Open Collections

Pfister, Caroline

In our capitalist and settler-colonial society, being without a home means being excluded from the mainstream social body and being treated as less-than-citizen, or even as less-than-human. This exclusion is fueled by a blame-the-victim narrative which attributes poverty and homelessness to individual issues like mental illness or addiction, without acknowledging that the root causes of inequalities are systemic: colonialism, racism, discrimination, neoliberalism... Efforts to “house” people are often more about “cleaning-up” urban public space, without addressing the universal human need to be and feel included. Housing, when provided in such context, is bound to perpetuate homelessness rather than ending it. But what if housing had a different purpose? What if four walls and a roof were not about keeping people off the street, but rather about ending the marginalization that they live with? Could housing empower those who have been made dependent on an inadequate welfare system by a society that casts them as deficient individuals? Could housing meet human needs beyond the need for safe shelter, and address the needs for community and social inclusion? This thesis examines the links between urban development, the systemic reproduction of inequalities, and practices of social exclusion in a colonial and capitalistic context, before analyzing life in informal urban encampments to understand the role of appropriated collective spaces in helping residents break away from cycles of social exclusion. The findings from this investigation inform the development of a design proposal for a housing project located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The design process is user-centered, guided by the needs of four fictional residents. The proposal aims to foster community, empowerment, and social inclusion through the integration of appropriable and inclusive collective spaces that serve a continuum of social group scales.

Vancouver (B.C.); Downtown-Eastside (Vancouver, B.C.)

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0422919

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

Caroline Pfister

DSpace