photo at top:
Don Valley Brick Works
Photo credit: Toronto Archives
From Smokestacks
to Skyscrapers
How do we understand the uneven temporal and spatial relationships between the widespread deindustrialization in cities of the global North and the gentrification that followed.
Joseph Schumpter’s theory (1942) of capitalism as a “gale of creative destruction” that sweeps the globe, devouring the old in order to create the new, provides a useful grounding for understanding the root cause, but not the consequences, of deindustrialization. As business and government leaders sought new forms of investment and profit, they turned their sights from no longer productive, and therefore less profitable industry, to property markets. Inner-city, former industrial neighbourhoods, with their depreciated and devalued property, provided an outlet for profitable reinvestment.
Leaders in post-industrial cities also began to explore new forms of economic development that saw abandoned industrial landscapes repurposed as economic and cultural hubs. Once considered obsolete and ready for the wrecking ball, these industrial landscapes have come to serve as harbingers of the shift from a production economy, built on the traditional industries of steel, mining and automotive, to a post-industrial economy based on services, finance, knowledge, information, and creative services.
Gentrification as Cultural Erasure
What is the impact on working-class, racialized and lower income households as industrial landscapes are turned into lofts, maker spaces, galleries and condos? How has
gentrification-induced industrial displacement extended beyond the specific neighbourhood facing industrial closure to affect the entire economic, social and physical structure of the city?
To a degree, answers to these questions can be context-specific, but they also are revealed through who is rendered visible or invisible by these processes and the ways in which post-industrial, gentrifying cities have positioned themselves in a global marketplace.
Many large metropolitan centres, or global cities, like New York, Toronto and Paris have resisted the deindustrialization label. They are now so thoroughly post-industrial that their former industrial lives have been all but forgotten.
Global Cities and Culture-Led Regeneration
How have cities of the global North sought to adapt to political and economic forces of globalization and deindustrialization in an era of urban austerity.
One key way is through ‘culture-led regeneration’ in which deindustrialized towns and cities have sought to rebuild their economies, lure new kinds of people and businesses, and redefine their identity.
​
Heritage sites offer a sense of authenticity that provides a ‘geography of cool’ for the Creative Class. But behind these cultural, artistic and new technology strategies lies a critique of cultural commodification with increased rents and property values that have ultimately contributed to displacement.
