BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - October 2016

WHAT A CITY IS FOR
bringing the city back to the people amongst the hip allure of ownership
Sadie Barker
When asked about the origins of
his new book, What a City Is For,
East Vancouver-based author and
teacher Matt Hern refers back nearly
ten years ago to trips to Portland
with his graduate students. The days
consisted of meetings with nonprofit
organizations and planners
— faces of Portland’s innovative
urbanization — all of whom, it was
quickly noted, were white. In an effort
to diversify, Hern sought connections
with initiatives in Portland’s black
and Latino communities. This proved
challenging because, he says, “Portland
is the whitest city ever.” But it wasn’t
always, and tracing the development of
Portland to its current reputation — a
liberal-dwelling locale, ripe with craft
beer and green space — narrates an
upsetting history.
Portland’s development in
the last 20 years is shadowed by
racist constitution, discriminatory
real-estate practice, and systemic
displacement. Today Albina, once a
predominately black neighborhood,
is unrecognizable: white and uppermiddle
class, with exclusive housing
prices. The story surrounding it —
a shift from black community, to
“classic ghetto,” to site of renewed
investment — is ubiquitous. It dictates
the social pathologies, like addiction,
unemployment, and displacement that
arise when a community is subject to
racial gentrification. This includes the
withdrawing of social services and housing
condemnation, typically followed by
renewed investment in the neighborhood
by those who can afford it.
Hern, who has
spearheaded many initiatives
in his Commercial Drive
community including
Groundswell: Grassroots
Economic Alternatives, is familiar
with the problematic relationship
between improvement and capital.
This phenomenon is reflected in the
skyrocketing real estate of his own
neighborhood and the “For Sale” sign
on his front door. Hern though, is
hasty to differentiate between degrees
of displacement, deeming his own
inconsequential in comparison to
Albina or the theft of Indigenous land.
Portland’s urban narrative is a
common one and it’s pervasive in
many cities, Vancouver included.
Commodification of land is an oftenpresumed
concept within Western
property rights, but it’s also, Hern
claims, the root of civic peril. Indeed, in a
city like Vancouver, with a 50/50 split of
renters and buyers, property ownership
fosters oppositional politics — owners
seeking high property value, renters
seeking low-rent. But should land be
commodified? Property ownership is
entrenched in Western consciousness,
but that that doesn’t make it right.
A reworking may be in order.
Hern suggests investing in cooperative,
non-market provisions of property,
recognizing the importance of common
and unfettered land, and looking
towards Indigenous concepts of
sovereignty. Because what is a city for?
A city is for everyone.
Matt Hern discusses and launches his
book, What a City Is For, at the Djavad
Mowafaghian World Art Center on
October 21.
Matt Hern looks at the epidemic that is gentrification
and the scars it leaves on a community
VANCOUVER IN THE SEVENTIES
the dawn of Vancouver’s social justice backbone caught on film
Jennie Orton
As the matrix has made pocketsized
camera computers available to
almost every person on the planet to
document the world around them,
the art of photo documentation has
gone from quality to quantity in the
blink of a photo burst. As a result, you
can notice two intriguing truths while
strolling the 400 images on display at
The Museum of Vancouver’s Vancouver
in the Seventies: Photos from a Decade
that Changed the City exhibit: the
vocation of photojournalism has, by
accessibility, become an evolved artistry
less dependent on instinct and timing,
and much of what gives Vancouver its
human pulse remains unchanged.
Curator Viviane Gosselin talks
about the exhibition, which is a sister
project of the book by the same name
written by retired Vancouver Sun
research librarian Kate Bird, and the
decision to categorize the images by
theme instead of chronologically, as they
are presented in the book; ideas such as
“Building in Vancouver,” “Performing in
Vancouver,” and “Playing in Vancouver,”
to name a few. This practice allowed
for attention to be paid to the
vibe of the city and how much the
decade was seminal in establishing
Vancouver’s personality.
“Something I find captivating is
protesting in Vancouver in the ‘70s, a lot
of the issues are resonating with today,”
notes Gosselin. The exhibit features
photos documenting the Gastown
Riots in 1971 (a clash between smokein
protesters wanting the legalization
of marijuana and police), the Battle of
Jericho (a showdown between hippies
squatting in the abandoned barracks of
Jericho Beach and police that resulted
in a dialogue about affordable options
for young travellers in the city), and the
1971 founding of Greenpeace Canada in
Vancouver amidst concerns of nuclear
testing and pipelines.
“For every decade since the ‘20s
there have always been a lot of people
in the streets protesting and exercising
their democratic right so I think it has
become something of a Vancouverite
ethos: that we want to manifest and we
want to express ourselves and we do
that as a collective, and the streets
are the outlet or the place to do that,”
Gosselin continues.
What sets these images apart is the
compositional expertise adopted by those
who chose to make photojournalism their
career in the 1970s.
“Certainly when you look at
those 400 images, they are amazing
historical documents but they are
also aesthetically stunning,” Gosselin
posits. “They are beautiful art
documents.”
Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from
a Decade that Changed the City runs at
the Museum of Vancouver from October
13 - February 26.
28 CITY
October 2016