VANCOUVER—A hipster vegan grocery store has set up shop across from a Chinese butcher in Vancouver’s Chinatown — just one example of rapid change in the neighbourhood.

Chinatown used to consist predominantly of businesses that catered to the Chinese-Canadian population. But the area’s new-found diversity has hindered social cohesion, according to a new report from the Hua Foundation, as newcomers are having trouble integrating into the existing community.

“We rarely talk about how neighbourhoods with so many different stakeholders across cultural as well as socioeconomic differences, how we can get along and work together,” said Kevin Huang, executive director of the Hua Foundation.

The non-profit has studied food-security gaps in the neighbourhood before, but its most recent report highlights parallel food systems in the Lower Mainland and how gentrification has deepened the divide between those systems within Chinatown itself.

Racist policies in the mid-1900s pushed Chinese-Canadian business owners in the Lower Mainland to create a separate supply chain that connected restaurants and green grocers with culturally appropriate farmers and distributors.

Vancouver’s Chinatown was a longtime hub for that food system, bustling with specialty shops and Chinese restaurants. But a wave of businesses have set up shop in the past decade that do not cater to longtime community residents.

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The Hua Foundation’s report found many traditional businesses do not share supply chains or customers with non-traditional businesses. The report defines a “traditional” business as one that provides culturally appropriate goods for immigrant, low-income and elderly populations.

Only 11 per cent of consumers surveyed by the Hua Foundation visited both types of stores.

This disconnect between different neighbourhood groups doesn’t bode well for the increasingly diverse community, Huang said, echoing other experts who argue social cohesion can build resilience against everything from high housing prices to natural disasters.

“I think in Vancouver, we’re really terrible about talking about race and culture,” he said.

“We’re kind of OK being side by side with each other but … we need to think about what can we do to incentivize people to get to know each other, both socially but also through business connections.”

The report says almost all of the owners of new businesses expressed a desire to connect with longtime storefronts, but many have trouble due to language barriers.

And it’s the longtime businesses that are suffering, according to the report.

About four in five non-traditional businesses surveyed said their fortunes had increased over the past five years. In comparison, nearly half of traditional businesses said their fortunes had decreased.

An earlier Hua Foundation study found Chinatown lost half of its fresh-food businesses, such as green grocers, butchers and fish mongers, between 2009 and 2016.

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The Hua Foundation report makes several recommendations, including appointing a business ambassador who can help traditional and non-traditional businesses support each other. It also suggests establishing special economic zones for Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside to recognize the cultural aspects of those neighbourhoods.

The City of Vancouver deemed itself a city of reconciliation in 2014 and issued a formal apology for the historic discrimination of Chinese-Canadians in 2018.

Researchers interviewed 32 business owners (18 traditional and 14 non-traditional) and surveyed 127 consumers for the Hua Foundation report.

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