Neo-Liberalism and the Post-Industrial City: Public Narrative, Rhetoric and Signifying Strategies
The Woodward’s redevelopment must be understood as a landscape of class power. The state and private capital are simultaneously attempting to gentrify the neighbourhood through the embourgeoisement of the built environment. The aestheticised landscape of advanced capitalism, characterized by spaces of conspicuous consumption, is articulated both materially and symbolically. The Woodward’s landscape privileges the new urban middle class, by materially and discursively erasing working class histories and struggles in this neighbourhood. This redevelopment is perhaps Vancouver’s most striking example of flexible accumulation at work – a process which is occurring globally in cities through landscape aestheticisation and the middle class colonization of poor and working class neighbourhoods
(Longhurst 2)
In this section I will follow the thread that I establish in this contextual essay that analyses the forces of late-capitalism and neo-liberalism in the reshaping of class, place and space in the contemporary city. I hope to establish a link that runs from Saskia Sassen and her ideas regarding the re-shaping of class and the changes in urban economy through Loic Wacquant and his examination of how this economic and social restructuring has created stigmatised populations and neighbourhoods of relegation, to how these neighbourhoods and populations are perceived and described in the media, in public policy decisions and finally how they are signified through referents of space, art and public narrative. Gentrification, undoubtedly, must be seen as a process that both visually and practically alters the urban landscape. Gentrification occurs primarily in relegated neighbourhoods that have experienced a loss of their traditional working class inhabitants. Middle and upper class residents who are flocking back to the city not only displace and replace the previous residents, but they remake the visual and symbolic imagery of the space itself to reflect their values.
I will apply many of the concepts identified by Sassen and Wacquant that are analysed in the above linked paper to Vancouver and its notorious "neighbourhood of relegation", the DTES, to see if these global trends translate to, or are relevant to, our city. I will pay particular attention to political and public rhetoric and narrative, as established by Wacquant, to analyse the discourse surrounding the DTES and to understand how that discourse and rhetoric plays out in material forms of signification and representation. Building on the research of Andrew Longhurst and Jesse Proudfoot, I will show how the DTES is currently in the process of being gentrified and how the Woodward's II development is the primary symbol and signifier of this process. Longhurst is critical of the Woodward's II development and the way he describes it, "the Woodward’s redevelopment, as a public-private partnership, is a 'landscape of power.' The built form both materially and symbolically enforces class divisions and assists with gentrification as a class project" (Longhurst 4), is particularly enlightening. As we will see later, the physical design of Woodward's II, the incorporation of public art within the space and, as in Debord, the spectacle that it is represents the new upper and middle class residents' values and functions as a signifier and referent for these values. These are values that include the promises of prosperity for everyone within the neo-liberal, late-capitalist economy that is the dominant hegemony of our time. Reflecting on Marcuse, we will also see how the Woodward's II space and its public art functions as a supporting symbol of the current dominant hegemony and does not function as activist or socially responsible art in any way. Not only does Woodward's II prop up the dominant social and political hegemony, but it also is guilty of cloaking itself as "inclusive" and "good for the neighbourhood". On whose behalf would this be true? The idea that marginalised populations lack a language of representation and signs and signifiers is something that I will develop further over the course of this section. We understand that external, dominant groups from outside of these subjugated populations often impose language and signifiers onto these communities as a form of "othering" and as a way to explain or justify the disturbing features of socio-economic and political inequality that exists in our advanced society. This phenomenon is readily apparent and visible in the DTES and as we shall see, Woodward's II is the predominant sign of this process.
Sassen has identified how the new global economy and market capitalism has caused structural changes within the city both economically and socially. She identifies the shift in labour and economy as one from traditional industrial and manufacturing jobs and spaces to the new model of the global economy. The shift has included the movement out of the city of factories, manufacturing plants and warehouses to locations spread across the world. This movement has led to two major changes. The movement of industry out of the city has removed much of the pollution, and grime associated with these locations and made the inner city more attractive as a residential location. As Sassen points out, the centralisation of the new global economy's owners, managers, consulting and financial operations within the city has attracted new residents and the high end amenities they demand. These two factors have conspired to force out the traditional working classes due to a loss of well paying jobs and an increase in housing costs. Sassen points out that this structural change has led to a social and economic polarisation within the city. The new city now contains displaced, marginalised groups who exist on very low wages providing services for the new upper class residents and the upper class residents themselves who have moved into the city from their post-war suburban locations attracted by the high paying jobs and cleaner, more liveable urban environments packed with the high end amenities they desire.
The polarisation of urban residents into high income earners and the remnants of the traditional working classes and lower classes of at risk and marginalised populations has intensified. Traditionally poorer areas of the city become more isolated and segregated as a result of the economic and structural changes re-shaping the city. A physical, spatial change can now be identified that seems polarised as well and Sassen describes the situation as one of "distinct sociospatial forms arising out of these processes are high-income residential and commercial gentrification... and sharp increases in spatially concentrated poverty and physical decay" (Sassen 251).
Wacquant and his research has identified advanced marginalisation and intensifying relegation and segregation of traditional working class and lower class residents of the city as a key feature of the neo-liberal process. Building on the previous quote from Sassen, Wacquant claims that social segregation is real and states that, indeed, "such new forms of exclusionary social closure and peripheralization have arisen" (Rise 123) during the time of the neo-liberal reshaping of the city. Wacquant describes these exclusionary locations as "neighbourhoods of relegation" that carry with them certain signs and metaphors of social decay, illness and poverty. The locating of marginalised populations within these social enclosures ensures that " a stigma of place thus superimposes itself on the already pervasive stigmata of poverty" (Rise 125). This strategy begins the construct of a public narrative that further marginalises and disparages the location and its inhabitants. We can actually witness this phenomenon at work regarding the DTES and its residents.
Critical and scholarly consensus establishes the previous concepts as real within the contemporary city during this era of late-capitalism. I will now focus on how this narrative enables the implementation of policies to speed up the forces of gentrification and the re-shaping of the urban space to reflect the dominant class' neo-liberal values both socially and aesthetically. It has been clear for some time that "in nearly every major First World metropolis, a particular urban district or township has 'made a name for itself' as that place where disorder, dereliction, and danger are said to be the normal order of the day" (Rise 125). Generally this district is located in the inner city and it takes up valuable real estate. The buildings are usually in various states of disrepair, abandoned outright or condemned. The buildings house low income, marginalised residents and the few shops and programs located in the neighbourhood to serve them. Rents are generally quite low, definitely below market value. This real estate is now extremely valuable and worth a vast amount of money to city governments and developers. Situated within the global capitalist economy this space is seen as underperforming and steps are then undertaken to push out the long time inhabitants so that new market housing developments and the amenities associated with the new residents can flood in. One of the strategies employed to sway public opinion, which in turn helps to speed up the process of gentrification and the removal of marginalised populations, is the creation of a polarising narrative played out in the media and in public policy discussions. The rhetoric employed in this narrative paints the relegated neighbourhood as "dangerous" which if unchecked, could spread to the rest of the city. Wacquant, with the language stigma of place and stigmata of poverty, identifies this rhetorical strategy as he states, "on this level, whether or not those areas are in fact dilapidated, dangerous, and declining matters little: the prejudicial belief that they are suffices to set off socially detrimental consequences" (Rise 125). Policies are changed, gentrification starts and development becomes rampant thus displacing and destabilising further already marginalised and at risk social groups. It certainly appears that all of these forces and narrative strategies are at work in the DTES.
Identification and representation of the DTES and other relegated neighbourhoods is a key feature that needs to be recognised and analysed, especially in relation to how these representations contribute to, and re-enforce, the political and social narrative that polarises public opinion. Andrew Longhurst and Jesse Proudfoot have produced detailed analyses and cogent arguments detailing how representation and rhetoric have shaped opinion regarding the DTES since the early twentieth century. Proudfoot suggests that political organisations, like the Downtown Eastside Resident's Association (DERA), that come from within the community have struggled for years to adjust the representational language and referents symbolising the DTES. DERA worked for years to change the symbolic image of the area from one of skid row to the neighbourhood named the DTES. Proudfoot "discusses this process in terms of the production of a new dominant figure in the neighbourhood: where once the 'derelict' had represented skid row, now stood the figure of the 'retired resource worker'” (Proudfoot 96). Symbolic representation of the neighbourhood became a contentious issue, possibly characterised as part of a larger cultural or class war, in the 1980s and 90s as DERA fought to put a face to the residents so as to sway public opinion away from enabling developers and governments from razing and gentrifying the area. Proudfoot describes the political value of symbolic representation:
[DERA] were also concerned with issues of representation. The principal target was the discourse of “skid row” that had come to define the neighbourhood since the 1950s. Skid row described a space filled with transients and derelicts, a neighbourhood in which the washed up inevitably found themselves. Against this popular image, which was endlessly repeated in the press and civic discourse, DERA advanced a counter narrative of working-class community, drawing on the collective history of the retired men who made up their membership. They emphasized the residential stability of the neighbourhood—the second highest in the city—and the deep connection many felt to the community.
(Proudfoot 96)
The value of a more sympathetic representation seems quite clear. A "working-class" community would receive a more favourable position in the public debate than an area known as "skid row" populated by "derelicts" would. DERA succeeded in the campaign to alter the representation of the DTES and "the most striking example of DERA’s successes at the level of representation comes in the name of the neighbourhood itself: whereas the area was once referred to as 'Skid Road,' after a decade of discursive work, DERA had succeeded in renaming the neighbourhood as the Downtown Eastside, even receiving a citation to that effect from the mayor" (Proudfoot 96).
Proudfoot points out that this success was not without it problems. As the aging working class residents of the community began to die and disappear they were replaced, not with new workers as there were far fewer working class jobs to be had, but by a more marginalised population. Indeed, "since the late 1980s a new, younger cohort has come to dominate the neighbourhood’s SRO hotels: heroin and cocaine users, women involved in the sex trade, First Nations people, the mentally ill: in short, people even more marginalized than the generation that preceded them" (Proudfoot 98). The loss of the traditional working class residents and the Expo evictions of the 1980s has dramatically changed the makeup of the residents of the DTES. The new inhabitants, a “'younger, meaner, rougher crowd', as the city’s planning department put it, grew substantially over the 1990s and 2000s, changing the character of the neighbourhood from one recognized by the generation of loggers as a community, to a neighbourhood that began to look more and more like a 'U.S.-style inner city ghetto'" (Proudfoot 98). The narrative that DERA created to promote the community has all but disappeared and the area has once again become a "neighbourhood of relegation". The public and political struggle over the area has since come to be dominated by neo-liberal ideology, especially in socio-political policy decisions. These policy decisions include the "deinstitutionalization and erosion of support for mental patients, the widespread loss of affordable housing in other parts of the city, as well as macro-economic factors such as the neoliberal retrenchment of the welfare state. Taken together, they amount to what I call a process of lumpenization in the Downtown Eastside: a deepening of poverty and breakdown of the earlier community" (Proudfoot 98-9). Everything Sassen and Wacquant identified earlier contributing to the socio-economic and class restructuring of the contemporary city can be found at work in the DTES.
The victory of neo-liberalism as the dominant social, economic and political force has allowed the processes of gentrification to take hold in the DTES and Woodward's II is the primary referent of this process. Woodward's has, since the 1990s, functioned as a contentious symbol of the battle over the DTES between social activists and late-capitalist governments and developers. The Woodward's II development can been seen as representing the victory of the neo-liberal ideology as it symbolises "the cultural and aesthetic sensibilities of the new middle class, and their desire for urban living and the amenities of an inner city location" (Longhurst 3). The establishment of the Woodward's II complex as the primary signifier of neo-liberal values is supported by considerable academic and scholarly work across a variety of disciplines. Longhurst's visual analysis of the material features of Woodward's II considers many physical characteristics and their symbolic function:
The embourgeoisement of the built form – through building improvements, the incorporation of art into the design, and general beautification – appeals to middle class aesthetic sensibilities, enforcing landscapes of class power and privilege. These landscapes are meant to establish a postmodern or neoliberal middle-class geography of consumption through the extraordinary aestheticization of the built environment.
(Longhurst 4)
The use of the concept of bourgeoisie is an interesting one. The art and architecture of Modernism were seen as celebrating, mirroring and idealising the values and achievements of the enlightened and educated classes. Using the term in this context seems to reinforce the analogy that Woodward's II, as art and architecture, is signifying the values and achievements of the new dominant ideology of neo-liberalism and late-capitalism. Woodward's II also symbolises the victory of these ideologies over community organisation, social activism and more socially conscious political and economic policy decisions.
Guy Debord’s critical commentary of mass culture provides another important theoretical framework when analysing the symbolism of Woodward's II. Debord identified the concept of the spectacle and how the spectacle is meant to distract people from the forces of capitalism that are reshaping their lives. I will refrain from going into too deep of a discussion of Debord's ideas here but it would seem safe to equate the entire Woodward's II development to that of the spectacle and its role in distracting and misdirecting the public and public discourse. Longhurst goes so far as to claim that the Woodward's II development signifies "cultural capitalism and the Woodward’s landscape as a spectacle and manifestation of class power" (Longhurst 5). He goes on to state that:
The redevelopment is a spectacle because of the scale of this project in contrast to the endemic poverty in the neighbourhood, the attention to the cultural aesthetics of advanced capitalism, and the considerable hoopla surrounding the project within popular discourses. Woodward’s is a landscape of spectacle, seen as a collection of images rather than a social relation among people.
(Longhurst 5)
We can go even further and identify the Woodward's II complex as a form of post-modern pastiche, as it attempts to recreate the stylistic characteristics of the original Woodward's building as well as the "heritage" style of the area, and equate it to Baudrillard's concept of the simulacra. This concept is meant to examine the relationships among reality, symbols and society. Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original to relate to. Woodward's II can be seen as simulacra in that it is a contrived symbol of community meant to signify a community that, if it ever existed, certainly no longer exists.
If we are to accept that the primary economic, social and ideological referents have shifted from symbols of community and resident populations and how they are represented in public discourse to symbols of space and physical forms of ideological representation in these contested neighbourhoods, then Woodward's II must be seen as the dominant signifier of this shift.
Woodward's II, its physical manifestation and its implied promotion of community and public space signifies, among other things, the transformation of anarchic, organic, and historicised urban space into commodity. Boundaries of personal and private space in the public realm, where issues of social status and identity, affluence and poverty play out daily become even more contentious. The battles over these issues have historically played themselves out in the DTES and the Woodward's site has long been the epicentre of these battles. The development of the Woodward's space into the symbol of neo-liberal victory, with its co-option of architectural form, materiality and visual art into its message of class power and dominance, must be seen as loss for the community and ensures that the space will continue as a contentious site and focal point, indeed a referent, in the continuing socio-political public debate.
