Please expand the map to full screen for best performance. Click on each point of reflection to read the story behind the local area. If you have trouble reading the text inside the information box, you may download the paper version of this walking tour by clicking here. However, it is strongly recommended that you use this interactive map as a tool and visual guide for your walking tour.

About this Project

The official history of Vancouver as a city is now 131 years old since it was incorporated in 1886. Urbanization and modernization has drastically changed the region over decades. Many of the city’s early planning decisions such as the design of the grid system, preserving large urban green space and developing a transit focused transportation network has been praised to impact what Vancouver is like today. In addition, Vancouver is recognized as one of the most sustainable and multicultural cities in North America. However, beneath all the glory there are people and communities that lived and are still living under the shadow of this city. The city’s early history was built upon racial discrimination, segregation and oppression. Vancouver was a city painted white by the elite European settlers that came with the CPR railway. Many stories were untold or glossed over in the city’s official history, and most Vancouverites never knew what was hidden under the shadow. This inspired me to do an interactive map and a walking tour as a project for my Planning Theory Course PLAN 508 at the School of Community and Regional Planning.

I am very passionate about this project because many of the stories I tell in this walking tour is based on what I personally researched and heard from people. Dr. Leonie Sandercock’s book “Making the Invisible Visible” (1998) had a strong influence of how I framed the concept and structure behind this project. 3 years ago I was a student researcher for the Vancouver City Planning Commission’s Chronology project. During this process I learned a lot about the city’s planning history, both its glory and dark side. My job as a student researcher was to identify what are the important planning decisions and events that could be considered as a milestone to the city. Many students were involved and over 3 months we gathering intensive amount of information on all the planning related events that happened. This chronology project is now an online interactive timeline that shows the milestones of Vancouver’s planning history. However, what is surprising to me in this experience is how certain events are being undermined or in the case of Hogan’s Alley, not at all presented in the final timeline. It seems like the celebration of Vancouver’s planning milestones tells an “official history” that excludes certain communities and stories that lived in the shadows of the city. They are probably not significant enough to be considered as “milestones”, or events that the city wish people would not focus on. This is why I decided to bring some these stories back into the light through this walking tour.

Ideally I would like this project to be an audio walking tour where people have to physically be at each reflection point to trigger the oral story telling process. Unfortunately due to technical limits and time constraint, I have chosen to do the walking tour as an online interactive map for the purpose of my planning theory course. Nonetheless, with the support of geospatial visualization tools, I was able to be more creative with my concept elements. For example, I intentionally used an all-black basemap of Vancouver to allude how marginalized ethnic minorities felt living under the city’s shadow; additionally, the black basemap is a bold contrast to the title “Painting the City White”. I also wanted to utilize digital technology such as this interactive map to make it more accessible to the larger public and younger generations; I wish to show that technology, if used carefully and correctly, can empower citizens and their history. This project will hopefully continue beyond the course and I might add more reflection points while transforming it onto an audio based platform. I truly hope that people will take this map out and actually walk along the tour route while reading the very few stories I present at each reflection points. I wish that this walking tour will facilitate discussions among people who chose to do it and help us reflect on an alternative official history of Vancouver.

Books & Articles Sources

Atkin, J., & Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection. (1994). Strathcona: Vancouver’s first neighbourhood. North Vancouver, B.C: Whitecap Books.

Culhane, D. (2003;2004;). Their spirits live within us: Aboriginal women in downtown eastside vancouver emerging into visibility. American Indian Quarterly, 27(3/4), 593-606.

Gilmour, J. (2012). Interpreting social disorder the case of the 1907 Vancouver riots. International Journal, 67(2), 483-495

Hall, P., & Ebooks Corporation. (2014). Cities of tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning and design since 1880 (Fourth;4;4th; ed.). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Itter, C., & Marlatt, D., (2011). Opening Doors in Vancouver’s East End Strathcona, Harbour Publishing.

Lee, J. (2007). Gender, ethnicity, and hybrid forms of community-based urban activism in vancouver, 1957-1978: The strathcona story revisited. Gender, Place & Culture, 14(4), 381-407. doi:10.1080/09663690701439702

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the invisible visible: A multicultural planning history. Berkeley: University of California Press

Online Resources (All accessed in October 2017)

David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication at Simon Fraser University – “A Brief Chronology of Chinese Canadian History – From Segregation to Intergration”: https://www.sfu.ca/chinese-canadian-history/index.html

Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project: http://hogansalleyproject.blogspot.ca/

Powell Street Festival Society: http://www.powellstreetfestival.com/about/history/

The History of Metropolitan Vancouver: http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_strathconaSaved.htm

Vancouver City Planning Commission Online Chronology Project: http://chronology.vancouverplanning.ca/chronology/