West Edmonton Mall

Aylesham Shopping Centre

Oakridge Mall

Kingsgate Mall is one of two Vancouver malls slated for (re)development. Recently it was announced that Oakridge Mall at 49th and Cambie would be converted from a low-rise two-storey structure (with acres of outdoor parking) to a city-within-a-city megapiece featuring 13 towers, the tallest at 45 storeys (see above). Within this mass, 2800 private homes and 350 retail shops.

While the Beedie Group (the current lease-holders of the Kingsgate Mall) have yet to reveal their plan, area residents continue to express concern over the scale of recent development applications, particularly in light of the controversial Rize proposal at Broadway and Kingsway, or the Stong's Markets site in Dunbar. As is often the case with these developments, the first to assure us are not the developers but the architects. On the topic of Oakridge, Stantec Architecure Ltd.'s Darren Burns had this to say: "I think you have to look long-term and think what the city will look like in 2050."

Like a lot of architects, Burns not only designs buildings (for developers) but sells them to area residents. Implicit within the architect's expanded role of "seller" is the changing role of area residents who, increasingly, want a say in that which they will be living next to. Indeed, as new models for developments take shape (such as the city-within-a-city structure at Olympic Village) so too are area residents forming their own critical structures.

Mediating between builders and concerned citizens are municipal governments, who approve development applications, ideally through community consultation. Have these governments developed new structures to consider the increasingly sophisticated concerns of area residents? That is the question being asked by those currently gathered on the steps of Vancouver City Hall, many of whom have imagined this city in 2050 and do not like what they see.

Kingsgate Mall

A resident of the Kensington-Cedar Cottage area in which I live has apprised neighbourhood listserve subscribers of a pro-community consultation rally tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. on the steps of City Hall. Although her motivation is based on the "Little Saigon" designation, a larger one looms: the proposed development of that most eccentric and wholly affordable of marketplaces -- Kingsgate Mall.

Readers of Kerry Gold's Globe and Mail article (see link) will notice not a news story but a halftone profile of Ryan Beedie, son of Beedie Group founder Keith Beedie. While I am hopeful that Gold's article marks the first of a series on the Kingsgate proposal (articles that include the voices of area workers, residents and social housing advocates), I have my doubts. Gold's real estate beat tends more towards affirmation than balance. Reading her these past few years you would think she is an embedded publicist for Rennie Marketing Systems.

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

On the table is a vase by the potter Mick Henry (its scrubbed-clean emptiness fills the room). Yesterday it was flowers, today it is music -- what Mick heard when his vase rose up between his hands, spoke to him, told him it was done.

Potters who make vases, knowing that we might stuff them with flowers. But vases unto themselves, first, perfect in advance of their utility.

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"Myself"

Everywhere I look is
black
The autumn opens its bra for the sky to suck
its huge imagination
In the darkness, streets are overturned 
Garbage dumps fly through the sky
People breathe a strange and fresh air
Deaf black houses are silently shocked 
by each tick-tock
Lying down in darkness
I feel consoled
that my eyes are still embedded in 
cubits of darkness, the most attractive color
for clothing, which I use to cover my face and furious body.
The faint lines in my chaotic thought
and the feeling of being prevented from sharing an apartment 
are completely nasty. 
The rippling black glances of my son this morning
when he looked at me meant: “Mom, please die!” 
His four-year-old hatred
makes me remember the freshness of loving,
the kind I haven’t seen for a very long time
because everything is colored 
and covered by foil
The blackness of spoiled fish
fried and yellowed in tomato juice
is an epicurean blackness
a memory to be shot and smashed 
The ambition of blackness
makes me lose sleep unceasingly
Insensitivity
licks me 
makes me smile and want to be at peace,
but it still crawls up my body and swallows my youth. 
In the end, I return to my room
needing a loss of memory
and the door is completely closed!