Martine August

Challenging the Rhetoric of Stigmatization: The Benefits of Concentrated Poverty in Toronto's Regent Park

This paper analyzes the impacts of territorial stigmatization on the experiences and life strategies of residents of Regent Park, Canadas first and largest public housing estate. It centers on how discourses of isolation, disorganization, and danger (based on imported theories and depictions of life in social housing developed in a very different time and place than the Canadian inner city) have served to justify the state-driven gentrification of public housing via ‘socially mixed’ redevelopment. Drawing on semistructured, in-depth interviews with over thirty tenants, this paper offers a counternarrative documenting the many benefits and advantages of living in an area of ‘concentrated poverty’. It reveals that tenants have deep attachments to Regent Park despite its reputation, and enjoy a strong sense of community; they have access to dense networks of friendship and support, local amenities and convenience, and services and agencies that suit their needs. While these benefits are real, they are counteracted by the impacts of coping with a neglected physical environment resulting from welfare state retrenchment (particularly on the housing front); and coping with safety issues and drug-related activities. Socially mixed redevelopment holds questionable promise for meaningfully addressing these problems and may even diminish some of the benefits of community life.

Negotiating Social Mix in Toronto's First Public Housing Redevelopment: Power, Space and Social Control in Don Mount Court

This article examines the experience of social interaction in Torontos Don Mount Court community, the first socially mixed public-housing redevelopment site in Canada. Similar to the American HOPE VI program, redevelopment involved the demolition and mixed-income reconstruction of the community to include both public housing and new market condominiums with a neo-traditional redesign. Based on participant observation, this article describes four struggles that emerged over the course of a series of mixed-income community governance meetings intended to promote social inclusion. These struggles related to (1) unequal power relations in shaping local priorities; (2) the power to brand the community and define its aesthetic characteristics; (3) the power to define and use public space; and (4) power over modes of surveillance and exclusion. The findings challenge the myth that the ‘benevolent’ middle class will use their political influence and social capital to the benefit of their low-income neighbors in mixed neighbourhoods. Instead, the research found that public-housing tenants were often on the receiving end of antagonism. It is argued that policymakers intent on ameliorating problems related to residence in disadvantaged communities should focus on funding for social programs and transformative change, rather than on public-housing demolition and state-driven gentrification via mixed-income redevelopment.

Revitalisation gone wrong: Mixed-income public housing redevelopment in Toronto’s Don Mount Court

This article challenges the presumed benevolence of mixed-income public housing redevelopment, focusing on the first socially-mixed remake of public housing in Canada, at Toronto’s Don Mount Court (now called ‘Rivertowne’). Between 2002 and 2012 the community was demolished and replaced with a re-designed ‘New Urbanist’ landscape, including replacement of public housing (232 units) and 187 new condominium townhouses. While mixed redevelopment is premised on the hope that tenants will benefit from improved design and mixed-income interactions, this research finds that many residents were less satisfied with the quality of their housing, neighbourhood design, and social community post-redevelopment. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this article finds that tenant interviewees missed their older, more spacious homes in the former Don Mount, and were upset to find that positive community bonds were dismantled by relocation and redevelopment. Challenging the ‘myth of the benevolent middle class’ at the heart of social mix policy, many residents reported charged social relations in the new Rivertowne. In addition, the neo-traditional redesign of the community – intended to promote safety and inclusivity – had paradoxical impacts. Many tenants felt less safe than in their modernist-style public housing, and the mutual surveillance enabled by New Urbanist redesign fostered tense community relations. These findings serve as a strong caution for cities and public housing authorities considering mixed redevelopment, and call into question the wisdom of funding welfare state provisions with profits from real estate development.

Integrating the Inner City: the promise and perils of mixed-income public housing transformation

Mixed-income redevelopment has been enthusiastically adopted in the United States and beyond as a promising cure-all for the physical decline and perceived social problems plaguing post-war public ...