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Gendered spaces of redevelopment: Gendered politics of city building

Gender in an Urban World

ISBN: 978-0-7623-1477-5, eISBN: 978-1-84950-557-4

Publication date: 14 February 2008

Abstract

In the post-industrial economies of large urban centers, redevelopment has become the primary engine of economic growth. Redevelopment projects are designed to encourage investment, attract tourism and bring new residents to the city. This form of city building is driven by a neoliberal urban agenda that embraces privatization, and is controlled by the economic interests of private business. In this chapter, we argue that city building under a neoliberal rubric is also a gendered political process, the outcome of which is the redevelopment of urban space in ways that reflect a masculinist and corporatist view of city life. Moreover, both the form of redevelopment and the process itself function to limit public participation in the life and growth of cities, particularly for women and other marginalized groups. In the first section of this chapter, Gendered spaces of redevelopment, we examine how the results of such a process are made manifest in the built form of Canada's largest city, Toronto, with a population of 2.5 million. The city is experiencing a major process of redevelopment and city building that is evident in a massive wave of condominium construction. We suggest that condominium projects, as a particular form of redevelopment, create privatized spaces and encourage privatized services that articulate neatly with a neoliberal urban agenda.

Citation

Kern, L. and Wekerle, G.R. (2008), "Gendered spaces of redevelopment: Gendered politics of city building", DeSena, J.N. (Ed.) Gender in an Urban World (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 233-262. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1047-0042(07)00009-8

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited