Being There

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:http://jacksoncouse.com/beingthere/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/no-cars-go1.mp3]

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