How refuge and refugee cities become the good and bad sides of the tracks in the 21st century

Cities have always had a good side of the tracks and a bad side. All that has changed is the economic forces which create them. In Elizabethan London, the Lord Chamberlain was worried about the entertainment industry, bear baiting, cock fighting and of course the theatre; not even James Burbage’s theatre company of which William Shakespeare was a co-owner was wanted in his neighbourhood and the Lord Chamberlain was successful in keeping it out for ten years.

In industrial Britain, it was the wind and coal fired furnaces of the midland industries which turned the countryside black that separated the good side of the tracks from the bad. Neighbourhoods downwind from the smoke stacks were poor and those upwind, upscale. The prevailing winds in eastern Canada are from the west and typically you will find the ‘good’ side of town on the west side and the poorer side on the east.

The arrival of the trains which criss-crossed the cities of North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were another way of dividing the comfortable, high quality of life neighbourhoods from the poorer. Keeping trains and their tracks out of the neigbhourhood were all about maintaining the quality of residential life.

It’s comforting to think nothing much has changed since James Burbage and Will Shakespeare’s day, but unfortunately they have. What has changed is the scale and intensity of the definitions. Now entire cities are being relegated to the good and bad side of the tracks.

Climate change is quickly turning the planet’s cities d into complex mosaic of refuge and refugee places. The scale is as populous as humanity, as encompassing as the planet and applies to every city and nation including the richest like Canada. Canadians like to look at New Orleans and think comfortably – well we don’t live on the Gulf of Mexico – we’re not subject to climate change driven hurricanes and (a little less surely) we don’t have any Detriots with its sagging car industry and abandoned neighbourhoods.

Canadians are wrong. The same economic and climate change forces fracturing other nations into have and have not places are present chez nous. There is a fault line somewhere a little west of Thunder Bay. On the western side of the fault line, you will find the richest, fastest growing cities anywhere. Fueled by the Alberta tar sands and Saskatchewan potash, western provinces are sucking up the younger generation of eastern Canada. From small Ontario towns like Welland to entire provinces, the indigenous replacement generation has left town and ‘gone west’.

Sustainability now defines where the good side of the tracks are and where they aren’t. If a city or town has this objective carved into its local administration you can bet you’re in a rich refuge city. You’re in a place like Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, B.C., or Canmore, Alberta. These are cities worried about slowing or stopping growth entirely, investing in light rail, reducing homelessness to zero, greening streets. Upwind has become sustainability land.

The curious thing I find about the endless articles being published on sustainability is that very few ever concern themselves with outcomes. It is as if sustainability and the lack thereof are abstract, mathematical concepts to be mulled over like e=mc2. What non-sustainability means is that the things are not going to continue as they were. This consequence seems obvious enough for the polar bear which people can grasp will not continue once the ice shelf is no longer there for the bears to hunt seals from, but they can’t seem to grasp that many cities which are the human equivalent of the polar bear’s ice shelf will also not continue.

New Orleans is not continuing. It is shrinking. It will continue to shrink. The same can be said of almost all cities and towns on all continents as climate volatility, water shortages and energy prices make what were ‘normal’ activities more difficult to undertake. This is the next global revolution. It is one we have created together by insisting that nothing change about the way we live on the planet. The result is all cities and all neighbourhoods will eventually become divided into refuge and refugee places

This is what is happening now and is revealed in reports like the United Way’s ‘Poverty by Postal Code. The old mixed income neighbourhoods are fast disappearing in favour of cities being organized into poor neighbourhoods (bad side of the tracks) and rich neighbourhoods (good side of the tracks). Cities are also separating out this way with very rich ones like Vancouver and Victoria at one end and poor ones with declining populations and property values like Sydney N.S. and Windsor, Ontario. Climate change will accelerate this division.