REVIEWS

Bollards or Benches— Abigail Auld

A neighbourhood’s dividing line

Take a seat in your neighbourhood and tell me, what grounds you there? Here in mine, there is a line of benches that sit heavy and concrete, an offering amid the shuffle of urban life. This is Osborne Village, a place so full of living that the river-bound mixed-residential enclave is claimed by some to be Canada’s Greatest Neighbourhood.[1] The benches run the length of River Avenue and are not exactly a destination but a delineating line, between surface parking and street. They are the result of redevelopment. A victory of city planners who battled corporate expansion by ensuring the loudest community voices weighed in, directing efforts to beautify and fit suburban aspirations into an urban neighbourhood. Yet this win—resulting in a smattering of furnished semi-public space—falls short. For some sixteen years, the benches have nearly always been empty. That is until now, when this place, and everywhere else in the world, is in the midst of a global pandemic. 

The transmission of COVID-19 makes gathering, specifically in public, a danger. Despite this, in Winnipeg, River Avenue and Osborne Street remain the busiest crossway for as far as this prairie horizon stretches. It hosts a scene playing out in cities everywhere: we meet for groceries, essentials, only for purposes worth the risk of contact with our strange neighbours. This regrettable scenario strips the neighbourhood and its benches down to their essence, revealing a brand of city life that serves some while leaving others on the margins. 

The Village is a place to shop. Though it once housed a bohemian life—gay, punk, and DIY—that is now done. As its alternative cachet piqued, whole blocks of aging low-rise storefronts were consolidated into split-levelled, skylight atrium-ed heritage super blocks, the result of a tax-incentivized spruce up. These blocks now house trendy but temporarily shuttered boutiques, restaurants, and bars that, even under the best of circumstances, are blighted by their inaccessibility, lackluster streetscape, and outsized rents. At the centre of it all, cornered by the commuter thoroughfares of River and Osborne, is the largest, and busiest, conglomerate parcel of neighbourhood real estate: the grocery store. 

This shop is a supermarket of the 50,000 square foot variety, complete with a hundred and forty-five parking spaces and the same for eight or so bicycles. With the arrival of COVID-19 here in early March 2020, the Safeway supermarket and its neighbour, Shoppers Drug Mart, became beacons of necessity. One could say that current circumstance validates the vision behind the 2004 redevelopment of this commercial block. With near total control over a large swath of the neighbourhood’s gathering space, Safeway moved quickly to unbolt, flip over, caution-tape wrap or otherwise make unusable all gathering fixtures. The task was simple, actionable. Initially, it seemed that the act of being in community could be prevented—simply packed away. Except, the extent of this urban design cannot be fully overturned. Built with ostentatious permanence, River Avenue’s brick and concrete benches endure and have become the medium on which communion in the midst of social isolation is taking root on hostile grounds.

Ordinarily, there are more pleasant places to meet than on this narrow margin, buffering Safeway’s asphalt from the rumble of the city’s pitted streets. In better times, when cafe seating abounds, this strip of beautified concrete is overlooked. For now, the tables are flipped at the grocer’s Tim Hortons kiosk, and the steady drip of dollar coffee and free Wi-Fi is running dry. Outside, with other quasi-public seating gone, the corporate and local Business Improvement Zone’s joint efforts to cultivate a place promoting a certain kind of lingering have all but disappeared. 

For many, this was a welcomed defense against an unknowable threat. Pandemic protocols provide a measure of order, allowing shoppers to enter the world briefly, before retreating to the comfort and safety of their respective dwelling units. Through the convenience of never-more popular delivery apps, the most advantaged can even delegate the risks of errands to others.

But such a sudden and total shutdown is not so ideal for those who, through sustained engagement, have turned Tim Hortons’ kiosk into a community hub. Cheap coffee, free internet, and relatively unmonitored gathering space are conditions that enable human connection. Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People, describes these elements as social infrastructure, “the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact.” He clarifies that “social infrastructure is not ‘social capital’—a concept commonly used to measure people’s relationships and interpersonal networks—but the physical conditions that determine whether social capital develops (2018, 5).” His argument extends to things like benches, parkettes, and corner grocers—all seemingly mundane elements that actually play a significant role in determining how people move about their city or suburb, and whether they connect with neighbourhood friends and strangers. This he says, “is especially important for children, the elderly, and other people whose limited mobility or lack of autonomy binds them to the places where they live (2018, 14).”[2]

For those to whom Osborne’s Safeway only serves to stock their fridge, it remains functional. For those who rely on the few cafe seats inside to socialize with friends, tap into the Internet, or conduct small business meetings, the pandemic’s shutdown has profound effect. Undoubtedly, the acute dangers of COVID-19 are loss of life, health, or income. Nonetheless, it also imposes long-term consequences on people’s ability to access and maintain vital interpersonal relationships and networks. News media reports broadly on the ways this pandemic makes apparent and deepens existing health and economic disparities.[3] Similarly, unequal access to social infrastructure limits people’s ability to weather adversity with resilience.

Still, people continue to seek social connection amid difficult circumstance, even on the margin of Safeway’s property. For now, the hubbub that once surrounded Tim Hortons’ kiosk has moved outdoors, defiantly occupying the line of benches that divide Safeway’s parking lot from River Avenue. Seniors, young folks, both those seemingly housed and unhoused, all meet to check in—sometimes for hours—and care for one another during an uncertain time. That people continue to meet, mostly six feet apart, on either end of conveniently sized benches is not particularly surprising. However, it is surprising that, of all places, this line of benches has become a beacon of social connection.

Safeway built its benches as part of a packaged redevelopment deal in 2004. These were not so much an offer of seating but an easement designed to appease. The land consolidation, demolition, and rezoning required to pull off the deal was not without neighbourhood debate. It took four years to win the resolve of concerned citizen groups through concessions, not so much to the meat of the intended expansion—which largely stayed the same—but to the arrangement and furnishings of the surrounding masterplan. 

The benches were an important element that secured approval, with City Council minutes underscoring how the “additional benches and column elements [placed] along River Avenue [would] provide for a more meaningful street interface.”[4] This brick and concrete colonnade evokes a linear neo-ruin, the totality of which terminates in a plaza at River and Osborne. There, an opening is made into a place by the luxury of decorative pavers and the enclosure of surrounding commercial units. A liquor mart, wireless shop, and Starbucks hug the focal of this common: curved benches encircling a tree. 

Most design firms wax poetic about the intent and inspirations behind their work, yet seldom champion what else informs design; namely building codes and zoning requirements. These regulations aim to ensure safety, and order the division of public and private space and responsibility. Deep in Winnipeg zoning by-laws, Section 190.9 of Part 5: Development and Design Standards - Parking and Loading dictates the requirements for every new accessory parking unit, including fence height, bordering requirements, shrub and tree quotas.[5] These ordered legislations structure our experiences of the built world. They are generally to public benefit when developed under democratic systems that care for shared interests. Though inevitably, even when well intentioned, institutional directives bear the weight of historic and ongoing power inequities and biases. Systems of design and care structure these conditions into the very fabric of our lives. 

Take, for instance, the shape of Safeway’s delineating benches. More than anything, this seating is a regulatory instrument. Though dressed as public seating, the benches also serve as physical buffers between careening motor vehicles and pedestrians, and the division of one kind of property from another. To know this sheds light on why it took a pandemic for people to ever sit here regularly. This is not a desirable place to be. Positioned along Safeway’s lot, the benches act as decorative bollards, towing a line deeply worked into the landscape. It is a delineation furrowed by centuries of parcelling land into property. From barbed wire cattle fences, to white picketed lawns, to supermarket parking lots, claims to land ownership and private and public rights rely on containment and division. How strange to position a place for gathering tottered on this divide. 

This divide is, however, not so strange when recognized as a fence—a barrier to people and a demarcation of property. As places to gather are now scarce and the act of doing so a risk, the benches are at last acting not only as a fence but are in actual use—and to a degree far beyond any civic planners’ best projected fantasy. Make no mistake, this is not all good planning and design. The benches’ current popularity is realized by Safeway’s turned eye, coupled with people’s self-determination to forge connection in the worst of circumstances. What makes this sliver of social infrastructure functional, for the time being, is not design but rather people’s resolve to be in community—to enact community—despite real risks.  

Budget-starved municipalities everywhere increasingly rely on large private developments, like Safeway’s, to provide infrastructure for public use. Without a doubt, governments should hold landholders to task, insisting they offset their private gains with provisions for public benefit. Although, in instances where the bulk of responsibility for public space is relinquished, so too is the ability to determine what kinds of publics are given access. This model of public-private partnership largely enabled Osborne Village’s swift pandemic response, underscoring why its urbanism shines in this moment. Certainly, the ease with which this neighbourhood closed up shop benefits general public health. Yet the flipside of such blunt mitigating action is that its effects are specific, with reverberating heightened risk only borne by some.

Not long ago, the sidewalk lined by Safeway’s benches would be perennially cast with sandwich-bagged orange peels. For some months these have been scarce. Since the pandemic hit, emergency food shelters in Osborne Village and elsewhere—the neighbourhood institutions that hand out bagged fruit—are offering limited or inconsistent service or are shuttered. It is one thing to observe the curious shifts in how people use public space in a post-pandemic world, but wholly another to focus attention on the countless unseen ways it wreaks dire consequence on people’s lives. Unless there is a desire to be unmoved by the pandemic’s turmoil, we ought to recognize the ways in which individual experiences of the same places have always been consequentially different. Public infrastructure does—and should be designed—to support the needs of diverse publics simultaneously.

Now six months into a global pandemic, initial shock has waned. Supermarket essentials have been restocked, the temporary hazard or “hero” pay for Safeway’s essential workers has been rescinded, and some plaza chairs and tables have returned—initially as bring-your-own fold-outs, before Starbuck’s formally followed suit.[6] As we live through this time, we all experience the effects differently. Yet as we react to this rearranged reality, might we realize that the privilege to ground oneself, to be tethered to community, is offered unequally now, as it has always been?

To envision a future where pandemics and other catastrophes may be weathered more equitably, we must recognize how provisions for certain comforts and livelihoods can, and do, displace the comforts and wellbeing of others. It means that those afforded safety and security and a neighbourhood that meets their needs must consider easing certain strongholds in order to alleviate the burdens placed on others. It likely means vacating a seat—or whole systemic structures—so that others may take up rightful place in a world rearranged.

References

[1]  Canadian Planners Institute, Canada’s Great Palaces Contest: Neighbourhood Category, 2012. 

[2]  Klinenberg, Eric. Palaces for People: How Social Infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life. New York, Crown Publishing Group, 2018.

[3]  Wherry, Aaron. “One country, two pandemics: what COVID-19 reveals about inequality in Canada.” CBC News, 13 June 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-cerb-unemployment-1.5610404

[4] City of Winnipeg. Executive Policy Committee. Minutes of Report on Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development, June 8, 2004: Item No.9 Subdivision and Rezoning - 499 River Avenue File DASZ 1/2004 [c/r DAC 5/2004]. Minute No. 390. 16 June 2004. 2132.

[5]  City of Winnipeg. Section 190.9 of Part 5: Development and Design Standards - Parking and Loading. Winnipeg Zoning By-Law No. 200/2006. 23 July 2020. 135-139.

[6] Chase, Steven. “Grocery executives defend decision to cut $2-per hour ‘hero’ pay for workers.” The Globe and Mail, 10 July 2020. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-grocery-executives-defend-decision-to-cut-covid-19-pay-premiums-for/

Abigail Auld is an architectural writer and curator interested in the way histories are embodied in human-altered environments. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory, and participated in the WriteON 2020 workshop session.  

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