... the rest to topple!
mardi 21 avril 2009
no 2010!
Not worth a Bailout: Olympic Village
Despite a claim of sustainability, environmentalists and urban planners are unconvinced that the Vancouver Olympic Village is worth the $875 million price tag.
“There has been an attempt, at least on a symbolic level, to make the Olympic events and infrastructures about the environment and therefore worth the money, but ultimately, the people saying that sustainability is the primary goal of these projects are green-washing” said Dr. Craig Townsend, a professor of Geography, Urban Planning and Environment at the University of Concordia yesterday afternoon.
“This Village is ultimately a mega real estate project which has used the games to generate a support that would have been difficult to generate at any other time, especially in a global recession,” he added.
In a secret meeting on January 19th, the provincial government of BC passed Bill 47, allowing the Millennium Development group to borrow $458 million from the province to pay for the remaining construction of the Olympic Village after the original lender, Fortress Investment Group, backed out of the deal last fall.
“This is a lot of money that the provincial government could be spending in other areas,” Townsend continued. “In terms of the traditional lasting impacts on the urban environment, mega-events like the Olympics leave a legacy of infrastructure that influences where future growth and spending occurs, but not much else; certainly not sustainability!”
Citing “The Big Owe” Olympic Stadium of Montreal, which was built for the 1976 Olympic games and amassed a debt of $1.5 billion which was paid off in 2006, Townsend was wary about the over-ambitious government spending on these types of consumption projects.
“Building something this expensive and permanent for a short-term event is bound to be problematic. Quite often the scale of these facilities is beyond the size of regional or local communities. In the case of Montreal, the Olympic Stadium was premised on an anticipated rapid growth post-games that never really arrived. As it turned out, Montreal had a decade of slow growth and we were stuck paying for these facilities that didn’t have any use.”
Townsend, who specializes in urban transportation systems, was also quite skeptical of the other projects currently siphoning provincial money in preparation for the Games, which he believes have been underreported in lieu of the Village scandal.
Specifically he considered the $600 million sea-to-sky highway renovation project from Horseshoe Bay to Whistler ‘the exact opposite’ of sustainable operations, arguing that there is “something perverse” about building a highway that connects the suburbs with an elite resort.
“Why should the public be putting this huge amount of money into something that is going to benefit just a very small number of people? Is that fair from a societal perspective? No. Sustainability is not just about preserving the environment. It is about the ways to build equality. The Olympics celebrate lifestyles that are inherently problematic for sustainability and this project specifically endorses the current inequities.”
Despite his criticisms of the ‘sustainable irony’ inherent to the 2010 Olympic plans, Townsend believes what it all comes down to is business as usual.
“I appreciate the attempt to brand the games with environmental initiatives, but if BC wanted to promote sustainability, they would have done something else entirely. I find it depressing that the people in charge have been dishonest in telling people how much they love the earth one day and then funding an eight-lane highway the next. This is, quite simply, superficial marketing. To a certain extent, the concept of a sustainable Olympics is just an add-on of selling the project.”
The true costs of the infrastructure projects initiated by the Games cannot be known until well after 2010, according to official reports from the Vancouver Olympic Committee.
Despite a claim of sustainability, environmentalists and urban planners are unconvinced that the Vancouver Olympic Village is worth the $875 million price tag.
“There has been an attempt, at least on a symbolic level, to make the Olympic events and infrastructures about the environment and therefore worth the money, but ultimately, the people saying that sustainability is the primary goal of these projects are green-washing” said Dr. Craig Townsend, a professor of Geography, Urban Planning and Environment at the University of Concordia yesterday afternoon.
“This Village is ultimately a mega real estate project which has used the games to generate a support that would have been difficult to generate at any other time, especially in a global recession,” he added.
In a secret meeting on January 19th, the provincial government of BC passed Bill 47, allowing the Millennium Development group to borrow $458 million from the province to pay for the remaining construction of the Olympic Village after the original lender, Fortress Investment Group, backed out of the deal last fall.
“This is a lot of money that the provincial government could be spending in other areas,” Townsend continued. “In terms of the traditional lasting impacts on the urban environment, mega-events like the Olympics leave a legacy of infrastructure that influences where future growth and spending occurs, but not much else; certainly not sustainability!”
Citing “The Big Owe” Olympic Stadium of Montreal, which was built for the 1976 Olympic games and amassed a debt of $1.5 billion which was paid off in 2006, Townsend was wary about the over-ambitious government spending on these types of consumption projects.
“Building something this expensive and permanent for a short-term event is bound to be problematic. Quite often the scale of these facilities is beyond the size of regional or local communities. In the case of Montreal, the Olympic Stadium was premised on an anticipated rapid growth post-games that never really arrived. As it turned out, Montreal had a decade of slow growth and we were stuck paying for these facilities that didn’t have any use.”
Townsend, who specializes in urban transportation systems, was also quite skeptical of the other projects currently siphoning provincial money in preparation for the Games, which he believes have been underreported in lieu of the Village scandal.
Specifically he considered the $600 million sea-to-sky highway renovation project from Horseshoe Bay to Whistler ‘the exact opposite’ of sustainable operations, arguing that there is “something perverse” about building a highway that connects the suburbs with an elite resort.
“Why should the public be putting this huge amount of money into something that is going to benefit just a very small number of people? Is that fair from a societal perspective? No. Sustainability is not just about preserving the environment. It is about the ways to build equality. The Olympics celebrate lifestyles that are inherently problematic for sustainability and this project specifically endorses the current inequities.”
Despite his criticisms of the ‘sustainable irony’ inherent to the 2010 Olympic plans, Townsend believes what it all comes down to is business as usual.
“I appreciate the attempt to brand the games with environmental initiatives, but if BC wanted to promote sustainability, they would have done something else entirely. I find it depressing that the people in charge have been dishonest in telling people how much they love the earth one day and then funding an eight-lane highway the next. This is, quite simply, superficial marketing. To a certain extent, the concept of a sustainable Olympics is just an add-on of selling the project.”
The true costs of the infrastructure projects initiated by the Games cannot be known until well after 2010, according to official reports from the Vancouver Olympic Committee.
lundi 6 avril 2009
the new new journalism
Everyone is freaking out about the state of journalism and wondering if blogs can really pick up the slack.
I heard about the CBC cuts two days before they were announced in the news due to an inconspicuous location while waiting for an interview. I was told that it was strictly off the record, but didn't realize at the time how breaking it could be.
What will happen to the institution now is anyones guess, but the experiment of letting advertisers run the media needs to end.
This article has some ideas and I recommend it. Normally, I would do a little review, but I have two take-homes and a two papers in front of me.
So enjoy.
I heard about the CBC cuts two days before they were announced in the news due to an inconspicuous location while waiting for an interview. I was told that it was strictly off the record, but didn't realize at the time how breaking it could be.
What will happen to the institution now is anyones guess, but the experiment of letting advertisers run the media needs to end.
This article has some ideas and I recommend it. Normally, I would do a little review, but I have two take-homes and a two papers in front of me.
So enjoy.
mercredi 1 avril 2009
911. A gendered emergency.
Image: Scott Reeder. "American Dick," 2007. Courtesy of Adbusters
Using gender as a tool to interpret and explain ideological issues in contemporary society can be very effective to discover patterns, archetypes and power relationships.
In Iris Marion Young’s article “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State,” she uses the lens of gender to help interpret and critique the principles of war and security in a post-9/11 era. Exposing the “patriarchal logic” of protectionism, which is constructed by the rhetoric of popular culture and war propaganda as inherently masculine, Young argues that under this system, women, children, and (by extension) citizens are “paradigmatically in a position of dependence and obedience.” (1) The construction of a masculine protector creates a binary of power and subordination between men and others. In this system, women, children, and (by extension) citizens are understood as vulnerable and thus requiring the security of men or government bodies.
By explaining how democratic citizens permit their leaders to protect them using the same practices that a patriarch would use to protect his family, Young discusses a “particular logic of masculinism” that associates the two. (7) The rhetoric of war and security mobilizes fear to gain support from the masses for a male government. Naturalized by pop-cultural construction of the male body as heroic, tough, or chivalric, these patterns suggest something important about the gendered relationship between the government and its citizens.
In discussing the events of 9/11 in the United States, Young exemplifies how “states often justify their expectations of obedience and loyalty, as well as their establishment of surveillance, police, intimidation, detention and the repression of criticism and dissent, by appeal to their role as protectors and the presumption of a threat.” (7) This can certainly be seen in the multitude of ways that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was packaged and sold to Americans. If you turned on the television in the last ten years you could tell how many mass media outlets had very clear ideas about who was a ‘terrorist’ and who was a ‘hero.’ This media angle focused on protecting the United States, spinning and selling the war as a positive and necessary humanitarian effort, even though we know now (and knew then) that it was unwarranted. The United States bargained with people’s fear and branded an unnecessary war with this language; it is in this example we can interpret a deep connection between the constructs of protection and the obedience of a nation. (They called it 'The Patriots Law,' for goodness sakes.)
Young also argues how, very often obedience within a country legitimizes its aggression and violence abroad. We have discussed in class how “loyalty at home legitimizes a governing body’s power over citizens internally and justifies it externally.” In the same authoritarian and paternalistic manner that a patriarch would run 'his' household, government war bodies are able to accomplish and normalize the subordination abroad.
There is something that happens when people think about women and war. Often, there is an assumption that women are inherently peaceful, and obviously this idea is contentious.
It's hard for me to discuss how women are associated with the peace movement without feeling frustrated with a professor I once had. I raised a point about the dangers of associating women and peace, and was immediately accused of 'not accepting that inequality exists' for some reason. The bottom line is (and was) that I am with bell hooks on this argument:
"Dualistic thinking is dangerous; it is a basic and ideological component of the logic that informs and promotes domination in Western society... it reinforces the cultural basis of sexism and other forms of group oppression. Suggesting, as it does, that women and men are inherently different in some fixed and absolute way, it implies that women by virtue of our sex have played no crucial role in supporting and upholding imperialism or other systems of domination."
photocredit: http://www.mrdowling.com/images/706unclesam.jpg
http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/war/gifs/ARTV00332.jpg
Nevertheless, the deconstruction of war and security with a gendered lens help broaden the issue using theoretical context. The connection is deep, and it suggests how patterns within a patriarchal home have manifested.
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