When I was in high school, I imagined university the way I had seen it in movies and on TV: playing Frisbee on the lawn in front of the library; walking across a green, grassy commons talking about Foucault with my articulate, bookish friends.
The day of my campus tour, I remember standing outside Stauffer Library waiting for my mom to pick me up, shocked at how much street and pavement there was on campus.
Four years later, I can’t count the number of times I’ve stepped out into traffic at Union and Stauffer in a crowd of 40 other students and found myself praying that the cab racing to make the yellow light won’t hit me.
I’ve started to think that in the Frosh Week welcoming ceremonies, in addition to telling students that they are the future of Canada by virtue of their acceptance into Queen’s, Hitch should mention exactly what the little man and the orange hand are for. But I think all the jay-walking in this little community is the result of pedestrians outnumbering cars.
In some ways, the jaywalking that makes Queen’s students notorious around Kingston is the natural way of things. In a tiny group of blocks where there are far more walkers than drivers, it makes sense that those without cars should have spatial priority. Unfortunately, our society—and our campus—have pledged their allegiance to suburban car culture, and privilege that lifestyle over the walker. Even the green, supposedly pedestrian-friendly spaces, such as the area around the Medical Quadrangle and Theological Hall, are unnecessarily paved and invaded, and Union Street is being widened to allow more traffic. Recently, street sections closed off for Queen’s Centre construction have given the pavement back to the people. Though the walk may be interrupted by chain-link fence and punctuated by drilling and bulldozers, having open, traffic-free spaces is an opportunity to see what it would be like if we closed all of the streets between University and Barrie—a quieter, healthier environment that I think would inspire creative answers to the question: What do we do with our land if we don’t give it away to cars?
Maybe I sound like I’m just too small-town for all of this big-city noise.
Then again, even in the big city, people have been raising a ruckus for quieter streets. In Toronto’s Kensington Market, on the last Sunday of summer months, Pedestrian Sundays make the neighbourhood car-free for a day. Others in the city have taken to creating “parking meter parties,” where a group descends on a street, buys up all the time in the parking meters, lays down sod and sets up lawn chairs and barbecues in an effort to take back public space from cars.
In addition to thinking outside the box of the environmentally destructive car culture, this type of movement also has a spiritual effect. The world looks different without cars; it’s inherently slower-paced, healthier and builds real community between people.
Imagine what the University could look like without the destructive presence of cars. You bring the Foucault, I’ll bring the Frisbee.
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