Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The research of Fried, Gans, and Jane Jacobs (1961), who presented a
broader rejection of rational, centralized planning, contributed to the recogni-
tion of neighbourhood as a significant ontological unit, a public resource sus-
taining the daily life of residents. Such research encouraged the emergence of
the neighbourhood movement in the 1960s to resist urban renewal and popu-
lation dispersal. We documented such resistance earlier in Vancouver's
Chinatown-Strathcona against urban renewal and freeway construction.
Multiculturalism offered an additional argument for preserving districts
against unwanted disruption. In legitimating protection for collective cultural
rights in cities, what government had granted to Chinatown, others, including
the elite Anglo-Canadian district of Shaughnessy, might also claim.
Shaughnessy, like Beacon Hill in Boston, is an in-town elite district evok-
ing sentiment and symbolism. An anglophile landscape of large character
homes and mature trees and shrubs has supported an elite identity of well-
being and privilege. The setting and the location are not readily substituta-
ble. Together they confer the status of distinction and the comfort of
belonging in a neighbourhood with an institutionally complete entourage
of elite social clubs, nearby private schools, parks and mainstream churches,
generating interlocking social networks and a supportive sub-culture. To
lose all of this might well generate feelings of grief. The intersubjective
fusion of place and identity provides a third significant interpretive theme
in understanding the land use conflicts in Shaughnessy and other Westside
districts with the entry of overseas capital.
Off-shore Regattas
We saw in Chapter 5 how Vancouver property was marketed in Hong Kong
and other global centres in East and Southeast Asia. Companies were pre-
selling property in Hong Kong before releasing it for sale in Canada; indeed
with eager purchasers in Asia Pacific, some Vancouver projects were not mar-
keted in Canada at all. Here was the well-lubricated flat world in operation,
with properties overflying the local market and coming to ground for pur-
chase by distant buyers. The attraction for the developer was brand recogni-
tion by keen investors in Asia Pacific who were willing to pay higher prices
than Vancouver purchasers could or would bear. The president of the Hong
Kong-Canada Business Association estimated that about 30 Vancouver build-
ing projects had been marketed entirely in Asia Pacific without any public
sales in British Columbia (Hamilton 1988).
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This transnational business
practice became general knowledge with the marketing of the Regatta condo-
miniums in December 1988. Developed by Grand Adex, with Victor Li (Li
Ka-shing's son) and Terry Hui as principals, the Regatta is adjacent to the
Concord Pacific (Expo 86) site. Li Ka-shing's real estate company marketed
