I really tried to love Vancouver. I will not spend a great deal of time trying to convince you that I did, but I really did. The fact is, five months after moving here, I’m a shadow of my old self. I will not spend a great deal of time trying to explain to you what happened, all you need to know is that the city had a pretty hard way of showing me our personalities don’t match. I can’t wait to get the hell out.

I hold Vancouver personnally responsible for all of this. You see, I’m an over-confident, stubborn twentysomething French girl. I refuse to believe that one can go in a few months from “hyper-active young graduate about to conquer the world” to “I feel like I’m dying inside.” Especially when each time you leave the city, be it for one day, you suddenly get all jumpy and annoyingly energetic again.

I know this sounds weird, but think about it for a minute. If you’re Canadian, you know that anyone who’s spent some time in Vancouver either loves it or hates it. Loves it like “I’ve visited 30 countries and I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” hates it like “this place has no soul and is truly depressing.” Actually, Canadians have pretty strong feelings about every major city in the country. “Toronto totally sucks.” “Montreal is just sooooo awesooome.” There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.

Now the people who hate Vancouver usually have a hard time explaining why it is so. Of course there’s the rain, lack of cultural events and nightlife, unappealing architecture, etc. But then they always end up adding something like “there’s just something to it.” Or, “it’s the vibe, I don’t dig it.” And eventually they conclude with “I don’t know what it is, but it’s just depressing.”

I’ve been trying to convince myself that maaaaybe the summer will reveal the city’s hidden treasures, feeling guilty to not be content with what I have. But the truth is, my mind was made up after a few days only. I remember the first time I walked on Commercial Drive. It didn’t take long before I thought “I don’t know what it is, but this street has something weird to it.” I didn’t feel comfortable at all. Nowhere in the city did I have the same sense of wonderment that Montreal elicited in me.

Where did that feeling come from? What is that “thing” about Vancouver that nobody seems to be able to explain? What happens in the brief moment during which we discover a new place that makes us decide whether we’re comfortable or not? I won’t take “gut feeling” for an answer. I shall discover what happens in our brain when we visit a city for the first time, how cities and places can affect our personality, and why we love or hate our cities so passionately. This will be an exciting trip into the fields of environmental psychology, urban sociology, psychogeography and more.

I’ve also decided to regularly give an account of the state of my research in this blog. Posts will be classified in the category “research.” You are encouraged to participate by submitting your ideas and hypotheses as well as by giving your opinion and advice.

Wish me well!

Flavie

This week, I’ve been looking at how chain stores can participate in urban revitalization. While doing some research for an article, I stumbled upon this 2005 Seattle Times article. American Apparel had just opened its first Seattle store in an area that was trying to take on a new lease of life, and hoped their presence would attract other boutiques. The article described their strategy:

While scouting locations for American Apparel stores, Webb looks for signs that speak to a hippay sensibility. Literal signs, such as “Loft Available” or “Vegetarian Restaurant.”

In a few instances, American Apparel is an active player in bringing other retailers to a street, leasing more space than it needs and subletting to those that cater to the same demographic.

In Houston, a city of malls, American Apparel opted to open downtown, where fashion boutiques do not exist, and is negotiating for a location in downtown San Jose, Calif. Yes, San Jose has a downtown.

And in Portland, American Apparel opened a store 18 months ago among boarded-up buildings on Southwest Stark Street instead of in the nearby Pearl District, where trendy redevelopment already had taken hold.

(By the way, did anybody stick with the term “hippay”?)

I never thought of urban revitalization as a conscious process, especially not operated by retail giants. Most of the time, revitalization happens progressively when store owners and artists look for cheap retail spaces and studios. But I incidentally found a similar example of this.

Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitter’s new headquarters are housed in a huge five-building, 11-acre campus located in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The building houses offices for the company’s different brands (Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie and Terrain) as well as employee services: a cafeteria, a coffee bar, a library and a fitness centre. The clothing and houseware company undertook the redevelopment of this former shipbuilding complex in 2004. The revamped buidings are a wonderful example of adaptation of turn-of-the-century industrial archictecture to contemporary purposes.

This great article from Metropolis magazine sums up pretty well the change this represented for the company:

The idea of yanking more than 600 of Philadelphia’s most creative—not to mention best-dressed —workers out of downtown was the equivalent of exiling Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue fashion houses to an industrial park near JFK. Losing so many trendsetters would surely diminish the Center City District’s hard-won cool quotient. Meanwhile all those hipsters in skinny jeans and vintage boots would have to figure out how to get to a compound so far off the city grid it was practically tumbling into the Delaware River. There wasn’t a coffeehouse or magazine stand in sight.

Other businesses have since relocated to the Navy Yard, creating more than 4,000 jobs and participating in the rebirth of South Philadelphia.

See more pictures on Decor8′s Flickr photostream.

Source: Le Monde.