Books: Alone together online

WestEnder
June 25, 2009

If you’re concerned about the degree to which you’ve been Twittering away your days, Hal Niedzviecki’s latest book might just pull you away from your iPhone long enough to reconsider the ghosts in the machines with which so many of us spend the bulk of our time. The bevy of online social-networking tools we use to cultivate relationships, the author says, has the effect of producing a surplus of what he calls “friends without benefits” — a convenient but unfulfilling substitute for the real intimacy, attention, and interaction we crave in our lives.

Such is the stuff of “peep culture,” the matrix of surveillance, voyeurism, and exhibitionism Niedzviecki explores in his non-fiction book, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours (City Lights Books). The 38-year-old Toronto writer has been exploring the social implications of a consumerist society, pop culture, and celebrity worship for years, and The Peep Diaries’ incisive look at the evolution of online socialization has most certainly touched a nerve: Among other critical accolades, the book recently received the golden nod from Oprah, landing the number-12 spot on her Summer 2009 list of 25 Books You Can’t Put Down.

“I’m finding that people feel almost relieved that someone is actually talking about this stuff, instead of just accepting it and going, ‘We all have to be on Facebook now, we all have to Twitter, we all have to blog, we all have to YouTube,’” says Niedzviecki about the public response to his book. WE reached him at his Toronto home last week. “Generally, we have a lack of discussion about everything in our society. But particularly, we don’t seem to be very good at discussing mass media and pop-culture phenomena. Very rarely do we talk about the social consequences of it, which is ironic because, of course, the social consequences are huge.”

But the social consequences that Niedzviecki talks about in his book aren’t, in the tradition of more conservative culture pundits, meant to sound an alarm on the ills of the internet and related technologies. “It’s certainly not that we shouldn’t be doing this, [it’s not that] we need to turn the clock back,” he says. But expanding public conversation about the social — and often anti-social —impact of what is known as social media will help raise critical awareness about technologies that are, in many cases, still in their infancy.

“When I went and talked to the founders of Twitter, they said to me that it’s going to enhance our friendships; you’ll send a few quick Twitters when you’re on the run to go out and meet your awesome friends. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing that,” he says.

What’s happening instead? Niedzviecki says people are finding themselves more and more alone, and yet only able to connect with like-minded others through mediated experiences online, as is the case with Padme, a real-life Fraser Valley housewife he writes about in his book. Padme is the primary caregiver for her children, and is in a “total power-exchange” relationship with her husband, whom she refers to as the Master in her blog, which attracts 4,000 daily readers from around the world. “She’s the kind of woman who, in the same paragraph, can complain about her son’s birthday party being abruptly cancelled and note that it ‘Doesn’t look like I’m going to be getting my spanking [from my husband] today with dealing with all this birthday stuff,’” Niedzviecki writes in his book.

And yet, even with a devoted following of supportive readers, the author notes, balancing the competing needs of real life and online life has been getting harder with each new reader the blog attracts. “The more successful the blog is, the more difficult it is to maintain proper balance, online and off. Some think she’s over-stepping by mixing the kinky with real life,” Niedzviecki writes.

Despite the bold matter-of-factualness with which Padme will simultaneously describe everyday errands with her kids and the kinkier details of her sex life, one resonant chord that continues to surface — and perhaps draws readers back to her blog — is that she’s lonely, just like them. But for Padme, self-expression through semi-exhibitionism is the best way to fight it, actions that occupy the heart of Niedzviecki’s peep culture. “There’s no question that there’s a profound loneliness in our society, and anyone who doesn’t see that is really an amazing optimist,” he says. “It’s something that we are really struggling with: What are the effects of this? Once you dismantle organic, meaningful, interdependent communities, what happens next?”

Single in Vancouver: Do you speak social?

WestEnder
June 25, 2009

Vancouver’s ‘No-Fun City’ reputation goes hand in hand with what many locals and newcomers have been whining about for years: that it’s nearly impossible to meet people in this town. Indeed, the ice queens and kings of the Pacific Northwest are a mystifying force to be reckoned with, what with their tightly packed groups of friends with not a space to spare, their stoic poker faces, and their homebody habits that only become stronger as they age. But 29-year-old Devon Ash contends that long-held notions of Vancouver as a social dead zone are hardly indigenous to this city. He says people feel that way all over the world.

“I’m not sure if [Vancouver’s] any different than any other city. I think it’s any time you’re in a city for long enough, we have a tendency to put our eyes on the ground... and we just kind of get into our routines in life,” Ash says. “Every city I visit, the guys are saying the same thing, which is it’s so hard to meet women in this city! But I think we’ve started to make it hard to meet women, period.”

In other words, don’t hate the players, hate the game. And turning it around in your favour starts with gradual personal changes — giving yourself more opportunities to meet people, learning to act more assertively, becoming more aware of your needs — that will plant you firmly on the road to mate-dom. So says Ash and his colleagues at Social Fluency, a Vancouver-based social coaching company they founded with the aim of helping hetero men and women improve their social skills, thereby upping their chances of playing their cards right when faced with, say, an astonishingly attractive person with whom you could spend the rest of your life.

Ash and his colleagues, Zach Browman, 34, and Nadeem Kassam, 29, started working on Social Fluency full-time in 2008, after a few years spent working on it as a side project to other jobs. The three handle all business aspects of the company, including leading what they call ‘Social Mastery’ workshops that they advertise on Facebook, Craigslist, and in local singles meet-up circles. Most workshops consist of a $1,500 four-week course that includes working in a classroom environment to learn about social skills and tools, as well as personalized ‘in-field’ training where instructors coach students in real-life situations. The results, they say, are transformative — not just for landing more dates, but for improved social skills in general.

“I think a lot of people feel like their problem is that they’re not meeting the right person,” says Bowman. “Although we need to meet people that we’re compatible with, you really also have to have the skills and abilities to attract them and to communicate well once you’re in the relationship.”

Common mistakes, Bowman says, include acting out pop-culture clichés in an attempt to navigate the more nuanced terrain of real life. (Note: Holding a boombox over your head that plays her favourite song while standing outside her bedroom window is romantic in theory, creepy in practice.) “The concept of how to attract a partner that’s put forth in movies and on TV just leads people in the wrong direction, which is typically equating love with neediness, that convincing them of your need for them will make them attracted to you,” he says. “In the real world, that just doesn’t work.”

What works, Bowman says, has far less to do with physical attraction than one might think. “The attraction part is actually about 10 per cent of what we’re teaching,” he says. “Really, we are teaching social skills, because if you want to be attracting a partner, it’s not one isolated part of your life that you need to work on. You need to work on your whole self, in a sense.”

And as meeting people gets easier, so too will be finding a mate. “Our mandate is not necessarily to get you more dates,” says Ash of his company. “It’s to open your social life up, and, through doing that, you naturally start bringing good people into your life.”

PHOTO: Social Fluency co-founders Zach Browman, Nadeem Kassam, and Devon Ash. By Doug Shanks.

Student survey reveals community support for sex workers

WestEnder
June 25, 2009

The government should decriminalize adult prostitution in Canada, according to the majority of responses to a recent survey conducted by Simon Fraser University student Christine Louie. The survey, titled “Community Attitudes to Street Prostitution: The Downtown Eastside and Strathcona,” was conducted as part of Louie’s work toward her honours criminology degree.

The survey suggests that 76 per cent of people who identified as Downtown Eastside or Strathcona residents think adult prostitution should be decriminalized, and that the sale of sex should be legal. Sixty-seven per cent of self-identified business people in the area favoured decriminalization, while 21 per cent supported criminalization. All respondents agreed that street prostitution is more dangerous than other high-risk jobs, and that sex workers need safe working conditions.

One-hundred and sixty-three people participated in the survey, which was conducted online between February and March of this year. Louie distributed a total of 1,069 flyers in February advertising her call for survey participants. While reaching the estimated 11,920-person population of the two neighbourhoods would have required more time and resources than Louie had for her research, the study is significant, despite its limitations. Her supervisor, SFU criminologist John Lowman, notes that the only random-sample survey on street prostitution he knows of was conducted in 1984, and the only other surveys similar to Louie’s were conducted by major newspapers.

“I think the results send a message that two communities affected by street prostitution support law reform, and they are concerned about decreasing the hazards involved in street sex work,” says Louie of her study. “I think that’s a thing the government should pay attention to — particularly during this time... when all these programs are getting cut and we’re more worried about street sex workers being displaced during the Olympics.”

The ongoing displacement that sex workers face, Louie says, demonstrates the need for prostitution law reform. “One community gets it displaced into another community, and another community that doesn’t want it gets it displaced to another area. It’s like this never-ending cycle,” she says. “If there are not any laws or any real change, there’s nowhere for [sex workers] to go, except in isolated areas that are extremely dangerous for them... I don’t think that people in general understand the issue around displacement and the problem it creates. It’s a short-term solution, and I think that’s a problem.”

In addition to providing analysis of her survey results, Louie’s study delineates the history of displacement endured by sex-trade workers on Vancouver’s streets. Over the past 30 years, workers have been moved, often by police acting on the request of residents, from the West End to Mount Pleasant to Grandview-Woodlands to the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona. While these moves have quelled various neighbourhood complaints about street prostitution, the working conditions and safety of sex workers hasn’t improved, particularly in the wake of the Mobile Access Project (MAP) overnight outreach van shutting down on June 12 as a result of funding cuts by the provincial government. The van distributed condoms, clean needles, and first-aid supplies to sex workers while on their strolls. Advocates in support of reinstating MAP’s provincial funding held a candlelight vigil at the van’s regular stops on Tuesday night (June 23).

The cut to MAP’s funding, says SFU’s Lowman, is “unconscionable.” “It’s a reflection of the general attitude that politicians have [toward] the problems of the women on the Downtown Eastside,” he says. “It’s almost like it’s forgotten about the 60 or more women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside.”

Despite the controversial loss of a service like the MAP van, Pivot Legal Society lawyer Katrina Pacey says Louie’s study shows promise for change, at least on the community level. “What this survey reflects is a result of what this neighbourhood has seen, which is incredible rates of violence and incredibly dangerous conditions,” she says. “I also think it’s very promising that they then see the way to remedy that situation is the decriminalization of sex work.”

Pacey says she and her colleagues at Pivot consider decriminalization to be a “necessary step” in reducing what she sees as many of the potential harms present in the sex industry. “I think people have a concern that if sex work is decriminalized, that it becomes sort of legitimized, or somehow it becomes something that society is seen as promoting,” she says. “And we don’t agree with that... We want sex workers to have control over their working conditions, we want sex workers to be free from violence in their work, we want them to have employment standards and rights, and we want them to be able to exit sex work without a criminal record and without all the scars that one carries as a criminalized person.”

As for the idea that the 2010 Olympics will increase pressure on Vancouver’s sex industry, Pacey says the biggest Olympic threat against sex workers, as with other marginalized communities in the city, is displacement. “I think poor people, people struggling with mental health, people who are marginalized, and part of the visible street population, are going to, in some way or another, end up displaced,” she says.

PHOTO: Christine Louie. Supplied.

Low-income housing becoming scarcer, study shows

WestEnder
June 25, 2009

Housing in the Downtown Eastside is becoming increasingly unaffordable for low-income residents, according to the results of a survey conducted by the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP). The survey was undertaken by CCAP members, who went door-to-door to 88 privately owned Downtown Eastside hotels. They obtained information on vacancies, rental rates, and rental conditions.

“We found a vacancy rate of 0.2 per cent — or virtually nothing — in rooms that rent for $375 and under,” says CCAP organizer Jean Swanson. The $375 monthly rental rate is a benchmark calculation of what someone receiving $610 per month on welfare should spend on housing. If rents go above $375, CCAP organizers say a person would have very little left to pay for food, transportation, and other needs. The group also calculated that there are 694 more rooms now renting for over $425 per month than last year, when CCAP conducted its first hotel survey — a 44 per cent increase.

“If rents keep going up, homelessness is going to keep increasing, and there’s no way government is going to be able to build enough social housing or open enough shelters to deal with the problem,” says Swanson. “The poor are being desperately exploited because of the lack of affordable housing.”

Based on the results of the survey, the CCAP has drawn up a list of recommendations for all three levels of government, which includes a call to build more housing, prohibit evictions up to and during the Olympics, and create a working definition of low-income living that will allow the City to create housing policies that reflect the needs of low-income people. “The city should establish a definition of low income, and use existing Statistics Canada income data to monitor the conversion of hotel stock. This will help the city make a case for effective rent control, and develop housing- and land-use policies that are realistic about the ability of low-income people to afford housing,” the report says.

The report also notes that the 2006 Statistics Canada data suggests a single person is considered low-income if they earn less than $21,199 a year. Meanwhile, a person on welfare would get $7,300 a year; on disability, $10,800; on minimum wage working full-time, $16,640; and at $10 an hour full-time, $20,800.

“If the city isn’t going to look at the housing supply in this neighbourhood with some clarity and look at it from the perspective of a tenant who only has $375 a month, then they’re missing a big part of the picture, and they aren’t going to take good measures to end the problems in this neighbourhood,” says CCAP organizer Wendy Pedersen. “Homelessness is not about addiction only. It’s not about mental illness only.”
PHOTO: CCAP organizers Jean Swanson and Wendy Pedersen. By Doug Shanks.

Filmmakers shine spotlight on 'no-fun city' rep

WestEnder
June 18, 2009

Urban development and its attendant clash of class and culture is endemic to any city’s growth, and Vancouver’s coming-of-age is in full bloom. As the Olympics draw near, and the Downtown Eastside continues to bear the most visible evidence of the city’s widespread addiction, poverty, and homelessness issues, questions of how — or if — to improve the neighbourhood remain subject to ongoing debate. Meanwhile, Vancouver’s cultural creatives continue to stake out unwanted commercial spaces in the area for use as galleries and performance venues — a hot commodity in a city where prohibitive liquor-licensing policies have played a large part in shaping our ‘no-fun city’ reputation.

Local filmmakers Melissa James and Kate Kroll have been exploring what gentrification, the Downtown Eastside, and a changing municipal culture mean to the city’s emerging artists in their forthcoming documentary, No Fun City. The film, set for release this fall, explores the city’s subcultures through the eyes of people like Vancouver punk-rock mainstay and Cobalt manager Wendy Thirteen, independent nightclub promoter Malice Liveit, and Downtown Eastside residents who have been observing their neighbourhood’s flux up close.

“There is a clean-up in progress in the Downtown Eastside that is happening very quickly... It’s a time of unrest and uncertainty in that neighbourhood, but there are also interesting revitalization projects happening that bring art and music to the community,” says James, adding that the recently opened Rickshaw Theatre and the forthcoming W2 Community Arts Centre are positive new additions to the area.

“We’ve interviewed many residents of the Downtown Eastside about the opening of venues and new galleries in the neighbourhood, and unanimously they’ve said that they love the idea,” says James. “They are cautious, however, and fear being displaced. Anyone who has spent time in the Downtown Eastside knows how much of a community it really is, and we need to make sure they are part of the change.”

James, who moved to Vancouver in 2006 from Montreal, has previously lived in Toronto, New York, and London, all in neighbourhoods she describes as “in the midst of being gentrified,” such as the plateau in Montreal, Williamsburg in New York, and King’s Cross in London. “When you live in a city with a very high cost of living, you have no choice but to seek out... areas of town where the rent is cheaper, especially for artists and musicians renting studios and rehearsal spaces,” she says. “Here in Vancouver, it’s very extreme... It’s happening at an alarming rate. It doesn’t seem to be occurring organically by one community slowly integrating into another. It feels more like people are being pushed out by developers and expensive restaurants.”

But local entrepreneur David Duprey says development in the Downtown Eastside can be healthy for the community. Duprey owns Main Street’s Narrow Lounge and the Grace Gallery, and he appears in the documentary talking about his work in revitalizing empty buildings in the Downtown Eastside. “I’ve got five buildings down there now... I lease out the buildings, fix them up, and then lease them out to artists... I do what the City calls ‘revitalization without displacement.’ But it can also be interpreted as gentrification, too, because I’m moving artists into the neighbourhood.”

Gentrification, he says, is a difficult term that is often misunderstood. “A lot of people treat [gentrification] as the scariest thing on the planet, but it doesn’t particularly have to be,” he explains. “I really feel strongly that Vancouver needs mixed neighbourhoods... This [Downtown Eastside] neighbourhood needs to have more mixed use. It needs to have people from different demographics. People down here need hope, they need to see there’s a potential to do something else.”

At the heart of the no-fun-city problem, says Duprey, is what is seen every weekend outside the nightclubs on Granville Street. “There’s not enough [live music] venues, there’s not enough bars outside the hell that is the Granville entertainment district,” he says.

James agrees. “I think Granville is designed for a certain type of person, and it doesn’t cater to all of us,” she says. “On paper, it may seem like a great way to cut down on policing and to keep it all contained in one spot, but I think the reality is that not everyone’s idea of fun is to be caged in by police and a bunch of rowdy drunks to listen to Top 40 or dance music.”

What James hopes to convey in her documentary, she says, is the need for more diversity. “The only solution I can see is to allow different types of people to open up more diverse places and to make it easier to obtain primary liquor licenses,” she says. “This will reduce violence, drunk driving... [and] allow the city to really become the fun, cosmopolitan place it wants to be.”

More information on the No Fun City documentary can be found at NoFunCity.org. The project is currently without funding, and James and Kroll welcome the participation of those interested in getting involved with the film.

PHOTO: Melissa James and Kate Kroll in front of the Dominion Building downtown. By Doug Shanks.

City rental vacancies up, report says

WestEnder
June 18, 2009

If the apparent proliferation across the city of lawn signs advertising apartment vacancies seems unusual — especially given last year’s media coverage highlighting Vancouver’s record-breaking shortfall of rental accommodation — it’s part of a national trend. Vacancy rates in Metro Vancouver and across Canada have risen in the past year, according to the spring 2009 rental market report released last week by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The report suggests Metro Vancouver vacancy rates are up to 1.9 per cent, from 0.9 per cent at this time in 2008. Meanwhile, average monthly rents in the region remain the highest in Canada, with the report showing the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Metro Vancouver to be $935, up from $857 last year.

But the jump in rental rates and vacancies is hardly indicative of an increase in actual rental stock in Vancouver, according to Robyn Adamache, senior market analyst with CMHC. “We have seen very few new rental apartments start [construction] over the past many years,” she says. “Over the past five years... we’ve seen less than 1,000 new rental-apartment starts each year... and with land costs remaining still pretty high in the Metro Vancouver area, we don’t expect that it will be any easier for developers to make their numbers work to build new rental [units].”

Meanwhile, a number of new condo projects that have reached completion over the last year has spurred some renters toward buying, which Adamache says may account for a slight increase in the vacancy rate.

But Sharon Isaak, cofounder of tenant advocacy group Renters at Risk, contends that the negative effects of the economic downturn are a major contributing factor in the increase of available rental properties.Many of those apartments, she says, have been vacated by people who have been forced to move out of their neighbourhood due to job loss, and young people staying out of the rental market by continuing to live in their family home. “They can’t afford the high rents,” says Isaak, whose young neighbours recently left their rental apartment to move back in with their parents. “People are losing their jobs. People are making choices and leaving... The rents are rising faster than what people can afford to pay.”

Despite the ongoing challenges renters face with finding affordable housing, Isaak hopes the increased vacancy rates will result in a decrease in mass evictions for the purpose of renovations (known as “renovictions”) in robust rental neighbourhoods like the West End. “There’s been a real niche market for investors buying rental apartment buildings with the intention of raising rents dramatically through a number of different ways because the vacancy rates are so low,” she says. “If the vacancy rates do relax a little bit, hopefully we’ll see an end to the renoviction investors — the ones who buy the buildings with the full intention of throwing out tenants, as a business model. I don’t think that’s a sustainable business model at all. It’s not one that Vancouver can sustain socially, either.”

CMHC will release this year’s second rental-market report in the fall, and Adamache expects to see a similar increase in vacancy rates. But in order to increase the supply of rental housing, she says, developers will need more financial incentive than what’s currently on the table. “According to this spring survey, [Vancouver has] the highest rents in the country; they’re still nowhere comparable to what a monthly mortgage payment would be on an apartment condominium,” she says. “So, in order for developers to be able to get their money back out of a new project with the current level of rent, [it’s] still very difficult.”

PHOTO: West End apartments. By Jackie Wong.

Residents object to ongoing operation of shelters

WestEnder
June 18, 2009

Provincial funding for the homeless shelters opened last winter through Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) runs out at the end of this month, but the need for the shelters doesn’t seem to be slowing down, despite the recent warm weather. According to City staff, the shelters continue to operate at capacity, with 935 recorded turn-aways between April 1 and June 7.

According to shelter staff, the two HEAT shelters at the north end of the Granville Bridge, located at 1442 Howe and 1435 Granville, are full almost every day by 6:15 p.m., and occupied mostly by people under 30. An estimated 40 per cent of people using the Howe Street shelter self-identify as LGBT, and most of the people in both shelters struggle with mental-health issues such as depression. The shelters are emptied out each day at 10 a.m., and line-ups to get back in start forming by mid-afternoon. The scene outside lends to what some nearby residents believe is an increase in crime, personal assaults and threats, and open drug use in the area, spurring the formation of a residents group called Concerned Citizens of False Creek North (CCFCN).

“[The] City arrogantly and arbitrarily made decisions without informing the public nor taking into regard associated social problems that would arise,” says Lin Sheffield, founding member of CCFCN, who lives within view of the shelters. “The whole purpose of the HEAT shelters was to house street people during abnormally cold winter [weather]. It’s now June and 20-plus degrees.”

Concerned that the HEAT shelters were opened without public consultation, CCFCN organized a town hall meeting with City of Vancouver staff to voice their concerns last Thursday night (June 11). “There was not a homeless problem in this area, and the City could offer no proof there ever was,” Sheffield told WE. She and other CCFCN members want the City to close both shelters immediately and start over — with increased public consultation — with the goal of developing a long-term strategy.

Judy Graves, the tenant assistance coordinator for the City of Vancouver, who has worked directly with the city’s homeless population for years, says a long-term housing plan is already in motion, and HEAT shelters are part of that. “The reality is, as soon as it becomes possible, we’ll be moving people out of the shelters and into housing, because we absolutely agreed that people shouldn’t have to live in shelters,” she said in an interview with WE. “But certainly, people staying in shelters is better than living on the street when they’re waiting for their housing.”

Graves says she is seeing improvements in the physical health of people using the shelters — many are getting clean and sober, and finding employment. Drawing from what she sees on regular overnight walks to offer resources to the homeless population, Graves says the Granville Bridge has been frequented by the city’s homeless for years. “People have always slept out there for as early as I can remember,” she says.

City councillor and HEAT member Kerry Jang is working with Graves and other City staff to find solutions in response to the concerns raised by CCFCN. “There were a lot of misconceptions that came out of that meeting; for example, that [the shelters’] low-barrier [designation] meant that it was a free-for-all inside. That’s not the case. A low barrier simply means that pets and carts are allowed inside,” he says. “People have been talking about people walking in with axes or weapons and things like that, but a lot of these guys, for example, are carvers. So they have their tools with them and they’re visible, but they’re put in a safe lockup when they enter the shelter.”

Mayor Robertson told reporters on June 11 that he is working with the premier and the housing minister to explore options for continuing to operate the HEAT shelters past this month. “We’ve got to hold onto the shelter capacity that we have right now, at least through next winter, until the permanent housing comes on-stream,” he said.

COVER: Designs on a future

WestEnder
June 11, 2009

While many of us are still reeling from the effects of a global economic crisis that has wiped out tens of thousands of jobs across the country in only a few months, an unlikely industry continues to thrive in the midst of what is, for many, truly the worst of times. A talented legion of Vancouver designers and tastemakers is proving that innovation endures in periods of flux, and may in fact grow despite — or perhaps because of — the chaos around it.

As countless other local companies struggle to remain relevant in increasingly competitive economic and cultural environments, design firms such as Cause + Affect are busier than they’ve ever been. Principals Jane and Steven Cox are the couple behind the company, which is best known for revitalizing the Vancouver Art Gallery’s youth credibility by introducing the popular Fuse party nights, bringing the international design forum Pecha Kucha Night to the city, and handling the graphic and exhibition design for the Vancouverism architecture exhibit that toured Paris and London. More recently, Cause + Affect has been hired by the Vancouver Economic Development Commission to look at new methods of cross-sector collaboration, communication, and design. “We’re now talking about crossing with the food industry, green technology, and other strong, emerging sectors,” says Jane. “We’re trying to instigate an alignment across these sectors to get together and really think: What do we want our city to be? How do we want to define this city? That’s been really exciting.”

As for the unexpected surge in business that Cause + Affect has experienced over the past six months, Jane chalks it up to a widespread desire for change. “In a recession, you might think about who you are and how you do things,” she says.

“Everybody delves deep, and they want to find a meaning in what they do; they want to re-evaluate if what they’re doing makes any sense,” adds Steven. “We kind of think about our job as helping people define their culture, [helping] companies define their culture, and then we help them communicate that culture, or we help them allow people to interact with that culture.”

And the couple’s mission has been successful: Among other accomplishments, Pecha Kucha, in which attendees present a creative six-minute lecture on a topic of their choice, has drawn such a consistently large audience that Steven and Jane are having trouble finding a suitable venue in which to host it.

“When we came back to Vancouver in 2004 [after working internationally]... there was a group of people in Vancouver who said, Vancouver sucks, nothing ever happens here, nobody does anything interesting, blah blah blah. That really wasn’t us,” Steven recalls. The frustration surrounding Vancouver’s no-fun reputation spurred the genesis of some of Cause + Affect’s first projects, which were received with great success. “We realized that Vancouver’s a city that won’t hand you things on a silver platter, won’t hand you opportunities. But if you make opportunities for yourself, it will reward you in its response to your efforts,” Steven says. “There’s a kind of self-awareness that’s finally happening, where people are coming up with their own ideas of what the city is, rather than falling back on the tourist-led identity that the city has always been.”

***

Similar to Steven and Jane’s desire to re-imagine Vancouver outside of its mountains-and-forest traditions, Cynthia Penner and Jay Brooks, principals of Box Interiors, decided to start a design firm here with the intention of exploring and contributing to what they saw as the charm of the city’s diversity. “We’re not outdoorsy people by any stretch of the imagination,” laughs Penner. “Some of our Toronto friends are like, ‘Why are you living in Vancouver if you’re not outdoorsy people?’ Well, there are a lot of other reasons: There is a great food culture here; there is a great multicultural environment here; it’s a great pace.”

Since Box’s inception in 2002, Penner and Brooks have taken on interior-design projects ranging from a renovation of the Vancouver Art Gallery Cafe (“Nothing changed except for décor, and [their] business grew 50 per cent,” says Penner) to the look of the Market by Jean-Georges restaurant in the new Shangri-La Hotel. Penner and Brook are also the designers behind the restaurants Coast, Trattoria Italian Kitchen, and Sanafir.

“When we first moved here [from Toronto in 1996], we were pretty frustrated that a lot of the clients we were meeting were really cautious and conservative,” recalls Penner. “But, slowly and surely, we’re finding people who are willing to be mavericks and willing to be leaders in design and not wait until their competition does it first, which is great. I think there’s also an overwhelming movement in general, in Vancouverites, toward having an eye for design.... I hope we’re doing our part to give places that they can connect to emotionally.”

And as people live in smaller and smaller spaces, Penner says, “There’s a lot more need to go out — out for entertainment, out for just freedom of space.”

“Going out is about connectivity and entertainment and hospitality,” adds Brooks. “If [our] clients are busy and their businesses are doing well, we’ve done our jobs.”

***

While some of the most obvious examples of local design lie in the decadence of Vancouver’s high-end restaurants, it’s also important to note that good design doesn’t always need to be expensive. That’s what Isabelle Swiderski aims to do with Seven25, a design firm she founded in 2006.

“We want to show small to medium business owners [and] not-for-profits where the possibilities for design are,” says Swiderski. “You don’t need to have tons of money to do engaging design... It’s certainly more accessible than people might think.”

Swiderski’s team at Seven25 has been responsible for the recent Bike to Work Week campaign and the forthcoming Home for the Games, a home-stay project which will take place during the 2010 Olympics. “The goal of [Home for the Games] is to put homeowners in touch with people who want to visit Vancouver... The homeowners agree to donate 50 per cent of the proceeds that they make from renting one of the rooms to fight homelessness in Vancouver,” Swiderski explains. “I specifically feel that design is meant to improve our lives, and that part of being a good designer is putting your skills to the service of organizations whose voices need to be heard, and whose missions are people-driven rather than profits. That’s definitely something we try to focus on, and, as a result, I think we work with really important and interesting people and organizations.”

And the best strategy for combatting what is sometimes a prohibitive conservatism among Vancouverites? Keep raising the bar, Swiderski says. “We have to be careful to not always seek the lowest common denominator,” she says. “If you can convey the right message in the right language, you touch people. That’s really what we aim to do: show people possibilities.”
PHOTO: Steven and Jane Cox, principals, Cause + Affect. By Doug Shanks.

Sex-worker outreach program in jeopardy

WestEnder
June 11, 2009

Vancouver’s only overnight mobile outreach program for sex-trade workers will close tomorrow (June 12) due to a lack of funding. The program, known as the Mobile Access Project (MAP), began in 2004 as a partnership between the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE), and the Vancouver Agreement Women’s Strategy Task Team.

MAP is the only service of its kind in the city for what are often termed “survival” sex-trade workers; they often work in isolated areas and with little capacity to call for help or to access resources. The MAP van has operated nightly from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., with WISH staffers driving it across the city to provide assistance to sex workers while on the job. The van is equipped with condoms (86,000 are handed out annually), a needle exchange, first-aid supplies, and coffee, water, and juice. It offers a safe place for sex workers to report violent incidents, talk about their experiences, and access resources for shelter, counselling, and exiting the trade. The van needs $250,000 of annual funding from the provincial government to operate — which, as of tomorrow, will be pulled.

“The provincial government, like other jurisdictions around the world, is facing challenging and unprecedented economic times, requiring difficult decisions,” the office of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General told WE in a statement last week. “Once cabinet is sworn in, these kinds of decisions will be made as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, the women who work on the city’s streets will be left more vulnerable, says Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, a Downtown Eastside drop-in centre for female survival sex workers. “The safety of the women is just totally in jeopardy because of this,” she says.

Gibson notes that MAP van staff take 95 per cent of the city’s “bad date” reports, which document violent incidents experienced by sex workers. “They are completely vulnerable to any person who wants to perpetrate violence.”

PACE is also facing funding shortfalls, mostly due to a lack of private donors. “Philanthropy’s sort of at a standstill,” says Natasia Wright, acting agency coordinator. While PACE and WISH’s funding shortfalls are due to shortages from different sources, Wright says programs for survival sex workers have, in general, continued to be marginalized, both at the government level and in the public consciousness. “I think it scares people; people would rather pretend like it doesn’t exist,” she says. “Also, after [the Pickton case], people, I think, really want to feel like [sex] workers are safe now that Pickton’s away... He was this monster that the police took care of. Of course, that’s not the case; it’s part of a larger social problem of sex workers’ human rights not being protected... The safety net isn’t working for these people, and that’s scary.”

Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang is planning to bring a motion to council that will help find ways for the City to play a part in reducing the harm brought to sex workers. For 2009, the City gave an Annual Community Services grant of $78,132 to WISH and $57,632 to PACE. “But for the MAP van itself, it’s nothing we can do outside of waiting on the province,” says Jang. “It’s tough times all around, but they’ve got to sort out their priorities, and this is clearly one that has to be at the top of the list. It gets me all choked up... Human abuse should not be tolerated.”
PHOTO: WISH Drop-in Society Executive Director Kate Gibson. By Doug Shanks.

ChangeCamp looks toward an info-friendly future

WestEnder
June 11, 2009

Talking to the organizers of Vancouver ChangeCamp is rather like talking to people from the future: an ultra-democratic, socially inclusive future in which people from all walks of life contribute their ideas on how to improve their relationships with their communities and governments.

But judging from the collective energy of Vancouver’s large and vibrant tech community, and the strides its members have taken to reach out to the uninitiated among us, the future is arriving faster than one might think. And that could mean a dramatic transformation in how social change happens, as well as how governments respond to it.

Our first-ever Vancouver ChangeCamp takes place June 20, a day-long event that will explore social change as it pertains to the roles of technologists, ordinary citizens, the public sector, and the non-profit sector. Modelled after the blogging camps and participant-driven “unconferences” that have been a staple of the tech community for years, ChangeCamp is specifically designed to answer two questions: How can we help government become more open and responsive; and how do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes?

On the heels of a May 21 motion passed by Vancouver City Council that will kickstart the adoption of open-data principles for municipal data, Vancouver ChangeCamp aims to deepen the conversation on already widely expressed desires to change the way we interact with government, particularly in an age where traditional models for activism can seem outdated and low voter turnout punctuates every election.

“On the one hand, you’re angry with the government for not taking care of you; on the other hand, you’re angry at yourself for being in a position of being a child and having to be taken care of... It’s a poor dynamic,” says ChangeCamp organizer and social-media specialist John Dumbrille. The missing link, he says, is meaningful citizen engagement. “I’m not really into politics, and I think a lot of people are cynical about politics, but the antidote to that is actual engagement. Not engagement by running for office or by backing someone who has the same ideology as you, but by actually engaging in taking care of your own backyard.”

The effect of a conference like ChangeCamp, says fellow organizer Steve Williams, is that it can help break down the silos that often keep the public sector, the non-profit world, the general public, and government bodies from interacting with each other. “The real interest that I’ve seen is that there currently exists groups and events for all of these individual silos of people... but there are very few opportunities for generating conversations and collaborations between those different [groups],” he says.

The biggest change that’s happened from more people using online social media, Williams says, is that it’s broadened the spectrum of participation. Even so, he is quick to note that technology itself is not a cure-all for the myriad social problems the city faces. “All the Facebook groups are all well and good, but we still have huge poverty rates, HIV rates, prostitution, drug abuse. These are real issues that we need to do something about,” he says. “The challenge really is, how do you translate this online participation into real-world, on-the-ground social change? That’s one of the real overarching questions we’re trying to get at with ChangeCamp.”

More information on Vancouver ChangeCamp is available at VanChangeCamp.wordpress.com. The event takes place Saturday, June 20, from 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. at the BCIT downtown campus (555 Seymour).

Study reveals 'empty condo' theory exaggerated

WestEnder
June 4, 2009

Who lives downtown? Or, more pertinently, who doesn’t? And what does the answer say about the future of urban housing in Vancouver?

The residential condominium buildings in the city’s downtown core have been celebrated as great achievements of urban planning and design. But apart from widespread speculation that hundreds of those condos sit empty, owned by offshore speculators who have no intention of living in them, urban planner Andrew Yan says “remarkably little is known” about the actual occupancy of downtown housing outside of the West End.

With that in mind, Yan, a planner and researcher with Bing Thom Architects, embarked on a study. The result, released last week, is a report titled “Ownership, Occupancy, and Rentals: An Indicative Sample Study of Condominiums in Downtown Vancouver,” that investigates the ‘empty condo’ myth (and, it turns out, it is a myth) and the area’s home-ownership patterns. The study excludes the West End, focusing on the downtown area bounded by Main and Burrard to the east and west, and Coal Harbour and False Creek to the north and south.

The study’s results were surprising even to Yan, who, since releasing it, has taken some heat from Vancouver’s opinionated housing bloggers. Perhaps they were as astonished by the study’s results as he is. “It’s as disappointing to me as anyone else,” Yan told WE of the study’s empty-condo myth-busting. “I was thinking [the number] would have been much higher, but it wasn’t.”

Using BC Hydro data for a sample of nearly 2,400 downtown condo units, Yan found that only 5.5 per cent of condos fall below normal hydro usage numbers that would suggest an unoccupied suite.

Yan’s study also suggests there are far fewer foreign condo investors than Vancouverites might like to believe: Six per cent (146 units) of the total study population are owned by non-Canadians, most of whom are from the U.S. Only two per cent are from countries in Asia.

“The empty condo is just a kind of proxy measure towards the deep concerns about affordable housing,” says Yan. “What’s the underlying reasons we’re pursuing empty condos? It’s not empty condos by themselves. It’s because we’re facing a major affordable-housing crisis in this city.”

And if the condos in the downtown core reflect the direction of new housing in Vancouver — most were built in the post-Expo period of the 1990s and leading into the early 2000s — how is the area succeeding or failing to provide affordable housing for the city’s residents, particularly families? Yan found that rents in condo buildings tend to be about 30 per cent higher than rents for similar units in purpose-built rental buildings, due to typically newer amenities, higher-quality finishings, and other bonuses of a new building. Still, Yan is unsure whether the current downtown condo model should set the standard for how the rest of Metro Vancouver will be planned. “Is this really a model to pitch to the rest of the region?” he asks. “Should families be downtown? I say yes... We need to make this an alternative to the suburbs, but density by itself doesn’t provide affordable housing.”

As for a dense neighbourhood that has, until recently, been largely known as a robust area for affordable rental housing, Yan believes the West End is what the downtown core strives — and somewhat fails — to be. “The West End is a polychromatic menagerie of urbanity built through a patina of history and layers of buildings, whereas the rest of downtown tries to mimic this, which unfortunately dissolves into being monochromatic and staged,” he says. “Indeed, the rest of downtown is density without diversity.”

But building for diversity – social diversity – is not always front of mind for real-estate developers looking to capitalize on an urban market. “Instead of building new housing for people, one of the first things [we need] to do is make housing affordable for the people who are here now,” says Wendy Pedersen, an organizer with the Downtown Eastside’s Carnegie Community Action Project. “The market is not able to meet the needs of low- or middle-income people... so some interventions need to happen.”

The question of how to provide diverse, affordable housing for the broad spectrum of Vancouver’s population is not just about building support for people on the lower end of the income spectrum; Yan says it’s about ensuring economic growth for everyone. “You need a level of affordability if you want to ensure a good level of economic development,” he says, acknowledging that his study raises more questions than answers. “The biggest question is, what kind of city do we want to be, and what are we willing to do to get there?”

Yan’s study is available for download at BTAworks.com.

PHOTO: Andrew Yan, researcher and city planner with Bing Thom Architects. By Doug Shanks.

Local gay rights advocates respond to Prop 8

WestEnder
June 4, 2009

The California Supreme Court voted last Tuesday (May 26) to uphold the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, much to the frustration of LGBT advocates across North America. That same night in Vancouver, Roger Chin proposed to his partner, Jim VanDeventer, in front of a crowd of supporters at a rally he organized in response to the vote. “The reason why I wanted to organize this was because I have a twin brother down [in the States], I know people in California, and it just seems so unfair that here I am in Canada, I’ve got the right to be able to ask ‘Will you marry me?’... But in the U.S., people can’t,” Chin told the crowd.

Chin and VaDeventer have been working on a documentary about bi-national gay couples who live, effectively in exile, in Canada. Some of the subjects of the documentary spoke at the rally, including Michael Smith. He and his partner, Paul Holzapfel, were among the 18,000 couples married in California last year during the brief period that gay marriage was legal in the state. Until last week’s Supreme Court decision ruled that gay couples who wed before November 2008 could remain married, Smith and Holzapfel weren’t sure if their marriage would stand or be annulled. “Every Canadian is perfectly justified in going their merry way and not worrying about [Proposition 8],” he told the crowd at the Vancouver rally. “But all around the world right now, people in the Middle East are being killed for being gay. In Moscow, people are being denied the right to assemble and have been thrown in jail for trying to have a pride parade. This is a human-rights issue.”

Of course, the right to marriage isn’t the only thing gays and lesbians in the U.S. have had to fight for. Donald Lim was processed out of his 17-year job in the U.S. military when his employers discovered he was gay. “Someone sent an anonymous tip saying I was a danger to the U.S. because I [am] gay,” he told WE. The primary reason military personnel used to keep gays and lesbians out of the military, he says, was unit morale. “They’re afraid that the gays would hit on their heterosexual coworkers, as if gays and lesbians couldn’t control their sexual urges,” he says. “I can tell you there are more cases of sexual harassment of heterosexual men against the female servicewomen than they will acknowledge or let people believe.”

Since leaving the military in 1993, Lim, who was born in Colorado, moved to the U.K. to live with his partner, Steven Rowe, under a civil partnership. The couple moved to Vancouver last fall. Despite the comparative liberties Lim and Rowe enjoy as a gay couple in Canada, Lim remains mindful of inequalities that pose a threat to Canadians’ safety when travelling in the U.S. “Canadians who are married can’t go into the United States as a married [gay] couple; they have to go in as singles,” he says. “If one of you gets into an accident, the other person can’t be there to help you. You can be denied access to your spouse.”

West End residents Barry Thorsness and Louis Martinez say they can breathe easier in Vancouver than they could when they were living in the United States. Thorsness was born in Prince George and has U.S. citizenship, and Martinez, born in Nebraska, is a U.S. citizen. “We thought of the differences of being gay in an American environment and the difference it would be living in Canada,” says Martinez. “Here it seems... less threatening to live out your life and enjoy it more. In the U.S., you’re always on the alert. I always wonder... am I walking butch enough not to create a situation? Here, I haven’t had to do that.”

Despite our considerable gains, absolute safety for the LGBT community is still not a reality in Vancouver. City councillors Tim Stevenson and Ellen Woodsworth will introduce a motion this week calling for a consolidated presence of City of Vancouver service groups in this year’s pride parade, with the theme of eliminating violence against the LGBT community. The motion is motivated in part by the numerous violent attacks on members of the LGBT community over the last three years, and the fact that there are federal and provincial laws against hate crimes that have never been enforced.

PHOTO: Gay rights advocates at the rally in response to Prop 8, May 26 in Morton Park. By Jackie Wong.

City asks province to help ensure renter protection during Games

WestEnder
June 4, 2009

The City of Vancouver has begun rolling out a long-awaited temporary-accommodation strategy that aims to balance the needs of homeowners, renters, and visitors during the 10-month period leading up to and following the 2010 Games. Applications for temporary accommodation licenses, which will allow homeowners to rent out a portion of their home during Games time, are now being accepted by the City. As well, council has asked the provincial government to introduce temporary measures to protect tenants from displacement during the Olympic period.

According to City housing planner Celine Mauboules, Mayor Gregor Robertson has written a letter on behalf of council to Premier Gordon Campbell, who has referred it to Housing Minister Rich Coleman for response. “We’re still waiting for [Coleman] on that front,” says Mauboules of the letter. Minister Coleman did not return WE’s phone calls by press time.

The letter from council includes recommendations for the provincial government to amend the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) to prohibit evictions between June 1, 2009, and March 31, 2010, other than by reason of tenant default; to increase provincial residential tenancy services by opening a full-time Residential Tenancy Office for a 12-month period around the Games; and to provide $40,000 in funding for a tenant assistant worker, to be hired this spring. “It is the Province that governs the Residential Tenancy Act, and they really are the ones that can prevent those evictions,” says Mauboules. “I think our mayor and council are on record as hoping for some strengthening of the RTA.”

Without support from the Province, however, housing advocates are concerned that the City’s efforts to protect renters during the Games will fall flat. “As a supporter of this Vision [Vancouver] council, I’m profoundly disappointed at the lack of consultation in the implementation of this policy,” says Am Johal, chair of unofficial watchdog group Impact on Communities Coalition. He contends the enforcement mechanisms put forward by the City to protect renters have “no teeth.” Similar to the mass evictions that occurred during Expo ‘86, Johal predicts the worst for 2010. “Come December, January and February, hundreds of tenants will be evicted in Vancouver,” he says.

Information on applying for temporary-accommodation licenses is now available at Vancouver.ca, by phoning 604-873-7011, or at the City of Vancouver Licence Office (443 West 12th, east wing, 2nd floor).

COVER: This ain't your parents' parenthood

WestEnder
May 28, 2009

There really is no way to actually know what it’s like to have another life depend on you completely until you have a kid. A pet is not the same. Cats and dogs will survive on their own, they’ll figure something out, they’ll eat you if necessary. And fish or whatever don’t count. No, a kid, a little human, is so ridiculously unprepared to be in this world, it’s heartbreaking.”
— From Adam Had’em: A Parenting Diary, published at OnlyMagazine.ca by Adam Thomas.

There’s no business like baby business: the sea of flaccid nursing bras in department stores; the curiously elaborate strollers priced similarly to a used car (does it have four-wheel drive?); the plastic toys; and, in many instances, the new parents’ abandonment of their established lifestyle in favour of suburban, minivan-driving domesticity — all of this seems to occupy the centre of mainstream parenting culture.

But these notions don’t sit well with all parents. Fathers, for example, are often left out of conventional mom-centric parenting communities. That’s starting to change, though, thanks to the efforts of a new generation of young male bloggers who write about their experiences as new dads, proving that parenting can, and should, be redefined.

***

Vincent Marra started his blog, TheDadJam.com, after becoming frustrated with the dearth of online resources about things to do with kids in Vancouver. A 30-year-old IT consultant, Marra lives in a two-bedroom condo near Granville Island with his wife, Nicole, their 10-month-old daughter, Yasmin, and three-year-old son, Sebastian. He blogs about a wide range of parenting issues, including his own experiences with home birth, dealing with toddler behaviour, and relationships.

“I remember reading an article about modern dads,” Marra says. “The article was way off, because it was just talking about how the modern dad has to have a digital camera and an HD camcorder. Do you just think modern dads only take pictures and make videos? We do a lot more than that. A modern dad is doing a lot more to get involved: staying at home with the kids, changing diapers.”

And modern fatherhood, Marra says, goes hand in hand with sustainable living. His family doesn’t own a car, and he and Nicole have been raising Yasmin without the use of diapers; those choices are a way to reduce their ecological footprint. “I try to... go against traditional views that your child needs to be in diapers until the age of three — these are old-fashioned views. I try to tell people, you don’t need to do that,” says Marra. The same goes for moving to the suburbs to raise a family.

“Maybe it’s because it’s what their parents did, or that’s what they think is the traditional thing to do... Maybe they think it’s more affordable to have a house in the suburbs and drive,” he continues. “But I think, longer term, it’s not affordable or it ends up being the same, because you have to take into account all the time that you spend driving into the city, and the car expenses and the household expenses... Living in the city, you get to spend a lot more time with the kids.”

As crucial as it is to spend time with your children, it’s just as important to make space to talk about the reality of how difficult parenting can be. Adam Thomas, the 35-year-old managing editor of Only magazine, started writing a magazine column, “Adam Had’em: A Parenting Diary,” when his daughter, Sylvie, was born two and a half months ago.

“There are thousands of magazines just dedicated to moms, and rightfully so, but there isn’t really much aimed at dads, or relating dads’ experiences,” Thomas says. “There is little communication about what is involved or what to expect, or even willingness to open up about being freaked out or scared.”

Thomas’s wife, Sarah Albertson, suggested he start the column as a way to present alternative viewpoints on parenthood that rarely, if ever, make it into the glossy parenting magazines. “Other parents will tell you it’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever do: you have to have a kid, it’s going to be the best thing in your life, [but] the first few weeks were literally hell,” she says.

“Nobody wants to admit that there’s problems. It’s indicative of our whole culture,” adds Thomas. “If people were sharing these experiences and being honest about things like, ‘My partner had a really hard time breast-feeding,’ or, ‘My kid has got this rash,’ or things like that — it really helps other people who are going through things. You realize that you’re part of some kind of bigger experience and you’re not alone... It takes a lot of pressure off.”

But the social pressure to buy into the baby industrial complex of our times is still there, Albertson says. “It’s a shame how materialistic parenthood has become. It’s become a lot about consumerism, and the point is, it should be the opposite. It should be detaching you from that world, and focusing on the things that matter: kids, family, having fun. Those should be the most important things.”

***

Focusing on the important things, however, can be difficult when faced with an overabundance of information on how to raise a child. “For young parents, the worst of it is when their kids are just born, when they look so fragile. There’s a definite tendency for people to equate youth with ineptitude, which is almost never true,” says 23-year-old Michael Hingston. Now a freelance writer and editor based in Edmonton, Hingston and his partner Katie Gutteridge, 25, raised their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Bridget, in a one-bedroom apartment near Commercial Drive until last year, when they moved in order to be closer to Gutteridge’s parents. Hingston and Gutteridge started a blog, “Portrait of the Baby as a Young Baby,” to document their experiences, from Gutteridge’s pregnancy, to Hingston’s last Father’s Day as a son, to Bridget’s birth. The two were SFU students before having Bridget, and have since finished their bachelor’s degrees.

“We both still have goals in our personal lives, but we’ve had to be strict and chip away at them when we’ve had time,” says Hingston. “Having a child doesn’t mean you can’t do the things you want, but you really have to pick just one thing at a time, and work at it like crazy whenever you can.

“That being said, a lot of my life and ambitions are irrevocably tied to Bridget anyway — my biggest ambition now is to make sure she grows up happy and level-headed.”

“I have put my daughter first in ways that I thought I wouldn’t,” says Gutteridge. “Maybe I thought that [by] being a feminist and in practicing equal parenting, I would somehow be immune to this sort of loss of identity, that I would refuse to give up my own life ambitions in the name of my child and partner. But, in some cases, I have. Absolutely, there are losses and life changes, but life is always changing, kids or no kids.”

Feeling able to be candid with these feelings — which many mothers experience — is crucial, because it’s normal. All the same, what’s often categorized as ‘normal’ mom behaviour is still consider extraordinary when people see dads doing it, which Hingston believes demonstrates the prevalence of outdated gender stereotypes, despite our considerable progress.

“The standards for being a good father are incredibly low,” says Hingston. “When a male co-worker at one of my minimum-wage jobs found out my girlfriend was pregnant, he said, ‘Good for you for sticking around, man.’ I was getting credit for not fleeing the country! Or if I take Bridget grocery shopping, other guys will say, ‘Giving the old lady a rest, huh?’ I routinely get glowing praise for doing something that’s just considered part of Katie’s job as a mother.”

But the appetite for parental reform appears to be huge: Marra was surprised and relieved to see the large number of stay-at-home-dads in the blogosphere when he started TheDadJam.com. He continues to meet more of them every day when he takes his children out to the playground.

As for Hingston, the best parts about being a parent are things, he says, that “would make non-parents nauseous”: “The way Bridget instinctively reaches out to hold my hand before we walk down the street, the elaborate songs she makes up about her stuffed animals, the way she slyly smiles when she knows she’s being funny... Knowing that you had a hand in shaping this person into who she is — it makes my chest ache on a daily basis.”

Tech enthusiasts urge City Hall to embrace new info-sharing opportunities

WestEnder
May 28, 2009

Zeitgeist chasers have often described the times in which we live as the era of the mash-up — and not only in reference to DJs who remix various pop songs to create new ones. The proliferation of easy public access to web-based information — particularly social-networking technology — has created a time in history when technologists, creative professionals, and academics are remixing and repurposing information from a variety of sources for their own use.

That’s the idea behind open-data standards and open-source software, which, if all goes as planned at City Hall, will be soon change the way City of Vancouver data is handled, used, and accessed by the public.

Last week, councillor Andrea Reimer introduced a motion calling for City staff to develop an action plan for the supporting principles of open, accessible data; open-source software; and open-data standards as they pertain to City information, thus making public data available for more flexible use. For example, an open-data standard for City information could allow third parties to blend City data with open-source platforms such as YouTube, Google Maps, and iPhone applications, creating more diverse opportunities for citizens to engage with City information such as crime rates, housing statistics, community gardens, and park space.

“I’m unbelievably excited,” says open-source activist David Eaves, who is also a fellow at the Queen’s University Centre for the Study of Democracy. “There is this feeling that there’s all this [government] information that’s secret... Actually, many governments are quite open. It’s not always that data is trying to be hidden from us, it’s just that it’s not easy to access.”

But the question remains as to how City staff will handle the data transfer to an open-source format while respecting privacy and security protocol. The crucial next step of data transfer, says local tech blogger Karen Fung, will determine whether or not Vancouver’s move toward becoming a more open city will actually take off. “If we bring this idea of open standards and open data to [City] staff, and this is the first time they’ve ever heard about it, they can take a very confrontational approach to it,” says Fung, who is also a master’s student at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning. “If they have a chance to think about it systemically and really get a sense of why it’s a good thing to do... then they’ll be much more ready to be on board.”

Bridging the gap between early and late adopters to new technologies, Fung says, will be key to the success or failure of Vancouver’s open-data efforts, and, as with anything, the best learning will happen through experience. In response to the “To Twitter or Not to Twitter” question, Fung recalls an article she read that likened the microblogging service to sex. “You can talk about it, but you really just don’t understand it until you’ve actually done it,” she says.

As for skeptics — or “conscientious objectors,” as Fung calls them — to new ways of using technology, she maintains that times, and people, will change. “When we make those projections of the worst... we’re assuming that what we’re proposing is going to come to fruition in a world that looks exactly like ours,” she says.

Local software developer Jim Pick agrees. “Everything on the internet’s going to be a mash-up a year from now or two years from now,” he says. “The way politics operated even two years ago is going to be different than how politics operate two years from now... There is a lot of stuff which hasn’t been created yet, but it’s going to be created very quickly once the framework is in place.”

In the meantime, the appetite for change in how the City of Vancouver handles and distributes its information, Eaves says, is huge. “There were demands before people even knew the motion was in play,” he recalls. “When I first blogged about the motion, Twitter went nuts.”

But where to begin? Addressing the dodgy internet access and lack of Wi-Fi at City Hall could be a useful start. “They don’t even have Wi-Fi or [available outlets for laptops] there,” says Pick, laughing. “It’s very closed.”