Reflections on What it Means to be “Urban”
One of the first questions our class was asked to reflect on was “What is a city?”. This is a very interesting question, and not one easily answered. It was evident from our class discussions that many of us think about and define cities in different ways. We knew that things like population size, types of housing, and what kinds of amenities are available were important, but trying to concretely define a threshold for when a “town” becomes a “city” was a lot harder to determine.
In my breakout group with classmate Anandu, we both agreed that you can live in a city but not actually think of yourself as living in one. In our cases we were thinking about the fact that we both grew up in suburban communities that objectively fall within the boundaries of cities, but subjectively, neither of us would describe ourselves as living in a city. We attributed these feelings to things like the slower pace in areas outside urban cores. There’s less traffic, more reliance on cars and less use of other modes of transportation, but also things like sense of community. In the more spacious and less crowded suburbs outside cities it’s easier to get to know the people who live in your neighbourhood and to foster a sense of collective identity and shared community. Of course, people create these same communities even in dense urban cores, but it’s the feeling that you are just one in a crowd that made us feel like the suburban experience is one separate from living in a city.
As Zack Taylor and Neil Bradford note in In Governing Canadian Cities, a full 40% of Canadians live in central cities in metropolitan areas. And urban policymakers are sometimes confronted with resentment from residents living in more rural areas who feel their interests are neglected in policies largely targeted to urban cores. Going forward this semester I’m looking forward to delving into how municipal governments can create and manage policies that are reflective of these perceived divisions. In an increasingly urbanized world I expect this feelings are only going to be amplified, further challenging municipal leadership.
