The Social Fixers: About Us
The Social Fixers are a group of students from the University of Toronto that includes Erika, Sayem and Lena, and Samira from the Diva Girls at Regent Park Focus. At first glance, our group name offers a clear hint on what our topic is in the creation of our media project. It stems from a succinct play on words to the concept of ‘social mixing’, despite the fact that we do not intend on ‘fixing’ the issues stemming from the planning practice that serves as the root of our project. Social mixing planning exercises have increasingly been employed by city governments as a band-aid solution to issues of concentrated poverty, and social stigmatization of low-income, racialized groups, such as those residing in the Regent Park neighbourhood (Brail and Kumar, 2017). As such, our group name is representative of this sort of neoliberal ideology as a method of internal critique of planning practices as they stand today.
From left to right: Samira, Sayem, Lena. Missing: Erika. (Photo by Romi Levine, University of Toronto News)
For our media project, our group is looking at the processes of displacement, moving and social mixing in Regent Park. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Human Geography, displacement can be defined as “the forcing out of long-established and working-class residents of a city” (Castree, Kitchin and Rogers, 2013). While displacement is most commonly associated with gentrification, our project will show that, in the case of Regent Park, many locals are experiencing ‘gentrification without displacement’. The term, coined by Shaw and Hagemans (2015), exemplifies “a benign process of ‘positive gentrification’ in which middle-class in-movers are not pushing low-income residents out of the neighbourhood but, through filling vacancies or increasing housing densities, are expanding the total population so that the proportion but not the absolute number of low-income residents declines” (p.324). For Regent Park residents, this has meant a disruption in their sense of community through the introduction of middle and high income individuals who continue to perpetuate stigmatizations and misunderstanding of Regent Park’s low-income, racialised residents (Bucerius et al., 2017).
This process, most commonly defined as ‘social mixing’, generally refers to the “balance between social housing renters, homeowners and private renters, and middle-income and low-income residents in a particular spatially defined area,” (Arthurson, 2012, p.2). The planning practice of socially mixing communities “is assumed to result in improved socio-economic outcomes for low-income residents through: sharing of information and resources between people of different socio-economic status; a stronger sense of social control through greater accountability among community members; positive behaviour change through role modelling and mentorship between people of different socio-economic status; and higher quality local services and infrastructure through stronger collective efficacy” (Brail and Kumar, 2017; Joseph et al., 2007). Social mixing, however, has often led low-income residents to feel underrepresented and as if the built and social environments of their community are no longer reflective of themselves, their families, friends and peers. Through the creation of a media project that provides a platform for the ‘lost voices’ in the Regent Park community, we hope to shine light upon the different experiences related to revitalization and its effects on different groups.
Interactive Timeline: A Tool for Collective Memory
Our group chose to create a timeline as a working tool of collective memory that challenges the narratives constructed by outside actors about Regent Park. In the timeline, we tell the story of Regent Park through multiple lenses, such as Samira’s life and her relationship to place, academic literature, news media, and government & corporate documents.
We chose to create a timeline for a variety of reasons. Primarily, we wanted to be able to tell the story of Samira’s relationship to spaces and places in Regent Park over time. This was important to Samira because the places that are meaningful to her in Regent Park have and continue to disappear as a result of the revitalization. She explains in the interview activity we conducted with her that she feels her memory of the Regent Park she and her family have called home for many years has slowly faded and will continue to over time. This brings to light the concerning effects that social mixing policies can have in residents’ perceptions of home, and sense of security in familiar places. As Shaw and Hagemans (2015) address, “Changes in one’s position in the neighbourhood structure — one’s ‘place identity’ — and in government interventions, initiated by different groups with different interests, can contribute to a sense of loss of stability and control, and similarly constitute a type of displacement” (p.326). As a result of her loss of sense of place, Samira has often felt that Regent Park does not represent home but, rather, just a place to live.
As such, we decided to create a project that not only outlined Samira’s experiences of the revitalization, but also highlighted the experiences of the community at large. We elected to make the timeline an interactive one, incorporating a section titled Your Story, where community members are able to add their own experiences directly to our project, thereby bringing to light the multitudes of voices present in Regent Park, and that continue to be affected by the ongoing revitalisation. Our group felt that a lot of work occurs from a point of view that tends to be detached from community perspectives, especially within the academic planning context. As a result, we found it to be of great importance to make these perspectives the highlight of our project.
Intersectional Identities Make for Unique Stories: Understanding Our Goal
Through the creation of our timeline our goal is not to create an analysis tool that seeks to explain why Regent Park is talked about or engaged with in a myriad of ways; rather, our goal is to simply outline how the histories of displacement and social mixing in Regent Park have been largely multi-dimensional. As a result of the intersectional identities of all [positively or negatively] impacted by the Regent Park redevelopment, the ways in which each person experiences the revitalization will greatly differ. Samira’s experiences show her perspective of the ways her life has changed as a direct result of the revitalisation. From the loss of memory, to detachments from a sense of home and the intentions of the city and developers, Samira’s experiences show us a very specific side of Regent Park’s revitalization — one where the development’s intended effects do not translate and change form into something more drastic. Our additional focus on community voices display a varied number of perspectives, where some members welcome the new changes to the community, while others remain ambivalent and untrusting of city planners and the Daniels corporation.
Academic vs. On-the-Ground Knowledge: Learning from Locals
Swathes of academic literature have attempted to understand the effects of social mixing on low-income and racialized communities, especially within the North American context, with a specific focus on Regent Park as a case study for these effects (Brail and Kumar, 2017; Bucerius, et al., 2017; Johnson and Schippling, 2009; Laughlin and Johnson, 2011). In addition, an increasing amount of scholars have identified the lack of community perspectives within this literature, and as such, have attempted to fill these gaps through community interviews (Brail and Kumar, 2017; Laughlin and Johnson, 2011). However, beyond the simple inclusion of community voices, there has recently been a particular interest for the involvement of youth perspectives on Regent Park’s revitalization (Bucerius, et al., 2017; Johnson and Schippling, 2009; Laughlin and Johnston, 2011). In the case of Regent Park, youth aged 18 and under make up over 50% of the neighbourhood’s population, 20% higher than Toronto’s 30% average (Ibrahim, 2010). In addition, these same youth often act as translators and liaisons for their parents who may need assistance in understanding the revitalization processes as employed by the city and Daniels Corporation (Laughlin and Johnston 2011; Johnson and Schippling, 2009). As such, the voices of youth, especially in the Regent Park context, are pertinent to include within the academic literature which informs so much of how we come to understand urban planning processes. In an academic context where such voices are traditionally absent or left out, filling in these key gaps is crucial if we hope to realize more just outcomes in the planning and study of our cities.
Check out our completed timeline here.
References
Arthurson, K. (2012). Social mix and the city: Challenging the mixed communities consensus in housing and urban planning policies. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing.
Brail, S., and Kumar, N. (2017). Community leadership and engagement after the mix: The transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park. Urban Studies, 54(16), 3772-3788.
Bucerius, S.M., Thompson, S.K., and Berardi, L. (2017). “They’re Colonizing My Neighbourhood”: (Perceptions of) Social Mix in Canada. City & Community, 16(4), 486-505.
Castree, N., Kitchin, R., and Rogers, A. (2013). Displacement. In A Dictionary of human geography (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hackworth, J. (2018). Gentrification as a Politico-Economic Window: Reflections On The Changing State of Gentrification. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 110(1), 47-53.
Ibrahim, S. (2010). Regent Park: Community Resources and Needs Assessment. Toronto Centre for Community Learning and Development. Retrieved from: http://www.tccld.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/RegentPark_2009-10_CRNA.pdf
Johnson, S. C., and Schippling, R. (2009). Regent Park Revitalization: Young People’s Experience of Relocation from Public Housing Redevelopment. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Retrieved from: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2011/schl-cmhc/nh18-1-2/NH18-1-2-50-2009-eng.pdf
Joseph, M., Chaskin, R., and Webber, H. (2007). The theoretical basis for addressing poverty through mixed income development. Urban Affairs Review, 3(42), 369–409.
Kelly, S. (2013). The New Normal: The Figure of the Condo Owner in Toronto’s Regent Park. City & Society, 25(2), 173-194.
Laughlin, D. L., & Johnson, L. C. (2011). Defining and exploring public space: perspectives of young people from Regent Park, Toronto. Children’s Geographies, 9(3-4), 439-456.
Shaw, K.S., and Hagemans, I.W. (2015). ‘Gentrification Without Displacement’ and the Consequent Loss of Place: The Effects of Class Transition on Low-income Residents of Secure Housing in Gentrifying Areas. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(2), 323-341. Smith, N. (2002). New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy. Antipode, 34(3), 427-450.
The Social Fixers are Erika, Lena, Sayem and Samira.