Introductions:
Patricia Richards:
Patricia first moved from Scarborough to Regent Park 20 years ago and has since witnessed its revitalization. With a background in banking, she transitioned out of the corporate world to become an entrepreneur after COVID. After earning her food certification, she heard about this course on a resident group chat. Patricia is driven to support local entrepreneurs while advocating for racial equality by overcoming adversity with unwavering optimism for a brighter future.
Elena Mehrzzad Taghizadeh:
Elena lived in Regent Park for 13 years, witnessing much of its revitalization. Drawn to the neighbourhood due to its close-knit community, she has participated in programs and events seeking to strengthen those ties and provide opportunities for residents. She became the co-chair of the Employment and Economic Development (EED) aspect of the social development plan in 2024, attesting to her commitment to bridging the gaps between residents and new businesses. She discovered this course through the School of Cities, seeing it as a way to expand her impact.
Jacob Frederick:
Jake is a fourth-year student majoring in Urban Studies and Economics and has worked with the City of Toronto to refine their Parklands Strategy. In his free time, he enjoys playing city-building video games and reading. As an aspiring lawyer, he aims to explore how his majors intersect in Regent Park and analyze how existing laws (or lack thereof) hinder economic justice.
Shreya Shourie:
Shreya is a fifth-year Urban Studies and Political Science student. With an affinity for politics, she joined the class to learn more about Regent Park and its redevelopment. She greatly enjoys the experiential learning aspect of the class. In her free time, Shreya enjoys reading. After graduating, she hopes to start her Law School journey.
What We Aimed to Complete:
This week, our group focused on maintaining momentum. This involved securing the information of more entrepreneurs so that we could schedule interviews. These were necessary because we still have not finalized a specific overarching topic for our project. Rather than going into these interviews with a topic in mind, we intend for the topic to jump out to us as a common theme in each interview. To accomplish this, we need a wide range of interviews to isolate a common theme, hence additional interviews.
Our Successes:
This week, we focused on outlining an action plan, which includes interviews with local businesses to hone in on an elusive theme. A breakthrough may have already emerged from our recordings from the lack of similarity between them. So, it may be fruitful to contrast the experiences of businesses in Regent Park based on their size and access to capital. Local businesses struggle to stay afloat and experience high turnover, whereas larger stores struggle to integrate into the neighbourhood. Exploring this avenue could be significant for our final media piece.
Our Challenges:
We overcame several obstacles this week. Scheduling misalignments made it challenging to arrange a time when every group member was available. This is a recurring theme; it presents a challenge in coordinating meeting times to progress the project. To mitigate this, we periodically communicate on WhatsApp, which keeps us informed. We will often write each other's ideas in point form during our meetings and expand on them later.
New Insights:
We learned much about the work conducted by the organization Elena works for, the EED. They focus on enhancing job readiness, skills training initiatives, Resume/CV assistance, and entrepreneurial endeavours for residents. Their aim is to create sustainable economic opportunities to ensure residents benefit from Regent's revitalization. They are, therefore, an organization that assists in combating economic injustice. Elena’s involvement provides us with insights into the economic challenges entrepreneurial residents face, allowing us to learn from them.
How the course has changed our understanding of urban issues:
After reflecting on our interviews, we realized that urban issues are significantly complex. Our interviewees have given us many perspectives, and none are the same, yet they are all connected. To elaborate, larger businesses wish to bring new people into the neighbourhood, shifting the public perception of the space. On the other hand, smaller businesses wish to grow. Without traffic from outside the neighbourhood, which the larger businesses bring, these smaller businesses may find it hard to gain customers. Hence, the experience/perspectives of each entrepreneur are connected.
Reflections:
As we reflected this week, we realized that we must hold ourselves accountable to schedule interviews and be on time. Moreover, since interviewees are receptive to the tone, body language and even emotions of the interviewers, we realized that we must be held accountable for how we present ourselves. We also reflected on how rewarding fieldwork can be; entrepreneurs in Regent have been open and willing to share their stories with us, and we have had the privilege of connecting with them.
Support:
We appreciate how helpful Dr. Mehta and the FOCUS staff have been thus far. Although we do not have any specific requests, we appreciate the guidance as we continue to work.
The Corner Shop Chronicles Team members are Jake, Elena, Patricia and Shreya