Open Collections

Silva, Wellage Chandima

University of British Columbia

The dominant presence of white Eurocentric culture in Canada and its urban spaces perpetuates colonial power dynamics while hindering cultural equity and denying human dignity to Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and racialized visible minority populations. This research project, designed as a mixed-methods analysis, aims to explore the potential of urban cultural spaces to facilitate cultural equity or human dignity for racialized visible minorities in Vancouver. The study investigates the experiences of racialized Canadian immigrants and their encounters with exclusion and marginalisation in urban cultural spaces, using evocative autoethnography and conversational interviewing. Engaging Fanon and Coulthard's work on the colonial politics of recognition, this study examines how ethnic minority expression and creation in the urban form as a praxis of self-recognition can advance cultural equity in solidarity with Indigenous Land-Back movements. It engages in conversational interviews and reflexive notes from recent immigrant cultural productions (Buto-Buto and Piña). Building on the insights gained from exploring cultural production and activism by racialized visible minorities, notes from visits to cultural centres in Metro Vancouver, data analysis of open data, it examines the City of Vancouver's Culture Plan 2020-29 and its potential to promote cultural equity for racialized visible minorities and the limitations of such approaches. This study advocates a transformative approach to planning in Canada, emphasizing the transcultural placemaking potential of diverse groups for equitable urban spaces and democratic outcomes. It hopes to inform the development of strategies and policies to promote cultural equity for racialized visible minorities in urban spaces.

Text; Dataset

2025-01-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87038

Planning

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/