Property, Pluralism and the Gentrification Frontier

Canadian Journal of Law and Society

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 187-218

  Blomley, Nick ^a  

^a SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85012511172     PISSN: 08293201     EISSN: 19110227     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S082932010000541X     Document Type: Article

References (138)

1. In the Tradition of Excellence: Station Place at Citygat Promotional material (Vancouver: Bosa Developments, 1995). Copy with author [emphasis in the original].
2. Community activist: Lower East Side, New York, quoted in R. Deutsche & C. G. Ryan, “The Fine Art of Gentrification” (1984) 31 October 91.
3. Interview with Barb Daniel, Executive Director, Downtown Eastside Residents Association (2 July 1996)
4. N. Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London: Routledge, 1996).
5. L. Reid & N. Smith, “John Wayne Meets Donald Trump: The Lower East Side as Wild Wild West” in G. Kearns & C. Philo, eds., Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994) 193 at 195.
6. Smith, Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present 4.
7. See also R. Rosaldo, “Foreword” (1996) 48 Stanford L. Rev. 1036 at 1037.
8. See Smith, Stanford L. Rev.
9. Cited in Deutsche & Ryan, Stanford L. Rev. 2.
10. For anti-gentrification examples in the legal literature, see P. Marcuse, “To Control Gentrification: Anti-displacement Zoning and Planning for Stable Residential Districts” (1985) 13 Review of Law and Social Change 931
11. L. K. Kolodney, “Eviction Free Zones: The Economics of Legal Bricolage in the Fight against Displacement” (1991) 18 Fordham Urban L. J. 507
12. H. W. McGee, “Afro-American Resistance to Gentrification and the demise of Integrationist Ideology in the United States” (1992) 23 Land Use and Enviornment L. Rev. 215
13. J. C. Dubin, “From Junkyards to Gentrification: Explicating a Right to Protective Zoning in Low-Income Communities of Color” (1993) 77 Minnesota L. Rev. 739.
14. See, for example, T. Robinson “Gentrification and Grassroots Resistance in San Francisco's Tenderloin” (1995) 30:4 Urban Affairs Rev. 483.
15. C. Hartman, D. Keating & R. LeGates, Displacement: How to Fight It (New York: Legal Services Anti-Displacement Project, 1982) at 4.
16. J. Caulfield, “‘Gentrification’ and Desire” (1989) 26:4 Canadian Rev. of Sociology and Anthropology 617 at 627.
17. Smith cites several examples of pro-gentrification arguments in New York. Rosalyn Deutsche also notes the manner in which dominant aesthetic ideologies are implicated in gentrification. See R. Deustche, “Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Projection and the Site of Urban ‘Revitalisation’” (1986) 38 October 63.
18. See also the extended discussion reproduced in J. Barry & J. Devevlany, Yuppies Invade My House at Dinnertime (Hoboken: Big River, 1987).
19. Sarah Hughes describes the link between mapping, property and the frontier in 17th-century Virginia: “Immigrant colonists gazing at a wilderness envisaged its taming and imagined new markers bounding the edges of their own fields and meadows. The men who could measure the metes and bounds of those Fields held the key to transforming a worthless, uncultivated territory into individual farms.” Quoted in R. J. P. Kain & E. Baigent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) at 265.
20. J. P. Reid, Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library 1980).
21. Recent literature on narrative, law and resistance has proved useful to me. See for example P. Ewick & S. S. Silbey, “Subersive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative” (1995) 29:2 Law and Society Rev. 197
22. R. Delgado, “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative” (1989) 87 Michigan L. Rev. 2411.
23. I have been influenced by a number of writers interested in property and the city, including A. A. de la Cueva, “Low Income Settlements and the Law in Mexico City” (1987) 11:4 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 522
24. D. A. Krueckeenberg, “The Difficult Character of Property: To Whom do Things Belong?” (1995) 61:3 Journal of the American Planning Association 301
25. J. Brigham & D. R. Gordon, “Law in Politics: Struggles Over Property and Public Space on New York City's Lower East Side” (1996) 21:2 Law and Social Inquiry 265.
26. J. E. Davis, Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighbourhood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)
27. N. Milner, “Ownership Rights and the Rites of Ownership” (1993) 18 Law and Social Inquiry 227
28. J. Waldron J., “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom” (1991) 39 UCLA L. Rev. 295.
29. More general discussions of property that I have found useful include M. J. Radin, Reinterpreting Property (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
30. C. Rose, Property and Persuasion (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994)
31. J. W. Singer “The Reliance Interest in Property” (1988) 40 Stanford L. Rev. 611.
32. See Smith, Stanford L. Rev. 4
33. M. Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (New York: Verso, 1990).
34. F. Bula, “Real Estate Boom Looms for Hastings Street” Vancouver Sun (5 March 1997) A10 [hereinafter “Real Estate Boom”].
35. R. Sarti, “City Seeks to End Loss of Low-cost Housing” Vancouver Sun (4 April 1997) B4.
36. Alex Yuen, real estate agent
37. quoted in “Real Estate Boom”, Vancouver Sun 18
38. Sarti, Vancouver Sun.
39. There are few examples of the uses of the frontier metaphor in Vancouver, however, presumably reflecting the differing historical context of Canadian colonisation. Loo notes that the British Columbia frontier was not Turnerian, but imperial and metropolitan. T. Loo, Making Law, Order and Authority in British Columbia: 1821–1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). However, it is ironic to note that many of the businesses in the area---incuding the defunct Woodward's department store, or the logging outfitting stores---have played an historic role in the opening up of the province's “resource frontier.” Woodward's, for example, got its start as an outfitter for the Yukon Goldrush. Now, ironically, it is the Downtown Eastside that has become a capitalist frontier in its own right.
40. There is an extensive body of writing that characterises the Downtown Eastside in negative terms, relying upon a “Skid Row” terminology of welfare abuse, poverty, madness, aboriginality, sex and drugs. See, for example, J. Collins, “Save our Slum” British Columbia Report (7 August 1995) 12
41. G. Shaw “Skid Road: The Flop Side and the Flip Side” Vancouver Sun (16 April 1983)
42. P. McMartin, “In a Beseiged Neighbourhood, DERA Becomes a Prize to Fight Over” Vancouver Sun (23 September 1996) B1
43. W. Deverell, “Back Alleys: Welfare Wednesday” (Winter 1993)The Vancouver Review 26
44. N. Ross “Welcome to My Neighbourhood” Globe and Mail (9 January 1995) A 18.
45. Collins, Globe and Mail, at 1.
46. A frequent accusation is that such community groups oppose new developments not because of a higher ethical objection to displacement but due to a fear that gentrification will upset the local status quo: “[T]his elite's main goal is to maintain poverty and a perceived state of crisis so they continue to justify theor existence---and state funding---as front line troops in the war against poverty.” Collins, Globe and Mail, at 14. It is interesting to speculate on whether this is simply a cynical accusation, or whether it reflects a fundamental failure to make sense of opposition to “obvious improvements.” Perhaps the only rationale for possible opposition, given a market-oriented mindset, is to assume that community groups are rational, entrepreneurial actors.
47. Interview with Jon Ellis, Gastown activist (14 May 1996).
48. The legal significance of this was made evident in a recent hearing before the rentalsman concerning the proposed eviction of tenants from the Dominion Hotel, whose owner seeks to convert a long-term residential hotel into a short-term tourist hotel. Identifying the tenants as “guests,” the landlord aimed to evict them at short notice These eviction notices were deemed illegal, with the rentalsman finding that the tenants were, in fact, “residents,” and this entitled to at least two months notice before eviction. Many of the tenants, it should be noted, had lived in the hotel long term---one for 30 years. As one commented: “This is my home, not some one-night stand.” Quoted in R. Sarti, “Gastown Hotel Tenants Wait for Ruling on Eviction” Vancouver Sun (31 May 1997) A17.
49. See also F. Bula, “Bid to Evict Hotel Tenants Rules Illegal” Vancouver Sun (6 June 1997) B1.
50. Interview with Ellis, Vancouver Sun [emphasis added].
51. One source refers to area residents as “social service clients who frequent the area.” “We're the block busters!!” Carnegie Newsletter (15 November 1997) 3.
52. “Just because a bunch of Indians wandered up and down the Rocky Mountain trench for a few hundred years, doesn't mean they own it.” Attributed to Allan Williams, Social Credit Attorney-General, 1975. Cited in N. J. Sterritt, “Unflinching Resistance to an Implacable Invader” in B. Richardson, ed., Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country (Toronto: Summerhill Press, 1989) 167 at 292.
53. P. Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York: Knopf, 1988) at 68.
54. For an extended discussion of the link between urban aesthetics and gentrification, see Deutsche & Ryan, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History
55. Deutsche, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History
56. R. Deutsche, “Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City” (1988) 47 October 3.
57. See N. Blomley & J. Sommers, “Mapping the Inner City: Governance and the Cartographic Imagination” [paper in review, copy with author].
58. On the politics of space-naming more generally see S. S. Gooding, “Place, Race and Names: Layered Identities in United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor” (1994) 28:5 Law and Society Rev. 1181
59. B. S. A. Yeoh, “Street-Naming and Nation-Building: Toponymic Inscriptions of Nationhood in Singapore” (1996) 28:3 Area 29.
60. On naming in other contexts, see T. Scassa, “National Identity, Ethnic Surnames and the State” (1996) 11:2 C.J.L.S. 167.
61. J. Comaroff, “The Discourse of Rights in Colonial South Africa: Subjectivity, Sovereignty, Modernity” in A. Sarat & R. R. Kearns, eds., Identities, Politics and Rights (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) 193.
62. H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967) at 394.
63. F. Bula, “Yuppies in the ‘hood’” Vancouver Sun (24 June 1995) A1, A2, at A1 [emphasis added].
64. Quoted in Collins Vancouver Sun at 14. Her comments reflect both a pragmatic realisation of the class privileges of gentrifiers, as well as an almost alchemical faith in the power of money. The irony in all this is that many who occupy any new first wave market housing in the area are not likely to be the rich, but those at the bottom of the end of the real estate food chain, given the relative affordability of new condos and lofts in the area compared to housing elsewhere.
65. Given its importance, a careful “archeology” of “highest and best use” urgently needs to be undertaken. For some suggestive examples of its use, see R. E. Park, “Succession, An Ecological Concept” In R. E. Park, ed., The Collected Papers of Robert Ezra Park, vol. 2,.(Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952) 223
66. R. M. Hurd, Principles of City Land Values (New York: The Record and Guide, 1924).
67. R. Ward “Victory Square” (1997) 31 The Georgia Straight 1540, 15, 17–19 at 15.
68. D. Bolen, “Urban Evolution Eventually Will Drop its Blanket Over Downtown's Decay” Vancouver Sun (4 December 1996) A7.
69. Jonathan Baker quoted in Collins, Vancouver Sun at 16.
70. Concord Pacific promotional material, Concord Pacific Place: The Ultimate Waterfront Community: Living! Vancouver's New Waterfront Lifestyle, at 3 [copies with author].
71. S. Hassan & D. Ley, Neighbourhood Organization and the Welfare State (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) at 190.
72. For one resident, “[t]hey think that everybody down here is just a transient. But this is a community. It is a neighbourhood. There are actual people living down here.” Quoted in S. Steele, “Letter from East Vancouver: Worlds colliding” Macleans (21 April 1997) 18.
73. Hassan & Ley, Macleans, at 185.
74. Interview with Barb Daniel, Macleans 3.
75. Interview with Jim Green, Downtown Eastside activist (27 June 1996).
76. Interview with Barb Daniel, Downtown Eastside activist 3.
77. Interview with Marg Green, Downtown Eastside activist (18 June 1996).
78. Protest (19 April 1997) [copy with author].
79. Interview with Marg Green, Downtown Eastside activist 46.
80. Interview with John Shayler, Downtown Eastside activist (16 March 1996) [emphasis added].
81. Interview with Jim Green, Downtown Eastside activist 44.
82. Hassan & Ley, Downtown Eastside activist at 202.
83. See Radin, Downtown Eastside activist 16.
84. N. Blomley “Remapping Property: Power, Space and History in the Inner City” [paper in review, copy with author].
85. Interview with Marg Green, “Remapping Property: Power, Space and History in the Inner City” 46.
86. For one academic treatment of the issues of meaning, identity and urban space in the context of redevelopment, see D. J. Brion, “The Meaning of the City: Urban Redevelopment and the Loss of Community (1992) 25 Indiana L. Rev. 685.
87. Interview with Muggs Sigurgeirson, Downtown Eastside activist (23 March 1996).
88. Carnegie Newsletter (1 November 1995).
89. “Can you find the Downtown Eastside on These Maps???” Carnegie Newsletter, Carnegie Newsletter at 2.
90. An inability on the part of the dominant society to register this sense of informal collective ownership is frequent. Only formal ownership seems to count. As one journalist noted: “The downtown eastside is home to militant community activists who view the district as their own, despite the fact that few of them own property.” J. Collins, “Given the Bum's Rush by Bureaucrats” (1997) 8:44 British Columbia Report 16.
91. “Community News” in Carnegie Newsletter (15 December 1995) at 26.
92. See Blomley & Sommers, Carnegie Newsletter 31.
93. Interview with Jon Ellis, Carnegie Newsletter 35.
94. Interview with Marg Green, Carnegie Newsletter 46.
95. See E. Mertz “Legal Loci and Places in the Heart: Community and Identity in Sociolegal Studies” (1994) 28:5 Law and Society Rev. 971
96. G. Rose, “Spatialities of ‘Community,’ Power and Change: The Imagined Geographies of Community Arts Projects” (1997) 11:1 Cultural Studies 16.
97. Interview with Barb Daniel, Cultural Studies 3.
98. See J. Sommers “Mapping Men: The Intersecting Politics of Space and Masculinity in Vancouver: 1962–1986” Urban Geography [forthcoming].
99. M. McCoy, “A Dispatch from the ‘Gentrification’ Wars” Vancouver Sun (19 May 1995) A19.
100. See M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. (New York: Routledge, 1992).
101. Interview with Marg Green, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 46.
102. “Real Estate Boom”, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 18.
103. I. M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) at 15.
104. See N. Blomley, “The Properties of Space: History, Geography and Gentrification” (1997) 18 Urban Geography 4.
105. B. Fryer etal., eds., Law, State andSociety (London: Croom Helm, 1981) at 14.
106. A. Doinel, “The Incredible Shrinking Neighbourhood” Carnegie Newsletter (1 March 1995) at 2–3.
107. Steele, Carnegie Newsletter 41.
108. See, for example, N. K. Blomley, Law, Space and the Geographies of Power (New York: Guilford, 1994)
109. V. Chouinard, “Geography, Law and Legal Struggles: Which Ways Ahead?” (1994) 11:5 Progress in Human Geography 415
110. B. Santos. Towards a New Common Sense (New York: Routledge, 1995)
111. D.Cooper, “Talmudic Territory? Space, Law and Modernist Discourse” (1996) 23:4 Journal of Law and Society 529
112. D. Delaney, “Geographies of Judgement: The Doctrine of Changed Conditions and the Politics of Judgement” (1993) 83:1 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 48
113. D. M. Engel, “Litigation Across Space and Time: Courts, Conflict and Social Change” (1990) 24:2 Law and Society Rev. 333
114. R. T. Ford, “The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis” (1994) 107:8 Harvard L. Rev. 1841
115. R. Shamir, “Suspended in Space: Bedouins Under the Law of Israel” (1996) 30:2 Law and Society Rev. 231.
116. See, for example, H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)
117. E. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1990)
118. T. Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
119. D. Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)
120. J. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City. (New York: Routledge, 1996)
121. D. Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
122. Cited in D. Wood, “How Maps Work” (1992) 29: 3–4 Cartographica 66 at 70.
123. “Whatever technical definition of property we may prefer, we must recognise that a property right is a relation not between an owner and a thing, but between the owner and other individuals in reference to things … The classical view of property as a right over things resolves itself into component rights such as the jus utendi, jus disponendi, etc. But the essence of private property is always the right to exclude others … [DJominium over things is also imperium over our fellow human beings.” M. R. Cohen, “Property and Sovereignty” (1927) 13 Cornell Law Quarterly 8 at 12, 13.
124. One early commentator on Vancouver described it as “a purely business town … This is a land of speculation, in mining properties, lumber lands, fruit lands, and, above all, in city lots, the price of which has doubled in the last two years.” J. A. Hobson, quoted in G. Woodcock, British Columbia: A History of the Province (Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintryre, 1990) at 159.
125. D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) at 154–156.
126. An academic position paper, in laying out the preconditions for “global city status” for Vancouver, makes explicit the need to reconfigure urban space, where it is argued that “policy should be designed to promote an outward looking global world view in Vancouver… Policy should also be developed to promote flexible urban land use controls to accomodate the changing economic and population base of an emerging international city. The link is seldom made between the operation of an urban land market and national and regional economic policy such as that being proposed here. However, it is essential that this link be made explicit… [this] implies that urban land use and development controls and policies should not only allow such an occurence, but help to promote its smooth occurrence … needed diverse and suitable housing supplies should be built and land use controls put in place that encourage housing innovation.” M. A. Goldberg & H. C. Davis, Global Cities and Public Policy: The Case of Vancouver, British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Planning Papers #17, 1988) at 15–17.
127. In response to this sort of argument, consider the comments of one activist: ‘The city has changed, it's becoming world class. But is it world class, or world ass? Are we becoming world class assholes, or are we really becoming world class? And, if we're world class, we got room for poor people” Interview with Don Larson (18 April 1996).
128. K. Olds, Pacific Rim Megaprojects and the Global Cultural Economy: Tales from Vancouver and Shanghai (PhD thesis in Geography, University of Bristol, 1995).
129. S. Millar, “Is the Van Home the Christadora of Vancouver?” Carnegie Newsletter, PhD thesis in Geography at 15. Interestingly, a community meeting in August 1997 featured Neil Smith as an invited speaker. Comparisons between the U.S. experience and Vancouver were drawn.
130. For an insightful discussion of the intersections between globalisation, property development and power relations in Vancouver, see K. Mitchell, “Multiculturalism, or the United Colors of Capitalism” (1993) 25:4 Antipode 263.
131. D. Crouch & D. Matless, “Refiguring Geography: Parish Maps of Common Ground” (1996) 21 Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 236 at 252–53.
132. See, for example, Wood, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 78.
133. M. Sparke, “Between Demythologizing and Deconstructing the Map: Shanadithit's New-found-land and the Alienation of Canada” (1996) 32:1 Cartographica 1
134. G. Huggan, “Maps, Dream, and the Presentation of Ethnographic Narrative: Hugh Brody's ‘Maps and dreams' and Bruce Chatwin's ‘Songlines'” (1991) 22:1 Ariel 57.
135. D. Cohen & A. C. Hutchinson, “Of Persons and Property: The Politics of Legal Taxonomy” (1990) 31:1 Dalhousie Law Rev. 20 at 29.
136. M. Lazarus-Black & S. F. Hirsch, eds., Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 1994)
137. S. E. Merry, “Resistance and the Cultural Power of Law” (1995) 29:1 Law and Society Rev. 11.
138. “We'll never understand the power that legal forms hold over our minds unless we see them at work up close, in the most ordinary settings …” D. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories” (1984) 36 Stanford L. Rev. 57 at 122.