There are a nail-biting two weeks left till the end of the semester, when we present our final projects to the rest of the world. With this rapidly-approaching deadline on the horizon, Dawn in Regent Park is now preparing to put all of our research together into our story map. However, research sometimes zigs and zags before we come to a final conclusion, and our project is no exception.
As mentioned last week, our main focus over the past little while has been organizing our interviews, both with community experts and residents, to include throughout our story map. With most of these interviews finalized and only one or two more left to do before this section is complete, our attention has turned towards editing the footage we have and cleaning it up to be ready to publish. This is also the point where we start organizing our scholarly research and developing the map itself, both so we can tell a clear story in our final project and so we’ll have time to clean up any mistakes that might be made.
Because we’re at this point in our research, this is where we’ve started running into some challenges with what’s available and accessible to us. Perhaps the biggest hurdle we’ve run into is with access to spatial data: while the City of Toronto makes data on crimes and many other safety concerns available to the public, much of this data isn’t in a form that can easily be mapped. Meghan has some experience with using data like this and will attempt to make some of it work, but we also have some backup data in the form of a list that Julie and Asae have collected, which can quite easily be mapped.
All is not lost in terms of data collection, however! During class time, we went on a walk through Regent Park to explore some areas that have been historically considered unsafe. On this walk, Julie, Asae, and Semhar pointed out a great deal of lighting that has been added to the area in the past year. Another observation that we made on our walk into the neighbourhood was the amount of security cameras that were installed. Every corner and pathway had lights and cameras installed, on each building there were at least 2 cameras on each side. One section of the neighbourhood that stood out was a parking lot behind one of the buildings. Asae and Julie told us how there were countless shootings there and was generally considered unsafe. However after revitalization it completely changed, the entire parking lot was illuminated with security cars parked. As we were walking back to FOCUS, we ended up talking to a man on a balcony. He turned out to be a sergeant for the Community Safety Unit and directed us to email one of the senior managers of the unit to see if they could give us more information. This is an avenue that we will definitely be pursuing as soon as possible!
Especially when looking back over our project as we approach the end, it’s clear that this whole process has been a lesson in how research can sometimes be difficult and non-linear. While we’ve found a lot of the things we were expecting to, we’ve had to adjust quite a bit to better fit our group’s interests, the information we have access to, and what we’ve found. While this is a bit challenging to deal with, it’s also a part of the knowledge creation process, and one that is to be expected.
Our group members giving us a tour of Regent Park for photos and background information on safety before and after revitalization
Dawn in Regent Park: Andrew, Asae, Julie, Meghan, and Semhar