Some, including our mayor, are "extremely disappointed" by this selfish behavior. Others are chalking it up to those hipsters. And others, such as Richard Florida, are being highly sympathetic: these are young people who live in small urban spaces and they are clamoring for some green space. Let them be human.

This, of course, is a debate that is playing out not just here in Toronto, but all around the world as we flirt our way into a reopening. Videos of the Lake of the Ozarks were making the rounds on Twitter when I last checked.

I'm not here to pass judgement or predict a second wave (though a few waves are probably inevitable). I'll leave that to the epidemiologists. The silver lining to all of this, I think, is that it is a clear demonstration of just how persistent urban life remains in the midst of this pandemic. The desire to be around other humans is a powerful force of attraction.

Here is an excerpt from a recent FT Opinion by Ben Rogers called, Cities are not dead — they will get younger:

Cities have always worked particularly well for young people. They flock to them to build up vital social and professional networks, meet their mates and learn how the world works. Around the world there is massive unmet demand for city homes and workspace. The idea that the centres of London, Paris and New York will turn into tumbleweed towns is fanciful. The age composition of these cities might change, but people and business will still be jostling for space near the centre.

In Toronto this weekend, that jostling for space played out on the grass of Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

At the time that Baudelaire was active, Paris was undergoing Hussmannization. It was being transformed from a medieval city with cramped narrow streets into a modern metropolis of broad avenues.

And essential to these new streets and urban spaces was the flâneur. At the time, the flâneur was an important literary and artistic figure. He was a man about town. A man of leisure. An urban explorer in the new modern metropolis.

Here is how Baudelaire defined the flâneur in his Painter of Modern Life:

The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.

One of the central themes at the time was that of anonymity. The modern city had grown to such a scale that a paradox had emerged. Despite all its density and physical proximity, urban life had an isolating effect. It had become easy to just be a number in an ephemeral crowd.

But fascinating to me is this idea that urban life – with all its ebbs and flows – could bring “immense joy” to the flâneur. In fact, the very definition of a flâneur was someone who did nothing. They weren’t capitalists on the pursuit of new material possessions. Their sole focus was urban life and nothing else.

And while most of us probably don’t routinely wander around our own cities as tourists without purpose, I suspect that many of us can appreciate the impact that urban life has on us. I know I do. It gives me energy.

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