By Granville Online
| Image: Hilary Henegar
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Published: May 27, 2009
"In the beginning did you encounter any push back from the community about this concept of greening the ghetto?"
Green vs. Reality blogger Emily Jubenvill asks Majora Carter about her struggle to implement green initiatives in the South Bronx, where she created Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to making the connections between the environment, the economy and social justice in order to improve job security and standards of living for area residents.
By Rob McMahon
| Image: Traces |
Published: July 24, 2009
A group of about a dozen youth and some artist mentors have been working together for four months on an art presentation to tell stories from the Downtown Eastside/Strathcona community through mediums such as stop-motion animation, video and shadow puppetry. The content derives from interviews of seniors and long-time residents of Strathcona, the oldest neighbourhood in Vancouver. The project was developed by
Media Undefined’s Jaimie Robson in partnership with the Strathcona Community Centre.
By
Emma Carscadden
| Image:
BCA |
Published: June 08, 2009
Guest blogger series:
Crawling Toward Sustainability
This is the fourth in a series of guest blog posts in which Emma will track the progress of her office to become more sustainable.
Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside are, even in light of the obvious social and economic problems, vibrant and thriving neighbourhoods full of fantastic businesses and merchants. BCA has always been located in this part of Vancouver. We enjoy being an active part of the neighbourhood, and one simple but significant way that we stay plugged into the community—and sustainability—is through buying local.
Buying local is easy to do every day. We could go to Starbucks, but instead we buy our coffee and sandwiches at the Wilder Snail, Benny’s Italian Market, or the Union Market. We get groceries and supplies at Sunrise Market and Rice World, and we get our celebratory Friday afternoon beer at the Astoria Hotel.
We took advantage of local business during our renovations as well. Of course there were the requisite trips to Canadian Tire and Home Depot, but we bought all our paint from Vancouver institution Ted Harris Paints, conveniently located just a few doors down from us on the 700 block of East Hastings.
Buying our paint at Ted Harris was socially and economically sustainable. Our money stayed in the neighbourhood to support another business that flourishes in Strathcona. It was also environmentally sustainable because we didn’t have to drive to pick up extra buckets or brushes, and because Ted Harris sells low-VOC paint. Paints that contain fewer nasty chemicals like formaldehyde are an increasingly popular, common and super-easy way to stay green. Plus, the name of the colour we painted our front façade is “Witching Hour.” Cool!
Buying local is not only a great way to be more sustainable without a lot of effort, but also a way to discover your city. There are hidden gems in neighbourhoods like Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside that deserve your business, so consider seeking out local merchants the next time you need a bucket of paint or a really awesome sandwich.
By Rob McMahon
| Image: Brasstronaut |
Published: June 02, 2009
Rock 'n roll is good for kids—and a few local Vancouver musicians are out to prove it with a live show at the Astoria
By
Emily Jubenvill
| Image:
Flickr / green4all |
Published: May 27, 2009
It seems like forever ago—a whole month!—but I still get excited when I think about the
Strathcona BIA’s Sustainability 2.0 expo.
By Jonathon Narvey
| Image: City of Vancouver Archives |
Published: May 13, 2009
Our city’s heritage is the key to our future sustainability
It’s tempting to look at our city’s progress on the sustainability front as going back to our roots – our heritage and environmental sustainability aims are today more connected than ever. And if we’re going to revitalize the historic Downtown Eastside, success will largely depend on our ability to hold on to our city’s cultural heritage while at the same time pushing the limits of sustainability.
Vancouver’s leaders and planners consider commemorating our heritage a key part of social sustainability. Between 2008 and 2011, $10 million in provincial funds for the Great Beginnings program is designated by the City to celebrate the history, heritage and culture of Vancouver’s first urban areas: Gastown, Chinatown, Japantown and Strathcona.
“There’s more interest in Vancouver’s heritage than a few years ago,” confirms Wendy Au, Vancouver’s assistant city manager, noting there are some real dollars available to maintain our heritage buildings.
Today’s conflation of heritage and sustainability, however, masks a profound difference in priorities between us and the pioneers we commemorate. “We’ve got two different world views from our early history and today, so much so that they’re practically in different universes,” says Gordon Price, director of SFU’s City Program. “You’ve got a group of people coming over, seeing this unlimited bounty of resources. To compare with how we’d see it, you’d have to think of going to another planet.”
Ironically, at least for us moderns, our early settlers viewed efficient and affordable mass transit as opening up access to unlimited resources and open land for the taking (notwithstanding First Nations’ views on the matter), contributing to a sprawling model of development distinctly at odds with today’s EcoDensity.
Vancouver developed differently than its contemporary cities in Europe and elsewhere in North America. From about 1897 to 1913, Vancouver saw an explosion of buildings, some of which, like the Dominion building in Gastown, showed off the great wealth of the era. The average worker could afford a house along our extensive electric streetcar tracks. So at first, the city saw a surplus of single-family homes rather than apartments. Vancouver initially skipped dense residential forms of development and went straight to a suburban model.
Rapid population growth and our geography would later ensure that the area grew into a series of denser, interconnected villages.
So while we think of those first neighbourhoods around what we now call the Downtown Eastside as the foundations of Vancouver’s heritage, the most important heritage we’ve got is the urban pattern laid out from the beginning by the streetcar. “If you look at EcoDensity, we’re really just continuing to use the system we already had,” Price says. “I live two blocks from Robson and Denman and catch the same routes as when they lived in wooden mansions.”
The street plan laid down by Vancouver founders staved off mass demolitions to make way for new roads. It has also helped preserve our heritage buildings, and here cultural and green sustainability are intertwined: saving buildings means saving the planet. “Even if from this day hence we build everything green, we’ll never achieve sustainability,” says Vancouver Heritage Foundation executive director Diane Switzer. To put it in perspective, building a new 15,240 square metre commercial building requires the same amount of energy as driving a car 32,186 km a year for 730 years.
Strategies for preventing global climate change revolve around efficient use of energy and reducing our carbon footprint, which means keeping our older buildings around through refurbishment and re-use. Switzer points out that it takes 65 years for an energy-efficient new building to save the amount of energy lost in demolishing an existing building.
Some experts like Stantec senior architect and Vancouver City Planning Commission spokesperson Jiang Zhu note the Downtown Eastside can provide long-term benefits from imaginative compromises that combine greater density, heritage preservation, and green standards.
Too many stakeholders are being too cautious when they talk about long-term sustainability for Vancouver’s buildings and neighbourhoods. The answer doesn’t lie in more green buildings, but in saving more of our old buildings. After all, the world’s oldest hotel, in Japan, has been in use for more than 1,300 years. The Pantheon in Rome has stood since 126 AD.
Read Jonathon Narvey's past columns here.
neighbourhoods |
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By Jonathon Narvey
| Image: Vancouver Chinatown |
Published: August 26, 2008
According to a Chinese Proverb, “Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown.” Vancouver city hall’s Chinatown Revitalization Program is aiming to help the historic neighbourhood evolve for future generations, guided by the concept of cultural sustainability. They’ve got big plans, some money and a shot at pulling it off.
Can Chinatown reestablish itself as a social and commercial hub while retaining its cultural distinctiveness? Albert Fok, vice-president of the Vancouver Chinatown BIA Society and chair of the Chinatown Revitalization Committee, says he likes to envision Chinatown as the next Granville Island: a culturally distinctive place where people will want to live and work, and a destination for shoppers and tourists during the day and night.
Some work has already been done to help boost the neighbourhood. A program in Chinatown’s shops ensures signs are translated into English as well as Mandarin and Cantonese. This and other measures, including communication workshops, are helping merchants interact better with a larger customer base.
Alongside these business promotions, the arts and culture community is promoting festivals and cultural events. Youth and student groups are active in the neighbourhood. Cultural landmarks such as the Millennium Gate, Shanghai Alley, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Courtyard and historic landmarks have been completed, renovated and improved. And there’s a proposal to bring bright neon signs back to help turn the area from its currents status as an after-dark ghost town into an entertainment hot spot.
But the real key to Chinatown’s revival is a kind of acupuncture architecture: building up the important cultural nodes within the neighbourhood to support the rest. The priority is doing something about the aging Chinese society buildings before they crumble.
Chinatown was founded in the 1880s on the edges of False Creek around the intersection of Carrall and Pender streets. It began as an ethnic ghetto for Chinese immigrants, and the early history of Chinatown represents a darker time in Vancouver’s heritage.
Systemic discrimination inspired Chinatown’s residents to create a support network of benevolent societies and clan associations that looked after their own, many housed in their own buildings. Chinatown’s distinctive and colourful hybrid Asian-British Commonwealth architecture derives from that early period. Most of the society buildings are around 100 years old and close to the end of their years.
The City of Vancouver provided $500,000 in grants in 2008 for feasibility studies to see what can be done with five of these society buildings, mostly built on small 25-foot lots. (There are 32 heritage buildings maintained by 12 societies in all of Chinatown.) As in Gastown, the facades of the historic buildings could be retained while modern spaces are built up behind them.
“The most important social and cultural networks to make this a viable community will be the societies and clans and their service agencies,” says Vancouver City senior planner Jessica Chen. “They contribute to the soul of Chinatown.”
The Chinatown plan is ambitious, but its success is tied to the future of the Downtown Eastside, and that’s going to take more resources than the City has. “The province and the federal government must come up with a comprehensive plan for the neighbourhood and address First Nations issues,” says Vancouver City councillor B.C. Lee. “If we don’t take care of everything at the same time, one aspect will pull down all the other aspects.”
He emphasizes the need for the “new” Chinatown to be welcoming to a diverse crowd even as it pays homage to Chinatown’s ethnic heritage. “This place is a reminder of how we all started from humble status. It actually represents the spirit of Canada as a whole.”
Chinatown still faces huge hurdles. Given the dilapidated state of its key buildings, doing nothing means a continuation of Chinatown’s hard-luck status. But if the feasibility studies of the crumbling society buildings lead to real development based on architectural and cultural nodes, Chinatown will have a new foundation to build a sustainable community.
As another Chinese proverb says, “Be not afraid of growing slowly. Be afraid only of standing still.”
Jonathon Narvey is a Vancouver writer and principal of Writeimage.
By Janet Gyenes
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Published: June 03, 2008
Shopping can sometimes be good for the soul, and Melissa Blyth and Kate McNair are turning t-shirts into thought-provoking artwork in their venture to raise funds for vulnerable people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The bamboo and organic cotton shirts, which sell for $34.95 each, are screened with original artwork created by Downtown Eastside denizens whom Blyth and McNair interviewed. “The whole idea is about creating possibility for people and empowering them to create their own life and show them that they have a choice,” explains Blyth.
The fashion fundraiser is a form of expression that can help connect people to the community, adds Blyth. “When someone actually wears the t-shirt they’re being enveloped by the person,” she says. “Each t-shirt has a story.”
To date, half a dozen designs have been made, and these tees will bring the thoughts, expressions and images of this marginalized community to the mainstream.
Renowned aboriginal artist Garnet Tobacco, who now lives on the street, drew the design for the “Heron Lies Hope” t-shirt with coloured markers. “He just started drawing,” says Blyth. “Art to him is an escape. He said he hadn’t done artwork in about two years.”
Funds raised through the Give a Shi®t initiative will go to the Transformational Venture Capital Fund, a resource created by The Business Collective, a group of entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Buy the t-shirts at www.greenoneventures.com, and find the Give a Shi®t initiative on Facebook.
By Janet Gyenes
| Image: Jade Thome |
Published: June 03, 2008
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is coming to resemble Hollywood Central as yet another film crew brings international attention to this blight on the city’s claims to sustainability.
In an episode of the 4Real series to air on MTV June 9, the show’s host and local hip-hop artist Sol Guy and Hollywood starlet Eva Mendes are led through a meet-and-greet with the city’s homeless, addicted and mentally ill. Acting as tour guide is Liz Evans, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society.
As one of eight episodes in the 4Real series, Vancouver is placed alongside such international hot spots as a favela in Rio de Janeiro, a refugee camp in Kenya and areas of poverty and strife in Haiti, Peru and Liberia. Each show offers an upbeat message, pairing an entertainment celebrity with a local hero who is making a difference.
“The nicest thing about it for me, other than that Eva Mendes is a sweet person, is that she
really didn’t have a clue about any of the issues and was completely uninformed around most of these things,” reports Evans. “So she was saying these really obvious things, and we’d get a chance to say, well, this is why, and now you can talk to this person who’s sitting in her bed here at the Stanley Hotel about her life, and you figure out how to deal with it.”
Evans has fielded some heat for her co-operation, with some critics labelling the episode “voyeuristic” and “sensational.” However, she stands by her decision. “We did it because we felt it was a very sincere attempt to allow people to tell their own stories with respect,” Evans maintains. “I think it actually succeeded in humanizing the individuals we work with.”
4Real Vancouver follows on the heels of a CNN news segment on Insite, Vancouver’s safe injection site, that aired last November, and a Dan Rather documentary on the Downtown Eastside that was broadcast in February this year. 4Real Vancouver aired on CTV in a preview of the 4Real series in March this year, and debuts on MTV on June 9. It will be available on the MTV website after that date: www.mtv.ca. The episode has also aired in Australia, New Zealand, Italy and Spain on the National Geographic Channel.
Has the show made a difference to poverty and homelessness in Vancouver?
One immediate outcome, Evans reports, was a call from a donor offering $85,000 toward a food program highlighted in the show.
But more broadly, Evans is encouraged by all the recent media attention. “I think the attention on the Downtown Eastside right now is positive because there are some more thoughtful responses being considered,” she explains. “Both [BC] Housing and [the Ministry of] Health are working rapidly to try to come up with some more creative sustainable solutions. I don’t think anything can work unless it’s done in conjunction with community. And that’s one of the mistakes governments make often, but hopefully they won’t this time.”
