Hipster Duck
Senior Member
What does it take to make a city a really vibrant place rather than a boring burgh that one simply inhabits?
The answer is not so clear cut. For example, Waterloo Region is very drab, despite having 40,000 university students and being rather wealthy. Meanwhile, Peterborough has only 100,000 people and maybe just 5,000 students and it has an exciting nightlife. How do 400,000 tri-city residents and the 40,000 students that live there entertain themselves?
Likewise, among larger NA cities, I could not believe the dullness of Cleveland, a city with a regional population larger than that of Vancouver. I had a car, so I drove around in vain looking for a few good places - nightlife, pubs, a strip of good restaurants. I didn't even care if it was in some faraway suburb and I had to spend my night in a strip mall, I expected some interesting things to pop up and, save for a small neighbourhood across the river called 'Ohio City' they just never materialized. If you took a city with the same population as Toronto - say like Houston - there probably aren't even as many decent, independent bohemian commercial establishments in the entire city as there are on just 4 blocks of Queen street.
You could even have a very pedestrian-friendly city that doesn't cut it versus a very auto-friendly city that does. For example, LA is interesting, but there are any number of European cities that are deathly dull like Stuttgart (which is actually very big) even though they are dense and urban.
Jane Jacobs talked about this in DLGAC. She mentioned how the Bronx, which was then a largely mixed-race (Jewish, Italian, some black) working class borough of 2 million people could not even support one decent restaurant.
Size, students, proximity to other cities, wealth, ethnic diversity, and often even the effect of automobiles are often not factors in determining a city's vibrancy. What does it take?
The answer is not so clear cut. For example, Waterloo Region is very drab, despite having 40,000 university students and being rather wealthy. Meanwhile, Peterborough has only 100,000 people and maybe just 5,000 students and it has an exciting nightlife. How do 400,000 tri-city residents and the 40,000 students that live there entertain themselves?
Likewise, among larger NA cities, I could not believe the dullness of Cleveland, a city with a regional population larger than that of Vancouver. I had a car, so I drove around in vain looking for a few good places - nightlife, pubs, a strip of good restaurants. I didn't even care if it was in some faraway suburb and I had to spend my night in a strip mall, I expected some interesting things to pop up and, save for a small neighbourhood across the river called 'Ohio City' they just never materialized. If you took a city with the same population as Toronto - say like Houston - there probably aren't even as many decent, independent bohemian commercial establishments in the entire city as there are on just 4 blocks of Queen street.
You could even have a very pedestrian-friendly city that doesn't cut it versus a very auto-friendly city that does. For example, LA is interesting, but there are any number of European cities that are deathly dull like Stuttgart (which is actually very big) even though they are dense and urban.
Jane Jacobs talked about this in DLGAC. She mentioned how the Bronx, which was then a largely mixed-race (Jewish, Italian, some black) working class borough of 2 million people could not even support one decent restaurant.
Size, students, proximity to other cities, wealth, ethnic diversity, and often even the effect of automobiles are often not factors in determining a city's vibrancy. What does it take?