“Design is the Mortar in Social Housing that Works”

Today is the final installment of Remarkk’s Shark Week Creative Hubs Week and I wanted to highlight the social sustainability dimension that is sometimes lost in the heavy panting over attracting Richard Florida’s Creative Class and the eagerness of the culture sector to move up the public policy agenda. I’ll save a critique of Florida for another time.

Today’s Globe and Mail has a story about Vancouver architect Gregory Henriquez and his new book Towards an Ethical Architecture, which will be launched at Vancouver’s Interurban Gallery today. The article poses some important challenges to both social-housing advocates, our municipal politicians and the NIMBY crowd.

Technorati Tags: politics, creativehubs, vancouver, socialinnovation, creativeclusters, housing, Toronto, clusters

I gather that my new friend Irwin’s gallery is involved with or adjacent to Henriquez’ most recent project, the Woodward’s District. Irwin posed great questions about the forces of gentrification and displacement of low-income people which arts and culture-driven redevelopment projects have a tendency to produce. Irwin lives and works at ground-zero of heart-breaking poverty, addiction and social exclusion in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The Woodward’s project appears to be a reasonable response, by interweaving cultural facilities, social services, market condos and social housing into one project. Surely we should be looking at similar models in response to Toronto’s horrifying condo monoculture and chronic homelessness problems.

What appears clear to me is that the ideas, tools and techniques of creative community building, excellence in design and a deliberate and socially aware intent can address the concerns about gentrification and displacement, as well as open the wider community’s eyes to possible solutions to difficult problems. A single project cannot fulfill an entire community’s hopes and dreams. But the possibilities and models that these projects around the world provide can engage a community and the political class into rethinking policy and planning approaches to sustainable urban development.

Florida’s thesis has yet to emerge into a wider political discussion outside the policy wonkosphere. The creative class has no class consciousness. It is not (yet?) a coherent group with a shared identity and values that politically bargains for its collective interests. Until there is a widespread movement of community-builders and political engagement, these issues will remain behind the firewall of policy forums.

Thankfully, there are visionary leaders that are moving the dialogue and practice forward.