“I Am Where I Live” – Isabella Chiu

This past Friday night I had the pleasure of attending one of my very first documentaries at the iconic Bloor Hot Docs Theatre with my dear friends, Kelly Ronan and Cara James, a.k.a. “The Publishing Gals”. You may know Kelly and Cara as my Sunday hiking companions. We were co-workers at publisher Pearson Canada for seven years and have remained fast friends ever since. Ironically, we talk more now than we ever did when we worked in the same building every day! One of the many things that I appreciate about spending time with Kelly and Cara is our diversity of opinions and our genuine ability to share them easily as we walk and talk each Sunday. One cannot help but be “well-read” in this industry of ideas and so our meetings, while always healthy, also contain a healthy dose of talk about the topic du jour (as you know, here in Toronto we have no dearth of crazy things to discuss on any given day!). So watching a documentary together necessarily means we must instantly dissect it the moment the curtain draws to a close!

On Friday we saw Danish film-maker Andreas M. Dalsgaard’s The Human Scale, a documentary that looks at the challenges modern cities face as our world population soars. The film focusses on the work of Danish architect Jan Gehl in such diverse cities as Copenhagen, New York, Chongqing, Dhaka and Melbourne where the results of observational research coupled with the desire to make our cities more livable has led Gehl to believe that growth in cities should be prioritized around people versus cars, not unlike the philosophy of our very own Jane Jacobs. This essentially means fewer high rises and super highways and more public and green spaces. As the documentary suggests, this philosophy in urban planning is driven by one very startling fact: by the year 2050, 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, up from 50% today. Where will we put all the people? Do we build up or out? How will we live? What will be our quality of life? How do we reconcile the priorities of big business, infrastructure and our need to commute in ever-widening “giga-cities” with our very human need to mingle in open public spaces, see the horizon and breathe the air? I would highly recommend watching The Human Scale as it is a timely story that has global and local impact.

So what did we talk about after the movie? I asked the Publishing Gals if they would share their thoughts on the documentary with you because a variety of voices is critical to unpacking and understanding such meaty topics. I also sent them a series of photos I took this past week at a photo shoot in Toronto’s most famous pedestrian-only neighbourhood, The Distillery, and asked them to help me choose “the one photo” for today’s post. The Stroller Parking sign is curiously fitting for our discussion on the pedestrian vs. car urban planning debate. You might guess how a farm-raised, “must see the horizon” gal might react (that’s me…) but that is only one side of this story. Here’s Cara’s response to my photo and to the film:

“I like the photo of the stroller parking, although “time expired” is perhaps a little ominous? Or not? Time was an issue in the movie, I thought. Do we have time to turn the Titanic, as it were. Before cities like Dhaka hit the iceberg. Do things move so quickly that we lose sight of what will really matter in the years to come? There was a quote about how cities are made for 100 years, not the next 5.

My other impression of the movie was that it sadly lacked any insight into special needs — like, oh look at this beautiful pedestrian walkway though Chongqing… and all I see is one set of stairs after another. Shouldn’t they be planning for an aging population?”

Kelly also found that the documentary, although thought-provoking, lacked a sense of depth that left all three of us wanting to know more:

“The movie left me with more questions than answers. Which is not necessarily a bad thing! Documentary movies are great for provoking discussions and raising issues, if not solving them.

We saw lots of examples of cities with real, tangible problems and bleak futures. The interviews with the experts showed us exactly how and why large cities were not providing livable conditions for the residents.

What I was hoping to see more of was the solutions and pilot projects that are making a difference in the lives of the people living in the world’s biggest cities (and getting bigger each year). I was encouraged to see a few examples of some great ideas put into action, but they didn’t explain in enough detail. We saw the great transformations of the alleyways of Melbourne; we saw the creation of public social areas along Broadway in New York; we saw the start of a transformation in Chongqing that provided a large network of walkable pathways and roadways. But, we didn’t see what happened to the traditional uses of those spaces: how did the drivers deal with the loss of driving routes; where did the normal city services from the alleyways go?

I was hoping the movie would leave me with a more positive outlook for our future and some strong ideas to apply to our own city. It didn’t.”

As Kelly rightly reflects, documentaries are fantastic conversation starters, and as you can see, we reflected and talked A LOT after this one! The three of us live in a very vibrant yet sprawling city that often takes hours to traverse in high traffic. I often wonder when the farmland between Toronto and Barrie, and Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge will disappear entirely, forming one giant “gigacity” that will take days to cross. I may never see my family in Forest again…it’s a good thing we have Skype!! In all seriousness, this is a global and local issue that needs solving immediately if we are to, as Cara puts it, turn the Titanic around. And Toronto is just one city with sprawl issues. Dhaka in Bangladesh is built upon a Jenga-like infrastructure that will collapse entirely should an earthquake of magnitude 6 occur. This is a city with 15 million people, the 9th largest city in the world! Do we build up or out? This is not an easy question to solve!

If you would like to learn more about the movie The Human Scale and the work of architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, please visit the film’s website. You might also be interested in learning more about Gehl’s contemporary in urban planning, Jane Jacobs who also believed that city growth should be planned around people, not cars. Jacob’s work in urban planning is celebrated each spring on her birthday by a now global series of public-lead “Jane’s Walks” through cities around the world. In fact, I found the title for today’s post in a thoughtful reflection by 17-year-old student, Isabella Chiu, after taking a Jane’s Walk through U of T this past June. Do you think we are where we live??

If you would like to see a few more snaps from the Distillery District photo shoot, please visit my gallery. Thanks so much for spending time here today. Please add to our conversation below in the comments! With thanks, from The Publishing Gals.