Moss Park gentrification a cause for concern

Gentrification by any other name is still gentrification. The seemingly benign language of "revitalization," "vibrant public spaces," "exciting opportunities," "community resiliency," "inclusion model" and "diversity" only disguises the reality that poor and homeless people will be displaced and the policing of poverty will escalate where gentrification takes place.

In Toronto's Downtown East (DTE), the proposed LGBTQ-focused sport centre at Moss Park's John Innes Community Centre, a joint venture of the 519 Community Centre and the city, is a concern for anti-gentrification activists, as is the closely related nearby George Street revitalization project, which is promising to "deinstitutionalize" that neighbourhood by consolidating most homeless services and individuals under one roof.

Before Gentrification, a City Covered in Graffiti

In the optics of law enforcement, there are no wins quite like the ritual display of guns, money, or drugs on a table. When the New York Police Department finally ensnared the graffiti artist Adam Cole, last week, a stack of stickers and a drum of glue sufficed. In the late eighties and early nineties, Cole was astonishingly prolific, blanketing the city with spray-painted stencils and wheat-pasted stickers bearing the name COST (as well as the occasional absurdist in-joke). After a fourteen-year hiatus, Cole’s COST tags reëmerged in 2010, grabbing the attention of the police department’s big-game hunters. Cole’s arrest was a reminder of how much had changed during his years away. Officers briefed by the department’s sophisticated, graffiti-busting Vandal Squad pinched Cole near the meatpacking district, where he had pasted some COST posters above a specialty wine shop.

From Kensington Market to Gezi Park: Gentrification is a global force

Gezi Park in Istanbul has been making headlines for two weeks, tempting the West's fickle appetite for revolution. Last Monday, 50 protestors occupied the nine-acre park to confront demolition crews preparing to turn one of the last remaining green spaces in the city into a shopping mall. Three days later, their number had grown to 10,000.

Western media reports have followed a predictable pattern for anyone bred on the script written by the Arab Spring: an autocratic government, supported by militia thugs, are suppressing the people's demand for democracy. "Democracy" in this context is a messy, sticky term, but surely, like Justice Potter Stewart we will know it when we see it.