Inner-suburban neighbourhoods, activist research and the social space of the commercial street

McLean, H., Rankin, K. and Kamizaki, K. (2015) Inner-suburban neighbourhoods, activist research and the social space of the commercial street. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), pp. 1283-1308.

Abstract

This paper tracks the transition of “creative city” planning from the gentrified downtown to the disinvested inner-suburbs. It attends particularly to contradictory notions of community mobilized by proponents of inner-suburban revitalization and by residents and business owners who daily inhabit inner-suburban commercial streets where cultural planning interventions are typically targeted. It further argues that those contradictory notions indicate immanent displacement pressure. The argument builds around data gleaned from an action research project in Toronto’s Mount Dennis neighbourhood, a former manufacturing neighbourhood that is now home to a large number of precariously employed new immigrants. We contend that community engaged research not only allows for an analysis of the race and class dimensions of creative city planning, it consolidates marginalized perspectives and opens up alternative possibilities for planning and development. We also claim that the relational, exploratory and sometimes fraught process of sharing knowledge with community-based researchers enriches critical research on the exclusionary politics of redevelopment planning.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: McLean, Dr Heather
• Authors: McLean, H., Rankin, K., and Kamizaki, K.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Research Group: Human Geography Research Group
• Journal Name: ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
• Publisher: University of British Columbia, Okanagan
• ISSN: 1492-9732
• Published Online: 13 December 2015
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2015 The Authors
• First Published: First published in ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14(4): 1283-1308
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License