Con­tract­ors set con­crete for new light posts on Dragon Alley

Let’s start with a song.

Here is the Final Fantasy ver­sion of the Arcade Fire song “No Cars Go”:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaS­cript enabled in your browser.

Dragon Alley is a tiny little strip of land. At first look, it’s noth­ing sig­ni­fic­ant. There used to be an old Horse barn at one end, a for­got­ten relic of a bygone age, tucked behind the busy urban inter­sec­tion of Col­lege and Dufferin Streets. Only it turns out Dragon Alley wasn’t so for­got­ten after all. This sum­mer, the Park­ing Author­ity for the city of Toronto tore down the barn, cut down the trees, and ripped up the earth for a new park­ing lot.

You might won­der, why should I care?  Why does this crummy patch of dirt matter?

Cit­ies in the integ­rated world eco­nomy face tre­mend­ous stress, and are chan­ging faster than we recog­nize. We used to live in what eco­nom­ists call “The Keyne­sian City,” an organ­ized city which acted to improve the lives of its inhab­it­ants. This was a city where we were cit­izens, with the recip­rocal and reflex­ive rela­tion­ship of belong­ing to a com­munity. The city was the place with all the swim­ming pools, pub­lic lib­rar­ies, schools, parks, and jobs. The mod­ern, Keyne­sian City pro­tec­ted people from the fail­ures and abuses of cap­it­al­ism. It was a place where people worked together for a com­mon interest.

The Keyne­sian City star­ted to crumble in the 1980s. Power shif­ted out of the hands of the Nation-State and the local com­munity, and into the hands of global insti­tu­tions like the World Bank and transna­tional cor­por­a­tions. Thatcher and Reagan were elec­ted. The Ber­lin wall fell. Tele­vi­sion syn­chron­ized global cul­ture. The very nature of the city star­ted to change. The pur­pose of the city stopped being the wel­fare of the people and star­ted being the attrac­tion of cap­ital and the cre­ation of a suit­able busi­ness cli­mate. With glob­al­iz­a­tion, the Keyne­sian City was replaced by the Entre­pren­eur­ial City. This is where our little park­ing lot fits in.

Fenced off and off llimits

For the past couple of dec­ades, cit­ies have pur­sued policies aimed at trans­form­ing the city from a place to live into a place to do busi­ness. Devel­op­ment of pub­licly owned land and public-private part­ner­ships are char­ac­ter­istic of the Entre­pren­eur­ial City. In our case, “the Toronto Park­ing Author­ity (TPA) has been work­ing with local small busi­ness organ­iz­a­tions to find loc­a­tions for off-street park­ing that will help to keep them com­pet­it­ive with other, lar­ger cor­por­ate retail­ers.” Under­ly­ing this action is a belief and grow­ing real­ity that busi­ness is the core of power and author­ity. With the increas­ing privat­iz­a­tion of pub­lic meet­ing spaces, like Dragon Alley, the indi­vidual is increas­ingly cast as a worker and a con­sumer, not as a com­munity mem­ber and a citizen.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Being poor is not a moral fail­ure, and it is not jus­ti­fic­a­tion for mar­gin­al­iz­a­tion and exploit­a­tion. The con­struc­tion of a park­ing lot in a hid­den and cramped area is dan­ger­ous and ill con­sidered. Con­cerns about viol­ence are a smoke-screen. A park, where the neigh­bors are inves­ted in the upkeep and secur­ity of the space, is inher­ently safer than an empty park­ing lot at night. The privat­iz­a­tion of shared space and pub­lic life is a scourge, and a blight on the health of the city as a liv­ing organ­iz­a­tion. It is unjust to remove green space from apart­ment dwell­ers, the people who need and bene­fit most from pub­lic space. The cold, cal­cu­lat­ing, and fun­da­ment­ally uncar­ing mis­gov­ern­ment by the city of Toronto exhib­ited in their decision to pave Dragon Alley is shame­ful and short sighted.

Dragon Alley isn’t paved yet. Now is the time to speak up, to speak out, and to pro­tect what com­munity we have. This fight is about more than cars and kids, it is about how we ima­gine the city, and our place in it.

Email coun­cilor Adam Giam­brone to tell him you oppose the park­ing lot at 9 Bonar Place.

Learn more about this devel­op­ment at dragon-alley.blogspot.com

and more about the Global City from John Ren­nie Short

Jack­son