Culture as Capital Part 2: Original Kitchener
Original Kitchener, Grand River Country - June 11 2024
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb123a3ee-d25a-487a-b59b-86fa0177c17f_1280x756.png)
The first post in this series proposes “showing the world who and what we are by working together as the five cities and seven nations of Grand River Country to organize a ‘Culture as Capital Manifest and Homecoming’ event for, say, 2026 or 2027.” — Culture as Capital Part 1. To explain what this might entail, I’ll start at home base: my city, my neighbourhood.
According to the online description of Currents of Change, an exhibit currently running at McDougall Cottage in Galt, Cambridge, the Grand River Valley is home to around 1 million people, 90 species of fish, and 250 species of birds.
Our watershed, from the river’s source near Dundalk to where it flows into Lake Erie, is a landform with boundaries that were not set by any imperial, national or provincial authority, but by the Creator, over geological time. It is the ground we stand on.
Life takes place in domestic as well as terrestrial locations: We live at home, and if your home is in a city or town, you live on a street, on a block, and/or in a neighbourhood. In the countryside, the equivalent could be a village or hamlet, which is usually part of a township.
The dateline for these Evening Muse offerings says “Original Kitchener … ,” by which I mean my city’s foundational civic, commercial and cultural centre, along with the constellation of pre-suburban neighbourhoods that surrounds it.
The limits of this area, which is home and/or workplace to maybe 40,000 of us, were also not set by any provincial or municipal authority. They evolved over historical time, shaped by human hands but not with any explicit overarching intent: Sandhills > Berlin > Kitchener; Quebec > Upper Canada > Canada West > Ontario just happened.
Among all the historic cities and towns in Grand River Country, Kitchener's downtown is the largest and the most troubled. That's what makes it so attractive from a civic engagement perspective: There's so much we could do here. And there is also so much to work with, starting with that marvelous range of historic neighbourhoods, which, unlike the officially designated “business improvement area,” are currently doing relatively well.
That wasn't true thirty-plus years ago, when I first got actively involved with my city: At that point, Kitchener’s older neighbourhoods were dealing with the same challenges that most “inner city” areas throughout North America were facing: absentee ownership, land speculation, neglected or abandoned buildings and a reputation for crime and general decay.
Central Frederick … Auditorium … Eastwood … Rockway … Mill-Courtland … Cedar Hill … Schneider Creek … Victoria Park … Cherry Hill … Mount Hope … Breithaupt … Civic Centre/Olde Berlin: Today, every one of these neighborhoods is relatively safe and stable, mostly thanks to the efforts of residents who bought homes there, chose to live in them, worked to improve their community, and fought to protect these areas through active civic engagement.
We’ve come a long way with these older precincts, but they remain fragile and will continue to need special care and attention, especially with the push towards even greater density in what is already the densest part of the city. Given the reckless, almost desperate, current mood among the powers that be, governmental, corporate and in certain strains of public opinion, this is not the time to give up and let the rubble fall where it may.
I see this constellation of neighbourhoods as downtown Kitchener's greatest advantage. There is, however, another strength we can build on that is arguably of equal or greater value: While the downtown’s significance as a commercial centre has been in decline for well over half a century, the importance of the core from an arts, culture and heritage perspective has held relatively steady.
Downtown Kitchener’s second great advantage lies in all the assets that exist within what the city's first cultural strategic plan termed the “Kilometre of Culture.”
“CulturePlan I” (1996) called for the creation of a "Kilometre of Culture" within a one kilometre radius stretching out from the junction of King Street, Kitchener's commercial "main street," and Queen, the city's primary cultural avenue.
This meant
taking stock of the assets that exist within that radius;
appreciating, cultivating and strengthening the connections among them;
determining what's missing, and setting out to fill the gaps.
While this work is carried on, the plan recommends looking for ways to derive the fullest possible benefit — social, economic and civic — out of a whole that is greater than the parts.
“Building on what exists,” was a Culture Plan I principle that has loomed large in my thinking ever since. Today this is known as ABCD -- “Asset-Based Community Development” -- and more commonly applied to social planning than to cultural matters (which, in my view, are related but not the same thing, in the same way the social sciences are distinct from arts and humanities learning and practice).
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d051352-e87b-4a63-93fa-ca53990c91bf_881x596.png)
The assets encompassed by the Kilometre of Culture include everything from the Raffi Armenian Concert Hall and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery at Centre in the Square to Schneider Haus and the Iron Horse Trail; and from King East and the Market District through the “royal intersection” at King and Queen past City Hall and over the tracks into rising Midtown.
They include the library, the market, studio spaces, community centres, city hall, the parks, three community radio stations (one virtual, two terrestrial), two museums and the two hotels. I’m especially interested in places of worship and their congregations as civic assets that are semi-public and designed for “third space” gathering (neither at home nor a workplace). These kinds of places are valuable beyond measure, and when lost, nearly impossible to replace. Kitchener’s stock of such assets is currently rich, but unappreciated and underutilized, and as a result, vulnerable to degradation, demolition, privatization or conversion to domestic space.
In my mind, free-standing, mandate-based, voluntarily formed and maintained associations and organizations belong in the same category as those places of worship and the congregations that have been gathering in the city’s central precincts for generation after generation: an important, but underappreciated, part of the rich range of assets we have to work with, and evidence for the value of “culture as capital” that we all have a share in: literally, part of our “common wealth.”
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0af904fb-16d6-4d36-ae5a-5dcdd1cdd3e4_3087x2427.jpeg)
Original Kitchener’s density is also as an asset, but so is it’s remarkable spaciousness. Our Main Street, from the Market District in the East to Midtown rising on the other side of the Grand Trunk tracks, is about as far as anyone could stroll or any group could promenade at any given time.
What’s not there can be as promising what is present. Alongside all the assets that are available in the city’s central precincts, we can also find
an acre-sized public transportation terminal left vacant and vulnerable to vandalism and decay;
two ill-conceived late modern mall structures, one almost totally vacant, the other maybe half full;
entire blocks rendered dead for pedestrian use due to infill construction designed without regard to the special qualities of pre-suburban streetscapes;
scores of boarded up buildings, empty storefronts and a lot of vacant upper story domestic space;
a set of architecturally significant institutional buildings that have lost their original purpose, most notably banks, and
a vast amount of good office space left vacant in the wake of the pandemic
Lots to do, lots to work with, and lots of room to do it in. But how to begin? Near the epicentre of the Kilometre of Culture there’s an “Idea Factory” at 2 King West, and an organization dedicated to “Ideas Transcending Objects” next door. Good. We need new ways of looking at what our towns and cities are, and what they could be, especially ideas that can serve progress towards achieving objectives like the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations for 2030. But ideas need to be transformed into action. 2030 is only six years away. It’s time to get to work actually doing things.
There’s only so much any one of us can do working alone. Actually doing things beyond one's personal or domestic sphere requires organization. If you have project in mind and have access to money, you can hire people to work with you. If not, you either have to join an endeavour, or launch one.
I'm especially interested in associative enterprises, preferably mandate-driven rather than for private profit or government led, that can make productive use of underutilized space. Adaptive re-use of existing places and spaces can be on a temporary basis, like the Creative Hub in the former post office at 44 Gaukel, or permanent, like the Globe Studios complex in the former Bonnie Stuart Shoe Factory or the Registry Theatre in the former land records office. The Civic Hub in the Saint John the Evangelist Anglican Church complex and the newly opened St Matthews Centre at 54 Benton also come to mind here.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08372970-d5ac-40a3-82a3-f26665b0c93d_1166x465.png)
In a recent funding proposal I described such accomplishments and the possibilities they can inspire as “generative intersections” emanating out from the city's point of origin. The “Kilometre of Culture” concept imagines the entire area that radiates outward from the city’s primary junction -- “Where East Meets West, and South becomes North” -- as a vast fertilization, germination, incubation and cultivation zone for civic, cultural and social development undertakings that could help lay the groundwork for a New Prosperity that suits 21st-century challenges and opportunities.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc254a90e-a741-4507-8bfa-139f2b0161b2_490x492.jpeg)
There is one more great advantage that the “Original City” has over parts of the city that have been built since suburban patterns became dominant: Walkability.
A century ago Kitchener, like all North American urban areas, functioned as what are sometimes called “15-minute cities” today. Schools, stores, churches, clubs and workplaces were all within walking distance. Automobiles were a novelty when Berlin, Canada, became a city in 1912. Things started changing rapidly shortly after that, but for another 30-40 years the streets continued to be designed the traditional way, meaning for walking and for vehicular traffic moving at a horse-drawn pace.
As a result, all original city precincts have good bones for the kind of lifestyle changes we’ll need to achieve a new, fully sustainable kind of general prosperity for the 21st-century.
The project I’m imagining — that Stratford-season length “Between the Lakes Culture as Capital ManiFest and Homecoming” happening that will show the world that we’re here at some point between 2026 to 2030 mentioned in the preface of this Evening Muse offering — is grounded in the conviction that:
1. liveable, walkable neighbourhoods are a prerequisite for a sustainable commonweal -- a general wealth or prosperity, tangible and intangible; measurable and immeasurable; and that
2. expanding the economy so that arts, culture and heritage related occupations become a viable choice for making a living can be the key to a future in which everyone who wants to work can be gainfully and contentedly employed in pursuits that don’t contribute to the further destruction of the planet.
My contention is that Original Kitchener can play a leading role here, not by branding itself a “cultural capital” and trying to corner the market on some type of attraction or experience, but by aligning with other mid-sized, third-tier, non-metropolitan cities and towns within or near the watershed, and setting out to demonstrate — make manifest — how culture, in the broader sense, can be capital that enriches us all.