Photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward reflects on whether Vancouver has become a city of vertical gated communities:
It was in 2001 that I was taking pictures of artist Alan Storey. I photographed him by his Coopers Mews sculpture. It is a (a whimsical look at what preceded the area(north west side of False Creek) before the condominiums were built. Part of the pathway includes steps that produce steam when one walks on them. He pointed at a nearby baby sitting centre. It seemed odd amidst all the concrete towers.
Storey and I had a fun time during our pleasant shoot. But it was partly jarred by an event that I will not forget. We stopped our picture taking when we saw an extremely beautiful and elegant blue car stop at the gate of one of the condos. It was an Aston Martin being driven by a young man. He glanced in our direction and then the gate went up and he disappeared into his building’s garage. We discussed that the kind of luxury that we had previously associated with living in Shaughnessy had a much different counterpart here by his sculpture and that it was a luxury of which we had no inkling. It was a way of life for which we had no understanding.
I guess by this measure, when I lived in my $600 per month one bedroom apartment on Nelson Street in the early 90’s, I was living in a vertical gated community. There was buzz in access at the door, keylock gated underground parking, a resident concierge (OK, a chainsmoking Geordie in an office by the lobby who hectored you for your rent cheque), and luxury onsite amenities (an algal green subterranean pool). Is it the way building form shapes social life, or simple class envy, that resides at the heart of Waterhouse-Hayward’s analysis?
Gordon: Alan Walks at the University of Toronto has done some interesting research looking at the shift of core areas’ voting preferences towards the right, which he links to the rise of gated communities in the sky.