Paul Tai Yip Ng Memorial Award 2019: Steve Kim

Congratulations to Mr. Steve Kim, who won our 2019 Best Graduate Student Paper award. Steve is currently a Masters of Urban Studies student at SFU. He received his BA in History at the University of Ottawa, where he focused on 20th century Asian-North American relations. Having moved to Vancouver in 2016, he learned about the historic intersection between urban planning and race, particularly in Chinatown. Despite income polarization in Metro Vancouver being most severe in Richmond and Surrey (Ley and Lynch, 2012), most news outlets accuse the Chinese community of misreporting their income to evade taxes. In Steve's analysis of census data for Richmond-Brighouse, it was evident that this claim was misleading. This led him to write on the causes and effects of anti-Chinese racism in shaping public discourse about poverty in Richmond. Like the previous year's winner, this paper is timely as the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed (again) Canada's deeply rooted anti-Chinese racism. Steve would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Karen Ferguson, who taught the Urban Inequality course for which this paper was written, and for her continued support in his academic career. Currently, Steve is working on his thesis: "The Urban Experience of Korean-Canadians in Coquitlam," a case study into the significance of ethnoburbs in fostering higher quality of life for immigrant communities. Steve also has research interests in affordable housing, public transportation, and equity planning.