly that much

Many of the sentiments expressed in this article in regard to Obama's likely election strike me as fundamentally misguided.

The world was riveted by the election drama unfolding Tuesday in the United States, inspired by the hope embodied by Barack Obama or simply relieved that — whoever wins — an administration that spawned Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay was coming to an end.

From Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to the small town of Obama, Japan, the globe geared up to celebrate a fresh start for America after eight wearisome years of George W. Bush.

In Germany, where more than 200,000 flocked to see Obama this summer as he moved to burnish his foreign policy credentials during a trip to the Middle East and Europe, the election dominated television ticker crawls, newspaper headlines and Web sites.

Hundreds of thousands prepared to party through the night to watch the outcome of an election having an impact far beyond America's shores. Among the more irreverent festivities planned in Paris: a “Goodbye George” party to bid farewell to Bush.

“Like many French people, I would like Obama to win because it would really be a sign of change,” said Vanessa Doubine, shopping Tuesday on the Champs-Elysees. “I deeply hope for America's image that it will be Obama.”

Europeans had a sense of the momentous change that was about to unfold.

“America is electing a new president, but for the Germans, for Europeans, it is electing the next world leader,” said Alexander Rahr, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“We see new challenges coming up, not only Islamic extremism, but a newly resurgent Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea — everywhere there are fires,” he said. “And we, as Europeans, can't solve these problems without America. A world without American leadership is, for most Europeans, a world of chaos.”

Obama-mania was evident not only across Europe, where millions geared up for all-night vigils, but also in much of the Islamic world, where Muslims expressed hope that the Democrat would seek compromise rather than confrontation.

The Bush administration alienated Muslims by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison — human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

“I hope Obama wins (because) of the need of the world to see the U.S. represent a more cosmopolitan or universal political attitude,” said Rais Yatim, the foreign minister of mostly Muslim Malaysia.

“The new president will have an impact on the economic and political situation in my country,” said Muhammad al-Thaheri, 48, a civil servant in Saudi Arabia. Like so many around the world, he was rooting for Mr. Obama “because he will change the path the U.S. is on under Bush.”

Nizar al-Kortas, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Anbaa newspaper, saw an Obama victory as “a historic step to change the image of the arrogant American administration to one that is more acceptable in the world.”

[. . .]

Kenyans made their allegiances clear: Scores packed churches on Tuesday to pray for Mr. Obama, whose late father was born in the East African nation, and hailed the candidate — himself born in Hawaii — as a “son of the soil.”

“Tonight we are not going to sleep,” said Valentine Wambi, 23, a student at the University of Nairobi. “It will be celebrations throughout.”

Kenyans believe an Obama victory wouldn't change their lives much, but that hasn't stopped them from splashing his picture on minibuses and selling T-shirts with his name and likeness. Kenyans were planning to gather around radios and TV sets starting Tuesday night as the results come in.

“We will feast if Obama wins,” said Robert Rutaro, a university president in neighboring Uganda. “We will celebrate by marching on the streets of Kampala and hold a big party later on.”

In the sleepy Japanese coastal town of Obama — which translates as “little beach” — images of him adorned banners along a main shopping street, and preparations for an election day victory party were in full swing.

After this election, the United States is going to remain the same hyperpower that it has always been, with a First World economy the size but much more integrated than the Eurozone's and a military of unmatched power and the sort of pervasive global cultural influence that can get under one's skin however it does get under one's skin. All these things about the United States are not going to change, and can't change barring a catastrophe that would surely take the rest of the world down with it. (Or, in fact, is taking the rest of the world down with it--poor Icelanders.)

Obama won't change it, since Obama is not a revolutionary. He's a northern liberal Democratic president who, probably, will take the United States into a centrist direction. Maybe, just maybe, the United States will adopt a scheme of universal health care, who knows? He is far, far from being the "Socialist" that McCain accuses him of being, and Obama's voiced support for military strikes in Pakistan--unilateral ones, maybe--suggests that in one crucial way he's not that different from Bush. (I'm still annoyed by Obama's election rhetoric about NAFTA, but I'll leave my dislike of politicians in large countries who advocate radical changes heedless of their effect on smaller and weaker neighbours out of this.)

I'll welcome Obama's election, certainly. I just don't think that it will change anything other than some of the fine details of the United States' relationship with the wider world. Obama, just like Bush, will be the president of a hyperpower willing to defend all of its varied interests in the wider world.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Obama and Canada

Stephen Collinson's article in the Melbourne Herald-Sun was the first article that appeared in Google News when I Googled the terms electoral college.

DEMOCRAT Barack Obama has taken huge strides towards becoming the first black US president, with TV networks projecting he will win the crucial battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Senator Obama's projected win in Ohio is a heavy blow for his Republican rival John McCain. No candidate has won the White House without taking Ohio since 1960. And no Republican has ever won the presidency without it.

The traditionally Republican state ravaged by the decline of heavy industry leaned Democratic today after narrowly voting at the last election in favour of George W Bush four years ago, TV networks projected. Ohio has 20 electoral college votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

TV network projections also gave Pennsylvania to Senator Obama on a night of high drama after millions of people cast their votes in an election expected to reshape US politics. Pennsylvania represented Senator McCain's best hope of capturing a state that was won by the Democrats in 2004, the central plank of his strategy given that polls show he will likely lose some of Republican states won by President Bush in that election.

The Pennsylvania and Ohio calls left Senator Obama with a projected 195 electoral votes, putting the Democratic camp well on its way to the 270 votes needed to clinch the White House.

Media networks have projected wins for Senator Obama in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington DC, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Mexico.

Senator McCain was given Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming and Kansas.

One thing of noteVisible minorities make up 16% of the Canadian population versus one-third of the American population. Obama's success has led, naturally enough, to speculate about the prospects for similar successes among Canadian ethnoracial minorities, as in this self-congratulatory article from the Canadian Press.

The office of the governor general, the Queen's representative in Canada and the country's highest-ranking figurehead, has been occupied by two visible minorities - Adrienne Clarkson and current successor Michaelle Jean.

Canada's already seen a female prime minister, albeit briefly - Kim Campbell in 1993 - but no visible minority has ever held the keys to 24 Sussex.

Other milestones include former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh as the first Indo-Canadian to become premier, as well as a host of MPs of myriad ethnic backgrounds, including Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, African-American and Lebanese.

[. . .]

Still, Canada's road to more equitable representation is "a work in progress," said Jean Augustine, Canada's first black female MP.

As a former cabinet minister responsible for multiculturalism and the status of women, Augustine recalled that when she travelled internationally, she became both "the messenger and the message."

Yet in her eyes, political parties should be doing still more to foster multiculturalism in Canadian government.

"When you look at the shakers and the movers, I don't see the impetus to ensure that individuals come into the party and make their way up and have the support of the party to ensure they have an individual from a diverse background."

Conservative MP Jason Kenney has been aggressively recruiting minority candidates for the last two elections in a effort to chip away at the advantage long held by the rival Liberals to win the lasting support of immigrants.

No single ethnic group in Canada makes up a coveted block of voters like African-Americans or Hispanics do in the U.S., which means no one group of Canadians has the same ability to move a candidate through the ranks.

I called this article self-congratulatory because--for instance--the writer mentions former British Columbia Premier Ujjah Dosanjh but fails to mention that he's the only Canadian First Minister who belongs to a visible minority. I'd go so far as to argue that it overlooks the very nasty historical pattern of racism directed against members of visible minorities in Canada, whcih include anti-semitic riots, segregation regimes directed against African-Canadians, residential schools that sought to save the Indian person by beating out the savage, and eugenics policies--including sterilization--directed against (among other groups) Ukrainian-Canadians and even excessively fecund French Canadians.

Is Canada ahead of the United States? Id argue that we're at par, at best, or quite possibly in behind. As I wrote back on the Fourth, the United States is in many ways a revolutionary society that can serve as a positive role model for the entire world. May Obaam's example stir all Canadians.