ABSTRACT
Known for the diversity of its residents and neighborhoods, the City of Toronto (Ontario, Canada) is home to just under three million people (City of Toronto, 2012). A careful drive through one such neighborhood – called New Toronto, ironically – reveals a community in flux. Newly built multi-million dollar lakefront mansions sit next to dilapidated rent-by-the-month low-rise apartment buildings. Post-Second World War bungalows that have enjoyed the same owners for decades are prime properties for developers looking to scoop them up for a steal, sever their large lots into two, then rebuild and sell new, more modern and expensive homes to younger buyers looking to find a house of their own (and willing to take on outrageous levels of debt in order to do so) anywhere in the increasingly unaffordable city (Canadian Press, 2015; Toronto Foundation, 2014). After the First World War, New Toronto was a hotbed for industry and many people worked in the various manufacturing plants situated close to the railroad tracks that cut through the northern tip of the neighborhood. But, starting in the 1980s, the departure of various factories from New Toronto to other (cheaper) locations, including the exit of the area’s largest employer (Goodyear), left behind a wake of unemployment and great swaths of unused industrial buildings and brownfields (ibid.). Given its proximity to the lake as well as to the downtown core of the city, New Toronto has been called the next ‘it’ place to live by Toronto trendsetters (e.g. blogTO, 2014) and yet, although one can see gentrification creeping in, the loss of those factories and lack of employment in the area continue to permeate its bones.
