Toronto’s changing neighborhoods: Gentrification of shopping streets

Toronto city is recognized as one of the most diverse cities in the world as a result of a half century of immigration from Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. As transnational spaces of consumption and exchange, commercial strips play a key role in maintaining the cultural identity and socio-economic stability of neighborhoods. Some commercial streets in Toronto have created thematic street signs and street festivals that mark and celebrate the area’s ethnic identity. Evidence of gentrification in Toronto through the arrival of high-end businesses, planning processes suggests that affordable commercial spaces are protected without organized community response or planning intervention. Business owners providing affordable goods and services on disinvested local shopping streets, particularly those who are newly immigrated, continue to be excluded from planning for the future. The awareness of a potential for displacement opens the door to questioning market-driven processes of commercial change.