Signs announcing Phase Two of the Regent Park redevelopment are up and talking up a brave new future for the biggest social housing experiment in the country.
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Sounds dreamy.
Aquatic centre. Retail on Dundas. Large central park. State-of-the-art.
A worthwhile endeavour, perhaps. Social scientists are at odds over the merits of creating mixed neighbourhoods from poor ones, when the “mix” means adding rich white people in condos. Up go property values. Then the rents. And there goes the neighbourhood for the folks living there in the first place. Enter exodus to the suburbs.
Preaching integration and practicing separation. I don’t know.
Regent Park has its own rhythm, a little quieter and less haunting now that 50s-era low-rises on Dundas, have been replaced by sleek black towers.
Regent’s notorious grit is going, going… slowly being cleansed by condofication.
The cops at 51 were the first to pull up stakes. Now the churches, All Saints and St. Bart’s, are primed to sell, pulled by the financial salvation offered by big bucks developers.
Who will mind the community garden?
I’ll miss the maze-like walkways, the trees rising high in the old Regent Park Community Centre courtyard. The crooked fences and half-broken basketball hoops. The one too many stray cats. The toothless, happy, faces.
Regent Park: home of the young, land of the free. We hardly knew ye. Next up Lawrence Heights.
