Despair is the City Killer

Despair is the city killer: that's more than just a phrase. For many people living with the long shadows of urban blight, it defines their reality, walling them in with ruined roads, among ruined neighbourhoods and ruined buildings. Accepting injustice in a city, even for the sake of "excellence" or "magnificence" often has ghastly consequences; costs that last for generations.

	If you believe that a city needs nothing more than a magnificent waterfront, or that it makes sense to sacrifice one part of the city so that others may have excellence, consider this city and its waterfront:
To look at it, this city appears to have many of the things Toronto wants for its own waterfront.
	Magnificent buildings, wide boulevards and waterfront parks, with a grand waterfront promenade going down to the water's edge.
Public art, performance venues... and hardly an "industrial use" in sight...
	The name of the city is Detroit... and behind that magnificent, shining front is this.
...and this
	These buildings did not fall in a war...
Nor did they die from an absence of "magnificent" architecture or public art.
	These buildings died from despair. They died from the anger of people left behind by a "magnificence", and "excellence" that had no room for them. And the City of Detroit very nearly died along with them.
Just a kilometre or so behind Detroit's magnificent riverfront, you can find scenes of devastation, of the ghostly ruins of neighbourhoods, just by turning up a side street.
	These ruins are shadows from a past, when anger flared into fire on the night before Halloween, known in Detroit tradition as "Devil's night". This is what urban despair looks like. This is what it leaves behind.
And this, clearly, is something a magnificent facade can never cure.
	The story of Detroit is not only one of ruin and despair. The people of Detroit have courage and faith. Many buildings, many lives remain bravely standing...
And everywhere among the ruins you can now see new construction, as new neighbourhoods grow up to replace the ruins.

The Cost of Injustice-- a Generation

As the people of Detroit rebuild with a stubborn bravery, throwing off a nightmare which began in the 1960s and only slowly fades today, we should consider the consequences of making bad urban choices. The lost opportunities, resources, and lives that Detroit's suffering represents are staggering.

David Miller often speaks as though he wants to make a simple minor decision that will cost nothing. He scoffs at the possibility of a lawsuit from the Port Authority, as though his actions had no effect beyond cancelling a bridge. But consolidating noise and pollution in one part of the Toronto region, with no reference to the people who live there, can have costs and consequences far beyond a simple lawsuit.

This is not an example of what will happen if we cancel a bridge. It is the ghost of a city yet to come: a harbinger of what can happen when politicians find it expedient to ignore a part of the community, to decide to accept any injustice, whether poverty or environmental inequity, in the name of some greater good.

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