Crude sketch of Halifax "Lighthouse Tower" skyscraper, here proposed. (I never said I was an architect. Or an artist. So lay off.)Halifax, Nova Scotia is becoming a boutique city. It is by far the largest North American center north of Boston and east of Quebec City, and has the makings of a world class city, even if not of the first or second tiers. But the unholy alliance of Nova Scotia politics -- radical environmentalists and anti-capitalists, with anti-change traditionalists -- is seeing to it that Halifax remains a fossilized provincial port settlement of small shops, heritage buildings, summer tourists, and views of the ocean unobstructed by human development.
The irony is that if it's sea-views and trees a fellow wants, he'll find little else almost anywhere in Nova Scotia outside of Halifax. It's hardly as if under-developed land is scarce in Nova Scotia. We've got all the rocks and trees and rotting timbers we can stand. Halifax is supposed to be a city, and the largest in its big neighborhood; it is only proper for such a center to have all those things that serious cities have.
The usual suspects who constitute Nova Scotia's anti-development alliance are two quite divergent groups: Tradition-minded heritage types, and "transgressive" environmentalist types. Both are positively acrophobic. The mere mention of skyscrapers sends them into conniptions. The traditionalists detest the clash of 21st Century against 18th and 19th Century, and the pinkos see steel and concrete as the Devil's work, and try to persuade themselves that the future belongs to stripped-down structures closer to their ideal of squatting in the bushes.
This is approximately the same alliance which joined forces to oppose the legalization of Sunday shopping until recently: Traditionalists who believe in the idea of a Lord's Day, and radicals who would defend any law prohibiting commerce, for any reason at all. A similar alliance blocked offshore drilling which might have rescued a lot of coastal communities from their perpetual poverty: tradition-minded fishermen who were made to believe that an oil rig would kill their livelihood, plus environmentalists and anti-capitalists who believe that extraction of resources from the earth is a kind of sin against God, or "Gaia".
These two groups, who would probably quite dislike one another if forced to live together for half a day, are allied again on the issue of building things in the city. They're against it.
The thought occurs that the buildings which are today cherished as near-sacred relics, were once current, or "modern" in their time. No doubt someone lamented the raising of these new-fangled buildings, when the centuries-old things were first built.
And no doubt someone lamented the clearing of the trees which made the city possible in the first place, including the lots on which these very Halifax environmentalists make their homes today, or the lots for their coffee shops or vegan restaurants or transgressive art galleries. But you've got to break some eggs to bake a cake. So the evergreens came down, the buildings went up, and there were still plenty of trees to be had in the big old world.
But it gets worse. The twist is that the leftists who oppose development in the city core also oppose development in the suburbs. Where all the people are supposed to go is a good question, and the rarely-spoken answer is that these leftists want considerably fewer of us human beings treading the earth, "despoiling" it and going about our "unsustainable" ways.
Nova Scotia's trendy enviromentalists are positively hateful toward suburbs and their dwellers. The going thing among Nova Scotia's elites generally is to regard suburbs as selfish, wasteful, monotonous and conformist, apartheidist, fearful of poverty and "the other", even doomed by high gas prices -- as if gas prices can never come down, or as if the people who can afford suburban homes and SUVs in the first place are going to be priced back down to apartment/pedestrian lifestyles by an extra dollar a day for their commute.
A September opinion editorial in Halifax's Chronicle-Herald actually sought to atone for the author's "guilty pleasures" of living in the suburbs. Living in freesanding homes in pleasant neighborhoods near the city is something which most functional folks either enjoy or aspire to; it is not something to condemn as a sort of sin. It is perverse to see comfortable, happy homes as sinful and disgusting, and not the sort of thinking one finds in bold, world-beating societies.
And another thing. There are some internal inconsistencies with the anti-skyscraper/anti-suburbs line of argument. This new Left extolls the virtues of apartment dwelling, since it leaves a "smaller footprint" or some gobbledygook, as if humans were a scourge to be contained as restrictively as possible. But that of course is precisely the effect of a skyscraper: The most efficient concentration of people and services. Skyscrapers are stacked upward instead of spread outward, to use a single lot instead of several city blocks. So this smaller footprint business could as easily argue in favor of skyscrapers as in favor of the sardine lifestyles of apartment dwellers. Not to mention the inconsistency of advocating apartment living while denouncing the sameness of the suburbs as some abomination. What could be more "cookie-cutter" than blocks of apartments? They're small cubes in big cubes.
And like the Marxists who were so certain since the mid-19th Century that capitalism was on the cusp of collapse, today's anti-skyscraper/suburbs set is sure that skyscrapers and suburbs are about to be washed away by a tidal wave of history. But skyscrapers are sprouting like bamboo shoots from Dubai to Shanghai. And suburbs will remain as long as they are what they always have been: a pleasant and convenient place to live for real people in the real world.
The environmentalist/anti-development crowd live in a parallel universe, where business demands and even human nature don't exist. They have the luxury of imagining that their toaster plugs are "killing the earth", and of sitting in judgement on the decent folks who go about their lives and produce the things that make our existence possible and comfortable. Alone, they may not be able to make the difference, but with their allies on the crusty, change-hating side, they make a near invincible bloc in Nova Scotia. The person who peels the traditionalists from the radicals will have solved the riddle, and allowed Halifax to grow and be the city it is supposed to be.
My own not-so-modest proposal is that Halifax get itself a spectacular, signature skyscraper. One that will tower over the rest of the skyline, and become an immediately identifiable icon for Halifax, the province, and even the region. A point of pride for the people. As well as herald a new era, in which Halifax welcomes development as a city in its position must. Something to break the old deadlock and make development a good word in Halifax again. The proposal is a stylized lighthouse tower. Six-sided and tapered toward the top like the old white wooden lighthouses which dot the shores. With an impressive steel and glass top, like the old lighthouse cupolas. And with spectacular lights at night. It is supposed to be a lighthouse, after all.
The irony is that if it's sea-views and trees a fellow wants, he'll find little else almost anywhere in Nova Scotia outside of Halifax. It's hardly as if under-developed land is scarce in Nova Scotia. We've got all the rocks and trees and rotting timbers we can stand. Halifax is supposed to be a city, and the largest in its big neighborhood; it is only proper for such a center to have all those things that serious cities have.
The usual suspects who constitute Nova Scotia's anti-development alliance are two quite divergent groups: Tradition-minded heritage types, and "transgressive" environmentalist types. Both are positively acrophobic. The mere mention of skyscrapers sends them into conniptions. The traditionalists detest the clash of 21st Century against 18th and 19th Century, and the pinkos see steel and concrete as the Devil's work, and try to persuade themselves that the future belongs to stripped-down structures closer to their ideal of squatting in the bushes.
This is approximately the same alliance which joined forces to oppose the legalization of Sunday shopping until recently: Traditionalists who believe in the idea of a Lord's Day, and radicals who would defend any law prohibiting commerce, for any reason at all. A similar alliance blocked offshore drilling which might have rescued a lot of coastal communities from their perpetual poverty: tradition-minded fishermen who were made to believe that an oil rig would kill their livelihood, plus environmentalists and anti-capitalists who believe that extraction of resources from the earth is a kind of sin against God, or "Gaia".
These two groups, who would probably quite dislike one another if forced to live together for half a day, are allied again on the issue of building things in the city. They're against it.
The thought occurs that the buildings which are today cherished as near-sacred relics, were once current, or "modern" in their time. No doubt someone lamented the raising of these new-fangled buildings, when the centuries-old things were first built.
And no doubt someone lamented the clearing of the trees which made the city possible in the first place, including the lots on which these very Halifax environmentalists make their homes today, or the lots for their coffee shops or vegan restaurants or transgressive art galleries. But you've got to break some eggs to bake a cake. So the evergreens came down, the buildings went up, and there were still plenty of trees to be had in the big old world.
But it gets worse. The twist is that the leftists who oppose development in the city core also oppose development in the suburbs. Where all the people are supposed to go is a good question, and the rarely-spoken answer is that these leftists want considerably fewer of us human beings treading the earth, "despoiling" it and going about our "unsustainable" ways.
Nova Scotia's trendy enviromentalists are positively hateful toward suburbs and their dwellers. The going thing among Nova Scotia's elites generally is to regard suburbs as selfish, wasteful, monotonous and conformist, apartheidist, fearful of poverty and "the other", even doomed by high gas prices -- as if gas prices can never come down, or as if the people who can afford suburban homes and SUVs in the first place are going to be priced back down to apartment/pedestrian lifestyles by an extra dollar a day for their commute.
A September opinion editorial in Halifax's Chronicle-Herald actually sought to atone for the author's "guilty pleasures" of living in the suburbs. Living in freesanding homes in pleasant neighborhoods near the city is something which most functional folks either enjoy or aspire to; it is not something to condemn as a sort of sin. It is perverse to see comfortable, happy homes as sinful and disgusting, and not the sort of thinking one finds in bold, world-beating societies.
And another thing. There are some internal inconsistencies with the anti-skyscraper/anti-suburbs line of argument. This new Left extolls the virtues of apartment dwelling, since it leaves a "smaller footprint" or some gobbledygook, as if humans were a scourge to be contained as restrictively as possible. But that of course is precisely the effect of a skyscraper: The most efficient concentration of people and services. Skyscrapers are stacked upward instead of spread outward, to use a single lot instead of several city blocks. So this smaller footprint business could as easily argue in favor of skyscrapers as in favor of the sardine lifestyles of apartment dwellers. Not to mention the inconsistency of advocating apartment living while denouncing the sameness of the suburbs as some abomination. What could be more "cookie-cutter" than blocks of apartments? They're small cubes in big cubes.
And like the Marxists who were so certain since the mid-19th Century that capitalism was on the cusp of collapse, today's anti-skyscraper/suburbs set is sure that skyscrapers and suburbs are about to be washed away by a tidal wave of history. But skyscrapers are sprouting like bamboo shoots from Dubai to Shanghai. And suburbs will remain as long as they are what they always have been: a pleasant and convenient place to live for real people in the real world.
The environmentalist/anti-development crowd live in a parallel universe, where business demands and even human nature don't exist. They have the luxury of imagining that their toaster plugs are "killing the earth", and of sitting in judgement on the decent folks who go about their lives and produce the things that make our existence possible and comfortable. Alone, they may not be able to make the difference, but with their allies on the crusty, change-hating side, they make a near invincible bloc in Nova Scotia. The person who peels the traditionalists from the radicals will have solved the riddle, and allowed Halifax to grow and be the city it is supposed to be.
My own not-so-modest proposal is that Halifax get itself a spectacular, signature skyscraper. One that will tower over the rest of the skyline, and become an immediately identifiable icon for Halifax, the province, and even the region. A point of pride for the people. As well as herald a new era, in which Halifax welcomes development as a city in its position must. Something to break the old deadlock and make development a good word in Halifax again. The proposal is a stylized lighthouse tower. Six-sided and tapered toward the top like the old white wooden lighthouses which dot the shores. With an impressive steel and glass top, like the old lighthouse cupolas. And with spectacular lights at night. It is supposed to be a lighthouse, after all.
