The race for new urbanism

You may have noticed a growing movement in Vancouver toward reclaiming the "old fashioned" neighbourhood feeling in several areas. Some call this "new urbanism". What I'm talking about is a neighbourhood where people actually know each other, watch out for each other, walk to the local store for food, grow food in a community garden, eat in the local restaurants, and walk their dogs in the local park. What it's *not* is a place full of big box stores, freeways, McRestaurants, mega-plex theatres and 7-11s. I think this new urbanism is a reaction to, and an antidote for, the automobile culture that's built up over the past 50 years, and we as a society are finally waking up from our automobile-induced coma. As evidence, one need only look at the huge popularity and spread of the Car Free Vancouver Days across multiple neighbourhoods. It feels like people are really starving for great neighbourhoods, which, it seems, necessarily means fewer cars.

Matt Hern, the co-founder of Car-Free Vancouver days puts it best. “Some people go from their house to car to work to shopping without ever actually living in their neighbourhood,” Hern says. “But the less you rip past in a car, the more you actually live here, the more you notice what’s happening in your ’hood and the more you’re likely to work to make it a better place.”(1)

And that's the point. Jim Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, refers to suburbia as the "National Automobile Slum," and sees the big-box stores and cookie-cutter housing of the suburbs as a tragic misallocation of resources. "We can't overestimate the amount of despair we are generating with places like this," says Kunstler. He theorizes that suburbia neither informs us where we have come from, nor affords us a glimpse of where we are going as a culture, and as a consequence we end up with desolate public spaces that "are not worth caring about."(2)

We are very lucky that Vancouverites of the 50s and 60s had the foresight to reject freeways within the city. No freeway ever improved a city, in my opinion. By eschewing freeways, Vancouver has preserved its core and kept people in the city, together, instead of letting them be dispersed out into the black hole of suburbia (suburbs have still arisen, but not at the expense of the core). As the price of oil continues to climb (and yes, it will go higher), residents of the city will have to adjust, but not nearly so severely as those in the suburbs.

This era, the post-cheap-oil era, is going to be very painful for people who live far from their work, friends, and sources of day to day supplies and services. If the worst of the Peak Oil predictions come true, the new urbanism might not just be a lifestyle choice, it might be a necessity. According to Kunstler, "We're not going to be rescued by the hyper car; we're not going to be rescued by alternative fuels. No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to run what we are running the way we are running it. We are going to have to do everything very differently. And [we are] not prepared. We are sleepwalking into the future... Life in the mid 21st century is going to be about living locally. Be prepared to be good neighbours; be prepared to find vocations that make you useful to your neighbours and to your fellow citizens."

The link to talk by Kunstler is in the second endnote below, and it is really worth watching (17 mins).

P.F.

1. Vancouver Magazine. "Citizen Hern" March 2008.
2. TED conference 2004. James Howard Kunstler talk on public spaces.

Sausages hold 'light' practice

CHINA CREEK PARK, Vancouver, BC, July 24, 2008. In what was described by onlookers as a "light" practice, the Sausages did some hitting drills and basically goofed off Thursday night, after their would-be opponents, the White Sox forfeited the game. Some fans even questioned how serious the Sausages were about salvaging the season. "Come on!" yelled one fan, known as Daz, after an easy ground ball trickled through three half-hearted Sausage attempts at catching it.
It was reminiscent of the uninspired training Rocky did before fighting, and losing to, Clubber Lang in Rocky III. All showboating and no discipline.
"We had better turn things around soon or first place in the league will slip through our hands," said Shoe, sighing.
After the listless practice the Sausages held a closed team meeting at the Cedar Cottage. Although media were barred from the meeting, it was easy to tell from the outside that things were getting heated, with one player heard yelling "the San Diego Chicken is the most famous mascot in all of sports!".
But there was some good news. Dirty Al, under the NTN handle "Jeeves", achieved a number one ranking in all the whole wide world in a silly trivia game. But two games later it was the SHARK who was out to get Jeeves and Volley. "Averages are not important. It's a game of extraordinary performances," announced Jeeves pompously. Jeeves has 173 points in the third game and threw his playing board aside and pouted for the rest of the night.
Daz, self-admittedly feeling "a bit tipsy", started heckling the team. "You have three wins? So does that mean two other times the opposition forfeited too?!" he shouted. "See you later, I'm going to the bathroom," he continued, before accidentally urinating in the broom closet.

Box score:
Dirty Al 100/100
Sink 100/100
DeedeeK 100/100
Volley 100/100
etc.

Consumerism gone wild

I was flipping through the BC Place schedule looking for an RV show to attend so that I could go there and watch the poor RV dealers listening to crickets and crying in their little tiny RV bathrooms because nobody, but NOBODY in their right mind would buy an RV today, when I came across something called the Vancouver Gift Show. That's right, a 3-day gift show on the gigantic floor of BC Place Stadium! What the fuck is going on in our society when there is a market for a 3-day show to promote a bunch of crap that nobody wants!? More fondue sets! More tuxedo shapes wine bottle cozies! More hot-rock relaxation sets that the recipient *might* use once and then stow in the basement until a few years later when it makes its fateful journey to Salvation Army. How much of the world's now precious resources have gone into and are going into gifts that never get used? I estimate the "miss" rate on gift giving is at least 50%. That means 50% of all those materials and all that energy and labour that went into making those gifts was pure waste. Don't get me wrong, gifts have their place. I love my family and friends and appreciate every gift I have ever received and I make an effort to use every gift and respect it as a gesture of love from someone else. Things I can't use I usually exchange for something I need if I can, or even [gasp] regift them. But we humans have pillaged the earth for too long, mining metals, cutting trees, killing animals, burning oil, and polluting everything, and we really ought to draw the line somewhere and say "no more waste". Let's show our love for each other in other ways that aren't so wasteful. My next point is going to offend some people, but I'll say it anyway. The biggest waste point of the gift industry is on children. I love my son, and I love kids in general, but trust me, they don't need all these fucking toys. We are breeding a generation of ADD kids because they are literally swimming in toys. Are we scared they might get bored if they only have a few toys? Or as adults are we projecting our boredom on our kids? Or do we just want to make sure they have an unlimited number of toys so that they can't possibly get bored so we won't have to actually play with them ourselves? Now, I know kids get really excited about Christmas and parents get no better rush than from seeing their kid squealing with excitement at all their wonderful presents. Sure, toys can, in the short term, evoke those beloved smiles that send endorphins racing through our "parent brains". But in the fullness of time there are usually only a small handful of toys that actually get used, and the rest just sit at the bottom of a massive toybox (if they get opened at all), and meanwhile we have set an expectation with our kids that they have to get a huge haul of toys every Christmas, birthday, Easter, even Halloween (the retailers and advertisers help propel that expectation along too!). We could give our kids a better gift than that. The gift of preserving some of the earth's resources for their lifetimes after we are gone. The way we are going, there won't be much left for them.
In case you were wondering, the gift show runs from September 7-9 and, not surprisingly, there weren't any RV shows. ;-)

P.F.

Sausages win!

The Sausages beat the Shirtsicles! Film at eleven.

Who's going to call in the score? How do we even do that? Does anyone remember?

And no injuries!

Box score pending, I don't have my newswire feed hooked up today.

P.F.

Why I love cycling

Back in April of this year I started riding to work, and during my cycling commutes I have time to think about a lot of things. On one particularly enjoyable evening ride recently I started thinking: why do I like this so much? Why is this better than walking, running or driving the car to accomplish the same thing? The answer hit me. Cycling through the city requires a certain level of focus that you don’t need for walking, running, or even driving. In a way, it’s analogous to skiing. Think about it. In skiing we travel at fast speeds, constantly balancing, working our muscles, feeling the air rushing by, and thrilling in the element of danger that accompanies it. Isn’t cycling similar? When riding through the city all those things come into play. I think it’s the element of danger that really makes it fun, because there is a certain pleasure that comes from being totally focused and living in the ‘now’. Ask yourself what parts of a day’s skiing really give you a rush? Is it the times when you are coasting on an easy slope? Probably not. It’s probably when you are pushing your limits on a difficult run, totally focused on the next turn, not thinking about the last run or the next run, but just this run. Living in the ‘now’. I think the same thing happens with cycling. For example, when riding in the ‘door zone’ between the traffic and the parked cars, you have to be totally alert for doors, bad drivers, people coming off side streets, potholes, and debris on the road. That may sound dangerous, but I argue it’s no more dangerous than skiing through a glade full of trees – as long as you are focused you’ll survive. And that element of danger also gives cycling a big element of pleasure.

Before I started riding I made a list of reasons to cycle to work. That list included responsible things like getting into shape, being environmentally friendly, reducing traffic, and saving money. The money savings were actually quite considerable, when you consider parking, gas, wear and tear, insurance, and speeding tickets. There’s no doubt those are all good reasons, but none of them promised any intrinsic enjoyment. It is probably the sheer enjoyment of riding that will sustain this habit for a long time. It gives me smug feeling to know that us cyclists are getting for free what people pay $75 a day for at Whistler.

P.F.

Sausages Injury Report

MONTGOMERY PARK, VANCOUVER, July 10, 2008. The Sausages are considering bringing wheelchairs to the games. That's according to former coach and now field manager Shoe. "We are pretty beat up right now," said Shoe. Instead of the game stats, the following are the injury stats for last night's game.
DeedeeK - shoulder, hamstring (the other hamstring this time)
Dirty Al - hamstring
Smitty - lacerated and bruised thumb
Romeo - hurt something last game
Marlene - hamstring
Slashbunt - OK, but taking it easy on her leg
Eric (spare) - sliced up his arm at work
Sink - sore shoulder
Volley - healthy
Meat (of the order) - sore head (hit by thrown ball)
Hope - healthy
Shoe - healthy
T-Bag - healthy, but MIA along with MIT.
A-Mac - healthy, but MIA

Smitty is the latest Sausage to catch the injury bug, after getting hit by a pitch and slicing open his thumb. "I'm going to need a minute," said Smitty after getting hit. "Actually, I'm going to need a lot of minutes," he added as he rushed to hide behind his vehicle where he could vomit in privacy.
"I might be out for the season," said DeedeeK. There are still 47 games left in the 2008 season for the Sausages, so they will definitely have to make some callups from the minors.
"I wanted to step in and play for Smitty, but they already had a number 12 on the team," said fan Daz, who also indicated he wants to go to Florence.

P.F.