The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, where civic planning far exceeded the European cities of the 16th century conquistadors who destroyed it.
The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, where civic planning far exceeded the European cities of the 16th century conquistadors who destroyed it.
One of the deepest-held ideas about cities is that indigenous people don't belong in them. It's an Enlightenment conceit: Europe brought civilisation to the New World, where people were living subsistence lifestyles with few advanced technologies or social structures. Never mind how absurd that was, the idea persisted.
Partly it'sbecause as the land in cities became more valuable, those with wealth and power pushed the poor away. And partly it's because it plainly is true that living in a city makes many people sick. But blame poverty and lack of amenities for that, not urban life itself. There's a strength of community everywhere you look in a suburb like Māngere, even though it was built with a barely functioning sewage system and the schools, still, are scandalously under-resourced.
The truth is, Europe wasn't all that good at cities, as Hernan Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors realised when they arrived in Mexico in 1519. They discovered Tenochtitlan, a thriving Aztec metropolis with 200,000 people, built on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco. It was as large as Paris at the time and five times larger than London.
Tenochtitlan had zoos and botanical gardens, sports stadiums, strictly enforced town-planning rules and a great many temples. Two terracotta aqueducts carried fresh water from springs four kilometres away, allowing the locals to bathe twice a day. Every night, barges on canals collected sewage for use as fertiliser in the fields.
In European cities of the time, sewage ran in the streets and ended up in the river. Cholera and dysentery were common. London was a ramshackle maze and Queen Elizabeth I bathed but once a month, "whether she needed to or no".
It's not that the conquistadors failed to grasp the magnificence of what they'd discovered. "Some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream?" wrote one. Still, they destroyed it all, the diseases of their fetid cities wreaking more carnage than their weapons.
Cortes founded Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, with a central zone, the traza, reserved for Europeans. The remains of the local population, in a foretaste of cities to come, were banished to the outskirts.
Fast-forward 500 years to Vancouver, where the Squamish Nation is reclaiming the idea they belong in the middle of the city. On land that was once a village they're building a high-rise housing complex for 10,000 residents, with 11 tower blocks surrounded by parkland.
Artist's impression of the Squamish Nation's high-rise housing complex.
"We want to bring our people back home," says Khelsilem, a Squamish Nation councillor. "People who support new housing are often marginalised out of decision-making. We're creating value for our nation, and the public at large." Most units will be affordable-housing rentals.
The site is downtown, right by the Burrard Bridge, and the buildings will be covered in plants. They're hoping that when people cross the bridge, it will be like "entering a forest as much as a city". Only 10 per cent of the homes will have a car park, which should work out just fine: the Burrard has the busiest bike lanes in North America.
Design for Living appears weekly in Canvas magazine.
