Come To The City – Unless You Are A Smoking Dog

Our cities are for everybody – unless you are poor, own a dog or smoke.

The great thing about cities is just how liveable they now are. Urban playgrounds for the well off. No longer dirty or crime ridden, our cities have never looked so good – full marks to the design professions. Just take a look at the transformation of New York city from the 70’s to now. Or, take a look at what London was like when Charles ‘can i have some more’ Dickens was huddled over his coal range with sooty quill in hand.
Our cities now have waterfront promenades, more cafes and restaurants than you could ever visit in a lifetime, museums, art galleries,…. I could go on.

Our cities now seem to cater for everybody – accessible ramps at every doorway, and free McDonald’s coffee for the elderly. No racism here brother. A multi gender, multi cultural melting pot. Cool – we sip with pride having created places for everybody. Libertarians unite! – the dream is alive. Everybody welcome, everybody do what you wish.

However,…
While we meander through city streets wondering where to pop our next latte, just consider this.
The poor (and yes we do have poor people, its just that as designers we never see them) don’t really now live in the city. On paper they do, but they are really quashed into the cities’ shitty periphery. As the city spreads its hipness, the poor are just shuffled sideways to where museums and art galleries are code names for drug dealers.

But wait, there’s more,
While the expulsion of the poor is an obvious and immediate concern, the insidious march of fascism is in fact oozing into our cities like toxic sludge down a drainpipe.

“What?” I hear you say. “Our cities are the hotbed of liberal tolerance, if you want conservatism head to the provinces where you can own a gun and are allowed to use it.”
Ah yes, while cities appear open-minded on the surface, lurking beneath lies the soft underbelly of liberalism – self righteousness.
Our city’s citizens welcome arts festivals and multi ethnic extravaganzas, but look a little more carefully.

A couple of examples.

Now I have a dog. There is a 30% chance that you have one too. In the land of the long white cloud we have 700,000 trusty hounds. England’s green and pleasant land has over 8 million pooches. With such high levels of dog ownership you would think that man’s best friend would be welcome wherever their four feet can take them. But alas no. Our tolerant cities have decided that dogs are not welcome. In the city I live, my dog is not allowed in the CBD at all. In Gisborne, my sister was threatened with a fine for carrying (yes you heard me correctly, carrying) a miniature Dachshund puppy. If you are out with your dog but poor old rover has been let off his lead for a bit of stretch, you are slapped with a $300 fine – holy crap! $300. The fine for punching someone in the face is less than that.
If you provide false particulars – $750. (Fortunately most dogs are not liars, other than “I don’t know where the cat is”, so this fine is rare.

So why the intolerance? Are these trusty pets really wolves in Poodle clothing?

No, it is self righteousness and uneducated fear.

Another example of our intolerance of smokers. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate smoking and I love it that bars and restaurants are now filled with nostril filling notes of sautéed foie gras. But you gotta feel some sympathy for those who like to suck on tar. Performing a perfectly legal activity, smokers are now being squeezed out of the city. Our cities will soon be smoke free – which of course means ‘smoker free’.
If you are a dog who smokes, you might as well pack up now and pad off to the hills.

My third and final example of intolerance is that of the unruly vehicle. If you are a law abiding citizen who trundles around at 30km/hour in a registered and warranted Honda civic then ‘we want you’. We want you so much that we are going to introduce the most massive undertaking in technology to catch everybody that isn’t like you. If your car is unregistered we will get parking wardens to punish you by death, though what being unregistered has got to do with your local council is a mystery to me. If you drive too fast we will fine you, if your car is weird we will fine you. If you do anything out of the ordinary we will catch you and fine you. This of course is all done in the name of traffic safety so urban folk accept it.

But who gets punished – the young and the poor – no wonder they can’t afford to buy a house.

Next time you feel smug about how cool your city is, just take a look around and see who isn’t there.

Richard Alexander Bain
Landscape Architect & self confessed urban critic
New Plymouth