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"Urban geographer whose research interests include housing policy, urban renewal, displacement, and social mix. Vancouver social historian and ethnographer."
People read this self-description & assume I am left wing. I think people on both the Right and Left make that assumption
People read this self-description & assume I am left wing. I think people on both the Right and Left make that assumption
Housing Policy: I am an expert on Canadian housing policy as I have researched it for a considerable part of my life. My insights cut both Left and Right. It& #39;s complicated.
Urban Renewal: This was the 1950s & 60s practice of buying up private homes in the slums, displacing the tenants, rebuilding public housing in its place or other public facilities. I& #39;m basically against it. There are Right wing and Left wing arguments against it.
Displacement: This is forced involuntary residential displacement either due to urban renewal/redevelopment or renoviction. I& #39;m very aware of how harmful it is to communities, families, and individuals. It can create lasting psychological trauma.
Social mix: Policies that promote communities that are diverse and mixed in terms of class, race, age, family composition, and/or disability. Very complex issue that I can& #39;t make a blanket statement about, but more social mix is not always better.
I& #39;m critical of policies that force social mix in terms of class composition because that can harm the social capital networks of the poor. That was a major finding of my thesis. This is very much pushing back on progressive rhetoric about integration.
Vancouver social historian and ethnographer: That doesn& #39;t mean I& #39;m left wing or a SJW! I am telling Vancouver& #39;s social history BEFORE the city was transformed by globalization, mass immigration, gentrification, foreign ownership of real estate.
I want to recover Vancouver& #39;s working class history before the city was blown up by globalization and I do want to focus on the white working class specifically b/c that is my positionality, my family/community background & a lot of those people have been unfairly demonized.
So there can be a great deal of content in my Vancouver ethnographies that the Left wing could find triggering. How ironic then that a Right winger uses my self description as "Vancouver social historian and ethnographer" to assume that means I& #39;m a leftist SJW.
