Go East?

The notion that most North American cities have their lower income zones on their east side because of the direction of the wind carrying the pollution from each centre's industrial areas seems like an interesting fact at first, but if continued to be mulled over, the idea starts to fall more like trivia about a hierarchy that doesn't matter anymore.

Due to idling, big box stores, and urban sprawl in all four directions (but most heavily west and south), the increasingly privileged unsustainable car-friendly zones seem to have it worse than a bit of shared air pollution.

Forced to drive to even the closest necessities like a grocery store, where thanks to poor urban planning it would take 5 minutes to drive, 30 minutes to walk, and an hour by bus, to purchase trucked in produce whose costs are soaring because of the precious oil in every facet of our lives, so that you can keep your oversized fridge stocked in an oversized house where your utilities are also skyrocketing to pay to heat and light up space that you don't really use all that much.

Formerly a resident of a deep west end neighborhood, where walking became the most lonely and often dangerous activity alongside endlessly curving blocks and sidewalkless roads filled with speeding SUVs and sports cars, the isolation is a real defining experience of the city. It gets easier central, but even in downtown after the end of the business day, though there are certainly more people and activity on the streets these days, the presence of pedestrians is quite sparse relative to the amount of space there is.

. . .

Not entirely unrelated, but having lunch with Kristy Trinier, Public Art Director for Edmonton Arts Council, she tried to convince me that East Berlin is a lot like Edmonton. She's lived there, I've only been there, but I certainly didn't buy the statement. She connects the two through their shared sense of having the image of being an industrial wasteland, but I maintain that the priorities are just too different. I did however bring up the statement the next evening with a friend who lived there for the past year and has returned indefinitely. Claire, who despises everything about this city, and lives in Millwoods, thought about the comparison and said she could agree, but only about very specific parts of East Berlin. There is one area that everyone knows about, as from the train to the airport it is just a stretch of barren wasteland filled with abandoned industrial zones that everyone there thinks is a shithole. Walking through the area one day by herself, self defense kicked in about the sudden isolation she felt about navigating empty streets. This sudden thought that she could be jumped at any point came into her head for the first time in her travels and it reminded her of home.

As most everyone who stays in Edmonton leaves often to connect to the rest of the world, what will happen as our gas-dependency will soon make frequent traveling obsolete for most individuals? Has the last fifty years of lived-in global cultural exchange coming to an end? And will cities like this one be able to continue as a place people settle for good?