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Visions of False Creek: urban development and industrial decline in Vancouver, 1960-1980.

False Creek has been both the poster child and the ground zero of Vancouver’s acclaimed ‘urban renaissance’ – the transformation of the city from resource town to world-class metropolis. This study explores the interplay between urban redevelopment and the loss of industrial land and blue-collar work in False Creek in the 1970s. I investigate how city officials, urban experts, local workers and business owners viewed and made sense of the transformation of False Creek from an industrial site to a commercial, recreational and residential district. An examination of the testimony of local workers and businessmen as well as of the visions of municipal authorities is necessary to demystify the loss of inner-city industrial land as a natural and inevitable process. I demonstrate how the demise of the industrial sector in False Creek resulted in part from state policy, and from changing understandings about the place of industry in the socio-economic life of the city. Finally, I make the case that while the redevelopment project incorporated innovative planning practices, and brought countless benefits to many Vancouverites, the transformation of the area is inextricably linked to a story of displacement. / Graduate

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3513
Date29 August 2011
CreatorsMiro, Jacopo
ContributorsStanger-Ross, Jordan
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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