Forgotten pasts and contested futures in Vancouver (Passés oubliés et futurs contestés à Vancouver)

Abstract

Vancouver has long enjoyed a widespread reputation as a young and forward-looking city, where the quality of life is high and the possibilities for prosperity and enjoyment are endless. This image has been crafted by generations of municipal politicians, real estate developers, and tourism boosters who present Vancouver as a city without a history, ever prepared to seize the opportunities of a globalised consumer economy. But as municipal officials and private investors continue to market this image, critics have denounced the encroachment of luxury housing and amenities in neighbourhoods long inhabited by working-class, Indigenous, immigrant, and otherwise precarious populations. Vancouver does have a history, they point out, and it is one of dispossession, exclusion, and discrimination. This article analyses the terms on which Vancouver’s past has been alternately papered over and mobilised in competing visions of urban development and planning, and suggests that historical awareness is a necessary condition for a more inclusive urban form on Canada’s Pacific coast.