cities » Ren Thomas

Vancouver riot: hooliganism at its finest

Fans watching Game 4 in front of the Vancouver Public Library

Two weeks have passed since the Vancouver Canucks’ Game 7 Stanley Cup loss to the Boston Bruins and the ensuing riot. Other events have prevented my journalistic ink from flowing as freely as others’ on this topic…yet the amount of ink spilled (both literal and virtual) has done little to answer the fundamental question of why the riot happened. Opinions range from “there wasn’t enough of a police presence” (“Police actions questioned in wake of Vancouver riot”, CTV News) to “the potential for violence always exists in the human brain” (“Sometimes, is a riot normal?”, The Georgia Straight, June 23).

I’ll let the experts discuss the reasons behind it, although I will say that I was as surprised as anyone at the Game 7 riot, having been downtown watching Games 4 and 6, both of which the Canucks lost. There were over 100,000 fans downtown on earlier game nights, and many of us watched the game on the big screens at Georgia and Hamilton Streets. There were big groups of police and security personnel standing around, as most fans went home in a state of quiet depression during the barren third period of each game (“Vancouver riot saw 800 cops on the street“, The Globe and Mail, June 28). The Stanley Cup Playoffs ran nine weeks this year, and considering it would have been the Canuck’s first Cup ever and Canada’s first since 1993, Cup Fever had built up over a two-month period.

I’ll also leave aside the alarming, or alarmist, media coverage, which quickly spun the story out of control. At 10pm on June 15th, a mere hour after the game ended, CTV reported that ”Rioters left downtown Vancouver reeling from countless fires, widespread looting and numerous stabbings in the wake of a crushing loss for the Canucks.” (In fact, fifteen cars were set on fire, several stores were looted along Georgia and Robson Streets and there were exactly two stabbings.) Stories abounded about how people were trapped downtown after TransLink was forced to shut down bus service into/out of downtown. (Anyone living here knows that Vancouver’s downtown is a peninsula. You can walk east, south, and southwest about 20 minutes and you’re out of the core and can hop on a bus.) The international media quickly picked up the events unfolding through thousands of Twitter feeds, Facebook updates and incessant hand-wringing of middle-aged news anchors on CBC, CTV, and local Canadian networks. Even now, media comparisons persist between Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot (over 100 arrests) and Toronto’s G20 protests last year, an event still being pursued in the courts involving 19,000 police offers, 1,100 security guards and over 900 arrests, the highest number of mass arrests in Canada’s history.

I’m more concerned with how quickly Vancouver residents disowned the riot, saying it was not typical of Vancouver.

Fans walk home along Granville Street after Game 6

“It is extremely disappointing to see the situation in downtown Vancouver turn violent after tonight’s Stanley Cup game. Vancouver is a world-class city, and it is embarrassing and shameful to see the type of violence and disorder we’ve seen tonight.” Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, June 15, 2011

NBA player Steve Nash, a Vancouver native, agreed the riot was an embarrassment for the city. Police Chief Jim Chu was quick to pin the blame on “anarchists and criminals” (though he took back those words within days). Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail wrote that rioters came from all over the region, not just Vancouver. Solicitor-General Shirley Bond said that the riot was due to a very young, predominantly male crowd–a different crowd than other Stanley Cup playoff nights. Spectators interviewed by the press indicated their disappointment, saying, “This is not Vancouver.” Later, when locals started penning their thoughts on the wood panels used to shore up broken windows of vandalized stores, a common theme was “Don’t judge us by a few hooligans.” Quickly, now, repeat after me: Vancouver is pretty. Not ugly.

In fact, this is Vancouver. Like any city, Vancouver has a history of violence, and riots have arisen out of political protest, civic unrest and hooliganism. In September 1907, 2000 citizens gathered in “anti-Asiatic riots”, smashing in the windows of Japanese business owners on Powell Street. A drunken riot involving 600 citizens and soldiers demonstrating in front of the Vancouver Police Station was broken up by tear gas and military police in August 1943. In November 1966, 5000 rioters swarmed into a three-block area along Georgia Street, throwing beer bottles, breaking windows, and starting fires in sidewalk trash bins after the annual Grey Cup parade; there were 200 arrests. In August 1971, Gastown residents rioted against a police crackdown on illegal drugs; 100 people were arrested. Less than a year later, in June 1972, 2000 people outside Pacific Coliseum hurled rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at riot-equipped Vancouver Police officers during a Rolling Stones concert (warmup act: then-22-year-old Stevie Wonder). Thirty policemen were injured as the mob tried to crash the concert. And of course, following the Canucks’ Stanley Cup loss in 1994, a riot ensued lasting six hours; 200 were arrested. Some of these riots were inspired by political events, but some involved a bunch of hooligans who thought it would be fun to smash some stuff up and set a few things on fire, just like June 15th, 2011. Many came prepared to riot regardless of whether the Canucks won or lost, with black knit masks, fire extinguishers that could be used to smash windows, and signs that said, “Riot 2011″. Countless people took digital photos of themselves with the burning cars, arms held high as if they’d scored a victory. In Vancouver’s first social media riot, Twitter feeds, Facebook postings, and the confessions of several teens who have been charged after the incident confirm how lightly participants took acts like setting cars on fire. They seemed to just go with the flow, and even seem surprised at the internet backlash that has led to them losing their jobs, being suspended from sports teams, and endangering their families. Like Stephen Quinn joked, some might even have hooked up as a result of their actions (“Missed Connections/I saw you (through the tear gas)”, The Globe and Mail, June 24).

Every city has the potential for inexplicable violence, because every city is home to hundreds of thousands of people. We did manage to hold the Olympics here without major incident. We’ve also held countless international events like Expo ’86, and community events like Car-Free Day on the Drive, the Kitsilano Greek Festival, and Chinese New Year celebrations, all of which draw thousands of people. All of these events are carefully planned with the presence of police, first aid, and security personnel. Most of the time, nothing goes awry. Occasionally it does (few outsiders remember that downtown windows were smashed by anti-Olympics protesters on the first day of last year’s Olympics). When it does, we all have to deal with it: the mayor, the police chief, the gutsy few that helped hold back looters (“Police seeking Stanley Cup riot Good Samaritans”, The Toronto Star June 27th) and more than 14,000 citizens who volunteered to help store owners clean up the shattered glass and debris on the morning of June 16th. These stories, both good and bad, become part of the city’s history, at least for those of us who can’t stomach the sugary-sweet myth of Vancouver. Those of us who live here know that this is also a city with persistent homelessness, sharply polarized incomes (with the poorest and richest postal codes in the country), and serious drug traffic. People exist here, like they do elsewhere, within a fragile network of social connections kept alive by a veneer of civility. Certain events (whether it be sports, politics, or inequity) motivate people to take sandpaper and blowtorches to the shiny surface, exposing the conflicts underneath. Other events, like “most livable city” contests, buff the veneer right up again. So never fear, politicians and business scions: the myth of Vancouver as some kind of laid-back hippie paradise (for rich people) persists.

Maybe this riot, like the 1994 Stanley Cup riot, the 2001 transit strike that lasted so long it produced skewed Census results, and the persistent smashing of Starbucks’ windows when they first opened on Commercial Drive, offers us a little insight into the complex social, income, and ethnic diversity of this city. These events, like the Olympics and Expo ’86 and the hundreds of festivals held here, are as much a part of the city as the Downtown Eastside and Kitsilano. The rioters, the Good Samaritans, the cleanup crew, and the internet vigilantes who have sent police thousands of pictures to help identify rioters: they are all Vancouver.

Vancouver: a hookup nightmare?

Vancouver has a lot of things going for it: beautiful scenery, coffee shops on every corner, and some fantastic local foods. But as my regular readers know, Vancouver also has undesirable characteristics: it’s ridiculously expensive, socially polarized and inward-looking. It’s also notoriously difficult for young singles to meet potential mates in this town. So when The Tyee‘s Vanessa Richmond asked, “What the heck is wrong with men in this town?” I couldn’t resist responding.

There’s a fair amount of Vancouver-bashing going on now that the Canucks have made it to their first Stanley Cup finals in 17 years. Most of the talk indicates the lukewarm attitudes the rest of Canada has towards “the most livable city in the world”.

“The fact is, as cities go, many Canadians view Vancouver as effete, a metropolis made up of snotty, latte swilling, cargo-shorts wearing, too-cool-for-school yuppies for whom pleasure and real estate remain their only abiding concerns.” Gary Mason, Can Canucks really be Canada’s hockey team?, Globe and Mail, May 18, 2011)

“We are yuppie, expensive and shallow. Look at the place! We’d be stupid not to be yuppie, expensive and shallow. I’m writing this column in my hot tub while sipping a clever little Okanagan Pinot Gris. Life is good here.” Pete McMartin, “Dear rest of Canada, please get your own hockey team”, Vancouver Sun, May 12, 2011)

Vancouverites know that it’s more than geography that separates them from the rest of Canada, and they’re proud of this cultural distinctness in the same way Alaskans revel in their separation from “the lower 48″. But there are specific characteristics that make it difficult for singles to hook up in VanCity (depending on what your definition of “hookup” is):

Strict Prohibition-era liquor laws make it more expensive to drink here and enforce earlier closing hours for Vancouver bars outside of the Granville Street club strip. When I moved here in 2005, I was shocked to discover that last call for bars and restaurants here is midnight…I mean come on, even in London, Ontario it’s 1:30am. It’s even illegal to take BC wines across the Alberta border, as a local radio reporter demonstrated recently (noted: I’m about to embark on a road trip to Calgary, so I guess we’ll have to stock up once we cross the border).
The weather. Canadians in Toronto and Montreal somehow manage to socialize in the rain and snow, but 8 months of rain per year literally dampens Vancouver’s social scene.
Urban planning. Metro Vancouver’s segmented land mass joined by precious few bridges makes socializing in the (tiny) downtown much more difficult than in other cities, where the downtown blends seamlessly into inner suburban neighbourhoods. It’s still a relatively small city (1.8 million for the entire region) and still largely suburban: people retreat to their homes after work, rather than sharing in the traditional urban pastime of after-work drinks that spill into dinner. And it’s still a relatively young city, so neighbourhoods don’t really have their own local bar/restaurant scenes. Vancouver still doesn’t feel like a vibrant urban centre.
Culture. Urban planner Gordon Price, quoted in Richmond’s article, notes that aloof behavior is “embedded in the cultural bedrock upon which this place was founded”. This British reserve means that men don’t approach women in bars, social hangouts, or even online dating sites: Richmond calls this “the eternal shyness of the VanCity man”.
Transience. Vancouver has a reputation that draws people from all over the country, and increasingly, all over the world. This creates a relatively transient population: many stay in Vancouver, but lots choose to return home when housing prices and incessant rain start to make them miserable. Many of my single friends have complained that the men they’ve dated weren’t into anything serious because they didn’t intend to stay here.

In other cities, singles aren’t hard up for hookups…how does anyone ever meet in VanCity? When I moved here for grad school, those of us from out of town quickly realized that the “townies” didn’t really socialize with us. They had their well-established networks of friends and family, and didn’t have the time or desire to add more. A classmate of mine who had moved here for work several years earlier told us how difficult it was to make friends here, and several of my friends have shared their own struggles in Vancouver’s social scene. One friend recently mentioned that her husband has had a tough time making guy friends. “You think it’s hard for women to make friends here?” she asked. “It’s ten times harder for men.” Even after living in Vancouver for six years, most of my friends are from out of town, and many from out of province. (Lest I be outed as “anti-Vancouver”, my husband and I noticed the same social phenomenon in Ottawa, where we lived for three years). This difficulty making friends in Vancouver inevitably extends to other social activities like dating.

I don’t know what the solution is any more than Richmond does; even her suggestion that women be more assertive in approaching men might be problematic in Vancouver (the men in her article are rebuffed when they approach women, so who’s to know how they would react if a woman were to make the first move?) All I can say is that Vancouver’s social scene is markedly different from Montreal’s, where waiters at restaurants flirt with every woman in sight, and Toronto’s (I dare you to find a Toronto friend who hasn’t gone out for after-work drinks in the last month).

Transit? Who needs it?

New Toronto mayor Rob Ford has been making headlines: and not in a good way. Ford has long been a controversial figure, and this summer’s mayoralty race was no exception. Echoing Mel Lastman, a similarly polarizing figure, Ford seems an odd fit for such a multicultural, cosmopolitan, and diverse city. He’s at best a pompous blowhard with insights into the political process; at worst, depending on your information source, he’s a racist homophobe who doesn’t support affordable housing, public transit, or any of the other pressing needs of the burgeoning city. But like Lastman, who was in office for six years, Ford will likely have a lasting effect on the City of Toronto.

In Canada’s biggest city, where 22% of the population takes transit, Ford has decided that transit is the enemy. On December 1st, his first day in office, he managed to kill the city’s proposed vehicle registration tax, freeze property taxes, and get council’s approval to have the Toronto Transit Commission deemed an essential service. With this designation, the TTC will be unable to strike, and union leaders say they’ll fight the decision, which will be made by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

McGuinty and regional transit planning authority Metrolinx also have to deal with Ford’s tyrannical attack on Transit City, an initiative that was seven years in the making and is already being built. The province, after approving the construction of four LRT lines, announced this spring that they may not be able to fund the entire plan at this time. Ford wants to scrap Transit City entirely, arguing that streetcars cause traffic congestion, and everyone prefers subways anyway. He wants to extend the Sheppard subway line to meet up with the Scarborough RT instead, even if the high cost of this option means that no other transit infrastucture can be built in Toronto. Perhaps he isn’t aware that one of Transit City’s approved lines was a retrofit of the Scarborough RT, which is rapidly deteriorating, and another was a Sheppard LRT that would extend much farther than the subway will? In vain, Metrolinx tried to convince Ford that many other options were more suitable and affordable than subway extension, but surprisingly, the man who claims to be so concerned about taxpayers’ wallets wants the most expensive option. The main beneficiaries of Transit City were to be the inner suburbs: Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York. Neighbouring municipalities like Mississauga also strongly support Transit City. David Hulchanski, who just released an update to his popular “Three Cities within Toronto” study, says that building LRT is the answer to slowing or reversing the segregation of the city by income. Doesn’t Ford feel a responsibility to represent the suburban “working man” that elected him?

Electing Ford represents frustration: residents are frustrated with the way their city is run. Suburban residents see traffic congestion, unreliable public transit, job losses, and rising taxes, and they want things to change. What they don’t see is that municipalities are chronically underfunded by the provincial government in ways that matter: it is the provincial government that funds transit and road infrastructure, and a good proportion of job creation also comes from provincial initiatives. This underfunding leads the TTC to strike, since they rarely have the money for either their capital or operating costs, and also requires the city to raise money in other ways, usually new or increased taxes. Canadian cities have precious few mechanisms to generate money, and unfortunately taxes are among the few. The vehicle registration tax would have raised $64 million for the City of Toronto; Ford has not announced another way of raising the money. Opponents claim that it is “mathematically impossible” that these two tax losses won’t cause any service cuts for City residents. Cancelling Transit City could cost the province fees for broken contracts: $137 million has already been spent on Transit City and $1.3 billion is committed. In fact, for a pro-business, right-wing mayor, Ford doesn’t seem to be very good at managing money. Perhaps his 2011 budget review will inform him that transit actually makes money for the City of Toronto: former budget chief Shelley Carroll says that high transit ridership contributed to a year-end operating surplus.

Both Lastman and Ford came into office at a time of economic recession. Both came to power after a period of progress for the City of Toronto: Barbara Hall (1994-1997) preceded Lastman and David Miller (2003-2010) preceded Ford. Both Lastman and Ford claimed to appeal to suburban “ordinary people”: indeed, the voting maps of Toronto illustrate the pervasive divide the media loves to play up (the Globe and Mail included). We know from US elections that the maps don’t tell all: as Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Naymark wrote in the National Post,

“This attempt to create a downtown versus suburb cleavage is at best a distraction, and at worst, sets a dangerous precedent.”

Toronto's 2010 Election Results

Toronto's 1997 Election Results

Perhaps most tellingly, both Ford and Lastman faced a slew of opponents for mayor: Lastman was one of over thirty candidates, while Ford was one of 40. According to the City of Toronto’s website, 383,501 voters elected Ford: 813,984 actually voted in the election. So, 47% of voters, who represented 35.3% of the City of Toronto’s population, elected him: that’s 16.7% of the city’s population. Lastman, the first mayor elected after Toronto announced its amalgamation with five suburban municipalities, won by a slim margin of about 41,000 votes. In times of discord and recession, the appeal of the right-wing, cost-saving, businessman is strongest.

The next three years will be momentous ones in Canada’s biggest city. Ford will have to make allies in the provincial government if he wants to keep taxes low. Let’s hope that Ford has a fight on his hands, at least as far as transit is concerned: it takes very little to kill programs and policies that have taken years to approve. As Councillor Janet Davis said, “For the first time [we're] expanding transit across the city that we waited generations for — the mayor can’t walk in on Day 1 and say, ‘it’s gone.’ It doesn’t work like that.” If anything, Ford’s rising star only proves how little power cities have over the issues that really matter to them, and how limited their sources of funding really are. The problem is that Ford’s blustery, and logic-free, decision-making will have long-term consequences on the City of Toronto: Lastman managed to have the Sheppard subway built, against the TTC’s advice. The result was a white elephant, no funding for additional services that the system badly needed, and at one point the streetcars running at very low speeds to cope with deteriorating tracks. While Vancouver is no stranger to provincial wrangling over transit infrastructure, at least we have a mayor who cycles to work and strongly supports sustainable transportation.

Segregated or integrated? American and Canadian ethnic populations

Bill Rankin's map of Chicago

A couple of years ago, when I attended the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference in Chicago, I was stunned to hear that Cleveland and Chicago are the most segregated cities in the US. As I’ve written before, Canadian cities simply don’t have these levels of segregation; obviously not for African American and Hispanic populations, but also not for other groups. Recently, I’ve come across a series of maps illustrating the difference between American cities that are more segregated vs. more integrated, thanks to some enlightened cartographers. It is very interesting to compare these maps to the (albeit simpler) maps of visible minorities in Canadian cities recently published by the Globe and Mail.

Bill Rankin‘s map of Chicago illustrates the sharp divides between white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and other ethnocultural groups. It was originally published in Perspecta, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture; Rankin is a PhD candidate in architecture and the history of science.

After seeing this, Eric Fischer produced similar maps for the 40 largest American cities. He used the same process as Rankin (one dot for every 25 people and same colour code, using the 2000 Census data).

We can see some segregation in New York City, but there are zones of integration.

Eric Fischer's map of New York City

Detroit’s 8-Mile district stands out as an example of entrenched segregation. Many of the maps of smaller cities, like Buffalo, Toledo, and Raleigh, highlight inner city concentrations of African Americans.

: Eric Fischer’s map of Detroit

Eric Fischer's map of Los Angeles

On the other hand, check out Riverside, CA, which looks very integrated. Los Angeles also has a lot of integration, and San Antonio is very integrated.

Eric Fischer's map of Riverside

A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail posted a series of “heat maps” showing the concentration of visible minorities in Canadian cities. They don’t break down the statistics (from the 2006 Census) into specific ethnocultural groups, as is the usual Canadian trend; there are simply too many groups to map. But they are interesting nonetheless. The maps are interactive, allowing you to zoom in, so I can’t reproduce them here. Check them out at www.globeandmail.ca under Multiculturalism.

Vancouver’s map shows that in most census tracts in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, over 30% of the population are visible minorities. Toronto has a similar pattern: over 30% of the population in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond, and Ajax are visible minorities. The central Toronto map shows some interesting areas of lower concentration: areas around the subway lines, west Toronto and the Beaches. In Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the census tracts with over 30% visible minorities are mainly in the suburbs.

Montréal is even more fascinating because it shows a very different pattern. The visible minority population there is almost exclusively concentrated on the island of Montréal, with lower rates of concentration in the suburbs: the older pattern of immigrant settlement that we still see in smaller cities. This is likely due to sheer numbers: Toronto and Vancouver receive tens of thousands more immigrants each year than Montréal.

Obviously, the American maps show that not all cities south of the border are sharply segregated, but even in the smaller cities, like Toledo, Ohio, there are lingering segregated African American populations. This in itself is not an issue; the maps of Canadian cities show lots of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of visible minorities. The real issue is when these concentrations are due to poverty or discrimination (either societal or institutional, such as in the housing market). American housing research seems to indicate that much of the segregation is in fact due to these two factors. Entire programs are devoted to fixing this problem: Housing Choice Vouchers, for example, aim to remove people from entrenched areas of poverty into neighbourhoods where they may have better educational and job opportunities.

I think these maps illustrate again how different Canadian and American cities are in terms of ethnocultural groups: both in terms of their composition and their spatial dispersal. This continues to create policy differences between the US and Canada, not only in my own research areas of housing, transportation, and immigration, but in many other areas affecting municipalities: welfare provision, health care, and education to name a few.

Home sales dive in Toronto and Vancouver

Just a three months after Edward Jones released a report about the precarious state of the Canadian housing market, housing sales fell in Toronto and Vancouver. Citing prices higher than historical averages, easy credit, and lax government policy that allows people to get in over their heads as the three conditions that create a housing bubble, Edward Jones seemed to be right on the money. Is Canada’s housing bubble finally about to burst?

In Toronto, new home sales in June 2010 were 43% lower than they were twelve months earlier, and July was the third consecutive month of decreasing sales. Housing starts in June were 15% lower than they were in May. But not much hand-wringing is going along with these trends: many experts, like Toronto Real Estate Board president Bill Johnson, say the market “has become more balanced.” After all, average prices are still 6% higher than they were last year, and most of the decline seems to be in first-time buyers. Higher-than-average buying in the first quarter of 2010 means that total sales this year are still up by 11%.

Vancouver has also seen record drops from last year, a 45% decline from last July and the third-lowest July in a decade. But again, this had little effect on prices: the average house price in Vancouver fell by just 0.2% to $793,193. Real estate agents estimate that about a third of the buyers are first-time buyers.

Outside of the major centers, where listings were lower and the market appears to be cooling, there are plenty of houses for sale in small- to mid-sized cities. Nevertheless, both economists and the general public are becoming concerned about the state of the housing market and economic instability, as well they should be. I’ve written before on the instability of housing as an investment and the major government supports that encourage the vast majority of people to believe homeownership is the only option. Is this really the only way to house our population? More specifically, should it be the only housing alternative to receive such funding and policy support? Although there has been some tightening of lending policy and mortgage availability, there are still a lot of policies and incentives supporting homeownership. What about using some of this leverage to support rental, co-op and other types of housing?

New food policy developments in Vancouver

Cypress Community Garden

Municipalities have become increasingly concerned about food security in the past few years. I’ve written before about Vancouver’s Food Policy Council and some of the work they’ve been doing, including encouraging a by-law to allow backyard chickens. Since then some notable developments have happened in the city.

A few weeks ago, Vancouver city council approved five community projects, agreeing to spend $100,000 on the small-scale projects. One aims to help people on social assistance or small fixed incomes can buy coupons at the beginning of each month for a small fee and redeem them later in the month for fresh fruits and vegetables at a mini-farmers market in the neighbourhood. Another funds the development of farmers markets; several Vancouver neighbourhoods worked with city council to streamline fees and fix restrictive zoning bylaws. Council has now approved the development of interim guidelines and zoning changes to develop new farmers markets and expand existing ones, including the very successful Kitsilano, West End, and Trout Lake markets. I visited the West End farmers market this weekend and found the vendors selling seasonal greens, peppers, berries, cheese, fresh lamb and eggs. The prices, as usual for Vancouver, started around the same as supermarket produce and went up from there, but there’s no denying the freshness of the food. I’m still not sure why farmers markets out here are so pricey, when a dollar or two at a market in Ottawa, London, or Toronto will get you a head of broccoli bigger than your own.

There are lots of other ways to get fresh produce in the city. Vancouver has some amazing community gardens, where residents pay a small fee for a garden plot and grow all sorts of fruits, vegetables and flowers. A friend of mine has a plot at the Cypress Community Garden, which cost her $30 for the summer. She goes to garden work parties with the many other gardeners in the area; Kitsilano is full of apartment dwellers who otherwise wouldn’t have the space to grow their own food.

You can also raise chickens and have access to your own fresh eggs daily, since the bylaw was passed to allow backyard chickens. You can check out all these developments on Vancouver’s Food Policy Council website.

The quiet (data) revolution

The Canadian Census is a major source of data for any researcher in urban planning, sociology, economics, geography, linguistics, and many other fields. While many scholars argue that the Census is prone to error and non-representation (for example, people without a regular address or students living away at college may be underrepresented), it is simply, to quote The Globe and Mail, “Canada’s only complete national database on education, income, employment, ethnicity and language”. It’s also a very costly endeavour undertaken every five years, with the next one scheduled for 2011. Which is probably why Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada, very quietly arranged to scrap the long form next year, although he’s hiding behind alleged privacy concerns. The decision has prompted a quick response from the Canadian Institute of Planners, Metropolis, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, market research companies, and many other organizations who rely upon the data for research and policy work. Provincial governments, non-profit groups and many other bodies dealing with target populations, such as immigrant settlement services or at-risk youth, depend upon the data to develop and deliver their programs effectively.

The Census is a statistically viable data source because it is a mandatory survey administered by government officials, with every fifth household receiving a more in-depth questionnaire, known as the Census long form. Eight basic questions, such as age, sex, marital status, and the relationship of people in a household, are recorded on the short form, and many of these questions date back to 1871. Fifty other questions (that’s right, 50) , such as mode of transportation used to commute to work, commute distance, detailed questions about income and occupation, and detailed questions about ethnicity and immigration are on the long form. Although many of these questions have been on the long form for 35 years, some are relatively new: the two transportation questions, dealing with transportation mode and commute distance, date back to 1996. In the absence of a national transportation survey, this data can tell us which groups travel by transit the most or which cities have the highest cycling rates, just to give a couple of examples. I published a paper in Plan Canada just six months ago that compared youth and young adults’ transportation modes in the ten largest cities in Canada. I’m currently using Census data from 1986 to 2006 to investigate how immigrants’ housing and transportation choices have changed over time.

I fail to see how any of these questions could be considered an invasion of privacy, especially considering the fact that names or any identifying characteristics are never linked to the data. This on top of the fact that Census data in Canada, unlike in the US where data is free and public, is incredibly restricted. Only researchers in government or academia have access to the Census microdata, that 20% sample that contains the long form data. Plenty of other government agencies collect private information: you need to report your height, weight, hair colour and eye colour to get a driver’s license.

The federal government is planning to replace the long form with a voluntary “national household survey” that will be mailed out to approximately 30% of Canadian households, which the Tories argue will reach more households than the long form did. Anyone done a mail-out survey lately? The response rate is usually around 20-40%…what is 30% of 30%? And critics have already noted that the most vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, Aboriginal communities and low-income populations, will be the least likely to respond.

While the opposition parties are marshalling their efforts to reverse the decision, petitions are circled and we all write madly to our MPs, the media has given the issue a fair shake: the issue was covered in all the major papers and online venues, and not just by journalists (see “Canadians must be able to count on Statistics Canada” by academic Richard Shearmur in The Montréal Gazette). In the past week, the Canadian Medical Association, faith groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress, and economists like former TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond have all voiced their objections to the decision to jettison the long form.

Beyond the appalling lack of respect for the vast amount of data generated by the long form and its necessity to researchers, policy makers and community groups, the troubling issue here is that Harper’s “new world order” even extends to the collection of statistics about the people he is supposed to serve.

An update on this story: the head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, tendered his resignation July 21st over this issue, saying the voluntary “new Census” cannot be considered comparable to the long form.

Vancouverisms

rain: a type of precipitation that is common in Vancouver from September to May, but is not acknowledged by Vancouverites. Ex.: a non-Vancouverite needs protection from this type of precipitation, such as an umbrella or raincoat, but Vancouverites rarely need these.

snow: a type of precipitation that rarely occurs in Vancouver but is uniformly acknowledged by Vancouverites, as it causes all traffic to cease. A very cold, dense mix of ice and water falling to the ground in clumps, occasionally persisting for 20 minutes before melting.

suckerhole: a patch of clear blue sky that often appears about an hour before sundown on a rainy day, tricking you into believing the next day might be sunny. Often occurs within a 7-to-10-day stretch of rain.

summer: var. a. a season that lasts from July to August, with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-20s. Rain persists until the end of June, when the skies begin to clear, only to cloud over again by Labour Day. Occurs for two out of three years, often following a relatively dry winter. var. b. a season that lasts from May to September, with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-20s, with a week or two in the high 20s. Little rain. Occurs about once in three years, often following a very wet winter.

Grouse Grind: not, as the Granville Island lager ads confirm, a dirty dance move, but a hike up Grouse Mountain deemed necessary for outdoor enthusiasts. The vast majority of the “trail” is paved and involves steep stairs; despite this it has a cult following. Cult followers get a time stamp at the bottom of the Grind and compete for the shortest time.

Kitsilano: alternately considered one of Vancouver’s most/least popular neighbourhoods, formerly housing hippies and now home to some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Kits culture includes yoga studios, dog walkers, coffee houses and strident environmentalists, which tends mask to mask the neighbourhood’s unique history and geography.

Commercial Drive: the last bastion of “working class” Vancouver, with a mix of shops, services, and interesting industrial land uses that predate the current Starbucks trend. That’s all Vancouverites want you to know about it. Anything else and you might want to move there…and you just don’t understand the unique culture, history and geography of the Drive.

East Vancouver: alternately considered one of the most/least popular neighbourhoods in Vancouver, with strong working class roots and humble dwellings, until recently quite affordable. Very stable, long-term community activists and vocal residents have led to a sort defensive stance about the community, a sort of “reverse snobbery” mostly directed to Westsiders who can’t possibly understand their neighbourhood, its unique history and geography.

Main Street: a formerly working class neighbourhood, now a hipster hangout with high-end, though independent, stores and restaurants. Socially-aware student types mix with a range of independent activist types, creating a unique culture, history and geography.

hipster: a middle- to upper-class individual who deeply identifies with the working class. Generally prefers to dress in second-hand clothing, currently with a heavy dose of retro 80s such as mullets, large clear plastic frame glasses, skinny jeans and plaid shirts. Musical taste features obscure local bands as well as well-known, but commercially less successful, Canadian bands. Interest in documentary films, bicycling, and pot culture required. Hipsters gravitate to Main Street, East Van and the Drive, having been largely displaced from Kits, Dunbar and Kerrisdale.

lifestyle: a melange of outdoor activities, beautiful scenery, mild climate, yoga, healthy eating, beach activities, self-righteous political and social advocacy, which is being threatened by outsiders moving to Vancouver. Syn. granola. Adj. livable: laid-back, scenic, with access to beaches, various outdoor activities, high-end condo living, and gourmet cuisine, but only for the wealthy.

fur babies: usually refers to dogs and cats who are kept as household pets and treated as the family’s children. A number of shops and services reinforce this image.

coffee shop: a small, independently-owned enterprise that supplies fair-trade coffee, a variety of herbal teas, and homemade treats, frequented by locals. Ant. Starbucks.

affordable housing: a form of shelter that is extremely rare in Vancouver, but is peppered throughout certain neighbourhoods and in adjacent municipalities such as Port Coquitlam and Surrey. Ant. most housing in Vancouver.

fleece: refers to both a fabric and a garment (usually a zippered jacket) that can be worn in any weather, any season, and on any social occasion. Usually worn with jeans, fleece is typically forest green or navy in colour with a prominent logo (eg. Columbia, North Face) on the front placket.

casual dress: typically jeans and a fleece (winter months) or khakis and a T-shirt (summer months). Hiking shoes or rubber sandals, often with velcro closures, complete the look. For women, yoga pants and tank tops, as well as capri pants, are common variants. Worn on all but semi-formal occasions, approximately 362 days of the year. Retail options: Mountain Equipment Co-Op, North Face, Lululemon.

semi-formal dress: a rare requirement in Vancouver, consisting of long-sleeved shirts and jeans or khakis (for men). Ties are not acceptable, nor is a jacket. For women, a skirt and a T-shirt with sandals, or occasionally low heels. Retail options: Spank, Aritsia. Ant. Dresses, especially long dresses or those made from silk, satin, or velvet.

great value for food: euphemism for some of the most overpriced food in Canada. Vancouver has many exclusive, gourmet restaurants, a smaller number of middle-range restaurants, and very little at the affordable end. Poor service can persist even to the high end. Similarly, grocery stores are uniformly overpriced, although some deals can be had at the smaller green grocers and in Chinatown.

Expo ’86: an international transportation fair held just after the worst recession in BC history (1981-83), which led to Vancouver’s rapid growth and development. Widely credited with being the best and worst thing to ever happen to the city.

2010 Olympics: an international sporting event discredited by most native Vancouverites, many of whom vacated the city for the 10-day period, leaving the Games to be celebrated by national and international tourists. Although locals disparaged the event, they did not lose a second in renting out apartments and condos to tourists at exorbitant rates.

11:00 pm: last call for bar patios on many of Vancouver’s main streets, except the bar-laden three-block section of Granville downtown. Time for bed so you can get up early for that hike tomorrow morning!

Toronto: Yoko to Vancouver’s Beatles, ie. the source of all discord in Lotusland. Some Torontonians have moved to Vancouver and infected it with their urban, workaholic, corporate vibe.

Ontario: Toronto.

Canada Day: a holiday largely celebrated by tourists in Vancouver.

Transportation governance in Toronto

I wrote recently about the fight to save Transit City, a proposal to extend LRT lines throughout Toronto’s inner suburban neighbourhoods. A while back, I had written about transportation governance in Metro Vancouver and its effects on public transit provision, and noted that Toronto was heading the same way. Well, it has: since 2009, the Metrolinx board has been completely divorced from public process.

Members of the Metrolinx board are appointed by the Minster of Transportation; they are not public officials elected by their municipalities. The current board, like the TransLink board in Metro Vancouver, is made up of mostly private sector business people who may or may not have conflicts of interest in transportation matters (ie. businesses that are located on a street with a proposed LRT line). Knowledge of transportation planning or experience taking public transit are not prerequisites; but to be fair, they never were, even when the board was made up of public officials. The Board can decide whether to hold meetings in public and how often to meet. There is no opportunity for the public to speak at meetings, even if they are allowed to attend, so there’s really no accountability for Metrolinx’ actions. The only recourse the public has is to complain to their MPP. But even if an MPP belongs to the party in power, they likely have no influence over who the Premier appoints as Minister of Transportation and who the Minister appoints to the Metrolinx Board.

It is bizarre that in Canada’s two largest cities, very small appointed boards decide the future of public transportation (11 sit on the TransLink board, and 15 on the Metrolinx board). It’s also a bit of an anachronism; we live in the area of downloaded responsibilities. The federal government offloads responsibility for housing and health care to the provinces; provinces download housing to the municipalities. Why would the province want such a tight grip on public transit provision? What is to be gained? Granted, these two boards are very short-lived so it’s hard to tell what their influence will be (Vancouver’s Canada Line notwithstanding). But like most transit advocates, I remain cynical about the whole issue of private-sector appointed boards making decisions about public spending, even if by some miracle they were actually public transit specialists. We need better governance in place for cities, especially on crucial issues like transportation and housing. Otherwise transportation board decisions will continue to be made as one-offs and there will be a lack of continuity in infrastructure projects and funding.

High homeownership bad for Canada?

I’ve often felt that homeownership is not the rosy American Dream that it claims to be. I find homeownership limiting, both economically and geographically: my parents and their friends, and now friends my own age, seem to sacrifice anything and everything in order to make mortgage payments. The years I worked at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, taught me how the federal housing agency was created partly to help sell the idea of homeownership right after WWII and enable it through a series of government-backed programs and policies. Then there’s my own research in the area of immigrant settlement and housing choice, which included a serious look at Canadian federal housing policies that have slowly eroded rental housing, co-op housing and social housing as options while supporting homeownership through numerous incentives. Let’s just say that it’s no surprise that at age 36, I’m still a renter, bucking the DINK and yuppie trends, a little cynical about the myth that renting is just “throwing your money away.” After all, renting has allowed me to remain flexible, pick up and move to different cities, travel, and live in neighbourhoods I never could have afforded if I had bought.

It appears that Richard Florida agrees with me. Higher rates of renting, public transit use and residential mobility are all key themes in Florida’s latest book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, released two weeks ago (read a review of the book, and other Florida works and quirks, on Urbanophile). Florida belies the myth that housing is a good investment, particularly when it’s held for 20 or 30 years: the rate of return on housing in the US has generally been quite low, in fact from 1890 to 1990 it was exactly zero. We’ve all seen how difficult it can be to sell a house in recent years in the US, and in earlier recessionary times in Canada: my parents’ current house was bought for $20,000 less than a similar house a few blocks away because the owner had lost her job in the 1990s recession and had to sell quickly. A friend’s parents sold their house in 2007 for almost the same price they paid for it in the early 1980s because the mill in their town had closed, leaving most of the residents out of work.

Overinvestment in housing has decreased investment in other areas like medical technology, software and alternative energy. Florida has written before about the dangers of putting too many eggs in one basket: at the height of the mortgage crisis in the US (in a November 28, 2009 article in the Globe and Mail), he wrote that the mortgage system was directly responsible for the crisis, and that the era of overinvestment in homeownership and car ownership were over. Interestingly, Florida also applies his argument to individuals: Canadians carry more mortgage debt as a percentage of their disposable income than Americans, meaning we have far less to spend on other things. A friend of mine who works in mutual funds and investments tells me the average homeowner pays for their house two and a half times due to interest. This is probably no surprise to those of us living in the country’s biggest cities, where housing prices are astonomical and have not shown any decline in growth since the US mortgage crisis. In fact, housing prices in Canada increased 20% last year.

Florida argues that in cities with higher homeownership, unemployment is also higher because homeowners are less likely to pick up and move when things get tough. He believes that mobility is often the key to employment, and more flexible housing choices are key in times of economic instability. It seems there are other people out there like me, who prefer the flexibility of renting because we want to remain mobile and have no desire to live in one place for twenty years. We aren’t all that uncommon either: 40.1% of the Canadian population moved within the past five years, according to the 2006 Census; 14.1% moved within the last year. Florida correctly predicted that rental housing would play a major role in stabilizing the US economy after the mortgage crisis: families were able to move into foreclosed properties that were renovated and re-marketed as affordable rental housing. This was because the Obama administration wasted no time in investing $4.25 billion on the creation of tens of thousands of federally-subsidized rental units using the federal Making Homes Affordable program.

Vintage 1950s matchbooks featuring real estate ads

In his May 3rd article in the Globe and Mail, Florida goes as far as saying that “home ownership is an impediment to Canada’s long-term prosperity” because high house prices, low interest rates and lax government policies in Canada could spell trouble for the housing market. Even though people have been talking about the “bubble” for over fifteen years, Edward Jones’ recent report predicts Canada’s is about to burst. The federal government recently made it more difficult to get a mortgage and is considering other measures to tighten mortgage availability in order to protect the market from collapse. They eliminated the no down payment mortgage option before the US crisis began, but there is still a 5% down option. What is particularly interesting to me as a non-economist is how the housing market has historically been used to maintain or even increase consumer spending to stave off or recover from economic recession: besides the post-war era, we saw low interest rates brought in after the 1989 stock market crash in Canada and after 9/11 in the US to encourage people to keep buying homes. I guess there’s a fine line between “removing barriers to homeownership” to encourage spending and bringing on an economic meltdown by letting anyone with a a couple of bucks buy a house.

Massive marketing was required to sell the idea of homeownership as a stable, more respectable lifestyle choice. Let’s not forget that those first homes were practically given away at very low prices and low mortgage rates, their construction highly subsidized by federal governments in both the US and Canada. Those cherubic children, war brides and returning vets in 1940s suburban home ads were so convincing that most of us still believe homeowners are somehow better than renters: even Florida hints that switching from homeownership to renting might have “unforseen social costs” for cities and regions. Our own values and biases about homeownership drive the market. Yet a mere 60 years ago, renter households were the majority in both our countries.

The classic French text Un chez-moi à mon coût (2000) (edited by Eric Brassard), which I read at the urging of a fellow renter working at CMHC, carefully dissects all the economic myths of homeownership, arguing that it is often the non-economic factors that are the most influential. The book presents case studies of housing choices of a variety of professionals, both renters and owners, who argue that there is no sound economic argument for homeownership or against renting: it just comes down to personal preference. But we’re so invested in the homeownership ideal that investing in rental housing, or convincing middle-income families to rent, would take a lot of work. The tide may be turning in the US, but with high housing prices and fairly easy access to mortgages, we may not see this shift in Canada until our own mortgage crisis rears its ugly head.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. (Planning)

Home sales dive in Toronto and Vancouver

New food policy developments in Vancouver

The quiet (data) revolution

Transportation governance in Toronto

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