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2. Community activist: Lower East Side, New York, quoted in Deutsche, R. & Ryan, C. G., “The Fine Art of Gentrification” (1984) 31 October 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Interview with Barb Daniel, Executive Director, Downtown Eastside Residents Association (2 July 1996)

4. Smith, N., The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar.

5. Reid, L. & Smith, N., “John Wayne Meets Donald Trump: The Lower East Side as Wild Wild West” in Kearns, G. & Philo, C., eds., Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994) 193 at 195Google Scholar.

6. Smith, supra note 4. See also Rosaldo, R., “Foreword” (1996) 48 Stanford L. Rev. 1036 at 1037CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See Smith, ibid.

8. Cited in Deutsche & Ryan, supra note 2. For anti-gentrification examples in the legal literature, see Marcuse, P., “To Control Gentrification: Anti-displacement Zoning and Planning for Stable Residential Districts” (1985) 13 Review of Law and Social Change 931Google Scholar; Kolodney, L. K., “Eviction Free Zones: The Economics of Legal Bricolage in the Fight against Displacement” (1991) 18 Fordham Urban L. J. 507Google Scholar; McGee, H. W., “Afro-American Resistance to Gentrification and the demise of Integrationist Ideology in the United States” (1992) 23 Land Use and Enviornment L. Rev. 215Google Scholar; Dubin, J. C., “From Junkyards to Gentrification: Explicating a Right to Protective Zoning in Low-Income Communities of Color” (1993) 77 Minnesota L. Rev. 739Google Scholar.

9. See, for example, Robinson, T. “Gentrification and Grassroots Resistance in San Francisco's Tenderloin” (1995) 30:4Urban Affairs Rev. 483CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Hartman, C., Keating, D. & LeGates, R., Displacement: How to Fight It (New York: Legal Services Anti-Displacement Project, 1982) at 4Google Scholar.

11. Caulfield, J., “‘Gentrification’ and Desire” (1989) 26:4Canadian Rev. of Sociology and Anthropology 617 at 627Google Scholar.

12. Smith cites several examples of pro-gentrification arguments in New York. Rosalyn Deutsche also notes the manner in which dominant aesthetic ideologies are implicated in gentrification. See Deustche, R., “Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Projection and the Site of Urban ‘Revitalisation’” (1986) 38 October 63Google Scholar. See also the extended discussion reproduced in Barry, J. & Devevlany, J., Yuppies Invade My House at Dinnertime (Hoboken: Big River, 1987)Google Scholar.

13. Sarah Hughes describes the link between mapping, property and the frontier in 17th-century Virginia: “Immigrant colonists gazing at a wilderness envisaged its taming and imagined new markers bounding the edges of their own fields and meadows. The men who could measure the metes and bounds of those fields held the key to transforming a worthless, uncultivated territory into individual farms.” Quoted in Kain, R. J. P. & Baigent, E., The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) at 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15. Recent literature on narrative, law and resistance has proved useful to me. See for example Ewick, P. & Silbey, S. S., “Subersive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative” (1995) 29:2Law and Society Rev. 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Delgado, R., “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative” (1989) 87 Michigan L. Rev. 2411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. I have been influenced by a number of writers interested in property and the city, including de la Cueva, A. A., “Low Income Settlements and the Law in Mexico City” (1987) 11:4International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 522CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krueckeenberg, D. A., “The Difficult Character of Property: To Whom do Things Belong?” (1995) 61:3Journal of the American Planning Association 301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brigham, J. & Gordon, D. R., “Law in Politics: Struggles Over Property and Public Space on New York City's Lower East Side” (1996) 21:2Law and Social Inquiry 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, J. E., Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighbourhood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milner, N., “Ownership Rights and the Rites of Ownership” (1993) 18 Law and Social Inquiry 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Waldron, J., “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom” (1991) 39 UCLA L. Rev. 295Google Scholar. More general discussions of property that I have found useful include Radin, M. J., Reinterpreting Property (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Rose, C., Property and Persuasion (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Singer, J. W. “The Reliance Interest in Property” (1988) 40 Stanford L. Rev. 611CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. See Smith, supra note 4; Davis, M., City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (New York: Verso, 1990)Google Scholar.

18. Bula, F., “Real Estate Boom Looms for Hastings Street” Vancouver Sun (5 March 1997) A10Google Scholar [hereinafter "Real Estate Boom”].

19. Sarti, R., “City Seeks to End Loss of Low-cost Housing” Vancouver Sun (4 April 1997) B4Google Scholar.

20. Alex Yuen, real estate agent, quoted in “Real Estate Boom”, supra note 18; Sarti, ibid.

21. There are few examples of the uses of the frontier metaphor in Vancouver, however, presumably reflecting the differing historical context of Canadian colonisation. Loo notes that the British Columbia frontier was not Turnerian, but imperial and metropolitan. Loo, T., Making Law, Order and Authority in British Columbia: 1821-1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, it is ironic to note that many of the businesses in the area—incuding the defunct Woodward's department store, or the logging outfitting stores—have played an historic role in the opening up of the province's “resource frontier.” Woodward's, for example, got its start as an outfitter for the Yukon Goldrush. Now, ironically, it is the Downtown Eastside that has become a capitalist frontier in its own right.

22. There is an extensive body of writing that characterises the Downtown Eastside in negative terms, relying upon a “Skid Row” terminology of welfare abuse, poverty, madness, aboriginality, sex and drugs. See, for example, Collins, J., “Save our Slum” British Columbia Report (7 August 1995) 12Google Scholar; Shaw, G. “Skid Road: The Flop Side and the Flip Side” Vancouver Sun (16 April 1983)Google Scholar; McMartin, P., “In a Beseiged Neighbourhood, DERA Becomes a Prize to Fight Over” Vancouver Sun (23 September 1996) B1Google Scholar; Deverell, W., “Back Alleys: Welfare Wednesday” (Winter 1993) The Vancouver Review 26Google Scholar; Ross, N. “Welcome to My Neighbourhood” Globe and Mail (9 January 1995) A18Google Scholar.

23. Collins, ibid. at 1. A frequent accusation is that such community groups oppose new developments not because of a higher ethical objection to displacement but due to a fear that gentrification will upset the local status quo: “[T]his elite's main goal is to maintain poverty and a perceived state of crisis so they continue to justify theor existence—and state funding—as front line troops in the war against poverty.” Collins, ibid. at 14. It is interesting to speculate on whether this is simply a cynical accusation, or whether it reflects a fundamental failure to make sense of opposition to “obvious improvements.” Perhaps the only rationale for possible opposition, given a market-oriented mindset, is to assume that community groups are rational, entrepreneurial actors.

24. Interview with Brad Holme, President, Pacific City Land Corp. (16 May 1996).

25. Interview with Jon Ellis, Gastown activist (14 May 1996).

26. The legal significance of this was made evident in a recent hearing before the rentalsman concerning the proposed eviction of tenants from the Dominion Hotel, whose owner seeks to convert a long-term residential hotel into a short-term tourist hotel. Identifying the tenants as “guests,” the landlord aimed to evict them at short notice These eviction notices were deemed illegal, with the rentalsman finding that the tenants were, in fact, “residents,” and this entitled to at least two months notice before eviction. Many of the tenants, it should be noted, had lived in the hotel long term—one for 30 years. As one commented: “This is my home, not some one-night stand.” Quoted in R. Sarti, “Gastown Hotel Tenants Wait for Ruling on Eviction” Vancouver Sun (31 May 1997) A17. See also F. Bula, “Bid to Evict Hotel Tenants Rules Illegal” Vancouver Sun (6 June 1997) B1.

27. Interview with Ellis, supra note 25 [emphasis added]. One source refers to area residents as “social service clients who frequent the area.” “We're the block busters!!” Carnegie Newsletter (15 November 1997) 3Google Scholar.

28. “Just because a bunch of Indians wandered up and down the Rocky Mountain trench for a few hundred years, doesn't mean they own it.” Attributed to Allan Williams, Social Credit Attorney-General, 1975. Cited in Sterritt, N. J., “Unflinching Resistance to an Implacable Invader” in Richardson, B., ed., Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country (Toronto: Summerhill Press, 1989) 167 at 292Google Scholar.

29. Carter, P., The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York: Knopf, 1988) at 68Google Scholar.

30. For an extended discussion of the link between urban aesthetics and gentrification, see Deutsche & Ryan, supra note 2; Deutsche, supra note 12; Deutsche, R., “Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City” (1988) 47 October 3Google Scholar.

31. See N. Blomley & J. Sommers, “Mapping the Inner City: Governance and the Cartographic Imagination” [paper in review, copy with author]. On the politics of space-naming more generally see Gooding, S. S., “Place, Race and Names: Layered Identities in United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor” (1994) 28:5Law and Society Rev. 1181CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yeoh, B. S. A., “Street-Naming and Nation-Building: Toponymic Inscriptions of Nationhood in Singapore” (1996) 28:3Area 29Google Scholar. On naming in other contexts, see Scassa, T., “National Identity, Ethnic Surnames and the State” (1996) 11:2C.J.L.S. 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Comaroff, J., “The Discourse of Rights in Colonial South Africa: Subjectivity, Sovereignty, Modernity” in Sarat, A. & Kearns, R. R., eds., Identities, Politics and Rights (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) 193Google Scholar.

33. Merivale, H., Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967) at 394Google Scholar.

34. Bula, F., “Yuppies in the ‘hood’” Vancouver Sun (24 June 1995) A1, A2, at A1Google Scholar [emphasis added].

35. Quoted in Collins supra note 22 at 14. Her comments reflect both a pragmatic realisation of the class privileges of gentrifiers, as well as an almost alchemical faith in the power of money. The irony in all this is that many who occupy any new first wave market housing in the area are not likely to be the rich, but those at the bottom of the end of the real estate food chain, given the relative affordability of new condos and lofts in the area compared to housing elsewhere.

36. Given its importance, a careful “archeology” of “highest and best use” urgently needs to be undertaken. For some suggestive examples of its use, see Park, R. E., “Succession, An Ecological Concept” In Park, R. E., ed., The Collected Papers of Robert Ezra Park, vol. 2,. (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952) 223Google Scholar; Hurd, R. M., Principles of City Land Values (New York: The Record and Guide, 1924)Google Scholar.

37. Ward, R. “Victory Square” (1997) 31 The Georgia Straight 1540, 15, 17-19 at 15Google Scholar.

38. Bolen, D., “Urban Evolution Eventually Will Drop its Blanket Over Downtown's Decay” Vancouver Sun (4 December 1996) A7Google Scholar.

39. Jonathan Baker quoted in Collins, supra note 22 at 16.

40. Concord Pacific promotional material, Concord Pacific Place: The Ultimate Waterfront Community: Living! Vancouver's New Waterfront Lifestyle, at 3 [copies with author].

41. Hassan, S. & Ley, D., Neighbourhood Organization and the Welfare State (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) at 190Google Scholar. For one resident, “[t]hey think that everybody down here is just a transient. But this is a community. It is a neighbourhood. There are actual people living down here.” Quoted in Steele, S., “Letter from East Vancouver: Worlds colliding” Macleans (21 April 1997) 18Google Scholar.

42. Hassan & Ley, ibid. at 185.

43. Interview with Barb Daniel, supra note 3.

44. Interview with Jim Green, Downtown Eastside activist (27 June 1996).

45. Interview with Barb Daniel, supra note 3.

46. Interview with Marg Green, Downtown Eastside activist (18 June 1996).

47. Protest (19 April 1997) [copy with author].

48. Interview with Marg Green, supra note 46.

49. Interview with John Shayler, Downtown Eastside activist (16 March 1996) [emphasis added].

50. Interview with Jim Green, supra note 44.

51. Hassan & Ley, supra note 41 at 202.

52. See Radin, supra note 16.

53. N. Blomley “Remapping Property: Power, Space and History in the Inner City” [paper in review, copy with author].

54. The very location of Sollheim Place as well as other DERA co-ops, like Pendera, appears important. They are defensively positioned on the ”edges” of the Downtown Eastside, juxtaposed with neighbouring private mega-projects.

55. Interview with Marg Green, supra note 46. For one academic treatment of the issues of meaning, identity and urban space in the context of redevelopment, see Brion, D. J., “The Meaning of the City: Urban Redevelopment and the Loss of Community (1992) 25 Indiana L. Rev. 685Google Scholar.

56. Interview with Muggs Sigurgeirson, Downtown Eastside activist (23 March 1996).

57. Carnegie Newsletter (1 November 1995).

58. One interesting example of the struggles over physical and symbolic spaces related to the successful application of one developer to close off a section of street adjacent to his condominium development. For community opponents, not only did this entail the unjustified loss of public space to a private developer, but it also entailed a clash over the meanings of that space, where an area deemed active, community space is regarded as threatening by new residents.

59. “Can you find the Downtown Eastside on These Maps???” Carnegie Newsletter, supra note 57 at 2. An inability on the part of the dominant society to register this sense of informal collective ownership is frequent. Only formal ownership seems to count. As one journalist noted: “The downtown eastside is home to militant community activists who view the district as their own, despite the fact that few of them own property.” Collins, J., “Given the Bum's Rush by Bureaucrats” (1997) 8:44British Columbia Report 16Google Scholar.

60. “Community News” in Carnegie Newsletter (15 December 1995) at 26Google Scholar. See Blomley & Sommers, supra note 31.

61. Interview with Jon Ellis, supra note 35.

62. Interview with Marg Green, supra note 46.

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65. See J. Sommers “Mapping Men: The Intersecting Politics of Space and Masculinity in Vancouver: 1962-1986” Urban Geography [forthcoming].

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69. “Real Estate Boom”, supra note 18.

70. This raises the vexed question of the material geographies of property in an immediate way. In an attempt at “out-developing the developer,” community groups in the Downtown Eastside have played an active role in producing their own social housing. Although actively positioned as a bulwark against gentrification, as noted, one inevitable side-effect, perhaps, is to encourage it. These entanglements occur in other contexts. For example, community activists now find themselves struggling to preserve SRO housing, given its critical importance in the provision of shelter, whilst condemning the deprivations of “slum landlords.” Some of these contradictions surfaced in a recent community coup d'etat, where a group of dissidents sought to overthrow the DERA Board on the grounds that they had become “service providers,” and had lost their original political mandate in relation to the politics of property and poverty.

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