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LIVING THROUGH “REVITALIZATION”: YOUTH,LIMINALITY, AND THE LEGACY OF SLUM CLEARANCEIN PRESENT-DAY REGENT PARK

RYAN K. JAMES

Department of Anthropology, York University, 2054 Vari Hall, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, ONM3J [email protected]

ABSTRACT

This paper traces experiences of local youth and their caregivers during the“Regent Park revitalization”, a $1 billion endeavour to demolish Canada’soldest and largest social housing complex and replace it with a “mixed-income,mixed-use community”. Based largely on participant-observation fieldworkconducted while raising a small child in the area, this paper argues that thematerial conditions of the neighbourhood during its estimated fifteen-yearperiod of transformation, and the ideological conflicts that surround theconcept of revitalization, have given rise to a complicated sociality in RegentPark that forms an enduring, life-altering experience for youth and caregiversthat in many ways matters more than the eventual outcomes of the plan. Thissociality is crafted through residents’ day-to-day negotiations with ahegemonic project aimed at securing their compliance with a high-stakes planto remake 69 acres of valuable land according to the tenets of third-wayurbanism, potentially reordering urban Canadian class identities in the process.

INTRODUCTION

Canada’s oldest and largest social housing complex is currently beingdemolished and rebuilt as a “mixed-income, mixed-use community” (TorontoCommunity Housing Corporation, 2012). Officially known as the “Regent Parkrevitalization”, this $1 billion endeavour promised nearly everyone affectedwhat they apparently wanted to hear: tenants of disheveled 60-year-old socialhousing will finally get new apartments; first-time homebuyers will get arelatively affordable entry point into an ever-appreciating downtowncondominium market; arts organizations and retailers will flourish; and localyouth will get new recreational space and a renovated school. All units of socialhousing will be replaced – though 29% of them outside the neighbourhood. Asthe redevelopment period began in 2005 and is esimated to take a total offifteen years (Toronto Community Housing Corporation, 2012), Regent Park atthe time of writing is a liminal patchwork of construction sites, old apartmentsand townhouses in disrepair, and pristine new buildings containing eithercondominiums or social housing units. Redevelopment is divided into fivephases, such that throughout the process, the majority of the neighbourhoodremains consistently populated as some residents move out and others move in.

Based largely on participant-observation fieldwork conducted while raising asmall child in non-profit housing at the perimeter of Regent Park, this paper


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traces some experiences of local youth and their caregivers1 during the currentstage of redevelopment. For these residents, the everyday realities ofrevitalization in the midst of this transitional period are often more tangibleand relevant than any outcomes that may become apparent upon completion ofthe project in 2020: the total timespan of at least fifteen years is longer than ayoung person’s entire living memory, and more time than many caregivers hopeto live in social housing; while the four years or more it has taken forhouseholds to relocate first to a temporary home, and then to a new RegentPark unit, can span a transition from childhood to adolescence, or adolescenceto adulthood. For many, the year 2020 is effectively the far-flung future.Further, the material conditions of the neighbourhood during itstransformation, and the ideological conflicts that surround the concept ofrevitalization, have given rise to a complicated sociality in Regent Park thatforms an enduring, life-altering experience for residents that is unique to thepresent state of flux. This paper focuses on this sociality, arguing that it iscrafted through residents’ day-to-day negotiations with a hegemonic projectaimed at securing their compliance with a high-stakes plan to remake 69 acresof valuable land according to the tenets of “third-way urbanism” (see Keil,2000), potentially reordering urban Canadian class identities in the process. Thelived effects of the hegemony of revitalization are especially acute for RegentPark youth and their caregivers, who are often the primary targets of theopportunities, disruptions, and discipline it brings.

FAREWELL TO OAK STREET

To ground an analysis of the revitalization and its implications for youth andcaregivers, a brief review of some local history is in order. Regent Park as it isknown today began as a “slum clearance” initiative, envisioned in 1946 toreplace a working-class district deemed outmoded and dangerous with a newcommunity planned by experts and replete with modern appliances (see Rose,1958). Initially judged a success, a southward expansion of the project wascompleted in 1959, but seen as problematic early on (see Haggart, 1964) andjudged a failed experiment in planning within a decade (see Allen, 1968).Regent Park as a whole was soon subsumed within this label, intensifying aclassist “territorial stigmatization” (Purdy, 2003) afflicted on its tenants, whoby the late 1960s were doubly disadvantaged as low-income earners and now asdwellers of an environment thought to foster anomie and criminality. By theearly 1970s, as postmodernist urbanism in the vein of Jane Jacobs was widelyespoused by the downtown liberal middle class, Regent Park was invoked as atextbook case of the sort of failed modernist “cataclysmic redevelopment” thatolder neighbourhoods must be protected against, while the blocks that thevanguardist neighbourhood movements managed to “save” were soon gentrifiedinstead of being demolished (Caulfield, 1994; Ley, 1996). At present, RegentPark is flanked at many points of its perimeter by blocks of expensive andimmaculately restored Victorian homes, and is thus all the more an anomaly asa low-income enclave surrounded largely by wealth. Meanwhile, the population

1 This paper employs an open definition of the term “caregivers” to refer to all manner ofsenior blood relatives and fictive kin (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.), and toaccount for a local tendency towards collectivized parenting in the form of neighbourslooking out for each others’ children.


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of Regent Park has since shifted from predominantly white and Anglophone inits early days, to its profile at the beginning of the revitalization in which two-thirds of residents were born outside of Canada and 70 languages are spoken(Toronto Community Housing Corporation, 2007, 5). Regent Park is one of themost ethnoculturally diverse neighbourhoods in a city where “diversity” isfamously celebrated and commodified, and yet is also one of the poorest urbanlocalities in Canada.

Regent Park has always been an especially young community: at the beginningof revitalization, over one-third of its residents were under 14, and just overhalf were under 24 (Toronto Community Housing Corporation, 2007). A concernfor the welfare of youth has figured prominently in the planning and re-planningof Regent Park through the decades. The redevelopment is in fact rooted insmaller-scale initiatives led by tenants – many of them women with children – toredevelop portions of Regent Park in the late 1980s and 1990s (Weyman, 1994;personal communication). These campaigns were based largely on theperception that the built environment of Regent Park facilitated the local sexand drug trades, which were particularly active in these early days of crack-cocaine and, by many accounts, predominantly engaged in by outsiders to thedanger and displeasure of residents (James, 2011). One by-product of this localactivism, in awkward combination with an excessive amount of outsideattention, has been the creation of some innovative social programming forlocal youth. The Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre, for example, wascreated in 1990 as an outlet for youthful creativity and a diversion from illicitdrugs and the like. Today it remains a popular and well-funded radio, video,internet, and print media studio for Regent Park children and teenagers.Pathways to Education, a free tutoring and support service for local high schoolstudents founded in 2001, is widely credited for a decrease in the local dropoutrate from 56% to 10% (Pathways to Education, 2012; Toronto Star, 2008).

Despite these local success stories, by the time the process of revitalizationbegan in 2002, it was all but taken for granted that the built environment ofRegent Park facilitated the same social deviance it had once been designed todiscourage. It is thus being demolished for many of the same reasons it wascreated (James, 2010). The revitalization is purported to replace acriminogenic built environment with one that emphasizes “eyes on the street”through well-lit, glassy apartment buildings and row-houses that tightly hugsidewalks (August, 2008, 86). On completion, roughly 71% of the 2,087 rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units that stood in Regent Park before theredevelopment will be replaced on-site, sharing a redesigned streetscape ofsmall blocks and through streets with roughly 3,000 units of market housing(condominiums and rentals) – Regent Park will then be 29% RGI housing, downfrom 100% (Kipfer & Petrunia, 2009). Of the RGI units to be replaced off-site,254 have already built in three hi-rise buildings, which also include low-endmarket rent units.

The revitalization was conceptualized in the early 2000s, when local electoralpolitics shifted from the right to the centre as a Liberal provincial governmentand a labour-backed environmentalist mayor were elected. It has been arguedthat in the years since, Toronto has been shaped by a dominant ideology ofthird-way urbanism – a politically ambiguous blend of neoliberal economics with


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“select progressive strands” dominated by a “loose constellation ofpredominantly white, new middle class gentrifiers, condominium dwellers, andedgy hipsters” (Kipfer & Petrunia, 2009, 111)2. A move away from aredistributive welfare state and “towards more self-reliance in the creation ofwealth” continues (Jackson, 2009, 402), but “the excesses of socialpolarization” are tempered through government intervention and “metropolitanplans … designed to be both competitive and socially inclusive” (Boudreau etal., 2009, 402). In Regent Park, private capital finances “public” services -funds raised from condominium sales are used to rebuild social housing inRegent Park. A contemporary dance company which moved in across the streetin 2007 charges $25 for tickets to its productions, and offers free dance lessonsfor local teenagers and pay-what-you-can yoga classes. Meanwhile, RichardFlorida’s “creative class” (2002) – “the young, cool, educated, high-value-addedworker of the knowledge economy” (Boudreau et al., 2009, 183) venerated asthe ideal urbanite in third-way thinking, is being recruited to the area throughprojects such as a “Centre for Social Innovation” scheduled to open in late2012, in which small organizations judged to be “working towards a betterworld” (non-profit or for-profit) will share low-cost office space and resources.A recent information session for prospective tenants was attended, amongothers, by software developers, representatives of arts organizations, and abroker who sells Regent Park condominiums.

Today, the full span of Regent Park’s history remains visible on Oak Street, aneast-west thoroughfare that was mostly converted into a 20-foot-wide sidewalkwhen Regent Park was built, as celebrated at the time in the documentaryFarewell to Oak Street (National Film Board of Canada, 1956). The sidewalk stillbisects the northern portion of the neighbourhood. Locally known as “theboardwalk”, it was identified as central to the social lives of local youth just asthe revitalization was beginning in 2005 (Laughlin & Johnson, 2011). My firstexperience with the boardwalk came as an outsider in late 2009: before I livedin the community, three young men challenged me to justify my presence onthe boardwalk as I passed by. I explained that I was on my way to volunteer at alocal school, and they wished me well. As an area resident, I now use theboardwalk daily as a safe alternative to nearby arterial streets for walkingacross three large downtown blocks with a small child. I have not since seenanyone express the type of ownership over the space exhibited by the youngmen who had checked me in 2009, however, and the point where thisinteraction had occurred near Oak and Sackville Street is now a dusty, fenced-off expanse of temporary urban prairie, set to reopen as a park in autumn 2012.The boardwalk, now largely desolate, will revert to being a through street at alater phase in the revitalization - a fact that was celebrated in summer 2010 as

2 Enough voters in the 2010 mayoral election clearly did not identify with this downtownhipster polity for the right-wing poplulist Rob Ford to win (see Filion, 2011). The newmayor is freqently ridiculed by the liberal mainstream media, and the excesses of hisrevanchist agenda have largely been stymied by city council. Given his highly temperedimpact, I would argue third-way urbanism remains a dominant ideology in Toronto. Fornow, the Regent Park revitalization progresses as planned, despite a pending review ofcondominium sales following accusations of conflicts of interest by a conservative tabloid(see Maloney, 2012), and inflammatory comments from the budget chief who has “joked”about cutting $16 million in revitalization funding, apparently only to irritate his rivals oncouncil’s centre-left (Dale, 2012).


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emblematic of the transition from bad to good planning during a “street party”held by the housing authority and its private builder-developer partner. A localband performed the jubilant “Dancin’ Down the Avenue,” featuring lyrics by thedeveloper’s vice-president celebrating how “we’ve learned a thing or two”about planning since the 1940s3.

Figure 1 – The four corners of Oak and Sackville Streets. In the foreground, the Oak Street“boardwalk”, which will become a through street when the revitalization is complete; to its left, thevacant space that will soon become “the big park”; and to its right, an empty expanse of grass thatsurrounds an original apartment building, as is typical of the old Regent Park. In the midground to theleft stands a condominium building and a rental building just visible behind it; both were recentlyconstructed through the revitalization. An original apartment building is in the midground to theright. (Photo by author)

LIMINALITY AND “COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT”

To date, “revitalization” has reconfigured roughly one-third of Regent Park.The remainder, at first glance, looks much as it would have in 1960: apartmentbuildings and townhouse clusters, pedestrian-only walkways, and dead-end sidestreets feeding into parking lots. Yet even this unrevitalized portion includesimportant additions made over the years: an outdoor swimming pool, two icerinks, two commmunity centres, antiviolence murals (figure 2), playgrounds,garden plots (both sanctioned and unsanctioned by the housing authority), andCPTED4 interventions of the past such as rusty wrought-iron fencing and securitycameras. These modifications of the built environment were envisioned by

3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3xrciggQg.4 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.


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generations of tenants, largely in the interest of keeping their children safe,healthy, and occupied, and were crafted through their decades of empassionedengagement with social service agencies, and the politicians and bureaucraciesthat have governed the project with a range of sympathy, hostility, andindifference (James, 2011; Purdy, 2003). Though the community has alwaysbeen dynamic, the dominant discourse surrounding it tends to imagine RegentPark as finally undergoing its first change-for-the-better, as it briefly passesbetween two diametrically opposed states: from a poorly planned, depressingenclave of poverty; to a normalized, “mixed” neighbourhood that willseamlessly blend with its surroundings. This flattens the complexity of nearlysix decades of history, predicts the future with an unreasonable degree ofcertainty, and glosses over the current transitory period of at least fifteenyears.

Figure 2 – one of several murals painted on an original Regent Park building. (Photo by author)

My emphasis on the importance of this transitional period and its effects isinformed by a distant but relevant area of the anthropological canon – VictorTurner’s cross-cultural studies of rituals that mark a shift from one state toanother for groups and individuals. Turner noted that these “betwixt andbetween” moments have a unique potential to give rise to a “mysticalsolidarity” between people of different social rankings (1987, 18) as “jurallysanctioned relationships” matter less when everything is in flux (1987, 11). Thisbrings to mind the idealized views of the revitalization presented in officialplans and press releases, which imagine socioeconomic class rendered invisibleas subsidized housing and $500,000 condominums are designed to appearmutually indistinguishable, and where new neighbours of all ages, ethnicities,and income levels help plan their neighbourhood together at “participatory”sessions open to all. Indeed, tenants and condominium owners now live acrossthe street from one another, and a “task force” has been created to build“community unity” among them through events such as “town hall” meetings.


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Outside of such special events, however, socializing appears non-existent insome places, lively in others, and awkwardly fragmented in most. Turner’sobservations of hierarchies being muddied and forgotten may only speak to theas-yet unattained ideals of the revitalization, but his emphasis on liminal statesas imbued with unique and influential characteristics unto themselves providesa useful point of departure for an analysis of how the current, tangible realityof a locality can matter more than the presumed outcomes of a long-term plan.

Despite goals of social mixity, stories from some of my participants illustrateenduring divisions along the lines of race and class. I once asked a group ofcurrent, former, and temporarily relocated tenants of Regent Park’s socialhousing, aged 16 to 26, if they knew anyone from the condominiums. All saidno; one man seemed suprised I had asked. One woman’s response was a storyof receiving stares from people entering a condominium building as shecongregated with her friends (social housing tenants) on the sidewalk nearby.“They were kind of looking at us, like, ‘why are all these black people hangingout here? I’m trying to get into my building; this is supposed to be a high-classcondo’”, she said, imagining the thoughts underlying a gaze she interpreted aselitist racism. Behaviour that is simply using public space to some, is loiteringto others. Her story brought to mind a prediction made by a lifelong resident inanother interview, that the presence of new, middle class residents woulddisrupt longstanding, unspoken codes around everyday life in shared space.Usage of radios and barbecues, for example, would come to be governed by by-laws and complaints procedures, rather than the informal standards shared bylongtime social housing tenants that balance rule-bending permissiveness withmutual consideration.

It is important to note, however, that the moments described above take placeduring a particularly challenging point in the transition at which there is littlefor people to do together. A new community centre, an indoor swimming pool,an “Arts and Cultural Centre”, and “the big park” are all slated to open withina year. Much has been made of the potential of these amenities to bring peopletogether, particularly the park at Sackville and Oak Streets: one senior TCHCofficial explained to me that the spatial arrangement of condominiums, rent-geared-to-income units, and the park will “create opportunities for people tocross paths” as residents of the two types of housing will take the same path tothe off-leash dog run. Even before the park opens, there is some anecdotalconfirmation of the hopes that hinge on it: a recent master’s thesis on therevitalization (Greaves, 2011) describes an instance of dog-inspired socializingamong people from different socioeconomic classes. A personal experience nearan extant off-leash dog zone at the perimeter of Regent Park has inspired anote of cynicism on this point, however: one morning I witnessed a woman inexpensive clothes arguing with two city workers who prevented her dog fromusing the children’s wading pool. She felt that because my daughter was theonly child using it and there were many dogs in the park, the pool “should befor the dogs”.


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Figure 3 – looking south through a construction fence on “the boardwalk”. In the foreground, thefenced-off space that will become “the big park”; in the background to the left, two original RegentPark buildings with a crane and the beginnings of a condominium building in front of them; in themiddle background, the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre, in the late stages of construction; andin the background to the right, the “Paintbox” condominium tower, also near completion, with aMacedono-Bulgarian Church in front of it. (Photo by author)

Elsewhere, the liminal state of the neighbourhood provides for scenes thatborder on idyllic, such as drinking fresh coconut water and sitting on an oldweightlifting bench outside Regent Park’s “farmer’s market” (figure 3) – a semi-permanent wood-and-sheet-plastic structure that sells discounted produce andis often surrounded by children playing cricket. Though I have been assured by athe local city councilor’s office that the market will have a place post-revitalization (this has been corroborated by the market owner himself), Isuspect the experience (and the prices) may not be the same if the market isformalized, to some extent, in moving to a permanent structure. For anothersnapshot, at a small park located across the street from the last portion ofRegent Park to be redeveloped, roughly a dozen adults often sit in the shade asour children and grandchildren play together nearby. The group includesgraduate students and factory workers, young parents and seniors, and at leastfour languages are spoken. Before children are turned loose to play, adults scanthe playground for broken glass, syringes, and other dangerous debris thatrarely appears. Each adult keeps an eye on each child; one takes his 200-pounddog for a walk to discourage the presence of those suspected of using the parkfor illegitimate purposes. The social life of the park thus exhibits precisely thesort of “mixed” social life and “eyes on the street” that revitalization promises,despite being located in a part of the community that will not be revitalized forseveral years.


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Figure 4 – The “farmers’ market” in Regent Park, with original apartment buildings in thebackground. (Photo by author)

“THE GENERAL DIRECTION IMPOSED ON SOCIAL LIFE”

To contextualize my field observations, I turn to Anthony Leeds’s formulation ofthe role of political and economic phenomena in the everyday lives ofcitydwellers: a unique “urban ambience” or “cityness” is crafted throughsymbiotic interactions between the locality and the “supralocal powerstructures” that manifest in and around it (1994, 221). In the case of RegentPark, these power structures would include an entrepreneurial public housingauthority (Hackworth & Moriah, 2006); the Daniels Corporation, its privatebuilder-developer partner; the centrist municipal government that presidedover the design of the new neighbourhood; the various public and privatefunders of local social service agencies; and the local media, which hasendorsed the revitalization at nearly every turn5. These powerful bodies “touchdown” in Regent Park in the form of the revitalization, a project craftedthrough interactions with each other and with the residents of the urbanlocality it is fundamentally transforming.

To think through the nuances of these interactions, it is useful to turn toAntonio Gramsci’s insights on how the success of a political project depends onthe consent of at least some of “the masses”. The concept of “hegemony” – the

5 A major exception is a recent series of articles in the right-wing tabloid, The TorontoSun, which level conflict-of-interest accusations at former TCHC executives, the DanielsCorporation president, and the centrist city councilor who represents Regent Park forbuying condominiums there (see Levy, 2012 & 2012a). Much of the content of theseaccusations rests on innuendo drawn from, interestingly, a crude co-optation of someleftist and academic critiques of revitalization as gentrification. Though these articleshave been influential enough to prompt the Toronto Community Housing Corporation tolaunch a review, the vast majority of newspaper coverage over the past decade has beenfavourable to the revitalization and the politicians and developers behind it.


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incomplete process by which subaltern groups consent to the “general directionimposed on social life” by elites (2003:12) – illuminates how neoliberalgovernmental priorities and the interests of private capital have influenced the“participatory” re-planning of Regent Park, and the forms of communityorganizing that now take place there. As the revitalization stems from earlierattempts led by residents to have parts of the community rebuilt, and hasinvolved public consultations at every stage, it is often prided on being a“participatory” effort. The incompleteness of hegemony is key – while somesocial housing tenants are heavily invested in the revitalization, others decrythe concept as a cynical euphemism for gentrification. Others still express pro-and anti-revitalization sentiments in the same breath, and/or find themselvesroped into the work of revitalization despite their misgivings around it. Throughthe lens of young peoples’ and parents’ perspectives, and experiences atcommunity events sanctioned by the housing authority and its private partner,this section examines revitalization as a hegemonic project that seeks tosubsume community activity and reconfigure urban class identities along thelines of “mixity” – while leaving income disparity untouched and privatizingsome social services formerly provided by the state, as is the third way.

As a researcher and low-income resident of the area6, I am often in an awkwardrelationship with a process I am critical of. Seeking to “give back to thecommunity” in some sense, I have volunteered at “Focus” (the aforementionedRegent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre). I once arranged for two TCHCofficials to be interviewed on-air by youth, and though the exercise certainly fitFocus’s mandate of facilitating skills development for its young participants,our discussion rarely strayed from the celebratory discourse of press releasesand condominium advertisements. I had hoped for a more frank and groundeddiscussion than the one we had, and left feeling like I had volunteered to brokera controversial project to youths who may have had unspoken misgivings aboutit. At Focus’s monthly free concerts held in the Daniels Corporation’scondominium sales office, I can often be found helping friends stack thecorporation’s tables and chairs at the end of the night as a volunteer roadie.And while Focus staff are grateful for the free usage of the venue, the eventsdo have a different “feel” from the concerts that occured in Focus’s oldheadquarters in the unkempt basement of a now-demolished apartmentbuilding.

At other times I have been enlisted into the manual labour of revitalization. Afriend at a local social service agency once recruited me as a volunteer to helpmove the “peace garden” – a memorial to Regent Park youth killed by violence,found in 2005 by grieving local women. In October 2011, the garden had to beuprooted to make way for construction; the salvaged trees and shrubs werestored over the winter for replanting this year. The event was solemn andprofound, centering on a speech by a founder of the garden. After about 50school-age children had helped with the gardening and returned to class, I wasone of the last remaining adults, covered in mud and wrestling small trees outof the ground with Lancefield Morgan, then TCHC’s “revitalization consultant” –a full-time liaison between tenants and the landlord, whose work oscillated

6 As a Canadian-born PhD candidate, I am, of course, among the most privileged low-income earners in the neighbourhood.


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between public relations and liberal community organizing. Lancefieldcontinued digging in the pouring rain after I had to leave for work.

Other community events have received funding from the purveyors ofrevitalization, but taken a decidedly anti-revitalization tack. At the 2009 annualRegent Park Film Festival, a free four-day event which included the DanielsCorporation among its many sponsors, I moderated a panel discussion on therevitalization following a cluster of film screenings around the theme of“displacement”. A panelist and lifelong resident said the new neighbourhood“will not be a community” as memories, longstanding multiculturalrelationships, and a sense of place and groundedness (especially for youth), areall being lost. He noted that pre-revitalization, high-achieving youth fromRegent Park – such as the organizer of the film festival itself - would stayconnected to the community, acting as role models and voices for its otheryouth. The disruptions caused by relocation now mitigate against the cohesionand continuity this connectedness once provided.

These observations came to mind two years later, when I began a groupinterview by asking participants if they have already moved as part of theredevelopment. One temporarily relocated teenager responded glibly, “yes, wegot the revitalization attack, I would call it.” I asked why she calls it an“attack” and she replied

Um, in a lot of ways it destroys a lot; like it takes a lot from you. Possiblyphysically because you’re not in the same space; mentally you lose acommunity, in other words like you don’t feel that connectedness as you dowhile you're in Regent Park when you go out to [her new location]. Because Idon’t even know my neighbours’ names, where before I knew the whole familynext door to me, and so forth, right down the line. It’s not the same.

Though now living more than a reasonable walking distance away from RegentPark, she still frequented the same community centres in the area as this is“the best way for me to stay in contact with the environment that I know.” Foranother participant, merely moving from one part of Regent Park to anotherdisrupted the childhood social networks that were specific to his now-demolished building.

Some members of the focus group vaguely remembered taking part in theconsultations designed to elicit young peoples’ input on plans for a newcommunity centre (its construction has just begun). One noted they have noway of knowing what has happened to the data they provided as no one kept intouch with them – “unless their idea of keeping in touch is the presentationcentre across the street on Dundas” (the condominium sales office). When Iasked participants if they expected to be connected to Regent Park in five orten years, another ex-resident who remains involved in the community replied

I don’t know if it’s gonna be the same in five years … like, do I wanna workwith – sorry,7 but – snobby white people? No. Not to say those are the only kindof people that are going to be involved here, but if it’s like all these expensive

7 I am white.


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condos that the people I grew up with can’t afford, I’m not probably going tobe involved.

These perspectives, in which the “old” Regent Park is longed for andcondominium owners are seen as a “snobby” Other – sharply contradict thehegemonic discourse around revitalization in which “old” and “new” residentsare the euphemistic terms for “social housing tenants” and “condominumowners” respectively, and meetings are held for the express purpose offostering “social connectivity” and “community unity” across this old/newdivide.

Many of my participants speak wistfully of things from the past that therevitalization hegemony portrays as obsolete and/or dangerous: the oldbuildings, the car-free sidewalk, identities rooted in socioeconomic class. Thisbrings to mind Kathleen Stewart’s work on nostalgia as a reconstructiveprocess, through which people who have experienced a loss of community makesense of shifting relations (1988). On this note, a local youth worker one saidthat despite the benefits of her agency moving into new space, in the end “it’sanother change, and kids just want things to stay the same”. At present, theideologies of third way urbanism that underpin revitalization constitute anincomplete hegemony in Regent Park: the community is being redevelopedaccording to third-way principals, but in this current moment of transition,many residents – young ones, especially – have not embraced the new classlessurban identity that is valorized as the ideal way to belong to a “mixed”community.

CONCLUSION AND AFTERWORD

In the time between draft submissions of this paper, several violent incidents inthe neighbourhood involving youth have caused concern, particularly from localparents, social workers, and housing authority officials. As no one has beenkilled, the incidents have largely evaded media coverage, but some communitymembers fear that the violence will escalate. I have heard it blamed on acurrent death of recreational space for youth, and on a lack of stability in thelocal illicit trades as much of their leadership has been imprisoned and/ormoved out in recent years. As standard procedure, the housing authoritypursues evictions against the families of youth involved in serious crime andviolence. At the time of writing, I am in the process of researching this issuefurther; for now, it would appear that though youth crime and violence arefacts of life in any community, their rates in Regent Park have increased inrecent months, and are taking on a character specific to the conditions of aneighbourhood in a prolonged state of transition. Still, local social workersadamantly caution against any anti-youth moral panic or law-and-ordercrackdown, as those involved make up a miniscule percentage of the youngpopulation of Regent Park.

This paper has aimed to illustrate the hegemonic character of the notion of“revitalization”, through an analysis of its political-economic context and itslived effects for local residents during its implementation. It has done sothrough a focus on the experiences of young people and their caregivers, asthese residents arguably experience the transition from social housing project


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to “mixed community” most intensely. Though critical of the currentredevelopmment, this paper is not intended as an argument that the pre-revitalization status quo of Regent Park was adequate – on the contrary, I willconclude by cosigning the position of a lifelong resident and mother: “No oneshould ever have to see what some kids saw here,” she told me, referring to thedisrepair and instability of the 1980s and 1990s. “And people should be able togo to an ATM8, buy good food – everyone deserves that. But why are we onlygetting that now that people own homes here?” This participant was also angrythat the new retail space - a discount grocery store, a coffee shop, a pharmacy,and a telecommucations provider - is thus far completely occupied by corporatechains, while the financial opportunities afforded to residents by revitalizationhave largely been limited to low-wage, blue-collar, and/or front-line socialservice positions. “Nobody from Regent Park made any real money, while somany people made tonnes of money off the redevelopment,” she said angrily.In a different conversation, a resident supportive of the revitalization notedthat though many of the jobs created are part-time and low-paying, such is thecase for the Toronto job market in general, and so Regent Park is “like anyother neighbourhood” in this regard. It appears that Regent Park is blending inwith its surroundings.

REFERENCES

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