Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
But in a fascinating illustration of the sociology of knowledge, robust social
science outcomes ran against the contrary intentions of special interest
groups, and by the late 1980s objections were already being raised contesting
this explanation. The pace of property investment and house price inflation
led to a public response fuelled by the media. A few nativist columnists and
reporters on the right were joined by a small number on the left who decried
the power of external capital in shaping local land markets. More prosaic and
more abundant were media stories that raised issues of housing affordability
and local jurisdiction. Popular book-length accounts of offshore investment
by Cannon (1989), Fennell and DeMont (1989) and Gutstein (1990)
attracted considerable attention. There was every promise that a left-wing
majority less friendly to the free market would win the 1990 Vancouver civic
election, opposing existing relatively open borders to real estate capital.
In this turbulent context the Laurier Institution was formed in 1988 and
came into legal existence in 1989 as a privately funded organisation seeking
to promote multiculturalism and immigrant integration and ward off nativ-
ist tendencies (Ley 1995; Mitchell 2004). Laurier described itself as 'a
national non-profit, non-advocacy research and education organization
dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of information concern-
ing economic and social implications of cultural diversity.
It has no political
or business affiliations
' (Laurier 1989a, my emphasis). The desire to soothe
frictions over immigration presented Laurier as a good citizen, but there
were also strong commercial reasons to keep trans-Pacific flows at a high
level. In this regard the claim to be free of business affiliations was ingenu-
ous for Laurier's corporate sponsors included major players in Pacific Rim
finance, real estate, trade and transportation.
Aware of the rising public unease with off-shore investment in the
Vancouver property market - after all the Laurier's backers included banks
and developers - the Institution speedily commissioned a six-part research
project to examine 'factors affecting residential real estate prices in the
Greater Vancouver area'. The task was to disabuse 'controversial sugges-
tions that a particular cultural group - the Chinese - were the cause of
increased real estate prices' (Laurier 1989b). The work was entrusted to
land economists in the Canadian Real Estate Research Bureau at the
University of British Columbia. Working among the same small group of
academics at UBC as Michael Goldberg, promoter of trans-Pacific eco-
nomic flows, the Bureau also had very close connections to regional and
transnational real estate companies.
30
The Bureau was at the very heart of
the pro-business alliance favouring globalization.
The neoclassical tradition in which the researchers worked and the
social space to which they belonged seemingly allowed only one outcome.
The midnight oil was also burning for the results of the first phase of the
research were announced in 1989 only a month after the Laurier Institution
