polis: a collective blog about cities worldwide

PAP/MIA 2: Unidos por Haiti

by Hector Fernando Burga

In this post, I build upon previous threads on collective and urban visuality to focus on humanitarian efforts in Miami following the catastrophe in Haiti. I am referring to Sabado Gigante - Giant Saturday - and its recently held Telethon: Unidos Por Haiti - United for Haiti.

You may have encountered Sabado Gigante while flipping channels on a Saturday night. For beginners: Sabado Gigante is the longest running show in TV history. It is broadcast live by Univision from its studios in Miami, with a signal reaching every television set in the US and across 42 countries in the Americas. The show originally began in Chile in 1962 under the direction of Don Francisco - a pseudonym for the show’s famous host, Mario Kruetzberger. Since then, its broadcast has appeared non-stop every Saturday. Today, it reaches an estimated 100 million people across the western hemisphere.


Unidos Por Haiti, started with a blast from the past: Gloria Estefan was joined by a chorus composed of members from local Haitian-American churches in song. She was followed by performances from the Latin American Farandula - Celebrities: Enrique Iglesias, Juanes, Shakira, and Daddy Yankee among many others. Besides the entertainment talent, the five-hour broadcast included interviews with survivors, Spanish-speaking Haitians in the audience and live broadcasts from Los Angeles and New York.


At several points during the broadcast, political figures reached out to Tele-videntes - TV watchers - for support and to report on rescue operations. Such was the case of Mexican president Felipe Calderon, who in an international presidential address, pleaded to Mexican residents in the US for donations, reminding them of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. He was followed by US Senator Bob Menendez, who spoke about the recently adopted Temporary Protected Status for Haitians living in the US. And later on, Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, provided information on aid and rescue operations under USAID.


Sabado Gigante has been criticized for its mixture of cheese, cliché and political incorrectness. The subordinate portrayal of Haitians and the Haitian-american community during the telecast raises valid questions. But the value of this Telethon may be lost in translation. For viewers in cities throughout the western hemisphere, Sabado Gigante is a weekend family ritual and this effort consisted on winning hearts and pockets. Unlike the demure and solemn English-speaking telethons aired in several mainstream stations last week, Don Francisco kept the mood light, fast, entertaining, but very serious. He mixed the sacred and the profane; the contingency of emergency with the swiftness of laughter. How did he do this through television?

As it turns out, in Sabado Gigante we may be watching an "authentic" Latin American hybrid characterized by some of the contradictions that make up this complex identity. The show has elements of the melodrama in Tele-novelas and semblances to performances in Carnival. In the Telenovela emotional excess and drama shape narrative caricatures of everyday life. In the Carnaval, sorrow and celebration, mockery and oppression become mass rituals in public space.

Both living traditions have contributed to the consolidation of nation states in Latin America, where cities are points of access for mass audiences and where racial difference and citizenship are managed by the state in public space. These characteristics acquire a trans-national visual format through the Telethon and transcend the public space of the square to the "public" square of the TV screen. The Telethon links spanish-speaking residents across the western hemisphere to form a collective effort based in Miami. Here, the tragedy is not only experienced locally, a complicated overlay of race relations and national identities shape urban identity. Live from Miami, exclusions and inclusions are brought to you for a good cause in Unidos for Haiti.

Credits: Image of F. Cuevas/Univision. Video of Unidos for Haiti from Univision.

Salton Sea Irony

by Alex Schafran

One of the most fascinatingly bizarre testimonies to the power of Western real estate boosterism is simultaneously home to one of the tragic ironies of California's historical environmental and urban quandary. Just a few hours east of the Los Angeles and San Diego, nestled on the edge of the Imperial Valley's desert agricultural miracle/nightmare, the Salton Sea and it's ring of post-apocalyptic semi-ghost towns has long been a must-see for fans of decay-porn and urban abandonment, or simply for those who love it for it's strangeness, it's monuments to Christ or Sunny Bono, or it's importance in the oeuvre of Val Kilmer.

For those of us whose blood-brain barrier is incapable of weeding out the urban, there are two intertwined stories about the largest lake in California which are worth considering. The first is about real estate speculation, about money and land and water, about classic Southern California boosterism and the creation of a second-home and retirement version of California City. In the 1950's, a half-century following it's "accidental" creation by a 1905 canal explosion which sent the entire flow of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink for a year and a half - dykes which themselves were party of the effort to make the Imperial Valley desert "bloom" - real estate developers imagined places like Salton City were destined to be the next great tourist destination, a hybrid of Palm Spring and the French Riviera. An entire city of 25,000 plus was platted, subdivided, sewered and (partially) sold.

Some bought, some didn't. Some built, others waited. Some dreamt, others doubted. But the reality of a lake that should never been caught up with the sea, as a sink that drained agricultural waste while simultaneously becoming one of the richest fish and fowl sites on the continent began to see massive die-off's, including more 7 million fish at one time in 1999. The result is the a landscape what never was, interspersed with the occasional testimony to the human desire for a castle of one's own. These days, the real estate of Salton Sea has largely been reduced in pecuniary value to naught.


Yet amidst the abandonment and devaluation that we Californians are learning about in full frontal fashion comes another story, one more ironic but perhaps equally as sad. As the fish die-offs and bird deaths began to take their toll not only on real estate values but on the environmental future of this accidental lake, some began clamoring to save the lake from extinction. This outcry came not only from the areas small population or from local developers, but from state agencies and environmentalists. but why would environmentalists want to save a lake that never should have been, a product of dams and diversions and agribusiness ambition?

As it turns out, this grand folly in the desert had filled a void created by an even greater folly on the coast. Over the past century, development had slowly paved over 90% of the natural wetlands of coastal California, forcing bird migration inland to this strange new lake that was full of tilapia and other tasty morsels. In an urbanization two-step not too different from that faced by many poor communities around the world, we must now fight to save a place that never should have been because their original homeland is now fully occupied by someone else.

Credits: Images of Salton City, California by the author. For more information on the Sea, see the brilliant documentary narrated by none other than John Waters.

Urbanism in the Information Age 3.0: The Digital/Physical Interface

by Andrew Wade

This post is the third in the Urbanism in the Information Age series, which explores the potential of digital technologies in urban transformation and interactivity. The first two posts explored IBM's approach toward "Smart Cities" and the visionary competition proposal - "the CLOUD" - for the London 2012 Olympics. This post examines the digitally constructed interface between author and reader, between the informer and the informed. The Zero Energy Media Wall for the Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing explores this boundary with a glass curtain wall that contains built-in photovoltaic technology to capture light energy that is then used to illuminate the facade of the building at night.

The project is particularly noteworthy for its successful integration of various building technologies that often stand in isolation. The glass curtain wall is blended with photovoltaic cells, which is also designed in concert with the LED display screen. The heightened complexity of this construction leads to a responsiveness in the building fabric that seeks to engage the wider community.

This leads to questioning the messages that such responsive facades might send. Who is the programmer and what will they communicate if actual urban surfaces become both receivers and senders of energy? As the MIT SENSEable City Lab and the decode exhibit at the V&A Museum also explore, such technology has the potential to position the reader as the momentary author, and to make the informed the proactive informer. Such possible transformations move beyond communicating building/urban data or displaying art installations to a fleeting audience, instead hinting at the reality of a responsive city that has the potential for self-correcting measures.

Credits: Images of the Zero Energy Media Wall from GreenPIX.

Spontaneous Art, Technology and Urban Spaces

by Min Li Chan

Watching a Current TV episode from a year back on "shadow art" in Brooklyn made me consider the role of spontaneous art in urban spaces, and the way they shape and transform the neighborhood ethos. In its most malicious form, spontaneous art is a euphemism for vandalism. But with the right motivations and nuance in execution, spontaneous art - especially if ephemeral - can renew an urban environment. Small strokes of unexpected ingenuity spotted on the side of the street can provide a sense of (re)discovery - they save us from being jaded, from failing to be tourists in our own home cities, provoking us to regard our urban environments with fresh eyes.

Imagine if the technologies that enable mass-scale digital art became as commonplace as the paint brush or wads of papier-mache - instead of art mimicking life, it could well be the case of the concrete and tangible aspiring to the liberties and improbabilities of the virtual world. In one example, the folks at Urbanscreen provide a glimpse of what digital art can do to transform buildings on the fly through projection technologies.



 To take the idea train a little further, imagine what mass-scale digital art could do transform difficult, bleak, poorly designed, urban spaces. Not too long ago, la crise des banlieues, a meme resurfacing as a result of the French riots in 1995, compelled us to ponder over the role of architecture and design in contributing to unhappiness and dissent in urban/suburban life. Could mass-scale digital art such as these projections play a larger role to retroactively alter and fix where the concrete world failed? Or is this purely naivete, without the completeness of systemic changes, that address deep-seated sociopolitical and economic issues that often lie at the heart of the matter?

Stalinist Urbanism

by Peter Sigrist



This is the fourth post in a series of visual studies on public parks in Moscow. The current focus is urban development under Stalin, between 1928 and 1953. As with the previous posts, this may evolve as I gather more information.


Portrait of Stalin by M. S. Napplebaum, 1924. Stalin's house in Moscow, 1932.

Stalin maneuvered his way into power after the death of Lenin, bringing an end to state-sanctioned debate among modernists on the future of the socialist city. A series of Five Year Plans accelerated urbanization and industrialization throughout the country. Between 1926 and 1955, the urban population of the Soviet Union grew from 26.3 million to 86.3 million (or from 18 to nearly 50 percent of the total population), creating an urgent need for investment in housing and infrastructure.


"Increased production of machine tools," a section from the Second Five Year Plan, 1934.

Planning was considered an essential and superior alternative to "chaotic" and "arbitrary" capitalist development, with the potential to meet the needs of the urban population and modernize the nation as a whole. In 1930, Stalin's administration issued a decree against "utopianism" in planning, calling for a more pragmatic "socialist realism." The independent architecture societies, where so many of the experimental ideas of the 1920s had arisen, were consolidated into the Union of Soviet Architects and brought under direct control of the state.


Interior of the Lenin Library, 1928.

New buildings were designed along neoclassical lines, and plans for the Palace of the Soviets took the form of a giant pedestal for a 100-meter Statue of Lenin, surrounded by columns, stairways, and an immense plaza. On Stalin's orders, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior -- built in 1812 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon -- was demolished to make way for the palace.


Demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (film stills), 1931.




Palace of the Soviets with giant plaza and parades, 1934.


Excerpt from the film "New Moscow" (1938), in which planners present a dramatic vision for the city.

A comprehensive master plan was released in 1935, with a focus on promoting industry, transportation, housing, and public green space while limiting the expansion of the city. Much of the plan was ignored, most notably the provision of adequate housing for the majority of citizens. Still, a great deal of public work took place before World War II.


Moscow Master Plan, 1935 (left). Note the attempts to widen and straighten roadways through the center, in comparison with Nikolai Kolli's map of the city from the 1920s (right). Click on either for a closer view.

Red Square was expanded and the public market at Okhotny Ryad eliminated to make way for the giant neoclassical Hotel Moskva. Main thoroughfares were widened, straightened, and lined with dramatic government buildings and residences for elites, including party leaders, senior military officers, and prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Gorky Street (currently Tverskaya) was expanded from 17.5 to 60 meters wide, and rows of venerable lime trees were removed to expand the Garden Ring Road.


Kaluga Gate on Leninsky Prospect, built in 1940.

Thirty-five kilometers of embankments, three urban reservoirs, two new ports, seventeen bridges, and a hydroelectric dam were built along the Moscow and Yauza Rivers.


Design for Sovnarkom (Council of the People's Commissars) overlooking the Moscow River, 1940.


Walkways and apartment blocks along the Frunze Embankment, 1940.



The Moscow Metro opened in 1935. Izmailovo and Sokolniki forests were converted into public parks of culture and rest. In the center of town, an extensive new plan for Gorky Park was put into effect.

Sketch of the Komsomolskaya Metro Station, 1935.


A ride in Gorky Park, 1930.

However, industrial development was the primary focus. In open defiance of the 1935 plan, new factories were built throughout the city. The shortage of housing created severe overcrowding despite millions of lives lost to famine, purges, and World War II.


Marble panel in the Autozavodskaya Metro Station, 1943.

With the exception of the metro, which was built with civil defense in mind, little urban development took place during the war. Even the steel from the partially constructed Palace of the Soviets was commandeered for the war effort. When the Soviet Union emerged victorious and thoroughly devastated, Stalin set out to celebrate the nation's heroism and project an "imperial principle" through reconstruction projects. Moscow benefited from new investment in public works, including the Academy of Sciences Botanical Garden, established in 1945.


Moscow Botanical Garden at Ostankino, 1948.

Postwar development brought historicism to new extremes in the form of monumental plazas, dramatic statues, and seven famous "wedding cake" high-rises built throughout the city between 1947 and 1953. The largest and perhaps most extravagant is Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), which includes a botanical garden and extensive landscaping connected to the park along the river at Lenin (currently Sparrow) Hills.


Moscow State University today.


Moscow State University plan, 1949.


An earlier design, 1947.


Open land around the new building, 1954.


New development, 1957.


An older house prepared for demolition to accommodate the Universitet neighborhood along Leninsky Prospect, 1957.

Housing for everyday citizens remained terribly insufficient, as elites were given beautiful apartments in the city and cottages in the country. New residential development tended to follow a kvartal model, in which buildings of roughly 5-10 stories were bounded by a city block with shops at street level and shared interior courtyards. Today, at least in the more affluent neighborhoods of Moscow, these structures have aged well. They combine density with pleasant landscaping and easy access to amenities. This model influenced the development of larger apartment blocks in "microdistricts" after Stalin's rule. These places are generally not considered beautiful. Still, there is much to be said for the kvartal idea.


Kvartal-like courtyard at lower-right corner, beside the residential tower at Kudrinskaya Square, 1954.

Stalinist urbanism draws upon a number of ideas raised in the 1920s for the socialist city, including the modernization of infrastructure, communal housing, employment and amenities close to home, ubiquitous public transportation, and the integration of green space. However, basic human needs were neglected in favor of industrial development and an image of grandeur. Human rights were given even less concern. This abuse of power in the name of socialism is an enduring tragedy. Stalin's massive urban modernization projects made it possible for Moscow to accommodate a great influx of people. But I'm not sure if they improved living conditions on the whole, or if the ecological consequences can be justified.


Stalin surveying a construction site, followed by Voroshilov, a removed person, and an unidentified person, mid-1930s.

In some ways Moscow's high-density living, extensive public transportation system, and accessible parks sound like a contemporary planner's dream. However, after reading about Stalin I've become more sympathetic to the flip side of this equation, the suburban house with a small park (ie, yard) of one's own, where we can adapt the environment on a smaller scale without imposing our will on others. Can urban condos and parks meet those kinds of needs?


"Increased public spending on health and physical education," a section from the Second Five Year Plan, 1934.

This might seem like a loss of faith in cities, but the real problem is abusive power. Stalin accomplished many things in Moscow that have proven of enduring value. But process is at least as important as results in this case. Great places can come about through autocratic, democratic, capitalist, and socialist means. But for the good of daily life in cities, a democratic socialism sounds preferable to autocratic socialism or democratic capitalism. Oppression and exploitation must give way to freedom and responsibility.

Credits: Top drawing of Mozhaiskoe Schosse (currently Kutuzovsky Prospect) scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era" by Alexei Tarkhanov and Sergei Kavtaradze. Portrait of Stalin scanned from "Stalin: A Biography" by Robert Service. Stalin's house in Moscow scanned from "Stalin: A Biography." Interior of the Lenin Library scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era." Graphic on increased production of machine tools scanned from the "Second Five Year Plan, План Второй Пятилетки," published by Ленизогиз. Film stills of the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior scanned from "Propaganda & Dreams: Photographing the 1930s in the USSR and the US" by Leah Bendavid-Val. Palace of the Soviets scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era." Plan for Greater Moscow 1935 scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era." Nikolai Kolli's map of Moscow in the 1920s scanned from "Mosca: Capitale dell' utopia" by Arnoldo Mondadori Arte. Kaluga Gate Square scanned from "Moscow: An Architectural History" by Kathleen Berton. Sketch of a design for the Sovnarkom building scanned from "Mosca: Capitale dell' utopia." Stairway and apartment blocks along the Frunze Embankment scanned from "Moscow: Architecture and Monuments" edited by Bryan Bean and translated by Bernard Meares. Sketch of the interior of the Komsomolskaya Metro Station scanned from "Mosca: Capitale dell' utopia." Carnival rides in Gorky Park scanned from "Propaganda & Dreams." Marble panel in the Autozavodskaya Metro Station scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era." Moscow Botanical Garden at Ostankino scanned from "Mosca: Capitale dell' utopia." Photo of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) from the MSU Department of Geometry and Topology. Plan of the MSU building scanned from "Architecture of the Stalin Era." Early design for the MSU building scanned from "Les sept tours de Moscou: Les tours babyloniennes du communisme, 1935-1950" by Europalia Russia. The area surrounding the university in 1954 scanned from "Hauptstadt Moskau" by Werner Huber. New development near the university scanned from "Hauptstadt Moskau." Traditional house amidst new development along Leninsky Prospect scanned from "Hauptstadt Moskau." The residential tower at Kudinskoy Square scanned from "Mosca: Capitale dell' utopia." Photo of Stalin surveying a construction site, photographer unknown, scanned from "Propaganda & Dreams." Graphic on health and physical education scanned from the "Second Five Year Plan, План Второй Пятилетки."

Quito's Response to the 1987 Earthquake

by Jordi Sánchez-Cuenca

It has been estimated that the earthquake in Haiti has killed over 200.000 people. This figure is terribly high, a massive tragedy almost comparable to the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It would have been much less of a tragedy if Haiti wasn’t an extremely poor, unstructured country with a dysfunctional government. The earthquake in Kobe in 1995, for instance, was of similar magnitude, it was also close to urban areas and it killed 6.000. Again, it is weak buildings (and weak governments that don’t regulate construction), and not disasters, what kill people.



In 1987 Quito was also hit by an earthquake. It was not as bloody, but it is interesting to see that it mobilized forces to make the city better than it was before. A good example is the restoration of the city centre after the earthquake. Some years before, in 1978, Quito had been chosen by the UNESCO first urban site to become World Heritage (together with Krakow). Quito was not only chosen because it is the largest, best preserved historical centre in South America. It was due to the efforts made by the local government in preserving its heritage through special regulations and urban planning, sensitizing the citizens and allocating budget for its improvement. After the earthquake, with support from international development agencies, Quito made an extraordinary effort in reconstructing itself to become a stronger, better ruled city centre.



Today it is a show of magnificent art and architecture, attracting tourists from all over Ecuador and the world, and keeping its original local character. While old churches and government buildings remain in its domination on the urban and social landscape, those heritage buildings that had gone derelict have been transformed into museums and education and cultural centres.



It is the time for Haitians and the international community to transform the country into a better, stronger place than it was before the earthquake.

Credits: Images of Quito's historical centre from www.quito.com.ec and www.elcomercio.com.

Cerdà and the Barcelona of the Future

by Melissa García Lamarca

Celebrating 150 years of the engineer Ildefons Cerdà’s characteristic design of l'Eixample, Barcelona’s urban expansion, the Contemporary Cultural Centre of Barcelona (CCCB) has an extensive and detailed exhibit running until the end of February 2010. It makes up just one of dozens of exhibitions, debates, urban tours and more underway since August 2009 until mid-2010 as part of the year of Cerdà, exploring the DNA of Barcelona’s urban form, organised by Barcelona’s City Council.

Approved in 1859, the concept and subsequent implementation of l’Eixample, the characteristic design pattern to expand the city from its compact historic centre, shifted Barcelona into the most significant urbanistic period in the city in the past two centuries. The layout uses a basic grid of streets and a territorial system of avenues, creating octagonal blocks with inner courtyards under which lay a complex transport and service network, creating in essence a structure that has unified Barcelona’s urban territory and development. The exhibition looks at the evolution of this urban transformation through the decades into a detailed examination of present-day reality, a place where 300,000 currently live and 260,000 work.

This extensive exhibit has over 200 plans, models, statistics, audiovisuals and installations that aim to give a multi-dimensional understanding of how l’Eixample functions, including a tour through similar urbanistic models around the world. If you can’t make it to Barcelona to see the exhibit, it is definitely worthwhile to check out the on-line photo exhibit or the virtual tour.

Credits: Images from Melissa García Lamarca.

Public Space and Sant Sebastià in Palma de Mallorca, Spain

by Melissa García Lamarca


As is the tradition in all towns and cities across Spain, this week it is Palma de Mallorca’s turn to celebrate its patron saint, Saint Sebastian. While these festivals traditionally had religious origins – and indeed patron saints are chosen based on their strong Christian faith in belief and action as protectors of places or people – today they are a time when Town Halls or City Councils organise a week of activities, from art exhibitions, sports and youth activities and parades to outdoor music and dance festivals lasting late into the night.


The latter, known as a revetla in Catalan, took place last night in Palma. Wandering around the city’s historic centre, it was amazing to see the complete transformation of public space and street life, absolutely teaming with people, including extended families with small children running about, when usually most nights of the week the streets are empty. As all the streets were closed to cars, taken over by people, the city pulsated with music, smells, life and laughter.


The Sant Sebastià tradition in Palma for this evening's festivities includes getting together with groups of friends or family and enjoying a torrada (barbeque) in the street, bringing your own sausages or meats to grill, eaten with bread and washed down wine, beer or mixed drinks. There are also bonfires, harking back to pagan traditions, and stages in ten of the cities plaza’s with live music playing until 3.30 in the morning.


What struck me as most important about this festival was the sense of being in the city and sharing the streets with others, the sense of life, energy and movement and especially civic life and participation. The question that comes to mind is how this sort of engagement and involvement other aspects of creating and living in the city can be mobilised outside of the festivals.

Credits: Photos by Melissa García Lamarca.

Cold Urbanism: Revisiting Canada’s Challenges with Northern Sovereignty

by George Carothers



Recent headlines have captivated governments and northern communities around the Arctic Ocean as word of ongoing military surveillance missions has rekindled images from a Cold War pastime. Increasingly, it seems as though the world’s northern nations have re-entered into an era of resounding tension, exercising tools of soft power in order to stake their respective claim to the north. This comes at a time when an ever-growing interest in arctic resources has emerged as a focal point for politicians, oil-barons, and development financiers. The Arctic itself has become the latest victim in the growing dialogue on ‘contested space’.

Amidst a relatively uncertain era of Canadian politics, the national response has been to increase the emphasis on northern development, both economic and ‘social’. But what exactly does this type of development entail? What are the repercussions?

Canada has struggled with northern communities (and cities) throughout its history. Although fur-trading posts in the north formed the backbone of the early Hudson’s Bay Company, North America’s oldest commercial corporation, this later fell to greater economic development and prosperity in the south. As progressive urban development devoured the fertile fringe along the southern part of the country, deep economic and cultural bonds began to transverse the non-militarized border with America. Development was concentrated throughout this more livable region of Canada, and the “true north” remained largely empty, yet arguably “strong and free”.



Canada’s North has been neglected for several reasons, perhaps the most obvious being its relatively hostile climate. For many Canadians, a trip to the far north would be nothing short of an unenviable task. I for one have only arrived in the north for the first time after visiting nearly every other continent on the planet. As I write this piece from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, the average January low in Canada’s largest northern city sits at a balmy -24°F, with the record low of -60°F. At 62°N however, Yellowknife is still some 250mi (400km) south of the Arctic Circle – a far cry from a truly northern urban centre.



Yet Canada’s sore spot on the environmentalist’s checklist has provided incentives for a great deal of investment above the current northerly urban boundary. With some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and natural gas, the region has emerged as a lucrative opportunity for both domestic and foreign investment. However, this same resource-based prospect that has been embraced by Canada’s Conservative Government has landed the country in a violent storm of controversy elsewhere.



Amidst this discussion of sovereignty, development and growth northward sit some of Canada’s most historic and perhaps neglected ethnic communities. The First Nations and Inuit populations of Canada have long been a part of conversations in ‘contested space’. Initially consulted for their knowledge and know-how of northern living, the First Peoples of Canada were bribed out of their property with western vices and driven nearly to self-destruction. Hundreds of years and several generations later, these communities continue to struggle with alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence. Many communities, often consisting of a few houses, a general store and a local ice hockey rink, are situated in isolated regions where surface travel is available only during the winter, as rivers and lakes freeze to make way for ice roads. To this day, access in and out of these communities during the summer months is limited to privately chartered light aircraft.



But this is now beginning to change. As the concerns of sovereignty begin to loom over Canada's North, so do the challenges of trying to populate and urbanize the existing remote villages. In 2010, many of these communities will taste ‘western food’ for the first time, as traditional hunting and fishing looses ground to flown-in frozen TV dinners and processed cheese from the south. But is this truly the idea of protecting Canada’s sovereignty? Does a flown-in Bucket of KFC at a cost of $44.00 translate into a sustainable sovereign future? Surely the associated costs with the loss of environmental integrity and national heritage must be given some weight in this equation.

It seems as though the prospect of populating, urbanizing and developing the north is an uphill battle, as is protecting Canada’s sovereignty. One might think, however, that subsidizing Aboriginal and Inuit communities into an unforgiving and relentless cycle of misery is not the greatest step forward, but rather a form of cold and heartless urbanism.

How might Canada effectively exercise its soft power in the race for control of the north? Does the answer truly lie in developing and urbanizing one of the most unforgiving climates on the planet? Perhaps the answer is buried far beneath in the ice.

Credits: Photos of Fort Smith Airport, water tower, High Level Arena by George Carothers. Photo of Yellowknife from Agent Magenta. Photo of Inuit (1854) is Public Domain.