Well, Pete McMartin’s column in today’s Sun sure grabbed my attention:
About a month ago, Andy Yan (of BTA Works) decided to map the city of Vancouver by property value … The properties assessed at more than $1 million are shown in blue. Those assessed under $1 million are shown in red.
… The boundary is as straight and uniform as a ruler. The boundary is Main Street. …
Yan found something else in the map beyond property values.
He superimposed on it a map of the results of the 2011 municipal election. They matched. The million-plus neighbourhoods voted NPA while the million minus neighbourhoods voted Vision. True to form, those anomalous enclaves of million-plus homes in Victoria-Fraserview and Renfrew-Collingwood went NPA. They were the only east-side areas that did.
Here’s that map:
Two comments: one niggling, the other more contentious.
The line that separates value runs down Ontario, not Main – two blocks to the west. Why? Because that’s the 0-block, where street addresses shift from West to East. Historically it was also the boundary line between the Municipality of South Vancouver (the working man’s district) and the more elite Municipality of Point Grey to the west, prior to the City’s amalgamation in 1929. A clear case where social class, street numbering and real-estate values (that “East” or “West” designation is worth thousands) are mutually reinforcing.
Secondly, McMartin’s observation about voting patterns and house values is a little off. Clearly there’s a correlation: million-plus homes in the southwest and -east are fertile ground for the NPA. But what explains the red zones north of Kingsway (30, 43, 60, 61, 63) where, except for 61, values are mostly below a million?
More interesting, how to explain the single-family zones in West Point Grey (113, 126, 128, 129, 130), where a sweep of Vision green reached the borders of Pacific Spirit and included, for God’s sake, Drummond Drive (map here) with some of the highest property values in the world? Or north of Queen Elizabeth Park (61, 62, 77). Or that little anomaly of 1o5.
While it seems to be true, as McMartin states, that “the NPA … could not break out of its privileged, less densified, enclaves,” Vision on the other hand was able to move in. So I’m not so sure Pete’s generality is true:
Vancouver is a city divided. The determinants of that political division are predictable and, if Yan is correct, can be plotted.
No disagreement with this, though:
… the cultural implications of it are far more varied and serious. Inadvertently, his map speaks volumes about exclusion, affordability, income inequality and quality of life. It speaks volumes about the very odd pressures – some of them out of our control – that are determining the city’s nature.
And by that I mean Yan’s map, like the city it describes, is a dichotomy. It describes outsized wealth and prosperity, no matter what side of Main Street you look at.
It also describes something obscene.
There’s no neat and tidy explanation for election results. Saying that the NPA are the party of the elites & Vision are backed by the middle class doesn’t hold water, so on this point McMartin is off the mark. Gord points out that the elites in West Point Grey Poll swung to Vision. Are dense neighbourhoods voting Vision? Poll 61, the dense Joyce Street station neighbourhood right in the heart of Adrian Dix’ riding along Boundary Road was convincingly won by the NPA. COPE were thumped.
YUEN, Bill 478
WONG, Francis 425
BALL, Elizabeth 392
AFFLECK, George 387
TANG, Tony 371
LOUIE, Raymond P 369
JANG, Kerry 357
KLASSEN, Mike 356
CARANGI, Joe 348
CHARKO, Ken 344
MCCREERY, Bill 338
DEAL, Heather 298
REIMER, Andrea 291
BICKERTON, Sean 291
STEVENSON, Tim 285
LOUIS, Tim 262
MEGGS, Geoff 259
WOODSWORTH, Ellen 235
AQUINO, RJ 214
CARR, Adriane 193
Yaletown is also among the most dense Vancouver neighbourhoods, yet it was handily taken by the NPA. Here’s poll 17:
AFFLECK, George 667
BALL, Elizabeth 633
KLASSEN, Mike 605
MCCREERY, Bill 570
BICKERTON, Sean 566
CHARKO, Ken 562
YUEN, Bill 551
CARANGI, Joe 517
WONG, Francis 516
LOUIE, Raymond P 394
JANG, Kerry 379
REIMER, Andrea 379
DEAL, Heather 375
CARR, Adriane 375
MEGGS, Geoff 373
STEVENSON, Tim 347
TANG, Tony 333
WOODSWORTH, Ellen 248
LOUIS, Tim 197
AQUINO, RJ 152
Here only Louie cracks the top 10, but 110 votes behind Wong. In the case of poll 17 and 61 they are among Vancouver’s newest high density communities. Same with Coal Harbour. All NPA.
There will surely be much better analysis over time of the November 19 results. But the NPA didn’t do as well as expected mostly because its election machine wasn’t as effective as the Vision machine, which is in the end how you win.
Or maybe because *gasp* the NPA was selling something Vancouver voters didn’t want.
I never figured out what the NPA was selling, let alone whether I wanted it.
And the red-green map is far too neat and tidy. It doesn’t make any distinction between polling divisions which voted 50.1% Anton and divisions which voted 65% Anton, for example. A map with a few more choropleth categories might have told a different story.
My recommenation to househunters: find something between Ontario and Main where you can get the West Side neighbourhood feel, at an East Vancouver price!
Alternatively, the City could increase its tax haul by making Main Street the East-West dividing line and renumbering those two blocks!
The E and W separation on Ontario St is indeed stark, though the 1M delineation is also arbitrary.
Paul Clapham makes an excellent point about actual percentages not being seen in the red-green polling map
To take it one step further, one could make the same argument about actual dollars not being seen in the red-blue real estate map as well (especially with respect to the soft, near-eastern middle belly on the red side of mainstreet)
I suspect at least some of the Vision ridings on the West Side have something to do with starter condos and rental housing (maybe a single conservative-voting homeowner has two rental suites, occupied by younger, more “liberal” voters).
I suspect the Chicken Strategy wasn’t pulling in the younger voters either.
Poll 130 (West Point Grey) may include Drummond Drive, but the ultra-wealthy are vastly outnumbered by those of more modest means. A typical lot is 33×115, smaller that you’ll find in some east side neighbourhoods, and a very high percentage of the homes contain secondary suites. I think the NPA pledge to make life easier for developers worked against them in Point Grey. Many of the older residents were probably scared of what would happen to their neighbourhood if city hall stopped giving developers a free ride and decided to let them do the driving.
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