Cities

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  Clear Cutting Social Landscapes

  Milton Friesen

  August 17, 2012

  Could the same be true of our social landscapes? Are the "old" institutions, both formal and informal, being over-taxed, eroded, or clear-cut faster than they are being replenished, floundering on a demand gradient greater than their supply? Are we dismantling them because they are perceived as obstructions to building the better future? I offer a comparative reflection.

  In the modern era, we have treated the plenty of nature as limitless—the carrier pigeon, buffalo, cod, rainforests, oil, agricultural land, and oceans. In painful slow motion, the long dawn of our awakening may be taking place. In time? Certainly not in som...

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  Retrograde Fantasies

  Peter Stockland

  July 6, 2012

  Did I say complement? Perhaps I meant antidote. For if the embarrassing neediness of the Canadian need for summer evenings ever needed anything, it is Greene's lugubrious fidelity to the torments of Christian joy. As Canadians, our identity is as a winter people. Even as urbanites, we accept the painful limitations of our natural snow-bound state.

  There are fewer better complements to a Canadian summer evening than sitting on the front porch absorbing the mournful Catholicism of a Graham Greene novel.

  Did I say complement? Perhaps I mean...

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  Engaging Those Who Disagree

  Ray Pennings

  July 3, 2012

  Aaron Renn, a leading American urban affairs writer, recently challenged those thinking about cities to have a "broader urban vision." Urbanism, he said, needs to be about more than funky "third space" cafés, creative classes, transit, and high-density living. Renn suggests that other networks and institutions, especially churches, need to be given a more prominent role in addressing the challenges facing modern cities. Both sides have rethinking to do. Given that Christianity started as an urban religion (look up the economic and political prominence of the various cities which Paul visited and sent letters to), it is surprising that contemporary western Christianity occasionally evokes thought of retreat from the cities. Doesn't our modern ethos often place "rural values" closer to what's religious than "big city values"? Before critiquing urbanists for ignoring religion, then, there is good reason to remind the religious that perhaps they have not taken cities as seriously as they should, especially in an increasingly urban society. (Eighty-one per cent of the Canadian population lives in cities, and the rate is increasing by more than one per cent per year.)

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  Publisher's Letter: Days of Faith

  Peter Stockland

  July 1, 2012

  Convivium is not an expressly political magazine in the narrow sense of process, strategizing and marketing that has come to define what we think of as politics. But it most definitely does concern itself with the polis—the city—with that shared space where the common life of citizens is lived out.

  Early in the last decade, I made a conscious decision to withdraw from engagement in Canada's political life. Of course, I have never been elected to anything more significant than secretary of the Red Cross Club when I was in Grade 4. Nor have I ever been ...

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  Two-Way Streets: Where Efficiency Isn't Everything

  Kathryn de Ruijter

  June 1, 2012

  As more and more people are moving downtown in cities across North America, more people are questioning how to revitalize downtowns after decades of flight into the suburbs. In Hamilton, a growing number of voices are pointing to the conversion of one-way streets to two-way as an important next step in this process.

  Hamilton, Ontario is a city with an intricate (albeit confusing) network of one-way streets. These multi-lane expressways are very efficient in their purpose: to get people through the city core very quickly. They are not, however, conducive to building a v...

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  Change the record

  Ray Pennings

  February 8, 2012

  Officially, the meeting's purpose was "to re-connect with our Centre City faith-based organizations and to seek further feedback on The City's Centre City Plan." That plan, adopted by City Council in 2007, calls for the doubling of residential density in the downtown core, or 40,000 additional residents in the next thirty years. But it makes no mention and considers no consequences of the 26 faith institutions which currently are part of the city's downtown, as these two Cardus studies from 2010 and 2011 noted. Municipal consultations of this sort aren't typically well-attended, so officials were enthusiastically overwhelmed, although scrambling to accommodate, the assembled crowd. The evening began with a short formal presentation which combined into twenty minutes Municipal Planning 101, 125 years of Calgary official plans, and a summary of the most current Plan. I found it telling that the last long-range plan for the city core, approved in 1966, featured three priorities for the downtown: a walking mall (Stephen Avenue); a +15 system of walkways (the series of second level bridges which connects downtown office towers); and a C-Train system (the name given to Calgary's LRT transit). Anyone familiar with Calgary today will recognize these features, highlighting that while Official Plans never accurately predict the future, they have a powerful influence in shaping it.

  Last night, the City of Calgary convened a meeting with the city's faith communities. It's an inspiring case study on how Cardus tries to achieve its mission.

  Officially, the meeting's purpose was "to re-connect with our Centre City faith-based organ...

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  Zoning out religion

  Peter Stockland

  November 2, 2011

  The Montreal woman was back in front of a judge yesterday to fight a ticket she received for participating in an "illegal Mass" at a rented facility in the borough of Lachine. But the case was put over until February 22, 2012 when Celani's lawyer will argue the ticket is invalid because it is an abuse of a zoning bylaw and, more importantly, because it violates her Charter rights. In the interim, Celani engaged a Montreal constitutional lawyer to argue the case, at least in part on Charter grounds. She acknowledged after her appearance on Tuesday that her reflex was to simply pay the $144 fine and settle the matter. Then she got mad, and the madder she got, the more she became determined to fight.

  Paula Celani's day in court has become a six-month legal odyssey.

  The Montreal woman was back in front of a judge yesterday to fight a ticket she received for participat...

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  I'll Take the Candy—Hold the Confusion

  Brian Dijkema

  October 27, 2011

  Kids who would otherwise be brushing their teeth and preparing for bed will instead be released to ask complete strangers to give them confections. Bad for the teeth, good for those with shares in Cadbury, right? It might even be good for the community. Instead of packs of youth breaking windows and looting stores, there are peaceful packs of kids and parents meeting neighbours who, for most of the year, go about their lives with a minimum amount of neighbourly interaction. I have a hunch that for most of us, Hallowe'en is benign at worst and a fun community-building exercise at best. The Globe and Mail reports that a number of Christians have taken to handing out Bibles (well, half-Bibles, actually) on Hallowe'en. The Jesusween movement was begun because "the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day." The Globe and Mail suggests that "proselytizing is becoming a greater priority for many Christians for another reason: Their numbers are steadily declining on both sides of the border."

  In four days streets across the continent will be covered with little people, running around in the great communal and sugar-fuelled pantomime that we call Hallowe'en.

  Kids who would otherwise be brushing their teeth and preparing for bed will instea...

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