Ethnic Identity, Place Marketing, and Gentrification in ... - Cities Centre

24 Ethnic Identity, Place Marketing, and Gentrification in TorontoIn some cases, artist or ethnic communities develop autonomously or for entirely pragmaticreasons (cheap real estate) and later become attractive to gentrifiers. In other cases, suchpackaging is deployed deliberately by city officials, BIAs, and developers who understand theprofit potential of these identities. In such cases, the difference between culture and economicsis difficult to discern, but it is clear that they are working in concert with one another to increasethe value of real estate.Cases like this also challenge traditional understandings of ethnic commercial landscapes asmore or less organic outgrowths of ethnic residential landscapes. Multiculturalism can behighly marketable, so many ethnic commercial strips have remained, well after their residentcommunity has fled for the suburbs.This could be a uniquely Canadian phenomenon (Mitchell, 1993), both to the extent that somany immigrant communities now reside in the suburbs, but also to the extent that the countrypromoted multiculturalism before other comparable countries. Yet one can draw analogiesin almost every city that aspires to be "globaL"Whatever their current extent, processes like the ones described here are likely to expand inthe future. Culture, it could be said, has rightfully been exalted as half of an explanatory dialecticfor understanding urban landscapes. This cases shows, however, that culture shouldnot be treated as an independent variable, isolated from power and economics.Centre for Urban and Community Studies. University of Toronto. www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca