[HN Gopher] Vancouver's new mega-development is big, ambitious a...
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Vancouver's new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous
Author : luu
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-03-14 06:52 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (macleans.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (macleans.ca)
| shmageggy wrote:
| The cut-down title hides the whole point and contents of the
| article, which is a really interesting piece about indigenous
| sovereignty.
|
| Original title: "Vancouver's new mega-development is big,
| ambitious and undeniably Indigenous"
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've put that up there now. Thanks!
| lisper wrote:
| I think this is terrific. It's high time the indigenous people
| reclaimed their sovereignty. The idea that "When you're building
| 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there's a big gap
| between that and an Indigenous way of building" is just
| ridiculous. Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and
| is not consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"? You
| aren't living the same lifestyle and building the same buildings
| that your ancestors were hundreds of years ago, why should they?
| I say: more power to the (Indigenous) people!
|
| (P.S.: I'm a white guy.)
| stavros wrote:
| It was a woman, actually. Your point is valid, I just don't
| like how "white man" has become a slur.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I think the quote is from a white man called Gordon Price.
|
| Full quote to assist you.
|
| "In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner
| and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela
| Sterritt, "When you're building 30, 40-storey high rises out
| of concrete, there's a big gap between that and an Indigenous
| way of building."
|
| "White man" can be used in that form when the white man
| appears to be telling a different culture what they can or
| cannot do or be.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Sure if you want to be racist. The shoe on the other foot,
| replace White man with Black man, Red man, etc and its
| clear that its racist.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| "White man" is not racist, it is a self-describing short
| term for Eurocentric supremacy and a quote from Kipling.
| As such it is not replaceable by Black/Red etc. Everyone
| can use it in such context as a metaphor, not as a racial
| reference.
|
| Edit: previously my message included some poor choice of
| words, which I will keep here for history and an example
| of accidental bias: "White men are absolutely allowed to
| use it as a slur towards other white men."
| gambiting wrote:
| >>White men are absolutely allowed to use it as a slur
| towards other white men.
|
| What kind of nonsense is that, the mental gymnastics to
| not call it what it simply is - racism - is just
| unbelivable.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Feel free to suggest another term for a person of
| European origin and Eurocentric education who is
| lecturing indigenous people on how to live. Modern
| discourse isn't about physical characteristics at all,
| even it does have roots in old racial theory. It's
| certain views, it's identity and culture. If someone
| behaves like in Kipling's poem, he is the white man, not
| because of his race, but because of his actions.
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm not debating the original point - I'm commenting on
| the clearly quoted section which says what white men are
| allowed to call other white men.
|
| Like, it really doesn't ring any bells of "something is
| not right here" when you read it?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Haha, now I got you and apologize for inaccurate choice
| of words. Those bells didn't ring, as I'm not American
| and not native speaker. Of course, everyone can use it.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Five year olds and internet commenters care about things
| being even-handed and fair.
|
| The rest of the world either settles their matters or
| employs lawyers to do so for them. Most time settlement
| is a disappointing serving a crow, hence the glint of
| involving the courts. How much will that serving of crow
| cost?
|
| Why do I bring this up? This "replace X with Y" is the
| ultimate form of an algebraic rhetoric that _demands_ a
| fully balanced system of mathematical perfection as if
| this were a reasonable way to go about things.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I disagree. It's an ad hominem point. Comments should focus
| on ideas. Race based commentary like this is a discredit to
| one's own argument and character.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Race: Famously irrelevant to the whole tribal
| lands/indigenous rights topic
| coldtea wrote:
| It's irrelevant to "does this follow indigenous tradition
| or violate it" point, which is the point discussed in the
| subthread - not tribal lands/indigenous rights.
| badcppdev wrote:
| Why would Indigenous people have to follow tradition? I
| believe it is racist (or sexist) to say that a group of
| people cannot do something because that is not something
| they've done in the past.
|
| For Mr Gordon Price to imply that a group should not do
| something because it has not been done before is him
| trying to deny their agency.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why would Indigenous people have to follow tradition?_
|
| They don't "have to". But they can break with it in a
| nice way or in a bad way.
|
| Same way a culture can change their tradition in a
| respectful way or to replace it with McDonalds and
| Starbucks for example.
|
| This is not confined to "indigenous people". The same
| critique can and does apply to any group.
| badcppdev wrote:
| You could take the word fuck out of the original comment
| and it would still have the clear reasoning that Gordon
| Price as a white person should not be telling an
| indigenous group that what they want to do is not the
| "Indigenous way".
|
| White person should not define "Indigenous way".
|
| How else can we misinterpret this argument?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _White person should not define "Indigenous way"_
|
| Any person, white, black, asian, whatever, can however
| assess whether this development is in line with the
| indigenous tradition or something that might distort or
| endanger it.
|
| Or do you think the same discussion doensn't happen
| within the indigenous community as well?
| badcppdev wrote:
| "indigenous tradition or something that might distort or
| endanger"
|
| Are certain groups not allowed to change? Why use the
| word distort or endanger?
|
| We aren't talking about the discussions inside the
| community. We are talking about people outside the
| community applying judgements to their decisions and
| actions.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Are certain groups not allowed to change?_
|
| Did I say that?
|
| > _Why use the word distort or endanger?_
|
| Because obviously some change can be distorting and/or
| endagering some things?
|
| The fact that an individual or group is allowed to change
| doesn't mean each particular change is always for the
| better.
|
| > _We are talking about people outside the community
| applying judgements to their decisions and actions._
|
| Yes, so? Do you think groups should only get judgements
| to their decisions and actions from within themselves?
| itishappy wrote:
| Why is tradition relevant here? The indigenous community
| is a present day community, not a historical preservation
| society.
|
| I disagree that we're all equal when it comes to defining
| what is and isn't "indigenous way."
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| The correct slur to use here is Honky.
| skywhopper wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a slur. To the extent it's an effective
| insult, it's due to centuries of behavior by white men. If
| someone uses "white man" to call out certain behavior, it
| might be worth their target considering why they got called
| out. Maybe sometimes it's unfair to the white man to be
| called out, but often it isn't. For folks who find it
| troublesome or disturbing to not receive the benefit of the
| doubt about their intentions as a white man, consider how
| much benefit of the doubt is given in everyday contexts to
| pretty much any individual who is not a white man.
| stavros wrote:
| Aren't you worried about the consequences of supporting
| generalizations over a group from the actions of their
| members? I learned at an early age that that's not OK, but
| it seems to be changing again, as long as the target is in
| a specific group.
| soupbowl wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a slur. To the extent it's an effective
| insult, it's due to centuries of behavior by black men. If
| someone uses "black man" to call out certain behavior, it
| might be worth their target considering why they got called
| out. Maybe sometimes it's unfair to the black man to be
| called out, but often it isn't. For folks who find it
| troublesome or disturbing to not receive the benefit of the
| doubt about their intentions as a black man, consider how
| much benefit of the doubt is given in everyday contexts to
| pretty much any individual who is not a black man.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| That's people's objection to "woke" views on ethnicity:
|
| You've returned to the world of racial essentialism, the most
| debunked form of racism, where you argue nonsense about what
| kinds of buildings people should make based on their ancestry.
| No matter how you dress it up in the language of civil rights,
| the racialized views promoted by the institutional left (eg,
| academia, media, and government) are built upon that racism --
| which we see articulated in your quote.
|
| But if you touch grass, you'd know people consistently build
| with the best technology available to them -- and have
| throughout history.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You've returned to the world of racial essentialism, the
| most debunked form of racism, where you argue nonsense about
| what kinds of buildings people should make based on their
| ancestry. No matter how you dress it up in the language of
| civil rights, the racialized views promoted by the
| institutional left (eg, academia, media, and government) are
| built upon that racism -- which we see articulated in your
| quote.
|
| If anything, the person you're replying to _rejected_ this
| kind of crap, they argue (like the article) that it should be
| the right of the Indigenous Nations to determine on their own
| what they want to build on their own land.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| Find out what you're complaining about before getting race-
| baited into hating someone. The context of his statement might
| have made it perfectly reasonable. This article is obviously
| trying to paint everyone and their dog as a racist so don't
| trust it to be open about the context.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I think you need to provide some links with context because
| the article makes a compelling case that people are trying to
| block an indigenous group from exercising their agency.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Do we know that it's not a small few wealthy deal makers
| selling the land out from under people that wanted to
| preserve it? I'm not Canadian, so I have no clue. But that
| would be my immediate suspicion based on experience in real
| estate and movies I saw on TV.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I agree that's absolutely a possibility. Also not a
| Canadian. But I will point out that superficially there
| doesn't seem to be opposition to development on the land.
| The opposition appears to be based on what is being built
| rather than where.
| kareemm wrote:
| I am Canadian and lived a literal stones throw from the
| site in question for 4 years.
|
| The real issue is that Vancouver is full of NIMBYs who
| want sightlines, low density, and "character" preserved.
| It's basically encoded into the zoning laws for the
| municipality. Those groups will use whatever tactics at
| hand to prevent density at a scale they don't approve of
| from being built.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I couldn't find the context so, given the tone of the
| article, I think it's a safe assumption that the author
| isn't being charitable and is trying to mislead.
| sgt wrote:
| You're being downvoted because of statements like "Who the fuck
| are you, white man"
|
| What if you said (in a different setting, where it would
| technically make sense): "Who the fuck are you, eskimo?"
|
| I bet you wouldn't, because you've been programmed by woke
| media.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I think I missed the meaning of the quote.
|
| Skyscrapers are not an indigenous lifestyle. I suppose that's
| not okay to bring up in this context?
|
| If someone put skyscrapers on the last Hawaiian island I'd be
| pretty upset about it. The entire population of the Earth
| should be. Can't we leave one thing undeveloped?
|
| But okay, maybe there is plenty of land to go around in Canada
| that looks the same as this land, so I could see that...
|
| How does any of that relate to indigenous people using granted
| land to build them?
|
| Does Canada have some law about that?
|
| I guess I don't see why this quote has any bearing for or
| against the development. It feels entirely out of place in the
| article. Just seems like an unrelated fact.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| In a city completely inundated with skyscrapers, it's odd --
| and maybe a bit telling -- that some people become concerned
| for the first time in their lives only once an indigenous
| nation decides to build a skyscraper.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand my question. I don't see from
| the quote that there is any concern. Where are you drawing
| that from?
| kareemm wrote:
| There's been tons of opposition to building up in
| Vancouver, especially outside of downtown. Opposition isn't
| unique to indigenous builders.
|
| What is unique is that nimbys have a new arsenal of tactics
| to use as to why this isn't a good idea eg "concrete
| skyscrapers aren't the indigenous way so you shouldn't
| build your project."
| comeonbro wrote:
| In a thread full of people with weird preconceptions
| talking past each-other, _this_ is the most perfectly wrong
| statement anyone has made.
|
| The people you're talking about would strangle this entire
| country to death (and have) before allowing a single
| 3-story building to be built outside of the small areas
| that were already been zoned for it 80 years ago.
|
| The Canadian Indigenous identity issues tied up in this
| project are the _only_ force that have _ever_ been powerful
| enough to bludgeon them into submission, just this one
| time.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >Can't we leave one thing undeveloped?
|
| Sure. Undevelop your own land and that will solve the
| problem.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I don't own the last Hawaiian island, but I'm thankful
| someone who does hasn't developed it.
|
| If they did and then "undeveloped" it, that wouldn't much
| help. Right? The last island will have been destroyed for
| future generations to study and enjoy.
|
| Not being Canadian, I have no clue what the context is.
| This might be the last of a unique piece of nature, or it
| could be the first acre of an endless desert. That context
| changes the meaning quite a bit, doesn't it?
|
| I'm not Italian, but I'd be upset if Italians bulldozed
| Pompeii.
|
| It's a world heritage site! Some things belong to everyone
| and are worth preserving.
|
| I'll gladly "undevelop" and take compensation to move if a
| temple was discovered under my house.
|
| So your comment has no meaning. I sure will "undevelop" my
| land, and since the law would force me, we can see that
| society as a whole had voted that I should, in certain
| cases.
| downut wrote:
| If the island is privately owned then hard to see how
| "future generations" will be able to study and enjoy it.
| Maybe, but probably not, eh? That's the point of it being
| privately owned. Now if the State of Hawaii were to
| assert eminent domain, acquire it at fair market value,
| and then turn it into public park lands as designated
| wilderness, well that might work for your intent, I
| think.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| It is simply not your business to tell disadvantaged
| people how they should exercise their rights. They have
| agency and can decide for themselves. If this means, some
| of the nature has to be sacrificed, that's their
| business, not yours to decide.
|
| If you care so much, undevelop your own land and restore
| the nature and the balance. Plant forests over your
| parking lots and golf courses, erase suburbia and embrace
| minimalist living. That is so simple.
| nejkbnek wrote:
| A modern "Indigenous lifestyle" means a lot of things.
| There's no contradiction in Indigenous people wanting to
| preserve their historical traditions, crafts and practices
| while also adapting to the current state of the world. Most
| Native people in Canada live in cities now and face issues of
| racism and generational trauma from colonial government
| practices like Residential Schools and the 60s Scoop which
| sought to cut their connections to their culture.
|
| Developing land like this is a way for the tribe to generate
| revenue and take care of their members, but it's also a way
| for them to have meaningful input into the development
| process. They don't have some responsibility to leave the
| land as a pristine untouched wilderness, they can choose to
| develop it in a way that aligns with their values.
|
| I visited a museum in the North once where they were talking
| about preserving the practice of carving giant canoes, to
| travel south and trade with Europeans. It struck me how this
| practice was historical and important culturally, but it also
| arose out of colonial interactions in the past 500 years.
| Both can be true.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Sure skyscrapers are an indigenous lifestyle. They build
| them, invest in them, live in them. Do you think indigenous
| people in 2024 are going to all go fish for salmon and live
| in teepee's?
|
| I remember on TV once this older indigenous guy promoting
| natural resource development he thought would create
| indigenous jobs going on about "Back in the old times, my
| people hunted the buffalo. Now my people hunt a new buffalo,
| called the loonie"
| verticalscaler wrote:
| > Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and is not
| consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"?
|
| Who the fuck are you, white man, to say "It's high time the
| indigenous people reclaimed their sovereignty"? You're foisting
| your notions of sovereignty and time unto them, which is
| racist.
|
| P.S.: I'm indigenous ;)
| refurb wrote:
| How is sovereignty and time in any way subjective?
| verticalscaler wrote:
| According to CNN being on time and indeed, daylights
| savings time, are forms of white supremacy. Although prior
| to being informed of this all I saw when glancing at my
| wrist was Mickey Mouse. Did not occur to me the rat bastard
| was out to get me.
|
| I suppose whether I am being rescued by my white saviors
| espousing this new age philosophy or tormented and
| infantilized is a subjective matter.
|
| It is important for us to remember not to judge a man until
| you've walked three full moons in his moccasins. ;)
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and is not
| consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"?_
|
| A person univolved with the colonization of Canada, not even
| from there or living there, that still believes that?
|
| > _You aren 't living the same lifestyle and building the same
| buildings that your ancestors were hundreds of years ago_
|
| And that's bad in a lot of ways too. Not all modernization is
| for the better. It can turn a vibrant community into a
| gentrified Starbucks shitscape, for example.
| FredPret wrote:
| You're so virtuous
| trallnag wrote:
| Unhinged
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Hating/liking this project is going to fall on age lines more
| than racial ones, the age demo of hacker news is likely to
| almost universally LOVE this project.
| lisper wrote:
| Not only am I a white guy, I'm an old white guy. (I'm 59.)
| Even worse, I'm rich too, so I am solidly in the demographic
| of the person I was quoting. But despite the fact that I am a
| rich old white guy, I don't consider rich old white guys to
| be my tribe. I look at the history of what rich old white
| guys have done (and in many cases are still doing) to racial
| minorities and it fills me with deep shame that I am one of
| them.
|
| So I genuinely love seeing racial minorities stand up for
| themselves. I particularly admire what the Maoris have
| accomplished in New Zealand. And I especially love it when it
| ends up annoying the rich old white guys that the racial
| minority is starting to do the exact same thing that the rich
| old white guys have been doing for centuries. Seeing the
| irony and lack of self awareness lets me tell myself that no,
| I am not one them, despite the fact that I look like them.
|
| BTW, the flip side of that is, "I am one of them despite the
| fact that I don't look like them." Which, it seems to me, is
| what we ought to be striving for.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Land back policy could be a very interesting win-win loophole for
| allocating new land for the purposes of redevelopment without
| consulting NIMBYs. A sort of accidentally leftist eminent domain.
| Of course, thats a bit insensitive and would be asking indigenous
| groups to fall on our sword for our political gain. In exchange
| for billions of dollars of land. And that would be bad? Unless..?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In some cities in the west like Palm Springs the reservation
| already owns like half the city in a sort of checkerboard
| pattern. Despite the fact this is expensive palm springs you
| still see the same old "reservation" style development of a
| casino and couple story hotel rather than big huge towers of
| hotels and condos like in miami beach. Maybe there really is no
| market for something like that in palm springs, or, there are
| larger forced that put a thumb on what these reservations are
| allowed to do with the land under their domain.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| given the price of real estate in Vancouver and the fact that
| this is in Kitsilano (one of the hippest / priciest
| neighbourhoods in the city), I don't even want to know the kind
| of money involved
| ovi256 wrote:
| The average condo sold in Greater Vancouver was 827k CAD in Feb
| 24.
|
| So the 6000 units here should be worth at least 4.8B CAD
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I wouldn't use GVRD/Metro Vancouver as an estimate; things
| get quite a bit cheaper in the other cities.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| But isn't this development entirely within Metro Vancouver,
| and apparently in an expensive part of it too?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Sorry, I think I was unclear in that original comment
| once I read the replies and read it back.
|
| GVRD/Metro Vancouver encompasses Vancouver and
| surrounding cities, as far east as Langley and Port
| Moody. The prices decrease quite a bit as you get further
| away from Downtown Vancouver and the city in general.
|
| "Other cities" in my original comment meant these
| outlying ones, not ones outside of the GVRD. The prices
| in False Creek are going to be _much_ higher than the
| GVRD average.
| mjr00 wrote:
| This development is being built on the waterfront across
| False Creek from downtown; it is _prime_ real estate. Given
| that + being brand new, units will sell far above the
| Vancouver average. As a guess, studio units in this complex
| will start at 750k, 1 beds at 1m and 2beds at 1.5m. Maybe
| higher.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Sure, my point was that City of Vancouver averages are
| going to be higher than GVRD and that average condo cost
| doesn't mean a lot when it includes condos from places
| like Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Langley and even Surrey.
| chasebank wrote:
| Most people on HN always repeat the sentiment that if you
| build more housing, prices will fall. I think you're
| right, these will sell for far above average. We don't
| have a housing shortage problem, we have a housing turned
| into a financialized asset problem.
| selectodude wrote:
| It's an asset due to its scarcity. If you remove the
| scarcity, it won't be an asset. Financial asset managers
| buy real estate because they trust that silly people who
| think the demand for real estate is infinite will block
| new development allowing them to make money.
| cherioo wrote:
| The newly developed housing isn't meant to be the one
| that is cheap. What gets cheaper is the old housing
| people left behind to get into the new housing.
|
| And if a city cannot build as fast as people flowing into
| the city, then there will never be "housing left behind".
| Erikun wrote:
| It's a pretty interesting development. I wonder what the legal
| framework for someone living there will be if they're not a First
| Nation citizen?
|
| From the article: " But Indigenous nations are accountable, first
| and foremost, to their own citizens. That could mean temporarily
| barring access to traditional lands, as in Joffre Lakes. It could
| also mean maximizing the economic potential of their property, to
| provide housing and funds to support education, health care and
| community growth. "
| lwansbrough wrote:
| In terms of land/home ownership, what it has meant in other
| parts of the metro area, is leaseholds. You can "buy" a
| property at a slightly reduced cost which will be reclaimed
| after several decades (100 years?), usually starting from the
| time of development.
|
| In terms of laws, policing is handled by the local police
| force, ie. VPD. While there is rhetoric about sovereignty,
| practically speaking much of the challenging problems are still
| handled by the Crown's government and not by tribes.
| Erikun wrote:
| Sounds like it wouldn't be any different from home ownership
| or renting in any other part of Vancouver then.
| potmat wrote:
| Really? Seems very different. There are some leaseholds on
| reservations near my cottage and "owning" one does not mean
| what you think it means. On a normal property as long as
| you pay your taxes it's yours in perpetuity, and the value
| tends to rise over time. With a leasehold it's never
| "yours" and can be taken away at a future date. The value
| approaches zero as the lease approaches its end date, since
| there's no guarantee it will be extended, so the property
| depreciates over time. This also has the effect of making
| any buildings on the property fairly dilapidated as the
| end-date nears, as the buildings can/will be confiscated
| with the lease (there's no incentive for the owner to
| maintain them).
| vivekd wrote:
| I remember reading that natives are not allowed to sell
| tribal lands in Canada
|
| Might not be a huge bar though , they could put it up as
| rental property which we desperately need in Canadian cities
| - and their website suggests that's exactly what they're
| doing
|
| https://senakw.com/vision
| jamwil wrote:
| I don't think they would be limited to rentals given the
| leasehold titles he mentions as a likely framework. The
| same is true of national lands or parks -- you can buy a
| property in the Banff townsite, or on Port Authority lands,
| for instance, but it's a leasehold title and the land
| reverts to the crown at expiry.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Leaseholds are very common in Hawaii due to similar
| ownership, although here it's privately owned land by native
| orgs in most cases, because the Hawaiians specifically voted
| down reservation-like agreements to maintain what sovereignty
| they have left. It works out pretty good here, buildings are
| routinely demolished and bigger ones grow in the place. Most
| of the land like this is in town, commonly Waikiki hotels and
| apartments are leasehold. We're still having a very horrible
| housing crisis here, though.
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| These leaseholds are typically more difficult to get a
| mortgage on, restricting lenders and increasing price :/
| vkou wrote:
| If it's difficult to get a mortgage, it should cause prices
| to drop.
|
| Easy access to zero-interest-rate borrowed money is one of
| many things that drives prices up.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The Squamish have said that they're going to align with the
| Provincial tenancy act, presumably to give certainty to
| renters.
|
| > Tenants moving into any of these properties will be protected
| by the BCRTA as they would in any other rental property in the
| province.
|
| https://www.squamish.net/bcrta-adoption/
| raverbashing wrote:
| While NIMBYs of all different types (boomers, degrowters wining
| about "affordability", 'ecologists' and people talking about
| "character of the area" about some parking lot waste everybody's
| time) glad to see someone is actually doing stuff
| slily wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if this project ends up being seen
| as a success or a failure as things evolve, hopefully it inspires
| zoning reforms if it works out. I expected the article to be
| race-baity because of the gross comments here but no, it's pretty
| fair overall and apparently HN isn't above bringing up anti-white
| rhetoric unprompted.
| api wrote:
| Let me see if I got this.
|
| 1. Settlers colonize indigenous lands, drive indigenous people
| into small parcels and reservations and try to exterminate their
| culture.
|
| 2. Settlers decide to start refusing to build enough housing for
| themselves because they don't want to alter the "character of the
| neighborhood" after... uhh... very much doing that.
|
| 3. Indigenous people build housing on their remaining bits of
| land for settlers, make tons of money off it.
|
| K, yeah, I think I got it.
|
| Maybe there's a solution for California in here: decolonize!
|
| Who were the indigenous people who inhabited the Bay Area? If
| they're still around, push a big decolonizing movement to return
| some land to them. Place looks like Tokyo in 20 years.
|
| "Okay, okay, we suck, you can have your ancestors land back. Just
| can you let me reserve a condo when they go on sale?"
|
| Then watch all the Bay Area lefty 60s homeowners suddenly become
| white nationalists. Their ideology is probably downstream of
| their home equity.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| The Bay Area indigenous land movement is finally starting to
| see some wins. Shellmound in Berkeley is a big win for the
| Ohlone tribe. [0]
|
| [0]https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/03/12/berkeley-
| shellmound-...
| api wrote:
| Shh. Make sure the tribe's leadership knows to stay quiet for
| a while until they can pick up a few more parcels before
| unveiling their plans to exceed the height of the Burj
| Khalifa.
|
| I'm obviously half joking here. No intent to be insensitive.
| Even if they don't build anything it's better than a parking
| lot.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| When they rip up the asphalt and find no significant bones
| or artifacts in the marsh underneath, any plans for a
| cultural interpretive center are going to turn into a mural
| and some bronze sculptures in the middle of newly designed
| Ohlone Towers.
| api wrote:
| Maybe the tallest free standing inhabited structure in
| the world would be a great monument to the ancestors?
| fckgw wrote:
| Maybe it would. Why does it matter to you?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Different structure though. These folk are preservationists
| and only decided to fight for the place once the parking lot
| was going to be replaced. Overall, it's not a bad play,
| though. 36% profit underperforms the loan over the period,
| but it's not nothing.
| skrbjc wrote:
| So developer wants to build on land they legally own,
| indigenous complain and get the city to block development and
| then to use tax-payer dollars to help them buy it, and then
| they will turn around and develop it themselves?
|
| Is this not just blatant extortion?
| tekla wrote:
| The downvoters are blind to this brilliance of solving the
| housing crisis while decolonizing. Is this not what leftists
| want?
| spxneo wrote:
| Canadian indigenous settlements have been described by some as
| an "open air prison".
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| The fact that the PNW is as expensive as the Bay area or even
| SoCal is a travesty. At least the first nation people figured out
| how to break the planning commission nonsense and took charge in
| their own communities. So long as they keep out the foreign hot
| funny money that made the regular cities too expensive they'll do
| just fine.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I wouldn't be so optimistic about this not getting bankrolled
| by foreign investors, especially if you consider Canadians
| foreign investors, but they'll do fine regardless.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| To be fair the PNW still has pretty good weather, gorgeous
| nature, good infrastructure (natural and man-made) and a varied
| economy. It'd be weird if it _wasn't_ expensive.
| r3d0c wrote:
| artificially more expensive because of outdated and backwards
| zoning laws keeping housing expensive
| ipaddr wrote:
| Hong Kong changing hands created a huge wave of freign. This
| project captures some of it
| r00fus wrote:
| Foreign what? bodies? cash? That cash is busy going
| everywhere else too.
| brabel wrote:
| Everyone is really happy to concede some power to another group
| as long as that group is seen as completely harmless, and they
| continue to do that out of guilty, knowing that they completely
| replaced the other group. It really gets interesting is when the
| other group starts to gain power and assert its power, as being
| done here. At some point, tables may turn and said group may
| become again the top dog. It probably won't happen in our
| lifetime, but these things do happen over centuries - to the
| point people actually forget who the powerful group was before.
|
| A simple example: the Tatars in Krimea
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars). Once, they
| invaded and took it over from its original inhabitants
| (descendants of Greeks and Sarmatians, a very different people).
| Over a long time, however, they become minority again, specially
| after they were mostly removed by the Soviets and today they are
| a minority group (the Eurovision winner in 2016, Jamala, for
| Ukraine, sang about the Tatars:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamala).
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The indigenous population is gradually increasing over time,
| which is a curious thing in a country whose leader who has
| confessed to presiding over an active genocide against them.
|
| It would take many generations of this trend happening for the
| Indigenous to become big players, but also not THAT long, maybe
| a couple hundred years.
| switchbak wrote:
| I don't believe Justin Trudeau ever admitted to _presiding_
| over an _active_ genocide. He was referring to the deaths of
| those in residential schools. Those were effectively shut
| down in the 80's - when Mr. Trudeau was still a child.
|
| I think it would be more accurate to say that he acknowledged
| that there were tremendous harms inflicted by both the
| government and the church both before and after
| confederation, and that those harms rise to the level of what
| he considers to be genocide. There still exist wrongs that
| are being done to First Nations today (by the Liberal
| government no less), but there's no way that Mr. Trudeau
| would categorize those as genocide, full stop.
|
| Also a reminder that as of yet, none of the mass grave sites
| of the last few years have been excavated, and ground-
| penetrating radar is insufficient to make a claim of a mass
| grave site. There is copious evidence of barbarous acts
| taking place at residential schools, however the media furor
| over these specific reports were premature, and we simply
| don't have solid data for these sites.
| guardiangod wrote:
| The native nation, Squamish Nation, used to own the entire parcel
| of land immediately north of the 10 acres land mentioned in this
| article as a reservation granted by the former-colonial
| government (a native village stood in Vancouver downtown but the
| colonial gov forced them to move across the inlet).
|
| But thru multiple forced relocations and unceded land take over,
| the reservation was gradually taken over.
|
| >Slowly, from 1886 to 1902, Indigenous peoples were removed from
| their traditional village sites and homes and required to live on
| reserves. As the City grew around them, legislation was enacted
| that required all Indigenous peoples on reserve be removed if the
| population around them exceeded 1,000 settlers. In 1913, this
| happened at Senakw. A barge arrived, and the residents were
| instructed to board the barge to receive funds from the Indian
| Agent. Once everyone from the village had boarded the barge, it
| was pulled from the beach and set adrift into English Bay. The
| village was then set on fire and burned to the ground. The owner
| of Cates Tugs, seeing the barge drifting precariously in the Bay,
| went to the rescue and towed the barge to Capilano Reserve,
| located in North Vancouver.
|
| https://bardonthebeach.org/history-of-senakw/
|
| It was only thru recent lawsuit and legislation that part of the
| reserve (an awkward T shape in the middle of wide stroads) was
| returned.
|
| The 10acre of land in this article-
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kitsilano+6,+Vancouver,+BC...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/little-known...
| notatoad wrote:
| Thanks for the context, i did not realize that this was land
| that had been returned to the squamish nation. The previous
| reporting i'd seen on this developemnt made it sound like the
| parcel was the original treaty land.
| comeonbro wrote:
| I don't know if it's fair to call a bridge a stroad
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| Where does the bridge start and end? It's an embankment onto
| the bridge from a stroad. You're both right.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Moderately dense development - good
|
| High rise developments enclosed in glass - bad
|
| Plants on the skyscraper terraces - sheer stupidity and bullshit,
| used only for pretty marketing 3D art
|
| If they made those high rises a 5-6 floor buildings instead, with
| no b/s trees on the balconies but instead planted them in the
| ground, that would be much more boring, cheaper and much more
| comfortable to live there.
| dangus wrote:
| There are a lot of examples of successful, affordable, pleasant
| skyscraper developments across the world. The entirety of the
| Vancouver city core is an example itself. It seems rather
| prescriptive to declare tower living uncomfortable when so many
| people enjoy it.
|
| Just look at some rental listings in the South Loop
| neighborhood of Chicago. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment in a
| modern glass tower with amenities galore for well under $3,000
| a month in the heart of America's second largest downtown.
|
| Imagine living completely car-free in a neighborhood like that
| and commuting 10 minutes to get to your downtown job. (Walk,
| bike, and transit score >90)
|
| I personally think that's way more comfortable (and physically
| safe) than a suburban lifestyle where you're trapped in your
| car on a stroad or freeway for every daily need.
|
| As far as vegetated skyscrapers, there are widely acclaimed
| examples like the Bosco Verticale. It's not a new concept and
| I'm not sure what the negative is supposed to be. Plants are
| bad?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > successful, affordable, pleasant skyscraper developments
|
| that depends entirely on the cultural and social expectations
| of humans who are supposed to live there
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Moderately dense development - good > High rise developments
| enclosed in glass - bad
|
| Can you explain why you think this?
| mthoms wrote:
| What's wrong with plants on the terraces and balconies? How
| would their presence make it less comfortable to live there?
| And high rise developments "enclosed in glass"? As the article
| mentions, that's sort of what Vancouver is known for.
|
| Is it the material you object to or the building height?
|
| I genuinely don't understand your comment. Particularly as a
| Vancouverite (who can't afford a home).
| singingboyo wrote:
| Also, as a Vancouverite... 5-6 stories, cheaper to live
| there, AND more comfortable? Dunno about that.
|
| I've got doubts about cheaper, and 5-6 story buildings in
| Vancouver always seem less comfortable than a skyscraper (for
| whatever reason - maybe just that the 5-6 story buildings are
| mostly old?)
| dangus wrote:
| The critics of this project seem to be outright racist. I don't
| think that's an overstatement.
|
| They're basically saying that Indigenous people aren't allowed to
| participate in the modern world. You're not allowed to be
| urbanist if you were "less advanced than the white people" three
| hundred years ago.
|
| And they're butthurt about the development not having the need to
| comply with Vancouver development rules. Yeah, well, sorry not
| sorry you weren't able to steal _all_ the land. Nothing is
| stopping y'all from changing the rules in Vancouver and building
| something similar.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| You might think so but nimby's hatred of tall buildings is not
| at all limited to the ones the Squamish nation is building, as
| evidenced by the lack of buildings this tall. It'd be more
| racist for them to make an exception to their usual moaning
| about tall buildings just because it was the Squamish doing the
| building.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| >as evidenced by the lack of buildings this tall
|
| The third picture shows the development projected onto a
| wider picture of the city. You can see plenty of other
| skyscapers, some looking similar height or nearly as tall.
| Just not any on the side of the river the Squamish are
| planning on building.
|
| I do agree though that NIMBY's will generally whine
| regardless of the person doing the building. I wouldn't say
| "[all] the critics of the project are racist" because I don't
| know all the criticisms, but certainly some of the criticisms
| in the article had a pretty racist slant to them.
| singingboyo wrote:
| > You can see plenty of other skyscapers, some looking
| similar height or nearly as tall. Just not any on the side
| of the river the Squamish are planning on building.
|
| That's kind of the entire point of Vancouver NIMBYism, at
| least around Kits/Point Grey. The "backyard" for them is
| basically "anywhere except the downtown peninsula" (the
| other side of the inlet in the picture).
|
| They won't care too much if someone builds a 20-40 story
| building on the West End/peninsula. Do the same thing on
| the west side ([1], off the peninsula) and they'll throw an
| absolute fit.
|
| [1] The West End neighbourhood and the colloquial west side
| are a solid 10-20 minutes apart from each other, driving
| time. Geographically - West End is on the peninsula, and
| the west side is basically the various neighbourhoods
| across the inlet (False Creek) from it.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| This is Vancouver -- NIMBYs got super upset and managed to
| successfully downsize a tower despite it being located off a
| major transit hub (Commercial & Broadway station) and was not
| historic anything (just a grocery store and associated parking
| lot).
|
| I'm not saying there's no racism involved with the Kits
| project, I'm sure there is. But folks here are pretty eager to
| deny housing to everyone regardless of race. Kits people are
| also aggressively opposed to low-income housing, any any
| density in their neighbourhood and are typically accustomed to
| being successful in this.
| Canada wrote:
| I'm not surprised that it took a literal nation to overcome
| the resistance to any serious development by that particular
| group of NIMBYs. Score a win for decentralized power.
|
| I don't think there's any racism at all on their part though,
| as much as the article tries to play that up. They simply
| _hate_ idea of downtown expanding into what they view as
| their perfect suburban neighborhood and they are well
| organized. They always oppose high density development
| regardless of who proposes it. This has nothing to do with
| "Canadians" generally, who don't give a shit as a broad
| group. This is about a small group of homeowners in a
| particular area of Vancouver.
|
| This development is just what Vancouver needs, and so long as
| it actually happens the city will be better for it. It's also
| great to see first nations or whatever we're supposed to call
| them get a big financial win like this too: By providing what
| the market needs. The only way to move past what happened in
| the past is well earned financial success in the present.
|
| I have two predictions:
|
| 1) This will have more positive impact on people's ability to
| afford living in Vancouver than anything the current group of
| clowns ruling Ottawa do.
|
| 2) In spite of the Kits homeowners fears, the expansion of
| the city through this development will make their property
| even more desirable and valuable.
| skrbjc wrote:
| How would you feel if they decided to turn it into a landfill
| or a nuclear powerplant or a massive chemical production
| facility that didn't have to comply with environmental laws.
|
| It's great they want to build big buildings, but the reality is
| if you say a group of people are above the law, then they can
| do whatever they want, including things that would be solely in
| their interest and in no-one else's.
| camg55 wrote:
| Think this is great for Vancouver which needs more housing. The
| zoning is broken, and far too conservative. Glad to see the
| Squamish addressing a need that will likely benefit all, and
| hopefully this encourages the city of Vancouver to do the same on
| their own accord.
| spxneo wrote:
| Building more homes in Vancouver will not result in lower
| prices because this is not a supply problem it is the financial
| assetization of home equity that drives higher and higher
| prices. Blue collar workers turned multi-millionaires rely on
| the continued rise of home prices to purchase cheap credit
| which they use to speculate on more homes. When they couldn't
| find anymore locals they turned to the international market to
| sell their bags. Now these 20k homes ppl are celebrating are
| NOT going to be sold under market prices no matter how much
| reddit and hn crowd wants it to be true. It will only stabilize
| the prices at current inflated levels.
|
| Be careful what you wish for. The only type of housing they are
| building is not white picket fenced backyard with a shed that
| is being converted to homes but high/low rise apartments
| primarily for rental, a hotbed for crime.
|
| Since David Eby overrode the strata no-rental rules, while not
| responsible it resulted in huge increase in cases of squatters,
| petty theft, drug labs and brothels. This does not include what
| a retired VPD officer describes as an "Amazon of drug labs and
| brothels" which is familiar to vancouver high rise but now its
| even easier for criminals. Vice reporters were even reporting
| on it years ago but now these cases are accelerating since Eby
| stepped in a populist spirit.
|
| I'm all for alleviating housing situation but we need to stop
| and ask if those people who are demanding/feel entitled to it
| really have the necessary income to justify it. Often I see
| people making 60k CAD/year lamenting how they can't find a home
| to live in. You can't afford anything in developed urban
| centres except in emerging economies.
|
| So I think rather than building more housing we need to ask who
| really has merit to be here and the biggest determining factor
| is income not how long you lived in Vancouver like certain
| demographic of locals are suggesting which is basically
| dogwhistling to say the market forces should not apply to them
| because of their skin colour.
|
| Simply blaming this on local housing policy failure like reddit
| does when housing prices has been appreciating all over the
| world, not just Vancouver, is myopic. There are cities that are
| far more dense than vancouver and has even more ridiculous real
| estate prices. They love Vancouver and the blue collar Canadian
| workers that bought their homes after 6 month of work in the
| 70s, 80s are not desperate to sell as they have nowhere else to
| go.
|
| Lot of people are being setup for major disappointments if they
| think vancouver home prices are coming back down to 2012
| prices. There is simply no way to force homeowners to sell when
| they have no urgency or financial stress to do so. over 50% of
| homeowners in Vancouver do not have mortgages.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| It is a mistake to blame the high cost of housing on market
| forces. It is largely the product of local housing policy. It
| is a choice.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I think it's both. Housing policy can help or hurt but
| overall many places in the world have stuggled to keep
| housing prices affordable.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| > stuggled to keep housing prices affordable.
|
| The political system does not strive for affordability,
| it strives to make housing a good investment.
| Unaffordability is just the inevitable consequence.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Local housing policy only sets housing costs explicitly if
| they override market forces e.g. via rent control. There
| are plenty of examples of how the market responds to this
| type of intervention, by not building more supply, letting
| existing supply fall into disrepair and constricting
| uncontrolled supply, resulting in much higher market rate.
|
| In general, housing policy affects supply, and market
| forces decide the prices. Notably increasing supply doesn't
| always lower prices as demand is elastic.
| soperj wrote:
| > Since David Eby overrode the strata no-rental rules, it
| ended up increasing cases of squatters, petty theft, drug
| labs and brothels. This does not include what a retired VPD
| officer describes as an "Amazon of drug labs and brothels"
| throughout vancouver high rise. I mean Vice reporters were
| even reporting on it years ago.
|
| David Eby has been premier since October 2022, strata
| property act happened soon after in November. Maybe, just
| maybe, the squatters, petty theft, drug labs and brothels
| aren't a result of the strata changes. Certainly not the ones
| that Vice reporters reported on years ago.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Property boomer checking in for duty
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| You could have saved a lot of time by just saying "fuck poor
| people"
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| > feel entitled
|
| It's funny how the people who sling this as an insult so
| often have a literal deed/title and are pursuing policy that
| pumps its value to the detriment of others.
| aclatuts wrote:
| This is like the tech bro version of: private investors
| buying properties is inflating property prices.
|
| The problem is blue collar people, which is a new one to me.
| davis wrote:
| Building more housing (of all kinds) == cheaper housing.
| Sorry but it really is that simple.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Houses there are a luxury, you would need to be a
| multimillionaire to buy something there. Also, most of
| Vancouver is zoned for sfh, check a zoning map. Your entire
| comment can be summarized as: Build buildings-> more rentals
| -> lower price -> lower income can afford it -> poor people
| are criminals.
|
| I lived there for 2 years, and a local tech salary was barely
| enough to afford living in downtown/near downtown renting an
| apartment.
| masterj wrote:
| Of all the bad racist NIMBY rants, this is definitely one of
| them
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Yeah, this is great. The way I see it, potential sovereigns
| gain legitimacy by organizing things for the good of the
| people. Right now it looks like the exercise of Squamish
| sovereignty is in the interest of all people (except property
| leeches). In which case, by all means run the show. You're
| doing a better job than the other guys.
| systemstops wrote:
| Someone at Westbank is a genius: fund the building of a massive
| skyscraper project on land that was recently returned to
| indigenous tribes because of a lawsuit, a project that would
| never be normally approved because of zoning laws. Then, declare
| any criticism of the project as racist, thus guaranteeing it will
| be built. I wonder how much of the money the tribe is actually
| getting out of this?
| fckgw wrote:
| What does acceptable use of their own land look like to you?
| What would meet your specific approval?
| systemstops wrote:
| It's acceptable to me - none of my business. But it's
| corporate money building this project, which we should be
| clear about. It's just built on native land.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I'm not sure why that matters? If others would offer the
| tribe a better offer, I'm sure they would accept it.
| systemstops wrote:
| I guess the point I was trying to make is that the public
| is being manipulated by the moral framing of this
| project. The buildings would not be normally allowed in
| that area, and the proponents of project are using an
| explicit racial justice narrative to counteract criticism
| of their violation of norms. I'm agnostic about whether
| or not the project is good idea, but I think it's
| generally bad to manipulate people in this way. What I
| was implying is that the whole thing seems like a really
| clever scheme by a real estate developer during a time in
| Canada when indigenous issues are hugely popular. But,
| maybe I am being too cynical.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > the proponents of project are using an explicit racial
| justice narrative to counteract criticism of their
| violation of norms.
|
| Pretty easy to do when some of the criticism indeed
| sounds kinda racist. Example from the article:
|
| > In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban
| planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan
| reporter Angela Sterritt, "When you're building 30,
| 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there's a big gap
| between that and an Indigenous way of building."
|
| I'm sorry, but does he expect indigenous people to only
| build log cabins forever or something? Maybe they should
| also forgo cars and buses and only use horses?
| systemstops wrote:
| It seems like he's expressing criticism over the racial
| narrative that this is an "indigenous way of being"
| building project instead of another corporate development
| that happens to be built on indigenous land.
|
| Obviously, no one is expecting indigenous people to use
| ancient building techniques that haven't been used in
| centuries, but the groups behind the project are making
| the explicit claim that the project is somehow tied to a
| racial identity. Criticizing their claim is perfectly
| reasonable.
| brailsafe wrote:
| The thing is, you don't need racism to make the adjacent
| residents seem like the people they are, it's just one
| more reason to build spite towers. They're standard rich
| boomers who'll show up to every hearing and persistently
| move the goal posts until any change is impossible, and
| they're on record doing so in a way that's beyond
| embarassing.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| The moral framing almost certainly a part of the strategy
| to get the public to accept the projects. But at the same
| time, I'm not sure the moral framing (that natives should
| have more autonomy over their ancestral land) is
| incorrect, or detracts at all. Is an appeal to ethics
| really "manipulation" if you agree with the underlying
| ethical principle? Or is it just emphasizing a point that
| we have ignored for too long?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| At the end of the day you need to pay someone to swing a
| hammer.
|
| When the City of Vancouver built its own below market city
| owned apartment at Main and 7th they hired local developer
| Marcon to build it. Marcon also builds for-profit condos
| all across the region.
|
| "Corporate money" being involved in the creation of housing
| is pretty unavoidable.
| guyzero wrote:
| "Corporate money" builds everything - that's how capitalism
| works.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The question is could someone build a similiar structure
| beside or does zoning prevent this. If so parent has a valid
| point
| fckgw wrote:
| It's not our land, zoning is meaningless. Who cares about a
| hypothetical if something "could" have been built here
| ipaddr wrote:
| There are still rules in place or are you of the opinion
| Russia could make a deal and put a warhead on that land?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The answer is that no, there is no zoning in that area
| because that parcel of land is not subject to City of
| Vancouver zoning laws, being not part of the City of
| Vancouver. The adjacent properties are part of the City of
| Vancouver, and therefore are subject to zoning that the
| City of Vancouver chooses to impose upon them. That zoning
| could be removed if city hall so chooses, but Kitsilano
| NIMBYs would oppose it. But city hall cannot define zoning
| rules for land that is not within their jurisdiction, so
| the NIMBYs have no voice. Just like, say, UBC is also not
| subject to City of Vancouver municipal zoning rules. Nor is
| Nanaimo. Nor Haida Gwaii.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but people should look at this through
| the lens of it being a massive real estate deal rather than as
| a civil rights issue, which it is not. Of course there's shady
| stuff going on if you scratch the surface, didn't you see the
| part where real estate developers are involved? Unless we're
| making the laughable (and patronizing) assumption that massive
| urban residential real estate deals are vaccinated from
| corruption if first nation tribal members are involved.
| danem wrote:
| What corruption are you referring to?
|
| Who built the house/apartment you live in? A real estate
| developer, right?
| yardie wrote:
| I mean some of the opponents have been obtusely racist in their
| criticism. One example is imploring the tribes to use
| "traditional" indigenous building techniques. As if that is
| supposed to mean they should be building as if they were in the
| 19th century.
| golergka wrote:
| Race-baiting manipulation against NIMBY zoning laws.
| Personally, none of the sides provoke any sympathy.
|
| However, what's important is the law. If they have proved their
| right to the land in court, that's the only thing that should
| really matter. And aside from the PR manipulation, a
| corporation building residential buildings is obviously a
| positive thing, providing value for everybody involved: their
| shareholders, land owners and future residents. The only who
| suffers are their neighbours who tried to prop up their
| property values by strangling development.
| reso wrote:
| I say this all as a YIMBY who is very happy to see 20k new units
| added to vancouver: something feels off about the plans for the
| Jericho lands but I can't describe it.
|
| I feel like when you have these mega developments where 10 condos
| go up all at once in the space of a few blocks, they end up as
| "bedroom neighborhoods", where people sleep but don't do anything
| else. There are a lot of these happening in Canada right now.
| There's one on Victoria in Waterloo. Concord place in Toronto is
| another example. I don't see street life there. I only see people
| going to or coming from somewhere else.
|
| The best neighborhoods are the ones where there is a broad-
| strokes master plan, but beneath that, some amount of
| decentralization in implementation. Then you get a diversity of
| ideas about how to live all in one place.
|
| Maybe there are words for this I don't know.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| If it is discontinuous with the broader urban fabric this is
| definitely a risk.
|
| Look up Orestad in Copenhagen - a massive master planned area
| that never gained any of the hoped for vitality you would see
| elsewhere in the city.
|
| A decent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OMxzXsufq8
| hdlothia wrote:
| I think the tough part is it's hard to master plan these
| thing sometimes. Is it better to limit restrictions and let
| people put coffee shops and bars where they want?
| jjjjj55555 wrote:
| It seems like it had othe problems apart from being
| discontinuous from the city. There are lots of areas like
| this in the US which are contiguous with the city, that still
| end up as dead zones.
|
| Did anyone really believe this was a good idea? I feel like
| the developers' need to turn a profit and the government's
| need to impose itself don't leave any good ideas on the
| table. Instead they focus on packaging up the same bad ideas
| just with different marketing.
|
| When it inevitably doesn't work as promised, they just say
| oops, and move onto the next project.
| munificent wrote:
| It's not exactly what you're getting at, but you might enjoy
| Christopher Alexander's essay "A City is not a Tree". It also
| talks about why highly planned cities can end up not working
| and feeling "right" in the way that older more incrementally-
| grown ones can.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| It would be more convincing to rage against planning if the
| backdrop wasn't a situation clearly created by the complete
| absence of planning. Obviously there's a middle ground. This
| isn't it.
| ttul wrote:
| Take Tokyo for example. It's ugly and massive and sprawling
| but, connected with amazing transit, there is not only plenty
| of housing for everyone at all income levels, but the place
| is also just totally rad.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I disagree about master plan neighborhoods being better. It's
| just way too much ownership, control, and responsibility for
| one developer or one period of time, usually. Imo, master
| planned neighborhoods are an optimistic dismissal of the idea
| that organic evolution of a neighborhood should be allowed to
| happen, and a massive bet on whatever gets built being great.
| Often this takes place as a huge cul-de-sac suburb with one
| place designated for a gas station and a few shops, or as just
| an isolated parcel where most of the businesses end up being
| franchises and people drive out to visit other places rather
| than shopping nearby. In the prairies, these developments build
| over wetlands on the outskirts where land is cheapest and it's
| all boilerplate garbage that the developer has decided in
| advance it's probably everything everyone needs. A sort of
| "This is where the houses go, this is where the commercial is,
| here's the rest of the city". Everything ends up looking pretty
| samey and dull.
|
| In other cases, when it happens in a city, like in Burnaby or
| Oakridge, it ends up displacing in some way or another way more
| people than is necessary, because they have a grand vision to
| replace 10 blocks of housing or something.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| I think you're basically describing a typical suburb and I
| agree those suck. However I live pretty close to the Jericho
| lands and there's plenty going on here. Both 4th & broadway are
| nearby with lots of shopping/dining etc. and there are big
| parks/beaches nearby. I think the neighbourhood will get even
| better with more residents.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Vancouver has sky high real estate prices, particularly in terms
| of local wages. There is limited land as Vancouver is locked
| between the ocean and mountains (and the border to the United
| States). But go look at any aerial view of Vancouver and you'll
| really see why.
|
| Downtown is high-density. Across the water it's basically all
| single-family homes with astronomical prices and none of those
| people want higher-density development, for obvious reasons (ie
| it will lower prices).
|
| This shouldn't be allowed to happen. This proposed development is
| on the other side of the water in what is otherwise SFH zoning.
| That's why some oppose it. NIMBYs strike again.
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| There is a certain irony in these buildings not using indigenous
| construction techniques.
| krapp wrote:
| No there isn't, any more than there's irony in white people not
| building thatch-roofed huts. Every culture evolves over time.
| brink wrote:
| Not people's perceptions of said cultures. Africa is over 62%
| Christian as it stands today, and yet the Wakandans of
| hollywood practice ancestor worship (representing ~2% of
| Africa). There's irony wherever you look. We can't seem to
| move past the past when it comes to minorities.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A lot of christians, maybe most globally, also practice
| veneration of the dead. Sometimes syncretically, but also
| from an external anthropological viewpoint the communion of
| saints is indistinguishable from ancestor worship. The
| christian theological understanding of it is very
| different, which is probably why we don't use this term for
| it. But's it's there.
| ximus wrote:
| It's comforting to see first nations of canada recovering a
| central role in modern canadian society.
|
| However, having lived here for a year a year now, I have observed
| a concerning aspect of this re-integration, which is mentioned in
| the article: First nations aren't just propped back up and re-
| integrated in society, it goes further in that they are given
| special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian
| citizens have access to. In this case it is exemption from zoning
| laws, but all over the country it's access to mining, lumber and
| fishing rights. They are exempted from federal quotas on fishing,
| cutting forests, etc ...
|
| On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some citizens
| special birth rights greater than others. But on more practical
| grounds, this is creating a great big loophole for the
| traditional resource extraction companies to circumvent
| environment regulation by partnering with first nations on
| projects.
| stonogo wrote:
| > On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some
| citizens special birth rights greater than others.
|
| Kind of the point here is that it was happening the other way
| for a couple hundred years, so just abrogating _current_
| inequality still leaves one party as a disadvantage. The hard
| part is deciding when these catch-up priveleges have run their
| course. Since first nations metrics along the lines of economic
| status are still below the national average, it 's clear we're
| not there just yet.
| nickff wrote:
| Complicating this calculation is the way that the 'catch-up
| rights' are provided via tribal mechanisms, which
| incentivizes 'chiefs' and 'council members'/'elders' to
| prolong the inequality so that they can maintain their power
| & control.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| This reminds me of the Malcolm X quote
|
| > If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out
| six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way
| out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that
| the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out
| much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is
| there.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| So why not run programs along the lines of current economic
| status, which is relatively easy to objectively determine and
| relatively light on ethnic, racial, and national animus? It
| is impossible to do a good job of litigating history and it
| is guaranteed to make people hate each other.
| elefanten wrote:
| This is absolutely the correct answer, all identity-based
| solutions are coarse and imprecise ways to solve a directly
| measurable problem (relative economic hardship). But the
| identity-based lever has proven too effective rhetorically
| and creates ample rent-seeking and self-enrichment
| opportunities to those wielding political power with an
| identity-based community. Plus, general means-based
| intervention is generally scary to the "wealthy" identity
| (cutting across all other identity divisions).
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| There is no real special catch up going on here.
|
| What is happening now is that First Nations have leveraged
| the courts to force a rule of law country like Canada to
| actually follow through on obeying the rule of law and
| following through with treaties they had signed and
| agreements they had made.
| nikitaga wrote:
| What treaties? BC signed very few treaties, unlike other
| provinces. That's why those lawsuits are even considered.
| We can thank a bunch of long-dead British guys for that.
|
| And let's not pretend that this has anything to do with the
| constitution or the rule of law. The actual "rules" in the
| source material are woefully under-specified and open to
| all kinds of interpretation, so the number one factor
| actually affecting these decisions is the social popculture
| that everyone in the country, including the justices, is
| subject to.
|
| We simply have a bunch of unelected people effectively
| writing an important part of Canadian law for decades,
| because the elected people whose actual job it is to write
| such laws don't want to do it.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The situation in BC yeah largely without treaties gives
| the First Nations even _more_ leverage to control their
| lands under claim because otherwise Canada has to somehow
| justify being a rule of law country and also stealing
| people 's land in the year 2024.
|
| Obviously it's not going to work, which is why the courts
| continue to rule in the favour of BC FNs.
| nikitaga wrote:
| > Since first nations metrics along the lines of economic
| status are still below the national average, it's clear we're
| not there just yet.
|
| Instead of rushing for race-based policies, how about
| implementing policies that would help all disadvantaged
| people equally without looking at their race.
|
| You can't compensate for past racism with modern racism. It
| will never end. Canada will learn that the hard way, it
| seems.
| philistine wrote:
| I see you took Pierre Elliot Trudeau's plan from way back
| in the 70s out of the moth balls and are now trying to pass
| it as new.
|
| It cannot work. Our government signed binding treaties with
| independent nations in the past. Those treaties are still
| valid, and we cannot declare them null and void because
| it's unfair that they give more fishing rights to 3% of
| people.
| BigParm wrote:
| When the catch up is in the form of hiring quotas for a
| mining project on native lands, that's just a consensual
| business deal and it's positive.
|
| But sometimes the situation is taken advantage of and the
| appeasement goes too far. Like instead of cutting firewood
| for the wood stove, you just throw all your furniture and
| cabinetry and doors in there. Then you just ask for new ones
| from a big company who just wants to quietly put this problem
| away without stirring up a fuss and risking their project or
| bigger costs later. That actually happened lol.
|
| It's not a race issue or a cultural issue. Natives are
| competent people. We may have different ancestral traditions,
| but we share exactly the same culture today. Where do you
| think the Canadian accent comes from? That's a native accent.
| Our cultures mixed together.
|
| If a business and a land owning band want to cut a deal, by
| all means. If the government and the bands want to settle
| land compensation, then settle it once and for all. It really
| just never ends as it stands. Like what does free post
| secondary have to do with land claims? It really looks like
| systemic racism.
|
| And if the government was serious about any of this they'd
| give them autonomy in their lands. Statehood. That hasn't
| happened. Why not? I get that you can't sign over Vancouver
| because it's been developed, but a lot of these places are in
| the bush.
|
| It's really a shit show. We're not the rich country we once
| were. We can't afford to pay billions forever on repeat just
| to make it go away for a little while. Settle it all
| immediately and make all races equal.
| philistine wrote:
| To do that you need to break international law by declaring
| the treaties signed in the past null and void. You also
| need to break international law by refusing to negotiate
| with nations who never signed treaties, and want deals at
| least as good as nations who signed treaties.
|
| There's a very good reason why what you're proposing is not
| what's happening: it's because you're dealing with nation
| to nation negotiations, and the other nations want nothing
| of fairness and equality. They want their full rights, and
| denying them that is turning back the clock decades.
| nvy wrote:
| >But on more practical grounds, this is creating a great big
| loophole for the traditional resource extraction companies to
| circumvent environment regulation by partnering with first
| nations on projects.
|
| There's a certain demographic that can't accept that indigenous
| people might not be nature-worshipping druids that never
| pollute and are infallible stewards of the land, so through
| that lens of course they don't need to be subject to
| environmental regulations.
| elevaet wrote:
| That may be true, but fundamentally this is about autonomy.
| These Nations do not necessarily fall under the jurisdiction
| of the National or Provincial government since they never
| ceeded their territory.
|
| It's a bit of a grey area for sure, but this isn't about
| "giving the people of the forest" stewardship of the land in
| order for them to protect it, it's recognizing that they
| didn't sign up to be governed under the nation/province.
| extr wrote:
| The idea that they do not fall under jusrisdiction is a
| farce and legal contrivance. In reality they have no
| international standing and do not and would not constitute
| an independent state under any normal criteria. What's
| happening here is the government is treating them with kid
| gloves because there is the perception what happened in the
| past is unfair (true!) and there is a desire to make amends
| for it. That's all well and good, let's just acknowledge it
| and call it what it is. If tomorrow they decided to start
| developing nuclear weapons I don't think "they didn't
| consent to be governed" would fly.
| lukan wrote:
| "If tomorrow they decided to start developing nuclear
| weapons I don't think "they didn't consent to be
| governed" would fly."
|
| Any nation developing nuclear weapons will get serious
| problems from the nations who already have them. Native,
| or not.
|
| And it used to not be necessary, to have "international
| standing" to have your own state. You just minded your
| own buisness and tried to get along with the local
| neighbors. As far as I understand, this is a compromise,
| to bring some of it back. They are still subject to most
| of federal law and that is not going to change. So there
| won't be a true souvereign native state inside of canada
| anytime soon.
| philistine wrote:
| Looking at realpolitik, I can see one path: Quebec
| independence. If it's achieved within our lifetime, a
| sovereign Quebec might offer full independence to First
| Nations to get them to sign a dotted line to stop trying
| to be inside Canada.
| TSiege wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they don't have international
| standing, what matters is that Canada has recognized them
| as sovereign entities. You can't be sovereign but then be
| boxed into the laws of another country
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Exactly why they wouldn't be sovereign nations except by
| Canada's niceness. You can only be sovereign by having
| some form of strong leverage, either resources, power, or
| international support.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Canada is already a federal state with sub national
| entities that don't have all the rights of the federal
| government. Pretty much any state that has a federal
| system already deals with this.,
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > they are given special rights that go beyond what any other
| class of canadian citizens have access to > I find it
| questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater
| than others
|
| The reason for this is because they are using their rights from
| signed treaties that define how resources are used on their
| lands.
|
| Persons that are part of First Nations like the Squamish and
| the Haida are not just "some citizens" of Canada but rather
| part of Nations that have their own governance and
| jurisdiction. Nations that have signed government to government
| treaties with Canada that clearly define their rights and
| jurisdiction.
|
| And in many cases in BC in particular, treaties were never
| signed, and First Nations never ceded their lands and title, so
| in fact there is an enormously strong legal case to justify
| their influence and power over lands that they never legally
| ceded to British Columbia or Canada. These First Nations
| continue to rack up wins in the courts that continue to side
| with the FNs that their title to their lands has never been
| extinguished.
| trhway wrote:
| The story shows one of the facets of the value of sovereignty
| what countries and nations have over the history been
| fighting for. In this case the indigenous people invested
| into their sovereignty countless lives and suffering, and 2
| centuries later it starts to pay off (similar to many other
| countries/nations in today's word who had been fighting for
| their freedom for decades and centuries until finally
| achieving it).
| nightowl_games wrote:
| > power over lands that they never legally ceded to British
| Columbia or Canada.
|
| Actually curious about this concept of "unceded land". If
| it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break
| laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not
| Canada?
|
| Seems like this "unceded land" concept is only applied
| selectively?
| crtified wrote:
| If 2 families solely inhabited (owned) an island, since
| pre-history, and Family 1 sells the entire island to
| newcomers, while Family 2 takes no part in the deal or its
| approval, and does not cede their land to the purchase,
| then any court in the land will, quite rightly, hear Family
| 2's case that they are still the owner of their regions of
| the island.
|
| Why would that be different here?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| See the Louisiana Purchase for instance. Or the founding
| of Israel by Britain.
| wolfhumble wrote:
| > Or the founding of Israel by Britain.
|
| Jerusalem, City of David, was conquered by David more
| than 3000 years ago. The founding of Israel was not built
| out of thin air.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Irrelevant
| thorncorona wrote:
| Do you have historical treaties which apply to you, and
| exempt you from those laws?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I dunno there's a lot of layers to "sovereignty" some of
| which FNs have deemed to test and others they have declined
| to do so.
|
| It's not just land issues. For example in other areas some
| FNs have wrestled back control over their child services
| from the Federal government.
|
| But regarding land, it used to be that you could "pre-empt"
| "Crown Land" and get permission to build a cabin on it and
| take ownership of it, but that hasn't been a thing for
| quite a while, likely because the Crown realized that their
| foundational arguments for owning "Crown land" was pretty
| shakey.
|
| At the moment FNs in BC largely seem interested in
| regaining title over their land and regaining a fair degree
| of power over how it is used.
|
| It's entirely possible for a jurisdiction to have ownership
| and control over land and to still be within the context
| and laws of the State called Canada.
| nikitaga wrote:
| "Unceded land" means that because 100+ years ago the
| British settled as they wanted without asking for
| permission, the land actually still belongs to indigenous
| people, and not to Canadians, not to the people who
| currently live on it.
|
| "Unceded land" isn't exactly a legal concept, it's more of
| an activist slogan from people who want to see all public
| land (e.g. >90% of BC) privatized based on race, or want to
| hold the threat of that over our heads to get more special
| treatment based on race.
|
| Legally, Canada does have title to the land, BUT that title
| is also encumbered by "aboriginal title" - a limited set of
| extra rights of indigenous people. For example, Canada
| can't prevent indigenous people from hunting, needs to
| meaningfully consult with them before approving resource
| extraction projects, etc.
|
| All of this is very poorly defined - in one paragraph of
| the constitution, and a couple more in ancient royal
| proclamations - the rest is being interpreted and re-
| interpreted by the courts as they wish, largely following
| the general popculture trends.
| amackera wrote:
| Part of the point of reconciliation is to accept unequivocally
| the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. Is it not morally
| questionable to ignore indigenous peoples' sovereign rights
| (over fishing, forests, lands, etc.) as we have been doing up
| until now?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| How can this work in practice, though? Wouldn't acknowledging
| indigenous peoples' sovereign rights over their lands require
| the formation of entirely new nations with their own borders
| and laws and military and courts etc etc that would cover the
| entirety of canada ? If they are have the right of a
| sovereign over these lands then can't they just tell everyone
| else to leave?
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| There are various weird traditional middle grounds, e.g.
| the City of London.
| TSiege wrote:
| This is essentially what we do in the United States. I've
| yet to see any problems from it. This is also why laws and
| treaties exist. How do you think the rest of the world
| works with multiple nation states close to one another? My
| counter question would be, would it be fair to give peoples
| land that first belonged to them as well as independence
| and then tell them what they can or can't do with that
| land? That would from my point of view be tantamount to an
| occupation
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > that would cover the entirety of canada
|
| This is very much _not_ what we do in the United States.
|
| Rather, we forcibly uprooted, exterminated, and/or
| migrated indigenous people until they only occupied the
| most marginal land available, and then told them "here's
| your bit".
| TSiege wrote:
| This is not what I'm arguing at all. We have been making
| (and largely breaking) treaties with indigenous peoples
| since before either country existed. But to say they
| didn't matter and that we still don't recognize them at
| all is completely ahistorical and out of touch with
| reality. Indigenous peoples in the US and Canada have
| worked hard to restore sovereignty. Your claim is
| completely ignoring that and recent precedents we've
| taken to right those wrongs. While it's not perfect (nor
| enough imo), it doesn't account to nothing
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_U
| nit...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yes that's exactly right
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I don't really see how this is that challenging. It's just
| another jurisdiction with its own governance structure,
| just like what happens when you pass between regional
| districts, provinces and municipalities and the underlying
| various laws change.
| nikitaga wrote:
| > I don't really see how this is that challenging.
|
| "Not challenging"? Ok, suppose you split the province of
| BC into 100+ of these independent indigenous-run
| jurisdictions, or maybe a bit less if any First Nations
| decide to amalgamate in the process.
|
| What will actually make these jurisdictions independent /
| sovereign? What mechanism will they use to keep the power
| in the hands of indigenous people? Are the millions of
| non-indigenous people living in BC supposed to pack up
| and leave for their ancestors' countries, that they might
| have never been to? Or are they supposed to exist as
| second class citizens, deprived of democratic and
| property rights? What fraction of indigenous blood will
| be enough to get first class citizenship?
|
| And don't cop out with "the indigenous people will decide
| these things". Obviously they will, if it comes to that.
| Show at least one feasible "not challenging" solution
| that they could possibly decide on, that would see such
| jurisdictions qualify as sovereign.
|
| > just like what happens when you pass between regional
| districts, provinces and municipalities and the
| underlying various laws change.
|
| Those Canadian jurisdictions are all governed by people
| who are elected by all Canadians living there, and all of
| those Canadians are also eligible to run for office,
| regardless of race. None of these types of jurisdictions
| could possibly give First Nations any meaningful
| sovereignty if their structure was applied to them,
| because these types of jurisdictions have no mechanism to
| ensure that indigenous people - or any other subset of
| people - will be in control, or will stay in control.
|
| Jurisdictions with indigenous sovereignty would
| inevitably require aggressive race-based laws, and either
| a more distinctly two-class society, or a purge of non-
| indigenous people from Canada. You could say that this
| kind of thing is indeed "challenging", to say the least.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| What are you going to do? It's an aristocracy, very difficult
| to remove short of revolution.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is good. First Nations people showing us how it's done. Good
| for them.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The housing itself is badly needed and I'm looking forward to
| that, but beyond that, as an appreciator of NW Coast Indigenous
| art, I'm looking forward to the public realm art. This is a
| fantastic opportunity for the Squamish and other MST nations to
| showcase art from their best and from young emerging artists in
| their community.
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