Thesis in Numero Cinq

Market Square - Empty Side of the Food Court

My undergraduate thesis exploring the role the Market Square Shopping Centre played in re-imagining the downtown of Kitchener, Ontario has been published by the online literary magazine Numero Cinq!

The Struggle for the Centre:
One City’s Adventure With Modernity

Now I know almost anyone out there who is reading my blog has probably already heard this news, but I figured I should post this here since I promised to post my thesis for so long. Thanks so much to Doug Glover for the opportunity and his kind introduction, which I’ve included below:

This is the story of one city, but it’s every city. Struggling with the urban sprawl, de-industrialization, automobile culture, malls, and suburbs, cities all over North America have been fighting for decades against flight from the centre – often finding themselves astonished victims of the Law of Unintended Results. Nathan Storring does an amazing job in this essay of exemplifying the general trend with a particular case, in this instance, the redevelopment, destruction and rebirth of the downtown core in Kitchener, Ontario (yes, yes, the home of the Blackberry). He writes: “To me Kitchener’s history is the quintessential parable about the cost that these midsize cities paid to take part in Modernity because we tore down our bloody City Hall. We didn’t have a physical City Hall for 20 years, just a floor in a nondescript, inaccessible office building! It was the ultimate sacrifice in the name of ‘rationality’ – a complete disavowal of any historic or emotional connection to the city.” The beauty of this piece is Storring’s attention to the details – civic debate, architects, planners, theorists, trends, fads. An era comes clear. After reading this, you’ll walk around your town and see it in a different way.

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  1. Pingback: A New City | Nathan Storring

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