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Making A Music City: The Commodification Of Culture In Toronto’S Urban Redevelopment, Tensions Between Use-Value And Exchange-Value, And The Counterproductive Treatment Of Alternative Cultures Within Municipal Legal Frameworks, Sara Gwendolyn Ross

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

English Abstract

Meaningful diversity and inclusion within today’s cities requires attention on many fronts, including that of city redevelopment strategies and policies. To that end, this article focuses on culture-led regeneration strategies—specifically, those of Toronto’s “Music City” initiative and “Creative City” strategy—and unpacks the mechanics of using culture and heritage as tools for redevelopment where their commodification can reveal the clash between divergent value interests that exist within spaces of culture in the city. Sustainable urban development must carefully account for these divergences to avoid the displacement and lack of equitable accounting of relationally vulnerable individuals, groups, (sub)cultures, and space. …