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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'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'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'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't make a blanket statement about, but more social mix is not always better.
I'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't mean I'm left wing or a SJW! I am telling Vancouver's social history BEFORE the city was transformed by globalization, mass immigration, gentrification, foreign ownership of real estate.
I want to recover Vancouver'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'm a leftist SJW.
