Name
From Double Dispossession to Relational Cities: Indigenous Resistance to Transit-Oriented Development in British Columbia
Date & Time
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Description
Critical urban geography challenges dominant theories of urban development, noting how new developments that dispossess residents of social housing is an expression of social processes and not individual choices. However, critical urban geography does not explicitly acknowledge how Indigenous persons who live in cities often experience double dispossession, where colonial processes dispossess them of their ancestral territories and where contemporary urban development dispossess them of social housing. This talk sits at the confluence of critical geographic theories of urban dispossession and Indigenous studies theories of colonial dispossession so to understand Indigenous experiences and resistance to Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia from 2011-2018. Using a critical relational theory of forms to analyze digital content produced by mainstream news outlets and Indigenous housing activists, I find that Indigenous activists living in Metro Vancouver led a multi-ethnic resistance to TOD that sought to stop developers from dispossessing community members of de facto social housing and advocated for a relational urban community. I end this talk by reflecting on Indigenous housing activists’ theories on how urban life is and ought to be, particularly as it relates to making urban communities more relational.
Location Name
Canal (CB) 2400
Session Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract ID
106
Speaker Name
J.J. Manson
Speaker Organization
University of California Davis
Session Name
CS159 Geographies of Resistance and Organizing