Cities designed for automobiles

From page 27

have to modify how you live, it’s a
different story. As time goes on,
I'm getting less and less popular.”

The growing concern over
heritage conservation is being
driven in part by a kind of
nostalgia. But Kluckner believes
that people are finally beginning to
realize that the way our cities have
been developing is simply not sus-
tainable.

The kind of development that
has become typical of the pro-
vince in the past 40 years —
where towns are no longer com-
munities but automobile-deper-
dent colonies — is degrading the
environment, he warns.

“The myth about affordability
says that you can get what you
want, for as long as you want, as
long as you move further away
from the centre. And society will
pul in road systems, and you don’t
have to be responsible for the
consequences of your decisions.

“And then decision-makers
say, ‘well. people want to live this
way.’ That's like saying people
really want to smoke two packs of
cigarettes a day.”

Kluckner remembers a very Gif-
ferent British Columbia. when
every town had a main street.

“On summer holidays I'd be

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fascinated to see pieces of the old
Okanagan Highway and little
towns like Peachland, which had
such narrow streets. When | went
back in my teens it seemed like
they were caught in a time warp.”

Today peopie have become
enamored of the idea of separating
their workplace from their home
fram their shopping centres, and
they've been able to get away with
it, says Kluckner, because of ac-
cess to cheap, almost unlimited,
mobility.

We have replaced pedestrian
and public transit-based cities with
tract housing and strip malls
designed for automobiles. This has
robbed B.C. towns of their distinc-
tive ‘community look,” and
suburbs lack a sense of
neighborhood.

“Houses are not built ina
neighborly fashion anymore.
They’re more fortress-like, turned
in upon themselves. It’s
astonishing how many people in
my neighborhood have gardeners.
lf they didn’t want to garden, why
own a khouse?’”’

Kluckner believes these are the
real issues facing today’s city
planners. One way to contain the
suburban spraw/ would be by de-
veloping “total communities” in
tringe regions of B.C., areas that

look in towards a common centre
with shops and a park rather than
how many of Vancouver's newer
suburbs are shaping up, where a
convenience store is the sole
commerical operation for hun-
dreds of houses.

But Kluckner warns it may be
tov late to do anything in areas
like the Fraser Vailey, which is
eating up farmland at an alarming
rate.

“What L.A. proved by the end
of the 1950s and Toronto by the
‘70s is that you reach a critical
mass and suddenly things don’t
work anymore. And you can’t plan
your way back out of it. For ex-
ample, you can’t put a transit
system in the Fraser Valley and
expect it to work — it’s just {oo
big.’

The old North and West Van-
couver of the streetcar era worked
well as distinct conmmunities until
the introduction of the
automobile; the only reason they
don‘t work now, he says, is
because of people’s attitude
towards using the bus for shopping
and getting to work.

As Kluckwer says in Paving Par-
adise, “Everywhere is beginning
to look like the same nowhere
without local context or a sense of
history.””

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