Scarborough’s Golden Mile

Despite living in Scarborough for almost 20 years and visiting my uncle every week near Victoria Park and Eglinton, I had no idea that the area I visited weekly was known as the “Golden Mile”. It was always an area I hated driving by just because of the construction and the excess time needed to get to my uncle’s place. This being so, I found this week’s class especially interesting because of its focus on Scarborough’s Golden Mile.

The Golden Mile is a commercial district in Scarborough located along Eglinton Avenue East, east of Victoria Park Avenue (Brown, 2010). It currently consists of strip malls, an indoor mall, parking lots, and a few big box stores. However, I was surprised when doing the readings for this week, which stated that the Golden Mile was seen as a “Golden Mile of Industry” due to its hub of large-scale manufacturing. Many companies actually chose to relocate their factories to the Golden Mile because it was such a happening place (Leblanc, 2006). However, not much of this remains today.

As a result, the city launched a plan in 2016 to turn a large area along Eglinton Avenue “into the type of high-density, mixed use community seen along Toronto’s busier streets” (Adler, 2019). However, residents of the area are becoming worried and these worries are well-founded. When investing in these areas to be a “type of high-density, mixed use community seen along Toronto’s busier streets,” it’s easy to displace existing communities (Adler, 2019). And if you’ve been to the Golden Mile before, there’s a strong cultural community presence in the area — suggesting that these worries need to and should be addressed.

The Inclusive Local Economic Opportunity (ILEO) Initiative is an initiative that brings together a number of different sectors (such as private, public and community sectors) to look for ways to
“reduce gaps in economic prosperity in the Greater Toronto region” by aiming to promote inclusive growth and avoid gentrification (United Way, 2019). Thus, not only is the initiative addressing important concerns of residents, but they do so in a collaborative way.

Our class has the opportunity to make an original contribution to the ILEO Initiative by addressing a number of questions in relation to the developments arranged for the Golden Mile. The group I’m in particularly will be looking at commercial gentrification. Given the challenges and worries residents of the Golden Mile have, I’m excited to hopefully contribute to alleviating residents’ worries.

Sources:

Adler, Mike. 2019. “Neighbours worry as plans for Scarborough’s Golden Mile Take Shape.” Toronto. Retrieved from https://www.toronto.com/news-story/9542913-neighbours-worry-as-plans-for-scarborough-s-golden-mile-take-shape/

Brown, Alan. 2010. “Scarborough’s ‘Golden Mile’.” Toronto’s Historical Plaques. Retrieved from http://torontoplaques.com/Pages/Scarboroughs_Golden_Mile.html

Leblanc, Dave. 2006. “Not Much Remains of Scarborough’s Golden Mile.” Globe and Mail, July 28.

Monsebraaten, Laurie. 2019. “Revitalization Project Aims To Put the Glitter Back in the Golden Mile.” Toronto Star, November 5.