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--> Google Sidewalk Labs, Toronto. It's a pretty sad thing to think that building 'odd-looking avant-guarde, expensive and dysfunctional architecture has anyth
by jariel 6y ago
--> Google Sidewalk Labs, Toronto.
It's a pretty sad thing to think that building 'odd-looking avant-guarde, expensive and dysfunctional architecture has anything to do with building a functional future and helping to improve social conditions.
Can we look at that project and assume for a moment that anyone was actually trying to 'alleviate poverty'?
The 67 project is actually an interesting sight to see, and a worthy attempt at 'something' - just not in the context with which it was initiated.
It's more likely it was a giant expression of creative hubris, which is fine, but not with the price tag or hypocritical lamentations.
Can anyone see how all of these dramatic projects, borne of the minds of 1960's progressive thinkers, mapped into every artifact of social life may have had unsurprisingly bad consequences?
This project is straight out of Trudeau Sr. era - and there are many more - please have a look here [1] the famed Olympic Stadium, which was never finished and is effectively dysfunctional.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Stadium_(Montreal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Stadium_(Montreal)
These projects should be giant lessons in self awareness more than anything. When we look at them in retrospect and ponder 'what were think thinking they were trying to do?', the reaction should be 'I wonder what we think we are trying to achieve now?'.
- motohagiography 6y agoHabitat 67 is a monument to what happened when progressive idealism met the Quebec construction industry, imo. The few examples of modern "sustainable," neighbourhoods that emerged organically were the result of a community (often illegally) adapting industrial buildings for mixed use, and then a cycle of gentrification that makes them desirable. Letting owners convert residential to mixed use also does it. The central planning route just creates subsidized luxury housing for the politically connected. Architecture expresses economics, and Habitat 67 was an artifact of using federal largess to bribe Quebec to stay in confederation in an age of naive social engineering. When I last saw it in the 90's, the way it continued to absorb subsidies to maintain it on behalf of people who worked in publicly funded culture industries, was basically the most Canadian thing ever. I often say that Canada is british democracy with french efficiency that only persists for lack of many natural predators this far north. Habitat 67 is kind of a monument to that absurdity.
- jariel 6y agoWell it exists because of natural resources. Quebec has in some ways paid the price for lethargy, I think due to the resulting institutional inefficiency, it's clearly poor for a more advanced province. That said - it's hard to fathom how Ontario is that much richer without the indirect stimulus offered by large scale immigration. When newcomers arrive and eventually take out mortgages at inflated prices, we basically print money for those and flush it into the economy. At the end of the day I'm not sure there's that much difference between Quebec and Ontario.
- 908B64B197 6y ago> it's clearly poor for a more advanced province. It has to. For political reasons. The transfer payments equation basically dictates how much it should spend. If the province got richer it would end up in a situation where it pays more than receive from the federal government. Just imagine the constant electoral adds "instead of hiring X teachers we were forced by the feds to write a check to Newfoundland or some other money pit".