Community leadership and engagement after the mix: The transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park
基于对32位社区领袖的深度访谈，研究多伦多最大公共住房区Regent Park改造为混合收入社区过程中，居民参与和领导力发展如何影响重建进程，并分析社区建设、制度记忆和领导力培养三方面的成效与挑战。
The CAD$1 billion transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood from Canada’s largest public housing site to a mixed income community is likely to inform the next several decades of public housing redevelopment policy both nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on the process and impacts of large-scale redevelopment, in the context of attempts to build a physically and socially inclusive neighbourhood incorporating non-market and market housing in downtown Toronto. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 32 Regent Park community leaders and other key decision makers, the paper explores how resident engagement and leadership development opportunities impact redevelopment processes in mixed income initiatives. Results focus on three key emerging areas of both strength and concern: (1) efforts to build community alongside the redevelopment as an integral, evolving and place-specific strategy; (2) the impacts and challenges of both a strong institutional environment in Regent Park and a sense of weak institutional memory; and (3) formal and informal leadership and mentorship opportunities and their contribution towards the development of engagement and cohesion in Regent Park. The opportunity for low-income housing initiatives to support knowledge building and learning, preservation of institutional memory and local leadership development is significant in the context of examining physical and social redevelopment.