Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(Sea Island) in its mouth. The lucky Sea Island is occupied by Vancouver
International Airport. The ethnoburb had a foreign-born proportion of 57
percent in 2006, the highest immigrant share of any municipality in Canada,
with 44 percent of the population self-identified as of Chinese origin.
20
There is a range of economic strata in the municipality. Poor recent immi-
grants from China are frequently huddled in overcrowded apartments and
rented houses in the northern section of Richmond;
21
elsewhere in the
municipality Hong Kong, Taiwanese and other overseas Chinese are living
in condominiums and detached houses. The demolition of houses in 1950s
and 1960s subdivisions and their replacement by larger new single-family
properties has caused some local agitation (Edgington et al. 2006). But by
far the most striking phenomenon in this new landscape - and its counter-
part in Markham, Richmond Hill and Scarborough, northern suburbs of
Toronto (Lo 2006; Wang 1999) - has been the emergence of new Chinatowns,
gathering around the distinctive cultural form of the Asian mall. While the
Pacific Mall in Markham claims the rank of single largest Asian-themed
indoor mall in North America, the concentration of so many retail centres
in a tight cluster in Richmond is unequalled.
22
David Lai counted 49 open shopping plazas or larger enclosed malls that
he classified as Asian-themed malls in north-central Richmond (Figure 5.4)
and 58 in a larger area of Toronto's northern suburbs (Lai 2001). These
facilities had Chinese signage, while store types and their customers were
overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese. Developers were usually Chinese-Canadian
or other East Asian immigrants, and the mall or plaza often drew its name
from an East Asian (usually Hong Kong) site, while the names of some
stores also evoked Asian origins. Most unusual in terms of western prece-
dents is strata titling in many of the larger malls, with retail and even office
uses divided into small self-owned units.
23
By 1996 it was estimated that 30
percent of Richmond retailing was in self-owned stores, while in Vancouver
the figure was less than one percent. A local Chinese-Canadian real estate
consultant pointed out the difference between western and Chinese business
outlooks: 'The western business people strongly emphasize 'floating capital'
while Chinese business people insist on 'real capital'. Chinese traditionally
believe real property is a safety net' (
Sing Tao
1996). Once again the mobility
of cultural ideas about property is shaping a distinctive landscape text.
The buying and selling of these strata units is often linked to immigration
policy. The capital that builds the mall may be accumulated in part from
syndicates of business immigrants making their mandatory investments. If
the investor stream is implicated in mall construction, the entrepreneur
class are often the retailers working off their requirement to develop a busi-
ness in Canada. In Lai's survey of 19 Richmond malls, three-quarters of
merchants were immigrants who had been in Canada less than ten years,
77 percent from Hong Kong and 13 percent from Taiwan. Overwhelmingly
