Verticality, Public Space and the Role of Resident Participation in Revitalizing Suburban High-rise Buildings

In this paper, we look at the role that public space may take on in the redevelopment of suburban high-risebuildings in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). We are interested in what role public space playsin the imaginary and how different forms of public participation in planning processes are beneficial to theoutcome of the redesign of high-rise buildings who are in need of repair and retrofitting due to their age andtheir social stigmatization. These suburban high-rises offer insight into newly proliferating forms of public space,and speak to the need for more diverse and specific physical, social and political articulations of public space.We find that by examining public space through the lens of verticality we are able to see how different planninginterventions, urban development processes, spatial contexts and competing imaginaries produce very differentand often hybrid forms. We base our findings upon selected planning and policy documents, media reports anddiscourse, and input from interviews with several locals involved in planning processes

Ephemeral Geographies Of DIY Making Space In Toronto’s Creative City

This paper discusses practices of “creative placemaking” in Toronto, the complex relationships that are formed between creative practitioners and the places they create, and the crucial role of more informal and do-it-yourself (DIY) workspaces in the broader creative community. As geographies and conditions of work have shifted, and affordable, accessible and appropriate creative workspace in the city has become increasingly rare, creative practitioners from across various fields are forced to find alternative ways to continue their practices. I examine the role of the DIY workspace as a crucial form of creative space in the city that offers the creative practitioner a level of spatial stability in the face of rapid and often arts-led gentrification, development and upscaling across the downtown. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes participant photography, I explore the imagery, production, materiality, and functions of these spaces; the ways in which they blur and require complex negotiations of boundaries; the ways in which they benefit, challenge and impact their makers and users; and their relationships with top-down Creative City policy frameworks and institutions. I argue that these kinds of spaces are often very different from dominant ideals of what an art space should be, are different from the at-home art spaces of the past, and are increasingly necessary for creative practitioners to continue their work in a changing city where they have fewer and fewer options, in spite of the deployment of Creative City discourse that might suggest otherwise. I also argue that dominant imagery and narratives distort our understandings of creativity and space in the city, but that real and imagined are mutually embedded, and that examinations of workspaces as perceived, lived and conceived can allow us to better understand them as places

Common Areas, Common Causes: Public Space in High‐Rise Buildings During Covid‐19

This article explores forms of public space that have been rendered palpable during the Covid‐19 pandemic: public spaces in high‐rise buildings. We consider both physical and social public space in this context, thinking about the safety of both common areas and amenities in buildings and the emergence of new publics around the conditions of tower living during the pandemic (particularly focusing on tenant struggles). We determine that the planning, use, maintenance, and social production of public space in high‐rise buildings are topics of increasing concern and urgency and that the presence of public space in the vertical built forms and lifestyles proliferating in urban regions complicates common understandings of public space. We argue that the questions raised by the pandemic call upon us to reconsider the meanings of public space