Recently, I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia to celebrate my brother’s 60th birthday. I have a long history in Halifax. My parents, when they were alive, lived about 30km down the coast. I went to architecture school there. I know the city fairly well, yet I found this recent visit to be a bit different than previous ones.
I have always liked visiting Halifax because it is a charming place with various seaside attractions, great wooden architecture, charming old buildings, military fortifications that you climb around on and an interesting waterfront. These things are still around.
For English-speaking Canada it is older than most cities. It is not nearly as old as Montreal or Quebec City, but it doesn’t give the sense that it is a big-box mall pretending to be a real city. It is the real deal.
In the past, despite the relative poverty of NS compared to Ontario there was always this sense that the government looked after most people, and that regardless, even if things were not that prosperous in the interior of the province, at least Halifax which is major regional service centre, would do alright.
What surprised me is the contrast with where I live, Hamilton, Ontario. Previously, Ontario always was the ‘have-province,’ while Nova Scotia was the ‘have-not.’ This is why in previous generations, the traffic would usually go from Nova Scotia to Ontario, Quebec or out West. If you had ambition you would leave town for greener pastures. I found it hard to conceive of any other pattern until now.
Now it looks like if you want to enjoy a charmed life, you might want to consider living in Halifax.
Halifax has beautiful women jogging by in Lululemon gear, eager cyclists who look like they are rushing to a software design seminar. There is no shortage of trendy coffee shops, Japanese lunchtime spots and bike stores selling touring bikes that you could use to explore the Cabot Trail. It looks like a bit like pre-recession College St in Toronto.
Halifax also has a fantastic full-length waterfront boardwalk and a state-of-the-art Farmer’s Market that would not look out of place in Zurich or Oslo. You can imagine well-heeled American tourists tripping over themselves to buy souvenirs in the shops or drinking micro-brews in dozens of stone-walled pubs.
Ontario these days, on the other hand, is taking on some of the rust-belt characteristics of say an Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania: the implosion of a once-prosperous manufacturing sector, cities in which new investment or civic amenities go wanting, or even civic governments that care about what citizens want. There is gloom in the air here and many residents are at a loss in how they feel about that.
Of course, the rest of the country, raised on the idea that Ontario always thought much too highly of itself and its alleged cultural advantages, is delighted in this reversal of fortunes.
Things that a cities like Hamilton or Toronto might learn from Halifax:
- Civic amenities such as integrated bike path systems, farmer’s markets and waterfront boardwalks are very effective in attracting educated young people, as well as visitors. These people are always on the look out for new progressive places to set up shop (especially right after they get their professional degrees at Dalhousie).
- A place has to feel ‘cool’ in order to attract these kind of people. Perceptions of being cool come from many interactions that people might have while visiting and can’t easily be manufactured on demand.
- Reactionary or ‘Tea Party’ style politics is the opposite of cool. It is a symptom of a place in decline; it is when people with money feel that in order to protect what they have, they have to start oppressing those without. This tactic never works out very well for economic and cultural development in a city. A civic race to the bottom will never win any place new friends. Downward spirals are never pretty. Life cannot be not just about lowering taxes for people who already enjoy the fruits of the status quo.
- Political systems must give the appearance of being responsive to not only the practical aspects of life but also the deeper issues such as quality of life, art and design.
- A city is should at least appear to be interested in high design standards for new civic infrastructure and the idea that cities should have amenities that give pleasure. In places where the weather is not all that attractive, design can fill a very useful niche.
- Cities must work flat-out–continuously–to attract newcomers with new ideas and preferably a bit of money, otherwise they soon whither and die.
