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That’s true, but it is just one of the many reasons Canada’s fourth-largest city needs a new central library. For the mayor, though, a library is an entry on the city’s ledger, to be built only if it pleases the private sector – and delivers value for taxpayers.

This is how politicians talk in 2014. This is what passes for leadership. And this is the dead hand that sits on the national capital, from all levels of government, making it pleasant and safe but dull and mediocre.

Mayor Watson is honest, diligent and tireless. He is decent and progressive. The city seems to be his life – and he gives himself to it, every day, magnificently and magnanimously. No one cares more about public service.

But his view of the library is consistent with virtually everything he does. Whether it’s light rail with no station at Confederation Square or the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park with no international design competition, he can never summon much imagination.

That makes him perfect for Ottawa, which imagination left some time ago. Jim Watson’s Ottawa remains a city without an idea of itself. Institutionally, it is simply unable to think big. It is always about value, not values.

Inspiration lives somewhere else. This failure of vision not only retards a real central library, which every big city in Canada already has. It afflicts transit, parks, cycling, buildings, the arts.

Richard Florida drops into Ottawa and reads from his script. Richard Florida seems to know next to nothing about Ottawa; if he did, he would know his “creative class” here is more a contented class. It is educated, wealthy and transitory, and uninterested in creating anything bold.