The City: Listening to the Street

THE STREET

Image: Sparks Street Promenade, Ottawa ON

Photo: David Atkinson

I believe that most city dwellers have something in common. We all love our city. So I want to share something with you that I learned quite recently.

A little while ago, my wife and I were in Montreal, enjoying a curb-side wood-fired pizza on a patio on Rue St. Denis, where we met a very wise Montréalaise. I told her how much I admired her city – how cosmopolitan it is and how alive it is with commerce, the arts and culture, day and night. After listening to some of her stories about local developments, I mentioned I was an architect and asked how she came to know so much about what was happening. She said something that I can’t stop thinking about: “Listen to the street. The street talks to you.”

I felt like I had just had a paradigm shift, although I couldn’t put my finger on quite what she meant, or how to find it. Was it the people, the history of the place, the shiny new urban architecture cutting its way through the past, the vibrant economy, or perhaps the politics? Whatever she meant, apparently, I was going to find it in the street.

CITY BUILDING

What feels like a long time ago, I became an architect. But most recently, I have been pursuing a broader idea: what it means to be a City Builder. As an Urban Designer for the City of Ottawa’s Planning department, my role now is to review development proposals in our Nation’s Capital and assist in their pursuit of design excellence.

I first came to work at the City because I believed that city building was about the bricks and mortar – the glass and the steel. But, after only a short time, I began to realize that I had this quite wrong. It isn’t the forms and spaces that make a City – it’s the people. This may seem obvious to many of you, but to me, as an architect, it was a revelation: architecture doesn’t provide all the answers after all.

Architecture is not A Field of Dreams (“if you build it they will come”). It’s true that people often visit places because of beautiful inspiring architecture, however, people build beautiful and inspiring architecture because they care about where they live. We have to care about a place first. Then we reflect this affection by building and growing our communities. We build the cities we desire.

COMMUNITY

Building community is the key to city building, I’ve come to realize – supporting one another, where we live. If we support local businesses – groups that care about the city they serve, that own and build properties – they will continue to invest in the place they call home. They need and deserve our support because, like you and me, they want the city to become its best.

So if you see something interesting going on in your city, share it. And if you come across someone in need, don’t be shy to connect them with someone who can help them, right there.

THE TOURIST

A city is not some idyllic concept or tourist attraction. A city is the face of its people. Choose any city and you will see that it is the physical manifestation of the spirit of everyone who has ever lived there. As tourists, we don’t invest ourselves in people. We visit as many of the “must-sees” as we can, supporting the economy, but we haven’t made the city our own. It is still the shape of others. In the many places I’ve lived before now, I feel that I’ve been a tourist, not understanding how to participate or contribute in a meaningful way.

This brings me back to the street. The street is where we connect with each other. But to be connected, we first have to get involved, and to get involved, we need to be aware of what is going on around us, and all the great things that are happening in our city. As I’ve learned, we have to be connected. And to be connected, we just have to listen to the street.