I’m a graduate student in the University of Toronto’s program in Planning. I recently presented my Masters Degree research. Here’s the executive summary:

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Toronto’s suburbs are a creative wasteland and historic mistake.
Toronto’s downtown is stimulating, eclectic and full of life.
The suburbs are the home of the Strong Neighbourhoods strategy – targeting ‘priority areas’ marked by violence, poverty and a lack of community.
The downtown is home to the Creative City strategy – targeting the hip, intelligent and worldly creative class, with new solutions to every problem.

Are these two perceptions accurate? Are these two strategies incompatible?

In this report, I examine the applicability of a creative cities strategy to Toronto’s inner suburbs, particularly its priority neighbourhoods. I study two priority neighbourhoods – one in North York, the other in Scarborough. This research is done through personal observations, and interviews with individuals working in arts, culture and creative industries.

Examples of interview subjects include:
• Sadi Ducros, whose graffiti art and ideas for community youth engagement continue to enliven the community a decade after he moved downtown
• Rev. Denise Gillard, whose church/music/dance school is internationally lauded, and hidden in the back unit of an industrial park
• Albert Sliwin, whose abandoned manufacturing plants evolved into the city’s second fashion district

Observations from these and other interviews showed:
– Patterns of creativity and building use similar to those in downtown environments, but adapted to different built form
– Significant social benefits to marginalized communities
– A creative class strongly rooted in local neighbourhoods
– Physical dispersion and a lack of connectivity between organizations
– Significant funding challenges
These results demonstrate that the creative class is having a significant impact on the social, physical, economic and cultural life in the inner suburbs and has the potential for even greater impacts in future. I therefore propose the development of a Creative City Strategy for the Inner Suburbs, to be developed through community engagement and integrated with existing creative city and strong neighbourhood agendas. This perspective would lead to a more inclusive, diverse and effective creative city vision for Toronto.