The Prospects of Towers and Resistance in Lynn Valley and North Vancouver
What is Gentrification?
The term gentrification was first coined in the 1960’s by English sociologist Ruth Glass to describe the displacement of working class residents in London by middle class property buyers (“gentry”). Since then it has moved all over the world taking many different forms. When it has occurred in larger cities it usually results in increased racial profiling of a neighbourhood’s residents as real estate speculators and their associated community groups use the police to secure investments. Nowadays it serves a major purpose within local capitalist economies in the west. As we see here in Lynn Valley and more broadly in the Lower Mainland, it is no longer only an urban phenomenon. It has reached the suburbs, and in a place like “British Columbia”, where tourism is the next major industry after resource extraction, it can even take a rural form. In places like the Gulf Islands, where working class people have historically gone because they are more independent there, where land and rent were extremely cheap, residents are now being forced to move by wealthier summer homesteaders. Continue reading
A Thorn in Their Side 