Study of Gentrification process in South Parkdale, Toronto

Study of Gentrification process in South Parkdale, Toronto

Introduction

Revived interest in the gentrification of central city neighborhoods in North America, Europe and Australia has led to informative contributions to our understanding of the nuances of the process and its relationship to local, national and global forces. Currently, the gentrification literature appears to have engaged with the role of policy in facilitating the process, returning to the concerns of earlier research that examined the centrality of policymaking to the movement of middle classes into workingclass innercity areas. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a specific neighborhoodslevel focus on contemporary, policydriven gentrification in South Parkdale, Toronto, still leaves us with the 'emancipatory' perspective on the process projected by earlier research in Toronto (Caulfield 1989, 1994) and other Canadian cities. This is an inherently geographical inquiry: Does gentrification in this new contexta different time and a very different placecreate the opportunities, demonstrated by earlier researchers, for positive social class interaction, understanding and tolerance? If not, what are the reasons that emancipatory urbanism cannot be detected? As we shall see, political decisions have a major impact on a neighborhoods with a troubled history, warranting a critical engagement with the relationship between urban policy and gentrification.

South Parkdale is the southern section of the Village of Parkdale, annexed by Toronto in 1889, ten years after its official incorporation. The area grew rapidly in the late 19th century as one of Toronto's first commuter suburbs, spurred by the development of the railway and, later, the streetcar. Streets were laid out to allow access south to Lake Ontario and north, the main thoroughfare of commerce and trade.

The character of the neighborhoods in the early 20th century has been captured by a local historian:

In the early days, large homes in spacious grounds overlooking the bay with their owners' boats moored at the jetties characterized the scene.... Comfortable dwellings on large lots then began to fill up the spaces up to Queen Street and within a few years, the lofty arches of healthy trees added beauty and shade to the avenue. Commuters from the new suburb were able to board trains ... for daily travel to the city. It is not surprising that in the early 20th century Parkdale was considered one of Toronto's most desirable residential locations, a distinction shared only with the district of Rosedale, which was also taking shape at the same time.

With the 1922 opening of the Sunnyside Amusement Park and Bathing Pavilion, Toronto's version of Coney Island, South Parkdale became known informally as the Village by the Lake, with a mixed housing stock consisting of fine Victorian and Edwardian terraces, some substantial mansions, and large (20ormoreunit) apartment houses, in a neighborhoods that contained onethird of all Toronto's apartment houses by 1915.

Identify the reasons for the revitalization of innercity and older midcity residential neighborhoods in the 1970 to present, in your study community.

Almost a decade ago, Jon Caulfield (1994) published a detailed account of Toronto's gentrification, now a ...