What’s in a Name?

It has been pointed out to us, and even by some from our own group, that “Car-Free Mile-End sans voitures” is a problematic name; that it is potentially misleading and is certainly a challenging, provocative banner by which to identify ourselves as a group. At face value it asks you to imagine a Mile End (a fairly large urban area) void of all cars. To some it may be a dream-like ideal. To others it comes across as a sheer incomprehensible impossibility. I would suggest that as an idea, it is both of these things at the same time….
We like our name because for those who see it as an ideal to strive for, it provides a goal. For those who assume the opposing point of view it poses a challenging vision that forces one to think outside the routine of city life, and hopefully to question it.
We are realistic. And we have learned things since we started. We know that it can be more than just impractical to close streets to cars; that there are other ways to win back public space from the prevalence of automobiles. There are “car-lite” options that can go a long way in improving our neighbourhood, which are well worth considering. In short, our objectives as a community oriented group lands squarely in the realm of realistic and reasonable.

So please don’t let our name scare you. We will not be disrupting traffic or making attempts at ramming changes through political or administrative processes. After all, we have no power unless we have the consensus of the community, at which point most everyone will be happy with any changes we come up with. We have no power except that which flows from organisation, which we hope is our future.

But if we haven’t got power at the moment we do have an incredibly persuasive argument: car-free culture is the antidote to so very much of what ails us as a community, as a nation, and as a civilisation.

Like most every urban community, the Mile-End, the Plateau or even the whole of Montreal is burdened by the over-dependence, and ever increasing presence of automobiles. It is well documented, and well understood by citizens and experts, not to mention all three municipal parties here: all three ran on a campaign to reduce traffic on the island. The list of problems includes the danger/ risk of accidents, illness caused by pollution, and the disintegration and displacement of community.

As a nation, our dependence on cars is arguably related to our climate and Canada’s vastness. But this overlooks the fact that most daily car use is a function of the suburban commute, not survival of long-distance travel across the expansive North. The suburbs were not inevitable outgrowths, but consciously made constructs: a function of cheap energy and an expansionist mentality that sold a particular industrial mode of production. By design, had we consciously chosen to do so, we could rather have limited sprawl (conserving farmland in the process), and built our urban centres around public transit and urban markets. Okay, so hindsight may be 20/20, but suburban sprawl can still be remedied (in part) by reinvigorating urban sectors (such as the Mile-End) according to sustainable models, which in turn, as you may have guessed, would inevitably involve a reduction in car dependence.

As far as our civilisation as a whole is concerned (i.e. the global economy) we are coming to terms with what was dubbed as the Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome in 1972. Leading the way, the Western World’s Post-War economy has long been celebrated as a great success. But by all accounts this automobile-based economy and the requisite living arrangements (of suburbia and big-box stores etc.) is proving itself a failed experiment of unintended consequences. And now it seems continued economic growth itself is faltering. Perhaps calling all of this a failure is unfair: Some great achievements have been enjoyed along the way, but it seems to me the whole shebang is running its own natural and inevitable course of rise and fall, of which climate change due to anthropogenic GHGs is one major symptom. Energy and other natural resource depletion is another. In ecological terms civilisation is following the familiar, classic trajectory known as overshoot.
Clinging to car-dependence as a way of life or as an economic model for growth is like climbing the smokestack on the Titanic. But I hesitate to extend the metaphor to include the proverbial “lifeboat community” as a way of casting the Mile End. None of the seemingly catastrophic changes that seem to loom is going to happen overnight. Yes we should try to reshape our neighbourhood according to sustainable, sensible principles. And yes, this should involve a dramatic reduction in car use by us all. But this will never happen in a vacuum to the exclusion of our neighbours. Perhaps as a motivating factor we can think of a Mile-End striving to be car-free, or going “car-lite”, as a matter of setting an example for those neighbours who must ultimately be a part of our future.

Limits to Growth:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC32/Meadows.htm

Overshoot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_%28ecology%29
http://members.shaw.ca/needsandlimits/index.html