Big Cities

Most of you know that Naked News is produced here in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. Some of us like to think of it as the New York of Canada, and in many ways it is. Property values are ridiculously high and so Toronto has become a city of condominiums.

When I was little, everyone lived in homes and homes were located in something we called “neighbourhoods”. Each neighbourhood had its own character, shops, restaurants and sometimes ethnicity. Friends’ moms always had a snack for us, and watched as we played street hockey or ran through sprinklers on hot summer days. We made friends, played, went to school and grew up with kids whose parents had been our parents’ friends since they, also, grew up in our neighborhood.

But today, it seems like a huge percentage of the population lives in high rise condominiums. Concrete and glass monoliths that all look the same and don’t have any character or charm, nor any sense of community or neighborhood. There are no interesting shops, or restaurants featuring meals like your grandma used to make. No smell of fish and chips with malt vinegar. No backyards for kids to play in, and no pear trees to pilfer fruit off.

As more and more people move to the city, the more empty spaces and neighborhoods disappear to make way for more highrises. Where there used to be a row of houses, is now a generic coffee shop storefront, and thirty storeys of strangers stacked like tin cans at Costco.

I know that the “Norman Rockwell ideal” never really existed. But there’s a reason it’s an “ideal”. We all love the comfort of “hearth and home”, and that’s part of what neighborhoods mean to me. I have fond memories of Toronto as a warm, charming city, and am sad that it’s becoming a behemoth growing bigger and colder.

I miss the beauty and simplicity of our old neighborhoods, and I hope our children and their children will find a way to recreate the warmth and comfort I feel like we’ve left behind.