For me, the answer is “not well enough.”
I have begun to realize that my sense of the city I live in, Victoria BC, is very limited save for the the few places I regularly go (e.g. University, the grocery store, cafes, downdown etc.) and the strips of scenery along the way. This is, in essence, my mental map of Victoria, and it’s too small! Like most university students here, I have lived in a few different locations through my degree and each time I move my entire sense of the city expands and changes. I like this.
So, I have decided to try and continue expanding my sense of this city. And, lucky you, I am going to do by best to take good pictures and share the places with you as I go.
First, I should confess something though. The desire to know my city better, is honestly mine. However, the impetus to get out of my chair and actually bike and walk around the city did not entirely come from me. I am taking a course (Planning and Urban Development) in which we are doing a number of classes in the field. So, finally, indulging my interests doesn’t conflict with going to class!
So over the next couple months, and beginning with today’s post, I will be sharing my newly expanded sense of place as I get to know the various neighborhoods we look at in this planning course.
Without further adieu,
The Uplands
This is a neighborhood I had only seen from the street as I passed through on occasion. I will admit that from what little impression of this place I’ve had over the years I have built a decidedly negative opinion of the place as a very functional neighborhood.
This opinion was not built on very much. Mostly my Jane Jacobs inspired sense of what a vibrant urban landscape should look like. This neighborhood didn’t have people out on the streets, nor even anything in it but houses. At first glance I had hastily put uplands into my failed neighborhood column.
This was clearly ignoring the facets of it that have made it so immensely desirable to those select few who chose to live there. (Speaking of those people, I’ve heard off hand mention that the Uplands has the highest density of millionaires per square km in Canada… make of that what you will.)
The affluent nature of Oak Bay is actually tied into the history of the Uplands. Over the better half of the 20th century the Uplands, and more specifically the deed restrictions placed on the properties by the developers, has played no small part in defining the greater character of development in the entire Oak Bay Municipality. Oak Bay did something relatively unheard of and took over managing the deed restrictions which discriminated what houses could be built based on a minimum price ($5000 at the time). In 1934 Oak Bay incorporated similar restriction in their general zoning.
Undoubtedly the history of the Uplands and it’s impact on the planning of the municipality has worked to shape the greater character of Oak Bay. Whether the exclusivity of Oak Bay is a good thing is more open to debate.
Regardless, some are quite pleased with this neighbourhood and I would be remiss, despite my quandaries, not to give it credit for the degree to which greenery and trees are a prominent feature in this neighbourhood. I chose not to say natural areas, or nature because this is an extremely modified landscape which does not, with notable exceptions, really function as the ecosystem it once was.
You see the forest meadow feel? (despite the gloomy weather)
Walking through the Uplands I began to have a much easier time imagining a city where natural systems were more integrated with the built environment. Rather than concrete and glass being the norm for a city feel, I felt a forest and meadow asthetic, even while simply walking along people’s front lawns (there are very few sidewalks in the Uplands – another issue.)
Speaking of sidewalks, a rather comical situation was pointed out by our professor which I was actually quite pleased to see in one respect. In short, a sidewalk ran into a tree and the tree won. This comes from the will of the mastermind behind the Uplands, John Charles Olmsted. At the turn of the century, he remarkably mapped every tree existing on the site of the Uplands development before drawing up any plans. It was paramount for him to preserve the trees and the aesthetic they created. Though much of the soil and the rest of the ecosystem (not to mention First National cultural harvesting) is effectively gone, many of the trees remain. It is this commitment to the trees and mimicking the original aesthetic that guided Olmsted to create such a distinctly park-like feel to the Uplands.
Patrick Condon’s book has really brought me around to the idea of streetcars as an extremely practical means of urban transport for North American cities. One of the reasons streetcars make so much sense here (North America), Condon argues, is because to a large extent our older cities are already built around the streetcar.
You wouldn’t realize it at first glance, or at least I didn’t, but this is true of the Uplands. The proof is embedded right in the round-about at the centre of the neighborhood.
This track is proof that a streetcar line once ran to the heart of the Uplands.
Although the streetcar line only ran infrequently and was geared more toward picnickers than commuters, this built in potential makes me think he Uplands might not be as bound to the personal vehicle as I initially thought. As fuel prices rise, values shift, densities grow and we begin to look for alternate means of urban transport the memory of a streetcar line could prove useful.
While I must admit that I’m not interested in living there, I do have more of an appreciation for the design of the place. It has left me imagining how other, more functional, neighborhoods might move toward the restoration of their original ecosystems.
