[Ken Gray]
I spent my first nineteen years in Victoria. I return to visit frequently. I have lived in neighbouring communities from Sooke to Sidney and places in between. I know it well. Obviously things change over time; I get that. But what Gene Miller proposes below is a transformative vision which could, if enacted, restore some of the city’s historic assets within a dynamic, imaginative approach to public and private space use, a vision not dictated simply by commercial needs, or the need to welcome tourists, while responding to social and ecological realities which demand strategic response.
Gene Miller is the founder of Open Space, founding publisher of Monday Magazine, originator of the Gaining Ground urban sustainability conferences, founder/developer of ASH houseplexes and currently writing “Nothing To Do: Life in a Post-Work World.” With me, he knows the city well.
In November 1964 British singer Petula Clark released Downtown. It topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and made Clark only the second British woman (after Vera Lynn) to have a Number 1 hit in America. To me, it sounds like a business jingle. It resonated with cultural trends of the 1960s which celebrated the physical downspaces of North American cities. In an era dominated by online marketing and connecting, a globalized economy deeply wounded presently, can we imagine that “downtown” could once again thrive? It’s a lot to ask, but I think the question is worth asking.
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown
Article by Dannen Stone in The Times Colonist, Aug 17, 2025 3:43 AM
Gene Miller proposes the complete visual, aesthetic and atmospheric overhaul of the entire public realm, including building facades, where warranted, from the Empress to Chinatown, Wharf Street to Cook.
I was just reading about rot.
Well, actually, about how the cyclical signature of the cosmos (repeated big bangs) imposes an essential principle governing all existence and materiality.
Things emerge, filled with life or other energy, become robust and mature, lose life force, weaken, finish and become bacteria farms or dust.
It’s no different with our civilizations, cities, social institutions, and our intellectual, ideological and spiritual creations.
Consider our civic governance model. With limited ability to blunt wounds and sustain community vitality, its relevance and future are uncertain. Dust to dust.
It’s axiomatic: solve the problem or be the problem.
I arrived here in 1970. Back then, downtown Victoria could and, as I remember, did proudly boast: “Downtown Has It All!” The claim didn’t seem hollow.
Downtown had ego, social heft. Along Douglas, Eaton’s and the Bay squinted competitively at each other. There was a proprietary, shopkeeper feel about the place, a changeless self-sufficiency, a promise of social equilibrium and constancy until the end of time; a powerful subliminal social message — not Olde England, really, but Olde Forever.
Queen Victoria stood on her plinth, in charge, and all was well.
Now, our fluid and rootless commercial and social landscape has taken over. Now, life’s a click or a drive-thru, and downtown more of a drive-by.
With this in mind as a caution, let’s ask: as it becomes less gravitic, less pivotal in the wider social setting, has downtown outlived its utility, its functional value?
Is it time?
Can, and should, downtown Victoria try to clean up a bit and gamble on a wheelspin and better times to come; or just wane by (hopefully) small increments; or develop a fresh vision and role, dressed in a new public realm wardrobe and a new, future-facing cultural blueprint?
I’ll ask twice: what is downtown’s future?
Halfway between uncertain and unpromising.
And again: what is downtown’s future?
I’d choose new looks, new purpose, new identity.
From the roadbed up: warm, inviting, beautiful, surprising. Everything you can touch, see, experience. Think gemutlich: German for comfortable. The opposite of cold, vacuous, crappy looking, enervated, un-owned, only spottily attractive.
I’m proposing the complete visual, aesthetic and atmospheric overhaul of the entire public realm, including building facades, where warranted, from the Empress to Chinatown, Wharf Street to Cook.
Wow, big job!
Consider: a rapturously beautiful public realm, a North American jewel, a marvel. Downtown, a living room filled with new residents and visitors.
You think: “This ain’t Vienna or Barcelona.”
Oh, c’mon. This is 2025. We can do anything.
Gather appropriate local architects and urban designers in a room. Give ‘em some money for their time and all the coffee they can drink. Post-rhapsodic architectural renderings, tantalizing images, in the windows of vacant storefronts. Rent a store as an idea centre. Get the public involved. Keep the energy high and have some fun. All settled, proceed with changes, block by block.
Cost? I dunno. Three million a block times, say, sixty blocks? Call it two hundred million. Same amount we’re going to spend, when the last cheque’s written, on a new pool/rec centre. Likely less than a current year’s worth of lost downtown custom.
Any plan for new downtown urban design begins with a profound renovation, not just of appearance but attitude, mixed with vision and study. Soberly: In the near future, what’s the place for?
Here’s our ace: the world’s going to hell.
Victoria: Capital of Thought, Capital of Conversation. A fresh conception of purpose.
There is simply no limit to the global need for ideas, social innovation and invention, conversation, for the propagation and dissemination of new understandings and systems of thought and social attitude and practice; new models for defining cultural importance; new ecological repair strategies, a tremendous need for new institutional models, and on and on.
The world needs future-proofing. And nobody has cornered this market.
Added to our garden city rep, a new visitor distinction as a capital of ideas: social issues management, ecological study and innovation (the world is desperate for this), education, the epicentre of global conversation about AI and its looming human impacts.
That is, significant intellectual, academic and activist traffic.
Fill the entire floundering Bay Centre with relevant university projects and programmes.
I will predict that if we, the city, made a commitment to this urban design vision and new identity, existing Victoria economic stakeholders would come out of the woodwork as sponsors.
Pianist Alfred Cortot called the keyboard compositions of Franz Liszt “psychologically necessary.”
In two words, that’s my argument for downtown renewal.
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Take Note - Reflections on life, music, politics, retirement and more by Ken Gray 
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