The Nature of Urban Heritage: The View from New Westminster, British Columbia

Abstract

Historic waterfronts are iconic sites of urban change, and the redevelopment of urban waterfronts – from sites of industrial work and commerce to post-industrial places of residence, retail and recreation – is a global phenomenon. Official discourses about such places are intimately related to the changes in physical land use, in material practices and in the production of publics. Using ethnographic research conducted in the post-industrial waterfront city of New Westminster, British Columbia, I examine the way that planning discourses about (re)connecting the city to the Fraser River are embedded in broader claims about heritage and identity. New Westminster, a rapidly gentrifying city within Metro Vancouver, has long taken pride in its British colonial past. As city leaders have worked to redevelop the industrial waterfront, however, they have quietly jettisoned the colonial heritage narratives in favour of ones in which local heritage is found in nature, represented by the Fraser River. I examine the ways that urban history, class, and ethnic identity are represented and contested through these discourses, and I argue that despite the very different content of the dominant heritage narratives, they each bracket social class and cultural diversity.