Intercultural Public Spaces in Multicultural Toronto

Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It is also a city of social inequalities. This article examines how public spaces facilitate social inclusion and intercultural communication and present specific socio-spatial practices and processes that transcend ethnocultural divisions and traditional public and private boundaries. Relying upon scholarly evidence of socio-spatial injustice, as well as upon 19 interviews and a focus group of 13 young participants, I discuss interculturalism as a possible theoretical framework for communication between social groups in public spaces. I frame public space as a means to redefine and redistribute, and discuss the forces that shape, appropriate and redefine it in Toronto. Based on the testimonies of my research participants, I also discuss phenomena such as the privatization of public space and malling. Finally, I present the practice of the domestication of public space and its potential for intercultural communication as a possibility for communities to make public spaces relevant