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Course:GEOG350/Chapters

2026-04-13T01:51:36Z

AlexisJenkin: /* 2026 Project List */

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==Creating Your Chapter==
Here are some steps and resources to help you create your page and have it appear on the index for this portal on the bottom, so that it can be easily accessed by your peers and your instructor.
===1. Login to the UBC Wiki===
Click the CWL button on the top left of the page and login from there.
===2. Create your User Page/Profile===
Your [[Help:User_page|user page]] is basically a profile page. Its purpose is to provide a space for you to let other UBC Wiki users know who you are and what your affiliation is with UBC. It can also be a space for testing and experimentation.
===3. Create Your Chapter Page===
We have made it easy for you to create your Chapter page right from here. Just '''add the title of your chapter to the box below and click on the create page''' button (note that you will need to be logged in to the UBC Wiki in order for this to work). On the edit screen that loads, add your name to the edit screen and hit '''SAVE''' at the bottom of the page. You can delete this later when you are ready to start writing your chapter.<inputbox>
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===4. Add Title and Headings===
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=== 5. Add your chapter to the Index page ===
After you have completed your chapter, add your chapter to the project list below. For list of sections, take a look at the [[Course:GEOG350/Sections|Book Outlines and Theme tab]].

== 2026 Project List ==
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!Chapter (with link to the project)
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Rie's demo page|Rie's demo page]]
|section1
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Inequality Within the Chinese Diasporas of Vancouver|Inequality Within the Chinese Diasporas of Vancouver]]
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|[https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:GEOG350/2026/SRO%27s_in_Vancouver_Chinatown&veaction=edit Chinatown demo page]
|section 3
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|[https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?veaction=edit&preload=Course%3AGEOG350%2FTemplate&title=Course%3AGEOG350%2F2026%2FThe+Green+Gentrification+Trap%3A+Ecological+Urbanism+and+Displacement+along+the+Arbutus+Greenway&create=Create+page&redirect=no Arbutus demo page]
|section 8
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/The Illusion of Proximity: UBC and the 15-Minute City Paradox|The Illusion of Proximity: UBC and the 15-Minute City Paradox]]
|section 2
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Spatial Inequality: Access to Recreational|Spatial Inequality: Access to Recreational Spaces]]
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Hyphenated Identities in Vancouver|Hypenated Identities in Vancouver]]
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Examining the Future of Public Transit in Metro Vancouver|Examining the Future of Rapid Transit in Vancouver]]
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Availability and accessibility of sidewalks in residential Vancouver|Availability and Accessibility of Sidewalks in Residential Vancouver]]
|section 2
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Spatial Inequality: The Georgia St. Viaduct|Spatial Inequality: The Georgia St. Viaduct]]
|Section 2: Place, Placelessness and Spatial Inequality
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Food Security: Community Gardening in One of Vancouver's Most Vulnerable Neighbourhoods|Food Security: Community Gardening in One of Vancouver's Most Vulnerable Neighbourhoods]]
|Section 8 or 6
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|[[Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities|Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities]]
|Section 1
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==Sharing Your Work==
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The following is all optional but if you’d like your name added to the page as author as well allowing other people to re-use it as a conservation resource, you can:
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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T21:49:38Z

AlexisJenkin:

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).
[[File:Vancouver Skyline and Mountains.jpg|thumb|342x342px|View of Vancouver City Skyline]]
According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
[[File:La Rambla (Barcelona, 2023).jpg|thumb|Neighbourhood residents protesting gentrification ]]When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within an Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
[[File:First Nations dancers watch the Canada Day celebrations in Calgary, Alberta - 2022.jpg|left|thumb|285x285px|Indigenous community celebrations in Canada]]
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37).
[[File:View of Powell Street in Japan Town Vancouver with watchmaker shop - 1928.jpg|thumb|Historic Powell Street]]
After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).
[[File:Powell Street Festival at Oppenheimer Park (5992072739).jpg|thumb|Nikkei community booth at Powell Street celebration ]]
As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).
[[File:Vancouver from Kitsilano Beach.jpg|thumb|Vancouver residents enjoying Kitsilano Beach]]
While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
By analyzing the effects of gentrification on Powell street, we have demonstrated a mode of understanding our wicked problem as a complex urban process which has adapted through various histories of displacement, settler colonialism and an ever competing claim for space. Our research on both the historical and contemporary transformation of Japantown has revealed how gentrification restructures community identity and belonging over time, exemplifying that the actions we take to revitalize a space have consequences that further enable uneven power relations, erase memory, and exacerbate urban struggle.

The process of emphasizing, defining and ideating for our wiki made the shift from thinking of wicked problems as broad urban theories to actual lived experiences of communities possible. This process of design thinking made it possible to identify our wicked urban problem as a complex issue which contains competing perspectives and must be addressed through a broader perspective as a whole. By building the wiki as an urban geography resource, our project further contributes to an overall analysis of the socio-cultural and economic forces that shape the city we live in.

From here, several questions related to to gentrification, development and dispossession remain for future research to investigate, especially when viewing Vancouver as a living city, constantly adapting and evolving in responses to various pressures. Questions such as; how can redevelopment be imagined in a way that does not erase people and histories that give urban space its unique identity? Is community-led resistance to development effective in protecting the cultural and social infrastructure, does it last, what types of resistance are most effective? Can gentrification responses avoid the colonial and exclusionary logic? We hope that this wiki contributes to discussions and research on gentrification and its relationship with vulnerable communities, sense of belonging, and the lasting impacts of settler colonialism.

==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T21:25:21Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity */

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).
[[File:Vancouver Skyline and Mountains.jpg|thumb|342x342px|View of Vancouver City Skyline]]
According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
[[File:La Rambla (Barcelona, 2023).jpg|thumb|Neighbourhood residents protesting gentrification ]]When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within an Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
[[File:First Nations dancers watch the Canada Day celebrations in Calgary, Alberta - 2022.jpg|left|thumb|285x285px|Indigenous community celebrations in Canada]]
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37).
[[File:View of Powell Street in Japan Town Vancouver with watchmaker shop - 1928.jpg|thumb|Historic Powell Street]]
After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).
[[File:Powell Street Festival at Oppenheimer Park (5992072739).jpg|thumb|Nikkei community booth at Powell Street celebration ]]
As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).
[[File:Vancouver from Kitsilano Beach.jpg|thumb|Vancouver residents enjoying Kitsilano Beach]]
While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T21:23:46Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City */

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).
[[File:Vancouver Skyline and Mountains.jpg|thumb|342x342px|View of Vancouver City Skyline]]
According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
[[File:La Rambla (Barcelona, 2023).jpg|thumb|Neighbourhood residents protesting gentrification ]]When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within an Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
[[File:First Nations dancers watch the Canada Day celebrations in Calgary, Alberta - 2022.jpg|left|thumb|285x285px|Indigenous community celebrations in Canada]]
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37).
[[File:View of Powell Street in Japan Town Vancouver with watchmaker shop - 1928.jpg|thumb|Historic Powell Street]]
After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).
[[File:Vancouver from Kitsilano Beach.jpg|thumb|Vancouver residents enjoying Kitsilano Beach]]
While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T21:19:45Z

AlexisJenkin:

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).
[[File:Vancouver Skyline and Mountains.jpg|thumb|342x342px|View of Vancouver City Skyline]]
According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
[[File:La Rambla (Barcelona, 2023).jpg|thumb|Neighbourhood residents protesting gentrification ]]When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
[[File:First Nations dancers watch the Canada Day celebrations in Calgary, Alberta - 2022.jpg|left|thumb|285x285px|Indigenous community celebrations in Canada]]
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37).
[[File:View of Powell Street in Japan Town Vancouver with watchmaker shop - 1928.jpg|thumb|Historic Powell Street]]
After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).
[[File:Vancouver from Kitsilano Beach.jpg|thumb|Vancouver residents enjoying Kitsilano Beach]]
While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T21:16:51Z

AlexisJenkin:

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).
[[File:Vancouver Skyline and Mountains.jpg|thumb|342x342px|View of Vancouver City Skyline]]
According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.
[[File:La Rambla (Barcelona, 2023).jpg|thumb|Neighbourhood residents protesting gentrification ]]

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
[[File:First Nations dancers watch the Canada Day celebrations in Calgary, Alberta - 2022.jpg|left|thumb|285x285px|Indigenous community celebrations in Canada]]
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37).
[[File:View of Powell Street in Japan Town Vancouver with watchmaker shop - 1928.jpg|left|thumb|Historic Powell Street]]
After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T20:58:29Z

AlexisJenkin:

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37). After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T20:57:48Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Gentrification and responses toward socio-economic dynamics */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37). After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism - Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and Complex Socio-economic Dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Moving Forwards - Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Key Takeaways ==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T20:55:10Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Problem Framing - larger context [Define] */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Vancouver as a Living City and Space of Contradictions==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Defining the Problem: Gentrification - An Urban Contradiction ==
Gentrification is one of the critical contradictions of contemporary urban life. It is a problem that is socially produced through who contains the power in organizing, investing and defining the city (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Gentrification then is a process where the urban landscape becomes revalued in a way that more often than not prioritizes exchange value over the needs of the residents. Gentrification, while seen as a type of improvement or revitalization of a space for developers, is often experienced and perceived as a form of displacement, cultural loss and the erosion of communities within an urban landscape.

It is through this methodology that gentrification can be understood as a wicked problem. Gentrification posits this contradiction, as in multiple cities the redevelopment works to generate new investment, new amenities as well as rising property values; one could argue that gentrification aids in a space's economic growth, but it has a downside as gentrification also intensifies housing insecurity and weakens the social networks which create neighbourhoods. Gentrification also acts to push residents out of their communities as economic and societal pressure rises.

=== Displacement beyond the Local ===
When analyzing gentrification in a broader context, the negative effects become even more apparent. San Francisco’s Mission District; a neighbourhood past associated with low-income Black and Latino communities has been transformed through the rising wealth gaps and pressures of redevelopment, community organizations continue to posit gentrification as a threat to the culture and communal flow of the land (Mirabal 2009, 12-18). Similar to this case the same concern regarding the uprooting of communities have been occurring in Chinatowns across North America wherein there have been accelerated displacement in low-income immigrant neighbourhoods, this shows that redevelopment erodes the social and cultural infrastructure of community life and is not stagnant in affecting affordable housing (Hom 2024, 1-3). These examples display how gentrification has come to alter who lives in a certain neighbourhood and that the transformative practices which alter histories, businesses and everyday life are ongoing.

Through the following examples gentrification can be understood as a system which continuously transforms communities and has ongoing effects across a wide range of urban contexts. To illustrate this continuous issue we can look at the Harlem neighbourhood in New York City as an example; Harlem is a historically Black neighbourhood which developed through its vibrant cultural and political form during the 20th century, but the multiple ‘waves’ of reinvestment following the 90s reshaped the demographic and economic structure of the space. Although this redevelopment has created an influx of capital and amenities to the area it has also been a main factor in contributing to the rising cost of living and displacement of many of the residents, eroding Harlem’s cultural identity (Zukin 2010, 10-13). Similar to this case is London’s Brixton neighbourhood which has been associated with the Afro-Caribbean communities which reside there. Through the processes of redevelopment, commercial and residential spaces have changed greatly, displacing the independent businesses and negatively impacting the community fabric which made up the space (Hubbard 2016).

=== Gentrification and Time Within and Evolving City ===
These examples make the case that gentrification is a process, one that unravels over time and impacts the social relations which make up a place. Doreen Massey argues that places are understood as “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time” (Massey 1995, 188). This transformation of communities and neighbourhoods through gentrification comes to reconfigure a space's whole history, and destroys a place's urban identity.

== Interactions of Gentrification with Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure ==
In settler colonial contexts, processes of urban redevelopment occur in spaces which have previously altered histories of indigenous dispossession. Cities in these contexts are the main sites in which the “drive for Indigenous elimination continues to be reproduced” (Ellis-Young 2022, 2). In this way redevelopment reshapes the urban form unequally, and in ways which accommodate the interests of the settlers, that being control of land and the erasure of Indigenous presence (Ellis-Young 2022, 3).

Gentrification then is not a often looked at contemporary issue but forms upon the histories of exclusion and a spatial and social reconstruction of space. This wicked problem therefore is a preservation of colonial logic through a contemporary vision, and can only be truly understood via a continuum of historical actions.

==Gentrification and Vancouver - The Impact on Vulnerable Populations ==

=== Historical transformation of Post-WW2 Powell Street ===
The Nikkei community in Vancouver experienced the prior through the forced relocation to internment camps from 1942 to 1945 following Japan’s declaration of war to the US. The community which was once referred to as ''Paueru-gai'' with sincerity by the Japanese as their belonging home, disappeared almost overnight. The “Japanese race” subject to internment were usually first sent to Hastings Park for containment and processing, then relocated again to formal camps in inner BC or in other provinces (“100 miles inland from BC coast”), namely those established in Tashme, Slocan Valley, and Whitemouth, etc. (Price 2020, p. p-14). In the immediate aftermath of WW2, many Japanese were skeptical of the idea of returning to Vancouver, particularly Powell Street. After all, by then, most properties of the interned were either sold (in many cases, to the nearby Chinese residents) or confiscated by the BC government. Most Japanese relocated to Ontario following the Canadian government’s dispersal policy; the only Japanese residing in Greater Vancouver before 1950 were those with special permission, such as exchange students or those part of the United Church (Roy 2008, p. 128-129). From 1950, however, older former residents of Powell Street began slowly returning to the largely abandoned region, which was left in a state often described as “slum” or “ghost-town” (Izumi 2011, p. 311) (Yakashiro 2021, p. 37). After the establishment of small businesses circa 1951, former resident families began to return, peaking at around 2,000 Japanese-Canadians when the returning movement effectively concluded (Roy 2008, p. 131). However, community reinvigoration stalled in the period between 1950 to near the 1970s. While efforts to reconnect the nikkei population existed, alongside negotiations with the government for reparations carried out by the BC branch of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) and other smaller civil organizations, the community remained relatively dispersed and disconnected (Roy 2008, p. 131-132). Only after the second wave of immigration from Japan to Canada in the 1970s did community reorganization revitalize. The new immigrants and the former nikkei often did not fuse well due to the cultural disconnection of those who experienced both countries prior to and after the war; the most notable efforts to create a “united” community were done when a generational shift occurred with the death of ''issei'' (first generation) passed away, being replaced by the predominantly post-war raised ''nisei'' and ''sansei'' (second and third generation) which had a firmer connection due to the shared cultural background cultivated in Japan (Roy 2008, p. 139) (Nomura and Fiset 2011, p. 313-316). As of 2007, Statistics Canada remarks that the population of Japanese Canadians are rapidly increasing while a majority of are Canadian born, illustrating the growth of native population rather than immigrants.

== Powell Street as a site of Settler Colonialism: Conflicting struggles for identity ==
Powell Street is a location known for its intertwined history of settler colonialism, one which had developed in relation to non-European immigrants in addition to the European population which initially claimed the land of the unceded Coast Salish People. Subsequent to the declaration of BC as government reserve and the dislocation of the resident Cost Salish People in the late 19th century, Asian immigrants, predominantly composed of Japanese and Chinese blue collar workers, began settlement in Powell Street neighbourhood, circa 1890~1925 (City of Vancouver 2008, p. 19-20). It is worth to mention that Japanese immigrants were not oblivious of the situation regarding (re)settlement; utilizing the logic of settler colonialism by proving their “Canadianness” through labour productivity, city cleanliness, and socio-economic integration was a strategy of incorporation to the Vancouver community, conscious or not (Yakashiro 2021, p. 45, 49). How Japanese columnists describe their (and their first-generation parents’) efforts of assimilation and how they politicized their loss of community through urban optimization and maximization of production, i.e. economic rationalism and productivism, resemble the logic of the modern city governed by the “principle of economy” Lefebvre critiqued as unmeaningful and exclusionary (ibid., p. 45) (Zieleniec 2018, p. 9-10). Just as the human body requires seemingly wasteful acts of excess, intoxication, and risk, to ''live''–rather than merely ''exist''–a truly happy and satisfactory life, a living ''city'' requires what may be deemed as “untidy”, “inefficient”, or “dangerous”. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 177-178). It is partially to this extent where the difficulty of rebuilding the community was for the nikkei community: The memory of Japantown was shaped through the narrative of an almost exclusively Japanese (perhaps partially Chinese) community, which lacked reproducibility in a land originally belonging to a different, indigenous community, and had become even less “pure” after the acquisition of land by non-Asians throughout the interwar period (Stanger-Ross 2016, p. 273-274). Therefore, the project of rebuilding the community could only be realized through the effort of “re-creating” rather than “restoring” what had once been.

== Gentrification and responses toward socio-economic dynamics ==
Recent community displacement was motivated largely by gentrification. Although efforts to protect the vulnerable neighbourhoods were made as mass-scale urban redevelopment plans were implemented to either host mega-events (Expo 86, 2010 Olympics, etc) or to increase private revenue and investment, land price increases to nearby areas did eventually ripple to DTES (Vanwynsberghe et. al. 2013, p. 2075). Brunett argues gentrification of DTES represents Vancouver’s broader unaffordabilty issue: high land/rent prices of all urban areas in the City of Vancouver pressures those who aim to start small businesses to low-income low-rent areas, causing an influx of newly established restaurants, cafes, and shops (Brunett 2014, p. 168). Access to such destinations call in “adventurous” visitors craving for authentic experience in poor neighborhoods which provide opportunity to communicate with the “othered” residents, reinforcing the cycle of gentrification (ibid., p. 162).

As a result, more and more Japanese Canadian residents chose to move out from Powell Street. Community sustenance efforts carried out by nikkei organizations such as the Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association shifted from geographically bounded efforts to a broader project connecting the dispersed throughout city and suburbia, as represented in the establishment of the Nikkei Culture Centre in Burnaby (a place with little connection to the former Japanese Canadian community) in 2000 (Roy 2008, p. 153-154).

On the other hand, there remains a smaller community of Japanese Canadians, primarily composed of multigenerational Powell Street residents who chose fusion with the DTES community over relocation. According to an analysis by Masuda et. al. based on interviews conducted to Japanese Canadians in 2013 to 2014, those who remained in the area claim they perceive DTES, a place where a diverse population of marginalized people live together resisting poverty, gentrification, and the demonizing narrative hand-in-hand, as where they belong (2020, p. 236-243). Those who embrace DTES and the social situation it is placed in, claiming a ''Right to Remain'', seem to construct an identity contradistinctive to the geographically unbounded community building efforts of JCCR by fully embracing the characteristic of DTES, which Powell Street occupies its core.

==Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Conclusion & Reflection (~300 words)==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T20:42:07Z

AlexisJenkin: /* References & Data Sources */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Introduction & Context==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Problem Framing - larger context [Define]==
*Present your primary problem statement
*Acknowledge alternative framings and competing definitions
*Explain which wicked problem characteristics are most relevant
*Articulate 2-3 "How Might We" questions that guide your analysis
*
*
==Stakeholders [Empathize]==
*Map the key stakeholders affected by this issue
*Describe how different groups experience the challenge
*Identify whose voices are typically centered and whose are marginalized
*Include a stakeholder map visualization
==Vancouver Case Study (~800 words) [Prototype]==
*Focus on a specific neighbourhood, project, or development
*Incorporate local data and spatial analysis
*Analyze political, economic, and social forces at work
*Include maps, charts, or visualizations of local data
==Comparative Perspective (~400 words)==
*Connect Vancouver's experience to other Canadian or global cities
*What can Vancouver learn from elsewhere?
*What makes Vancouver's situation distinctive?
==Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Conclusion & Reflection (~300 words)==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Ellis-Young, Margaret. 2022. “Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages.” ''Geography Compass'' 16 (1). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12604</nowiki>.

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Hom, Laureen D. 2024. ''The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles.'' Oakland: University of California Press.

Hubbard, Phil. 2016. “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier.” ''Sociological Research Online'' 21 (3): 106-111.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts.” ''History Workshop Journal'' 39 (1): 182-192.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. 2009. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and the Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” ''The Public Historian'' 31 (2): 7-31. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2009.31.2.7</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3.

Zuk, Miriam, Ariel H. Bierbaum, Karen Chapple, Karolina Gorska, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Paul Ong, and Trevor Thomas. 2015. ''Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A literature Review.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Zukin, Sharon. 2010. ''Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.'' New York: Oxford University Press.<references/>

{{Sharebox|names=|share=no}}

Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T18:50:11Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Introduction & Context (~300 words) */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Introduction & Context==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Problem Framing - larger context [Define]==
*Present your primary problem statement
*Acknowledge alternative framings and competing definitions
*Explain which wicked problem characteristics are most relevant
*Articulate 2-3 "How Might We" questions that guide your analysis
*
*
==Stakeholders [Empathize]==
*Map the key stakeholders affected by this issue
*Describe how different groups experience the challenge
*Identify whose voices are typically centered and whose are marginalized
*Include a stakeholder map visualization
==Vancouver Case Study (~800 words) [Prototype]==
*Focus on a specific neighbourhood, project, or development
*Incorporate local data and spatial analysis
*Analyze political, economic, and social forces at work
*Include maps, charts, or visualizations of local data
==Comparative Perspective (~400 words)==
*Connect Vancouver's experience to other Canadian or global cities
*What can Vancouver learn from elsewhere?
*What makes Vancouver's situation distinctive?
==Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Conclusion & Reflection (~300 words)==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3. <references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T18:47:08Z

AlexisJenkin: /* Introduction & Context (~300 words) */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Introduction & Context (~300 words)==
“''Humans as social beings are said to produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”'' (Lefebvre 1991, p. 68).

According to Henri Lefebvre, the creation of urban space is a socially produced and constantly negotiated process. This process is influenced not just by physical geography and recent history, but by the actions of socially, politically, and economically powerful mediators (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). In this sense, the city can be understood as a living organism, constantly shifting and evolving in response to the “mediations” within and outside its boundaries (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). Due to these constant influences and changes, what we consider “the urban” will never fully be understood in the present moment (Lefebvre 1968). The urban space is full of contradictions, especially as we shift from what Lefebvre understood as the traditional “city” - which has become nothing more than an object of cultural consumption for tourists - to a more contemporary “urban” world. Within this context, many issues arise from the contradictions inherent to modern urbanism. These contradictions can also be called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems have been described famously by Rittel & Webber (1973) as problems that have no definitive singular solution, with each problem being unique, and their solutions being neither true nor false, simply good or bad. One such wicked problem is gentrification; with the tension between the need for economic growth, and citizens' right to housing, particularly for those who are historically vulnerable and marginalized (Ghaffari et al. 2016).

==Stakeholder Landscape (~400 words) [Empathize]==
*Map the key stakeholders affected by this issue
*Describe how different groups experience the challenge
*Identify whose voices are typically centered and whose are marginalized
*Include a stakeholder map visualization
==Problem Framing (~500 words) [Define]==
*Present your primary problem statement
*Acknowledge alternative framings and competing definitions
*Explain which wicked problem characteristics are most relevant
*Articulate 2-3 "How Might We" questions that guide your analysis
==Vancouver Case Study (~800 words) [Prototype]==
*Focus on a specific neighbourhood, project, or development
*Incorporate local data and spatial analysis
*Analyze political, economic, and social forces at work
*Include maps, charts, or visualizations of local data
==Comparative Perspective (~400 words)==
*Connect Vancouver's experience to other Canadian or global cities
*What can Vancouver learn from elsewhere?
*What makes Vancouver's situation distinctive?
==Ideas for Urban Action ==
After detailing the trajectory of gentrification and the displacement of Japanese-Canadians in the Vancouver context, it is important to look forwards and consider potential solutions to this wicked problem. Part of what makes solutions to gentrification so difficult is the presence of conflicting stakeholders, some of whom view gentrification as an economically positive process. While it has been shown to have devastating economic and social impacts on vulnerable and culturally marginalized populations, it is also considered to be a driving force of economic growth in urban areas (Smith 2023). Supporters of gentrification highlight several factors when arguing in support of this urban process; such as improved infrastructure, increased property values, increased property tax revenue for public services, better education systems, and the addition of green technologies (Smith 2023). Yet its devastating effects cannot be ignored if cities want to work towards urban citizens having a “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968).

Referencing theories by Lefebvre (1991, 1968) and Douglas (2020), it can be argued that a solution to gentrification is found in the utilization of everyday processes in urban life, which bring an awareness of the limitations of the current system, and a desire to push against it. By pushing against the hegemonic order, citizens fight for a “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1968). Often, this right is fought for by the urban working class, as they strive to find a place in the urban world. Building on this concept, Douglas (2020) writes about “guerrilla urbanism” as a form of anti-gentrification activism that can be practiced by the urban working class. His theory highlights the importance of informal urban space interventions, which are an everyday form of urban resistance to hegemonic neoliberal forces, such as gentrification (Douglas 2020). These “urban space interventions” can take many forms, however they are defined as “short-term unsanctioned and unscripted activities [that] begin to intersect with sustained, organized actions of resistance [and] lead to substantive and transformative outcomes” (Douglas 2020, p. 204).

While Douglas is unable to provide an exact “how-to” for guerrilla urbanism, there are three key concepts that are of use when considering how to challenge wicked urban problems, such as gentrification. These concepts being “the everyday”, “exceptional moments” and “theory of moments”.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Douglas argues for the use of “the everyday” as a tool in urban resistance and guerrilla urbanism. This concept is best illustrated by the following quote; “The radical transformation of society could only be achieved through the transformation of the everyday” (p. 205''')'''. For Lefebvre (1991) and Douglas (2020), it is in the public urban sphere where hegemonic economic and political practices - such as gentrification - are organized most explicitly. Therefore, it must also be in this space where these processes can be challenged most successfully. The city is being constantly negotiated and changed by the mediators and mediations within it, and even the smallest transgressions against the current urban order, insignificant on its own, is a step in the right direction (Lefebvre 1991, p. 77). What these transgressions look like is better outlined in the following section by the concept of “exceptional moments”.

The idea of “exceptional moments” is the notion that positive emotions, such as joy, can be a way to challenge the current world order and bring about critical consciousness (Douglas 2020, p. 205). This critical consciousness is the awareness of the current state of the world, and is often paired with a desire to push against its limitations. Exceptional moments may look like a variety of things; experiencing love, expressing creativity, participating in protest, or even just feeling the sun on your face at the beach (Douglas 2020). They are broadly defined as moments in which one becomes aware of a better “total” life that is impossible in the current system, and where there is a sudden consciousness of the limitations of current everyday routines, systems, and expectations. Repeatedly having these moments brings urban citizens attention to the possibility for a different system, and is an essential step in facilitating urban change (Douglas 2020). All together, the use of everyday exceptional moments as a form of resistance becomes Lefebvre’s “theory of moments”.

While building collective consciousness through everyday acts of resistance and “guerrilla urbanism” is a highly theoretical solution to gentrification, an analysis of 64 papers on gentrification by Ghaffari et al (2016) highlights several tangible solutions. These solutions build on the concepts of Douglas (2020) and Lefebvre (1991, 1968) of engaging urban citizens in the everyday, with solutions relying on community engagement, participatory action, and education (Ghaffari et al. 2016). The authors highlight bottom-up action and willing participation as the most important factors in resisting gentrification. While this may not be a straight-forward or simple solution to gentrification, the issue itself is neither straight-forwared nor simple, rather it is decidedly wicked. This leaves the urban world with a mission; to bring about critical consciousness and discomfort with the current urban system, and to begin resisting through community level participation and everyday exceptional moments. While one action alone is unable to uproot an entire economic and political system solidified over many decades, consistent everyday forms of guerrilla urbanism that come from joy and the desire for a better “total” life have the power to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions that allow gentrification to take place and continuously rip communities apart.

“''Even if an action itself is not transformative, it can suggest ideas that can lead to change”'' (Douglas 2020, p. 206)

==Conclusion & Reflection (~300 words)==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3. <references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T18:45:38Z

AlexisJenkin: /* References & Data Sources */

Total length: Approximately 3,200-3,500 words plus visualizations, references, and process reflection

==Introduction & Context (~300 words)==
*Introduce your topic and its significance to Vancouver
*Situate it within broader urban geography themes from the course
*Preview the wicked problem characteristics that make this challenge complex
==Stakeholder Landscape (~400 words) [Empathize]==
*Map the key stakeholders affected by this issue
*Describe how different groups experience the challenge
*Identify whose voices are typically centered and whose are marginalized
*Include a stakeholder map visualization
==Problem Framing (~500 words) [Define]==
*Present your primary problem statement
*Acknowledge alternative framings and competing definitions
*Explain which wicked problem characteristics are most relevant
*Articulate 2-3 "How Might We" questions that guide your analysis
==Vancouver Case Study (~800 words) [Prototype]==
*Focus on a specific neighbourhood, project, or development
*Incorporate local data and spatial analysis
*Analyze political, economic, and social forces at work
*Include maps, charts, or visualizations of local data
==Comparative Perspective (~400 words)==
*Connect Vancouver's experience to other Canadian or global cities
*What can Vancouver learn from elsewhere?
*What makes Vancouver's situation distinctive?
==Ideas for Urban Action (~500 words) [Ideate]==
*Present 2-3 evidence-based approaches or interventions
*Acknowledge trade-offs and potential unintended consequences
*Discuss which stakeholders might support or oppose each approach
*Avoid presenting a single "solution"—emphasize that wicked problems require ongoing engagement
==Conclusion & Reflection (~300 words)==
*Summarize key insights
*Reflect on what you learned through the Design Thinking process
*Identify questions that remain open for future inquiry
==References & Data Sources==
Birmingham & Wood Architects and Planners; Ayukawa, Michiko Midge; Cain, Helen; Clague, Michael; Denise Cook Design; Hunter, Terry; Walling, Savannah; Kelly, Patrick; Roy, Patricia. “Powell Street (Japantown) Historical and Cultural Review.” Prepared for the City of Vancouver. 2008.

Burnett, Katherine. 2014. “Commodifying Poverty: Gentrification and Consumption in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Urban Geography'' 35 (2): 157–76. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.867669</nowiki>

Douglas, Gordon. 2020. “Kong at the Gates - Guerrilla urbanism and the possibility of resistance”. ''Urban Design International''. 25: 203-208 (2020). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-020-00111-z</nowiki>

Frederico, Margarita M., Clifford J. Picton, Steven Muncy, Luis Ma Ongsiapco, Celia Santos, and Vladimir Hernandez. 2007. “Building Community Following Displacement Due to Armed Conflict: A Case Study.” ''International Social Work'' 50 (2): 171–84. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872807073964</nowiki>.

Ghaffari, Leila; Klein, Juan-Luis; Baudin, Wilfredo Angulo. 2017. “Toward a socially acceptable gentrification: A review of strategies and practices against displacement”. ''Wiley''. 12(2). <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12355</nowiki>

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. ''The Production of Space''. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Basil Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. ''The right to the city''. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996.

Masuda, Jeffrey R., Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman. 2020. “After Dispossession: An Urban Rights Praxis of Remaining in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 38 (2): 229–47. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819860850</nowiki>.

Nomura, Gail M., and Louis Fiset. 2011. ''Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century''. University of Washington Press. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/194/monograph/book/11323</nowiki>.

Price, John. ''The BC government and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)''. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Association of Japanese Canadians, 2020.

Rittel, Horst W.J & Webber, Melvin M. 1973. “Dilemmas in the General Theory of Planning. ''Policy Sciences''. 4: 155-169. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730</nowiki>

Roy, Patricia. 2008. “The Re-Creation of Vancouver’s Japanese Community, 1945–2008.” ''Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada'' 19 (2): 127–54. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.7202/037751ar</nowiki>.

Smith, Robert, F. 2023. “Gentrification Pros and Cons: A Double-Edged Sword. (August 8, 2023).

Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2016. “Suspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII.” ''Journal of Planning History'' 15 (4): 271–89. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513215627837</nowiki>.

Vanwynsberghe, Rob, Björn Surborg, and Elvin Wyly. 2013. “When the Games Come to Town: Neoliberalism, Mega-Events and Social Inclusion in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.” ''International Journal of Urban and Regional Research'' 37 (6): 2074–93. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01105.x</nowiki>.

Zieleniec, Andrzej. 2018. “Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre” ''Urban Planning'' Volume 3, Issue 3. <references/>

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Course:GEOG350/2026/Living Cities: Gentrification in Vancouver and Vulnerable Communities

2026-04-12T18:42:15Z

AlexisJenkin: creating our wiki