Notes from the Ontario Heritage Conference in Peterborough
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| James Howard Kunstler predicting doom |
June 6, 2009
Jim Kunstler is an Optimist, Really.
There is a movement in Ontario, Canada to preserve what is left of its older buildings, towns and cultural landscapes. Each year two organizations devoted to the cause, Community Heritage Ontario and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, get together to run a conference on a theme, this year being "Heritage in Creative Communities" in Peterborough, Ontario. The theme was set a year ago, and current economic events kind of overwhelmed it. Certainly if you invite James Howard Kunstler as the opening act, you know what the subject is going to be, and it ain't creativity. More in TreeHugger
Adam Vaughan Steals Show at Ontario Heritage Conference
In a crowd of authors and journalists like Jim Kunstler, Gord Hume, Clive Doucet and Alfred Holden of the Star, the surprise of the Ontario Heritage Conference was how Adam Vaughan, a rookie city councillor from Toronto, stole the show with his intelligence and wit. I tried an experiment in live twittering the conference, and as a result my notes are a series of short zingers. For those not following Twitter, I reproduce some of the best here, most from Adam Vaughan but a few from others at various panel discussions:Vaughan: We are not at war with the car, it is a war against a stupid idea from fifty years ago.
Kunstler: The future is not about our preferences, it has its own agenda.
Vaughan: hyperdensification is as big a problem as suburban sprawl. Tall buildings are moncultures.
Kunstler: There is a scale between the house and the tower, Paris is all seven stories and it is a nice place.
Doucet: Look at Havana. All the tall buildings were abandoned, because elevators have to run. all the time. We will do it too.
Kunstler: (on the Bilbao effect) City councils are bending over and picking up the soap for the starchitects, it is tragic and perverse.
Vaughan: if you build an economy you don't necessarily get a city, but if you build a city you will get an economy.
Doucet: Cities that endure are cities where people want to live. But we gave it all away to the developers, they are locusts.
Vaughan: Centralization sucks. The reality is that we should decentralize taxing and decision making back into the community.
Kunstler: we have to undo the influence of Frederick Law Olmstead, he is not a model for small urban spaces.
Glenn Murray: just because we love IKEA doesn't mean we should welcome big boxes.
Avi Friedman: we are living at a time of a perfect storm. Of opportunity.
Vaughan: The arts are recession-proof; they are always broke.
Kunstler: (quoting) New ideas first get ridicule, then face violent opposition, then become accepted wisdom.Type of News Item: News
