Selling the ‘scary city’: gendering freedom, fear and condominium development in the neoliberal city

Abstract

In contemporary postindustrial cities, urban revitalization policies are discursively linked, in part, to urban fears and relations of threat. In Toronto, these tensions are inscribed in the city through new-build gentrification in the form of condominium development, a process that has created tens of thousands of securitized residential spaces. These spaces, I suggest, are produced in part through gendered ideologies about cities, bodies, safety and fear that (re)emerge or are (re)invigorated in the context of Toronto's revitalization hopes and fears. In this paper, I explore the gendered imagery of revitalization through condominium advertisements, and read these in relation to interviews conducted with women condominium owners. This exploration emphasizes the simultaneous commodification of pleasure and danger through gendered images and experiences. I argue that the dynamic tension between freedom and fear, excitement and anxiety, highlights the gendered constitution of the neoliberal makeover of the city, and the patriarchal power relations that continue to structure contemporary urban life.

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