There is a little restaurant/coffee shop I know that typifies what community – and the White Rock community, in particular – means to me.
For the purposes of this column, the name of the establishment is unimportant. Perhaps you know it, or know somewhere just like it – or have known, and valued, this kind of community experience in years gone by.
It is situated in an area of fairly high pedestrian traffic, and it’s the kind of casual, no-reservations place where passersby might catch sight of someone they know through the window and come in and say hi.
More likely than not, they will stay for a cup of coffee and a quick glance at the menu. If they’re tempted to order anything – because the food is good, and prepared with a home-cooked touch – they’ll likely be a return visitor.
It’s also a place that’s small enough and friendly enough that conversations can spill over from one table to another. Strangers – young or old – may end up sitting at the same table, and quickly become strangers no more.
I have heard the problems of the world settled there, the experience of generations shared there, the birth of enterprises and grand artistic visions there.
Much more there, in fact, than in many sterile post-modern edifices – the kind that cities tend to approve so they can check the box that they are doing the work of building community.
The place I’m thinking of is currently subject to the same development pressures that many areas on the Semiahmoo Peninsula are experiencing, not all of them in city-centre areas.
The block it sits in will no doubt be redeveloped sooner than later, and the buildings will be tall.
If they fit with the current trend in condo development, they will feature isolating security measures bordering on the paranoid, denying not only entry to anyone without the proper codes but also access to elevators or any casual contact with anyone on other floors.
The buildings will be secure, no doubt, but they may be at risk of being about as neighbourly and as community-building as a medium-security prison.
Some people feel more comfortable living that way, others don’t.
The design will also, no doubt, feature community spaces and sidewalk bistros populated by the kind of theoretic people you only find inhabiting architects’ renderings and CGI simulations.
They likely won’t look like the real people who gravitate to wherever it is real people tend to gather.
The reality, for the small business I’m thinking of, is that it will have to find some other location in the city, and given the current leasing market, that may well be impossible. The city will have lost a thriving business – and a genuine ‘community space’, while the new buildings may have their retail spaces sit vacant for months or years at a time, again because of the kind of rents that will have to be charged to make the venture worthwhile.
Development advocates will argue that new amenities gained outweigh such losses, and maybe they do.
But I urge our civic leaders – who time and again pay lip service to ‘community’ – to study the real nature of human interaction, and the crucial role of small business, before being dazzled by the grandiose CGI version.
Alex Browne is a longtime Peace Arch News reporter.