More "lignes jaunes" and "stationnement", less "espace pour les poussettes": these were the complaints of the woman sharing the lovely terrasse with me at Little Italy's Café Conca D'Oro, a neighborhood coffee spot that doubles as a sort of community center.
At first, I was surprised to hear this sort of discourse on a Sunday morning with such pristine weather - it seemed a time for relaxing with a latté, not using its caffeine content as rant fuel. Her posse, through a thoroughly Québecois mix of French, English, and a few Italian greetings thrown in for good measure, were making an exhaustive listing of the failed adjustments their neighborhood streets had been seeing lately. Not limited to just more "yellow lines" and less "space for strollers" and their mothers, their complaints covered a plethora of real urban planning issues.
Just by coincidence, I happened to have a copy of Jane Jacobs' urban studies bible on me - her legendary The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Their complaints were almost carbon copies of Jacobs' strongest grievances. There was no debate about the validity and realness of their remarks - from their discussion, I'd learned that they were longtime residents whose parents had grown up in the same neighborhood, if not the same house. I'd also noticed some of the construction they were bringing up.
What really struck me was the fact that these changes were being discussed in a colloquial, regular setting without any scholarly terms, government officials, or university graduates. It made me realize that while these urban design issues are massive problems, it is the seeming lack of communication between government and resident that makes these issues arise. This, logically enough, was one of the most recurrent complaints being made by the posse - according to them, there was no public review session for them to be able to voice their concerns.
It also made me realize that ultimately, this is what Jacobs wanted from her book, and it's what makes her work unique to this day. The individual ideas she discussed were singular and groundbreaking at her time, but they're no longer new now. It's her straightforward, understandable tone that still sticks out. She didn't just want to introduce new ideas about the way cities should operate, she wanted to make city planning a publicly accessible domain. She wanted exactly this to happen - people sitting at a café, complaining that there wasn't enough space on the sidewalk for life to flourish.