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Challenging the Rhetoric of Stigmatization: The Benefits of Concentrated Poverty in Toronto's Regent Park

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  • Martine August

    (Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impacts of territorial stigmatization on the experiences and life strategies of residents of Regent Park, Canada's first and largest public housing estate. It centers on how discourses of isolation, disorganization, and danger (based on imported theories and depictions of life in social housing developed in a very different time and place than the Canadian inner city) have served to justify the state-driven gentrification of public housing via ‘socially mixed’ redevelopment. Drawing on semistructured, in-depth interviews with over thirty tenants, this paper offers a counternarrative documenting the many benefits and advantages of living in an area of ‘concentrated poverty’. It reveals that tenants have deep attachments to Regent Park despite its reputation, and enjoy a strong sense of community; they have access to dense networks of friendship and support, local amenities and convenience, and services and agencies that suit their needs. While these benefits are real, they are counteracted by the impacts of coping with a neglected physical environment resulting from welfare state retrenchment (particularly on the housing front); and coping with safety issues and drug-related activities. Socially mixed redevelopment holds questionable promise for meaningfully addressing these problems and may even diminish some of the benefits of community life.

Suggested Citation

  • Martine August, 2014. "Challenging the Rhetoric of Stigmatization: The Benefits of Concentrated Poverty in Toronto's Regent Park," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(6), pages 1317-1333, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:6:p:1317-1333
    DOI: 10.1068/a45635
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Tom Slater, 2006. "The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 737-757, December.
    2. Edward G. Goetz & Karen Chapple, 2010. "You gotta move: advancing the debate on the record of dispersal," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 209-236, March.
    3. Jeff R. Crump, 2003. "The end of public housing as we know it: public housing policy, labor regulation and the US city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 179-187, March.
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