Revitalization is a word that sure sounds good; but is the phenomenon the city’s calling “revitalization” over at Regent Park really a good thing? That’s the question the Toronto Public Space Committee is encouraging us all to ponder tomorrow night with a screening of short docs on the subject of planned affordable housing projects:
From a heart-wrenching story of a community uprooted to make way for a planned neighborhood (“Little Burgundy”), to a thorough exploration of the history of housing projects (“No Fitting Habitat”), these films show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The screening will conclude with a promotional film from 1961 about a “successful experiment in slum clearance” known as Regent Park South.
Co-presented with the NFB, this continuation of the Streets to Screens series happens at Toronto Free Gallery Thursday night (December 14th) at 7:30pm. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $3 to the TPSC if your wallet is feeling adequately vitalized.
Image of Regent Park South circa 1964 courtesy of the NFB.
One comment
The best neighbourhoods are almost always the ones that were unplanned. Not all of Jane Jacobs’ theories hold currency any more but the natural process of unslumming that she wrote about in ‘Death and Life’ is such an airtight theory it might as well be a law. If we would’ve let the old Regent Park slum take its natural course it would probably look like Corktown, a unique and delightful part of town that is starting to undergo a manageable level of gentrification. But we’ve already made a monster out of Regent Park and now we have this wonderful opportunity to ‘right’ the ‘wrongs’. The new site plan for RP looks fantastic and the fact that it is being done in phases means that the neighbourhood will mature as it is built. I see little reason to be skeptical about this project.