TIFF Review: URBANIZED

All large cities in the world – my own included – face constant challenges. They are forced to evolve, to find a way to solve problems the people who built the cities couldn’t have fathomed all those decades and sometime centuries ago. It’s these challenges, and the art involved with solving them, that’s the subject of URBANIZED – a wonderful new documentary from director Gary Hustwit.

At TIFF the doc is preaching to the choir (there were several bursts of applause for discussion of public transit and bike lanes), but that doesn’t make its points any less valid. Its biggest point, as mentioned early on, is the fact that urban design is an art of massive collaboration. From city planners, to architects, to politicians…so very many painters take their turn with the brush that it’s very easy for the final painting to look quite different from the sketch that inspired it.

The doc comes with some wonderful moments of whimsy, such as its bouncy score and many clever bits of animation.  Tricks like these do well to enhance what is some truly lovely photography of many of the world’s great cities.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t present a hypothesis for what all cities everywhere should follow as a template. It stresses the need for every city to examine what is best for all, and to put the needs of the many above the wants of the few…but it doesn’t go so far as to say that every city needs to focus on public transportation, or every city needs to focus on revitalization. By taking us through all sorts of towns that are in various stages of vibrancy (or lack thereof), it tries to illustrate as many different ideas as possible.

As I mentioned, Toronto is facing challenges with many of the issues this documentary discusses – and the crowd at a film festival tends to gather many of them from one particular side into one place. It’s sorta like gathering a banquet hall full of NPR listeners and asking for a show of hands on who’s in favour of increasing the public school budget. That’s not to say that I disagree with the people in the room today, it’s just to point out that sometimes at screenings like these , the base can get a little rowdy. Might not be a barometer of true quality so much as it is vocal political agreement.

That said, there is one thing URBANIZED has given me that I will never forget. When discussing the dynamics of city living – crowded subways, busy sidewalks, massive gatherings of humanity in any form – he notes that “It’s not imposition – it’s engagement”. In other words, if we wanted to, we could probably invent ways to get us briskly from A-to-B at the push of a button…but it would circumvent the interaction and vibrancy that gives a city its life. It’s a point I will dearly try to remember the next time I’m squashed in a sweaty streetcar in August.

URBANIZED plays TIFF twice more: Sunday September 12th – 1:15pm @ AMC and Friday September 16th – 9:15pm @ AMC.