Gentrifying Farm Land? Land-use change in Kelowna, BC.
While I've been persuaded to believe that land-use shouldn't be the be all, end all of urban planning, I've decided to start an occasional series on examples of land-use changes as they relate to the great gentrification debate. Let's be clear: change is not synonymous with gentrification. Change can happen in any space. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "That suburb is sure gentrifying," despite the fact that suburbs do indeed turn-over. This change may not be accompanied by grand physical manifestations, but when the occupants change, the place changes. And as I so flippantly say gentrification can't happen in suburbs, I'm hit with the reality that my own childhood neighbourhood might be a prime example of gentrification. Maybe reserving the term for major cities is an unfair snobbery I picked up somewhere along the way. In fairness to my own double-take, I'll begin where I began. Or almost began (I moved there when I was three).
I grew up on an apple orchard. Yes, living on an apple orchard is accompanied by all of the bucolic images that jump to your mind: thousands of trees to climb, build forts in and play hide-go-seek between. But do I live there now? No. Would I ever want to move back to that lifestyle? No. You'll just have to trust me that with those incidental memories, there are many less picturesque realities (just consult the suicide rate of farmers to get a better view of what I mean).
As tree farming is a higher-density production than other agricultural pursuits, our farm was about 35 acres with several thousand trees. Due to this density, it lends itself to a unique phenomenon: the parcels of farm land are zoned as much smaller strips than the mind-blowing sizes of section-system of prairie farming or ranching. Fruit farms are much closer together. Not exactly a high-density scenario, but nevertheless, as a kid, we did have neighbours within walking distance. My family's orchard was adjacent to the neighbourhood store and across from my elementary school.
Trick-or-Treating
Every year, my mother insisted that on Halloween I stuck to trick-or-treating in "my neighbourhood." For two or three hours of effort, I was rewarded with whatever came from about twenty neighbours. I had to strategize because there was one little old German widow who had to come last, because she would inevitably be the last house of the night. Every year she and my mother would start chatting, then the undeniable invite for tea would arrive. My hopes for bite-sized Oh Henry! bars thwarted, replaced with a Speckulaas cookie (the Windmill shaped ones). The following day, I was always a bit jealous of my classmates whose parents drove them to proper residential neighbourhoods. Of course, they'd all be hung-over from terrible sugar highs the night before, full of regret and stomach pains while I'd have to wait for St.Valentine's Day to make up the difference.
This is not a morality tale of how moderation triumphed, nor a memoir of how romantic my childhood was. It is a picture of a unique land-use relationship. Of the 20 places I hit, probably less than half of them were farms. Near the school there was a small cluster of houses, and further down the road there was one cul-de-sac. The German widow lived in one of these houses. Between and behind these clusters, there were tree farms. I wasn't allowed to skip them on my trick-or-treating excursion, and I was properly rewarded (I think my per capita take was far higher).
Until the 90s, even though these farms were relatively small in agricultural terms, they were, nevertheless family farms, inhabited by full-time orchardists. These family farmers weren't "playing" hobbyists, they were actually trying to be breadwinners. I say "trying," not to be disparaging, but to note that it was in the 90s when the previous order of agriculture collapsed.
When I was a primary schooler, I officially lived on a rural route, RR3 to be exact. Later in elementary school, I graduated to living on a road, with a street address. My family didn't move. What changed was the several parcels of land in the area that were subdivided, let out of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Our area had suburbs in an instant. Suddenly, my elementary school couldn't house all of its students. Grade three was a boom year for my social life.
As fruit farming of the old order became less-and-less sustainable, these nicely-sized strips became appealing to a much different set. No, not exactly what you're thinking. The ALR limited the uses of property; so while some sub-divisions did develop, most of the land remained untouchable. Many property-owners were stuck. They couldn't make it as family farmers, and many children of farmers have little desire to continue the family business, so who could fill the gap? Two typologies were created: larger immigrant families from farming backgrounds in the Punjab region who continued the orchardist tradition and estate owners who built large houses while maintaining their trees as a hobby.
I recently returned to my neighbourhood with my mother. My mother moved "into town" many years ago, so we returned to play a game of "who-do-we-still-know." It is a mixed-bag of results. Some people have remained (the store-owner, many of the new families that took over in the 90s, and some of the neighbours in the pre-subdivision houses), while a lot have moved on. When we went through the suburbs from my grade three year, we knew no one. As we passed the farms converted to estates, we also knew no one. But these houses and estates were occupied. New, likely younger, families had moved in. This is definitely change. But is it gentrification?
When we were wandering around, my mother and I discussed how drastically she felt the change that arrived with the sub-divisions and estates. Before, there were no McMansions to speak of. There were farms and tucked away in the forest there were four trailer parks. There were the richer folks in the neighborhood (the doctor and the storekeeper), but the general sense was that this was a less affluent community. When the subdivisions arrived, the old tenants were priced out. The modest farm houses disappeared.
Is this a bad thing? Let's not sugarcoat the neighbourhood with the "we were poor but we were happy" line. The truth is, a lot of people who lived in the neighbourhood were very, very, unhappy. I wouldn't be able to fully comment because the centering point of the neighbourhood for many was a place I could not go: the local pub. It was not actually in my neighborhood, but in an adjacent neighborhood of farms (the children of which came to our school). Back to the density issue, this one pub serviced the farming community for a large swathe of Kelowna's farming area. It would be foolish to ignore the numerous social problems that were latent; somewhat protected from discovery by the seclusion of the place.
