Honours Profile: Kyra Vergara

Essay: For the worlds we dream of building: On reimagining progress & the aesthetics of gentrification

Kyra Vergara graduated from Simon Fraser University earlier this year with a BA in Sociology (Honours with Distinction) and completed her honours project under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Scott.

Her project explores the intersections of urban “revitalization”, taste, sustainability, and perceptions of progress. We interviewed Kyra to get to know more about her project and to ask about her experience in the SA Honours program.

What is your honours project about?

My honours thesis – For the worlds we dream of building: On reimagining progress & the aesthetics of gentrification – delved into the intersections of urban “revitalization”, taste, sustainability, and perceptions of progress. Through field observations in Surrey Central and False Creek, alongside semi-structured interviews with young adults, my research took on a predominantly critical stance on the redevelopment of growing urban centres such as Surrey Central. The neighbourhood’s new construction advertises a lifestyle of luxury, modernity, and “smartness”, though not without further disenfranchising its visible unhoused population from the city’s present and future. 

The critiques found in my project are rooted in imagining holistically sustainable cities, way past how they are envisioned right now. It’s a small step in ensuring that these goals for cleaner urban centres are not limited to their contribution to mere climate-friendly living solutions, but ones that ask “who is the city built for?” so that they may have the capacity to care for all its inhabitants.

How did you decide on your topic? What sparked your interest in it?

Rooted in sociology is the belief that people and the systems they find themselves entangled in are far from isolated. At the risk of sounding reductive, the cyclical relationship I sought to highlight in my thesis – of how peoples’ perceptions of progress are influenced by the aesthetics of urban design, which then drives the production of new neighbourhoods, before rising and repeating to influence perceptions of progress – was the best way I could think of to honour the sociological imagination that I still feel so struck by.

To have the privilege of speaking with and writing about the folks who so graciously let me interview them compelled me to give this project as much love and care as I could: Their vulnerability and honesty in conversations about their futures, hopes, dreams, fears, dreads, and imaginations left me driven to seek out what the ‘good life’ could and should be. I saw this project as an exercise in giving back to my community, the cities I’ve spent my whole life in, and the field of sociology – all of which I’ve found so much tenderness and love in. I wanted to write something that would remind me of that. Of the soft and strong relationships that have held me together, and a vignette of the foundations I’d like to see forged in the pursuit of sustainable development. 

What skills have you developed or strengthened through being in the honours program?

I made a point to write my thesis as engaging as I could, with a smaller goal of contributing to making academic research and literature accessible! With how heavy the issues and wide of scope I undertook for this project, I wanted to write something that was interesting in topic and in writing style. By doing so, I hope that I’ve helped make these issues that are so deeply interlaced in the fabric of every day life worth thinking about in a different way. The ability to iron out the intersections I saw in my head and develop the vernacular to speak about these issues was also invaluable, and I’ve seen that newfound skill play out in my life well beyond this project.

What challenges did you face? What was the most difficult obstacle you had to overcome?

The pursuit of trying to make clear, concise connections between gentrification, aesthetics, and progress was a massive undertaking. I spent all of SA 495 mapping out where these things intersected and how they influenced each other, and I’m grateful to have been pushed to seek out the clarity necessary to bring this project to life. It was really easy to fall into the doubts that I was taking on too much, or that I was too focused on the minutiae of these big issues. I also found myself grappling with the idea that writing about gentrification would lack the impact I could make by advocating for ethical change in other ways, though I’ve found since that writing this thesis has given me a new way to be able to think about the issues I wrote about, and a way to thoughtfully talk about it with my community in a way I wouldn’t be able to without going through with my research.

What was it like working with your faculty supervisor, Dr. Nicholas Scott, on your project?

Thinking back, my project was in a lot of ways an extension of a smaller paper I wrote for SA 255 with Dr. Scott a few years prior, where I’d written about gentrification and immigration in Surrey and Vancouver. I had spoken with Dr. Scott during SA 495 while I was still trying to narrow down my project’s goals and what I wanted to research, and I remember that conversation as one of the first instances someone had seen what I was trying to piece together as clear as I had. It was such a privilege to be able to pour my heart out to Dr. Scott, and to have him help untangle convoluted webs I found myself in all throughout the process. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive and encouraging supervisor, whose insight and own passion for urban sociology is inextricable from my work.

How does your project relate to your future career and/or career goals?

I think a Master's was always in the cards for me. Spending my entire undergrad feeling reinvigorated by the papers I’d write, research and writing have nestled themselves next to my heart in a way that made me certain I’d miss it sooner rather than later after graduation. The answer to what I wanted to go to grad school for came as I wrote my thesis, having imbued in me an interest in urban planning. I have felt the time since writing my honours thesis tend to those flames, and I’m nervous, excited, and everything in between thinking about bringing those perspectives into a Master’s in a few years time. I find myself afraid that I’ll lose sight of the critiques I raised so emphatically in my work as I enter the field at a different angle than urban sociology, though I hope that the connections I’ve built through mentors like Dr. Scott and the folks who shared their stories with me as I wrote my thesis will help me keep my feet on the ground. 

In the meantime, I’m honoured to have had the privilege of coauthoring an article with Dr. Scott and a few peers from SA 442 in the Spring term on human supremacism and multispecies democracy. The opportunity to think and and work alongside with these folks has been a gentle reminder of the necessity of community and camaraderie in a way that I hope to never take for granted. 

At the heart of this project and everything I’ll do afterwards sits the world that can and will be. I hope that the love with which I wrote my thesis with pours through its pages, and that that carries out into whatever’s next for me, forever.