With the generous support of Larry Bell, an alum of the Department of Geography and the Urban Studies Program at the University of British Columbia, we are pleased to convene a Forum of distinguished experts to explore Vancouver's relation to global capital flows. We will explore three sets of questions:
1. How are key cities in the world economy becoming sites of investment as insurance against an uncertain future? What is unique about Vancouver's experience as a hedge city? What lessons can Vancouver learn from the experience of London, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, and other cities? How do emerging trends in Vancouver provide lessons for other cities?
2. How can we measure and map the complexity of the hedge city? What does "foreign ownership" mean in an era when more and more families are living transnational lives? How can recent changes and longer-term trends be measured in light of the absence of long-form data from the 2011 Census of Canada, and the restoration of the long-form for 2016? What are the prospects for a longitudinal, micro-data Canadian counterpart to the American Housing Survey, which provides essential information for home-builders, investors, and policymakers in the United States? How would a Canadian version of the detailed lending data from the U.S. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and/or the Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Public-Use Database help us to monitor short- and long-term trends in housing and debt?
3. How does the rise of the hedge city present new challenges for planning, public debate, and public policy? What will the legal and regulatory classification of "foreign" individuals involve, and how is it likely to interact with regional discussions of immigration, ethno-racial and cultural change, and inequalities of wealth and class? How can communities and policymakers at different levels of government adapt and negotiate conflicts over taxation, public services, and inequality?
Vancouver, BC, September 2016