CityPlace and City Space: An Investigation into Toronto's Changing Skyline

As the largest master-planned residential community in Toronto, the case of CityPlace offers an important and dramatic study of physical, social, and symbolic transformation. The towers of CityPlace altered the skyline of downtown Toronto, created a new residential and commercial neighbourhood on previously unused rail land, and established a community of nearly 18,000 people. The unique features, context, and scale of CityPlace condominiums offer a profoundly interesting case for understanding a variety of policies and processes, including: social mix and creative city planning strategies; the narrative of Toronto as a city of neighbourhoods; and the form and function of community through both online and offline geographies. The rapid construction of this neighbourhood raises critical and timely questions about the profound transformation of Toronto through the building of CityPlace, and the role of this development in shaping new neighbourhoods and identities. My dissertation engages with many themes embedded in these transformations, connecting the development of CityPlace to concepts of urban neoliberalism and development, new-build gentrification, the performance and perception of neighbourhood and community, and the production of space in the urban realm. This project investigates CityPlace in the contexts and confluences of the site’s development and evolution: production and promotion of the condominium complex within neoliberal paradigms of benevolent gentrification, creativity, and social mix; complex negotiations of Toronto’s narrative as a Jane Jacobsian city-of-neighbourhoods; strategies and sites of community life and novel perspectives on the physical and virtual locality of neighbourhood connection. CityPlace condos are reflective and constitutive of broader geo-political forces such as urban neoliberalism, place-making and gentrification, and the production of a symbolic economy – concepts that must be carefully applied to a timely and meaningful analysis of this site. Extending this analysis further, CityPlace is also a site of negotiation and nuance, where challenging, contradictory, and variegated practices, policies, processes, and perceptions complicate but also enrich our contemplation of this neighbourhood. In this dissertation, I utilize a multimethods approach to explore case and context: the production, policies, and practices of CityPlace condominiums, and how this neighbourhood operates within and informs a landscape of narratives about urban space. Ph.D