When is a city a city?
Be wary of labels. Some cities feel like towns while some towns feel like cities.
Qatar has been in the media recently because it is set to host the 2022 soccer World Cup. This has been a tad controversial because they are building the football stadiums using Nepalese workers who have to live in houses so small the mice are hunchback and are paid a pittance (the Nepalese, not the mice). Furthermore, Qatar is so hot you can fry and egg on your forehead, so running about on a soccer pitch could be a death run – raising the obvious question, “how in Allah’s name did Qatar win the hosting bid?”. Given that Qatar has more oil than a 50’s haircut, I think it is pretty obvious that not only does money talk, money screams.
Now, while Qatar is a friend of the ‘we like oil’ west, they recently announced that foreigners who visit this sandy isle should not wear leggings, as leggings are not pants. The idea being that one should show respect by covering up. I’m not sure of the logic of this but I assume that its a case of baggy clothes Ok because they hide everything, leggings not OK because they hug closer than bark on a tree, thereby revealing bits and pieces reserved for Allah’s eyes only.
Naturally us western folk think this is silly, as showing off our bodies is our way of telling others that we are shallow, egotistical, and superficial, so please take me home and smother me with jam.
However, this issue of ‘leggings are not pants’ does have parallels that are worthy of discussion. Labels and definitions do matter. I am often mildly irritated by celebrity chefs referring to anything that contains a morsel of bread as a sandwich. In my opinion, for a food to have the lofty status of a sandwich, it should come between TWO bits of bread.
And, what about kids ‘sleepovers’? As any parent will tell you, these should be re-labelled as ‘wakeovers’.
Overstatement is also true of cities. I grew up in Masterton during the period when its population was the thick end of 19,000. At that time, a town could become a ‘city’ if it had either a cathedral, or a population of over 20,000. We couldn’t build a cathedral cos the Anglicans had been running short of fee paying parishioners ever since Mr Darwin’s “my father was a monkey” speech. Consequently, to achieve city status, us Mastertonians had to put our efforts into increasing the population. This involved rampant shagging and telling Wellingtonians that if they moved to Masterton they could enjoy rampant shagging. Unfortunately, despite the fact that no town represented the funky spirit of the 70’s better than Masterton, by the 80’s the population just never managed to reach 20,000. Just when it looked likely, in 1989 the rules changed and the requirement for city status was lifted to 50,000. Bugger.
The simple truth is that if Masterton had made it to the magic 20,000 in time, it would, in my opinion, still not have been a city. It would have been like calling a chihuahua a wolf – technically correct but come on! Similarly, a city should look like a city, act like a city and well…feel like a city.
Interestingly, I now live in New Plymouth, which has a population of 53,000. Under the new rules, New Plymouth only scrapes into city status by a mere 3000 souls. Yet, New Plymouth feels like a city in ways that bigger centres like Tauranga just don’t. Let me explain.
Tauranga boasts over 100,000 people (ok, old people), but to me it still feels like a town. It is spread out, there are few civic buildings of any scale or mana, and well, it’s just not urbane.
New Plymouth on the other hand has always felt cityish. The central business area is tight and intimate. It’s civic buildings are located together in the same part of town creating a cultural ‘precinct’. The opera house looks ands feels like a place that could house an opera – dripping fenestration feasts the eye and crushed velvet comforts the buttocks.
New Plymouth’s streets are urban – bluestone underfoot and street trees like Paris. Its edges are framed by its internationally acclaimed coastal walkway in one direction and Edwardian clad hills in another. Pukekura Park nestles amongst all this like a warm friend, wood pigeons flirting a dash of colour, Mount Taranaki sedately in charge.
My point is that despite the city’s modest actual size, New Plymouth just seems so much bigger. Rotorua feels like a shanty town, Tauranga a suburb, Nelson an old folks home. Palmerston North and Hamilton – about as much fun as a vegetarian barbecue.
Now of course, New Plymouth has its faults. For starters, I live there. Furthermore, it’s parochial and isolated. Residents resist walking and cycling, blaming the hilly terrain and an annual rainfall that could satiate the world’s thirsty. Our politicians don’t understand economics, self-righteously cutting spending in the naive belief that community is a market force. No, New Plymouth is not a perfect city, but by and large it is more of a city than many far bigger.
Labels can be misleading and should be used with caution – just ask anyone who has looked for an escort.
Richard Alexander Bain
Self confessed city chaser