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Civil Rights Meet Civil Engineering: Urban Public Space and Traffic Logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Nicholas Blomley
Nicholas Blomley
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby BC, V5A 1S6,Canada, email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The scholarly analysis of public space, despite ideological differences, has tended to focus on the political and ethical dimensions of public space, construed as a site for encounters between people. This has been at the expense of what the author terms the “traffic logic,” a pervasive administrative view of public space that emphasizes pedestrian flow and motion, and tends not to discriminate between things and bodies. The paper illustrates the prevalence and effects of traffic logic with reference to By-Laws in the city of Vancouver. The author notes its important consequences through brief discussions of cases involving public protests and begging. While important, traffic logic's pervasiveness and bureaucratic commonsensicality render its reach and effects harder to discern. As a powerful yet mundane form of urban governance, it demands closer scrutiny.

Résumé

En dépit de divergences idéologiques, les travaux savants sur l'espace public entendu comme site de rencontre entre les gens ont eu tendance à se centrer sur ses aspects éthiques et politiques. Cela s'est fait au détriment de ce que l'auteur nomme «la logique de circulation», une perspective envahissante de l'espace public qui fait valoir le mouvement et le flux des piétons et ne discrimine guère entre des corps et des choses. L'article illustre la fréquence et les conséquences de la logique de circulation en référant aux règlements municipaux de Vancouver. L'auteur relève ses importantes conséquences grâce à de brèves discussions de cas impliquant la mendicité et des manifestations publiques. L'étendue de la logique de circulation et l'évidence bureaucratique, bien qu'importantes, permettent mal de discerner ses effets comme sa portée. Forme influente bien que courante de la gouvernance urbaine, elle exige un examen plus minutieux.

Type
Urban Governance and Legality from Below/Gouvernance Urbaine et Légalité d'en Bas
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 2007 , pp. 55 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2007

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References

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9 S.B.C. 2004, c. 75 [Safe Streets Act].

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13 Interview with author (19 October 2006) [Interview B].

14 Though cf. Valverde, Mariana, “Taking ‘Land Use’ Seriously: Toward an Ontology of Municipal Law” (2005) 9 Law Text Culture 34Google Scholar; Levi, Ron, “Loitering in the City that Works: on Circulation, Activity and Police in Governing Urban Space” in Dubber, Markus & Valverde, Mariana, eds., Police and the Liberal State (Stanford: Stanford University Press) [forthcoming]Google Scholar; Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London: Verso, 2003)Google Scholar.

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38 Federated Anti-Poverty Groups v. Vancouver, [2002] BCSC 105 [Federated] (Affidavit of Rowan Birch).

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61 Cf. Sennett, supra note 45 at 255-376.

62 City of Vancouver v. Maurice et al, (2002) BCSC 1421 [City of Vancouver].

63 Ibid. (Written argument of the plaintiff). Thanks to Tom Zworski and Noah Quastel for this.

64 Ibid. (Memorandum of argument of the intervenor).

65 Ibid. at para. 24. The references are to R. v. Guignard, [2002] 1 S.C.R. 472, 2002 SCC 14; Ramsden v. Peterborough (City), [1993] 2 S.C.R. 1084 and UFCW Local 1518 v. Kmart Canada, [1999] 2 S.C.R. 1083, a series of Charter cases concerning freedom of expression.

66 City of Vancouver, supra note 62 at para. 6.

67 The court deemed these to be “social and political issues,” not “legal issues,” ibid. at para. 22).

68 Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada v. Canada, [1991] D.L.R. 77 (4th) 385 [Commonwealth].

69 Anyone who knows the Downtown Eastside will note the irony in characterizing this stretch of Hastings Street as a zone of purposeful pedestrianism given prevailing representations that centre on the disordered and anomic patterns of walking and street use.

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72 Defined as sitting or lying in the street so as to impede pedestrian traffic, continuing to solicit from a person after a refusal, soliciting in groups of more than three, soliciting within 10 meters of a bank or ATM, and soliciting from a driver so as to obstruct vehicular traffic. See Streets and Traffic By-law, supra note 12, s. 60(a).

73 Federated, supra note 38 (Written argument of the respondent City of Vancouver, at 2) [Federated, Written Argument].

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