This is an interactive map of my personal associations and understanding of the meaning behindff home, house, neighbourhood and housing. Please read through each narrating paragraph below before using this interactive map to explore further. Thank you and enjoy this interactive experience!
Introduction
Home, house, neighbourhood and housing. These four words are commonly used in our daily lives, yet they are rarely discussed in depth. The words are closely related, but everyone could have a different personal interpretation of each word influenced by their unique living experiences. As a Vancouver-born Chinese Canadian who spent most of my life living in different places outside Canada, all four words are deeply connected to geography. I created this interactive map to represent what I associate with home, house, neighbourhood and housing with my own living experiences. Please follow me through this journey as I go through every word and what they each mean to me.
Home
Home for me is a place. It is not a physical location or a space I live in, but more of an emotional connection with a strong sense of belonging. I associate strongly with different cities when it comes to the concept of home because my family moved around a lot. For me a city represents home better than a house, and they are all places close to my heart. I dislike being asked “Where are you from?” since I cannot answer that question without going through every city I have lived in and debate which one to pick. I feel more comfortable with the question “Where is home for you?” because then I can tell a story about the multiple places I call home. The cities that my family live or lived in is part of why I would consider a place home, but it doesn’t encompass the larger emotional connection. These cities are places that make me feel very comfortable and belonged because I am connected to the local culture, history and communities. Even when I move away, these places will always have an impact on my life because they are part of my living memories. There are a few other cities where my family lived in before, but I do not associate them with the word “home” because I did not build up that sense of attachment. It is about having a deeper, stronger personal connection that does not dissolve overtime.
What you see now on the interactive map are places marked with heart icons. They represent the cities that I call home and they each have a short story associated to them. Please feel free to click on each icon and check out the pop-up info window. Some of these places are very close to each other so you may have to zoom in to click on them separately. The places I call home on this map in a relatively chronological order are Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Beijing, Yantai, Vancouver and Toronto. Feel free to use the full screen function of the map on the top left corner when interacting with it.
House
House for me is a space. It is any type of sheltered space enclosed by four walls and a ceiling over the top. I use to the word ceiling because most houses I lived in are actually apartment suites; therefore I don’t always associate the word roof with a house. Growing up I used the word house and apartment interchangeably because they mean the same to me: a physical space that my family and I live in. This is extremely common in China and Hong Kong, since majority of the population live in apartment buildings within gated communities. That was the norm I grew up with, so my concept of a house has always been a single unit in a medium to tall apartment building. Growing up, single detached houses were usually called “villa” and they cost a lot to purchase. They also tend to be tucked away into more discrete locations such as halfway up the mountains in Hong Kong, or far from the urban centres in the suburbs of Chinese cities. It was quite a culture shock for me when I moved back to Vancouver and saw single detached houses everywhere own by average families. I never quite understand why many families in Vancouver are obsessed with purchasing a single detached house or hesitant to move into high density housing. However, I realize how much I have been taking the concept of house for granted. I am more emotionally connected to the word “home” as a place because I never needed to worry about not having a “house” as a space to live in. This is definitely not the case for many people who are houseless with nowhere to live. Having a house is not about owning a single detached dwelling or a high-rise apartment unit; it is about having the space to live in where you can be dry in the rain and warm in the wind.
If you now turn off the “home” layer on the map at the top right corner, and turn on “house” as a visible layer, you will see all the physical spaces I have lived in since I was born. Please start with checking the “houses” I lived in Hong Kong and China by clicking on the little house icons. You can read about what type of house I lived in and what my experience was like living in that space. Then move over to Vancouver and zoom into the city map to see all the houses I lived in here.
Neighbourhood
Neighbourhood for me is a community. The geographical idea of a neighbourhood was very narrow and limited for me growing up because I mostly lived a vertical life in apartment buildings and gated communities. In addition, despite being a Chinese decedent, my family was still considered a foreigner in Hong Kong and China, and we moved around frequently; therefore it was hard for me to get to know a neighbourhood well enough to associate the area with the word itself. It is only until when I moved back to Vancouver that I started to form a better understanding and personal association with the concept of neighbourhoods.
Now if the map is already zoomed into the City of Vancouver area, please turn off the “home” and “house” layer and turn on the “Vancouver Neighbourhoods” layer. This is what neighbourhoods mean to me objectively as a planning student, and I find these neighbourhoods quite unique to this city. The boundaries define the geographical layout of each neighbourhood and they each have their characteristics and “stereotypes”. If anyone asks me about the neighbourhoods of Vancouver, I can quickly draw out this mental map and talk about what I think about each neighbourhood from a planning perspective. I have been to all neighbourhoods in the City of Vancouver more than once at this point, but that doesn’t mean I developed a connection to all of them. Never judge a neighbourhood by its cover, because the true gem and soul of a neighbourhood is the people living there and the community they build together.
That being said, if you turn on the “My Neighbourhoods” layer, you will see certain areas of the city being highlighted in purple. These are places that I have more personal connections to and would call them my neighbourhoods. It is usually because I live or lived in the area, or that I visit frequently due to being attracted to their unique community atmosphere. You can see that these purple areas do not necessarily match up with the “official” neighbourhood boundaries, and that is exactly how they should be. A neighbourhood is about feeling connected to the local community, and that sense of community is usually not defined by the boundaries of streets or any built environment.
Housing
Lastly I want to talk about housing.
Housing for me are numbers.
I leave housing till the very last because I am hesitant to associate the word housing to anything. There is a underlying fear every time I think about housing. Most phrases that relate to the word “housing” lead to deeply complex issues: housing market, housing affordability, housing price, housing cost, social housing, housing bubble, housing economy…numbers, numbers, numbers. Nearly all of these phrases are represented by rows and columns of numbers on news media and housing reports. Therefore I have a very low emotional connection to the word housing because anything related to it seems to be a planning disaster that needs to be resolved. In addition, my family lived in many cities such as Beijing, Hong Kong and Vancouver that are highly unaffordable when it comes to housing. Housing market was something that my parents constantly talked about because we moved every few years. The word has such a negative connotation that I never really thought about it in depth.
When I was born in Vancouver in 1994, my family lived in a basement suite because we cannot afford to be home owners. Ironically the situation isn’t that much different now when I am again renting a basement suite more than 20 years later. My parents said that hey will move back to Vancouver when they can afford a place to be homeowners here. At first they envisioned it to be in the next few years, but now they have delayed it to after they retire, or maybe give up on Vancouver and look into other cities. I still remember when I was a kid my father would often tell me that our whole family will move back to Vancouver when the “housing bubble pops”; but he was never able to answer when I naively asked “Where is the bubble and when will it pop?”.
The mapping analysis I did in 2016 pictures a Vancouver that is under a sever housing crisis. It uses the 2011 census data to measure housing affordability by the ratio between a family’s median income and the average housing cost. This indicator takes into consideration the different income levels between cities and census tracts. Based on the 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, the hosing affordability rating is divided into 4 categories. If the median multiple is under 3.0, it is considered as affordable housing; 3.1-4.0 is moderately unaffordable, 4.1-5.0 is seriously unaffordable and 5.1 & over is severely unaffordable. In comparison to Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, Metro Vancouver is alarmingly red in nearly every single part of the region. Feel free to click on the map to enlarge the image and look at it in detail.
Although housing affordability isn’t the sole indicator of a city’s ‘livability’, it is an essential need and basic rights for people to have a sheltered space to live. Housing is a word that can connect all four words together, but it can also create a huge barrier between associating home, neighbourhood and house together as a whole. Without an affordable housing situation, many people are not be able to live in a sheltered space (house), to build a community in a neighbourhood, or to feel like they have a place call home. This thought piece helped me reflect upon many questions and issues that I don’t usually delve into on a daily basis. It also raised more questions and concerns I have about things related to home, house, neighbourhood and housing. As a future planner, I want to stay positive and believe that good changes will happen if we unite people together and push for better solutions towards these seemingly unsolvable issues.