Is Culture Destiny? 2

I live. downtown.  I live not just downtown, but in a particular part of downtown Vancouver, known as Downtown South.  It's the slightly better off sibling to our notorious Downtown Eastside.  This has long been a seedy neighbourhood, known more for it's bars, fleabag hotels, sex shops, greasy spoon diners and pawnbrokers.  Until maybe thirty-two years ago when the first middlebrow hotel opened in the 'hood.  Gentrification has since sunk its hooks into the area.  There are now fewer sex shops, fleabag hotels and greasy spoon diners.  I haven't bothered to notice if there is still a pawn shop.  The hotels are now all middlebrow and cater to international tourists travelling on a budget.  There have been a number of condos and luxury apartments built here recently, along with affordable housing buildings for the poor, mentally ill and low-income seniors.

What has resulted is an interesting cultural mix, based more on income than ethnicity.  We have yuppies, poor people, street people and middle class tourists all co-existing and never talking to each other.  All, or almost all, the aboriginals are poor and/or street involved.  Between nail spa, sports bar and Starbucks, everyone goes about on their own business.  The visible crime and street edginess help contribute to an ambience of fear and suspicion.  The most successful business is the liquor store next door to my building.  There used to be a second hand bookstore.  It has been gone for nearly ten years.

This is neither a nice, or a welcoming neighbourhood.  There is absolutely no sense of community or neighbourhood.  Did I say that no one talks to each other?  We have here a clear and disturbing visual of the kind of growing economic inequality that is rapidly turning Canada into a sick country.

Ethnicity doesn't appear to matter here.  Only what you have.  Or don't have.  Sidewalk beggars and homeless people sleeping in doorways in all weather co-exist with well dressed fashion victims.  Mentally ill and low income renters such as me simply come and go as we need to.  I tend not to go out at night.  It feels neither safe or comfortable.

My neighbourhood is evidence in microcosm that the real cultural determinant of the twenty-first century is going to have very little to do with ethnicity and a lot to do with income.