Plots, Places, Exemptions
Finding Place in a Disappearing City
December 3, 2019
Guy Debord emerged with the term psychogeography in 1955 and spoke to how the dérive or drift, a journey through an urban landscape, is essential to one’s connection with a city and a heightened understanding (Lyons). Drifting through my East Vancouver neighbourhoods I am faced with development signage and rerouted by excavators and plastic orange fencing. I began a series of paintings titled Vanishing Vancouver (see fig.1) in response to these dérives and a quote by Caroline Adderson who was mapping the demolition of Vancouver houses (see fig.2). She said, “If every house was documented on the map … the whole city would look like it had a bad case of the measles (O’Connor).” Psychogeography refers to what is revealed through the experiences of an urban environment and the marks they leave on our psyche. What happens when exploring your city is constantly being interrupted by development and what kind of effect does that have on your connection to the place you live? Living and working around Main Street in Vancouver for the past 18 years, I have experienced the phenomenon of an area faced with redevelopment, gentrification and demolition. The change in the psychogeography of neighbourhoods in Vancouver has been a fast paced hot topic since the Winter Olympics of 2010 (Bula) and it doesn’t seem to show signs of slowing down. As older and familiar buildings vanish, I am concerned about an urban environment without visible history and layers. How does constant redevelopment affect the habits, creativity, patterns, and well being of people trying to create or maintain community?
When you type “Main Street in Vancouver” on the search bar in Google, one of the first results is an article naming it one of North America’s top 15 “cool streets” by a Cushman & Wakefield report. Cushman & Wakefield is among the largest commercial real estate services firms with revenues of $6.9 billion in 2017 (Forbes). As per their report, Cool streets are defined as being “bohemian enclaves and focal points for local arts, music or the LGBT community”, but also characterized by “an explosion of unconventional new retail concept (Collony).” This “cool” version of Main Street that real estate agents sell alongside their shiny new developments would not exist if it were not for the older buildings that still line the street. “New ideas must use old buildings (Jacobs 188)”, it is the balance of old and new that creates the economic diversity that is essential to maintaining choice, interest and a vibrant community. On Main Street unconventional creative entrepreneurs started this kind of explosion of new retail with Red Cat Records, JoJo’s Place Antiques, Eugene Choo, Beansprouts, Front and Co, Three Bags Full, Baker’s Dozen Antiques, and Urban Source and they are still thriving, due in part to accessible rent prices in older buildings that allowed room for their original ideas (see Fig. 3). These businesses helped to establish this vibrant community long before it was labelled such. Ironically, as the common urban neighbourhood cycle continues, the new developments push out the artist community and change the psychogeography of the place that they are trying to sell to outsiders.
Since 2010, Main Street neighbourhoods have experienced instability and seen the loss of a wide variety of community hubs, mostly due to an increase in speculative property tax, increased lease costs, demolition clauses and ultimately the forced sale or land to developers (Bula). The negative effects of this phenomena can be felt throughout Vancouver as independent enduring businesses are lost along with their familiarity and contributions to the neighbourhood. In a recent CBC article Patricia Barnes, executive director of the Hastings North Business Improvement Association, points out that “it's leading not only to a loss of business but also personality to the community… while retail chains are also important to the area, they don't bring the same character. We need people to be able to start their own businesses and to bring unique flavours to neighbourhoods. That's what makes them vibrant (Ballard).” Due to the gentrification of older buildings, Main Street has seen the loss of entire social housing complexes (the once vibrant Little Mountain Housing project), art galleries and antique shops (Arts Off Main), established restaurants (The Foundation), independent grocers and coffee shops (Bean Around the World) which were all at the time of gentrification, flourishing and fostering community activity. They have been replaced with chain restaurants and shops, standardized retail and even more often nothing (see Fig. 3) - as the development land sits in rezoning limbo. In the most ironic case Hot Art Wet City (a thriving event space for over 4 years which hosted workshops, art shows, comedy nights and community events) was forced to close due to an ending lease that brought with it a dramatic rent increase in March of 2017 (Siebert). Like so many future developments the space now sits empty with a rezoning application sign in its place and a lifestyle ad in the window. The sign refers passers-by to a website www.mainstreetarts.ca, where developers pitch the sale of new condo that boosts local colour, with a mixed use building that will celebrate the diversity, culture and community of Mount Pleasant (“Main Street Arts”).
Looking at Main Street to explore the “precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals (Debord)” there is a cycle of displacement and lack of grounding, “it is easy to feel small in the face of the monumental power of the real estate industry, the tyranny of zoning codes, the inertia of bureaucracy, the sheer durability of things that have already been built (Montgomery 2).” As Main Street's personality adjusts to change at a rapid rate, I rely on Google Maps to remind me of what the neighbourhood looked like just a few years previous, sometimes a few months previous. Moving through my neighbourhood with constant longing for both the past and a sense of what the future might hold. Living in a neighbourhood without a sense of belonging affects the psychological well being of the people in the community, displacing all that is familiar can create anxiety (Bacon). Once familiar places and spaces are continuously wiped out, the memories of it are in question. I find myself asking the same question David Niddrie and Jennifer Okrusko were asking themselves for their project Disappearing Main Street, where they documented through photography the ever changing face of Main Street in Vancouver. “ Why does this matter (Niddrie)? ”
A 2015 study by the group Social Life, found that unlike newer buildings; older estates, community gardens and familiarity with places are what strengthens a sense of belonging (Bacon). The psychogeography of old buildings creates opportunity, fostering growth and allowing for change to be slow and steady (Jacobs 199). Accelerated development leaves no room for growth of social relationships and the personality of a place cannot be formed or maintained. Our relationship to our surroundings affects what we do, how we feel and what we think. There is great importance in the psychology of the land on which we live our everyday lives. When looking at land, it is important to look at geology, psychogeography and also history… when it comes to psychogeography there is no substitution for being on the land (Cartiere).” The feeling of belonging to the land on which we leave our footprint is essential to our sense of community (Bacon). Fear of displacement, like “root shock” and loss of belonging can be damaging to wellbeing and quality of life (Bacon).
For better or for worse, the one thing that communities in Vancouver can count on is change, like Octavia, one of the imaginary places in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, “they know the net will last only so long (Calvino 75).” As the Main Street area of Vancouver erases buildings and history through redevelopment and leaves land empty instead of allowing for gradual growth, it is not just pushing out existing artists and businesses, but removing space for new ones. Older buildings foster cultural, economic and psychological well being, and are great incubators for entrepreneurship, innovation and experimentation (Jacobs 190). Constant re-development can create anxiety in citizens through a lack of familiarity and sense of not belonging, it affects the pleasant experience of a dérive and changes the psychogeography of a community. As Jane Jacobs wrote in, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings... a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings... the economic value of old buildings is irreplaceable at will. It is created by time. This economic requisite for diversity is a requisite that vital city neighborhoods can only inherit, and then sustain over the years (Jacobs 187).”
Figures Cited
Figure 1. Heintz, Angie. Vanishing Vancouver. Oil on wood. 2018.
Figure 2. Adderson, Caroline. Vancouver Vanishes Map. 2016.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jX_-7AqLyIN3hMrhAGTi852UsFP_J549&usp=sharing
Figure 3. Heintz, Angie. Mapping Main Street - interactive. 2019.
Works cited
Bacon, Nicola. “Belonging.” 2019. PDF file.
Ballard, Joel. “Building Owner Tackles 'Insane Property Tax' With Pointed Rent Sign.” CBC News, 3 Dec. 2019, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/insane-property-tax-rent-sign-1.5381817. Accessed 3 Dec. 2019.
Bula, Frances. “Vancouver Lower Main Street Development Threatens Arts Centres.” The Globe and Mail, 26 Aug. 2013, www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/vancouver-lower-main-street-development-threatens-arts-centres/article13964552/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2019.
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1974.
Cartiere, Cameron. HUMN 311: Latitudes and Longitudes: The Art of Finding Place, Nov. 2019, Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, Vancouver. Lecture.
Collony, Joannah. “ Main Street One of Top 15 Coolest Streets in North America: Retail Survey.” The Vancouver Courier, 30 June 2016, www.vancourier.com/main-street-one-of-top-15-coolest-streets-in-north-america-retail-survey-1.2291569. Accessed 22 Nov. 2019.
Debord, Guy. “Theory of the Dérive and Definitions.” 1958. PDF file.
Forbes Magazine. 17 April 2019, www.forbes.com/companies/cushman-wakefield/#7cb41e953f9c. Accessed 28 Nov. 2019.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books Edition, 1992.
Lyons, Siobhan. “Psychogeography: a Way to Delve into the Soul of a City.” The Conversation, 18 June 2017, https://theconversation.com/psychogeography-a-way-to-delve-into-the-soul-of-a-city-78032. Accessed 8 Oct. 2019.
Main Street Arts. 2019, https://mainstreetarts.ca/.
Montgomery, Charles. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. 2013. PDF file.
Niddrie, David and Jennifer Okrusko. “About.” {Disappearing} Main Street, 20 June 2017, https://disappearingmainstreet.wordpress.com/about/. Accessed 18 Oct. 2019.
O’Connor, Naoibh. “Interactive Map Tracks Demolished Heritage homes.” The Vancouver Courier. 25 July 2016, www.vancourier.com/news/interactive-map-tracks-demolished-heritage-homes-1.2309425. 21 Oct. 2019.
Siebert, Amanda. “Main Street's Hot Art Wet City Will Close at the End of March, Says Owner Chris Bentzen.” The Georgia Straight. 12 Jan. 2017, www.straight.com/arts/855741/main-streets-hot-art-wet-city-will-close-end-march-says-owner-chris-bentzen. Accessed 1 Dec. 2019.
