Addressing Cultural Preservation in Urban Development
Over the course of this semester we have learned about many different ways to think about the intersections between urban life and public policy. Last week’s discussion about how to promote inclusive development in changing neighbourhoods throughout Toronto was very interesting. The focus of this week was on the revitalization of Scarborough’s Golden Mile but there were a lot of public policy questions that came up in terms of development and gentrification in general. One idea that I have continued to think about is the idea of cultural gentrification, which I understood as the way in which displacement also takes away long established cultures in certain areas.
I think addressing the idea of culture gentrification is an important aspect of urban policy that sometimes gets left out of policy changes when neighbourhoods are being redeveloped. The need to think about what creates a culture within neighbourhoods has become increasingly apparent. In my opinion, it is the residents themselves, the local businesses and the art and history in the area that create the culture. Although maintaining the same culture may be difficult when private developers are changing the land use it may be useful to have municipal governments and policy makers thinking about inclusive development that is resident driven in order to establish and maintain important cultural aspects.
Public consultations with current residents should be made a priority in order to understand the culture and what needs to be done to preserve it. This would also be an efficient way of learning about how to incorporate histories of particular neighbourhoods and areas into the redevelopment. Although this is only one small aspect of gentrification and there is still a lot of work to be done in order to promote inclusive development to protect against physical and commercial displacement, I feel that the idea of cultural gentrification is another important aspect that needs to be brought into the conversation of redevelopment form a public policy perspective.
