Culture-Led Regeneration in the Post-Industrial Built Environment : Complements and Contradictions in Victory Square, Vancouver

A nuanced discourse on the mix of factors shaping the urban cultural economy includes investigations of the saliency of the built environment, and particularly the positionality of heritage buildings, in cultureled urban regeneration programs. To this enterprise we contribute an assessment of cultural regeneration in Victory Square, an historically rich and socially-contested site at the intersection of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside [DTES] and the Central Business District (CBD), with its long history of marginalization and contemporary trajectory of social upgrading, and the insistently revalorized inner city of new high-rise residential communities. Both the conflictual past and dislocations of the ‘active present’ insert multiple narratives into the regeneration storyline, underscoring the complexity of social relations played out within the postindustrial landscapes of the city. ; Applied Science, Faculty of ; Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of ; Reviewed ; Faculty ; Graduate