In this era of hyperconnectivity shaped by the Internet, computers and smart phones, how can we “rehumanize” the city and appropriate the spaces in a tangible way, rather than taking refuge in a “digital city” and spaces of disembodied sociabilities?
In a new essay officially launched in June, Guillaume Éthier, professor in the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), imagines an “analog city”, that is to say an ” little utopia” which is “fundamentally the opposite of the flaws of digital.
“Things are changing in terms of sociability and public space. There is a shift towards digital, especially from concrete spaces, he explains. The idea is to take note of this passage and imagine a city that would try to reimagine its role based on this new situation. »
The duty met him on rue Saint-Viateur, in the Mile End, in Montreal. A place which, according to him, has several “qualities specific to what can become an interesting commercial avenue, with life”.
Cafes, bookstores, restaurants and colorful shops abound in the street and, here and there, passers-by can sit down. The professor points to a space a little out of the way, with two benches surrounded by low walls and vegetation, set up next to a small specialized grocery store.
“It’s good to have little spaces of intimacy, bubbles,” he says. He praises slowness, in a world that tends more towards speed and immediate reactivity. “It allows another appropriation of the city and to stop in the flow”, he adds.
The opposite would be “very generic” spaces, “slippery” “non-places”, such as airports, large shopping malls, supermarkets or coffee chains like Starbucks. Spaces without cultural density and in which people are in transition.
“It’s a place where you know that, no matter where you are in the world, you’re going to have exactly the same experience,” says the researcher, speaking of Starbucks coffees, which he sees as products of the era. digital and which change the way of occupying the city, just like Airbnb or Uber. “Inside, there are workers who have laptopswho do 1,000 jobs and who are connected to the same tools,” he adds.
The professor says that urban space in modern cities has less and less to offer to entice people to spend time offline.
He thus praises fluid places full of vitality, where people can meet while being disconnected from the Internet and social networks. “There are things that don’t happen online. We see it with the metaverse project, it’s so crude compared to the wealth of behaviors outside, ”he underlines.
Things are changing in terms of sociability and public space. There is a shift towards digital, especially from concrete spaces.
A little further, Mary, who lives in a side street in Saint-Viateur, has a paintbrush in her hand and is busy, with two other people, giving shape to a large mural in an alley, on which we see a course water, vegetation and animals. “I wanted to imagine what the landscape was like here before the construction, and what it would be like if we allowed more biodiversity in the urban environment,” she explains. A few passers-by stop to observe.
“You just have to walk a little slower and be in contemplative mode to realize that these things exist, slips Guillaume Éthier. Because otherwise plugged in somewhere else or in a life where we only get from point A to point B, they would go unnoticed. »
In praise of imperfection
Cities must also assume and celebrate a part of imperfection. The ideal of the smart city, which wants to be efficient at all costs and over-equipped with sensors and cameras that track the citizen, does not impress the researcher. He considers it as “an upper middle class ideal”, which thinks of urban life “as something messy, to be domesticated” and which wants to normalize behavior.
The Field of Possibilities in Mile End, which describes itself as a place that “reinvents the use of abandoned brownfields”, represents well the type of “informal” and experimental place that comes out of this vision and is necessary for a city . “The rules are a little different, you can isolate yourself and be out of sight,” says Guillaume Éthier.
Here and there, the walker sees abandoned fire rings and works of art on the wooden posts that connect the electric wires or on the fences that block access to the railway. Dirt trails cross groves of trees and tall clumps of wild grass. Further on, a group of ten-year-old children play and learn with the help of an animator.
“When this kind of place disappears, you go to the basement and play video games. Or you go to the park, more boring and smooth, but something is missing,” he says.
The researcher is currently collaborating with the city of Montreal in the development of the city’s next urban plan. He chose with his university colleagues about twenty public spaces, including the Field of Possibilities. “We try to see what we can learn from these places and to understand how users use the place and appropriate it. And here, it’s a place that we targeted to show the need for informality in the city,” he explains.
And faced with what he describes as the failure of debates on social networks and the people who, behind their screen, are in “representation” and remain camped on their strong opinions, the professor also dreams of open discussion spaces in towns.
“There is the public space, which is now global, and there are our intimate private spaces, where we talk to each other. But there doesn’t seem to be much between the two anymore and the possibility of meeting people differently, in other circles,” he argues.
He doesn’t know what form this could take, but he imagines discussion forums in public places, like a sort of agora, to meet people from different backgrounds. A bit like the American organization The People’s Supperwhich organizes meals in the communities to promote exchanges between people from diverse backgrounds.