It's comforting to see first nations of canada recovering a central role in modern canadian society.<p>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 ...<p>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.
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).<p>But thru multiple forced relocations and unceded land take over, the reservation was gradually taken over.<p>>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 Sen̓áḵw. 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.<p><a href="https://bardonthebeach.org/history-of-senakw/" rel="nofollow">https://bardonthebeach.org/history-of-senakw/</a><p>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.<p>The 10acre of land in this article- <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kitsilano+6,+Vancouver,+BC,+Canada/@49.2723714,-123.1429206,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x548673cb8fb30e4d:0x911f8c71a495ca09!8m2!3d49.2731715!4d-123.1426172!16s%2Fg%2F11c3q1fphl?entry=ttu" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kitsilano+6,+Vancouver,+BC...</a><p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/little-known-history-of-squamish-nation-land-in-vancouver-1.5104584" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/little-known...</a>
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.
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..?
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Maybe there are words for this I don't know.
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?
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.
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?<p>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. ”
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.<p>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).<p>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.
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.
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.
Let me see if I got this.<p>1. Settlers colonize indigenous lands, drive indigenous people into small parcels and reservations and try to exterminate their culture.<p>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.<p>3. Indigenous people build housing on their remaining bits of land for settlers, make tons of money off it.<p>K, yeah, I think I got it.<p>Maybe there’s a solution for California in here: decolonize!<p>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.<p>“Okay, okay, we suck, you can have your ancestors land back. Just can you let me reserve a condo when they go on sale?”<p>Then watch all the Bay Area lefty 60s homeowners suddenly become white nationalists. Their ideology is probably downstream of their home equity.
There's no amenities in that neighborhood besides a quiet 4 lane street with some burger places on it. The beach is close by but there's just not that much room to build stuff for all these people to do. It'll be a boring place to live. Vancouver's walkable but the nearest main area is a twenty minute walk up the hill in one way, or a twenty minute walk across a noisy bridge the other way. If you know Vancouver you know that a twenty minute walk to get anywhere is significant. Unrelated, but a mildly interesting tidbit is that this development will be across the street from Lululemon's headquarters.
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.<p>A simple example: the Tatars in Krimea (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars</a>). 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: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamala" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamala</a>).
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
Good to see a competition for who can sell out to foreign investors first.<p>57% of Vancouver are renters, and 98.3% of property is mortgaged... a disaster waiting to happen.... lol =)
Off topic remark on the story drafting...<p><i>Sen̓áḵw</i><p>How is anyone supposed to pronounce this if they're not from Vancouver and haven't been exposed to indigenous culture there? You'd think they'd include an English approximation or a link to an audio recording. I don't think the average person has the time or energy to resolve 3 stacked diacriticals and a consonant juxtaposition.
6000 apartments on 10 acres translates to a population density of 150k/km assuming there's just one person living in each.<p>With three people per apartment you could pack the city of Lyon into little more than a square kilometre.
Good. Do it. Let's see what they build.<p>I lived in Connecticut when the Mashantucket Pequot tribe successfully sued for the right to build casinos on their land, resulting in Foxwoods, the first of many casino developments on Native land from coast to coast. It was all over the news. Today, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are tourist attractions, and the casinos create jobs in Native communities and bring in buttloads of money.<p>Personally, I hate casinos. I'm not too fond of high rises either. But if Native American and First Nations people are doing things with their land that bring autonomy and benefits to their community, we'd be stupid to object -- and that's before bringing up the treaty violations.
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
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>(P.S.: I'm a white guy.)
The critics of this project seem to be outright racist. I don’t think that’s an overstatement.<p>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.<p>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 <i>all</i> the land. Nothing is stopping y’all from changing the rules in Vancouver and building something similar.
The cut-down title hides the whole point and contents of the article, which is a really interesting piece about indigenous sovereignty.<p>Original title: "Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous"
Moderately dense development - good<p>High rise developments enclosed in glass - bad<p>Plants on the skyscraper terraces - sheer stupidity and bullshit, used only for pretty marketing 3D art<p>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.