Take Me To The Place I Love

BBC World had been doing ads where their reporters talk about the cities they're from. They end by saying, "<insert city> is my city."  I guess they're trying to seem really international, emphasizing their intimate knowledge with major cities around the world.

I'm not sure about the woman who ends it with, "Dubai is my city." Is there anyone who can really say that? Even if you're one of the hundred and fifty people who has lived in Dubai for more than twenty years, the current urbanism amusement park that is Dubai is hardly yours.

Me, I could never make a "this is my city" statement like that. My birthplace of Woodstock didn't reflect what I want in a city. While my current home of Kitchener-Waterloo is far more to my taste, I still don't feel that sense of ownership.

KW does have many things that I appreciate. A few years ago I got a pamphlet in the mail from the Perimeter Institute (of theoretical physics) telling everyone of their opening. It hit me: I just got junk mail from a physics institute - that doesn't happen in normal cities.  That geekiness that comes of two universities is nice, as are other quirks like the insane road system, German and Mennonite heritage, and the odd collection of neighbourhoods created by three cities slowly colliding.

But there's also negatives: a big constituency of commuters who don't care much about a community they only sleep in. An old guard that still sees the region as the collection of small towns it once was.

Then there's London (Ontario) down the road. It's about the same size as the combined size of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. Both cities seem to be struggling culturally between a conservative small-town heritage, a bland suburban present, and a cosmopolitan urge coming from our age of communications and globalization. So I've always thought everyone in both cities would be happier if we just had a big trade of citizens. Send all the forward thinking, intellectual techie yuppie hipster types to one city, and they can have their light rail and sushi and bike sharing. The white-bread keep-it-like-i-remember-it-as-kid crowd can have all the power centres and mini-mansions and tax freezes they want.