“Vancouver’s Favourite Country Music Pub”, Single Room Occupancy Hotels, and the Context of International Frameworks: Mapping Vancouver’s Urban Law and Cultural Policy

Abstract

The public and private spaces of cities, their design, and the urban law and policy that shapes the lived spaces within cities provides a potent example of overlapping and often contested heritage(s) and heritage spaces that may have built heritage merit, may carry a high intangible value as gathering spaces for art, culture, and performance, or may be both characterized by their tangible and intangible heritage merit. The layers of diverging, contested, or interwoven heritage within the same urban spaces can diverge in what they mean to a group, community, or individual. They may represent significant moments of architectural grandeur, cultural capital, celebration, significant moments of horror that teeter within desires to forget their existence, or they may also represent a space for future cultural flourishing and community growth. Heritage space within a city may be less conventional than existing legal frameworks for assessing cultural heritage, value, or merit permit, and heritage assets can take numerous shapes involving sight, sound, smell, movement, and so on. This expanded and more inclusive manner of understanding the many iterations of what heritage can be in a city and what heritage spaces can signify for the many urban denizens and stakeholders who find meaning and community within the “third places” of a city, creates a complex web within which urban law and policy must navigate.

Keywords: Urban law; Inequality; Pub history; Intangible heritage

JEL Classification: K10; K11