<pIn his book A Brief History of Progress, historian Ronald Wright examines “progress traps,” innovations that help some humans, then kick our asses, causing problems we can’t or won’t solve because we’re afraid to lose face and status.
It starts with a “seductive trail of successes” and ends in catastrophe. As a rule, civilizations lack the foresight to see the downside of their innovations. We enjoy rapid increases in wealth until resources are depleted beyond use. Then our progress is unveiled as a myth.
In a recent talk with Halifax journalist Silver Donald Cameron on The Green Interview, Wright gives historical examples: Neolithic hunters learn to burn grasslands, creating grazing areas for big game, where they slaughter or chase them over cliffs, creating a wealth of meat, population growth and the eventual scarcity of game. Sumerians invent irrigation and enjoy centuries of agricultural surpluses until land salinization cuts production 75 percent, leaving a desert and collapsed civilization.
Work animals are replaced by the steam engine, which is replaced by the internal combustion engine. More than a century later we face global climate catastrophe. Steel weapons are replaced by bronze, which are replaced by gunpowder, which are eventually replaced by nukes that can’t be used without a “mass suicide pact.”
Easter Island, a small barren South Pacific island thousands of miles from any other land, is a notorious example. Thousands of years ago it was a tropical jungle with the world’s largest palm trees. The Polynesians started building large statues commemorating ancestors, cutting trees to transport them. “They cut down the last tree to drag the last statue from the quarry,” Wright says.
The soil was degraded. They couldn’t build a canoe to escape. Perfect progress trap, resulting in societal breakdown—war, cannibalism and the toppling of the status symbols they killed themselves for.
Reminds me of Skye Towers—the proposed 48-floor residential buildings on Granville Street. People oppose this project—even the Downtown Halifax Business Commission—for the usual reasons: view-plane obstruction, violation of HRM By Design, out of character with the city.
Looking deeper: what would possess us to enter such an obvious progress trap? To paraphrase Shrek‘s Donkey: What are we compensating for?
Wright observes that civilization itself is a pyramid scheme. It works as long as you bring in new rubes to filter money upward. No actual wealth is created, and when the base can no longer expand, environmental problems become social upheaval. Easter Island writ global. We’ve seen it happen in impoverished countries with blatantly corrupt governments. The Occupy movement showed tricklings of discontent in the land of milk and honey.
Given that the masses are already perturbed, what purpose does a 48-storey protrusion—a symbol of opulence—serve? It’s as useless a status symbol as a giant stone statue of great-grandpa, a pyramid or a bomb. It wastes the resources that could be spent on improved healthcare, sustainable food, physical activity, education and art.
The way it’s been pushed over the city’s planning policy shows who it does and doesn’t serve. Councillor Streatch summed it up for Metro: “Documents are guides only. And members of council are entitled and, indeed, should be encouraged to vote their conscience.” The lowly 5,000 citizens consulted during the HRM By Design process be damned; this project doubles HRMBD’s height limits, and is more than 20 storeys above its neighbours.
Densification is no justification. In a city with a low skyline and a million square feet of vacant lots, there is ample opportunity for densification without twin towers north.
We’re not Easter Island or Sumeria. Climate change and globalization have changed things irrevocably. Halifax won’t collapse because of its clever lack of wisdom. The decisions of faraway elites may be what sinks us.
But that doesn’t absolve Halifax of its moral obligation to take advantage of the abundant, premium historical and scientific knowledge available, and do the right and wise thing: surrender our colossal status symbols in lieu of something useful.
Chris Benjamin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Drive-by Saviours, and the award-winning Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2012.
Nice one Chris!
ok… this article make no sense. On one hand he talks about the Rapa Nui deforesting and depleting all their resources to erect statues. And then tries to compare it to a 48 story building that consolidates some of the sprawl we are experiencing. The sprawl by way causes
traffic congestion, consumes wooded land, increases the cost of services, and so on.
There isn’t even a valid analogy. With densification it is possible to drive your bike to work a couple of kilometers , instead of 10k while breathing in the exhaust of the commuters who live in the distant burbs.
quote- “It wastes the resources that could be spent on improved healthcare, sustainable
food, physical activity, education and art.”
A 48 story building uses less power , water , materials, than the equivalent 4 story buildings.
it leaves arable land alone, you can walk to work , and it probably will have an art gallery in it ! sheeesh… if you are trying weaponize an argument , at least make some sense …
And for the record- I think the building should be kept within the HRM By Design guidelines
This article is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin.
If you are against intensification and densification of our city centre, you must be for suburban sprawl then? How environmentally concious of you, I’m sure your forefathers from Easter Island are very proud of you.
Oh you’re not for suburbanization? So instead as a city we should forestall any and all growth instead of when it comes in the form of four story buildings that can’t even begin to have their development costs covered unless they rent for more than $2000 a month?
That’s big of you.
Densification means the efficient use of city services, protecting our open spaces and containing gridlock. So smart growth means densification of the Regional Centre.
Urban design that promotes a higher density of buildings and public spaces (in conjunction with other conditions such as mixed use, good building design and adequate open space) can:
*Provide cost savings in land, infrastructure and energy
*Reduce the economic costs of time spent travelling
*Help concentrate knowledge and innovative activity in the core of the city
be associated with lower crime and greater safety
*Help preserve green spaces in conjunction with certain kinds of urban development
*Reduce runoff from vehicles to water, and emissions to the air and atmosphere (though air emissions may be more locally concentrated)
*Help encourage greater physical activity, with consequent health benefits
promote social connectedness and vitality.
There is clear evidence about some of the savings offered by high urban density. Market demand leads to high land prices in dense city centres, and provides an impetus to economise on land resources. There are also infrastructure savings (eg, on roads, sewerage, schools). High density also leads to energy savings, with significant reductions in fossil-fuel use and car dependence – especially in cities with multiple compact centres like ours.
More general economic benefits of high urban density include enhanced ability to attract and concentrate businesses that are not space-intensive, such as knowledge-based industries, and to offer people better access to job opportunities.
Overall pollution from vehicle emissions can be less in dense cities, providing development is carefully located and directed. Infill development is also shown to create less runoff and water pollution.
Urban density and green space are sometimes suggested to be incompatible. It is certainly clear that green space in the city contributes to public health, quality of life and biodiversity. This value is reflected in property prices around iconic green spaces. But it is less clear how much green space is needed to generate these benefits. Incorporating large tracts of green space into the city can create problems elsewhere. It may push development to the periphery where it changes the nature of adjoining rural areas, and generates more traffic and raises the costs of doing business in the wider urban area. Think Bedford West.
Cities in which compact centres are interspersed with green areas, like Dartmouth and Halifax are belssed with, may offer the best solution to these problems.
The fiscal benefits of more compact urban design (i.e., mixed land uses & higher densities) also include reduced health care costs. Research fact sheets released last month by the Inst. of Planners and Heart & Stroke Foundation summarize Canadian-based evidence about our built environment and impact on human health.
Until the 1990s, exclusive suburban homes that were accessible only by car cost more, per square foot, than other kinds of housing. Now, however, these suburbs have become overbuilt, and housing values have fallen. Today, the most valuable real estate lies in walkable urban locations. Many of these now pricey places were slums just 30 years ago.
Different infrastructure needs to be built, including rail transit and paths for walking and biking. Some research has shown that walkable urban infrastructure is substantially cheaper on a usable square foot basis than spread-out drivable suburban infrastructure; the infrastructure is used much more extensively in a small area, resulting in much lower costs per usable square foot.
It’s important that developers and their investors learn how to build places that integrate many different uses within walking distance. Building walkable urban places is more complex and riskier than following decades-long patterns of suburban construction. But the market gets what it wants, and the market signals are flashing pretty brightly: build more walkable, and bikable, places.
In short, your mis-guided analogies aren’t only wrong, but dangerous for the sustainability of our city and will only re-enforce the continuing trend of the suburbanization of HRM. Good work.
Nice one Meags!!
I think Chris must have been using Tim’s desk and found his stash of the really good stuff. 🙂
I just don’t see how you can leap from “progress traps” to Skye Halifax without offering any argument to sway the audience. Those, like me, who are on the fence here are left realizing that you have no argument, and just made a useless editorial piece.
What is even more offensive than some garbage-eater at the Coast disproving of a development like this is that the Downtown Halifax Business Commission is against this too.
Their “logic” can be found here:
http://downtownhalifax.ca/index.php/site/e…
Lots of fear based platitudes against developments that “don’t fit” within the guidelines of HRM By Design – a plan created at a time when a development such as Skye weren’t even on the radar – is all they can come up as detractors.
Even though it would inject millions into the Downtown, substantially raise the tax base, and provide space for thousands of new residents in an area that has seen very little growth to achieve the tepid targets the city itself has set for the area.
This project doesn’t “violate” Halifax By Design. As with any document, it is a living breathing entity that could never be designed to forsee all the changes that can occur in the future. Perhaps you have mis-understood what Halifax By Design was – it certainly wasn’t meant as a panacea to placate the Luddites, because nothing will ever be good enough to satisfy them. It is a guideline, but not one that is written in stone.
Their ignorance of modern urban planning best practices should really force them (and the writers at the Coast) to take a back seat to discussions of this nature since they are obviously ill-equipped to understand them.
Perhaps Paul MacKinnon and Chris Benjamin can apply for jobs at the Heritage Trust when they feel they have done enough damage to our city and business community in their current positions.
This is trash “journalism”, go back under your rock.
Wow the authors of this piece just got destroyed in the comments section. Do they read these things? Should give them something to think about.
I’d love to see 48 storey buildings in HFX. Some heritage group would have a collective heart attack though.
This is why Halifax can’t have nice things and is going nowhere.
I can’t believe this got past the editorial staff without a re-write.
D- pending a makeup paper.
who will fill these office towers, lisa babe? you’ve got a million potential tenants on speed dial i hope.
the hope that ‘if we build it, they will come’ is stupidity on a biblical scale. for the record, i’m not against building new structures. i just can’t stand developer after developer approaching the city with a plan they KNOW does not conform to the rules, as if the rules apply to everyone but them. why do we even bother making rules as a community when some of us have no interest in being good neighbours at all, just profiteers. further, too many of these developers come with their hat in hand, needing taxpayer money and tax holidays in order to make the venture profitable. yes, let’s get gov’t out of the way of business – so it can go right into the public treasury and just take whatever they want. have you ever seen such a thing a conservative/socialist? they’re not hard to find these days.
i’d like to see 48 storey building in the city too -just anywhere but in the viewplane. it’s really not that hard. developers only keep asking us to bend the rules of hrm-by=design because council keeps approving exceptions. no one thinks the rules apply to them. would it really fail to bring the million into the downtown core if they were to build this 48 storey building, say, in the north or west ends (where there’s lots of land available just blocks from downtown -and where all their staff park already anyway to avoid the crazy fees they charge for parking). how about downtown dartmouth? i’ll bet they could REALLY use the economic growth an office tower would bring. it’s hard enough to find parking and a seat in most restaurants on a nice night downtown as it is. i’ll bet food vendors in other parts of the city could stand some development being directed towards them too.
This was the most garbage article I have ever read by the coast! I think Cranky was being generous with a D-
It’s like nobody at The Coast is capable of accepting defeat on the whole Nova Center vendetta so they’re now desperately trying to find something new to point the finger at that’s in an early enough stage of development to think they’re actually capable of influencing it.
“i’d like to see 48 storey building in the city too -just anywhere but in the viewplane. it’s really not that hard. developers only keep asking us to bend the rules of hrm-by-design because council keeps approving exceptions. no one thinks the rules apply to them.”
Because you – as well as a depressingly-large amount of people in this city – have a fundamental misunderstanding of what HrM actually is. These aren’t ‘rules’ that are being challenged in the first place, they’re guidelines, and there’s a very important distinction between the two. They are by definition flexible and open to reinterpretation by means of appeal – if they weren’t, developers wouldn’t waste their time attempting to challenge them in the first place.
Never mind the logical pretzel of complaining about parking and then in the same breath calling for a model of urban development that would make people even more reliant on car-based commute – and subsequently increasing congestion and parking demand – than they are now. If more people LIVE downtown and WORK downtown it means fewer people need to COMMUTE downtown.
Families don’t want to live downtown. they want a home with a yard and a school close by. They don’t want to hear bar patrons making a noise at 2 in the morning. Nor does Mr Ramia want his hotel patrons to be disturbed in the same manner as those staying at the Marriott and other nearby hotels.
Families don’t live in high rise condos, except in big cities aka NY. Check the census data for downtown Halifax.
Not living downtown is not urban sprawl. Living in Bedford or Sackville is not urban sprawl. Ask all the urban planners where they live and what their family income is.
If you want densification on the peninsula it may be time to consider buying up the south end, demolishing the single family homes and changing all lot sizes to 30 feet. And providing decent housing for low income earners will bring density and increased local expenditures, such people tend not to fly to Toronto or Montreal for sports and fancy clothes, and their kids will go to the local schools, thus ending the closure of inner city schools and the building of new schools outside the urban core.
“If you want densification on the peninsula it may be time to consider buying up the south end, demolishing the single family homes and changing all lot sizes to 30 feet.”
That’s basically what Vancouver did. Residential towers for density with townhouses at street level for those desiring the house-with-a-yard setup you champion (not everybody in the HRM does, btw). They even have schools on the peninsula too, goodness forbid. And there’d still be plenty of room for those who want to live out in the sticks, with less of that arterial-road congestion they always complain about as a plus.
This is quite possibly the most illogical and worst article i have ever read. I never thought i could read a worst article then a few i have read by tim, but this makes tim look like he should be a shoe in for a Pulitzer.
This is a really terribly written article, with a really terrible premise illustrated by a non-nonsensical analogy.
As much as I might disagree with Tim Bousquet’s anti-development stance (which he denies having), at least his articles are generally well-written with consistent arguments based on defensible logic. He makes it plain what his stance is and why, and he presents some pretty decent arguments. You wouldn’t be nuts to agree with them. And if you disagree with them, at least you can discuss.
This article has none of that – it is just patently absurd. Tall buildings, as phallic symbols of corporate power, are literally the harbingers of the collapse of civilization? Really? So bloody childish.
I’m actually pretty surprised Tim allowed this to be published.
oops. that was “nonsensical”, not “non-nonsensical” 🙂
There is nothing wrong about Wright. His ‘Brief History of Progress’ is insightful and provocative. But Chris Benjamin has got it all wrong. No plausible link between Wright’s message and the Skye project. At least nothing articulated by this article. Nothing but pretentious sophistry. It is so encouraging to see the twaddle is seen for what it is by the majority of comments.
Well, having listened to Wright’s Massey lectures numerous times (I even own the audio versions and the illustrated companion book!), I can’t say I understand what relevance his “progress traps” are to Skye Halifax. Wright’s essential argument is that we must modify our resource extraction and consumption patterns to emphasize long-term stewardship as opposed to short-term gain. What does this have to do with intensification of population in downtown Halifax? If anything, projects like Skye Halifax – even if only 24 stories instead of 48 – serve Wright’s argument precisely.
For my part, I would prefer new residential developments be somewhat smaller – say 20 stories or so maximum – and that they be spread around downtown as much as possible, with ground-level retail and townhouses. But we have to tolerate Fenwick here in the South End as it stands – downtown seems the right place to build anything as big or bigger.
Joeblow: “Families don’t want to live downtown. they want a home with a yard and a school close by. They don’t want to hear bar patrons making a noise at 2 in the morning. Nor does Mr Ramia want his hotel patrons to be disturbed in the same manner as those staying at the Marriott and other nearby hotels.
Families don’t live in high rise condos, except in big cities aka NY. Check the census data for downtown Halifax. “
There may be very little families living downtown because there aren’t nearly enough highrises downtown, and certainly none that desire to attract families.
In any event, metrics and actual studies and research indicate the average family size is down to 2.2 people, and continues to shrink. Families with children have fallen -3%, while at the same time couples without children, or families without children have had double digit growth (10% and 11% respectively).
In fact, around these parts, empty nesters are the ones who would be potentially filling high-rise blocks. Seniors, always intent and successful on ghettoizing a community, right JoeBlow?
Downtown Halifax is where all the amenities are – it’s where the hospitals are – it’s where the shopping and entertainment is. Many different classes of people, families included, choose to live in vibrant areas of cities.
That’s not to say amenities can’t be built that encourage family living within high density developments. Vancouver’s False Creek development is a perfect example. You know, if you want to read up on actual facts instead of spewing your garbage around professing to know what you obviously don’t.
The link between Urban Density, Creativity, And Innovation:
http://www.vwl.tuwien.ac.at/hanappi/AgeSo/…
Eight Myths – and Facts – regarding High Density Development:
http://www.uli.org/sitecore/content/ULI2Ho…
Vancouvers’ experience: The relationship between affordable rental housing and surrounding property values:
http://www.rebgv.org/does-affordable-renta…