GROWING PAINS
With rapid growth comes some surprise developments
Residents love Richmond despite a flood of newcomers that has triggered some tension.
Jordan Loo says Richmond has been “a safe place to grow up.” Working with a friend on their laptops at a café in Richmond, Loo, 26, said the city is “way more laid-back than Hong Kong.”
Loo just spent three years in Hong Kong “to work and get in touch with my roots.” And even though he can make a higher salary in Hong Kong than in Richmond, Loo prefers his imperfect hometown because “it’s not all about money and being in a rush.”
He is sitting with Justin Ng, 26, as the two friends discussed the pros and cons of the extremely rapid demographic change that has swept Richmond in the past three decades. Ng loves Richmond, where he also went to public school, but he’s concerned about the way ethno-cultural groups tend to stick together.
Self-segregation was just one of many issues the two reviewed in their conversation, just as many other Richmond residents often privately weigh what works and what doesn’t in their fast-changing and expansive city on the Fraser River delta.
Despite their appreciation for Richmond’s urban calm, ethnic harmony and openness to diversity, residents interviewed by The Vancouver Sun would not go so far as to say they had found Nirvana.
Numerous issues, and some tensions, are rising to the fore — over ethnic enclaves, new policing challenges, language barriers (particularly conflict over Chinese-language signs), shifting politics, extreme housing unaffordability and threats to community cohesion.
The number of people in Richmond has more than doubled in three decades, to more than 200,000. It’s B.C.’s fourth-largest city.
Between 1981 and 2011, the ethnic Chinese population grew by 82,000, almost all of them immigrants. The South Asian population expanded by 10,000 and Filipinos by 11,000 in the same period, with the white population dropping by 28,000.
No city in Canada, and arguably the world, has such a high proportion of permanent residents born outside the country — 62 per cent. And many of them remain on the move between Canada, Asia and elsewhere.
Vancouver International Airport, located in Richmond, now handles three million passengers a year flying back and forth across the Pacific.
Richmond-raised Justin Tse, a post-doctoral geography student at the University of Washington, says Metro Vancouver, particularly Richmond, is a key destination for the fast-rising number of wealthy “transnational migrants.” Tse’s research has discovered Richmond takes in a larger-than-average share of East Asian trans-national families, who typically want their children to go to North American schools, such as the nearby University of B.C.
Meanwhile, amid all the metamorphosis, some Richmond residents continue to hold fond memories of the way things used to be. That’s when flat Richmond was largely covered with farmland, modest single-family homes, frog ponds and many say people seemed more connected, fondly calling the city “Ditchmond.”
But everyone in Richmond seems to know, good or bad, there’s no going back to the way things used to be. So what are some more of the ways that escalating change — both demographic and physical — is striking Richmond?