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Author Topic: social housing, gentrification and other housing issues
lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 08:19 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With the silly accusation about Layton and Chow "living in subsidised housing" cropping up again, perhaps a discussion on the merits - and problems - of co-ops, public and assisted housing and other forms of social housing measures would be timely, as restoring federal housing aid is on the agenda now as well.

Yet another gentrification story, in Old Montreal, the (new) prosperous residents are complaining about Accueil Bonneau, a soup kitchen, homeless shelter and transition home that has been there for decades - I think in times past a lot of the residents and users were mariners who had fallen on hard times. wealthy Old Montreal residents petition for shelter to be moved.

It is very difficult now to get funding to launch new co-ops or other social housing projects. In my neighourhood, they were planning to build the new (French-language) superhospital along the railway tracks between the Plateau/Mile End and La Petite Patrie. Since that project has fallen by the wayside housing groups are trying to get a public housing development started up (co-ops + HLMs) but so far neither Québec nor the Feds have budged.


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 28 April 2005 08:43 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There is a long history (back to the 1930s) of ideological hostility at the federal level, especially in the Finance Dep't, to social housing, and a long record of incompetence at the provincial level. When the Finance guys hold sway in Ottawa, they move to transfer all responsibility for housing to the provinces because they know that that is where housing policy goes to die. That transfer was, eg, one of the proposals of the Charlottetown Accord, and even though Charlottetown was defeated, the feds went ahead and did it anyway.

The most creative plans for social housing have usually come from alliances among municipalities, small citizen groups, individual developers with some social awareness, and some bureaucrats in Ottawa who have always believed in such projects.

Sounds very Red Tory, doesn't it?

His strength on this subject is one of the reasons I'm glad Jack has a national podium at the moment. It would be nice to think that he could get some response from the people on this score. The issue needs better framing, though.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 09:12 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
On the subject of wealthy and enlightened supporters of social housing, Phyllis Lambert, a scion of the Bronfman family, certainly comes to mind here. http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Phyllis_Lambert.html This architect played a major role in saving the grey-stone buildings just east of McGill University from a huge high-rise development project, creating many co-op apartments and assuring that people of a wide range of income levels can live in the area. I have friends who live in these houses, ranging from artists in precarious circumstances to a lawyer and a university professor - the latter don't receive subidies, eh? Hard to get in, though...

[ 28 April 2005: Message edited by: lagatta ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 April 2005 10:36 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think the way our conservative politicians look at it, "the market" will provide all we need. IOW's, the poor shall continue forking out two-thirds of their welfare cheque or meagre earnings to the noble cause of slumlordery.

I'm looking for something I read about what a foreign-born architect was proposing for Canada's lack of affordable housing. His idea was for very cheap unitized buildings for under $20 thousand, I think. It starts out as a very modest box design, about 15' by 20', but as the owner affords expansion, they can have it looking like an average home in a few years. For starters, a chemical toilet suffices until resources permit for city hookup. A single 15A circuit powered by solar panel is basic. I was impressed with the idea because the piece mentioned how successful it had been in other countries. The design is implemented in several countries around the world, including the architect's native country in Europe, if I remember correctly.

The plan was not popular here because in a majority of Canadian municipalities, new housing is controlled by a handful of land developers who are favoured by local building authorities and provide few next to no affordable apartments or condos. I'll keep looking for info ...


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 10:44 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel, I'd seen that too. It could be a good idea in rural and semi-rural areas, but in cities it would just be another factor contributing to sprawl, as it is single-family housing and obviously poor people would have to buy cheap land on the very outskirts of the urban area. Social housing should also benefit all of society, by intelligent densification (that is, with proper soundproofing, enough balconies, adequate gardens, etc.) Densification, if properly done, provides for far more rational use of urban infrastructure, public transport, (and walking and cycling) and decreases the need for cars.

Here in Montréal, there are a lot of good projects on the drawing boards, but funding has been cut so much that GRTs (Groupes de ressources techniques - advisory groups) are just sitting on them.

You are right about stupid bylaws, however. In an outlying area of Montréal, some residents were opposing the idea of allowing more apartment buildings as it would "decrease property values".


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Melsky
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posted 28 April 2005 11:04 AM      Profile for Melsky   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I like the idea of a development that would be a combination of a co-op/condo and kibbutz. Sharing resources like childcare, vehicles and laundry facilities makes a lot of sense. At the same time I need my own space and privacy.
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Fidel
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posted 28 April 2005 11:05 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I agree that urban sprawl is a bad thing as far as the enviro goes. I think that his idea was meant as an interim solution to what are emergency situations. And I think we're seeing a growing number of emergency housing situations in Canada. I think the homeless, the down and outers, need something that will fit within their low wage budgets. We certainly shouldn't view it as a long term sol'n at all, I agree. Canada's natural resources are the envy of the world. And American's driving up the price of our lumber is not a valid excuse for Canadian's to be sleeping on the streets in January, imo.
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lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 11:26 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What is needed then is an emergency programme to provide both construction jobs and housing for the homeless and poorly housed - while striving to avert the creation of ghettos. Government has no trouble expropriating land etc when it is a question of military needs or national disaster etc.

Fidel, of course you are aware that while high housing costs and housing shortages that lead to absurd requirements on the part of landlords contribute to homelessness, there are also mental health issues involved that also require a concerted public health intervention.


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skdadl
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posted 28 April 2005 11:39 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There is a massive redevelopment of the Regent's Park area in Toronto just getting under way now. As people may know, Regent's Park was first developed in many of the wrong ways, and did indeed become a ghetto. I know very little of the planned redevelopment beyond what I've seen in the papers recently -- it looks/sounds good, although I've been wondering what happens to all the resident families as one large section of the old area after another is knocked down.

The lessons about mixed tenancy and mixed uses must have been learned, surely? Does anyone know more about this project?


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awkward silence
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posted 28 April 2005 06:44 PM      Profile for awkward silence     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The residents will be put up in alternate housing during reconstruction, and will have first option at new units – though it’s likely a percentage will not want to move for a second time.

I’m sceptical. I only know what I’ve read here and there as well, but I worry about these kinds of sweeping redevelopments. Always (well not always) done with the best intentions, but regardless of how progressive the plans, the “raze and rebuild” models ignore some of the paths that get trodden down in the social fabric. There are elements of community that are indelibly tied to the architecture and history of space – those that make a place feel like home – that are wiped away in the process. They cannot be engineered because they are the organic creations and expressions of community.

There is a vast difference between a home in a community and well-designed place to live. How much meaningful control or input did residents have into this redevelopment of their home?

I also get nervous around using the word “ghetto”. Why do we have to talk about Regent Park as though “it” needs to be saved from itself?

Also,

quote:
Physical redesign and the social "mixing" of poor project dwellers and middle-class homeowners who want to live in the city centre are intended to reform the "deviant" cultures of the poor, supposedly generating new and positive attitudes toward work and crime - and drug-free neighbourhoods.

The real emphasis here is on changing tenants, themselves, and not the failure of government social and economic policies that have caused problems in the first place.


From this, which I thought was a pretty good critique.

I do think design can be more than superficial tinkering, though, provided it’s democratically driven.


From: toronto | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 06:55 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That is a very interesting article - and welcome to babble.

Indeed Regent Park and "Le plan Dozois" here (the similar but slightly smaller development between Ontario and de Maisonneuve west of St-Laurent in south-central Montreal) were indeed developed to "sweep away poverty" without solving its root causes.

But there are problems - Iike the author of the article, I don't think there is anything wrong with well-designed high-rise apartments, even for families - in many countries they are ubiquitous in cities. But they need adequate balconies (terraces), good soundproofing, etc.

However a lot of residents in developments like those indeed live in fear of other residents, not a pleasant situation. And in very large areas where only low-income people are housed, there are never proper grocery stores and other essential proximity services.


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Granola Girl
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posted 28 April 2005 07:59 PM      Profile for Granola Girl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I also agree that social housing has to be mixed in with market rate housing in order to avoid creating stigmatized geographic pockets of poverty. I remeber St. Jamestown in Toronto, when I used to live there in the 90's, as an example of social housing gone wrong - creating a "ghetto" of poverty, as it were. I know some find the term offensive, but its a good way of summing up the idea of a marginal population who is quartered together based solely on economic consderations - a kind of economic apartheid. Here in Vancouver there are some great examples of mixed income housing that spring to mind, such as one housing project in Coal Harbour which is equally divided between low-income and higher-income renters.

One issue that hasn't been raised in regards to social housing is the idea of home ownership. I would personally like to see social housing that somehow allowed its residents to eventually own the units they live in, perhaps through subsidized mortgages or something similar.


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lagatta
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posted 28 April 2005 09:56 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Co-ops, depending on the formulae, sort of collectively "own" their property. Beyond the legal details (I am NOT an expert on that) they do provide residents both security and responsibility.

I'm not familiar with any recent projects providing outright ownership of individual flats or houses. Of course Thatcher did that, but she was selling off previously social housing (dilapidating public property). I'm not opposed per se to ownership - I think it is important to foster security and responsibility if that is what people want. so they can feel an investment of time and money in improving their dwellings is not a waste.

There were a lot of subsidies to returning veterans after the Second World War, but alas, while providing homes, they also helped create a monster - suburban sprawl.

[ 28 April 2005: Message edited by: lagatta ]


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jrootham
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posted 29 April 2005 12:48 AM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The trouble with co-ops is that people have to co-operate.

I can't resist the line. It's the title of a history of starting DACHI in Toronto.

I have been finance committee chair for Alexandra Park Co-op for most of the past 20 years (also president and treasurer for a while more recently). That's the small one next to Sonny Atkinson which was Alexandra Park Ontario Housing.

Despite the trouble referred to above I am absolutely in favour of co-ops.

Co-ops typically do own the buildings, and mostly own the land as well (we don't at the moment, but that is another tail). Economically they do very well in areas of high housing demand. In areas of lower demand they have some troubles since they tend to pay staff better and have some tendency to resist cutting corners (not a guarantee, but if you want to cut corners in a co-op you have to do it in public). Certainly co-ops built before inflationary periods in the housing market have very large cost advantages, since mortgages dominate the cost early, and in private rental they still do in Toronto since buildings get flipped to avoid rent controls.

Co-ops can be amazingly resilient as well. Even if a completely crazy board takes over the membership can rise up and deal with them.


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Pogo
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posted 29 April 2005 01:30 AM      Profile for Pogo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I am not big fan of transferring ownership of social housing if you mean freehold title. Once values start to rise it will be these houses themselves that become part of the inaffordability problem. Indeed, anticipating this a lot of US projects have built in resell controls where the resell price is set for a defined period, say 20 years. However after 20 years all hell breaks loose. I am a fan of ownership in the coop sector as there are natural resell controls in place. Basically the share price that members pay remains constant. It can change but it is virtually unaffected by changes in the base land value.

Indeed I am very curious about the macro effects of this. If we had enough coops would their cost stability be a downward pressure on rental rates and housing costs?


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Fidel
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posted 29 April 2005 06:17 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by lagatta:
There were a lot of subsidies to returning veterans after the Second World War, but alas, while providing homes, they also helped create a monster - suburban sprawl.

The feds offered my father seven percent on a loan to buy a house. And it wasn't much of a house. They offered him life insurance but neglected to mention mortgage insurance to the old man, a grade eight graduate who lost five pension years at the steel plant as a reward for volunteering in '39. My mother finished paying off the debt after dad died in 1980. A small amount was owed at the time, but they made sure she didn't get away with anything. Not a dime of help from Britain for mum either. She bolted Spitfires and Lancasters together. England stood alone against Nazi Germany for the better part of a year.

[ 29 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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Gir Draxon
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posted 29 April 2005 07:47 AM      Profile for Gir Draxon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
While I agree that affordable housing is an important issue, I don't think that it should nessecarily come at the expense of gentrification. To put it simply, rich people living in lunury condos downtown is better than ensuring that the only place they would want to live is in a massive house out in some subdivision outside the city proper.

In fact, with some good planning, there can be affordable and luxury housing in the same cities without sprawling out over the entire landscape.


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skdadl
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posted 29 April 2005 08:51 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From awkward silence's link:

quote:
Redevelopment proponents wilfully ignore how declining funds for education and social assistance, lack of child care, a precarious job market, racism and social stigmatization restrict the life chances of public housing residents.

Point taken, awkward silence, and welcome to babble. (Love the handle.)

It certainly never made me feel better, when I was facing financial catastrophe, to know that I had neighbours who weren't. So treating design as an independent factor is a mistake, yes, although it's worth remembering that some modernist architecture emerged from intensely political views ("machines for living," eg) that turned out to be alienating for many, regardless of economic status.

Perhaps this is sentimental of me, but I remain attached to a middle-ground when thinking of the benefits of higher-density housing. Older areas of European cities tend to be solidly six to eight stories high in many places, which already gives them greater density than most parts of Toronto, in spite of our towering high-rises. And to my non-expert eye, that is still the urban design that produces the most consistently lively neighbourhoods, even where the tenants are low-income, and especially where the street level is given over to the local grocery store, pharmacy, shoe repair, cleaners, etc.

Does that really take a different culture?


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Fidel
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posted 29 April 2005 09:15 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, I think there's a trade-off somewhere in this. On the one hand, I don't think anyone wants the cramped living conditions that exist in say, Tokyo. I remember reading about the poor of Victorian era London. Some 300 000 lived in a few square blocks and buildings so close that neighbors could reach out windows and shake hands with each other. It was an insult to human dignity.

And on the other hand, not only is it enviromentally irresponsible to have an entire two floor bungalow dedicated to the comfort of one or two people, the same now goes for the poor who have no place to go, inner city or anywhere. I think that the feds are the ones who need to develop a contingency plan here.

We need a national, affordable housing plan because the market just isn't fulfilling the needs of tens of thousands of Canadian families. The affordable housing market needs intervention on a similar scale as if it were corporate welfare handouts on the liberal or conservative agenda.


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Pogo
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posted 29 April 2005 10:40 AM      Profile for Pogo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Gir Draxon:
While I agree that affordable housing is an important issue, I don't think that it should nessecarily come at the expense of gentrification.

As you point out the key is proper planning. One of the stepss is proper standards of maintenance. What often happens with gentrification is the deliberate steps landlords take to devalue property when they are looking to develope the area. Enforcing realistic standards of maintenance goes a long way to achieving this.


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lagatta
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posted 29 April 2005 11:07 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That is true. My landlord - or more specifically, my nice old landlady's horrific yuppie son - is waiting for a subsidy from the city for renovations. In the meantime nothing gets done. I've been through that before.

Gir, I'm certainly not opposed to the presence of wealthier people in the city core, as opposed to the phenomenon the USians called "white flight" as it was so racially fuelled down there. I don't think anyone wants to see depressed, deprived urban cores. Moreover, seeing where you live, I find such urban density concerns salutary! But there is something sad and sterile when working-class families can't live in town, and when the artists who originally made the place "creative" are pushed out. An extreme example of that phenomenon is the city of San Francisco.


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skdadl
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posted 29 April 2005 11:19 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another pretty extreme example, I would say, is Yorkville, where gentrification -- hypergentrification -- drove all the artists and musicians and craftworkers who had made the place happen in the first place to seek refuge twenty-five years ago on Queen West.

And guess what is happening to Queen West now?


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Melsky
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posted 29 April 2005 11:37 AM      Profile for Melsky   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Queen West is being forced out to Parkdale.
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fern hill
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posted 29 April 2005 12:11 PM      Profile for fern hill        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Gentrification -- 'twas ever thus when the Market, which is always right, as we've been told, is allowed to rule. Manhattan artists move to Brooklyn. Yorkville moves to Queen West, etc. Then those areas become groovy and so on.

Planning is key, as several here have said, but then the neanderthals come out squealing about 'private property rights' and they should be able to sell to whomever they want, develop however they want, etc.

It seems to me that housing represents the single biggest failure of capitalism to deal sensibly with ordinary people's basic needs. Under capitalism, with or without a social housing policy, the poor will always be badly housed and/or gouged on rent. The Dickensian example is apt.


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jrootham
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posted 29 April 2005 02:50 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
If we had enough coops would their cost stability be a downward pressure on rental rates and housing costs?

Absolutely. I wrote a paper and presented it to the Ontario Legislature about the economics of housing. It doesn't directly address this question but I think you can work out the implications.


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Tommy Shanks
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posted 29 April 2005 03:22 PM      Profile for Tommy Shanks     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm not convinced that gentrification, in and of itself, is a bad thing, or indeed an opposable force. Many of us would like to see original residents of any area stay put and continue to do what they did to make an area interesting in the first place. However, its obvious that that attractiveness is what draws more and more people to a neighbourhood.

Thinking about it further, the possibility of preserving "pre-gentrified" but popular enclaves can't really happen. It seems to be a form of NIMBY-ism in reverse, wanting to preserve a neighborhood’s vibrancy while keeping out those that would like to share in that. And, in a loose sense, who would like to live in an area in which others were either trying to get out or were resisting moving to?

Regarding the redevelopment of Regent Park, and to touch on skdadl’s point on the successful urban model, any redevelopment should include lots of main street, 4 - 6 storey residential development, with street level commercial/institutional usage. They should also be right on (rather than setback) the street. On the side streets a mixture of townhouses, duplexes and narrow lot single family homes would probably work as effectively as it does in many other cities. As Lagatta points out, density is the key when it comes to effective public transit and in the creation of lively and safe streets. The city used to have a program to promote infill, laneway, and main street housing, but I’m not sure if its still up and running.

One of the problems with Regent Park, particularly the south side, is its use of the "tower in the park" model. There is a heck of a lot of wasted space, although less on the north side. As well, the original plan used a lot of dead-ends and cut-offs for streets, effectively making them no-go areas.

I understand the redevelopment will remove many of these termination points and increase the density of the housing types that will be included. One concern I've heard is that many of the planned thoroughfares are too narrow or awkward for firefighting equipment to get through, creating a pretty hazardous situation.

Edit: My bad. I spelled Lagatta's name wrong.

[ 29 April 2005: Message edited by: Tommy Shanks ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
awkward silence
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posted 29 April 2005 04:37 PM      Profile for awkward silence     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
“ghetto” … is a good way of summing up the idea of a marginal population who is quartered together based solely on economic considerations

This is true, but I think the language has more implications than what it delineates in strictly descriptive terms. My uneasiness with the term, at least in this case, stems from a couple of different considerations.

On one hand, although economic and racial stigmatization are rolled up in the concept, a ghetto is a geographical location. It allows a particular place to become problematized in itself – poverty, marginalization, alienation are problems that somehow get read as street names.

Calling a neighborhood a ghetto is, in my opinion, (in part) what allows it to be paternalistically bulldozed (or redeveloped) in the name of eliminating a “problem”.

On another note, this kind of problematization is abstracted from the fact that many people have grown up in these communities, made their lives there, and want to live there. It just seems a vulgarization of the fact that to many, this is a home that they care about and which is meaningful to them.

It’s true that my last apartment was a shithole – ugly, mice, leaking sink, poor maintenance. Nevertheless, I would have been insulted if someone, upon visiting, were to have affixed such a rigid and removed label to it. In spite of these problems, it also contained all my belongings and for me, carried within it the significance of years of comings and goings. We never just live in spaces … the connections between who we are and where we are are always much more intimate. Calling my place a shithole means also saying something about me. Likewise with communities.

There’s a difference between identifying specific problems with a place and defining a place itself as problematic.

But maybe this is a digression…

Design is important, but I think it needs to be based on the lived experiences of those who reside in an area, particularly if it’s redevelopment. Community is about so much more than pragmatic calculations of density, built form, street size, mixing incomes, etc, although poor planning with respect to these considerations can be disastrous.

As I’ve been writing, I’ve been thinking of two cases (probably familiar to most) I recall reading about, about community driven renewal, in the context of the Regent Park development, and community engineering without community control. If anyone’s interested, this and this were the first links I got on google.

Gentrification can only be partly mitigated at the planning level. It’s an inevitable result of economic inequality.


From: toronto | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Tommy Shanks
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posted 29 April 2005 05:08 PM      Profile for Tommy Shanks     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The second example, while it did involve the community resulted in gentrification nonetheless. So, sure there is some subsidized housing, some above-store apartments, and the like, the bulk of the homes between Shuter south to King, River to Parliament, have been renovated, as has much of the commercial stock.

Hell, most housing in that area is now $350,000 plus.

So even though there were safeguards and processes in place to mitigate the gentrification process, over time it occurred.

Concerning Donmount Court, considering the state of disrepair the complex was in something had to be done. Is it the best solution? I don't know. But even if they had of replaced it with an exact replica, the fact that is was newer and had less physical problems with the existing stock would have made it more desirable. Is that gentrification?

[ 29 April 2005: Message edited by: Tommy Shanks ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
awkward silence
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posted 29 April 2005 05:29 PM      Profile for awkward silence     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
So even though there were safeguards and processes in place to mitigate the gentrification process, over time it occurred.

Agreed. It’s inevitable.

I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was trying to downplay the seriousness of the need for improvement in Regent Park. Having nothing happen is not an option either. Gentrification occurs when the fundamental character of neighborhood begins to be changed through the displacement of certain groups of residents, so no, it’s not gentrification per se. In time it might be the result, though.


From: toronto | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged

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