Ape Rifle

Istanbul is not a city designed for the automobile, to say the least. With its dense, old urban fabric and hilly geography, you could almost imagine the first settlers musing to themselves, “gee, this place is going to be a real scene after the invention of the combustion engine”. And what a scene it has become all these years later, like so many other massive urban beasts the world over, with millions of vehicles bursting the city’s seams.

Steep, narrow and winding roads become major thoroughfares with a predictable outcome- a performance of narrow misses, precarious turns, grinding brakes and puzzle-like gridlock. While attending an event with a rooftop terrace overlooking just such a street, I was treated to hours of vehicular contorsion.

5:35pm

When there is open road in Istanbul, only one option is available: go fast. Forget that there is most likely someone right around the corner.

5:55pm

Traffic starts to build up in both directions thanks to cars parked in a rather unfortunate place.

7:28pm

Things get dicey as cars coming in opposite directions start to block each other from turning. Cue blocked lanes up and down the road in both directions.

7:46pm

Lots of close calls and gear grinding gets the traffic flowing.

11:08pm

A big van gets involved and really starts causing trouble. At this point several people got out of their cars to direct traffic and walk further down the road to tell people to back up and make space.

11:14pm

The big van continues its attempts to escape this nefarious corner. Some people get out of their taxi for a breather while they wait.

With springtime this year returns a particular type of seasonal frenzy: the Montreal Canadiens, darlings of the city and local media obsession, are in the NHL playoffs. In a place where the terms ‘hockey’ and ‘civic pride’ are often interchangeable, Montrealers have responded in a flurry of excitement and anticipation. Even the police, traditionally wary of such times thanks to infamous hockey-fueled riots (see 1955, 1986 and 1993), have made their peace with the fans by sporting Canadiens flags on their cruisers. Just like many taxis, and a decent percentage of vehicles in the city.

The Canadiens in the playoffs aren’t just the talk of the town: they are the town. Social calendars revolve around game nights, and the landscape is noticeably more bleu, blanc et rouge. The acoustics inside the Bell Centre, the team’s arena, are rarely below a deafening roar. Beer is still unbelievably overpriced, the in-game light-and-sound show designed for suffers of attention deficit disorder is as ingratiating as ever- but no one cares. Attention is focused on the drama playing out on the ice. The goalie of the Boston Bruins, who have the current misfortune of being on the wrong end of Montreal fans’ energy, equated his appearance at Montreal’s temple of hockey with being like a gladiator. Thankfully, these days you only get killed by the media and jeers as opposed to your opponent’s blade.

Worship of the Canadiens is perhaps so strong because of hockey’s power of unification. In a city so traditionally divided by linguistics and political allegiances, here is something that everyone can get behind with no questions asked. The storied history of the team has provided common legends for all Montrealers to consider their own- English, French or otherwise. This year’s crop of players have a particularly Russian flavour. Much more so than the vapid corporate nonsense of the Olympics, here’s an example of the power of sport and spectacle to transcend societal divisions. Rich? Poor? Federalist? Separatist? Doctor? Truck Driver? All are glued to a screen or their seats, ready to burst forth in celebration or, alternatively, in brutal cursing of the referee. It takes quite the stodgy curmudgeon not to get caught up in this hockey fever.

It has been oft argued that nationalism has replaced Catholicism as Quebec’s dominant religion, but to this I would add that hockey is equally carrying the weight of spirituality in this post-Christian society. And if the Canadiens are the deity of choice in these parts, then this is the holy season. And what is fueling this faith? The belief that, in a league hijacked by marketing and American sunbelt cities with indifferent fans, hockey’s ultimate prize might just return to its true home.

There is no getting around it: Montreal in early spring is a messy place. The thick blanket of white that smothers the city during the dark winter months pulls back to reveal a wide variety of discarded trash, soaking on wet sidewalks and covered in the residual rock salt of de-icing efforts. The roadways are battered and cracked, the mud of construction sites and vacant lots leaking out onto them and into cavernous potholes. Many street corners remain lakes over which pedestrians must jump, and snowbanks decay into an attractive shade of brown or exhaust black. The temperature rises, to be sure, but people remain weary and slightly on edge, not yet convinced that blinding snowfalls are a things of the past. In this part of the world, winter often says goodbye with a massive spring blizzard. How considerate.

Needless to say, at this time of year the city does not look its best. A massive proportion of Montreal’s built environment now dates from the mid-20th century, when concrete was king and grey and brown were de rigueur. Soggy weather brings out the worst aspects of this discarded architectural style, sucking the colour out of the landscape and leaving a residue of marred roads and brutal buildings. Thankfully, the passage of time brings forth a blast of sunlight and a return to the world of colour.

Passing by the street corner pictured above, I couldn’t help but read a scene full of meaning. On a superficial level, the billboard is typical in that it reflects the impossible fantasies of salvation through real estate, in which gorgeous conceptual renditions never quite match the resulting physical structure. Reality has that annoying habit of being slightly messier.

On a more symbolic level, this image spoke to me as a declaration of springtime and renewal, not only in terms of weather but for this particular corner of the city. It has long been populated by concrete, decay and idles spaces devoid of activity outside of the summer Jazz Festival onslaught. As neighbourhoods go, this one around Place-des-Arts (a major performing arts complex) has excelled as a void, a complete hole between busier and more lively parts of the city’s core. Urban change at its scarring worst, one could say.

Montreal is trying to change all this. Having re-baptized the area as the Quartier des Spectacles, the city has revved up some ambitious renewal plans of the usual kind, in which North American cities have nowhere else to turn but permanent spectacle, tourism and nebulous ‘cultural’ industries. A long neglected urban splace has thus sprouted colourful fencing and construction sites, including the condominium tower above. With a minimal amount of fanfare, chunks of the city are changing drastically. Like winter begrudgingly giving way to spring, this bleak landscape of empty lots and bunker bank towers could regain both colour and, more importantly, some vitality.

But as with spring, there is always the possibility of that massive blizzard rolling in to spoil the fun. A prolonged economic mess in North America, a political flare-up at the provincial level of the kind that ravages Montreal’s optimism, a development approach that transforms all space into playgrounds for the wealthy- the sources of weariness are many. But as it is with the arrival of every spring, hope springs forth; amidst the dirty snow and mangled infrastructure, people sense the sun is truly and finally coming. Hopefully, the same can be said for the fortunes of this fair city.

Mr. Spielberg’s much publicized about-face regarding his participation in Beijing’s upcoming summer spectacle is a media dream come true, a potent attention-grabbing mix of Hollywood celebrity, African misery and Chinese power. Coming soon after a similarly themed mini-scandal in Britain, this development bodes ill for the host government, so intent on keeping this sporting circus framed solely through the prism of smiling pandas and dancing ethnic minorities. As the usual activists get fired up by the renewed publicity of their cause(s), it could be a long and laborious run-up to August for internet censors in the Middle Kingdom. 

It is, perhaps, unfair that Beijing is singled out for its amoral pursuit of black gold via tainted regimes when numerous other nations undertake similarly unsavory ventures in other, less publicized locales. With so many bloody hands on the international stage, it is difficult to even fathom the number of boycotts that, in an ideal world, would grind to a halt any major transnational gathering in 2008. After all, Mr. Spielberg’s native land has in recent years invaded (and continues to occupy) another nation in an unprovoked attack. Post-Soviet Russia has spent a good amount of its time and energy reducing Chechnya to rubble. Canada, with its rapid development of the carbon-suicide oil sands in Alberta, could feasibly be accused of grave crimes, albeit of a more environmental nature.

While it is highly questionable whether international politics should entangle sporting events, Beijing has nevertheless managed to shoot itself quite squarely in the foot in this instance. Its calls for an ‘apolitical’ event fall on disbelieving ears since it has effectively made the hosting of this two-week sporting event a defining element of its own agenda. Its messages of sports unity and non-interfere translate, beyond Chinese borders, into “if anyone is going to play these games for political gain, it’s damn well going to be us”. When you play with hubris, you have to expect to get burnt. Position the Games as a flexing of your muscles, and those who disapprove of your actions (for reasons founded or unfounded) will seek to humble you. This is not rocket science.

Beyond this debate, however, lies a much deeper and more disturbing question: what was Spielberg doing as an artistic advisor to the Beijing Games in the first place?I have trouble believe the organizers of these games imagined the ideal opening or closing ceremony to resemble a Universal Studios theme park, with dinosaurs crashing about or an aging Harrison Ford being chased into the Bird’s Nest by a boulder. A segment about Munich, perhaps? Tom Hanks carrying in the torch dressed in vintage WWII GI gear or, dare I say it, Zhang Ziyi in full geisha attire? 

A culture as rich and spectacular as the Chinese should not need recourse to the talents of an American blockbuster king to throw together a few song-and-dance routines. Evidently the whole affair smells of a publicity stunt, albeit one now gone wrong. That the Chinese organizers felt they needed a recognized celebrity from a foreign land to add some credibility to their party plans reveals a rising giant that is still insecure in its own skin, an awkward teenager on a growth spurt that craves approval. Unaware of its own attractive qualities, China seeks to imitate the popular kids in the hope of fitting in. Enter Rem Koolhaus, Sir Foster and the usual suspects to play off this for the sake of realizing their wildest architectural fantasies. 

And I, for one, find this extremely unfortunate. The Chinese have so much to offer in their people, history and culture, but it is questionable whether any of this will truly be on display come August. The need to impress at all costs long ago gained primacy over such humble considerations. And so visitors should be forgiven for any confusion when they encounter Chinese culture  as a haphazard collection of berserk architectural monoliths designed by Europeans. At the very least, however, they can now be relieved that a mechanical Jaws will not be attacking the opening ceremony.   

In urban Canada, the pervasive use of heavy-duty vehicles stems mostly from environmentally destructive ego-tripping as opposed to any actual utility in road navigation. The proverbial marketing image of an SUV climbing steeply up the Rockies reveals itself to be utter nonsense when, in reality, said machines spend the majority of their lifetimes cruising well-paved expressways and idling in expansive parking lots. As a result, I suspect such vehicles are now designed to be little more than big and shiny- a suspicion brought about by the observation of such vehicles having just as much a propensity to get stuck in snow as their much smaller, car-like counterparts. The ‘utility’ aspect of SUV has grown largely meaningless and, judging by the girth of our waistlines, so has the ’sport’.

In the northern reaches of Mozambique around Pemba, however,  a whole other reality was to be found. To describe the road network there as rudimentary would be to erroneously imply that the rough dirt tracks which comprised the vast majority of it could be considered roads at all. Two lonely single-lane paved highways served the region’s sparse road traffic, the only chance at a journey in which one’s backside was not irreparably damaged. Unfortunately, these oases of pavement where often only the very start or end of a long journey: to get to most villages involved the lengthy navigation of cratered dirt tracks, many of which were further obliterated during the heavy summer rainfalls. The infrastructural engineering feats of industrial humanity have yet to encroach on this space, and the landscape still dictates, often limiting, the scope of human movement. There was nothing unusual about spending several hours to travel a mere 20-30km. 

Pemba, as the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, was somewhat of a diamond in the rough in this regard. Isolated on the tip of a peninsula by an enormous bay, its old colonial core had a small network of paved streets on which travelled the town’s traffic of motorcycles, scooters, pickup trucks, battered sedans and beaten up chapas (the Mozambican version of the globally ubiquitous private minivan service, complete with East Asian characters still painted on their sides). The main road stretched from the old port through the town centre, past the airport and down the peninsula and out onto the mainland (where it became one of the two cherished paved highways). A half-hearted police checkpoint left over from more tumultuous times marked, quite literally, the boundary between this small pocket of urban bustle and the vast interior beyond. 

Under these conditions, heavy-duty 4X4 vehicles were not symbols of conspicuous consumption gone awry but rather essential tools to anyone in the business of semi-serious road travel. In and around Pemba, that consisted in no small part of NGOs, international development agencies and government ministries- in fact, most vehicles in town apart from the white sedan taxis and chapas had some manner of logo, national flag or donor agency name plastered on their doors and bumpers. One was never in doubt that ‘development’ was one of the major employers and key industries in the area, for better or worse, populating the roads with shiny Japanese pickup trucks (the Land Cruiser being a particular favourite).

The organization I worked with had its own small fleet of such vehicles, manned by a dedicated team of pothole-hardened drivers. They were responsible for the driving on all field trips, generally trying to maximize speed and distance covered while minimizing bodily injury. They were a friendly, talkative lot (as drivers always are, it would seem), laughing and chatting away while honking some poor unsuspecting cyclist into the roadside brush in a cloud of dust. My experiences of the road in Mozambique consisted largely of sitting in the passenger seat as these men worked their magic over potholes and around ditches.

Of course, the roads in this region were not all fun and games. For reasons that an economic geographer could better explain, the roads passed right through the heart of villages, or alternatively created village clusters as people erected their huts on the side to sell firewood, warm Cokes and faded David Beckham t-shirts. This caused a particular problem when it came to the two paved highways in the region, however, as they played a risky dual role as high-speed thoroughfare and residential pedestrian street. It was a semi-regular occurrence for high speed travel along the lonely highway to turn a corner into a pseudo-market taking place on and across the roadway at a crucial road junction. The preferred response? Lots of honking and a number of leaping people, goats and chickens. 

Unfortunately- but unsurprisingly -in these conditions, pedestrian road fatalities were slowly becoming part and parcel of the scene in the area. On one particular field trip, the vehicle in which I was traveling had reached a central junction (’central’ in these parts meaning a cluster of huts and shacks made from mud, wood and grass) when we were waved down by the police. I thought we were being randomly controlled as part of the profitable enterprise that is law enforcement in such places. Instead, the police chatted calming with the driver and the next thing I knew a few uniformed officers had hopped in the flatbed of the truck and we were back on our way. They weren’t pulling us over- we were giving them a lift! I felt that particular sense of bemusement possible only when one finds themselves witnessing the culturally surreal in a foreign land, the perfect fodder for laughs and nostalgia over drinks with friends at a later time and another place.

My sense of bemusement waned when I learned the purpose of these hitch-hiking cops. Not being up to scratch in high-speed Portuguese, I caught next to none of the conversation that led to our vehicle doubling as a police cruiser. A co-worker along for the ride, however, humoured me and explained what was going on. There had been an accident in one of the village down the road, and the police officers were needed at the scene- but they had no way of getting there (perhaps their vehicle and/or fuel was being used for decidedly non-official purposes at the time by someone else, which was nothing out of the ordinary). They had asked the driver if he could give them a lift to the scene of the crime, because we were heading that way anyways.

The police knew of the accident, I learned, because the driver involved had told them about it as he passed through the junction where we had picked them up. Apparently, the man had hit someone on his way through a village, but had not stopped for fear of being attacked by the angry residents. So he continued on and duly informed the officers at the next police post. What became of this driver I never found out, but my guess is he went undisturbed on his way.

A little while later, our vehicle slowed as we approached the village in question. There was a crowd gathered on the road side, comprised of everyone from the village elders to the usual mischievous toddlers with wild hair. It was not uncommon for a vehicle passing through a village to cause a certain amount of waving and shrieking on the part of the younger residents- I’m sure foreign faces passing at high speed can be exciting when you are a kid. Within this crowd, however, there was little sense of welcome. The people were not hostile, but neither were they warm. Instead a cold hush seemed to permeate the scene, with people’s eyes exhibiting tension and uncertainty. As we stopped, I saw the source of their consternation.

In the middle of the road lay the victim of the high-speed accident, deceased and peacefully draped with a blanket. The small outlined shape was that of a child. 

The police officers hoped out of the back of the pickup truck and thanked our driver for the lift. The eyes of the village were fixed on our vehicle and the white faces inside it, and a combination of unease and guilt started to wash over me. Guilt for what? I’m not really sure, to this day. But in that particular instance anything and everything that had to do with development and privilege somehow felt responsible. The sort of privilege that values those able to travel by car over those trying to scrape an existence out of selling wood on the roadside, or toiling all day in fields of maize. 

Before the situation could even begin to sink in, we were off on our way. Our pickup truck, sporting shiny agency logos and a donor country flag or two, took off back into the dirt, leaving behind the dead child to an angry village in mourning. They couldn’t leave the mortality behind with a shift of gears and a cloud of dust- my surreal memory of a transient event was their much more permanent tragedy. 

Despite my best efforts to immerse myself in my current Canadian environment, my mind often wanders back to my life on the beach in Mozambique. Ok, not literally on the beach- but still no more than a ten minute cab ride (or, when feeling more adventurous, a forty minute walk) away. I spent eight months enjoying such a state of affairs, and finding myself now in the midst of a far more northern winter it is not surprising that I still long for those days now many months past. Having a remote stretch of tropical African coastline at your doorstep is rarely a bad thing, and its absence becomes slightly more conspicuous when battling cold winds on the evening streets of a darkened North American downtown. 

Of course, as it always goes with such experiences, the mind has a tendency to retain the beautiful while muting the more troublesome. Life in Pemba, like anywhere else, had its good and bad sides. The positives are both easy to list off and hard to forget: a stunning tropical setting, a pace of life that redefined relaxed and a people whose warmth and joie de vivre never let on that the country had been in brutal conflict for the better part of the past thirty years. On the negative side, the slow pace and isolation could be stifling from both a personal and professional perspective, leaving one to feel cut off from the ebbs and flows of the wider world.

And then there was the ever-present threat of malaria. In my case, at least, the suspense didn’t last very long- I got it two weeks after arriving there. While that might seem morbidly humorous in retrospect, I don’t recall being particularly amused at the time. Actually, I mostly just remember sitting in the back of a pickup truck, sipping on a warm bottled soft drink as vintage Snoop Dogg drifted out of the speakers and I waited to find out if my fevered delirium was indeed mosquito-related.

Good or bad, the memorable aspects of Pemba were most often to be found in the raw state of both landscape and the human condition in such a place. If modern China is what you get when a money-drunk developmental state tries to order and polish every square inch of land (with decidedly mixed results), then northern Mozambique is far on the other side of that scale: a place where government, regulation and industrial commerce barely register on the radar. In this environment, where people’s capacity to manufacture landscapes is to be found somewhere between extremely limited and non-existent, events which would seem shocking in other more heavily ordered places emerged as normal occurrences, woven into the fabric of the raw tropical landscape.

One such event took place on a weekday sometime in the fall of 2006, when I found myself not at work but at the beach, thanks to a holiday afforded by one of Mozambique’s numerous revolutionary, independence and peace treaty commemorations. Going to the beach on such a day was sheer relaxation, as it was guaranteed to be largely devoid of anyone (Pemba’s main beach-going day was Sunday, when the whole city would descend on the same strip of sand in a cacophony of football games, laughter and cart-wheeling children). The main strip of sand, Wimbe, was touristy in the same way that Pemba can be considered a city- very tenuously. It consisted of a single stretch of small holiday bungalows , a few restaurants and a beach disco- all slightly overgrown around the edges and sporting the strange look of Portuguese colonial architecture (and considering how long the Portuguese stayed, think 1970s concrete modernism, not 19th century).

On that particular afternoon, I found myself immersed in the regular seaside routine of reading, loafing and tropical daydreaming. As per usual, some of the familiar faces were to be seen: co-workers, local and expat foreign aid/development staff, old Portuguese-Mozambican businessmen, government officials, South African bush pilots and perhaps a Cuban doctor or two. This ensemble could also include young Christian evangelicals from southern American states, doling out free ice cream to recruit fresh young souls (I suspect the latter were looking for sweets rather than God). Throw in the occasional cross-Africa backpackers, and you had quite the motley crew of individuals. 

The day was shaping up to be relaxing in an ultimately forgettable sort of way; with the heat of the sun and the hum of the surf, mental activity was at a bare minimum. Collapsed on a chair under a parasol, sometime in between sipping on a Sprite and pretending to read, I managed to look up.

And to my surprise, I saw a crowd of people gathered on the beach. That wasn’t so normal.

The crowd was animated and had its attention turned towards the ocean. At first I struggled to see the source of the commotion, and then I noticed two men swimming towards the shore quite powerfully, dragging something behind them just under the surface. Small boats often loaded and unloaded in the waters just off the beach, with the crew wading back and forth through the water with goods, so I wasn’t quite sure why this particular instance was causing such a scene.

And then the two swimmers emerged from the waves with a corpse in tow.

The crowd moved quickly to surround the bloated body, looking on as if this was merely an abnormally large fish lying on the sand before them. The patrons of the restaurant bar alongside me started to stir, murmur and get up for a better look, roused out of their tropical beach daze. “Must have been a fisherman who fell off his boat in the bay”, someone said, “it looks like he’s been out there a while”.

As the large majority of us stood around rather dumbstruck, someone took the expected course of action and alerted the police. In Pemba, however, it was questionable what exactly that would accomplish: police officers spent the huge majority of their time manning profitable traffic checkpoints, strolling along the beach or standing guard in front of their station with rusty-looking AK-47s. Their baggy, ill-fitting uniforms gave off an air of earnest ineptitude- I highly doubt they received the funding or training necessary to make them more than a casual presence on the town streets (well, when they weren’t confiscating scooters or shooting up suspects, that is).

A few police officers eventually showed up on the scene, but they mostly managed to just stand around looking as befuddled as the rest of us. Unsure of what to do with the dead body, they eventually moved on to the more routine police task: dispersing the crowd with an air of authority. In the midst of it, someone got a hold of a a canvas sheet and covered up the corpse. There was more discussion and standing around on the part of the authorities, but eventually they moved on and left. They didn’t take the body with them. 

With the departure of the police and the dissipation of the crowd, things drifted back into the normal state of affairs. People chatted, sipped on a beer or went for a dip in the warmth of the Indian Ocean. The beach hawkers moved on, bringing their large display boxes of chocolates and sweets with them. A few children ran around laughing and playing in the sand, already oblivious to the covered corpse a few feet away. The sun beat down as usual, and the midday stillness of the tropics was settling back in. I returned to reading, or maybe writing- or most probably daydreaming in a half-awake state. The harsh heat of Pemba had a way of minimizing shock and muting reaction.

But whenever I looked up from my reverie, the picture-perfect tropical scenery upon which so many holiday myths are built included this ghost on the sand, this quiet human casualty of the seas. While it would be tempting to twist this event into an allegory about how all was not well in paradise, I cannot do so- all was in fact quite normal in paradise, the good with the bad in life and death.

The body was still on the beach when I left much later that afternoon.   

Cape Town, South Africa, March 2007

Montreal’s urban form, like many other North American cities, is been affected by two major forces of change. The first is suburbanization, a defining element of the 20th century so analyzed and debated that it needs no further discussion in these pages. The second is the gentrification of inner-city neighbourhoods, a process which has transformed many a derelict warehouse on this continent over the past twenty years or so. The latter, in particular, has hit a fever pitch in these parts, with long-standing vacant lots suddenly devoured by high-rise concrete skeletons and neglected post-industrial neighbourhoods being lined up for China-style radical transformation.  Add to this yet another large-scale project to overhaul one of the downtown area’s more lifeless sections, and you’d think the city was serious about dealing with its urban blunders of the 20th century (forgetting for a second that it was exactly these sorts of large-scale grands projets that got us in trouble in the first place).

The other day, however, a long walk in search of some picture frames led me through a stretch of Montreal’s urban fabric that has yet to experience either story of dynamic change. It was a landscape I have seen in many North American cities (particularly older ones in the northeast US and eastern Canada), a spatial no man’s land lost between the density of the central city and the mall-serviced sub-divisions of the suburban periphery. These are the areas not conveniently located enough to be a target for gentrification, yet way too engrained in the concrete urban fabric to be considered by those seeking suburban delights. They have seen scant construction or upgrading since the middle of last century, but are hardly abandoned- these are the forgotten landscapes, the negative infrastructural spaces in between areas that people want to be.

Often, these landscapes are a strange mix of industrial detritus from a bygone era, service garages and U-Haul lots. Space here is filled with low-rise sheds and cracked-pavement parking lots, and mostly devoid of people and life. Urban negative space is like the storage area for North American industrial society, its aging backbone that no one wants to see: train tracks and expressways, old warehouses, bargain furniture stores, ugly motels and graffiti-covered remnants of loading docks. Buildings here are cheaply built, purely functional, with an aesthetic that has decayed along with the passage of time since the 1970s. This negative space is unnerving in that it reveals the growing age of the ‘new world’, reminding us North Americans just how much of our urban space has been devoted to the needs of gritty logistics and throwaway commerce- the physical embodiments of which have not necessarily aged well since their heyday.

Wandering in such a space on a cold Sunday in November, it is difficult not to feel a certain quiet malaise, a sense of a society that is obliviously easing itself into an age of decline. Amidst the twisted metal fences overgrown with weeds, the idle boxcars and the fading billboards, contemplation of our great industrial experiment is all but essential. And out of it comes a fear that through our long-standing thirst for production and consumption, we have produced vast swathes of disposable built environment barely worth remembering.

Last June, a particularly interesting piece of news came and went without much fanfare: those who concern themselves with such things estimated that, sometime during the next year, humanity would become a majority urban species for the first time in its history. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this milestone slipped by largely unnoticed, little more than a flash in the carnival of endless distractions that comprise our modern airwaves. The media rule of thumb seems to be that the less trivial a matter is, the less attention it receives- hence the amount of coverage devoted to inconsequential personal details in the American presidential perma-campaign, or the latest exploits of spoiled brats misspending their fifteen minutes of fame.

So in this time when long attention spans are de facto discouraged, it is tempting to dismiss this urban majority estimate as just another tidbit in a sea of information, filed under “Did you know?” alongside sports trivia and tech gadget statistics. I would argue, however, that this news deserves a different fate, one in which it is given more thought and consideration. It is one thing to casually acknowledge that more people might now live in cities than rural areas, but another to truly contemplate what this means and how this might affect the course of our species in the long-term.

Granted, an initial difficulty with this contemplation lies in the arbitrary definitions of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. In such a complex and fluid world, is this division even relevant? As anyone who has spent time navigating the endless and ill-defined fringes of a mega-city could tell you, it is perhaps no longer even physically identifiable in many areas. On a conceptual level, then, the terms are left open enough for those who use them to do as they please: in China, for example, some ‘cities’ are in fact geographically vast regions comprising large rural areas where residents are ‘urban’ by legal fiat only.

And related to this is the tricky subject of rural-to-urban migration: when are rural migrants to the city considered urban? How are they counted? What if they spend some years in the city but ultimately go back to rural homes? Can they be considered urban and rural? It is quite possible, likely even, that the fluidity of social networks and migrant patterns render problematic any academic attempts to fit people into neatly defined spatial boxes.

Despite these somewhat semantic difficulties, it remains that large-scale urbanization as a force of change is one of the most important stories of our time. To expand on this, it is important to note at this point that a rural/urban divide should not be understood in any narrow physical sense (which leads to the problems mentioned above), but rather as a fundamental difference in lifestyle. A move from a rural, agrarian existence to an urbanized, industrial life is, above all, an escape from direct toil of the land. In the most rudimentary of rural environments, people survive through their own direct agricultural efforts; in any urban setting, people survive by accumulating virtual wealth that gives them claim to food and resources. The latter condition places urbanity at the very heart of industrial modernity as it is so often understood today: this reliance on complex production systems is considered advanced, while direct reliance on working the land is considered backwards.

Standard of living measures that are tossed around by governments and development agencies alike are, after all, doing little more than measuring the extent to which a society or region has urbanized itself (ie removed itself from direct toil of the land and built up complex industrial systems which can be understood through statistics). So as people the world over strive for a better life, it should come as no surprise that this process manifests itself as urbanization; after all, the very concept of the good life as many understand it today is inescapably urban, which is perhaps why the visualization of wealth is so often tied to city skylines. Perhaps also why informal urban settlements the world over swell ever more with new arrivals.

But enough of the academic meandering and back to the main point of inquiry: what can we expect from a humanity that is now in the majority off the land and seeking survival in an urban context? I believe we will see the growth of two related paradoxes- the first involving the environment and the second involving political stability and personal freedoms.

Regarding the environment, an increasingly urban humanity will be more mentally detached than ever from its reliance on the natural world- unfortunately, this at a time when our impact on the planet will be greater than ever. As people move from direct reliance on agriculture to indirect survival based on the accumulation of money, this drives the growth of complex industrial systems, be they transportation, commercial or utilities. Agriculture, somehow, just becomes another industry, no more or less than others.

So as these systems grow so complex that people can survive by trading financial derivatives or selling digital music, the reality that our whole existence is still based on the fruits of agriculture gets lost in a haze of economics and post-industrial drivel. Unfortunately, our physical impact on the land is as real as ever- it’s just that the urban human is less conditioned to understand its implications. Rather, we obsess with the survival of our industrial systems (the art of economics) as if they were self-contained entities disconnected from environmental limitations. And I fear that despite all the talk of environmentalism these days, the continued urbanization of humanity will only accentuate this trend with unforeseen consequences.

This development has significant implications, as all good environmental trends do, deeper inside the social and political fabric- and this brings us to the second paradox. While much is said about the freedom and vitality of cities and the opportunity they offer compared to agrarian life, what is less mentioned is that urbanization is also a process of disempowerment. A city dweller, unlike someone who can directly grow the means to their survival, relies completely on systems and services to provide for them. And for many, this is fine if not ideal- but only because they are well positioned to benefit and/or control these systems. In the dreamscape of development economists everywhere, this is the end state of paradise- everyone a productive, happy industrial consumer with the whole machine humming along nicely.

Of course, reality has a nasty tendency of getting in the way. The urban modernist dream falls apart with the realization that a transfer from an agrarian to an urban lifestyle does not always result in a nice condo with family trips to the mall. In many cases, it can mean a squalid existence in harsh slums, an urban density devoid of the services that are supposed to accompany it. This is detachment from the land as a means of survival, but without the access to the services or virtual wealth (ie money) that are supposed to replace it.

It isn’t much of a stretch from here to imagine, then, how increased urbanization might result in increased unrest and political stability. As agrarian beings, we associated our survival with nature- the quality of the soil, the constancy of rainfall, the scourge of floods or droughts. We were completely in God’s hands, so to speak- it is quite difficult to argue with a cloud, for example. As urban beings, however, we associate our survival with man-made systems (which, to be said, operate quite poorly if at all in many parts of the world). In this context, it is much easier to blame failures on governments, municipalities, corporations, etc. With mass urbanization, states are quick to grasp at the benefits- industrial development, large labour pools – without, perhaps, truly comprehending that they’ll take the brunt of the blame when large numbers of people feel the system doesn’t provide.

And, finally, this is why increased urbanization has the potential to lead to stricter state control at the very same time as it causes unrest and political instability. Just as those who are utterly disempowered and yet find themselves in dense urban environments will need to be contained, the industrial infrastructure that services the fortunate will need to be protected. When the ability to survive of the fortunate urban citizenry depends on the integrity of industrial systems (be they physical such as transportation or virtual such as finance), their protection against acts of terrorism and/or civil unrest becomes paramount.

In places where the large majority of urbanites are net benefactors of these industrial systems, this will be accepted without much thought or question- for example, think of the boom in CCTV surveillance in Western cities with London leading the way. As more people join the complex structure of the urban world, the more people need to be catalogued, counted and monitored. In places where huge majorities of urbanites are excluded from these systems, while at the same time increasingly depending on them, reaction is likely take on more violent undertones. One sure way to ferment protest is to strip people of their self-reliance and provide little or nothing in return- whether in the historically deprived urban townships of South Africa or the rural land gobbling industrial frenzy in China.

So detachment from the environment will deepen as the need to address our impact on it grows, and the potential for unrest is matched by the prospect of greater state control. I am not attempting here to romanticize the rural lifestyle; but rather, to temper the frothy narrative of economic miracles and growing skylines with the realization that there are some serious implications to urbanization. As more people than ever search for the good life in an urban landscape, it is important to contemplate what could happen if they find little more than exclusion and a denser version of the misery they left behind. As the human condition becomes increasingly defined by an urban lifestyle, as a majority of us come to rely on man-made systems for survival, it becomes ever more important that these systems be inclusive. Unfortunately, considering our current track record, this hasn’t exactly been a strong point in our evolution as a species.

Having recently committed myself to office-bound employment in a nondescript Montreal office tower, it’s little surprise that I’ve been struggling with the occasional bout of wanderlust. The thrill of travel, the awe and excitement inherent in experiencing new places, have given way to a routine of shirt-ironing, lonely food court lunches and windows that can’t be opened. This hermetically-sealed world can certainly feel stifling with its overabundance of plastic and artificial light. The decision to embark upon this road, however, is not one I regret: the time had come in my life when I needed to trade in the global wandering for a little more stability, both personal and financial. As a major bonus, the work I have taken on is both challenging and rewarding.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t find my mind wandering, on occasion, back to the road, back to those distance places I’ve lived- often, back to China. I struggle to keep my experiences there alive and relevant to my current life, perhaps out of fear that I will be consumed by routine and lessen my engagement with the world outside my own small circle of movement. I have heard it said that debt is a driving force behind the political disengagement of so many in the West, but it would seem to me that work-related fatigue is an equal, and not wholly unrelated, culprit. Who has time to ponder the state of the world when there are bills to pay?

Being geographically tied down for the time being, I thus satisfy my wanderlust through reading. In this age of up-to-the-second online news and more streaming video content clutter than you could possibly know what to do with, it is still hard to beat a Sunday afternoon nestled up with a good newspaper, magazine or book. I’m an avid user of the internet, granted, but I cannot help but be irritated by the attention deficit format of most major portals and news services- I tire of digging through all the videos and multimedia gimmicks to find something substantial that I can actually read. Put me down on the side of opinion which considers talk of the demise of printed media as greatly exaggerated; the internet still has a long way to go (and as an added bonus, books don’t burn out my eyes).

And so I regularly tear into Harper’s and The Economist (sure its economic dogmatism is a bit tired, but the breath of its coverage and the quality of its political and business commentary have me hooked regardless), and check out solid Canadian fare such as The Walrus and Maisonneuve. In terms of books, I put Amazon through the motions a few months back and ordered myself an eclectic little stack, ranging from Lullabies for Little Criminals to A Long Way Gone and Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (a great, nasty little anthology about the deep inequalities inherent in the world’s oft-celebrated urban development stories).

Needless to say, I couldn’t resist grabbing a few titles relating to China. I got China Shakes the World, China: Fragile Superpower- both of which I have yet to read - and China Road by Rob Gifford. This last one I tackled first, as it appeared more travelogue than armchair policy analysis, and that offered the chance to hit the road vicariously, to re-enter that strange world where everyone is mangling some dialect of Mandarin. It was the sort of book I felt would offer me some mental escape from the office and remind me of life in the back of bumpy buses, even if the cover hinted at some of the dreadful clichés so common in modern China punditry. I didn’t have many expectations beyond figuring it would wet my nostalgia for life and travel in the Middle Kingdom, and that was good enough. Anything to take me back for a while.

But the book was a very pleasant surprise, and I have to commend Mr.Gifford for putting together one of the more refreshing readings on China I’ve come across in quite some time. It isn’t that Mr. Gifford’s approach is particularly groundbreaking; a Beijing-based journalist moving on to the UK after spending a good amount of time in China’s embrace, he travels across the country from Shanghai to the Kazakh border and reflects upon the country and his experiences there. What makes China Road stand apart from so much China punditry is its disregard of the common economistic perspective in favour of a more deeply engaging humanistic approach. We are so bombarded with talk of China’s ‘economy’ that one could be forgiven for forgetting that flesh-and-blood people actually live there, and it is frightful how readily our economics-obsessed societies can reduce so many lives to a statistics sheet.

Rob Gifford, thankfully, puts the focus back on the Chinese people he meets, as he writes about their dreams, ambitions, fears and frustrations. He further complements this with commentary on his own experience as a foreigner in China, and some of these passages certainly brought a smile to my face as I remembered my own life circa 2002-2004. The writing is brisk and engaging, deftly touching on politics and history without getting weighed down in dense academic analysis. China Road is certainly rooted in a travel experience, but uses its accounts of particular lives and incidents to explore China’s complex history and wax cautiously on future implications. Gifford manages this in a manner that demonstrates his deep knowledge of Chinese history and politics and avoids getting lost in the theoretical ether. He also feels no need to shy away from the usual sensitive topics, but approaches them from a welcome perspective devoid of any condescension or sense of cultural superiority. It is clear that the author has a deep fascination with and respect for the Chinese people, but at the same time he doesn’t let that obfuscate his view regarding the serious problems inherent in the society they’ve built for themselves.

All in all, I think Rob Gifford has written a great book. While it certainly plays to the China expat crowd - which can identify with many of his experiences  - it also provides a balanced, realistic and accessible glimpse into life in the Middle Kingdom for anyone interested in going beyond the numbing economism of the mainstream media.

In particular, I find there is strength in Gifford’s refusal to offer any solid theoretical prognosis on China’s future. In a crowd where some warn of an imminent collapse while others trumpet an inevitable and untouchable rise to global domination, China Road presents the country (properly, in my opinion) as one of such contradiction that no one can reasonably predict how the whole thing will turn out. This is a theme that Gifford touches upon throughout the book, and is perhaps the best analytical tool with which to approach a society country empire civilization so huge, complex and convoluted that any pundit or hack can find ample evidence to support their particular view.

China is both a strong state and a decentralized, chaotic empire where the edges are held together by brute force; it’s bursting with optimism and festering with hopelessness, its greatest source of instability its obsession with stability; it’s a land of unrelenting grand-scale urban development and crumbling stagnation; it’s a society dripping with wealth where most people still fight for basic survival; it’s an unimaginably overcrowded country yet a land of vast, remote landscapes haunting in their quiet beauty; it’s fiercely nationalist yet rudderless and struggling for identity; it ruthlessly destroys its own history to restore its former glory, weighed down by the past while trying to escape it; it calls capitalism communism; it offers freedom yet crushes dissent; it inspires awe and derision; wealth, opportunity and the good life have never been so available to (some) of its citizens, and yet the land is careening precipitously towards environmental suicide. The Chinese have never had it so good- or so bad. There is a saying that the more time you spend in China, the less you should understand it.

China can be anything to anyone, given its size and turbulence- it’s would be no surprise, in the end, if the place simultaneously collapsed and took over the world. Thankfully, to Rob Gifford it simply provided the opportunity to write a thoroughly enjoyable book called China Road, which allowed me to travel once again on those kung fu movie bus rides through the desert, as my present life is increasingly reduced to hermetically-sealed office space. It brought me back to a time in my own life when I crashed through the deserts of Xinjiang or the backwaters of Henan, staring out the window and being wonderfully confused and conflicted about the Chinese world passing by outside.