Bulldozing Language in the Name of Urban Re-Development

What is "human-scaled design"? Not what it used to be. The connotations suggest something not massive. In terms of domestic architecture this would not mean a 46-storey building towering over any humans in the vicinity -- and containing "units" so micro you couldn't swing the proverbial cat in them (although there's room for cat-astrophe, design-wise). 

Downtown living in a commercial core is not human-scaled; it's business-scaled. (But then, maybe both renters and the units they live in are but commodities -- a renter simply a customer of the housing industry.)

What matters is that the language around this real estate "development" is dishonest. In the mid-sized west-coast city of Victoria, BC, the small downtown core once shelved off gradually into well-treed suburbia. The low-rise route leading out of downtown was christened "Antique Row" by advertisers and tourism promoters because most shops sold old furniture and collectables. 

Now that this heritage is being destroyed by growth and development and the shops replaced by towers, Antique Row is being re-christened, mendaciously, "Heritage Corridor" -- now that its heritage is being erased. 

The City pitches the coming 46-storey high-rise as a "sensitive and innovative response to the existing character" of the neighbourhood: the opposite of what it is. How can dense high-rise blocks of "units" with no parking replace rows of low shops and easy customer access and be called "human-scaled"? 

Neighbourhood history is being erased -- but that happens in growing cities. The worst destruction is to language. Describing things by words that mean the opposite is reprehensible dishonesty, not to mention illogical illiteracy. 

The foundations of language and communication are being bulldozed -- our heritage of reasoned speech, and not "sensitively". We live in a post-postmodern era when people in pursuit of real estate profit from overpopulation can apparently "innovate" new heritage, and if that sounds counter-intuitive to you, you're in the wrong "heritage corridor" in the race to urban uglification. 

City Life -- What do we want in a next door neighbour?

The Ideal Neighbour

-- never whistles

-- has a dog who doesn't bark

-- has a cute kid or two who wave over the fence but never shriek 

-- grows foliage in his garden 

-- has no surveillance cameras 

-- doesn't put an officious Neighbourhood Watch sign in the window 

-- keeps to himself which lives he thinks matter

-- doesn't put election signs on the lawn

-- waters the lawn

-- hates loud music

-- thinks "hip-hop" is what robins do on the lawn after he waters it

-- possesses no leaf blower, chainsaw or drill

-- has a good high hedge

-- doesn't keep saying we should get together

-- doesn't move away

-- continues never to whistle