Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
but were heavily concentrated in South Shaughnessy and adjacent parts of
Kerrisdale. Of 184 letters received up to the summer of 1992, all but four
bore European, primarily ethnic British, family names. Other mobilization
was occurring. In Kerrisdale, a preservationist group, the Kerrisdale/
Granville Homeowners' Association was formed in 1988, while in part of
Third Shaughnessy a 15-block district of mansions audaciously hired its
own architect and lawyer under the leadership of a resident, John Pitts, and
wrote its own preservation bylaw, which it forced through an embarrassed
Council who had failed to come up with adequate guidelines themselves
(Ohannesian 1990).
The City made three efforts to revise the design of new houses between
1986 and 1990 but none was successful in stemming the tide of protest, and
by 1990 it was undertaking a much larger review with an intent to introduce
area-specific design and zoning revisions for a large swath of 4600 single-
family dwellings in Shaughnessy and significant parts of Kerrisdale and
Oakridge confronting rapid landscape (and ethnic) change (Figure 6.3).
Planning Department questionnaires offered three downzoning solutions to
residents, a strategy that would achieve preservation by requiring smaller
houses to be constructed, and thus discourage demolition and re-building.
The response rate (36 percent) was high for a mail-back questionnaire and
indicative of keen local interest. Almost a quarter of all residents favoured
the most radical zoning revision, a 40 percent reduction in the floor area
permitted outright for a new house (Table 6.1), a massive intervention in
the existing zoning protocol. Most residents preferred smaller reductions
in the permitted building size, and only 20 percent wanted no revision to the
existing bylaws. Interestingly, the desire for protection was not related to
the actual incidence of landscape change. In Oakridge, the initial destina-
tion of wealthy Asian immigrants, existing houses were being demolished at
the substantial rate of 3 percent per annum during 1991-92, ahead of the
rate in Kerrisdale (1.8 percent) and twice the rate of 1.5 percent in South
Shaughnessy (City of Vancouver 1992). Nonetheless few protest letters
came from Oakridge and there was more support for the existing zoning. In
this district of elderly households living disproportionately in ranch-style
homes and bungalows there was no strong sense of the neighbourhood as a
source of sentiment and symbolism worth saving. The shoe was on the other
foot in South Shaughnessy, where the demolition rate was lower but
endorsement was strongest for the radically restrictive option in downzon-
ing (Table 6.1). South Shaughnessy was closest culturally and geographi-
cally to the iconic First Shaughnessy district. For residents it was not an
asset to be sold, allowing trading up to a better district. It was already a
destination of distinction (Bourdieu 1984), a positional good (Hirsch 1976),
where scarcity is absolute rather than relative and substitution is not readily
possible, a place and a way of life to protect.
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