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Well done Las Vegas, a very coherent story this week, helped along by your intro and conclusion.  Excellent visuals as well.  You could have delved into the idea of authenticity a bit more rather than leaving it as a 'settled' idea.

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Well done Las Vegas, a very coherent story this week, helped along by your intro and conclusion.  Excellent visuals as well.  You could have delved into the idea of authenticity a bit more rather than leaving it as a 'settled' idea.

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PS could you include me as an administrator next time so I don't keep obscuring parts of your posts with my comments.

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-       The implementation of modern technology (ex. The trams) played a large role in gentrifying the area, prompting the onset of shopping and commercial precincts, ultimately creating a more urbanized and populated space.

-       Fortitude valley today has been shaped into a more attractive and popular area as it comprises of attributes that welcome all people: live music, restaurants, and shopping sites.

-       Fortitude valley has experienced the emergence of “hipsters” as poorer stores transform into more attractive sties with vintage stores. However, this transformation unavoidably re-brands the area, re-shaping the identity and habitus of the population, ultimately clashing with the original character of the neighbourhood.

-       Chinatown no longer emits the authenticity of Chinese culture as modern developments in the area erode the soul and integrity of what makes Chinatown “Chinatown”

-       Therefore, in striving to create a more urbanized city, though we can generally perceive fortitude valley as a thriving and popular neighbourhood, aspects of fortitude valley have experienced the negative effects of gentrification

o   For example, the erosion of cultural integrity in Chinatown, as well as the re-branding and shaping of populations due to the onset of “hipsters”.

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This padlet discusses gentrification and authenticity in Fortitude Valley. The Las Vegas group looks at different aspects of Fortitude Valley and explores through research how gentrification and authenticity relates their aspect. Taylah discusses the history of Fortitude Valley. Emily explores what Fortitude Valley is like today. Paul explores the notion of hipsters in Fortitude Valley. Talya examines the gentrification of Chinatown in Fortitude Valley. By looking at the different aspects of Fortitude Valley, the group can make a final conclusion about gentrification and authenticity in Fortitude Valley.

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Brisbane Times article on the re-purposing of laneways and alleys in Brisbane (including Fortitude Valley) as public space.

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"Laneways don't necessarily have to be predominantly commercial," he said.

"They offer the opportunities to add a little bit more greenery into dense urban areas.

"You could even look at laneways as potential pocket parks. I don't see a lot of that in Brisbane right now but it might be an idea for the future.

Flexible use is another idea. Laneways lend themselves really well to pocket experiences like pop-up markets, pop-up restaurants and things like that so they can be flexible spaces."

Dr Matthews said laneways always had the potential of being unsavoury and the less they were used, the more unsavoury they would appear.

"If there's a dark alleyway and there's not much happening down there with sight lines obscured by piles of rubbish at the side of the laneway or pallets or large dumpsters and things like that, it creates a very unsavoury picture and people will tend to stay away," Dr Matthews said.

"If you flip that and you look at these spaces in terms of their potential as assets you understand them really as just smaller versions of other streets in the city."

Several retailers and cafes operate out of Bakery Lane in Fortitude Valley
Photo: Michelle Smith

About a decade ago Brisbane City Council launched its Vibrant Laneways program as a way to encourage more entertainment and dining opportunities within the city's laneways.

This program invested in Eagle Lane, Burnett Lane, Hutton Lane and Fish Lane.

The council's city planning chairman Matthew Bourke said laneway culture had thrived since the program with a growing number of businesses choosing to open on laneways.

"Redevelopment projects in the inner-city are continuing to add to laneways, including more recently at Fish Lane and for the newly created Bakery Lane in the Fortitude Valley."

The council has no additional funding planned for the program with private investment now driving the laneway revolution.

Valley Chamber of Commerce president Murray Sutherland said laneway rejuvenation had a big impact on the way the valley presented.

"Going back many years ago there were fairly old and derelict pockets in behind some of those buildings and I think they are certainly rejuvenating and making them nice little pockets of discovery," he said.

Dr Matthews said the first step to creating a quality laneway design or revitalisation program was to pay attention to what the community needed.

"My best advice would be to first of all pay attention to what the community needs, go and consult with them and ask them what they require from laneways," he said.

"The council can do their job they are there to try and come up with strategic overall programs and policies ... but what is also important is there are businesses and employers that are actually prepared to occupy those spaces."

Dr Matthews said in time laneway redevelopment may stretch our further into suburbs like New Farm and Teneriffe, but the further out from the CBD there was less need for the developments.

Bakery Lane and Winn Lane in Fortitude Valley will soon be extended to include California Lane, which will open soon.

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Brisbane's laneways: from derelict to destination

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"Laneways don't necessarily have to be predominantly commercial," he said. "They offer the opportunities to add a little bit more greenery into dense urban areas. "You could even look at laneways as potential pocket parks. I don't see a lot of that in Brisbane right now but it might be an idea for the future.

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The Gentrification of Chinatown in Fortitude Valley

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The Gentrification of Chinatown in Fortitude Valley

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Brisbane’s fortitude valley neighbourhood has partially undergone and will slowly continue to undergo the process of gentrification. However, in the Chinatown area in particular, we can observe an immense shift in the exploitative processes that gentrification can comprise as developers drive out the authentic culture, land, and people who make up the district (Walters, draft).

Chinatown is typically perceived as a sacred place for native Chinese people as it is devoted to maintaining a rich and genuine sense of Chinese culture to whatever city it’s placed in. Whether you’re in San Francisco, Vancouver, or New York, Chinatown is a district that emits a paralleled richness in culture as it is concentrated with authentic Chinese foods, people, businesses, decorations, and even mannerisms and practices (such as bargaining for goods with the local businessmen/women). However, sacred cultural niches that are placed big cities are in the process of (or have already undergone) gentrification. From an urban-city planner perspective, gentrification can be positively seen as a way to refine older parts of the city in order to match the modernized aesthetic to the rest of the city à moving all parts of the city forward, in a more urban direction. Whilst this process may be lead with good intention, it undeniably rids cultural hubs in the city of their uniqueness and soul. Vancouver’s Chinatown, for example, is in the midst of second wave gentrification as the ‘hipster population’ is slowly adapting and commodifying the Chinese culture into a more desirable and urbanized area. Brisbane’s Chinatown however, has come to a position of almost complete cultural eradication and is gradually advancing into the second wave of gentrification.

Brisbane’s Chinatown, located in fortitude valley has unfortunately been a successful target of the process of gentrification, as the district has almost totally been wiped of its soul and culture. The area now is no longer occupied by local Chinese herb and medicine markets, grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, or shops, but has rather been replaced and rezoned by newer restaurants and modified to accommodate more modern ways of living. The screenshots attached depict the unpromising integrity of what’s left of Chinatown as people are turned off by the lack of cultural vibrancy and poor upkeep.

Therefore, gentrification is suited to conform to “hegemonic global urbanism”, rather than to preserve the heritage of the cultures that are dying (Zukin, 2009, p. 545). Chinatown in fortitude valley is arguably starting to commence the second wave of gentrification as this vulnerable district acts as a perfect pawn for capital-driven developments.

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Real reviews of Chinatown from tripadvisor.com

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Real reviews of Chinatown from tripadvisor.com

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The cultural threat that Vancouver's Chinatown is facing

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The cultural threat that Vancouver's Chinatown is facing

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Imagine if Chinatown no longer existed. Those shops stacked high with winter melon like mini Zeppelins, heaps of dried mussels and cucumbers, butcher shops with crinkly Chinese sausage dangling from green string and bright pink BBQ pork, ginseng, tea - all of it gone, replaced with chain stores and high-end supermarkets.

There's already a fancy new supermarket on Main Street where, under the watchful eye of a concierge at the door, you can buy $10 sandwiches at the espresso bar. At Gore and Pender is the giant mural depicting Tao scholar Lao Tzu. Now, a residential building under construction completely obstructs it.

Gentrification isn't just nibbling at Chinatown's edges. Thanks to rezoning changes, it's taking major bites out of the neighbourhood. There are two major mixed-use condo rezonings at Main Street and Keefer that are massive, bulky and featureless, like something you'd see on Robson Street. Instead of Chinatown's packed sidewalks that force you to dodge elderly people with their wheeled shopping bags - part of the experience - this stretch of bright wide sidewalk speaks of new money.

Class inversion is happening in cities throughout North America. Urban cores used to be the domain of low-income groups, while the wealthier demographic lived in the suburbs. In recent years, wealthier groups are choosing urban living and pushing low-income groups to the outskirts, or further.

"You have to ask, 'Where is this coming from? Who are you serving?'" asks Kevin Huang, executive director of the Hua Foundation, a non-profit for young Chinese-Canadians. Mr. Huang is also committed to supporting the people who form the tight-knit Chinatown community, and who are now under threat of displacement.

He gave me a tour of Chinatown this week, pointing out the many empty storefronts that used to be run by old Chinese family businesses. Some moved out when the new owners increased the rents. Others were evicted, the properties held as investments. The impact is significant, as Mr. Huang's own survey shows. He's counted the loss of 50 per cent of the area's green grocers in the last six years, 33 per cent of herbal stores, 60 per cent of fishmongers and 38 per cent of BBQ meats and butcher shops closed in that time period. With so much uncertainty, the association that owns the May Wah Hotel on East Pender - which is 120 units of single-room housing - has decided to put the heritage building on the market for $10-million.

"With this rezoning, I think this is a battle for the soul of Chinatown, and what does it mean for us as a city in terms of diversity and inclusion," Mr. Huang says.

People worry that the city's changes that allow building heights of 120 and 150 feet on Main Street have already made the historic neighbourhood bulldozer bait. They say a new proposal to allow 200-foot store frontages in exchange for 20-per-cent social housing would incentivize so much development it would be the end for Chinatown as we know it. Those new storefronts would be half a block wide, or roughly eight lot sizes. It's feared that land assemblies would become rampant, as in other areas of the city. There's evidence of an assembly under way on Gore Street, Mr. Huang says.

"We seem to be treating Chinatown as a development site instead of a community," civic historian John Atkin says.

The old mom-and-pop shops are already hurting, faced with mounting property taxes and aging ownership. The educated next generation doesn't always want to take over the old business. And those new corporate retailers wouldn't be able to buy from within the neighbourhood or from small local farms the way current businesses have for a century. The old local economy of Chinatown - a model of sustainability before it became a buzzword - would be destroyed.

Chinatown is one of the city's lowest income neighbourhoods. It is also a strong community. Like other North American Chinatowns, it formed more than a century ago in the face of racism and segregation. The community banded together with associations that offered cheap single-room housing and other community supports. Residents fought a 1960s plan to mow Chinatown down with a freeway, and if Mr. Huang and a mobilized group of a second and third generation Chinese activists get their way, it will survive this new threat of destruction by gentrification.

Melody Ma, a self-professed "policy wonk," grew up attending dance classes in Chinatown. Both Ms. Ma and Mr. Huang see the city's failure to prioritize people, with their histories and traditions and lives, as the problem. Other cities have adopted culture as an integral part of their urban planning, including New Westminster and Montreal, so they've asked Vancouver City to consider doing the same. Councillor Elizabeth Ball put forward the motion Wednesday and city council agreed to consider adopting recommendations that would make culture as much a priority as green buildings.

If the city had already adopted such a policy, it's doubtful the two massive buildings on Main Street that dwarf Chinatown would look the way they do now, Ms. Ma says.

"That means developers will have to make sure they consider the needs of the community prior to even talking to city hall - that we're recognizing the culture and history and the aspirations of the people who live there," she says.

It's more than the buildings. Unless the culture is preserved, the place becomes commodified and soulless, she says. To thwart displacement, the city offers up bigger building potential in exchange for a few units of social housing. But what good is social housing if a community is wiped out?

As she sees the changes, Ms. Ma wonders where she'll fit in.

"I grew up in Vancouver, and I'm starting to wonder whether this is the right place for me to be in anymore. Not because of affordability issues, but because I'm seeing that the city losing its soul, and it loses its soul when the culture is disappearing.

"My childhood is a construction pit right now. And all around town this is happening. If we continue on this path, then what you are going to get is the Hooters and Walmarts and Rexalls that can afford these places, and we lose all the character that makes us want to live here."

All indications are that Chinatown would be well on its way to revitalizing if the threat of big development wasn't in the air. Tons of new coffee shops, restaurants, barbershops and boutiques have opened in the last few years. Restaurants have nearly doubled. In 2011, there were 405 business licensees; in 2016, licensees grew to 429, according to city data. Chinatown is proving to be a draw for young small business operators.

Chef Ryan Mah is owner of Pacific Poke, which occupies a small space in one of the new developments.

Mr. Mah's grandfather Tim Louie was the first son of famous B.C. grocery store businessman H.Y. Louie. Both his grandparents, Tim and Pearl, ran small businesses in Chinatown. When he went looking to start his own restaurant, he knew he wanted to return to the neighbourhood.

Other Chinese-Canadian entrepreneurs of millennial age share the same desire to bring the old hood back to life.

Mr. Mah takes a break from his work behind the counter to talk about the city's proposed changes.

"It really hurts the small businesses and community, and it takes a lot of opportunity away for the Chinese residents here in general."

Small businesses such as Mr. Mah's face deeper challenges if the city doesn't craft policies to protect them. In the 200-block of E. Georgia and Keefer streets alone, assessments climbed 20 per cent, or $615,000 on average, per parcel, in 2016. A new building at 245 E. Georgia, which used to be the Keefer Bakery, went up 67 per cent. Ms. Ma knows of a former grocery that now stands empty after being flipped at least once. She thinks the city should consider an empty-store tax the way they've done with homes. Empty storefronts are blight on a community. She'd like to start a shaved ice or bubble tea store of her own, but leases are high, and many of the landlords want only temporary pop-up businesses instead of long-term tenants. Others don't maintain the buildings, Ms. Ma says.

Ms. Ball says the city has to be careful not to build a city of soulless developments.

"Money has its own life and you have to realize money as a great big thing sitting there has to be balanced ...We want culture in our city. We have a chance to stop and take a breath, and say, 'You've created a beautiful resort, but what have you put in that allows people in their small apartments to find a way to communicate with the people around them?' Very little."

The city's acting assistant director of planning for downtown, Karen Hoese, says she's been listening to the criticisms. They are looking at ditching the rezoning policy that allows buildings higher than 90 feet. But if they allowed a bigger project, with a wider frontage, it could allow for better design and the city could get community benefits out of the developer. But she's hearing that the community isn't impressed with the benefits, or the threat to their neighbourhood. So they will be seeking more feedback in February, after Chinese New Year.

"It's this trade off between Chinatown character and getting the public benefits you would get through allowing larger developments," Ms. Hoese says. "And one thing I'm hearing is [a concern for] Chinatown character ... And we have been hearing concern about the big developments. We need to hear about those concerns.

"Unfortunately, there have been negative responses to certain things happening in Chinatown, but it has pulled people together, and I think it's great young people in Chinatown are getting involved in determining the future of that community."

But pressure on the community will only intensify because the area is in the crosshairs of future densification. A couple of blocks away, the viaducts will come down and the new St. Paul's Hospital will transform the historic area into a hub of high-tech medical care.

Ms. Ma says "it was a mountain to climb" just getting council to agree to consider culture as a priority.

"We have to ask ourselves, 'How do we place a culture or community first - rather than just follow finance?'"

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Vancouver's Chinatown threatened by development and demographics

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Imagine if Chinatown no longer existed. Those shops stacked high with winter melon like mini Zeppelins, heaps of dried mussels and cucumbers, butcher shops with crinkly Chinese sausage dangling from green string and bright pink BBQ pork, ginseng, tea - all of it gone, replaced with chain stores and high-end supermarkets.

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Fortitude Valley has become widely known within Brisbane over the years due to its hub that’s comprised of music, restaurants, bars, and variety of businesses. Although ‘The Valley’ as most residents call it, has unique factors that set it apart from other places in the city, “…raw, yet sophisticated. It is where elegance and style meet grungy and offbeat…” (Visit Brisbane 2018). It is a place where you can go and let loose with your mates, see some live music, or grab a bite to eat. There is a wide array of options for locals, or tourists to get involved with during an outing. Fortitude Valley used to be considered as part of Brisbane’s darker side, and not a place you would find the elite social class. It can be described as, “…known for illegal gambling houses, unlicensed night clubs, brothels, and police corruption” (Queensland Places 2018). However this all began to change when gentrification started among the suburb. It then had created a place with large department stores, safer night life, and blooming businesses. This is still in tact today as you can find all these same outlets along the strips that make up The Valley. What sets Fortitude Valley apart is it’s ability to incorporate the history that made it into the area that we currently see today. It didn’t morph into an upper class, or rich area after rising up from where it all began. There is still a sense of authenticity, and “grungy” vibe that is incorporated into the atmosphere and community. When you compile all of these factors together, this is what Fortitude Valley is made up of; But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Hipsters - The Unwitting Agents of Gentrification?

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Hipsters - The Unwitting Agents of Gentrification?

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Fortitude Valley is a distinct inner-city area with many spaces of consumption and culture. While distinctly different to West End, the Valley has its own unique flavour which has attracted entrepreneurial hipsters. Is the presence of a hipster element a signifier that an area has reached the point where second wave gentrification must necessarily follow? Historically this has been the case and arguments alternatively point to the hipster as an agent of gentrification, or a symptom of the process (Mullins, Natalier, Smith, & Smeaton, 1999; Hubbard, 2016).

Fortitude Valley has become a popular residential area of young professionals and middle-class creative types and early stage gentrification in this area is visible. Poorer stores which once served working-class populations have been replaced with stores and boutiques supplying cultural commodities like coffee, vintage clothing and craft beer. Hipster entrepreneurs have taken what is believed to be local and ‘authentic’ and commodified it, valorising Fortitude Valley’s local and history as a high-end shopping district (Hubbard, 2016). This is taken as a sign by most that the district is improving, however it also encourages the colonisation of the area by the more affluent in search of the lifestyles it provides (Hubbard, 2016).

Discourse that brands an area in a certain way then becomes rhetoric, then as a strategy for growth, shaping how an area develops. Hipsters add a new place identity discourse even if it’s a simulacrum (Zukin 2011). The hipster effect on culture attracts the wealthy who come to avail themselves of the social and cultural capital residing in the area grants (Hubbard, 2016; Bourdieu, 1986). The changing habitus of the area’s population (and its higher cultural capital) clashes with and overpower the original residents (Bourdieu, 1986). The original population of the area gradually disperses to other regions and are replaced. These effects combine to push up retail and residential rents, which further force marginalised and vulnerable groups out. This raise in value is then typically exploited by developers who ride in on the hipster’s coattails and commence the second wave gentrification process (Mullins, et al., 1999).

In this way hipsters form a pseudo vanguard for big capital, though rarely is the hipster party to this arrangement. Hipsters themselves are mostly displaced when real capital enters the area. Once the process of gentrification is complete, hipsters cannot maintain the rents and consumption levels the area’s new affluence demands and are themselves forced to move on (Hubbard, 2016).

Fortitude Valley is already feeling the ‘touch of the hipster,’ with several stores, cafes and music venues opening which exploit and shape the cultural shift of the area. The presence of this new type of consumption indicates that Fortitude Valley will be experiencing large-scale gentrification in the years to come. Once this happens the hipsters will move on to a new area, to which capital will inevitably follow.

References
Mullins, P. Natalier, K. Smith, P. Smeaton, B. (1999). Cities and Consumption Spaces. Urban Affairs Review. 35, 44-71

Hubbard, P. (2016). Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier. Sociological Research Online, 21(3). Doi: 10.5153/sro.3962

Zukin, S. (2011). Reconstructing the authenticity of place. Theoretical Sociology 40. 161-165. Doi: 10.1007/s11186-010-9133-1

Bourdieu, P. (1986) The Forms of Capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York, NY: Greenwood Press.

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Fortitude Valley, more commonly known as “The Valley” is a suburb located northeast of the Brisbane central business district (Australia, 2018). In the early 1850s, European settlement began in Fortitude Valley (Queensland Places, 2018). The settlement was distant from Brisbane as it was separated by hilly terrain (Queensland Places, 2018). By the late 1850s, there were around 100 to 150 houses in Fortitude Valley (Queensland Places, 2018). By the 1900s, Fortitude Valley had churches, chapels, State and Catholic schools, and halls (Queensland Places, 2018). In the early 1900s, it was estimated that around 16,000 people lived in the suburb with most people living in the numerous villa residences which were located on the outskirts of the suburb towards the river (Queensland Places, 2018).

In the 1890s, electric trams were introduced into Fortitude Valley and became the main access to The Valley (Queensland Places, 2018). The suburb became a ‘city centre’ outside of the Brisbane city (Queensland Places, 2018). As the tram system was already established, shop owners decided it was a logical choice to establish a shopping precinct in Fortitude Valley (Queensland Places, 2018). In the early 1900s to the 1960s, the shopping centre known as McWhirters thrived in The Valley because of its close proximity to Brisbane CBD and the easy access to the trams (Queensland Places, 2018). In the 1950s and 1960s, the shopping centre became the largest non-CBD shopping precinct in Australia (Queensland Places, 2018). However, with the rise of suburban shopping centres and the tram network closing in 1969, the shopping precinct struggled with the decreasing number of customers. (Queensland Places, 2018) This led to the dilapidation of the shopping precinct in the 1970s (Queensland Places, 2018).

In the 1970s and 1980s, Fortitude Valley became an uncertain suburb (Queensland Places, 2018). The Valley became a place known for illegal gambling houses, unlicensed night clubs, brothels, and police corruption (Queensland Places, 2018).

The first step to revitalising Fortitude Valley was the opening of the Chinatown Mall in 1987 (Queensland Places, 2018). This process of revitalisation can be noted as gentrification. Gentrification is when a deteriorating suburb undergoes a renovation to restore the suburb into a lively place (Walters & McCrea, 2013). Chinatown Mall hoped their presence would be the first step in removing the criminal activities and creating an area full of people like the suburb once had with their shopping precinct. Chinatown Mall was successful in bringing back locals and visitors to Fortitude Valley for the Chinese culture and food (Visit Brisbane, 2018). Contemporary buildings, clubs, bars, restaurants, and boutique shops were also built amongst heritage-listed properties to revitalise The Valley (Visit Brisbane, 2018). The Valley did this so the suburb could still remain ‘authentic’ rather than just transforming the suburb into a newly developed area (Walters & McCrea, 2013).

In the 1990s, Fortitude Valley became a place that had a thriving live music scene and was known for their nightclub district (Australia, 2018). The Valley is still known as this today. In 2012, it was reported that around 50,000 people go to the Valley on the weekend to enjoy the clubs, pubs, and restaurants in the suburb (Visit Brisbane, 2018).