Show Notes
From late January, when the first protesters’ trucks and cars piled into downtown Ottawa, to mid-February, when the Canadian government enacted emergency laws to remove them from the streets, Canada’s capital city of Ottawa was locked down. But it turns out, the reasons why the protests proved uniquely disruptive to the people who actually lived there were actually baked into the city’s very design. In the first episode of City Space’s second season, we look at how we design and choose capital cities, why capitals reveal the story of the country as a whole, and what Ottawa’s failures tell us about the broader Canadian project. Adrian speaks to Dave Amos, planning professor at California Polytechnic State University and the host of City Beautiful, a YouTube channel about urban design, about exactly how a capital city is built and what it’s meant to do. Plus Andrew Waldron, architectural historian and Canadian heritage conservationist, explains how the layout of Ottawa doomed the city to chaos when protesters occupied the roads and the core.
More from City Space
This week on City Space, our team attempts to unravel a few puzzling urban enigmas. Can anything be a street name? Does a patch of grass qualify as a park? What does this unique house reveal about the development of the area? Irene and our producers guide you through different neighborhoods as they try to solve the mini-mysteries that define a city - in this case, Toronto. The hows and whys (or why nots) of urban design and city planning. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
If you drive in Toronto you know the name “Gardiner”. The waterfront expressway was named after the man who dominated Toronto politics at a crucial point in its history: Frederick Goldwyn Gardiner, or “Big Daddy” as he was known. In 1953 Gardiner became the first chair of Metropolitan Toronto, a trailblazing experiment in two-tier municipal governance that brought Toronto and 15 surrounding towns together, until full amalgamation in 1998. But Gardiner’s legacy is a complicated one, and his reign left tensions between urban and suburban Toronto baked into the city’s physical fabric and governance. In this episode we look at why, more than 40 years after his death, the City of Toronto is still reckoning with his vision. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Across Canada, more and more First Nations are turning to real estate and housing development as money makers, shaping the future of Canadian cities. This is especially visible in Vancouver with projects like Sen̓áḵw, a development by the Squamish Nation that is set to become one of Canada’s densest neighbourhoods. It’s a project that carries a lot of promise, specifically as a symbol of Indigenous urban development and reconciliation in action. But Sen̓áḵw also comes with its share of controversy, as a development that isn’t subject to Vancouver zoning laws because it’s on Squamish land. In this episode, we look at how developments like Sen̓áḵw are forcing municipalities across the country to face some tough questions, like how to square Indigenous sovereignty with city planning and what reconciliation looks like at the local level. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In 1977, a 100-page hand-painted plan for a white, stone, European-style Calgary was discovered in the walls of a garage. The illustrations show a totally different vision for the city, with wide, stone boulevards, artificial lagoons and grand, classical buildings. While the plan was expensive for a frontier town of 80,000 people and was swiftly shelved with the outbreak of the First World War, the beauty of those drawings captured Calgarians' imaginations when they were rediscovered. What if Calgary had been built like Paris, with beauty at its core? What even is “beautiful”? And who gets to decide? In this episode, we’re telling the story of the English gardener Thomas Mawson who wanted to make his colonialist mark on Calgary, and explore how power uses architecture to tell stories. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Is expropriation, or forcing corporations to sell apartments to the government, a way to ease the housing crisis? Berlin seems to think so. In a landmark referendum back in 2021, the majority of Berliners voted ‘yes’ to forced sales, calling for the government to buy 240,000 apartments owned by some of Berlin’s mega landlords - whether they want to sell or not. Some call the strategy “radical” but needed. Others say it’s unconstitutional. But is it a viable solution to Berlin’s housing crisis, and could it work here in Canada? In this episode, we dive into the history behind Berlin’s expropriation campaign and try to figure out if a similar referendum on housing could succeed on this side of the Atlantic. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.