Smoothing the National Landscape: Life-World

The professional appraisals of the Flats reflected the social Darwinist understanding of “natural” neighbourhood change. These descriptions were part a desire to the move the Flats “forward” – and to forget the working landscape of the past.

The neighbourhood descriptions contained within individual property assessments charted the “natural decline “of the central city, assessed the desirability of the neighbourhood, and expressed a pointed desire for the Flats to “progress forward.” Yet, this socio-technical process would overlook the working landscape of the past, the French-Canadian and Irish background of the majority of the working-class residents, a growing Italian community, and a smaller Lebanese community as it experienced significant postwar migration that had altered the Irish, British and French-Canadian of the area. In fact, contrary to reports marking the Flats as a transient area, many residents had lived on the Flats for several decades. In 1951 over 77 per cent of all the dwellings had been occupied by the same residents for more than five years.

While real estate specialists, town planners, federal politicians, and civic boosters hankered for the redevelopment of the Flats, the expropriation and demolition would also sever community and family ties.

For example, the widower Mrs. Cora Albert, who had lived on the Flats for 36 years expressed her displeasure: “I’m not too happy to move because this is my home and my family is all happily settled here”. Her two daughters and a son rented the three other units of the four-unit row house, and had recently undertaken several renovations.

In fact, despite the narrative of decline, many individual land-owners had improved the overall condition of the building stock. Yet such rehabilitations in the view of appraisers, only ‘retarded the deterioration of the area as a whole’ and were only slowing down the ‘natural’ decline of the area.

Many appraisers blamed the ‘integration of the Italian Ethnic group,’ for the ‘unnatural’ upswing in housing prices in the area. In the racialized view of experts, these ongoing familial lending practices and multi-generational homes were deemed by the experts to be out of step with the postwar norms of institutional lending and the nuclear family ideal.

Smoothing the National Landscape: Red Line Taxi

As an operator of over 50 cabs, plus 40 independent operators, the central location of Red Line Taxi at the Corner of Fleet and Duke Streets near major thoroughfares, was conveniently located drivers within 1.5 miles of Union Station and Chateau Laurier where 60 per cent of business was produced. As part of the ongoing property rationalization, the company received $236,000 as compensation for relocation to a site near the new railway station being completed as part of Gréber’s plan. This accounted for the cost additional mileage that would be incurred by the company. No longer able to operate in the CBD due to zoning rules, the company received compensation for relocation on suburban land on land purchased from the NCC. While there was advantages to being located near the new train station, and near the cross-town expreswat, the extra labour costs of the new location were born by the individual drivers. In fact, just as the move was being completed, as the assessment report notes, additional mileage costs would no longer be born by the company, as it was switching to a model in which the company rented out the cars and sold gas to the drivers, rather than paying them a salary, in essence externalizing the operating costs to the drivers. Just as waged labour was becoming a relic in the taxi industry, so too was the very physical building itself: the hub of its network, the stand-alone radio tower above the garage, was deemed surplus and bidders attempted to purchase the ruins, to fulfill new functions, however, the NCC would not easily relinguish goods, and left them instead to the wreckers ball.

Smoothing the National Landscape I

On 17 April 1962, the federal government publicly announced a massive urban renewal project for the neighbourhood of LeBreton Flats in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The expropriation of LeBreton Flats, and its working-class residents, emerged from an ambitious state-led initiative to remodel Ottawa into a new, modern, national capital. Initiated in 1945, and carried out in the 1950s and early 1960s, the federal planning initiative would radically alter Ottawa’s urban socio-environment. The proposed reconstruction projects proceeded from class-based assumptions, transatlantic urban reform consensus, that tagged low-income neighbourhoods as undesirable ‘slums,’ making it easier — if not necessary — to run expressways, construct large office blocks through the working-class districts. The state-led project provoked the ‘creative destruction’ of the rich socio-industrial landscape of LeBreton Flats and cleared away the ‘dead weight of past environments.’ The relics of the vast lumber and milling industry did they fit with the image of a modern national capital – and were cleared away for a new dream image – a National Defense Headquarters.

Taking a cue from Walter Benjamin, this series will expose the wreckage of past to help make the translation of the modern maelstrom possible. Empirically, it exposes the last vestiges of the industrial staples trade, and how all users – residents, squatters, scrap-dealers, manufacturers – were relegated to negotiating the terms of their disappearance from the Flats. Yet, despite this extensive attempt to remake the Flats into a national ‘landscape of power’, the state-led recalibration of industrial-ecological landscape remained incomplete. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, this new series of blog entries looks-back at the promise (and failure) to re-make nature at remains a symptom of the phantagasmoric spell of progress and mimics Benjamin’s methodology by focusing on collection of ‘scraps of history’ as a means from which to expose the false promise of the postwar dream.Second, inspired by Benjamin’s atmosphere of One Way Street, photographic and archival evidence is used to uncover fragments of ongoing activity on the Flats. These textual and visual fragments, drawn from expropriation files, offer cues to the distorted spell of progress of the postwar consensus and a counter narrative to the rent-based determination of urban decline.

Landsdowne Live and the Urban Growth Machine

When Robert Dahl wrote his book on urban governance in 1961 he asked the question of who governs the city, and how urban development can be understood in a political context. This early contribution to the study of urban governance is complemented by Logan and Molotch’s classic 1987 essay “The City as a Growth Machine.” Logan and Molotch maintain that the question of “Who Governs” has to be complemented by the equally central question “For What.”

Land-based interest and the day-to-day actions of urban elites figures prominently in their thesis, and their analysis provides an agency-centered understanding of the power relations and resources underpinning the formation and development of urban places and systems. Logan and Molotch argue that “for those who count the city is a growth machine, one that can increase aggregate rents and trap related wealth for those in the right position to benefit.” The desire to drive growth creates a consensus among elite groups, a consensus which is used to eliminate alternative visions of the role of local government. The Urban Growth Machine (UGM) thesis, which stems from this essay, maintains that coalitions of land-based elites drive urban politics to expand the local economy and the accumulation of wealth. Civic boosters them, connect the very essence of civic pride to growth.

According to this analysis the rentier-class ensures support for the project of continued growth by creating community solidarity on the collective benefit of growth and expansion. Among this growth coalition, local business people, especially those who invest and finance property development and real estate are major participants in urban politics, and are often deploy their considerable resources to promote growth based development. Much of the growth mobilization involves local government (which rentiers need local governments to succeed). The aforementioned properties interest playing a major role in electing local politicians: paying tribute to the old political adage that politics is about who gets what, here and how. And so when a development friendly Mayor such as Larry O’Brien is elected, they can act in full force to bring the UGM up to maximum speed: which is perhaps most evident in the Landsdowne Live project currently being proposed for Ottawa.

Property developers and financiers, however, are not alone in driving the UGM. Local media the authors point out also benefit from expansion since they gain increased circulation, advertising and profit as a result of growth. Historically, newspapers “bolster and maintain the predisposition for general growth.” Second, baseball and football stadia have been used by local governments to provide a focus for development projects.

Landsdowne live is a wonderful example of how the interests of media and property development mesh with the UGM. Media outlets such as Team 1200, Ottawa Sun, and media personalities such Glen Kulka, have trumpeted the benefits of a new stadium, and their voices should not be seen one voice among many, but a voice with vested interest in promoting not only general growth but the expansion of sports in the city from a purely profit laden perspective. Cleverly, these media outlets have outright ridiculed politicians and civic activists who propose alternative visions, as the UGM contends. Likewise for the property developers: local property robber baron Greenberg has used the Citizen to promote the growth-centered vision for the city. All those who oppose this grand vision were are told, have no civic pride. It is not a stretch to say this is an unfair playing field, is it is a question of power and resources. However, as this is an agent centered understanding of the political economy of development, the thesis also argues that interest which do not mesh with this view can be quite effective in offering an alternative vision if the growth based vision is not compatible with their “use of places – to live, to shop, and earn money.” Professionals not tied to the growth machine are most potent group to contend the growth coalition. The density of professionals in the Glebe offers just that possibility of effective citizen opposition.

The UGM is working quite well in Ottawa. With a sympathetic Mayor who is himself part of the urban growth coalition, civic resources have been mobilized to maintain their profitability and to promote one vision. I applaud those who are working to slow down the machine.

La Défense 4: Un Aller-Retour

As a major employment node, the massive la Défense complex is directly connected to la Périphérique and to the RER commuter train network though a major transportation hub below the main plaza.


Auto-mobility@ la Défense


Rail Links


This last picture is almost seemingly the entrance to la Défense, however, it is in fact the entrance to Hull’s own peripheral government Place du Portage office complex built as an urban renewal project in the early 1970s. Like la Défense, the four-phase complex, boasting the largest contiguous floor of any office building in Canada, is linked to the (unfinished) highway and expressway network. The massive complexes and their unilinear transportation linkages are an ode to the swift character of the rush hour commute and to the efficient speed of modern office work and workers. While more accessible (in terms of class and age participation), these transportation corridors are still an enclosed and specialized one-way space. Its high-modernity entrenches the city landscape further in the limiting “yokes of corridor mentality”.

Place du Portage, like it’s transatlantic cousin, was built on the paths of low-income neighbourhoods - also-know-as ‘slums’ or ‘bidonvilles’ in the pathologies of modern postwar urban reformers. However, unlike la Défense, the old neighbourhoods still surround the government offices, though despite their kitch pastiche continue to suffer the repercussions of the massive intervention, and from a general uneven development of Hull-Gatineau’s urban-suburban polarization.

Ottawa’s Urban Growth Machine

In 1961, just around the time Jane Jacobs was writing her influential book on the death and life of the great American city, Yale Professor Robert Dahl was writing a book on urban governance. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. A case study of political power and representation in New Haven, Connecticut, Dahl book looked systematically at political power, economic influence to evaluate who governs the city of New Haven, and how urban governance can be understood.

The simple question of who governs remains pertinent today as we evaluate the tools and policies of urban planning. How for example are land use decisions made? How does the process of comprehensive planning integrate different goals and motivations? How are stakeholders given a stake in decision-making? What are the limits to this decision-making process?

The Urban Growth Machine (UGM) thesis, which developed from these early interventions, maintains that coalitions of land-based elites drive urban politics to expand the local economy and the accumulation of wealth. According to this analysis the rentier-class ensures support for the project of continued growth by creating community solidarity on the collective benefit of growth and expansion. Land-based interest and the day-to-day actions of urban elites figures prominently in UGM provides an agency-centered understanding of the power relations and resources underpinning the formation and development of urban places and systems.

Recent debates over the expansion of Ottawa’s urban boundary is symptomatic of the formation of coalitions around urban growth. As the City of Ottawa renews and updates its official plan, local developers and lawyers are lobbying to have the boundary expanded so that their lands can be developed for residential use. In their lobbying efforts they have attempted to include in their analysis the cost of housing, arguing that is the urban boundary is not expanded, then home ownership would become unaffordable to many residents. Of course, as the UGM thesis suggests, this is all about creating coalitions, but the real goal of the development industry is to ensure adequate lands for continued greenfield development.

Why is this so important? Planning decisions around sewage, roads, transit, parks, creation of commercial districts, former industrial spaces can dramatically increase the value of land. Most of the profit for land developers is captured in the rezoning, subdividing and servicing of raw land. The extension of water and sewer into smaller lots multiplies the value of the original parcel. Almost all of the developers profit comes in the planning phase and municipal politicians create wealth through land use planning, servicing and subdivision: either on green field sites, or by rezoning current sites to allow for higher building height or density. In fact, profits earned in the planning approval processes are much higher than in the actual construction of homes and high-rise units

However local community and environmental groups have argued that such an approach will only perpetuate unsound planning decisions of the past and continue to worsen the problems of sprawl, pollution, and traffic. Not only have they promoted a more dense and environmentally sound (day we say “smart”) planning approach, but, Ecology Ottawa, a local group battling sprawl and promoting sustainability, has demonstrated to what extent the UGM is at play by highlighting the relationship between developers and zoning decisions. In discussing a revealing report looking at the contributions of developers to local councilors, Ecology Ottawa spokesperson argues the following:

“It seems large developers and their interests are being put first—ahead of the broader public interest—in key decisions about how our city will grow. What is most revealing about this report, however, is how widespread the acceptance of political contributions from these influential vested interests is.”

All of this debate shows how the UGR theory, as an agency centered theory, takes into the struggles over local hegemony and counter-coalitions organized around environmental and redistributive concerns. At times, these interests will contend and sometimes over-power the urban growth machine. In short, UGR explains a politics of locality based the rearrangement of local interests into coalitions where various interests compete and co-operate depending on the development and economic initiative.

P3’s @ Landsdowne Live

As Larry 0’s trial was nearing, a number of pretenders to began to position themselves for the crown, in case zero-means-zero fell on his sword. Among the pretenders Rick Chiarelli advanced a plan for the redevelopment of Landsdowne Park that would highlight his consensus making ability. Chiarelli’s motion gave the promoters of “Landsdowne Live” a 60 day exclusive window to negotiate with the City. Most of the central city councilors voted against the motion, citing amongst other things the questionable ethics of accepting a non-solicited bid, and giving preferential treatment to once group.

Now anyone familiar with Landsdowne will not argue that something has to happen with the acres or Parking lot that surround the stadium and ruin this choice site along the Rideau Canal.




Most also agree that the historic features such as Aberdeen Pavillion should be preserved in any development and that some sort of sports facility should be retained.




However, most disagree with the scale and style of the redevelopment, especially in reference to the now condemned and partially destroyed stadium. The “Landsdowne Live” plan proposes a new stadium to host a new CFL franchise (Rough Riders III), a hotel complex, an aquarium, and some large-scale retail space. The promoters are among the heavy hitters in the development game and have surely done their homework on the profitability of their venture. However, what makes this idea dubious is the redevelopment depends on the P3 model.

As others have noted, urban renewal projects, although they adhere neoliberal principles of market-driven development have come to rely and in fact depend on public investment to orchestrate development. The problem is not that the public sector is involved in such projects but that they willingly seed control to the private partner and in effect download the risk or failure to the public sector while keeping the benefits of any development to themselves. At the same time they lessen the possibility for public contestation of the urban renewal project. In short P3 are premised on opaque governance practices, and shaky finances. So when City Councillor Clive Doucet yells loudly (and ineffectively) in the wilderness about the sham process he is right. We should question the process under which the redevelopment is being proposed, as well as the motives of the developers.

Plus, how many games are in a CFL season anyways: 9? Why not build something that might actually get used many more days a year, like an amateur soccer complex...

Update on Murk II: The Trial of Larry 0

Almost two years after allegations first surfaced, the Trial of Larry 0 is finally underway. You can follow the proceedings on twitter here.

Troubling the Keynesian-Neoliberal Periodization on the Flats

Recent interventions in the literature on neoliberalism have called on critical scholars to “appreciate both diversity and consistency across particular neoliberalizations” (Prudham, 2005: 15). This call to search for the “similarities among differences” of neoliberalism (Castree, 2005) can be used to trouble the complicated ways in which the lines between the Keynesian and neoliberal urbanism are blurred both forward and backward. To recall Ross (1996), the event-process of modernization has significant afterlives that looks backward and forward. Simultaneously, Keynesian impulses are reformulated into the neoliberal urban development projects and neoliberal characteristics back onto the Keynesian project.

The modernist urban planning practices of the postwar state dispossessed the residents of inner-city neighbourhoods, including those of LeBreton Flats, for the good of the nation. In a similar fashion neoliberal practices recolonized the Flats to celebrate the nations history of participation in just war. Meso-level state-led intervention shows evidence of ongoing discursive and material dispossession on the Flats. The NCCs violent expropriation in the 1960s was partially premised on increasing land-rent of a depressed neighbourhood. In the contemporary context, the NCCs ongoing interest in rent-extraction parallels its earlier intervention. Although no longer couched in the universalized modernist spirit, and the clean, proper, nuclear, family subject, the discursive construction of the national makes new allusions to proper subjectivity. The capital’s new wish image is oriented towards an internalization of nature as an image-commodity. History has been forgotten in the abstract container of the nation, yet a selective use of discursive (national) nature has been used to sell an urban revitalization. Nature is being brought into the process of capital accumulation according to the regulatory and governing features of the neoliberalization.

In both these periods, the acquisition and maintenance of proper property use is a guiding principle, perhaps not-surprisingly since private property guaranteed by the state is a foundation of (neo)liberalism, often targeted at dispossession of the least fortunate (McCarthy and Prudhan 2004). “The prevailing regime of property,” as Blomley (2004: 38) is a “dense and pungent set of social symbols, stories, and meanings” affects urban dwellers differentially; property owners have control, and can increase their wealth; renters cannot; women and racial minorities are often more likely to be disadvantaged (Blomley, 2004: 38). Most critically to this case, national identity maintains meanings and narratives of property ownership, and tells the story of how the land should be ordered.



Considering the case of LeBreton Flats this is an especially perceptive analysis. Through a diverse set of practices, set within common features and processes, urban planning in the national capital has centralized control within national agencies to exclude displace certain bodies from the national landscape. In the 1960s the concentrated power of the NCC, the NCPS and the NCPS was used to wash away the “slums” of LeBreon Flats, and to replace the “derelict home” with modernist office towers and fast moving traffic. This control over property regimes continues breaking the neoliberal line, although governance structures and practices have changed. National capital planning is now outsourced. “Governance-beyond-the-state,” and P3s now dominate the national management of “empty” properties, though the landscape is far from empty as it continues to evoke powerful meanings. The spaces of LeBreton Flats have been remodeled into a mutable space where subjects can interact intimately with the landscape rather than only gaze upon its modern wonders. The national subject creates their own experience through direct interaction with the national soil and narratives of nationhood on the grounds of the War Museum. In contrast, the discursive rhetoric of the Keynesian period prompted national subjectivity through central dispensation of film and urban planning ideas. The idea of the ideal subject was told to the audiences and members of the nation. A back and forth between each of these periods shows how the contemporary redevelopment of LeBreton Flats builds on and consolidates the massive intervention in 1962.

In the postwar period as huge city swaths lay ready for reconstruction, and critics wondered if “modernist planning was merely an aesthetic preference masquerading as social reform” (Klemek, 2004: 10). The same question might be asked today but in the aftermath of the attack on egalitarianism, asking instead if neoliberal planning is simply a green aesthetic, imbued with culture embourgeoisement masquerading as a “mixed-community.”

Our Revanchist Mayor at it Again: Target Cyclists

Our ever so progressive OPS has renewed its fight on the segmentation of function on our city streets. Our Revanchist Mayor, his rural-right-wing-fringe henchmen, and our man in blue Vern White, and his 9% budget increase, are at it again. Just a short time after launching an attack on city pedestrians, the OPS has launched a month long program targeting city cyclists. The cops will be warning and ticketing cyclists riding on sidewalks. While I agree with the dangers of riding on the sidewalk, and the inconvenience to pedestrians, I fail to see how this is a priority for making cycling safer. In fact, zero deaths have ever been reported in cyclist pedestrian accidents in the city (if anywhere?). Should this really be the focus on city policing efforts to make our streets safer for non-automobile users? Hey Larry, how about creating an east-west bike lane, or fixing the damn curb in the middle the bike lane at the Percy and Chamberlain intersection, or frigin’ targeting those drivers always honkin’ and swearin’ at me for actually using the streets according to the rule of the Highway Traffic Act. It always drives me crazy when they target cyclist noting that we are regulated to have the same obligations under this act when in reality the rights as users are never enforced by the men in blue. Now there is a possible bike-friendly strategy.

This story really got me when I was also reading in today’s Toronto Star a story about the cops finally nabbing the notorious Igor of Queen Street West for bike theft in a quite and easy sting operation. Now for those unfamiliar with T.O., city bloggers and cyclist have long identified Igor as a crook and violent maniac bike shop owner (he actually physical assaulted a friend who tried to reclaim their stolen bike from his basement). For some reason he has always escaped scrutiny. So a big hoorah to T.O.’s cops for busting him. Mabye the cops will follow suit in Ottawa?

Photo: Women munitions workers of the Dominion Arsenals Ltd. plant in Québec city, bicycle in their home town of Sainte-Foy (1942, NALC, 1971-271 NPC)

Privatizing Parking: The Revanche Strikes Again

In an earlier piece, I gestured at the impending repercussions of Larry 0’s false prognostication of the City’s doomsday fiscal picture. In the recent budget debate O'Brien's run-by-the-seat-of-his pants reforms - partially filled in with suggestions for ‘transformation’ from his DND-buddy and man-for-hire Gordon J. Hunter - were in large part rejected by City Council. However the past budget debate cast the discourse of inflexibility and set the parameters for our own local ‘shock doctrine.’ Denizens were told that the City is plain out of cash: any variation of the City’s budget is unmanageable; any extra cost a doomsday scenario and solutions were to be cast in the 'free' market.

This discourse has recently resurfaced in the debate over Ottawa’s parking regime. To recall the details, council recently approved the shift from meters to pay-and-display for on-street parking. With lower maintenance and collection costs, municipalities across North America have successfully implemented this shift – to the benefit of City coffers, while still holding onto public ownership of the resource, and more maintaining control over public policy decisions. However, in Ottawa’s case, our current Council headed by Revanchist Larry 0, with the support of right-wing-rural-fringe henchmen, has argued that the City cannot front the money to buy the machines up-front. The solution: privatize the whole operation. The Mayor, with his background accumulating his own mini-fortune through contracting-out and privatization, has once again shown his zeal for private appropriation of public goods. Under the plan, a messianic Toronto company will set-up the system, and front money in exchange for the City’s on street parking revenues i.e. cash. To sweeten the pot the company promises to increase the City’s annual take by $1.7 million per year. Upfront this deal seems like a great deal: the City gets machines and increases its revenue without any investment.

However, the myth of P3’s and the tactics used to market former public goods has to be systematically disproved. In almost every instance promoters of P3’s offer the same juicy goodies: in return for a monopoly on a public utility they will dish out increased revenues to the state. This privatization of public resources - sometimes referred to as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) - has largely been discredited.

The reorganization of state functions along these lines externalizes public control through privatization and de-regulation, quasi-private institutional development while interiorizing neoliberalism into urban policy regimes. Various "shock treatments” such as place-marketing, enterprise/empowerment zones, urban development corporations, private-public partnerships, property redevelopment and boosterism are deployed by local boosters, planners, engineers, property developers and politicians to meet the parameters of reconfigured neoliberal urban policy regimes.

The techniques associated with the “golden path” of entrepreneurialism are part of a more assertive networked style of governance, where a host of actors compete for the urban policy agenda, and where flexibility, efficiency, competitiveness, state entrepreneurship and collaboration have become the standard bearer and the “best practices” of urban governance (Rodriguez, 2001). Informal, networked based governance structures have become the norm, resulting in "a new constellation of governance articulated via a proliferating maze of opaque networks, fuzzy institutional arrangements, ill-defined responsibilities, and ambiguous political objectives and priorities" (Swyngedouw, 2005: 17). These non-transparent, ad-hoc, context dependent and networked institutional ensembles render existing power-geometries even more exclusive, and less democratic (Fainstein, 1994; Swyngedouw, 2005). The conduct of P3's raise questions of public accountability, representation and exclusion (Rodriguez, 2001; Leo and Fenton, 1990) since they provide, at best, limited and formalized democratic participation (Swyngedouw, 2005). They also offer greater possibility that concealed dealings will lead to public loss of control and to a “great deal of scope for abuse” (Leo and Fenton, 1990).

The move by the Toronto-based company to forge a parking P3 adheres to the general pattern for these contracts. In attempting to wrest control of public resources, companies offer added incentives such as amusement parks, bribes, cash, etc, in order to sweeten the pot. In most cases, users are gauged, contractors provide less revenue than anticipated and face financial losses on the contract. In many cases, the contractor comes back to the state asking for better contract terms, with full knowledge that they have an edge over the public in these negations. Having wrestled the infrastructure from the local state, and being a monopolistic provider, the public is left with little choice but to renegotiate more favourable terms to the contractor.

A parking P3 is also suspect public policy – from an urban planning perspective. Parking policy is a key aspect of urban planning toolkit. Pricing has been used to manage supply of parking, and in case of parking shortage short term limits allow access to on-street businesses, limiting the need for parking lots. Pricing can be used to encourage alternative uses of transportation and to alleviate congestion, and to encourage a move towards sustainable cities, no small consideration in face of climate chagne. In short, it is a complex policy tool that works beyond a simple source of cash for the City’s coffers and P3’s obfuscates public oversight over urban planning, and flexibility of using parking policy for multiple policy goals.

Finally, the effectiveness of such a parking regimes is also highly questionable. The City of London Ontario was one of the first Canadian jurisdictions to put out their parking services to private tender, and the evidence points to the folly of such an enterprise. The City of Ottawa should learn from such examples: P3’s rarely pan-out, and City Council should consider this evidence, and for once to show some long-term thinking.

All of this may be cast in the light of Karl Polanyi's prescient note on the paradox of the economic liberalism: "Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not." A lesson on economic history that wears well in the urban planning affairs of this current City Council.

Tunnel Vision

“Let’s hear it for the boy,” the 1980’s pop-hit, pays tribute to the machismo of the good ol’ hometown boys. This ode to the boys might well apply the ongoing dependence of cities on the entrepreneurial style of urban governance and development. Boosterism of this particular kind, is nothing new to the neoliberal era. However, the ongoing dependence of the men in suits to this logic needs to be exposed in context of Ottawa’s tunnel vision.



During the highly contested 2005 mayoral election, the incumbent liberal Mayor Bob Chiarelli (center-right) faced a stiff challenge from the center-left candidate Alex Munter. After a few weeks of campaigning, the issue of Ottawa’s planned and approved light rail project came to dominate the election.

Enter the background. In the run-up to the election, the liberal mayor had pushed through the light-rail plan through city council claiming the deal, and federal funding, would expire if not signed before an election. Munter, his main challenger, took exception to the details of the plan, and to the manor in which it was rammed through city council. This struck a cord, while most Ottawan’s supported the idea of light-rail, many shared Munter’s skepticism about the project approval process.

Enter the dragon. A small group of downtown businesses formed the Albert/Slater Coalition to fight the proposed dedicated light-rail project. Initially the arguments held little sway, but the well financed coalition was organized and resourced, and consistently on message: light-rail would kill downtown business.

Enter the good ol’ boy – Larry O’Brien. A relatively unknown, Larry O, came into the race. For most of the campaign he ran a distant third. However, his zero-tax increase promise and vow as protector and champion of the business class garnered more and more support (a timely pay-off a rival right-winger also helped). Larry O took on the claims of the Albert-Slater Coalition as part of his pro-business platform. Munter’s attacks on Chiarelli’s force-play softened Bob’s appeal to suburban voters, and combined with an anti-Munter wave in the last weekend of the campaign, Larry O, the unknown and business allies were swept to power.

As reported in an earlier piece, O’Brien was a relative newcomer to city politics, and seemed to have few ideas on how to approach complex policy issues. He had for example, no fixed idea about light-rail beyond his concern for the Downtown business owners. Larry O waffled and wailed about light rail, switching his position here and there. Finally, his worship decided he was against the project, brought it back for a vote in City Hall, and with support from the east, west councilors left out of the north-south route, and rural right-wing fringe councilors, the project was shelved. During this debate, the concerns of the Albert/Slater Coalition emerged as one of the principal reasons for shutting down the plan. The Mayor made it clear that a downtown tunnel would be the only option. City Council acquiesced and voted in favour of studying the proposal for a 1B$ tunnel.

However, it was never quite clear who this Coalition was. For anyone who has walked, bused, driven or cycled down Albert of Slater street they would know it is a major transit artery with very few destination shops. The streets are dominated by small restaurants, coffee shops and other services that cater to the lunch-time crowd from adjacent office buildings. Moreover, the transit lanes make it near to impossible to actually park on the streets. Far from a mixed-use street celebrated by urbanites, the streets resemble the modernist Faustian bargain lambasted by Jacobs in 1961 and Berman in 1982.

The question then is why these seemingly unimportant businesses were able to trump the interest of Ottawa’s large commuting class. How did their interest outweigh those of the entire city? How were they able to fund their campaign? Why were businesses which would seemingly profit from increased foot traffic (which light rail invariably brings along with it) be against such a project?

After the dust had settled on this debate, and the light-rail defeated in city council, the Mayor appointed a special advisor on transit (this despite the fact that the city already had a transit plan). Once this report and others made their way through the City’s bureaucracy, the city release its four options for transportation – none of which considered a surface rail component. It was clear that the tunnel option was being favoured by the selection criteria – an option favoured by his business allies. Pedestrian users were being shoved off the street in favour of a subterranean enclosure.

Enter WB. Walter Benjamin’s literal explorations of the city, in such texts as Berlin Chronicle, One Way Street and most famously his Arcades Project, offer the urban observer a way to see the city and to draw out the hidden and invisible city. Benjamin offers a dialectic of seeing the city. Benjamin urges the urban observer to turning the city’s past inside out by referring and juxtaposing images of the past. Each of these images is meant to rub like a friction against the readers own life world. Each of these images of the city, as fragments of modernity, emblematic of a representation of ideas, demystify the present.

Benjamin’s childlike curiosity and a topographical imagination were stirred by the wonders of capitalist modernity, including utopian urban renewal projects. While he wrote in the first decades of the 20th century, industrialization and capitalism was pushing the boundaries of progress, and technology was fetishized as the material expression of progress. Urban networks: sewers, water works, electricity were being introduced at a rapid rate in the city to control the power of nature in the city. Technology in itself would improve living conditions and social environments and lead to a better world. Networks marked a new aesthetic form and also showed the extreme promise of engineering science. Being connected to a network was identified with being connected to the future, to progress and to the possibility of a better society. Among these urban renewal projects, the filth of industrialization of the 19th century led to the development of underwater sewers. By closing off the drainage of waste, engineers hoped to clean up the mess of industrialization. In the case of sewers, it created a divide between the underground and above, between light and darkness.

As Benjamin noted, the transfiguring form one to the other the debris of the messy past is cleared out to form a new neat natural image, forming a new wish image. The old residue is cleared away to make way for the up-to-date green development. Yet, new wish-images, are more than a fantastic collective consciousness. New utopias exist both in the physical structures of buildings and in the ephemeral celebrations.

The downtown tunnel, at the monstrous cost of 1B$ is an enourmous project with much utopian appeal. This colossal bid-dig project will solve the cities downtown transit woes. Yet, the tunnel might also be seen is a subterranean enclosure, a capitalist sewer ready to catch the unsuspecting viewer, drawing off from the surface urban life and hiding it in the tightly regulated private space of the tunnel and office tower megalith.

For this an Ode to Larry O’, for “every-time he comes so near I just want to shout "let's hear it for my man."” The Downtown Coalition can sing “he's my loving one-man show… what he does, he does so well.” Indeed, let’s hear if for the boy. When you’re caught in the labyrinth of capitalist pleasure and tunnel fetishism you’ll only have to thank the boy - and his business cronies.

City Hall yells "Kill the Street!"

Sparks Street, 1909

Public space, Marshall Berman has noted, has the urgent quality of a common terrain where "men and woman can come together to heal their inner wounds" (186: 476), where strangers can articulate their differences, and where people "can begin to deal with the contradictions of urban life and potentially work them out (1986: 477).” For Berman, the right to public space is implicit in basic democratic rights, and a key aspect of the transformative aspect of liberal individualism. An ideal public space includes access for all, a place where strangers can mingle, is attraction to all, has plenty of exit routes and has no visible police. Street life, Berman insists is key to the creativity of the city: fun, theatrical display, dance, are all part of the structural transformation of everyday life.

This celebration of street life, somewhat romanticized by Berman’s incessant belief in the redeemable qualities of bourgeois urban life, has, since the emergence of Jane Jacobs fabulous critique of the concrete modernization of the post-war urbanization, become the key anchor of principles of urban planning.

Last week, the City of Ottawa demonstrated its complete ineptitude in making this city a truly walkable city – and its continued attempts to “kill the street.” Our civic-ly owned army for the propertied class, the Ottawa Police Service, undertook a pedestrian sweep. Yes, the coppers targeted those damn pesky and dangerous pedestrians with a blitz. The crime, jaywalking! The coppers issued 108 tickets to those purveyors of evil disobeying the crosswalk lights that run along Ottawa’s ONLY pedestrian street. How dare they think they might once have the right to own a whole street!

Now as you might gather, this irks me for several reasons.

What the he-double hockey sticks? Don’t the cops have something better to do? In the last budget debate the OPS was crying so poor it got a whopping increase in their budget, no questions asked, thank you very much. Now, surely, they must have some excess staff if they are able to spend a day issuing tickets to the most vulnerable users on the transportation ladder (Cars-Transit-Pedestrians). It makes you wonder how much the City actually cares about pedestrians and transit? While the coppers get a huge cash infusion, and take liberty to target pedestrians, transit users, some of the poorest of users, faced a massive fare increase. Are you as confused as I am about the City's priorities? Really, if the Cops are that bored, what about tagging those damn cars always blocking the crosswalks?

Now on a more serious, and disturbing tone. The OPS, faced with massive backlash, noted that the order to target pedestrians came straight from the Mayor’s office (Larry O’ denies this, but considering he is under trial for paying off a rival I will not give him the benefit of the doubt, and yikes, will believe the cops instead). Either way, someone had a brain cramp.

Here is my tow-bit theory. Probably the Mayor was driving (so ecologique, M. le Maire…) from the Daly Prison for Rich People, when he was made late for a meeting with his defense lawyer since his Gold Gaz-Guzzling Mercedes (GGGM) was blocked from its zero-mission by a jaywalker. Our revanchist Mayor, delayed on important duty, called out his henchmen (i.e. le cops) to target those damn obstacles to a modern city. Bravo, M. le Maire!

As Berman has noted, public space is only open if it "engenders encounters between people of different classes, races, ages, religions, ideologies, cultures and stances towards life" (1986: 484). I urge the Mayor to fix the brain cramp at City Hall. Perhaps cut back on using Mr. Clean on your head, it might clear your thinking. Or try reading something other text on urban life than the “Transforming Governance” blueprint. I suggest All that is solid melt into air… Mabye then you'll ditch the GGGM and embrace city life, with all its contradictions...

Respect for LeBreton Flats

This weekend a public dialogue was held to discuss the future of LeBreton Flats. The event attracted a broad range of residents, community activists, and included professional and amateur planners, non-profit housing providers, educators, health professionals, transportation buffs, accessibility advocates, cultural sponsors, local artists and writers.

A few of the old residents of the Flats, were also there, and risked opening-up old wounds, to remind the participants of the spector of the NCC’s expropriation. The importance of remembering and respecting the history of the site was laid out at the forefront, and especially that LeBreton Flats lay within Algonquin territory, on land that was never ceded, and of the significance of the site to Algonquin heritage and culture. Participants were also reminded of the diverse ethnic groups who were affected and rejected by the expropriation including those of Italian, Jewish and French-Canadian ancestry.

Drained once or twice before by administrative enclosure and exclusion of the planning process, community actors and activists were not detered from engaging once more in a process to define the next phase of LeBreton Flats - in an inclusive from that was reminiscent of the old Flats.

These enthusiastic participants brought forward their hopes and dreams of all in an honest and vigourous discussion. Their suggestions of what should happen on the Flats integrated the diversity of the community and the past, long and short, into a full-range of options for the next phase of development.

Many of the community actors who had been involved in advocating against the NCC’s sell-off to Claridge in Phase 1 participated despite the failure of past efforts, and the NCC’s obscene power-brokerage. They were willing to overcome what was generally seen as a slight against them.

Based on a multiple small gatherings in themed break-out groups reporting back to the room as a whole, the session produced an ambitious but lively call for a diverse and equitable community. The participants were almost unanimous in their call for a small-scale, inclusionary planning process which should be launched through a community directed planning process. Their vision included real, and long-term affordable housing maintained in perpetuity, provided my multiple builders including non-profit housing providers, for multi-generational, multi-income and multi-cultural users. The participants called on the new phase to respect the past, most importantly by acknowledged the aboriginal past, and be from the start in close consultation with the Algonquins ensure that their interests in the land were addressed. The working past of the Flats was also on their minds as participants suggested that places be created for the trades artist, and workers, with innovative spaces such as tool-cooperatives and workshops, and light industrial places. Local workers would also find studios and workshops to work from, and families place to play. It was a quite different from Claridge’s stale, condominium based Phase 1 “doughnut.”

Despite invitation, no one from the NCC showed up, even to observe. If they would have bothered to show-up, the NCC property sharks would have heard a clear rejection of Phase I and its limited view, gentrified and exclusionary vision for LeBreton Flats.

The Shock Doctrine at City Hall

Ottawa’s recent draft budget report suggests closing 23 community centres, nine libraries, wading pools, reducing bus service, doubling the cost of ice arena rentals, eliminating web-casting of council meetings, cutting public health nurses etc, etc.

Larry o noted that his zero-for-zero campaign "is a war." Indeed, Larry O'Brien has hit it right on the head. His scorch earth policy is an emulation of the “Shock Doctrine:” a clean slate razing of the city and the services it provides. It goes like this. Render the citizens helpless into a state of shock through distortions, and flip-flops; use any tactic necessary to disorient them, unbalance them; bring them child-like state, and then, slowly, on that clean slate, rebuild the state, in your image, into a empty shell which has been completely gutted and outsourced (à la Calian). This tactic so wonderfully exposed in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism has become the new mantra of right-wing ideologues. Larry 0’s brainless blunder has brought the Doctrine to City Hall. O’Brien’s constant flip-flops and distortions, amount to tactics of psychological warfare used against Ottawa’s citizens to bypass and overcome the democratic process.

There is a second dimension to this. The Shock Doctrine is a democracy avoidance strategy premised on violence. Now, in the urb, violence does not necessarily equate troops with guns in the city. But violence can be more subtle: it can enacted through a disempowerment of rights. The health of cities is entirely dependant on quality services such as libraries, health clinics, housing, recreation. Without these basic services the city is an empty shell, and the marginalized get pushed further into the fringes of society. Meanwhile, the cities enforcers are getting a 9% increase in their already massive budget – no questions asked. You get the idea.

Any voices of reason in this insane debate? "In a real economic business sense, the cost of providing the services is cheaper than not providing the services," Rev. Brian Cornelius, the minister at First United Church said. "It's pay a little bit more now or a lot more later, and taxpayers should realize this."

Gutting the city for 52 cents a day? I say we need to overcome this shock by recovering our narrative. Thankfully the people at People for a Better Ottawa have started the reclamation.

Red River Murk

Larry 0's recent desire to emulate Winnipeg’s privatization plans have made my own internal ruminations quite au courrant. For some weeks I’ve been thinking about the links between Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien and Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz. Both are political neophyte entrepreneurs who rose from nowhere to sit in the big chair at city hall, and both used their business credentials to launch their rise to power. Although themselves dependent on public funding to launch their enterprises, both Mayor’s came to power preaching property tax freezes. As I never cease to insist, both can credit the public sector with a great hand in making them successful. The tag "self-made millionaire" does little to reflect their actual career trajectory.

Katz’s most recent entrepreneurial success is running the popular minor league baseball team the Winnipeg Goldeyes. The Goldeyes popularity can in large part be attributed to his good fortune of playing in a marvellous waterfront ballpark. The stadium was built and financed through public infrastructure investments and multi-level funding, including access to prime city-land for parking privileges. As readers of this blog can deduce, this public funding kick-start for his entrepreneurial spirit is quite similar to Larry 0’s dependence on federal staffing contracts.

However, it is their links to murky dealings which make this comparison compelling. Both Larry 0 and Sam Katz have been on the hot-seat over court revelations of unscrupulous deals. Larry 0,* as has been discussed at length here, has been under investigation for bribing a fellow right-wing candidate to drop out of the recent municipal election. For his part, Katz, the one-time concert promoter and nightclub owner, is also under legal pressure.** Last month it was revealed in documents relating to divorce proceedings that Katz has yet to pay any interest on more than $434,000 owing to the public labour fund Crocus Investments. Yet Katz continues to draw $217,000 as majority owner of the Winnipeg Goldeyes (that is on TOP of his Mayoral Salary). I guess he can’t use that salary to pay his debts.

Since becoming Mayor, Katz has been vilified for participating in city business which involved his business friends and associates. The murk is as thick on the banks of the Red River as on the banks of the Rideau Canal. Dubious distinctions. All this makes me question what kind of business acumen these entrepreneurs are bringing to city hall.

*Oh, and yeah, that is not a typo, I’ve decided that Larry Zero (0) is much more appropriate than Larry Oh (O).

**To be fair to Sam, this is nothing new, he has long been involved in dubious business practices, especially as a concert promoter. The list of unpaid creditors, shoddy accounting, and special government favours, to those with longer memories, is long. Hey, this guy is a promoter at heart.

Sell-Off

Yesterday, our unelected Minister of Pork-barreling (otherwise known as Minister of Public Works Michel Fortier), announced that Canada’s “new” government had sold off a package of public properties to private developer Larco Investments for $1.6 Billion. The government was only too willing to unload these properties fearing to have to foot the bill for much needed repairs after years of neglect. As part of the deal Larco will provide $77 million dollars of repairs. So far, so good.

However, several factors point to the long-term insanity of these asset sell-offs:

• The federal government will still have to pay annual maintenance and operating costs on top of base rent.
• The base rent of $79 million dollars/year is more than the amount Larco will spend on the extensive repairs needed.
• As a condition of the sale, the feds signed a guaranteed 25 year lease.

Now that is pretty sweet. Can you imagine getting a 25 year guarantee by your tenant, employer etc. This is what I call revenue security. PSAC has called the Minister to task, noting that on top of giving up control of these properties “the federal government has, in effect, written a $630 million dollar check signed by Canadian taxpayers.” It is even more perverse considering a counter-appraisal by Infometrica evaluated the properties at $2.3 Billion. No risk of large repairs, or increasing utility costs, no risk of default, AND guaranteed rent. Sounds like a license to print money. However, this type of profligacy in favor of private property developers is nothing new, and we should head warning to lessons of the past to learn about the repercussions of these silent deals.

In early 1974, when restrictions were imposed on public works expenditures, the federal Department of Public Works (PW) cleverly adapted to these new conditions. With the assistance of private sector real-estate moguls, senior mandarins at PW initiated an early form of public-private-partnership (P3’s) to ensure the post-war building boom would continue. Under direction of Andy Perry, who before his appointment as ADM of PW had built Robert Campeau’s Place de Ville Complex, the feds abandoned the “crown-construct” model preferred by past and current functionaries at the NCC and launched the “lease-purchase agreement programme” (Deachman and Woolfrey, 1982).

However, as Deachman and Woolfrey (1982) astutely demonstrated in their case study of Terrasse de la Chaudière, the cost-effectiveness of such agreements was often questionable since over the long-term costs for office-retail-hotel developments such as Terrasse de la Chaudière were considerably higher under the “lease-purchase” agreements than the “crown-construct model.” Deachman and Woolfrey estimate the Terasse de la Chaudière development would over the full 35 years would cost $1B, and $900M more than it would have cost to self-build.

Yesterday’s announcement is a continuation of this trajectory.

This is a classic case of what McGill University Prof. Henry Mintzberg has referred to as the perverse adoption of private management models to the public sector, which contrary to the private sectors have completely different goals, and as a result different criteria from which we should judge efficiency. Leasing works for large private sector firms since they must meet short term financial objectives to keep investors happy. These private firms often sell-off valuable property to boost profits, dividends or stock price. Private firms may also sell fixed assets to provide cash for investments in liquid assets with higher returns. Private firms use opportunity costs as a way to make these decisions. Fixed asset sales work very well in the short-term. However, governments operate over the long-term with financial horizons beyond the life span of the average firm. Governments are not in the investment business: they cannot turn around and invest the sale value in another asset that will give better returns (It’s not like Harper is going to invest the 1.6 B in Berkshire-Hathaway and send me a nice dividend check every quarter). Assets such as buildings make sense for the public sector because over the long-term owning is cost-effective. Moreover, no matter what, the feds will need office space. They will never “get-out” of the business of needing office space. The logic just doesn’t work here.

We can excuse ministry officials, I guess, since Fortier is hiding in the shadows of his barrels. Remember this is the unelected and uncountable Minister who is unwilling to run in one of three (THREE!) by-elections in Québec. My guess is he is scared of facing public scrutiny. To scare him out of the shadows, I say that whenever Fortier announces something every reporter should ask the same question: Mr. Fortier, why are you not running in the Outremont by-election?

The murky nature of this deal, and flawed rationale of the initial 1974 P3’s continues to capture the minds our MBA-indoctrinated ADM’s and high-level federal property mandarins. Henry Mintzberg should take them to school! Oh, and did I mention this: When is Fortier going to run anyway?

Closing E.B. Eddy

A Benjaminian Excise of the Tragedy of the E.B. Eddy Plant

On July 31, 2007, the century old dream of an industrial heartland in the Ottawa Valley was dealt a final blow. Domtar Corp. the owner of the historic E.B. Eddy plant announced the closure of the last remaining plant on Chaudière Island. An epoch had finally come to an end. The slow and steady decline had met its terminal point. Forest would no longer be transformed into a cashable commodity by the practiced hands of unionized labour.

For over a century, over a large geographic area stretching far into the Upper Ottawa Valley, lumber had been transported to Chaudière Island to be transfigured from one form to another. Squared logs, timbers, pulp, had all been transformed and metabolized by the labour of the workers and by the energy of the Falls into a commodity to be bought and sold on international markets. Now, we are told by the Captains of Canadian Industry, Chaudière timber is no longer a saleable commodity. The timber fibres are a relic of the past.

The debris of the messy past will soon be cleared out to form a neat natural image and a new wish image. The new utopia will fit neatly into the clean and crisp image of a green capital city. The Chaudière Falls, like LeBreton Flats, will be cleansed of its past, yet like all epochal shifts, the break will not be clean. The traces of past images will be recycled into the new dream embodied in the physical structures of buildings and in the ephemeral celebrations on its grounds. Ye olde plant will become the festival site for consumption where national culture and global tourism will now, in the place of paper, be manufactured. However, this new national storage of memory will be performed as a class-less memory void of the trials of the workers of the Flats. The memory of the Chaudière Falls is to store a national story of regeneration void of tragedy.

****

“To the form of the new means of production which is the beginning is still dominated by the old one (Marx), there correspond in the collective consciousness images in which the new is intermingled with the old. These images are wish images, and in them the collective attempts to transcend as well as to illumine the incompleteness of the social order of production. There also emerges in these wish images a positive striving to set themselves off from the outdated – that means, however, the most recent past. These tendencies turn the image fantasy, that maintains its impulse from the new, back to the ur-past. In the dream in which every epoch sees in images the epoch that follows, the latter appears wedded to the elements of ur-history, that is, of a classless society. Its experiences, which have their storage place in the unconscious of the collective, produce, in their interpretation with the new, the utopia, that has left its trace behind in a thousand configurations of life from permanent buildings to ephemeral fashions.” Walter Benjamin