Infrastructural reuse projects, lost spaces, and spaces of homelessness: a case study on the Bentway in Toronto

Abstract

This paper examines The Bentway, an infrastructural use project creating a new high-profile public space in Toronto, Ontario. Infrastructural reuse projects transform transportation corridors, former industrial waterfronts, and, in the case of The Bentway, land under an elevated expressway into park-like, but often heavily programmed, curated spaces managed by non-governmental organizations. Through a series of interviews and policy analyses, this paper examines tensions between publicness, accessibility, and gentrification that are inherent in these projects. The Bentway followed rather than precipitate an enormous wave of urban development. Still, conceptualizing the Bentway as taking place in “lost space” obscured its impact on a space associated with homelessness. Infrastructural reuse projects should be examined for not only the ways they foster gentrification, but for the ways they transform public space itself without anticipating how this can impact marginalized people that may have formerly used them.

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