By Ken Westhues
Published June 1995
There are two cities in Kitchener-Waterloo, but not the ones you’re probably thinking of. The boundary near Union Street is not irrelevant, of course. It makes a difference in tax-rates and which city council you help elect. But another boundary matters more. The routine of your daily life depends on it. This crucial boundary cutting across both municipalities deserves to be thought about. If nothing else, it helps clarify the issues surrounding the impending overhaul of Kitchener’s downtown.
The line is defined by the dominant mode of transport people use. On one side the car is everything. Most families have two. Dad uses it to get to work. Probably so does Mom. Teenaged kids beg for the use of it. Walking and running, if done at all, are not to get somewhere but just for exercise. Sidewalks are mainly for paperboys and papergirls. Lots of people don’t know where the nearest bus stop is. Call this Cartown.
On the other side of the line is Walk-town. There are cars here, too, but they aren’t the vital medium of life. People go lots of places directly on foot. They run to catch buses. Taxis do a thriving business. Umbrellas are popular.
This crucial dividing line is fuzzier than the city boundary, but everyone knows more or less where it is. Stanley Park, Beechwood, Lakeshore Village, Lincoln Heights, Chicopee, and all the newer suburbs lie obviously deep in Cartown. Pity the few people who live there without wheels of their own. Cartown includes also most of the older neighbourhoods. Walktown is tiny by comparison. There are little bits of it adjacent to many shopping malls but mainly it extends a few blocks on either side of King Street from the universities at one end to Rockway Park at the other. Only in this thin strip, embracing not even 5 percent of the twin cities’ area, do feet do much more than accelerate cars.
How Cartown Conquered
Walktown is what cities used to be. Houses were close together, streets narrow, sidewalks broad, stores and factories and offices all close at hand. People outnumbered driveways ten to one. Near downtown Kitchener you can still see how people put all kinds of misshapen additions on houses as the city grew. Proximity to downtown made life easier.
The first people able to afford cars were fortunate. They could live in Walktown and still drive whenever they wanted to. But as the number of cars increased, Walktown withered, every new driveway, parking lot, filling station and widened street meant more steps for pedestrians. Longer bus or trolley rides, to, and higher taxi fares.
The car not only crippled Walktown but it created a new world of its own, and all in half a century. First came shopping plazas like the one on Belmont Avenue, where the street was wide and parking plentiful. Later enclosed malls were built with limitless parking and protection from the elements.
The cartown Fairview symbolized was at least in new territory. Westmount Place and Frederick Street Mall Threatened core areas at their backdoors. But no matter. Individually, the car was the measure of the man. Collectively, the expressway was the measure of the city.
Until just a few years ago, planners and councils in Kitchener-Waterloo scarcely thought of preserving Walktown. It was assumed to be on its way out. Soon everyone would have a car and live like that planners and the aldermen. This is not to point a finger of blame. Large American cities like Detroit, St. Louis and Houston allowed Walktown to slip altogether into the past.
Not so New York, Toronto, Montreal, or the great cities of Europe. What draws tourists to them even now is that downtown they can forget the car and still get around. The sidewalks are alive with activity. Everything seems at your fingertips. There is a sense of freedom no enclosed mall can match. Downtown Toronto is loved by residents and visitors alike because Cartown was never allowed to conquer it.
Ken Westhues teaches sociology at U of W. this is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the K-W Record in 1984 during the last debate on revitalizing the down-town. The issue then centred on the feasibility of enclosing parts of King St.
