Course:GEOG350/2024/Section 9: The city through the lens of political economy

Livability In Vancouver: A Case Study of Vancouver's Olympic Village

Introduction

Livability in the Context of Vancouver

Vancouver, often displayed as a city that that is not only metropolitan but also with an abundance of nature.

On the global stage, the City of Vancouver is considered “... one of the best places to live” (City of Vancouver, 2024). The city is engulfed in the natural beauty of the mountains, the ocean, and the lush greenery year round and there is a “... desirability of its social and physical assets… and temperate climate” from around the world but also from other provinces in Canada (Gurstein 139). The city has seemingly succeeded in providing a visual expectation of a livable city but there are criticisms that point out that the city does not fulfill certain aspects of livability. We can presume that certain factors of livability are prioritized over others which can be observed in Vancouver’s Olympic Village, a case study that this page will focus on because this neighbourhood was designed with the intention of becoming a bustling and “livable” community as a part of urban renewal project to revitalize the downtown core around the 1980s following “...a migration of middle class [families] from the inner city to the suburbs” (Sepe 206). As a result, the city used policies which aimed for a “Living First Strategy'' which focused on improving walkability, transportation, services and more around the Coal Harbour and False Creek areas (Sepe 206). The City of Vancouver selected Millenium Properties Ltd. to develop the former athlete housing into a mixed-use residential area with the goal to "align with the city's goals around sustainability, social, and environmental issues" (City of Vancouver). Although the neighbourhood was envisioned to be a "livable community" and may check off some aspects of this title, residents and other actors have contradictory opinions.

Issue With Livability Rankings for Cities

Vancouver's Science World Building was originally built as a part of the speculative urbanism projects built to act as the Expo Centre for the 1986 World Expo Fair. This building is a key example of how aesthetics were utilized as part of a marketing scheme to entice more visitors and investors to pay attention to the city.

We hear about livability over and over again but what exactly does livability mean for cities and why is this something that cities want to achieve? Cities want to remain attractive to ensure that there is a steady population to keep daily flows of activity in the city running. This is a large motivator behind speculative urbanism projects which invites both local and foreign attention on the city which is important for generating cash flow to the city. In the case of Vancouver, large, shiny developments were introduced around the 1980s as part of some “urban regeneration investments for the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication” which were aimed to create excitement and interurban competition (Sepe 206). The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics was another large-scale event where the city poured approximately $7 Billion for the construction of new Olympic facilities and venues as well as infrastructure upgrades to the city, such as the construction of "the rapid transit Canada Line" (Freeborn) . However, the consequences to keeping cities attractive is that prioritizing futuristic aesthetics over social equality can cause large wealth gaps and affordability issues that can be seen in Vancouver currently.

To examine this issue, this page will use one of Vancouver’s “most livable communities,” Olympic Village, as a case study to see how the strategy used to design this neighbourhood does and does not address factors affecting livability. We will also be examining how certain aspects of livability are often emphasized to give a certain image of the city and the implications of doing so.

Overview of issue/focus

What is Liveability?

To begin our conversation on liveability, we must have a basic understanding of what it means. For many developers, this term is used “casually to describe a desirable urban amenity” (Livingstone quoted in Cramer-Greenbaum 70) . Different disciplines will carry different definitions of the word, but one thing is certain: although this word may seem simple, it often invites political and economic interest.

Criticism of Global Liveability Rankings

Cities are often designed with the want to draw in prospective residents and to retain current ones by working towards building upon factors of liveability. Scholarship and case studies on the concept of “livability” proves that there is no single definition of the issue. Vancouver’s high ranking on the Global Liveability Ranking, and in general, the fact that Canadian cities that often appear in some of the Top 10 spots on the ranking lists generates great pride for Canadians (Gurstein 138). However, as cities such as Vancouver and Toronto have experienced exponential worsening of issues such as housing and affordability in recent years, there is no wonder why these titles have been critiqued.

Vancouver, Canada has consistently been ranked highly in several Global Liveability Ranking scales from global consultancy groups such as Mercer and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) despite the many social issues that pervade the city (Gurstein, 138). Affordability issues, lack of community, and more are frequent topics of conversation for Vancouverites and are patterns that can be recognized in many cities that appear in the top spots of the Global Liveability Ranking which seems to suggest that these rankings only consider liveability for certain socioeconomic classes or that the qualifications to being “liveable” does not encompass the full story. Unfortunately, this seems to be the issue with many cities belonging in the higher rankings of the Global Liveability Index. So, if these issues are known and are becoming worse, what exactly makes these cities liveable enough for them to retain their high status on these surveys?

The Race Towards "Liveability"

Although liveability rankings were not intended to “... inform urban policy,” policy-makers and local governments have taken serious interest in these ranking scales and have led to cities becoming more competitive with one another to gain a higher spot on the liveability hierarchy. The methods often used by EIU Liveability Index, Mercer Quality of Life Ranking, and Monocle Magazine’s 25 Most Liveable Cities Index, just to name a few, use methods that are “opaque, imprecise, inconsistent, and biased” (Cramer-Greenbaum 70). It is clear that in creating these lists and the lack of transparency that there are many factors being left out such as housing affordability criteria, “a basic component of livability” (Cramer-Greenbaum 70).

These global ranking systems have never claimed to assess livability for all people and these rankings were actually created with the intention of being tools for these multinational companies to send employees abroad (Cramer-Greenbaum 73). Another issue with this system to note is the fact that EIU and Mercer have separate ranking systems “...to separate cost of living from liveability” which is another incredibility important factor that contributes to how easy it is to live in a city (Cramer-Greenbaum 74). Despite the fact that these ranking only consider a very simplified version of “liveability” that it catered to a middle to higher class working-class individual, urban governments have continued to use these ranking scales as a serious marker to enhance urban competition which has seriously impacted policy because governments have become keen on wanting to move up this ladder. This phenomenon, as David Harvey, an influential thinker in geography, would identify as a "general transition in urban governance from "managerialism' to 'urban entrepreneurialism" which "...forces cities to be more competitive" with one another (Nelson 133). "Mega-win events such as the Olympics are seen as a key example of this ... trend towards urban entrepreneurialism" and act similarly to liveability ranking scales due to their high publicity and therefore are often used to leverage more resources and support from both private and public sectors (Nelson 133).

Vancouver's infamous Downtown Eastside, characterized as the country's "poorest postal code."

As a result of this shift towards neoliberalism in cities, new urban development plans have been pushed to meet the criteria that these companies put out and have put other urban issues on the back burner which has led to more opportunities for some and displacement and poverty for others (Cramer-Greenbaum 71). In order to set up a certain image for the city and to enhance the city’s competitiveness on a global level, the issues regarding affordability and housing that have been left out by Global Ranking Indexes are also the same issues being left out in urban spaces as governments are aiming to obtain the glorified title of being “liveable.” In Vancouver, we see this in areas such as the Downtown Eastside where public policy has failed to address the lack of social housing and provide actionable change to aid one of the more vulnerable communities in the city.

Overview of Liveability in the Context of Olympic Village

To better examine the want to be liveable in Vancouver, the following sections analyze the neighbourhood of Olympic Village because this area is “considered by many to be one of the finest communities in the world from an ecological and architectural perspective” and is Canada’s first LEED Platinum Community (Millenium Properties, 2021). Olympic Village was designed to meet standards of “livability” as the neighbourhood was originally a “...shipping and industrial hub” in the 1800s and after the 2010 Olympics, it became a “ghost town” which was then renewed to become “… a culturally rich, vibrant and sought-after neighbourhood” (Engel & Völkers). Despite being carefully curated to become a sustainable community, this neighbourhood has received criticisms due to the lack of affordability and sense of community.

Olympic Village is a great example of how large-scale events such as the Olympics tied together with Global Liveablity Rankings push notions of interurban competition because of their high visibility in the public eye. Using this case study, we will examine the harmful effects of following livability rankings provided by companies such as EIU and Mercer as the main checklist for livability does not deem a city or community as “liveable.” This chapter aims to act as a call to action to city officials, governments, and policy makers to expand intervention and policy-making beyond the boundaries of liveability that have been drawn by these companies and instead, look more critically at the ever-growing social issues present and how state involvement could be used to create a more livable city for more people. Livability in this sense then lends itself to be a responsibility of the state to address because these officials are the individuals who make decisions on how budgets are distributed and have the authoritative power to make changes on the city scale.

Case Study of the issue

Photograph of Vancouver's Olympic Village

Initial Design Concept of Vancouver's Olympic Village

The idea of developing Olympic Village into becoming one of the most liveable neighbourhoods in the world was a design intention from its conception. Westerhoff discusses this in her article as she analyzed planning and rezoning documents relating to Olympic Village. The neighbourhood was presented to be an opportunity to improve the overall efficiency, health and liveability of the urban environment, including the restoration of prior ecosystems and soil health.

Livability of Vancouver's Olympic Village

Livability itself is a multifaceted concept that has many dimensions to it and Olympic Villages satisfies many of these aspects.

To begin, we will first discuss what aspects of Olympic Village are successful with respect to livability. In a more superficial sense, the village fulfills aesthetic conceptions of livability through the many mixed-use buildings, beautiful views of False Creek, green spaces, modern residential buildings and landmarks such as Science World, and is often quite lively. The neighbourhood faces the downtown core, and its recognizable silhouette is often featured in images of Vancouver due to its picturesque features. In this sense, Olympic Village has become somewhat synonymous to the visual connotations of the city and encompasses visions livability that the City of Vancouver puts out. Other than this, accessibility to the other parts of the city and within the community itself is a key asset. The neighbourhood has a seawall that runs through it providing efficient walking routes and dedicated bike routes to create a pedestrian friendly design. Accessibility to the rest of the city is also efficient as there is a nearby rapid train station, called Olympic Village Station, along with bus stops in the area. Quality of the environment is also an important aspect of livability and Olympic Village achieves this with ease, with urban green spaces and well-maintained parks. Olympic Village is a very safe neighbourhood in Vancouver with low crime rates which is also why many young families and couples choose to live in this area (Statistics Canada). Health and well-being are other key aspects that are considered through the addition of a community recreational centre with other fitness studios in the area. Along with this, there are also many healthy food options in the form of cafes such as Terra Breads and an Urban Fare grocery store in the area ensuring residents have the choice to live a healthy lifestyle if they so choose. With a community centre in the area, gathering spaces as well as festivals and events that happen in Olympic Village there are a multitude of social and cultural amenities for residents to engage in. For example, there are often comedy shows, small concerts and presentations that happen with smaller outdoor events that occur often in the summer.

Urban Public Space of Olympic Village

As far as education options, there is a Simon Fraser Elementary School close by with plans being finalized to build a school in the area. Furthermore, there are also Eric Hamber Secondary as well as Kitsilano Secondary close by for high school options. As fast as post-secondary options, the University of British Columbia is less than an hour commute by public transit and there are other options such as Langara College and Vancouver Community College that can be reached with a 30-minute or less commute. Residents of Olympic Village are ensured great education options for their children at every level. Finally, we can also consider infrastructure and services in liveability. Due to the planning as well as recency of the design of Olympic Village, the infrastructure is well laid out and new and the high reliability and quality of water, electricity, as well as waste management make this factor of livability in Olympic Village great as well.

Although Olympic Village is clearly a well-designed neighbourhood that is very much livable, one major critique of the neighbourhood is whether it is "truly livable" due to the issue of affordability. These qualities of the village are often ones used by real estate agents and the City of Vancouver to sell the positive attributes of this community. These marketing tactics fundamentally ignore arguably one of the most important factors to consider when discussing in Olympic Village as the aesthetics and market value of the neighbourhood often distract from the viability for an average person to live comfortably here. Therefore, it is evident that it is important to consider the issue of affordability and livability for the average citizen in regard to Olympic Village. We can first analyze what factors play a role in the unaffordability of Olympic Village.

History of Unaffordability in Vancouver

To provide a brief history on the housing cost issues in Vancouver we will draw upon knowledge from David Ley who sums it up thoroughly. In the 1970s, the rates of rental prices were rising due to the gentrification in the inner-city areas caused by interventionist policies managed by the state (Ley, 9). In order to deal with the rising costs, the state implemented policies that would direct public resources into the construction of affordable housing units. Furthermore, there were also policies in place to renovate older buildings to improve the housing affordability as well as quality. A couple decades later in the 1990s, there was a regional affordability crisis which led to the state to rely on market solutions. This led to the government allowing the housing market to figure itself out in the private secretary which would lead to a competitive real estate market and would be the beginning of the rising housing cost issues in Vancouver (Ley, 13) . In the 2000s the gentrification of neighbourhoods in Vancouver would continue beyond just the city centre and into the suburbs which would impact more tenants and income groups in Vancouver (Ley, 11) . Housing prices would double while the median family income would drop from the 1980s relative to 2006. In the 2010s the problem would be even more evident and is essentially what residents of Vancouver still face today. In the mid 2010s, massive amount of wealth immigration from offshore investments and specifically from foreign Chinese investment. Foreign ownership can be defined as "housing purchased primarily with income or wealth earned from abroad and is not taxed as income in Canada" and there has been strong evidence that this has been a large factor in exacerbating affordability challenges in Vancouver and also, Toronto (Gordon 2) . This foreign investment would lead to the peak of the unaffordability crisis in Vancouver and this effect would be a worldwide effect on gateway cities (Ley, 13). From this example, we can see how foreign and public attention of Vancouver has deepened the wealth gap between local residents.

Framework to Understand Unaffordability

Vancouver Art Gallery plaza filled with visitors and locals attending the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

We can draw upon the concept of embeddedness to understand the housing market in Vancouver and how it has become so unaffordable. As Shepherd and Wargent describe it, they acknowledge that the market should not be isolated from its broader societal context but integrated into social structures (4) . In relation to Vancouver, the housing market is not merely about regulation and deregulation. If we looked at it from the standpoint of regulation and deregulation we would assume that if the government merely regulated the market again everything would be fixed. However, we have to understand that during the years of deregulation, it is not only deregulation itself that has caused this massive unaffordability for the median resident in Vancouver. There are also other factors that we should consider such as cultural, social, and political factors that play a role as well. An impact that we could consider is the immense attention that Vancouver received after the 2010 Winter Olympics. In an interview with CTV News, Gregor Robertson, the city’s mayor during the Olympics, stated that his one regret from the Olympic Games is the contribution to the affordability crisis. “We might have attracted too much attention to Vancouver, and it turbo-charged our growth. Obviously, our housing market was impacted by that,” he said. “I don't think anyone could have anticipated how hot real estate would be in Vancouver.” Furthermore, we should consider during this time the massive increase in the foreign investments that people from overseas and specifically China. Foreign investors made many property investments at the time to many cities internationally, Vancouver being one of them. These investments would be made for not only a potential profit but also to essentially have international assets outside of their home country which has a much different government from Canada. The massive increase in demand for property in Vancouver from overseas plays a large role in the increase of housing prices. This is just one example of how we must consider all the forces that play a role in unaffordability in Vancouver as there are a multitude of forces that intersect to cause this unaffordability crisis. Just merely increasing regulation of the housing market will not suddenly remove the built up demand from the 2010s and bring housing prices back to affordable levels.

Unaffordability of Olympic Village

Understanding the history of the unaffordability issue in Vancouver is essential to trying to solve these issues in the present. With the issue of unaffordability in Vancouver, and specifically waterfront property such as Olympic Village these properties are out of reach for most residents of Vancouver. The City of Vancouver used this public event as an urban regeneration opportunity and was fundamental in solving issues of "economic decline and interurban competition" and as a result of the construction of various Olympic-related facilities and venues, low-income residents were being pushed to the streets (Nelson 135 - 136) The 2010 Olympics caused the prices of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels to soar which made developers and landlord more willing to displace current low-income residents in favour or "more lucrative real estate opportunities" (Nelson 136). This is quite disappointing since the city claimed after the Olympics that these condos that were built would be affordable and essentially made for the “normal” resident in Vancouver. However, when analyzing past scholarly research there seems to be many conflicting views on this. Tolfo and Doucet discuss the planning behind Olympic Village perfectly, “In [Olympic Village], livability is an aesthetic and design concept that aims to create a neighbourhood where (middle-class) residents can “work, play, and shop” and “enjoy a vibrant street life” (Tolfo & Doucet, 2) . When planning Olympic Village, the goal may have been to make it affordable, but the execution and decisions made along with the state of the housing market in Vancouver would lead to these properties to never be affordable. With rising housing costs in Vancouver due to the free market approach from the government in the mid 2010s, along with the utopian design concept of Olympic Village, it is inevitable that the housing costs in Olympic Village would rise as well. Foreign investors would see this area as a profitable place to essentially park their money and have an increasingly profitable asset which is what Gurstein would refer to as a 'hedge city" (139) .

We argue that the issue of unaffordability in Olympic Village raises the question that if a place or area is designed to be perfectly livable in a city but a large majority of the residents in that city cannot fathom being able to live there due to financial constraints then is that place truly liveable. As Tolfo and Doucet put it, most residents never experience the qualities that make their city ‘livable’, the actual experiences of livability are heavily influenced by one’s socioeconomic position (2) . This creates a paradox where although the area is well designed and amazing to live in, is it truly liveable. If one cannot afford to purchase property and live there and instead the property is bought up by those that either have much more than the median income or those that are not even from the city and are just purchasing property to merely make a profit, then who is the place really made for?

Looking Forward

Although the unaffordability issue is still continuing in Olympic Village as well as other neighbourhoods in Vancouver, it is important to acknowledge that there are steps by the government to try to make Vancouver as a whole more livable. Policies such as the Speculation and Vacancy Tax in British Columbia, the Foreign Buyer Tax in Vancouver, and more surveillance measures on this have deterred some foreign investments which have played a role in attempting to bring back affordability to the residents of Vancouver (Gordon 3) . Policies by the government such as the National Housing Strategy which commits 55 billion dollars over a 10-year plan to provide affordable housing by 2030. Creating a planning committee that includes all three levels of government to have input into creating housing solutions has had a positive impact on the issue of unaffordability (Ley, 14) . Although the issue of unaffordability still exists, these interventionist policies by the government have attempted to create more affordable housing and have led to some positive effects on it.

Lessons learned

Through our analysis of Olympic Village, it is evident that no matter how a place is designed in terms of livability it will never be able to fulfill every individual's ideal case of livability. It is also important for cities and citizens to take Global Livability Rankings with a grain of salt as these companies often only consider livability for an upper-working class individual and often excludes crucial criteria that contributes to livability for the average person. Olympic Village seems to check all the boxes of livability on paper but fails in the case of affordability which essentially prices out a majority of residents in Vancouver which brings about the question of who is it really livable for? On the other hand, another example in Vancouver, Strathcona and Chinatown area, its livability is focused on affordability. However, Strathcona Chinatown falls short of livability relative to Olympic Village in almost every other aspect. A key issue is the safety in the area along with old infrastructure and not nearly the same level of environmental quality as Olympic Village. Therefore, it is evident that livability is a hard goal to achieve in any city, this begs the question how can a city make itself livable for everyone regardless of their interests?

Karl Marx-Hof Public Housing Building in Vienna, Austria

Looking towards the future, Kerry Gold provides a few possible solutions for fixing Vancouver’s unaffordable housing market. These solutions follow strategies that other jurisdictions in the world have tried and been successful in. One example that is often brought up is Vienna where the private rental sector for housing is in competition with social housing and social housing is designed by star architects. With a lot of land being publicly owned it allows for almost 44% of the housing there to be subsidized. This is a viable option in Vancouver as the City of Vancouver owns around 700 properties making them the largest landowner (Gold) . Another option could be to follow the American method which would be to create more housing of all types essentially in order to meet the massive demand for housing in Vancouver. The problem at the moment according to Michael Spotts is that there is a housing shortage which causes higher-income households to compete for older housing stock which would normally be filtered down to lower-income households. Finally, Gold discusses that Vancouver could follow Finland's framework and prioritize ending homelessness. The goal is to first house people then help them solve their problems. By doing this they produce more public housing and are able to cut down the rent level through increased supply as well as subsidies. Although the situations of these places differ from Vancouver’s they are starting points on how to fix the issue of unaffordability in Vancouver and think more critically about wat is being prioritized in definitions of liveability in order to provide livability for all.

References

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