AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
“I don’t think they care about us”:
An Urban Ethnography of Gentrifying Leisure Spaces in Montréal
Gabrielle Valevicius
Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education
McGill University
October 2020
1 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Table of Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...…4
Résumé………………………………………………………………………………………...….5
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………6
Contribution of Authors…………………………………………………………………………7
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………….8
Introduction...... 10
Chapter 1: Literature Review...... 16
1.1 Inroduction...... 16
1.2 Gentrification...... 18
1.3 Environmental Gentrification...... 26
1.4 Contested Leisure Spaces...... 30
1.5 Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks...... 35
Chapter 2: Methodology...... 36
2.1 Inroduction...... 36
2.2 Theoretical Perspectives...... 36
The Spatial Turn…………...... 39
The Ethnographer’s Biography…………………………………………………..43
2.3 Methods…………...... 47
Participant Observation...... 49
Interviews and Sampling...... 54
Textual Analysis...... 56
Data Analysis...... 57
2 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Ethical Considerations...... 60
2.4 Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks……………………………………...... 61
Chapter 3: Data Analysis………………………………………………………………………63
3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..63
3.2 The Divisive Character of Gentrification……………………………………………64
3.3. No Other Choice; A “Commonsensical” Use of Space……………………………..88
3.4 Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks………………………………….……..98
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………99
References...... 108
3 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Abstract
This urban ethnography explores how gentrification is lived in and through everyday spaces of leisure in a divided Montréal neighborhood. The neighbourhood setting is Mountain Sights, situated within the Triangle development—an ongoing urban revitalization project located in the broader neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges (CDN). CDN is a historically working-class neighbourhood and home to a large refugee and new immigrant population. I specifically explore how gentrification is played-out in and around De la Savane Park (DSP)—a large urban park situated alongside Mountain Sights Avenue that has long been central to Mountain Sights residents’ leisure practices and community life. My analysis contributes to scholarship on gentrification and critical leisure and sport studies in the following two ways: 1) by highlighting the divisive character of gentrification, which was notable in my ethnographic setting due to an emergent distinction between longer-standing lower-income apartment tenants and higher- income condominium dwellers; 2) by examining how Mountain Sights residents, particularly youth, creatively adapted available (often disinvested) leisure space in and around DSP as
“spatial practice”—a theoretical idea coined by sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1991). My thesis concludes with important opening questions that address how the global health crisis incited by the COVID-19 virus has exacerbated the pressures of gentrification on Montréal’s lower-income families.
4 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Résumé
Cette ethnographie urbaine explore l’impact de la gentrification sur les espaces de loisir et de sport à Montréal. Cette ethnographie s’est déroulée principalement dans le quartier de Mountain
Sights, situé dans le développement urbain Le Triangle, un projet de revitalisation urbaine au sein d’un secteur formellement industriel du quartier de Côte-des-Neiges (CDN). CDN est un quartier historiquement à faible revenu, où y habitent de nombreuses familles réfugiées ou nouvellement immigrantes. Mes recherches se sont axées plus spécifiquement sur le processus de gentrification à l’intérieur, ainsi qu’aux alentours, du parc De la Savane—un grand parc public qui longe l’avenue Mountain Sights et qui, depuis longtemps, est central aux loisirs et à la vie communautaire des résidents de Mountain Sights. Mon analyse contribue aux littératures sur la gentrification ainsi qu’aux littératures d’étude critique du sport et du loisir de deux façons principales : 1) en illuminant le caractère divisoire de la gentrification, qui était marquant à mon emplacement ethnographique, notamment due à une division grandissante entre les locataires de longue date et à faible revenu et les résidents plus aisés qui habitent dans les condominiums; 2) en examinant comment les résidents de Mountain Sights, plus particulièrement les jeunes, ont adapté de façon créative des espaces de loisir (souvent délabrés) à l’intérieur ainsi qu’autour du parc de la Savane en tant que « pratique spatiale »—une idée théorique du sociologue Henri
Lefebvre (1991). La conclusion de ce mémoire aborde d’importantes questions, en guise d’ouverture, pour discuter de comment la crise sanitaire actuelle, engendrée par le virus de la
COVID-19, a exacerbé les pressions de la gentrification à Montréal envers les familles à faible revenu.
5 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Jordan Koch for providing me continuous academic guidance and support throughout the process of writing this thesis and for challenging me to engage with the complex and critical components of interdisciplinary research. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Naomi Nichols and Dr. Shane Sweet for their valuable and deeply constructive advice, which has provided me inspiration and perseverance.
I would like to thank my parents, Alma and Andrius Valevicius and my siblings Darius,
Veronika, Aïda and Augusta Valevicius, my brothers-in-law Cameron Cook and Nicholas
Papaxanthos, as well as my partner Oumar Sall for their unwavering support and for always shedding positive light on my efforts, through both the more fruitful as well as the more difficult instances of my graduate journey. I would like to express my gratitude for the members of the
McGill EPHECS lab who have brightened my time at McGill through their friendship, compassion and moral support. Thank you to Shoaib-Hasan Shaikh, Marina Erfle, Melissa
Daoust, Hariata Tai Rakena, Derek Wasyliw, Jeff Silas, Mike Auksi and Bobby Angelini.
I would also like to thank staff members and volunteers of the organizations Project
Genesis and the Centre Communautaire de Mountain Sights for their time and guidance over the course of my master’s degree.
6 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Contribution of Authors
Gabrielle Dalia Valevicius was the principal contributor to the data collection, data analysis and interpretation of the data of this thesis.
Dr. Jordan Koch, Gabrielle Dalia Valevicius’s supervisor, contributed to the conceptualization of this research project and guided the candidate in the different steps involved in shaping this thesis.
7 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Preface
The man I approached sitting on the bench that hot summer’s day in De la Savane Park
(DSP) was enjoying the August rays with his baseball cap slanted over his forehead to
shade his eyes. I was worried that I had disturbed what was a rare and blissful moment in
the sun when the noise from the nearby construction cranes and bustling city traffic was
relatively silent. The man fortunately seemed unphased by my intrusion and agreed to
share with me his thoughts on the various developments taking place in his
neighbourhood. He told me that Mountain Sights was originally named for the once
stunning views it afforded residents of Mount Royal, a prominent landmark and urban
park in downtown Montréal. Today, Mountain Sights is replete with construction cranes,
“rue barrée” signs, and the once stunning views of Mount Royal are heavily distorted by
high-rise condominiums that scrape the sky above the original low-rise apartment
buildings. I got the distinct impression that the man had simply resided to the fact that
various urban change projects were inevitable in his neighbourhood regardless of his
viewpoint—'it just is what it is’ when it comes to urban change. The man also said that
DSP had already been closed for several months. He simply shrugged his shoulders
apathetically when asked about when the park’s renovations would be completed: “no
one knows!” He—like many others I encountered over the course of my ethnography—
seemed generally alienated by the changes taking place in Mountain Sights. I recalled an
earlier conversation that I had had with a community worker who mentioned to me how
unfair it was that the park’s renovations had only begun once new condo owners had
moved into the area. The park’s changing aesthetic was also an issue of concern for
many of the residents with whom I spoke. One couple I met feared that the new
8 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
community garden would be smaller than the previous one and expressed their concern
that rental fees for a garden lot would increase. Another resident with whom I spoke felt
that the park’s new layout reflected only the desires of higher-income residents and
neglected the interests of the area’s longer-standing residents, especially youth. I got the
sense over the first few months of my fieldwork that, while many in the area perceived the
changes as “timely” or “normal,” others worried that the changing leisure environments
simply constituted another way to exclude them from their neighbourhood: “I don’t think
they care about us1.” (August 13, 2019)
1 These were the words of a local Mountain Sights resident that were documented by community workers Claire Abraham, Jennifer Auchinleck, Daniel Paul Bork, Liza Novak and Sheetal Pathak (2017), who have been diligently invested in speaking out about the effects of intensifying gentrification in Mountain Sights.
9 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Introduction
"C'est ça qu'on appelle le progress," (“This is what we call progress”) explained the man sitting next to me on a park bench on Mountain Sights Avenue, tongue in cheek. I had casually inquired about the ongoing infrastructural projects and other changes occurring throughout the neighbourhood and asked whether he knew anything about the current renovation projects taking place at De la Savane Park, the area’s most substantive green space. The park’s renovations began in 2019, after longer-standing residents had for over a decade been advocating for safer and improved family public parks, recreation, and leisure facilities. Indeed, families had for years expressed concern over the park’s poor lighting and under-resourced playground facilities
(Abraham, Auchinleck, Bork, Novak & Pathak, 2017, p. 32)—a concern that was made even more prescient by the neighbourhood’s expanding population incited by the soaring number of newly built condominium units in the area: over 3,000 units built since 2009.
The Mountain Sights neighbourhood (henceforth referred to as Mountain Sights) is part of the broader Côte-des-Neiges borough in central Montréal in the eastern Canadian province of
Québec. The core of Mountain Sights is Mountain Sights Avenue, where the majority of the neighbourhood’s longer-standing apartment buildings are located. Mountain Sights also falls within the 40-hectare zone called Le Triangle—one of Montréal’s large-scale revitalization projects that surrounds the Namur metro station.2 Developers initially saw-fit to revitalize the formerly industrial and underserved area of Le Triangle due to its proximity to downtown
Montréal and accessibility to public transit (“Le Triangle,” n.d.). Le Triangle’s revitalization also corresponded with the recession of many industrial activities that once employed the bulk of the
2 Other development projects in close proximity to Le Triangle include the development of the former Hippodrome racetrack, where 6,000 condominiums are expected to be built over the next decade (Sargeant, 2019)
10 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL area’s working-class residents, such as the automobile and textile industries that used to line
Mountain Sights Avenue and the surrounding city streets (Abraham et al., 2017, p. 5; “Le
Triangle,” n.d.). In 2006, before the development of Le Triangle, Mountain Sights was home to only 1,520 residents, the majority of whom were young families from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds (approximately 65% born outside of Canada). The average income was estimated at
$16,400 per year for individuals aged 15 and up, while roughly 57% of residents lived below the poverty line (Abraham et al., 2017, p. 5). Today, the rise of studio-sized luxury condos in Le
Triangle (priced around $400,000 per unit) has attracted numerous new residents to the community (Abraham et al., 2017, p. 9)—including a large number of young white-collar professionals with their own cultural dispositions and tastes for high-end leisure amenities.
The term ‘gentrification’ has become convenient shorthand for the many transformations taking place in the City of Montréal and, indeed, throughout much of the country and also in other parts of the world (see Harvey, 2012). The term has been commonly associated with an area’s transition from working-class characteristics to one that is equipped with expensive housing/living costs, shifting social and cultural aesthetics, and the corresponding displacement of lower-income residents from the area (Atkinson, 2003; Brown-Saracino, 2010; Glass, 1964).
A significant body of scholarship has refuted the oft-stated claim that gentrification unequivocally signifies desirable economic growth for a city due to the replenishing of old and dilapidated housing stock (Davidson & Lees, 2005; Peck, 2005; Harvey, 2012; Slater, 2006;
Sutton, 2015). Many scholars have also shed light on the social costs associated with rapid urban change in cities worldwide, including Japanese cities such as Kyoto and Osaka (Fujitsuka, 2004),
Sydney (Shaw, 2005), Puebla, Mexico (Jones, 2015), Hong Kong (Ley & Teo, 2014), Barcelona,
Shanghai, Moscow, and Berlin (Atkinson & Bridge, 2004; Lees, Shin & López-Morales, 2015;
11 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Smith, 2002), and also in the post-communist cities of Tallinn, Budapest, and Prague (Sykora,
2004). The key social costs include: soaring housing costs and resident displacement, the intensification of exclusionary politics (Shaw, 2005), the erasure of cultural heritage (Fujitsuka,
2004; Shaw, 2005), increasing foreign investment, ex-patriate settlement and growing income disparities (Sykora, 2004), controversial state-led development projects (Jones, 2015), rent deregulations (Doshi, 2015; Sykora, 2004) and enhanced social divisions.
My thesis expands upon both Urban Studies and Leisure Studies literatures by exploring how gentrification complicates the use and exchange of urban leisure spaces; i.e., spaces that have long been credited with enhancing community health, cohesion, and social identity
(Kremer-Sadlik & Kim, 2007; Maller, Townsend, Brown & St Leger, 2002; Olliff, 2008).3 I specifically explored how the public’s use and exchange of a large urban park in Montréal’s
Mountain Sights neighbourhood has been affected by significant ‘environmental gentrification’4 driven by soaring housing/living costs and an influx of new residents into the area. Few studies have considered how an area’s new and longstanding residents experience gentrification in and through daily activities, such as sport, recreation, and leisure (Aptekar, 2015; Belanger, 2010).
My thesis was guided by the following research questions:
• How do residents conceive and negotiate urban leisure spaces against the backdrop of
gentrification and its associated pressures?
3 Scholars from multiple disciplines have shown that a population’s regular access to public sites of sport, recreation, and leisure is associated with: enhanced health and wellness outcomes (Babey, H., Tan, Wolstein & Diamant, 2015; Jenkins & Pigram, 2006; Kaczynski & Henderson, 2007); community wellbeing (Spaaij, 2009); positive youth development (Holt et al., 2012); and sense of belonging (Peters, Stodolska, & Horolets, 2016). Other studies have also explored how well-maintained public parks nourish community bonding and promote social cohesion (Bedimo- Rung et al., 2005; Peters, Elands, & Buijs, 2010; Roult et al. 2019; Vaughan et al., 2018), and even facilitate the integration of new immigrants (Aptekar, 2015; Leikkila, Faehnle, & Galanakis, 2013; Peters et al., 2016). 4 ‘Environmental gentrification’ has recently emerged as shorthand for describing beautified parks, walking trails, and green spaces associated with urban change (Checker, 2011; Eckerd, 2011; Rigolon & Nemeth, 2018).
12 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
• How is gentrification lived in-and-through everyday activities such as sport,
recreation, and leisure?
• What do peoples’ experiences of sport, recreation, and leisure reveal about the social
production of individual and community identity in Mountain Sights?
The methodology for this study was urban ethnography—a qualitative approach that facilitates the examination of diverse and subjective viewpoints through participant observation, interviewing techniques, and textual analysis (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). The hub of my urban ethnography was De la Savane Park (DSP), an area consisting of roughly 4.6 acres of open-greenspace that has long afforded a prime meeting space for the neighbourhood’s diverse residents during both the summer and winter months (“Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-
Grâce—Parcs et espaces verts,” 2019). Since 2019, DSP has undergone significant structural changes, including: the demolition of a basketball court, the removal of exterior fencing that once contoured the park’s perimeter, and the construction of a new chalet building to house the
Centre Communautaire de Mountain Sights (CCMS).5 In addition, the foundations of the new garden lots have recently appeared at the front of the park where the basketball court was formerly located. The park’s original garden had a communal character where flowers, vegetables, and herbs were cultivated by the collective. In contrast, the new garden is sub- divided into individual “boxes” where community members grow and harvest their vegetables independently of one another—a subtle shift that is emblematic of the neighbourhood’s evolving character that privileges individual condo ownership and private leisure amenities at the expense
5 Since 1992, the Mountain Sights Community Centre (CCMS)—located in the heart of DSP—has hosted a variety of community-oriented leisure activities, including a low-cost summer day camp for kids and teenagers in the area (Centre Communautaire Mountain Sights, 2018-2019, p.11). The CCMS also hosts local gardening and cooking workshops that facilitate the socialization of new immigrants into the community (Centre Communautaire Mountain Sights, 2018-2019, p. 20).
13 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL of the commons. Similar renovation plans that aligned with this neoliberal aesthetic were also expected to take place during the spring and summer of 2020 but have been delayed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.6
In total, I have spent 12 months conducting observational fieldwork in Mountain Sights.
From November 2019 to March 2020 (when the pandemic hit Montréal), I volunteered at the after-school homework help program of the Centre Communautaire de Mountain Sights (CCMS) twice a week, the main community centre for the Mountain Sights community. I volunteered with the CCMS at two different locations: at the temporary site while the chalet at DSP was under renovation and at the new chalet once the repairs were completed in January 2020. My volunteering experience allowed me to build relationship with local youth and community workers and to better understand the importance of DSP in the lives of Mountain Sights families.
There was just over a year between my initial visits and my last visits to my field site, which occurred sporadically before, during, and following my volunteering months at CCMS. The timeframe of my visits allowed me to become familiar with the constant evolution of the revitalization of DSP and of the surrounding green spaces in the Triangle (i.e. the parc du
Triangle and the Traverse Linéaire, which I discuss in my data analysis). I became very familiar with the DSP’s landscape as well as the characteristics the streets around the park, both sites where I engaged in casual conversations with the various people I encountered.
My data analysis was enhanced by Henri Lefebvre’s (1991, originally published in 1974) theory of “production of space”—a framework that examines how space is socially constituted
6 The timeline of completion for the remaining renovation projects remains unclear. Construction sites were among the first economic sectors to return to their activities, while many sectors remained shut down in accordance to Quebec’s mandatory pandemic confinement and social distancing measures throughout the spring of 2020. However, the progression of construction projects has been predicted to face delays post-confinement if access to construction materials (i.e. materials from abroad) or specialized third-party workers remains complicated due to the constraints caused by the global pandemic crisis (Shué, 2020; Tomesco, 2020).
14 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL beyond its physical materiality through the practice of everyday living (p. 38). Lefebvre’s work grew out of the broader ‘spatial turn’ movement that started to develop in the 1960s. ‘Spatial theory’ gained increased scholarly attention in the 1980s and beyond with contributions from a number of humanities scholars, such as economic and political geographers David Harvey and
Edward Soja (Arias & Warf, 2009). The ‘spatial turn’ also constituted an important academic response to earlier conceptualizations of space among social scientists who had prioritized the linear study of time and social “progress” over the study of space. In contrast, spatial scholars condemned Western historical narratives that reduced the study of social life to chronological periods of time characterized as either “undercivilized” or “modern” (Arias & Warf, 2009, p. 3).
Lefebvre himself invited scholars to look beyond space as a physical phenomenon by instead examining the ideological structures and multiple human experiences that operate within social space (Arias & Warf, 2009, p. 3). Lefebvre’s work has since been taken-up by numerous Urban
Studies and Leisure Studies scholars to enhance their investigations of: the social production of urban space through public art and graffiti (Zieleniec, 2016), urban gardening and cycling
(Stehlin & Tarr, 2017), music and soundscapes (Lashua & Kelly, 2008), running groups (Van
Ingen, 2003), and skateboarding practices (Iain Borden, 2001). My work adds to this literature by shedding light on how gentrification processes can play out in urban spaces of leisure.
The thesis is divided into three chapters, and a conclusion. Chapter One reviews a wide range of literature on gentrification and examines its relationship to both urban and leisure spaces. Chapter Two, next, explains the primary methodology for this study. I specifically show how urban ethnography was used to shed light on the broader economic and political structures that shape and govern space, to better understand how these structures affect people’s everyday access to and usage of urban space. This approach has helped me grasp the impact that
15 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL neighbourhood change incited by gentrification can have on social dynamics pertaining to ethnicity, race and class lines. In this sense, urban ethnography helps provide a sense of the complexities and inequities that emerge from neighbourhood change and to expose the ways in which more vulnerable communities experience different form of inequities promoted by capitalistic revitalization projects.
Finally, Chapter Three presents the core of my data analysis. Here, I draw upon numerous observational field notes and conversational interviews with various community stakeholders to show how Mountain Sights residents have been impacted by gentrification. I also show how residents have responded—and adapted—to various gentrifying processes within their neighbourhood’s leisure spaces to effectively resist the broader practices of dispossession and displacement. Collectively, these chapters demonstrate the structural and systemic forces that underlie a community’s opportunities for sport and leisure and raise the importance of considering structural and political factors in all forms of health and sport related studies.
Chapter I:
Literature Review
1.1 Introduction
This thesis extends upon the broader Urban Studies and Leisure Studies scholarship that have only recently begun to highlight the human dimension of urban change within public spaces of sport and leisure. Susan Birrell (2006) explained that sport and leisure studies have increasingly shifted towards an interdisciplinary, rather than multidisciplinary, approach with an emphasis upon building bridges across different fields in order to develop more fulsome inquiries of particular sport/social issues (p. 339). This shift towards a more critical and holistic
16 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL view of sport and leisure has helped breathe fresh theoretical and methodological insights into the scholarship, with particular attention to how power cuts differently across race, class, and gendered lines in various sport and leisure contexts (Birrell, 2006, p. 341). For instance, a commonly made assertion in early sport and leisure studies was that sport, recreation, and leisure help bind people together, foster community cohesion, and afford an important venue for integrating new groups into society (Spracklen, Long & Hylton, 2015, p. 116; Roult et al., 2019).
Other commonly made assertions have emphasized the character and capital building properties of various sport, recreation, and leisure pursuits (Jarvie, 2003; Long, Welch, Bramham, Hylton,
Butterfield & Lloyd, 2002). However, my research builds upon the more critical dimension of sport and leisure studies that has also exposed the often-alienating properties associated with various sport, recreation, and leisure pursuits (Bélanger, 2010; Koch, Scherer, & Holt, 2015;
Lashua, 2006; Lashua & Kelly, 2008; Scherer, Mills, & McCulloch, 2019). This research necessarily requires consideration of the broader social dynamics that perpetuate inequality with regard to the use and exchange of urban leisure environments.
This literature review is divided into three main sections. Section one addresses the historical, theoretical, and pop-cultural underpinnings of 'gentrification' as a heuristic device that habitually used to encapsulate various social and economic processes unfolding in cities around the globe (Bélanger, 2011; Harvey, 2012; Lees, Shin & Morales (Eds.), 2015; Lees & Ley,
2008). Section two, next, introduces ‘environmental gentrification’ as an explanatory tool for the creation and revitalization of urban green spaces such as public parks, bike paths, and walking trails. This section further argues that, while scholars have investigated how environmental gentrification cuts differently across class and racial lines (Checker, 2011; Lang & Rothenberg,
2017; Rigolon & Németh, 2018), few have considered how gentrifying processes are potentially
17 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL lived in and through everyday activities such as sport, recreation, and leisure (Aptekar, 2015,
Bélanger, 2010). Finally, Section three reviews a series of empirical examples that highlight the tensions that have been occurring in gentrifying leisure spaces in North American cities.
1.2. Gentrification
Ruth Glass (1964) first coined the term 'gentrification' to describe what she had witnessed taking place in Britain during the period of deindustrialization—a period characterized by the decline of manufacturing industries in Western city centres and a corresponding shift towards a more service-based economy with newer technologies (Rowthorm & Ramanaswamy, 1997;
Wacquant, 2008). In short, Glass (1964) observed a whole series of social and economic changes that corresponded with the increased migration of more affluent residents into previously working-class quarters of London. For example, one of the most visible indicators of affluence that Glass (1964) observed was the upgrading of infrastructure, such as the restoration of old and dilapidated Victorian houses coupled with their sub-division and transformation into expensive housing units (p. 22). These sorts of ‘gentrifying’ processes inevitably enhanced the monetary value and social status of previously abandoned or neglected neighbourhoods, thus further transforming the area’s overall social character and appeal to more affluent individuals.
However, Glass (1964) also observed that the effects of gentrification were linked to the displacement of working-class residents from their neighbourhoods: "Once this process of
'gentrification' starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed" (Glass, 1964, pp. 22-23). The significant shift in both the population and character of working-class districts were consistent with what Glass (1964) perceived as the "Americanization" of London, whereby
18 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL the City’s once distinctive community and heritage markers were homogenized according to a typically American aesthetic that existed across most other major cities in the West (p. 20).
In the 1950s, the suburbanization movement that occurred in both Europe and North
America also provides important insights into the social dynamics and the economic patterns of divestment and reinvestment that Glass (1964) observed were characteristic of gentrification.
Suburbanization is a term used to describe a population’s migration from metropolitan city centres to outer and previously undeveloped areas of the city. The early 20th century was replete with industrial activity, including a thriving automobile industry in major cities such as Detroit and Windsor. Following World War II, moreover, the availability of automobiles and roadways increased peoples’ mobility, which prompted many wealthier families to relocate to the suburbs where they could purchase bigger houses with more green space and ultimately escape the hustle and bustle of city life (Smith & Greer, 2018, p. 10).7 This movement of both people and industry from the city centre to the suburbs was also accompanied by major shifts in production practices.
For instance, automobile plants adapted their production to integrate emergent technologies that required less land and less human labour (Shaw, 2001, p. 290). The end result of these collective processes was the vanishing of both population and wealth from many urban centres, which were left to cope with decaying industry and infrastructure, high unemployment, and fewer economic and social resources (Shaw, 2001; Smith, 1979, p. 542).
This pattern of deindustrialization and suburbanization is a typical precursor to gentrification—one that is not without controversy. The Second World War and the ensuing
7 Increased mobility served as only one explanation of suburbanization. Another corollary explanation of suburbanization is called the ‘natural evolution theory’, which contends that central urban areas are the first to develop owing to their proximity to industrial activities. When housing options become oversaturated in those areas, developers are quick to provide alternative housing and occupation options for those who can afford to relocate to neighbourhoods further from the city centre (Mieszkowski & Mills, 1993, p. 136).
19 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL decades were marked by a period of mass migration known as the ‘Great Migration’ in which predominantly African American communities from rural areas in the US south moved north and west in search of economic opportunities in industrial cities (Boustan, 2010, p. 418). The diversification of large cities that corresponded with this migratory flow brought to the fore longstanding race and class tensions and, amidst these dynamics, many “white households left central cities to avoid living in racially diverse neighbourhoods or jurisdictions" (Boustan, 2010, p. 419). In Chocolate Cities and Vanilla Suburbs (2004, pp. 16-30), Eric Avila explained that after the arrival of Black migrants to central cities, Black communities became increasingly stigmatized as “urban” and whites transferred en masse to suburban life, where they adopted and endorsed “a new ‘white’ identity” (Avila, 2004, p. 20)—one that was reinforced through suburban home ownership and middle-class social status (Avila, 2004, pp. 5-6). This phenomenon of ‘white flight’ contributed to the ongoing racial segregation of many American cities. Urban centres were cast as hubs of racial poverty and decaying infrastructure, while suburbs took on a decidedly white and affluent identity (Avila, 2004, p. 19). Scholars Allison
Shertzer and Randall Walsh (2019) argued that this pattern of “white flight” remains a key contributor to the widespread segregation witnessed in many America cities to this day (p. 415).
A large body of scholarship has also explained how “white flight” is typically coupled with a pattern known as “redlining” to further uphold racial segregation in American cities, mainly through mortgage discrimination against racialized minorities who wish to access housing in specific urban areas (Beyer, Zhou, Matthews, Bemanian, Laud & Nattinger, 2016; Lloyd, 2014;
Safransky, 2020). This pattern is also reinforced through the systematic denial of social services within racialized communities, such as denying access to healthcare and other essential services
20 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
(Addie & Fiedler, 2008; Beyer et al., 2016; Forrester & Harris, 2003; Poteat, Millett, Nelson &
Beyrer, 2020).
Globalization in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s also played an important role in transforming the economic realities of many large industrial cities in North America, including Montréal. As mentioned earlier, a number of manufacturing industries began to outsource their labour to developing countries to capitalize on cheaper production costs that were facilitated by lax labour and environmental laws. Increased trade and production specialization also accelerated the economic shift from manufacturing to a more service-based economy in North America’s biggest cities, as did the advent of novel technologies that further diminished the need for maintaining a high-cost and often-unionized workforce (Kollmeyer, 2009, p. 1650; Nicolaides & Wiese, 2017)
Finally, the pattern of deindustrialization, suburban migration, and capital reinvestment has come full circle in many urban centres across North America. Urban deindustrialization and suburbanization—which first led to decaying infrastructure and diminished property values within many city centres—later created opportunities for developers to reinvest capital in urban centres at a considerable discount from their original value (Harvey, 2012). This pattern of capitalizing on divested property has fuelled a new generation of property developers and ‘house flippers’ seeking to profit off peoples’ desire to relocate back to central areas in search of better transit options, urban amenities such as shops and cafés, and also as a means to avoid the now congested highways that had once enabled suburbanization (Baker & Lee, 2019; Hamnet, 2010;
Moskowitz, 2017). A corollary to this has been the ascendant tech and service-based industries that occupy a greater portion of today’s urban economies, resulting in the rise of new markets such as ‘creative’-companies (Florida, 2019) and the new culture industry—businesses that require less factory floor space and more office cubicles and storefronts. Chris Hamnet (2000)
21 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL summed-up these collective patterns of divestment and reinvestment that have largely reshaped today’s cities as bringing about: "changes in occupational structure, income distribution, gender relations, the housing market, and cultural tastes" (p. 333).
Several other viewpoints have emerged since Glass (1964) first coined the term to lend greater insight and texture to the concept and patterns of gentrification. However, while researchers have reached some consensus about the key features of gentrification—such as the influx of wealthier residents into previously low-income urban areas, the corresponding displacement of lower-income residents coupled with a cultural ‘shift’ in that area’s character and "identity" (Brown-Saracino, 2010, p. 12)—debates still persist about how to best conceptualize gentrification; i.e., as a positive, negative, or mixed sociological process.
In his article, The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research, Tom
Slater (2006) discussed how gentrification has all-too-often been reduced to a narrative that emphasizes only its positive manifestations: the hip cafés, vintage clothing and vinyl record stores, chic art galleries, and the trendy microbreweries and neighbourhood restaurants (Slater,
2006, p. 738). Such manifestations certainly resonate with a narrative of healthy economic growth (Byrne, 2003; Duany, 2001; Florida, 2019; Freeman, 2005); however, according to Slater
(2006), the positive manifestations have largely overshadowed other associated issues, such as decreased housing affordability and population displacement. These manifestations have also helped romanticize gentrification as generative of employment opportunities, social cohesion, and as a potential launch-pad for class mobility by offering low-income residence greater opportunity and political clout in municipal affairs (Slater, 2006, p. 743). Slater (2006) was careful not to dismiss wholesale the potentially generative aspects of gentrification; however, he
22 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL also encouraged researchers to place greater emphasis on the experiences of non-gentrifying groups, as well as enhancing our understanding of the root causes of gentrification (p. 743).
Loic Waquant (2008) called Slater's article a "wake up call" (p. 198) for Urban Studies researchers:
By focusing narrowly on the practices and aspirations of the gentrifiers through rose-
tinted conceptual glasses, to the near-complete neglect of the fate of the occupants pushed
aside and out by urban redevelopment, this scholarship parrots the reigning business and
government rhetoric that equates the revamping of the neoliberal metropolis as the
coming of a social eden of diversity, energy and opportunity (p. 198).
Loretta Lees and David Ley (2008) reiterated both Slater's (2006) and Waquant's (2008) argument that greater attention should be paid to the underlying policies that promote gentrification, as well as to the experiences of non-gentrifiers. Lees and Ley (2008) further argued that dominant perspectives about transforming inner-city spaces are mostly reflective of specific state-led agendas (p. 2382)—agendas that support the enhancement of cultural, artistic, and community amenities, which, over time, render a previously underserved neighbourhood more appealing to prospective homebuyers (Cameron & Coaffee, 2005, p. 40). Lees and Ley
(2008) also questioned the intentions of stakeholders who promote gentrification as a catalyst for
"social mixing" and cohesion. They argued: "state-led gentrification today is being promoted in the name of community regeneration (in the face of supposed social/community breakdown/degeneration) through policies of mixed communities" (Lees & Ley, 2008, p. 2381).
For Lees and Ley (2008), the close relationship between public policy and gentrification agendas have yielded many negative consequences across the globe, as state-led policies have not always coincided with the needs of inner-city residents (p. 2380).
23 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
The ambiguity surrounding the usages and deployments of ‘gentrification’—from political to pop-cultural8—has invited deliberation among scholars about whether or not the term any longer affords explanatory power for today’s urban changes (Atkinson, 2003; Bondi, 1999;
Butler, 2007; Davidson & Lees, 2005; Lambert & Boddy, 2002). Mark Davidson and Loretta
Lees (2005) have argued that the term still affords crucial use-value, despite how “politically loaded” it has become (p. 1187). They further argued that terms such as “transition” or
“reurbanisation” fail to capture “the politics that are inevitably present when neighbourhood change is premised upon social class” (Davidson & Lees, 2010, p. 408). Lambert and Boddy
(2002) also questioned whether or not the rise of ‘new-build residential developments’9 constituted a form of gentrification due to the fact that such developments do not promote population displacement. However, Davidson and Lees (2010) critiqued this scholarship as promoting a limited understanding of residential development and displacement because it misrecognizes displacement as other than an individual’s physical or “direct” removal from their original neighbourhoods. Davidson and Lees (2010) noted that displacement is a complex phenomenon that can also happen indirectly through, for instance, an inability to access a home
8 Gentrification has been widely referenced and debated in various popular cultural mediums (Hamnet, 2000, p. 331). For instance, a few years after his "anti-gentrification" rant went viral in 2014, Spike Lee wrote the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It— a re-write of his 1986 film that showcased the life of Brooklyn-born artist and protagonist, Nola Darling. The series depicted the conflicting neighbourhood dynamics between new “bougie” neighbours and longer-standing Fort Greene residents. Another recent Montréal web-series called Amours d’Occasion by Eva Kabuya pays homage to a gentrifying Montréal neighbourhood through its soundtrack. The series is set in Montréal’s Saint-Henri neighbourhood and subtly navigates themes of dispossession and displacement (Twigge-Molecey, 2014), including the erasure of its historic jazz scene (Genest, 2020). Finally, in Washington DC, music has also long been a vehicle of resistance against gentrification. In 2019, the "DontMuteDC" movement was sparked after a small business in a gentrifying DC neighbourhood was ordered to turn off the go-go music it had been playing for over 25 years at the shop’s entrance. The sanction came only after a resident in one of the area’s new condominium buildings issued a noise complaint. Protests soon followed with the area’s long- standing residents playing go-go music in the streets in support of the shop owner. A petition was also launched denouncing multiple social inequities in the area (Walker, 2019). 9 In contrast to traditional understandings of gentrification that are often characterized by the revitalization of pre- existing homes or infrastructure (which subsequently raises land value in previously disinvested neighbourhoods), new-build gentrification is marked by the construction of new residential units. These new units (e.g., condominium units, city houses) can emerge from the demolition of run-down constructions or as new developments carried out on previously non-residential plots (see Davidson & Lees, 2010).
24 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL in one’s own city because of a spike in the housing market (resulting from new urban developments, for instance), also constitutes a form of displacement that disproportionally disadvantages lower-income residents, favours the elite, and alters the socioeconomic fabric of urban centres (Davidson & Lees, 2010, p. 399 and 408). Rowland Atkinson (2003) highlighted this viewpoint when he argued: “The problem of gentrification here is often not simply the social cost of local household dislocation but also the difficulty of re-entering the inner-city” (p. 2345).
Atkinson (2003) concluded that there needs to be more critical examinations of the social costs that can arise in different urban change contexts, even if the urban developments do not at first appear to reflect traditional patterns of gentrification.
Rowland Atkinson (2003) conceded that a "new language" is required to better address the contextually-specific nuances of gentrifying processes in distinct locales: "a new language for gentrification is needed that is subtle enough to distinguish between a range of types that may play out differently in different contexts" (Atkinson, 2003, p. 2348). For Japonica Brown-
Saracino (2010), any new conceptualizations of gentrification must seek to elicit greater insight into the everyday dimensions of gentrification (p. 14). Brown-Saracino (2010) also pointed out that most researchers have highlighted the outcomes of gentrification (e.g., transformed housing markets, urban displacement, etc.), but have so far failed to consider how gentrification is lived through everyday interactions (p. 13). Brown-Saracino (2016) thus advocated for greater focus upon the everyday dynamics and lived experiences associated with gentrification on the proverbial frontlines of urban change—a focus that is at the heart of my thesis.
25 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
1.3. Environmental Gentrification
The study of urban green spaces, public parks, and green infrastructure such as walking and cycling paths has gained increased attention in recent years (Anguelovski, 2016; Checker,
2011; Rigolon & Németh, 2018; Rigolon & Németh, 2019; Quastel, 2009). One of the first scholars to elaborate on ‘environmental gentrification’ as a conceptual edifice for explaining such a phenomenon was anthropologist Melissa Checker, whose ethnographic research in
Harlem, New York City, from 2007 to 2011 shed critical light on how the ‘upgrading’ of green leisure spaces accelerated the gentrifying process in the surrounding area (Checker, 2011, p.
211). Checker's (2011) research in Harlem traced the development of a proposed neighbourhood project called the GreenX:Change, which was led by the Harlem Community Development
Corporation (HCDC). The HCDC had initially promoted its development project by emphasising the environmentally desirable outcomes that it would produce, such as more greenery and improved air quality (p. 210). What Checker (2011) also found, however, was that the “green awareness” agenda that had forcefully been promoted by the HCDC did not square with the desires of the area’s longer-standing residents, many of whom questioned the HCDC’s sincerity and the underlying motivations driving the project (p. 210). In particular, many locals were suspicious that the city had only become concerned about improving their health and wellbeing once luxurious condominiums were built around the park. Furthermore, these locals were all-too- well aware of the significant rent increases that had also corresponded with such changes (up to a
93% rental increase between 2006 and 2010) (p. 211). Checker (2011) denounced the approach of development-minded entities, such as the HCDC, whose development project yielded far more gentrification than ‘environmental benefits’: "Operating under the seemingly a-political rubric of sustainability, environmental gentrification builds on the material and discursive successes of the
26 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL urban environmental justice movement and appropriates them to serve high-end redevelopment that displaces low-income residents" (p. 212). Checker (2011), thus, urged greater consideration of how "green lifestyle" rhetoric may be combined with growth-oriented policymaking to bring about a whole new genre of gentrification.
Since Checker’s (2011) work, numerous other perspectives have emerged to expose the paradoxical intersections of urban planning, sustainability agendas, and gentrification
(Anguelovski, 2016; Curran & Hamilton, 2017; Pearsall & Anguelovski, 2016; Immergluck &
Balan, 2017; Lang & Rothenberg, 2017; Mullenbach & Baker, 2018; Quastel, 2009; Rigolon &
Németh, 2018). For example, Alessandro Rigolon and Jeremy Németh (2018) exposed how planners of large green infrastructure projects (LGIPs) have tended to strategically mask their capital-making agenda by collaborating with equity-driven and community-based organizations.
LGIPs can be distinguished from smaller green spaces, such as small neighbourhood parks and community gardens, by generally including a plan to improve transportation; e.g., creating new walking or biking paths (2018, p. 72). LGIPs also tend to argue that the increased greenery generated through their projects will contribute to improved air quality and overall quality of life.
However, several scholars have also pointed out that LGIPs tend to accelerate the pace of gentrification by appealing to higher-income residents looking to settle or invest in new/developing neighbourhoods (Anguelovski, 2016; Immergluck & Balan, 2017; Lang &
Rothenberg, 2017; Rigolon & Németh, 2018, p. 72). Rigolon and Németh (2018) further discussed how LGIPs often usher their planning and managerial responsibilities onto equity- minded environmental nonprofits (p. 72)—a type of collaboration that protects developers and other public stakeholders by limiting their accountability with regards to the gentrification- caused housing crises that tends to coincide with the creation of LGIPs (p. 77).
27 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
As an empirical example, Rigolon and Németh (2018) used Chicago's 606 walking and biking trail to drive home their point about the collective offsetting of responsibility for lower- income residents affected by environmental gentrification—a $95-million project that generated massive rent increases in the area over subsequent years (Rigolon & Németh, 2018, p. 71). The city had collaborated with The Trust for Public Land (TPL) to plan the 606 Trail, an organization devoted to equitable park access and environmental justice issues (Rigolon & Németh, 2018, p.
76). TPL's response to residents’ concerns about the increasing gentrification in the 606-trail area is reflected in the following comment from one of the organization's representatives: "We're not in the business of affordable housing" (Rigolon & Németh, 2018, p. 76). In short, all actors involved in the creation and design of the new trail denied any accountability for the housing crisis that ensued on account of the fact that that it was none of their mandates. Rigolon and
Németh (2018) summed up this contentious point by noting that: "reliance on park nonprofits to coordinate a project of this scale increases the chances of fragmentation between efforts to develop parks and initiatives to preserve affordable housing" (p. 76). They stressed the importance of forging strong alliances across various sectors when planning these types of projects (i.e. recreational, environmental, and housing), in order to ensure that all parties involved are privy to the community-wide implications of LGIPs (p. 72).
Dan Immergluck and Tharunya Balan (2018) also addressed how LGIPs tend to show little regard for how gentrifying processes will affect an area’s low-income residents. Their study focused on the Atlanta Beltline—one of the largest urban park developments of its kind in the
US (Immergluck & Balan, 2018, p. 548). Construction on the Atlanta Beltline began in 2016 in an effort to transform the 22 miles of abandoned railroad tracks into public park and walking trails, which would eventually include a streetcar connecting the 45 Atlanta neighbourhoods
28 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL along the trail (Immergluck & Balan, 2018, p. 547). The authors explained how the plan generated considerable increases in the area’s property values, many of which were historically lower income. The new ‘Beltline zones’ also became increasingly appealing to prospective home buyers, which further prompted the city to take additional measures to tailor the new park space to prospective investors with little regard for the views of longer-standing residents. For instance, the city significantly enhanced surveillance efforts along the walking trails by implementing a police-driven “Path Force Unit”, which led to a noticeable spike in arrests (Immergluck & Balan,
2018, p. 550; Suiter, 2016). Tensions peaked when housing advocates accused the private and public stakeholders driving the Beltline project of failing to introduce any measures to protect lower-income residents and homeowners in the area (Immergluck & Balan, 2018, p. 551).10
Urban Studies scholars have also pointed to New York’s High Line Park as another prescient example of environmental gentrification through an LGIP (Littke, Locke & Haas,
2016; Loughran, 2014; Lang & Rothenberg, 2017; Patrick, 2014, Rigolon & Németh, 2018).
High Line Park is similar to Chicago’s 606 Trail and the Atlanta Beltline in the sense that it stemmed from the transformation of a mile-and-a-half stretch of rundown railroad tracks into a world-famous public park that attracts both locals and tourists alike to enjoy its greenery.
Scholars Steven Lang and Julian Rothenberg (2018) and Kevin Loughran (2014) noted that today’s urban public parks and green spaces have been designed, transformed, and managed in ways that systemically favour the lifestyles and leisure practices of the privileged class over all
10 Immergluck and Balan (2018) provided several guidelines to potentially prevent and/or reduce the effects of environmental gentrification. Firstly, planners of large-scale park projects should always put equitable housing strategies at the forefront of their process by adopting an “affordability first” approach (p. 560). Planners should implement an effective plan early-on regarding the creation of low-rent units alongside their other development activities. Moreover, policies also need to ensure that lower-income homeowners do not suffer from increasing property taxes. One potential strategy that the authors suggested was to offer tax subsidies to help residents cover the costs of climbing tax payments or to issue taxes that corresponded with residents’ relative income. Finally, another strategy that the authors suggested was to offer tax breaks for property owners who guaranteed affordable rent prices for their tenants (p. 560).
29 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL other social actors. For example, both scholars and locals noted that High Line’s revival was undertaken principally to foster economic growth agendas rather than to enhance the health and wellbeing of community members.11 High Line essentially became a branding tool for particularly well-positioned stakeholders to market the city as progressive, sustainable, and community-oriented to various local and foreign investors (Lang & Rothenberg, 2018, p. 1744).
Loughran (2014) explained that parks such as High Line essentially maintain their “brand” value through the careful manipulation of public space, as well as by controlling the sorts of leisure practices that are permitted (p. 52). Finally, Loughran (2014) further noted that class struggles and exclusionary dynamics within public parks and green spaces have occurred throughout history, dating back to ancient civilizations (p. 52); however, he also encouraged us to reflect upon how present-day social inequalities are manifested through the use and exchange of various urban spaces—a matter that leisure studies scholars have also taken-up in recent years.
1.4. Contested Leisure Spaces
Scholars have noted the central role that urban parks and green spaces play in nurturing feelings of belonging among community members, as well by fostering intercultural and intergenerational exchange among diverse residents (Peters, Stodolska & Horolets, 2016;
Leikkila, Faehnale & Galanakis, 2013). Karin Peters, Monica Stodolska, and Anna Horolets
(2016) also studied how new immigrants in Germany, the United States, the Netherland and
Poland experienced a sense ‘belonging’ to their new environments through exposure to urban
11 In fact, the first actors who pushed for High Line’s transformation into a green and sustainable space were grassroots initiatives with community-centred objectives. However, when political elites and profit-minded stakeholders got involved in the project, they adapted it to meet their own objectives (Loughran, 2014, pp. 50-52).
30 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL parks and green spaces.12 The authors further noted that a person’s relationship to a local park or green space can even be therapeutic, especially for individuals who experience challenging or precarious life circumstances (p. 68). Clare Rishbeth and Nissa Finney (2006) supported this argument by noting how public parks serve as key spaces for recently immigrated communities to engage in social interactions, strengthen cultural ties, and for the creation of new positive memories.
However, the generative properties associated with shared public leisure spaces are not necessarily predetermined or universally experienced. In the context of gentrification, for example, several studies have also demonstrated how residents’ experiences of urban change may be one of displacement or disconnection from their local public parks or leisure spaces
(Aptekar, 2015; Butcher, 2010; Butcher & Dickens, 2016; Checker, 2011; Rigolon & Németh,
2018, Twigge-Molecey, 2014). Melissa Butcher and Luke Dickens (2016) used the term
‘affective displacement’ to describe the process through which residents no longer ‘feel at home’ or as though they ‘belong’ to particular spaces or communities (p. 802; also see Butcher, 2010).
The authors further noted that these sorts of alienating sentiments materialize when new gentrifying populations claim ownership over public spaces to suit their own lifestyle. The loss of a ‘feeling of belonging’ among the gentrified population can often further translate into feelings of inadequacy and discomfort when navigating spaces that have been transformed through gentrification (Butcher, 2010; Butcher & Dickens, 2016, p. 802).
Sofya Aptekar (2015) studied how gentrification-related pressures played out along the lines of class and culture at a community garden in a diverse sector of Queens, New York City.
Her ethnography discovered intensifying hierarchal dynamics that disrupted a once tolerant and
12 The authors used Julia Bennett's (2014) conception of ‘belonging’ to explain how feelings of belonging are shaped by "multiple social relationships stretching between past, present, and future generations and places" (p. 658).
31 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL peaceful garden that had been shared by over 200 gardeners from diverse backgrounds (Aptekar,
2015, p. 211). She described the garden as a highly intergenerational, multilingual, and welcoming environment that was also specially adapted to accommodate the needs of gardeners with disabilities (Aptekar, 2015, p. 124). However, new norms and general practices began taking over the garden that reflected the broader gentrifying trends in Queens, NYC. For instance, the garden’s leadership positions were increasingly occupied by white elite professionals who instituted a new set of organizational norms and aesthetics that favoured structure, cleanliness, and an enhanced visual appeal over the more relaxed culture that had long predominated the garden (p. 224). These norms were expected to be adopted across all of the garden’s lots and thus especially targeted the practices of longer-standing gardeners who did not conform to the new expectations.13 The new leaders were pejoratively dubbed “the lawyers” by the area’s longer-standing residents who pushed back and actively challenged the domineering approach adopted by these urban elites (p. 215). Hence, Aptekar’s (2015) study illuminated how the dispossessing effects of gentrification that occur on a larger scale can also play out in the everyday lives and leisure practices of residents despite claims of inclusivity and tolerance (see
‘Cosmopolitan Canopy’ by Elijah Anderson, 2011; Aptekar, 2019; Aptekar, 2015).
Hélène Bélanger's (2010) research in Montréal’s Pointe-Saint-Charles (PSC) neighbourhood presented another complicated picture of the relationship between gentrification and social cohesion. In 1977, Parks Canada opened the kilometres-long Canal Park that passes through PSC into a long stretch of esthetically pleasing bicycle paths that now line the Lachine
Canal, which have rendered the area particularly appealing to property developers and
13 Aptekar (2015) provided the example of Maral, an elderly woman from Asia, who was continuously reproached for adorning her garden lot with eclectic recycled objects and artefacts (pp. 220-221).
32 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL prospective home buyers (Marotte, 2018)14. Today, the old factories that once lined the Canal have been converted into modern office spaces and sparkling new lofts on both sides of the waterway (Marotte, 2018). Bélanger (2010) set out to study how longer-standing residents in
PSC perceived and experienced this revitalization campaign and found that longer-standing residents were generally dissatisfied with the new residents' lack of efforts to integrate into the
PSC community (pp. 151-152). Bélanger (2010) also observed a disconnect between longer- standing PSC residents and newer condo dwellers with regard to their use and exchange of urban park space. To newcomers, for example, the Canal Park bike path enhanced their lifestyle, while also providing a viable transit option between PSC and Montréal's business district. Longer- standing residents, on the other hand, did not approve of the growing population density and increased bike traffic in the park (p. 152). Finally, Bélanger (2010) observed that the area’s longer-standing residents no longer experienced the same sense of belonging to the park that was now being marketed to the area’s new and wealthier residents. Instead, longer-standing residents felt alienated by newcomers who seemed to have appropriated the park space for themselves (p.
152). Bélanger (2010) concluded that gentrification in PSC had considerably redefined the use and exchange of urban leisure spaces for the area’s longer-standing residents (p. 152).
Scholarly literature on the relationship between gentrification and urban leisure spaces remains limited; however, there have been several media accounts of clashing populations within gentrifying areas that merit some attention. For example, one incident that gained significant attention in the US took place at the Mission Playground in San Francisco’s traditionally lower- income Mission District. This area has experienced significant gentrification over a few short
14 Since the opening of the initial Canal Park in 1977, Parks Canada has continued to invest millions into the park, to revitalize and extend the bicycle paths, as well as to build various rest areas along them (“Pathway along Lachine Canal east of Atwater to be extended by 1km,” 2018).
33 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL years incited by the emergence of new tech industries (Maharawal, 2017). In 2014, tensions peaked at a soccer field in Mission District when a group of local youth who had regularly played at the Mission Playground were confronted by a group of young tech employees who demanded that they leave the field on account of the fact that they had ‘booked’ and paid for their field time—a practice that seemed foreign to the local youth who had long promoted inclusive playing strategies, despite the recent implementation of pay-for-use regulations.
Footage of the incident showed the local youths explaining the ‘informal rules’ of the park to the tech employees who were relentless in their demand for the local youth to abandon the area. The footage was emblematic of broader issues occurring in the neighbourhood and prompted local politicians and community advocates to denounce the ongoing dispossession and displacement of longer-standing residents within Mission District (Maharawal, 2017, p. 34).
Another incident that generated significant media attention occurred at Toronto's newly renovated Regent Park pool and recreation facilities. The new pool, in particular, generated heightened demand among the neighbourhood’s higher-income families who had previously neglected the centre’s programming. Consequently, lower-income families reported difficulties securing spots for their children who had previously enjoyed regular access to the centre. The online registration filled-up instantaneously and was difficult to access for lower-income families who lacked high-speed internet, among other linguistic and cultural barriers (Smee, 2019).
Toronto Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam noted that up to two-thirds of the individuals accessing the new pool were driving in from nearby, more affluent, sectors of downtown Toronto (Smee,
2019), thus dispossessing locals and other low-income residents from the facility. Wong-Tam sought to resolve the issue by forcing the registration process to prioritize the inclusion of Regent
34 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Park’s lower-income families (Smee, 2019)—a progressive step that raises questions about other forms of dispossession and displacement occurring in urban leisure spaces.
1.5. Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks
This chapter discussed how social pressures associated with gentrification are reflected in the development, access to, and use of urban spaces of leisure and sport. It has also shed light on how lower-income residents in gentrifying neighbourhoods can feel especially excluded from the urban changes occurring at their neighbourhood parks and recreation facilities (Aptekar, 2015;
Bélanger, 2010; Maharawal, 2017). An emergent body of scholarship has advocated for greater consideration of parks and leisure spaces within urban planning processes—spaces crucial to carrying out activities that promote physical and emotional health and that also nurture social cohesion (Leikkila, Faehnle & Galanakis, 2013; Peters, Elands & Buijs, 2010; Peters et al.,
2016). Moreover, as Lauren Mullenbach and Brigitta Baker (2018) stated in their systematic review of research on leisure spaces and gentrification, there needs to be more research on how gentrification is experienced "on the ground" and as it happens through peoples’ everyday experiences in local spaces of leisure (2018, p. 4)—a matter to which I now turn.
35 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Chapter II: Methodology
2.1 Introduction
The chapter is divided into two broad sections that outline both the theoretical and methodological considerations that underpin my project. Section one discusses the project’s theoretical orientation, which has been partly inspired by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.
Lefebvre’s (1991) work on social space provides a framework that facilitates our understanding of how space is socially ‘produced’ vis-à-vis ‘spatial practices,’ ‘spaces of representation,’ and
‘representational spaces.’ Lefebvre's (1991) work has also been taken-up by numerous urban and leisure studies scholars who have used his theories of social space to explore how urban space is shaped and made meaningful through various sport, recreational, and leisure practices (Iain
Borden, 2001; Lashua & Kelly, 2008; Stehlin & Tarr, 2017; Van Ingen, 2003). Section two, next, explains urban ethnography as the overarching methodology for this study. I discuss how urban ethnography is a distinctively qualitative approach that combines three main methods: participant observation, textual analysis, and interviews. The various strategies I intend to employ in my data analysis will also be discussed in this section.
2.2. Theoretical Perspectives
This study is guided by aspects of both constructivism and critical theory. The constructivist component of this inquiry is driven by my desire to push-back against singular usages of terms such as gentrification. As noted in Chapter one, community advocates and citizen groups have long pointed out the social costs of gentrification, such as the physical displacement of lower-income residents from their neighbourhoods and the rupturing of community ties. To many property owners and developers, however, gentrification is considered
36 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL a sign of healthy economic growth (Atkinson, 2002, p. 6). My research aims to go beyond the most common narratives around the concept of ‘gentrification’ to generate reflection on the complexities of urban change, including the workings of indirect forms of displacement during the process of urban change. These indirect forms of displacement refer to the exclusionary social dynamics and cultural displacement felt by long(er)-standing residents who continue to reside in a neighbourhood as an incoming class of wealthier residents bring with them new norms and expectations regarding the neighbourhood (Versey, Murad, Williams & Sarri, 2019, p. 3). In this sense, I avoid entering definitional debates that position different terms such as
“revitalization,” “re-urbanization” and neighbourhood “renewal” as isolated processes of urban change. Instead, I hope to highlight how gentrification implies intersecting forms of urban change, and to also reveal how such forms apply pressure disproportionally upon lower-income residents in gentrifying areas. My constructivist inclinations thus resonate with a broad appraisal of the consequences of gentrification, as well as resonating with my chosen methodology (urban ethnography) by enabling me to ‘hear out’ the multiplicity of perceptions, meanings, and investments that people may hold in gentrifying processes within DSP.
The epistemological underpinnings of both critical theory and constructivist paradigms is considered subjectivist and transactional in nature (Guba & Lincoln, 1994, p. 111); that is, the researcher is viewed as actively shaping the research, as opposed to being positioned as an impartial or ‘neutral’ observer. I came to this research with a particular set of biases stemming from my own life experiences growing-up in the Eastern Townships, QC. Recent experiences as a female graduate student trying to navigate soaring living and rental costs in the City of
Montréal have also shaped my view of gentrification. Suffice is to say that I have been living
37 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL through a societal context in which gentrification and its associated pressures have featured prominently in my life and in the lives of my closest friends (more on this below).
Where constructivism and critical theory differ slightly is from an ontological perspective. Critical theory is driven by social critique and a desire to expose power relations with the aim of generating positive social change. Critical theorists thus attempt to: “locate the foundations of truth in specific historical, economic, racial, and social infrastructures of oppression, injustice, and marginalization” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 204). The nature of my research into ‘how gentrification is potentially lived in-and-through everyday activities such as sport, recreation, and leisure’ is decisively critical in orientation in the sense that part of my aim through this work is to expose how broader social forces inform peoples’ everyday living practices. Constructivism, on the other hand, is more “antifoundational” in its approach (Guba &
Lincoln, 2005, p. 204). Constructivists try to make space for their participants to guide the research, instead of imposing their own theoretical inclinations on a subject matter (Guba &
Lincoln, 2005, p. 202)—they focus on ‘by whom’ and the ‘how’ ideas are formed, rather than upon the ‘why’ which typically guides critical theorists’ studies of pre-existing structures and ideas (Weber, 2007, pp. 99 and 104).
My goal in this research is to utilize only those theories that have “earned their way into the study,” as opposed to forcing my empirical data to align with a pre-designated framework
(Sandelowski, 1993, p. 215). Lefebvre’s (1991) seminal work, The Production of Space, proposes numerous theoretical ideas to help expose the structural forces that produce urban space. I have chosen to discuss only those ideas that I have deemed to be most thought- provoking in relation to my empirical data, which I discuss more below. I have also tried to heed the advice of Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson (2007) who argued against framing an
38 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL ethnography entirely through, and to support, one specific theory (p. 159). Instead, they suggested that theory should interact with data and be approached as an element that adds texture and meaning to our analysis (p. 159). My attraction to Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) work has thus been driven primarily by my initial field experiences in DSP, whish spoke powerfully to how individuals’ perceptions of a changing urban landscape involved complex layers of social, political, and structural significance.
The Spatial Turn
The theoretical study of social space has gained increased prominence in Leisure Studies over the past two decades, especially within the emerging field of sports geography. John Bale’s
(2003) Sports Geography argued that the study of sport is undeniably a “spatial science” due to the centrality of common geographical themes such as ‘space’ and ‘place’ (pp. 9-10). He further claimed that the study of sport is inseparable from the study of landscape in the sense that the environment influences sport and vice versa (Bale, 2003, pp. 10-11). For example, the names and identities of sports teams are largely associated with the specific regions in which they are played; i.e. a national team and national pride (p. 11). Bale (2003) further noted that, while numerous social scientists have explored the intersections of space and sport, most of these writings are scattered across various scholarly fields and sources. Bale (2003) thus called for a sport-specific geography that was better attuned to the social relationships and hierarchies wielded in-and-through various sport, recreation, and leisure practices (p. 11).
My work is not situated within “sports geography” per se, but Bale’s work has afforded an important point of departure for the development of my own theoretical interests. In Sites of
Sport (2004), John Bale and Patricia Vertinsky outlined how various conflicts tend to arise at
39 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL sites of sport when different users claim a divergent ‘sense of place’ through their sport, recreation, and leisure activities (p. 2). Vertinsky (2004) explained that, while sport may help us to secure a ‘sense of place’ by allowing us to “embody” a space through movement, it may also alienate individuals harbouring an alternative investment and/or relationship to that space (p. 8).
For example, Cathy van Ingen’s (2003) Geographies of Gender, Sexuality, and Race: Reframing the Focus of Space in Sport Sociology sheds light on how many of the archetypical inequalities observed in other parts of society have routinely been re-constituted through the design, use, and control of dominant sport and leisure spaces (p. 205). Van Ingen (2003) leaned heavily on Henri
Lefebvre’s (1991) “spatial theory” to explain how bodies that move through space using various
‘spatial practices’ such as walking, running, playing, “…involve the use of an established spatial economy characteristic of each social formation (place) and demonstrate the ways in which bodies interact with material space” (Van Ingen, 2003, p. 203). Spatial theory thus encourages us to reflect upon how social spaces may be re-constituted according to established spatial economies that are reflective of broader race, class, gender, and sexual divides.
My field observations have been loosely guided by the work of Lefebvre in the sense that
I am interested in how broader social inequalities are potentially reflected in the use and exchange of urban space (in DSP, in particular). Lefebvre’s work helped to inform my analysis of how urban space is conceived and negotiated in parallel with some of the broader gentrifying forces outlined in Chapter one. For example, Lefebvre (1991) argued that we must examine how social space is imbued with political meanings, as well as imbricated in broader economic or capitalistic structures (p. 26). To understand some of the inequities that are perpetuated through gentrification, it is thus important to bear in mind how capitalism in the West has roots in slavery and ongoing patterns of colonization. In Canada (and other parts of North America), for instance,
40 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL capitalistic governance has been promoted at the expense of Indigenous and other racialized communities, who have been systematically denied access and rights to land and resources—a social and economic pattern that Shiri Pasternak (2020) has dubbed “racial capitalism” (p. 303).
Contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism continue to promote disparities and racial oppression. This is notably the case in Canada, where “there has been a long spatial history of colonial policy, law, and practices that have structured the enrichment and class advantage of white settlers” (Pasternak, 2020, p. 306). Lefebvre (1991) was interested in how power relationships pertaining to capitalism operate within social space, and in understanding how the social production of urban space both informs and is informed by whom has access to that space, under what conditions, and to what social and political ends. Lefebvre (1991) explained that socially produced space “also serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power; yet that, as such, it escapes in part from those who would make use of it” (p. 26).
Lefebvre (1991) identified three elements that are central to producing social space, which he referred to as the “spatial triad”: 1) spatial practice, 2) representations of space, and 3) representational spaces (pp. 38-39). Firstly, Lefebvre’s ‘spatial practice’ invites the researcher to consider how physical spaces such as urban parks or recreation centres are perceived by different stakeholders (i.e. different communities or populations), which stems largely from how such spaces are utilized and/or practiced through the various activities of city residents (Lashua &
Kelly, 2008, p. 469; van Ingen, 2003, p. 202). Secondly, Lefebvre’s ‘representations of space’ invites the researcher to consider how spaces are imagined or represented according to imaginary codes and symbols that come to be experienced or associated with a physical space (Lashua &
Kelly, 2008, p. 468; Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). How space is conceived in the imaginary realm,
41 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL therefore, is subjective to the different persons and/or stakeholders who experience or envision a particular space. For Lefebvre, the perception of (implicit or explicit) codes and regulations associated with a given space cuts differently across the population; i.e., they are experienced differently by families, youth, elderly folks, lower-income residents, higher-income urbanites, and city stakeholders such as urban planners, engineers, and politicians, etc. (Lefebvre, 1991, p.
38). Moreover, peoples’ experience of these codes is subjective within both the embodied and imaginary realms. However, it also important to note that certain codes and regulations can also be generative of objective actions, and, in this sense, they can control and govern space (i.e., through neighbourhood surveillance, park rules, or urban design features and other aesthetics)— a point that undoubtably influences how imaginaries around space are also shaped.
The third element of Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad is ‘representational spaces,’ which emerges from the relationship between the two former elements (Lashua & Kelly, 2008, p. 469).
‘Representational spaces’ thus invites the researcher to consider how spaces are lived and navigated by different stakeholders, based on how they perceive, imagine, and negotiate those spaces (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 39). In my analysis, I leaned on some of Lefebvre’s (1991) sub- theories of ‘reductive practice’ and ‘contradictions of space’ to understand how conflicting perceptions of space shaped peoples’ lived experiences of DSP. These sub-theories further helped me to grasp the different ways in which spatial experiences have been shaped by dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that are similar to those propagated by gentrification, and have also been largely influenced by power structures that decide which spatial practices are deemed acceptable and, conversely, which practices are considered disruptive and threatening to the new spatial order. Collectively, all of these theoretical elements have shaped my analysis of
42 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL the various meanings and navigational strategies encoded in and around DSP—an analysis that has also been filtered by my own background and personal investment in DSP.
The Ethnographer’s Biography
I grew-up regularly moving between the small countryside town of North Hatley in the
Eastern Townships of Québec and the city of Sherbrooke. We frequently changed addresses as my parents were on a constant quest to find a ‘good deal’ in terms of housing for our family of five kids. Neither of my parents had roots in Québec: my mother immigrated to Chicago from
Lithuania as a young adult and my father was born in Ontario several years after his parents and siblings had arrived in Canada from Lithuania after fleeing WWII. They moved to the Eastern
Townships when my dad was hired as a philosophy professor at the University of Sherbrooke.
By the time I was eight years old, my parents’ perpetual search for real estate had evolved into a new vocation when they decided to purchase their first rental property in downtown Sherbrooke.
I witnessed firsthand the hard work and ‘sweat equity’ they invested into their property over the years, as well as their various financial slumps and successes. I recall times when our entire family was deployed to clean, renovate, rake leaves, and shovel snow in and around their growing number of properties. I also recall accompanying my dad to the rental board, where I witnessed him claiming unpaid rent from tenants. I became habituated to viewing housing issues through the lens of the landlord—a lens shaped by costly repairs and permits, vacant apartments, and large bills that provided a source of constant stress for my parents.
However, my frame of reference took a sharp left turn when I moved out to Montréal for my undergraduate degree at McGill University. I quickly discovered the overwhelming stress associated with finding affordable housing in a major metropolitan city with a perpetually rising
43 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL cost of living, low vacancy rate, and where other structural barriers appeared to ‘stack the deck’ against the tenant. This “reality check” motivated my volunteering with community organizations in Côte-des-Neiges (CDN), such as La Maison Bleue where I taught yoga and participated in various outreach events and social outings with the mothers who attended the centre. I also volunteered with Project Genesis (a non-profit that assists residents dealing with various housing-related issues in CDN) as part of their community outreach team. Through these experiences, I learned about different realities in CDN, including the impact of rising property values on apartment buildings: repairs left neglected, tenants’ needs ignored, and widespread landlord abuse, especially among lower-income and newly immigrated families.
I first learned about ‘gentrification’ in my first year at university from an elderly woman who attended a brethren church near my downtown apartment. The woman explained to me how the character of her Little Burgundy neighbourhood (previously named Faubourg of St. Antoine) had been completely upended since the 1960s and 1970s, as the city encouraged new money and residents to flow into the neighbourhood. This area located southwest of and in close proximity to Montréal’s downtown had long been home to African American, Canadian, and Caribbean workers who built the Lachine canal and the Canadian National Railroad that traverse the southwestern part of the city (Williams, 2020). In the early 20th century, Little Burgundy was primarily populated by a vibrant Black anglophone community with a lively social and cultural scene, including an impressive jazz scene, which showcased Montréal as one of North America’s largest jazz meccas (the largest in Canada) (Williams, 2020). Montréal’s Festival international de jazz may still be operating today, but few Montréalers are aware of its roots and of the community that made it world-famous. In the 1980s, Little Burgundy was essentially
‘professionalized’ as new investors entered the area and real estate agents began promoting the
44 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL area as ‘Downtown Adjacent’ to draw in a new class of white collar professionals who settled there to benefit from the short commute to the downtown’s business district (Rose, 1996, p. 159).
Since then, gentrification has considerably erased the neighbourhood’s heritage by forcefully scattering a tightly knit community. The woman from my neighbourhood explained to me that thousands of residents had been forced to abandon their long-time apartments due to mass demolitions and evictions inflicted by the city of Montréal as part of a large urban renewal project (which also involved changing the name of the neighbourhood) (Kouaou, 2020). The city also retained the power to authorize who could occupy new lots and living quarters in the gentrifying neighbourhood, which eventually led to the closing of several historical Little
Burgundy organizations (Williams, 2020). The effects of this mass dislocation have impacted the health and wellbeing of the families impacted by gentrification to this day, some of whom remain in Little Burgundy and face continued threat of displacement, as well as many others who relocated to CDN, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Montreal North (Kouaou, 2020; Williams, 2020).
I learned more about the exclusionary character of gentrification when I moved to
Montréal’s Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie area after completing my bachelor’s degree, where conversations about gentrification can be overheard on practically every other street corner. I witnessed firsthand as several of my close friends and neighbours experienced sharp rental spikes in their buildings at a seemingly break-neck pace over just the four years in which I lived in the neighbourhood. I also saw the rapid transformation of the area’s old housing stock into more ‘upscale’ private units only to be sold for exorbitantly high prices at the expense of longer- term tenants who were forced to leave to make-way for the renovations. The building in which I presently live was also sold in the fall of 2019 to a condominium contractor for considerably more than the listed price, which makes me question whether I will eventually be forced to leave
45 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL if/when my new landlords decide to follow the aforementioned trend and transform my building into a more profitable return on investment.
Despite this uncertainty, I recognize that students such as myself are also often unknowingly members of the gentrifying class. For many other students in my position (i.e., from a modest upbringing, living independently from their parents, and about to enter into the fulltime workforce), housing affordability is a central condition in selecting our residence. This condition incites us to settle in areas that may be less “central” to our schools or jobs, but that nevertheless present a few affordable or ‘trendy’ leisure amenities emblematic of the student lifestyle, such as an espresso bar, a fine grocer, and some niche boutiques (which tend to multiply the more students and millennials move into an area). Similarly, the “struggling” artist also plays a part, often unintentionally, in gentrification patterns: they choose neighbourhoods that are slightly off-grid and “authentic,” and over time, aestheticize these spaces in ways that charm wealthier populations to gravitate to these now “trendy” hot spots (see David Ley’s article
Artists, Aestheticisation and the Field of Gentrification, 2003). My inevitable implication in these urban movements has forced me to reflect upon the nuanced and complicated nature of gentrification, and further invited my consideration of the policies and collective awareness needed to help prevent the devastating effects of gentrification on more vulnerable populations.
Finally, this research has inspired me to reflect back upon my own leisure experiences growing-up in Sherbrooke. Short-track speed skating was the first love of my life, and I used to relish having access to a local skating rink at which to train. However, my parents made it clear to me that the costs associated with training at the ‘next level’ were prohibitive and I was consequently asked to take-up other, more affordable after-school activities such as track and field and ultimate frisbee, which were offered at practically no-cost at my public high school. I
46 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL cannot overstate the positive effects that these sorts of after-school leisure activities had on my own personal development and wellbeing. I have come to realize that my own positionality and relative privilege as a white teenager from a middle-class household has enabled me to navigate sport, recreation, and leisure programs and spaces with relative ease. My research has alerted me to the different challenges that exist for youth living in more precarious situations and navigating areas where broader urban changes potentially threaten neighbourhood dynamics.
2.3. Methods
Urban ethnography is a distinctly qualitative approach comprised of three main methods that are conducive for obtaining a holistic perspective of the daily lived experiences of Mountain
Sights residents (Wacquant & Howe, 2008, p. 9). Hammersley & Atkinson (2007) explained:
[Data collection in ethnographic inquiry] usually involves the researcher participating,
overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what
happens, listening to what is said, and/or asking questions through informal and formal
interviews, collecting documents and artefacts—in fact, gathering whatever data are
available to throw light on the issues that are the emerging focus of inquiry (p. 3).
At its core, ethnography is concerned with both people and writing: the Greek root of the word is comprised of ethnos, which means “people” and graph, “writing” (Sparkes & Smith, 2013, p.
33). Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) called ethnographic inquiry a practice of “thick description”—a way of writing that attempts to grasp and interpret the multilayered realities and structures of cultural life. Ethnographic researchers seek to acquire first-hand experience with
(and alongside) a group and/or community with the ultimate goal of describing a particular social phenomenon from the perspective of its members (Sparkes & Smith, 2013, p. 34). The use of
47 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL multiple methods is beneficial for the researcher to better grasp and appreciate the different factors that shape the perceptions and experiences of those community members.
However, the ethnographer must also exercise reflexivity and approach both their fieldwork and writing with sensitivity to their position as a researcher, an awareness of their personal and academic biases, and refrain from taking an authoritative position with regards to the subject of their study—a tendency that James Clifford and George Marcus (1986) described as the “privileged ethnographic gaze” (cited in Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 203).
Ethnographic inquiry thus involves more than just an assemblage of different methods: it also necessitates the researcher’s careful attention to the multiple ways knowledge is constituted both individually and socially (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 230).
The scholarly field of sport and leisure studies—once dominated almost exclusively by quantitatively-oriented investigations—has witnessed a growing number of ethnographic inquires over the past few decades. For example, ethnographers have provided rich analytic accounts of rock climbing sub-cultures (Bogardus, 2012), parkour in the city (Atkinson, 2009), martial arts (Brown, Jennings, & Sparkes, 2010), Ashtanga yoga (Atkinson, 2012), and ‘inner city’ floor hockey matches (Koch, Scherer, & Holt, 2018), to name but a few. Multiple feminist scholars have also shed light on the gendered dimensions of sport, recreation, and leisure through ethnographic studies of: boxing (Paradis, 2012), roller derby (Pavlidis & Olive, 2014), bodybuilding (Bunsell, 2013), sport and leisure facilities (Rütten, Abu-Omar, Frahsa & Morgan,
2009), and the experiences of Indigenous women in community recreation (Paraschak & Forsyth,
2010). I draw from many of these investigations in the following section to highlight the methodological steps I adopted throughout my urban ethnography in Mountain Sights.
48 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Participant Observation
Bronislaw Malinowski’s (1932) famed Argonauts of the Western Pacific introduced participant observation as a distinguishing feature of ethnographic inquiry. Malinowski (1932) explained that participant observation involves the researchers’ immersion within one distinct culture, place and/or community over a sustained period of time in order to learn the local language, build relationships, and to capture the essence of everyday life through careful observation. Participant observation has evolved considerably since Malinoskwi’s era; however, many of its central tenets still remain key features of the methodology. For instance, participant observation no longer implies a researcher’s immersion in one geographically-designated community. Anthropologists Karen Ann McGarry and Lynda Mannik (2017) explained:
More contemporary understandings of the ‘field’, however, situate it as a cultural
construction of the anthropologist or anthropology student. In other words, we create
artificial geographical and ideological boundaries around people, ideas, and places to
cultivate our own field sites. Such categories are not fixed or natural; instead, they are the
by-product of an academic necessity to delineate a manageable field site for our study (p.
35).
The authors further explained that people/communities are less geographically-bound in today’s globalized world; hence, ethnographers must exhibit greater flexibility in how they define and/or characterize ‘distinct’ communities ( p. 35)—a matter to which I have grown increasingly sensitive given the vast range of cultures and languages I have encountered in Mountain Sights.
Participant observation for my urban ethnography took place almost exclusively in the
Mountain Sights area of Côte-des-Neiges (CDN) in central Montréal. I initially became aware of the area’s rapid gentrification through my volunteer work with a local non-profit called Project
49 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Genesis (PG)—a CDN-based organization that assists low-income residents with issues of housing, pension, welfare, and family benefits. In the spring of 2019, the community outreach team, with whom I volunteered, paid a visit to two apartment buildings on Mountain Sights
Avenue that were well-known to the organization due to pressing repairs and safety concerns raised by the buildings’ tenants (concerns that were left neglected by the landlords).
Volunteering with PG allowed me to see first-hand a wide range of housing conditions as well as to interact with tenants who were seeking assistance regarding various housing and financial circumstances. Several weeks after my first visit to Mountain Sights, I began ‘hanging out’ in and around DSP as a means to gain deeper insight into the urban changes unfolding in the area on a daily basis. I spent my first visits walking through the streets of Le Triangle surrounding the park, where I observed the new condominium buildings as well as the numerous construction sites. I took the time to notice as many details as possible; i.e., details that would have likely escaped my sight had I not been actively observing the environment around me.
For instance, I paid attention to numerous publicity signs in the area; some posted to advertise the new condominium projects and to attract potential buyers, and others showcasing the city’s construction plans for new green space. I observed the shape and size of the different condominium buildings; their architecture and aesthetics; their balconies; their privately shared courtyards; their underground parking entries and the types of vehicles that drove through them.
I also took stock of the area’s old and aging infrastructure that was checkered between the newly built homes, such as a worn-down auto repair shop and others that are still open for business. In short, I tried to observe as many details as possible: the bustling car traffic; the active construction sites; the lineups for tables at Pushap restaurant right next to DSP; the popularity of the Eastern European Epicure market; and, of course, the social interactions at the trendy “third
50 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL wave” café. I occasionally brought a with me camera to document the evolving landscape.
In total, I conducted observational fieldwork for 12-months (between August 12th, 2019 and August 25th, 2020). I paid special attention to leisure and sporting activities that unfolded in and around DSP at different times of the day (i.e. mid-day and evenings). For example, I observed how the park’s depreciated water game structures were used for other functions, such as riding bikes, shadow boxing, or for dribbling a basketball when the water was turned off (as was the case for most days). I also noticed how numerous families and daycares used the park’s playground as a reprieve from hot indoors spaces. I further noticed neighbours picking fresh produce in the community garden while other park-goers would use the baseball field lawn for jogging, working out, riding bikes, and for gathering with friends on the grass (I actually never saw the field used for baseball). I was also surprised by the thick fall leaves that were left unraked from the previous year; the broken park benches; rusted water game structures; and the lack of lighting at sunset. My research setting was always changing due to the renovations— almost every visit provided a different view (i.e. a new section excavated at DSP, sections of the park closed-off or reopened, new condominium buildings completed, etc.) and my goal was to present as much of the change as I could in this thesis.
In November 2019, I expanded my ethnographic fieldwork by volunteering two nights per week (approx. 3hrours per visit) at the Centre Communautaire de Mountain Sights (CCMS) for fourth months until March 2020 (when the COVID-19 pandemic brought an abrupt halt to my fieldwork). My duties at the CCMS included helping youth with their homework and participating in many of the centre’s other social activities (e.g., participating in holiday parties, youth games’ nights, and various other fun leisure activities). These interactions were crucial to helping build relationships with youth in the area, as well as fostering rapport with CCMS staff
51 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL members and other residents in CDN.
To record my observations, I kept a fieldwork journal in which I documented handwritten notes following each visit to the Triangle sector. I later digitally transcribed these notes, and expanded them with reflexive analysis about my observations (a total of 55 field notes were recorded throughout my observational fieldwork that ranged in focus from the words exchanged with individuals in the Triangle through conversations, to my own reflections on researcher biases and academic protocols, and also to reflections on my own ease and anxieties in the process of doing ethnography). Most of my notes were written once I returned home from the field. I sometimes wrote notes while observing at DSP, but I never took notes while interacting with someone or while I was at the community centre. When I volunteered, I was dedicated to fulfilling my duties as a volunteer as best as I could to focus on the youth’s needs as opposed to seeking out information to write. Crucially, though, volunteering at the CCMS allowed me to grasp the importance of the CCMS’s activities and programs for local families. It also helped me to build trust with local staff and volunteer workers in the area, which further helped me to secure additional connections with relevant stakeholders in the community.
My original plan was to continue doing weekly visits to DSP for an additional six months over spring/summer 2020 and to volunteer at the centre’s summer day camp; however, this timeline was cut-short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the CCMS’s closure.
Although my advisor and I felt as though I had gained sufficient observational fieldwork data to begin writing my data analysis prior to the pandemic, I supplemented my data throughout the summer over 7 visits to my field site and by way of a casual follow-up telephone conversation with a community worker from Côte-des-Neiges. During this later stage of my research, I also researched extensively on the impact of COVID-19 upon the health, wellbeing, and leisure
52 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL practices of CDN residents to grasp how the pandemic was potentially changing the everyday life of Mountain Sights residents.
Figure 1. A lamppost on the corner of Mountain Sights Avenue and Paré Avenue
Figure 2. Condominium buildings behind the plaza located next to the Namur metro station
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Figure 3. Continuous construction in the Triangle, a few blocks away from Mountain Sights Avenue.
Interviews and Sampling
As noted above, a series of informal (conversational) interviews supplemented the data I obtained through my observational fieldwork. Significant insight about DSP was obtained through various unstructured and spontaneous conversations that took place throughout my ethnographic fieldwork. In total, I had conversations with 35 residents and community workers in the area, some of whom I encountered on a regular basis at the park. Among these individuals were Mountain Sights residents, Triangle condominium residents, a Town of Mount-Royal resident, Mountain Sights car dealership employees, a Mountain Sights convenience store employee, Mountain Sights restaurant employees and clients, one barista in the Triangle, a City of Montréal administrative worker, two construction workers at DSP, two police officers, as well as five CDN community workers (3 of them who worked in Mountain Sights) and volunteers at the CCMS. Moreover, my volunteering at CCMS also allowed me to interact with many youths in the area through the different leisurely games and academic activities held at the centre.
54 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
However, I did not engage in any type of interview about the urban changes at DSP with anyone who was not of adult age. In terms of my conversational interviews, I always made sure to ask the person I approached if I could ask them one or a few questions about the urban changes happening in the Triangle and in Mountain Sights. This was the point of departure for most of my conversations, which then took different avenues based on the responses of the interviewees; i.e. some conversations remained focused on gentrification, while others extended to a wide range of topics such as talking about family, cuisine, gardening, music, careers and the media.
The open-endedness of these spontaneous interviews was essential to my study: it allowed me to grasp individuals’ opinions on the urban changes occurring in the area, and also helped me connect with the community-oriented and welcoming character of the Mountain Sights community.
I did not conduct any formal interviews and did not have a pre-established sample shaped within a specific sampling tradition. Nevertheless, the techniques of purposive sampling—a sampling method often used for interviews in qualitative inquiry—echoed with the ways in which I met some of the individuals I spoke with, especially with regards to the CDN community workers. Purposive sampling helps to identify individuals who can share relevant information and help provide the researcher with “rich” insight into their subject of study. They are often members of the community, or deeply invested in the community that the researcher is studying
(Sparkes & Smith, 2013, p. 70). Purposive sampling is an overarching approach that includes a variety of subtypes of sampling, such as snowball and convenience sampling (Sparkes & Smith,
2013, p. 70). I met some of the community workers I spoke with through snowball sampling
(chain effect). Certain individuals I spoke to recommended I approach specific individuals who had exclusive insight or expertise relevant to my research question (Sparkes and Smith, 2013, p.
55 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
71). While my approach to engage in conversational interviews in and around DSP was often unplanned, spontaneous and organic, I also benefitted from the recommendations of community workers who directed me towards other workers and volunteers who operated in the same field as them. The arrival of the COVID-19 virus in Montréal complicated my opportunities to meet with new individuals to speak with in Mountain Sights, given that the CCMS closed and social isolation protocols prohibited interactions in public spaces during the months of mandatory quarantine in Montréal. I waited for Montreal’s isolation measures to change before doing some more fieldwork at DSP to supplement my initial data collection.
Textual Analysis
I engaged in the method of textual analysis for two main objectives: 1) to study community organization reports published by different CDN organizations, such as Project
Genesis, CCMS, Centraide, FRAPPRU and the Corporation de développement communautaire de Côte-des-Neiges, and 2) to scrutinize the urban plans for the revitalization of DSP and other green spaces planned to be built in the Triangle (the Parc du Triangle and the Traverse linéaire).
Firstly, I studied community reports to familiarize myself with how community stakeholders, who are in close contact with CDN residents, have formulated the long-standing issues in CDN and the required solutions and policies needed to alleviate these issues. It was important for me to review these documents, considering how they provided context-specific information in relation to my area of research—information that remains largely undocumented to date in scholarly literatures. In addition, some of the reports I examined were co-written by community members with whom I had the chance to interact throughout my fieldwork. Hence, the analysis of these reports helped me make continuous connections between the elements I observed in and
56 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL around DSP and the issues that were highlighted by community workers in their organizations’ reports. Reading these reports is crucial to grasp how the community sector in Montréal is working to push for social change around issues pertaining to gentrification (i.e. housing issues, class tensions, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, etc.)—a factor that continuously inspired me to think about how my own study could contribute to denounce some of these issues.
Secondly, I analysed urban plans for DSP with two main goals in sight: 1) to grasp the elements that will constitute the revitalized DSP (i.e., what types of new facilities and leisure spaces will be included, such as sports fields, lounging areas, playground, walking paths, etc.) and; 2) to gain awareness about the type of aesthetic promised for the new DSP. Interestingly, the urban plans I analyzed included some references to other revitalized urban spaces in North
America, which Triangle developers looked to for inspiration for the re-making of the Triangle and DSP. Hence, I analysed urban plans in detail to also situate the changes at DSP in broader existing urban trends. This process helped me identify how gentrifying processes in leisure spaces across different cities are highly comparable and cause similar pressures—a point I identified in my review of literature when I discussed environmental and green gentrification.
Data Analysis
Data analysis in ethnographic work is not an isolated step in the research process—it evolves through the researcher’s pre-fieldwork research, data collection, and also during write-up
(Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 158). The data analysis technique used for this study was driven by triangulation, which involves identifying various interconnections and comparisons across multiple data sets (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 183). This strategy allows data collected through different methods to be compared in relation to the same subject of inquiry. A
57 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL strength of this approach is that it does not solely rely on one source of data, which could otherwise limit our understanding of a particular social issue such as gentrification (Atkinson &
Hammersley, 2007, p. 183). Sparkes and Smith (2013) encouraged researchers to approach data as an “analytical bricoleur” (p. 115). Norman Denzin (1994) further explained this approach:
“The bricoleur understands that research is an interactive process shaped by his or her
personal history, biography, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity, and that of the
people in the setting. The bricoleur knows that science is power, because all research
findings have political implications. There is no value-free science. The bricoleur also
knows that researchers all tell stories about the worlds they have studied. Thus, the
narratives of stories scientists tell are accounts couched and framed within specific story-
telling traditions, often defined as paradigms (e.g., positivism, postpositivism,
constructivism, etc.)” (p. 18).
My approach to triangulation resonates with this philosophy and acknowledges that validity is achieved through the mindful connections and interpretations of multiple data sets, as well as through the researcher’s heightened reflexivity to their own biases throughout research design, data collection, and by making aware the presence of their own voice during a manuscript’s final write-up or publication (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 184).
My analysis, therefore, presents the patterns and themes I identified over my visits to the
Triangle. Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theoretical ideas served as practical heuristic devices to scrutinize how the broader socioeconomic dynamics caused by gentrification affected leisure and sport practices for the area’s lower-income families. Lefebvre’s (1991) work, more specifically, allowed me to look beyond the surface of my observations and to understand the more systemic forces that shaped the landscapes for sport and leisure in and around DSP. Lefebvre’s ideas
58 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL served as a guide for me to discuss how a neoliberal system promotes structures that, over time, can squeeze lower-income individuals to the margins of novel urban projects. Therefore, in my analysis, I attempted to present the voices of residents not merely as symptomatic of gentrification, but also as voices that spoke to the larger problems caused by gentrification.
Moreover, the exceptional circumstances incited by the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to adjust to new realities and to adapt throughout my remaining data collection and process of data analysis. Online communities of researchers and ethnographers provided me with some additional insight into how our new global reality has changed the way we do fieldwork (i.e., we are turning to online methods more than ever). A text by anthropologist Annika Lems, however, really prompted my ongoing reflections about fieldwork during the pandemic. Lems (2020) argued that ethnographers are faced with a significant challenge because they have lost, first and foremost, direct contact with their studied environment and communities. The social processes they study have also changed; hence, the practice of ethnography finds itself at a crossroads because the “everyday” life they aim to capture has essentially disappeared (Lems, 2020, n.p.).
As noted above, I adapted to the new reality of the pandemic by opening myself up to the different ways of acquiring knowledge about a topic of inquiry. I grasped the value of using different mediums to interact with individuals, such as, for example, communicating via phone or through email exchanges when in-person interactions were impossible. Most significantly, however, I learned to acknowledge the unplanned changes that can arise over the course of a research journey—changes that we cannot resist. Instead, we are confronted with adapting to fundamental societal changes occurring around us despite the direction of our original research agendas. I also quickly understood, nevertheless, that my methodology, urban ethnography, allowed me to navigate an unpredictable research context, given how this methodology embraces
59 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL different data collection methods and allows for a rich and subjective appraisal of the issues (as numerous and complex as they may be) that are raised through research.
Ethical Considerations
Formal approval for this study was achieved in December 2018 through McGill
University’s Research Ethics Board (REB). The following measures were taken in order to ensure that this study respected the ethical standards outlined in my approval letter:
• Only informal interviews were conducted for this study. All of the informal interviews
involved adult participants only. Only non-invasive questions were asked to respect the
anonymity of the participants.
• All of the individuals who participated in the informal interviews were provided a
pseudonym in this thesis to protect their anonymity. Moreover, in order to protect their
private life, no personal questions were asked about their names, specific place of
residence, employment, and status.
• For all of the informal interviews, I always asked the people with whom I spoke for their
verbal approval to engage in conversation, and told them that there was no pressure or
obligation for them to answer any of my questions.
• All field notes and informal interview notes were stored in a personal notebook as well as
in a on a secure (password protected) hard drive. Only myself and my supervisor have
access to this data. Notes containing any identifiable data about participants will be kept
safely for up to 10 years, after which they will be destroyed.
• New measures implemented by the REB for field research in the context of the COVID-
19 pandemic were respected at all times. All in-person interactions during the summer of
60 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
2020 occurred at a minimum 2-meter distance and only outdoors. I also wore personal
protective equipment (PPE) at all times at my field site and always asked the individuals I
approached for their consent to discuss with me.
• All interactions that took place during the pandemic respected social distancing protocols
implemented by the public health officials of the Quebec government.
• Finally, the dignity, safety, and confidentiality of participants must, at all times, be the
priority of the researcher. Soyini Madison (2012) provided the example of the
custodian’s rip-off, where the researcher is solely guided by acquiring data for personal
use and who therefore fails to acknowledge the integrity or safety of the people involved
in their inquiry (p. 143). Another ethical offence is called the ethnographer’s infatuation,
through which the researcher romanticizes the situations or difficulties of the populations
involved in their study (p. 143). I was mindful of these offenses throughout my research
process.
2.4. Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks
This chapter provided a detailed outline of the overarching methodology that guided this study. Part one described various theoretical perspectives regarding the social production of space, drawing primarily on the work of the French geographer and social theorist Henri
Lefebvre. I also noted that this study was not heavily guided by theory, but rather embraced relevant theoretical writings as a means to add texture to my data analysis. Part two, then, overviewed the specific methods chosen for this study, which included participant observation, conversational interviews, and textual analysis. I also discussed various data analysis techniques and ethical considerations that shaped the conduct and write-up for this study.
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The next chapter explains how I employed these various methods to generate an insightful analytic account of how gentrification is potentially lived in-and-through CDN residents’ experiences of sport, recreation, and leisure in DSP. It highlights the voices of individuals I spoke with in and around DSP. It also illuminates how I analyzed the issues raised through my conversational interviews against broader structural forces that shape public leisure space. My analysis raises multiple questions that point to the, sometimes very subtle, but complex ways in which gentrification affects opportunities for sport and leisure for the longer- standing and lower-income families of Mountain Sights.
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Chapter III: Data Analysis
3.1 Introduction
This chapter presents the results and major themes that emerged over the course of my ethnography at De la Savane Park (DSP). My central finding was that among Triangle residents, the leisure and sport practices of the lower-income residents of Mountain Sights—a majority of whom are racialized and live in subsidized housing—have been adversely affected by ongoing gentrification promoted by the Triangle’s development. Mountain Sights residents have nevertheless been innovative in how they make-use of neglected park infrastructure by adapting various spaces to suit their leisure needs, despite being excluded from urban development plans that continuously prioritize the needs of condominium dwellers over lower-income residents.
This chapter is divided into two distinct sections. Section one sheds light on the divisive character of gentrification by discussing how the Triangle development project has essentially produced two classes of residents: 1) condominium dwellers, which are considered the
“gentrifying” population, and 2) Mountain Sights residents (i.e., the longer-standing, “gentrified” residents), who predominantly reside on Mountain Sights Avenue and who are mostly comprised of renters, with a majority living in subsidized housing. My early observations revealed that the social and economic divisions between these two subgroups were not limited to their place of residence, but were also reflected in the physical landscape of the Triangle. For instance, the new roads and street lighting that was built alongside the new condominium buildings stood in stark contrast to the older and underserviced infrastructure that still lines Mountain Sights Avenue and within DSP. Contrasts such as these were not accidental: they emerged directly from Triangle development plans that were introduced in 2009 and that failed to incorporate the needs of
Mountain Sights residents. Section two, next, analyses how Mountain Sights residents have
63 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL navigated the city’s exclusionary tactics by effectively repurposing the typically dilapidated leisure spaces in the only ways they can: as “spatial practice.” My analysis is enhanced by Henri
Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of “spatial practice,” which refers to the “commonsensical” ways in which individuals adapt their physical environment to accommodate their everyday lives.
3.2 Section One:
The Divisive Character of Gentrification
Gentrification and Class Dichotomies in the Triangle
Much of my ethnographic observations were conducted throughout the summer of 2019.
On a typical day, I would arrive at the Namur metro station just before 5pm following my workday in downtown Montréal. Upon exiting the station, I would cut diagonally through the retail store parking lots that extend eastward to the centre of the Triangle—a popular shortcut for people commuting home to their condominiums. The contrasting landscapes on both sides of
Paré Avenue—the street that delimits the front of DSP—always stood out during my fieldwork.
The sidewalks on the north-eastern side of Paré Avenue were clearly original—cracked and imperfect, and this section of the street was lined with crooked lampposts. The other side of the same street—the side on which a number of new-built condominiums were arising—displayed an entirely different aesthetic: newly built cobble-stone sidewalks, lined with tall, slim, and modern lampposts that had replaced the older ones. The contrast between the eastern and western edges of DSP was also striking: the eastern edge lined with rundown Mountain Sights Avenue apartments, while the western edge was lined with sparkling new condo buildings.
To enter DSP, I usually walked through the alleyway that lines the entire east side of the park along the backside of a series of Mountain Sights apartment buildings. The park’s front
64 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL entrance was temporarily fenced-off for much of my fieldwork due to construction, which frustrated many apartment-dwellers who had to endure strangers such as myself peering in through their back windows while sauntering along the alleyway. The apartment buildings also did not have any backyards or large balconies to protect families from the intruding eyes of park- goers (or to insulate them from the noise of the park’s construction projects). Instead, most balconies were used for storing overflowing garbage bins, old furniture, and for hanging laundry.
In this way, the park acted as the only greenspace available for the area’s apartment dwellers.
Figure 4. The alleyway behind Mountain Sights Avenue apartment buildings that lines the entire eastern edge of De la Savane Park.
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Figure 5. The contrast between a Mountain Sights apartment building and a condominium building on Paré Avenue. De la Savane Park is located between these two buildings.
On one of my earliest visits to DSP in November 2019, I struck-up a conversation with a young man who happened to work for the local community centre. The man informed me about a new report that had been produced by a local non-profit in Côte-des-Neiges (CDN) entitled:
Left out of the Triangle, The Impact of the Namur—Jean-Talon Development on Mountain Sights
Residents (Abraham et al., 2017). The report provided a detailed overview of various urban development projects in the Triangle that had adversely impacted the lives of lower-income
Mountain Sights residents over the past decade. The report also profiled numerous unfulfilled promises and commitments that urban developers had issued to Mountain Sights residents in the years leading-up the developments—commitments that were issued as assurances for those residents who were concerned about how the new development projects might inadvertently compromise the social fabric of their community. The document also profiled the growing disconnects between the area’s socially affluent newcomers, and the Triangle’s longer-standing
66 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL residents who reported feeling increasingly estranged from their neighbourhood (Abraham et al.,
2017, p. 37)—a common theme that I also witnessed repeatedly during my site visits.
Consider the following fieldnote from the Fall of 2019 in which I spoke with Ali (a pseudonym)—a community worker in Mountain Sights. Ali lamented the rapid pace of the area’s development, and was especially frustrated by the massive condominium buildings that had invaded the area, which caused the population to skyrocket while available leisure space remained limited, under-resourced, and increasingly overcrowded. Ali compared this phenomenon to the Roman colonial expansion discussed in the popular French comic book series, Astérix et Obélix (Astérix the Gaul, in English). The series tells the story of a Gaulish village whose inhabitants struggle to protect their home from Roman invasion:
Ali: What is happening in Côte-des-Neiges is a bit like Astérix and Obélix, with the
Gaulish village being overtaken by the Romans. It’s not only the Triangle development
project happening here: there’s also the Hippodrome [development] project taking place
on the other side of the Decarie highway at the former site of the Blue Bonnets Racetrack
(pointing east), as well as the Royalmount [development] project taking place just a few
blocks away (pointing west).
Gabrielle: Yeah, I’ve heard about those developments. In what ways do you think they
impact Mountain Sights residents?
Ali: One thing that I’m concerned about is how these development projects will affect
after-school funding for our kids’ activities. You see, the new condos have raised the
average household income in the area, which is what the government uses to calculate
the allocation of subsidies for extracurricular activities. The school is now getting less
city funding to help deliver these activities, despite the fact that the number of lower-
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income youth in the area hasn’t changed one bit. And those subsidies are vital for some
of our less-fortunate youth! (November 13th, 2019)
Ali raised a number of important themes that speak to the overwhelming scope and speed at which major urban development projects have taken place in the Triangle. Like many of the themes captured in Astérix et Obélix, several of the area’s longer-standing residents felt threatened by the sudden arrival of newcomers and they expressed further concern about potentially being “swallowed-up” by the abundance of new development projects, including the high-rise condo buildings that ascended much higher than the older apartment buildings. Ali also drew attention to the fact that many of the borough’s large-scale projects were not restricted to the Triangle, but were instead emblematic of broader development patterns in the area that also included a soon-to-be-built neighbourhood at the nearby site of the former Blue Bonnets
Hippodrome (which promises to house 6000 new residents), as well as the massive Royalmount project located just north of the Triangle (which is expected to include an additional 6000+ private condo units, as well as an array of box stores, movie cinemas, and other middle-class leisure amenities) (Wilton, 2020). Collectively, these various development projects have (and will continue to) radically alter(ed) both the character and the complexion of CDN, whose lower- income residents now find themselves largely on the outside looking-in. These projects will also introduce various other gentrifying pressures that have yet to be fully-realized or appreciated by the area’s more affluent newcomers, such as contributing to diminished funding for low-income youth to attend much needed after-school programs.
Prajeet (pseudonym)—a man in his early 60s who has lived in the low-rise apartment buildings on Mountain Sights Avenue for over 20 years—shared similar concerns about the different changes occurring in his neighbourhood. He specifically noted how municipal leaders
68 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL had failed to detail to community members how the ongoing developments would impact day-to- day life—an issue that he further identified as part of a broader pattern of systematic racism and marginalisation in Montréal:
Prajeet: Are you from the condos?
Gabrielle: No, I live near Jean-Talon market.
Prajeet: Well, maybe “they” [referring to condominium dwellers] know what’s
happening with the park. Us [referring to the apartment dwellers], they [developers &
municipal leaders] don’t tell us anything. I don’t even know what they are doing, when
the park will be ready, what it will include … they don’t tell us! They did not even consult
with us or ask us about our needs and desires, or anything like that.
Gabrielle: Do you know if the new plans include a pool? I have not seen one in the
current plans for the park, but I was wondering if you knew something more about that,
like whether the splash pads will be converted into a pool or something similar.
Prajeet: No, I don’t think there will be a pool. There should be a pool, that’s for sure,
instead of that stupid water thing. It’s useless (he pointed to the splash pads). It’s a waste
of water. It doesn’t replace a pool. You see, they don’t listen to us here. You see, here, we
are Brown, Black, our skin … it’s not white. They [Triangle developers] just don’t listen
to us. Everything, all these transformations around here, it’s made for them
[condominium dwellers], for these new condos. Us [Mountain Sights residents], we don’t
know anything about what is going on. We don’t even receive any papers in our mailbox,
not even any emails, and our landlords do not provide us with any information either. It’s
ridiculous. It’s always like this. (June 17, 2020).
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Prajeet felt strongly that the needs of condominium residents had been prioritized over the area’s longer-standing and highly racialized lower-income residents. As we continued our conversation,
Prajeet pointed out the non-white individuals passing through the alley and told me: “look, we are not white here” in order to urge me to acknowledge how the effects of urban change cut differently across racial lines. To date, literature on gentrification has principally addressed issues of class inequalities, and downplayed the racial inequalities that have so often been perpetuated through urban development projects (Robinson, Rhodes & Van Sluytman, 2020, p.
475). However, racial dynamics, as Prajeet made clear, are also well-rooted in gentrification agendas (Chronopoulos, 2016; Robinson, Rhodes & Van Sluytman, 2020), and require far more scholarly attention in order to better understand how the effects of urban change in sport and leisure spaces also cuts differently across both class and racial lines.
Marilyn (pseudonym)—a community worker at the Mountain Sights Community Centre
(CCMS), who has also been a resident of Mountain Sights for nearly three decades—repeated an anecdote that she had heard from another community worker in the area. The anecdote describes how race and class divisions are already playing out at DSP due to urban change:
Marilyn: What we [Mountain Sights community workers] hope for is a harmonious social
mix in the area once the renovations are finished. We don’t want to see anymore tensions
or judgements between both groups of residents. We hope that people from all
backgrounds get to know each other in order to break the stigmas in the area. To be
honest with you, I don’t know how it’s going to be. I don’t know if youth from the
condominiums will be coming to our activities because, right now, they don’t come out
[to activities hosted by the Centre Communautaire de Mountain Sights]. We mostly
service the families and kids who come from the apartment buildings. One colleague of
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mine recently interacted with a parent from one of the condo buildings whose son wanted
to go ice skating in the park. There’s usually an ice-skating rink in front of the chalet in
the wintertime. Maybe you didn’t know that since the rink wasn’t there this year because
of the chalet renovations. Anyways, my colleague informed me that the father of this
young kid had asked her about the skating rink, but then later decided to take his kid to a
different skating rink in a ‘nicer’ part of town because he did not want his son mixing
with the other youth at DSP. He ended up bringing his son to the ice rink in TMR [a
wealthy part of town known as Town of Mount-Royal]. (August 19, 2020)
Of significance is that both Marilyn and her colleague at CCMS identified stigma against lower-income residents as an issue of growing concern within the community that was ultimately challenging the positive ‘social mix’ that she hoped to cultivate in DSP—a factor that Kathy
Arthurson (2010) also identified in her work Operationalising Social Mix: Spatial Scale,
Lifestyle and Stigma as Mediating Points in Resident Interaction. The father’s decision to bring his son to the skating rink in the more affluent TMR neighborhood located a short drive from
DSP reveals the privilege of mobility enjoyed by many condo-dwellers, as well as the widening social divisions that permeate the area’s residents (at least while lower-income apartment dwellers can still afford to live in Mountain Sights). Marilyn’s concern, like Arthurson’s (2020), takes on even greater significance in relation to urban leisure spaces, such as DSP, which are presently being revitalized in order to appeal to a new class of higher-income urbanites (and often at the expense of lower-income residents, as I discuss below). Héléne Bélanger’s (2010) study of Montréal’s Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood also documented a similar theme when she discovered how many of the area’s longer-standing residents felt increasingly disconnected
71 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL from newcomer groups who chose to completely disengage from the neighbourhood’s traditional social and leisure practices, such as attending community events (p. 152).
Moreover, while Mountain Sights residents have increasingly felt alienated by massive development projects, the community’s location vis-à-vis TMR and other more affluent neighborhoods has further accelerated investment and real estate speculation within formerly disenfranchised sectors of Côte-des-Neiges, such as Mountain Sights. As Chapter two noted, gentrification usually involves the resettlement of wealthier social groups within gentrifying communities: “First, the class-based colonisation of cheaper residential neighbourhoods and, secondly, a reinvestment in the physical housing stock” (Atkinson, 2003, pp. 2343-2344) from which other consequences typically emerge, such as resident displacement and other social pressures related to class and race inequality (p. 2347). My interaction with David
(pseudonym)—a real estate investor who was showcasing the area’s “potential” to a friend at the time of our interaction—speaks to the second common gentrification process: the reinvestment of capital in a disinvested neighbourhood.
Gabrielle: Could I ask you what you think of the developments in the area?
David: Are you looking to purchase something here? A condo?
Gabrielle: No, I am researching the Triangle development. I’m interested in how people
feel about all of the changes taking place in the area.
David: Well, ever since they built the police station at the top of Mountain Sights,
everything has changed. Everything calmed down. I’m telling you, this place is changing.
It’s a prime location. I mean, there are millionaires living three blocks away (referring to
TMR)!
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Gabrielle: That’s true. Speaking of TMR, can anybody go to TMR, walk around, and
access their outdoor leisure amenities, even if they’re not a TMR resident?
David: Are you not from here? (his tone became defensive)
Gabrielle: I live in Montreal. I was not born here, though.
David: There are NO gated communities in Montréal. I was born and raised in TMR. I
can tell you that there are no closed communities in this city. I don’t know where you got
that idea. (August 18, 2020)
David initially coded me as a prospective condo buyer (due in no small part to my apparent class and racial characteristics). However, his tone became noticeably more defensive when he realized I was studying gentrification in Mountain Sights. I later explained that my question about open-access to leisure spaces was motivated by an earlier experience I had while biking through TMR on a sunny afternoon and was stunned to see all of the beautifully manicured parks that sat practically empty during the summertime. I also told him about a sign that I had noticed posted on various lampposts throughout the area that encouraged people to report any suspicious activity to the local authorities (Figure 3). To David, signs such as these were synonymous with a smart and protected property investment: “TMR has their own police force to keep residents’ safe and to protect their property,” he later added—an interesting wrinkle in his argument about Montréal’s not having any gated communities. He further argued that the appearance of a new police station on Mountain Sights Avenue was promising that the Mountain
Sights area was “finally changing”, thus rendering it a more seductive area for capital investment. David’s rationale echoes with the words of Abdallah Fayyad (2017), who also argued that the “expectation” of public safety in a gentrifying area begins to shift as higher- income residents settle into the neighbourhood: “The theory goes that as demographics shift,
73 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL activity that was previously considered normal becomes suspicious, and newcomers—many of whom are white—are more inclined to get law enforcement involved” (Fayyad, 2017, n.p.).
However, Fayyad (2017) further cautioned that a potential “side effect” to increased surveillance is the corresponding criminalization of communities of colour (n.p.), primarily through the disproportionate policing and fining of African American residents in gentrifying and
“revitalized” urban spaces (Steinmetz, Schaefer & Henderson, 2017, p. 77). This criminalization is at the core of what authors Kevin Steinmetz, Brian Schaefer, and Howard Henderson (2017) called the “contemporary colonial character of policing” in African American communities:
“colonialism constitutes an ongoing project of domination that has continued to share the material circumstances and crime control interactions of marginalized racial/ethnic populations”
(p. 69).
Figure 6. A “Neighbourhood watch 9-1-1” sign in Town of Mont-Royal, the prestigious neighbourhood that boarders the eastern and northern sides of the Triangle [The sign showcased the head of an owl and had “Surveillance de quartier 9-1-1” (“Neighbourhood Watch 9-1-1”) written on it. I pulled out my camera from my backpack to snap a photo of the sign. The purpose of the sign was seemingly to encourage people to call the police if they notice any “suspicious” activity].
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The constant renovation delays within DSP (as well as the delays in building two additional green spaces in the Triangle, the parc du Triangle and the Traverse linéaire—both of which are smaller green spaces than DSP) have sparked increased skepticism among Mountain
Sights residents about both the intent and potential side-effects of these new urban plans. In
2008, for example, Triangle developers had promised community members in Mountain Sights that DSP would be completely renovated by 2016 to accommodate the growing population.
However, only a few minor sections of DSP had been renovated by the end of the summer of
2020, while the broader park remained embroiled in construction projects. Over 3,000 new condominium units had nevertheless been built in the Triangle over that same time period
(Abraham et al., 2017)—another clear indication of whose (public vs. private) needs have been prioritized during the area’s gentrification. Yohan—a young man in his mid-twenties who grew up in Mountain Sights (but currently lives outside of the neighbourhood)—shared his skepticism about the promises of Triangle developers when we spoke at a restaurant near DSP:
Yohan: They [referring to developers] always say: “two years,” “two years,” then two
years go by and it’s another, “two years.” Typical Montréal construction (sighs). Just
like when they repaved Paré street a few years ago. It took ages! We had no idea why
they kept re-digging and re-paving the same street. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
Overall, it’s a really slow and painful change for residents who have no choice but to
endure the construction and then move out when rents go up after the renos are complete.
It has been ongoing for 5-6 years already. The whole area is “supposed” to change for
the better, but it’s like Mountain Sights always comes last. It’s kind of hard to say how I
feel about the changes. It’ll be easier once the neighbourhood [Mountain Sights Avenue]
actually looks like a real neighbourhood once again. (August 18, 2020)
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Yohan was similar to many of the other residents with whom I spoke that had little faith in either the municipality or the developer’s desire to prioritize the needs of Mountain Sights residents over those of private investors, which had clearly taken over the area through various construction projects. Yohan also explained how the city’s efforts to improve upon the Triangle’s green leisure spaces were ultimately falling short of developers’ promises:
Yohan: Do you know the other park that they are building next to Victoria avenue?
Gabrielle: Yes, the small park on the former car dealership site?
Yohan: Yeah, exactly. It was supposed to be bigger than what it’s going to be now. At
some point the developers had to change their plans, because the lot owner refused to sell
his property. I’m not sure if he finally sold it to them, or what actually went down
between the two sides. I don’t think he sold it. All I know is that the Parc du Triangle will
be a lot smaller than it was initially supposed to be, like half the size that was promised.
You think the developer would have looked into that sort of thing before promising us
how great everything was going to be, right? (August 18, 2020)
Figure 7. Excavations at the Parc du Triangle, the new (small-than-planned) green space in the Triangle
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Other Mountain Sights residents with whom I spoke expressed similar feelings about feeling mistreated and lied to by the area’s key decision makers. Kai—a man in his late 20s who lived in the low-rise apartment buildings—noted that the park renos only started once the new condominium buildings popped-up, despite leaders’ earlier promises to renovate DSP:
Kai: I can’t really say when they [the renovations at DSP] will be done. They were
supposed to be done a long time ago. It’s only when they built all these condos here that
things finally started to move forward at the park. (June 17, 2020)
Marilyn—a community worker in Mountain Sights (introduced above)—also explicitly reaffirmed how the Triangle’s developers had failed to integrate (or even consider) the views of the area’s longer standing residents when contemplating making changes to the area:
Marilyn: How can I say this? The development of the Triangle … it did not consider the
needs of the existing residents. The whole project was undertaken to benefit outsiders: the
investors, the developers, the contractors, etc. They were the driving force behind all of
this—not us! We [the Mountain Sights residents] created a committee and were actively
trying to get our voices heard throughout the entire process: going to meetings,
demanding consultations, and voicing the changes that we wanted to see in the
neighbourhood. We did this for many years. We came together because we knew the
developers had the upper hand, and we wanted to make sure that our interests would still
be included in their plans. For example, one of the three main green spaces that was
supposed to be built in the Triangle is a narrow pathway that threads between some of
the condominium buildings over there. Our committee demanded that Mountain Sights
residents also be able to enjoy equal access to that space so that we, too, can maximize
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our green space. That wasn’t in the initial plans. We had to make sure that public spaces
were created, not just private ones as they had originally planned. (August 19, 2020)
This field note is emblematic of the active role and practices of resistance exhibited by many Mountain Sights residents against, and in spite of, the overwhelming pressures exercised by developers (more on this below). Marilyn also noted another tactic that was used by the
Triangle’s developers to squeeze Mountain Sights residents out of the area was to prioritize the sport and leisure activities of newcomers over those practiced by the area’s long-standing residents, especially youth. For example, during my fieldwork at DSP, I quickly discovered the popularity of basketball among many Mountain Sights youth. However, the basketball court was nevertheless one of the first elements to be demolished when the renovations began at DSP in the spring of 2019. While the development plans still indicate that a new basketball court will eventually be built in another part of the park, at the time of writing (Fall 2020), the new court remains only a pipe-dream for the area’s youth. Adesh—an Indian man in his 60s or 70s with whom I spoke at DSP—explained the history behind the basketball court’s relocation:
Adesh: The court was originally located right there at the front of the park, where the
new garden is. It was busy all the time with young people. Such a popular activity among
the youth. But apparently those folks in that new condo building over there didn’t
appreciate all of the noise in the evening time (he pointed to the condominium building
that lines the east side of DSP). Residents kept complaining that the kids were playing too
loudly, too late, and hanging out there all the time playing basketball, so the city tore it
down. The developers said they’ll relocate the court to another area of the park.
Gabrielle: I see, so over there (pointing to the other end of the park). I guess there aren’t
any condominium buildings over that way from what I can see.
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Adesh: No, there’s no buildings over there. Only a cemetery (laughing). (August 18,
2020)
A few months following my meeting with Adesh, a community worker from the area explained to me that the new condominium building from which residents complained about noise from the basketball court had actually been built during the era of Michael Applebaum—a former Montreal mayor who was eventually convicted of a number of construction-related corruption charges during his governance (Bernstien & Shingler, 2017). The community worker also informed me that this particular condo building had been the beneficiary of that corruption in the sense that it was approved despite failing to comply with municipal zoning laws that prohibited residential construction in such close proximity to a public park. This echoes Jean-
Paul Addie and James Fraser (2019) research on the revitalization of public parks across
America that have largely been “…remade for people other than those who have limited options to secure housing and live their everyday lives with a sense of precarity” (p. 1370). Addie &
Fraser (2019) also discussed the removal of a local basketball court and public pool in a gentrifying Cincinnati neighbourhood that was driven by the desire to draw new and wealthy residents to the area at the expense of longstanding families. The authors further argued that urban planning decisions in that Cincinnati neighbourhood were driven by a prevailing settler colonial mentality that is common to gentrifying projects, one which results in the erasure of public landmarks that have long-been central to racialized communities. This settler colonial mentality is also reflected in the subtle ways in which city planners effectively exclude racialized bodies from the spaces they design, as also occurred in Mountain Sights.
The sport of soccer was another popular leisure activity among Mountain Sights residents, especially youth—one that, again, was not sufficiently considered by developers in
79 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL their new design plans for DSP. Consider the following dialogue with Jean (pseudonym)—an
African man involved in a weekly soccer tournament at DSP. I spoke with Jean and other members of his soccer tournament (the majority of whom were also African) while they awaited the arrival of their other players to begin play on the make-shift soccer pitch (it was actually a baseball field with no soccer nets). At the time when I spoke to these players, only a small section of grass that was sandwiched between plots of excavated terrain at DSP remained open and unoccupied, but that did not stop the men from hosting their weekly tournament:
Jean: We’ve been coming here for five years for our friendly tournaments. One of the
guys who organizes this got permission from the City to reserve this space for the
tournaments. Right now, it’s a bit different with the renovations. We can still play, but
there’s a bit less space for us to move around.
Gabrielle: Have you been informed whether the newly renovated park will include some
more amenities for soccer? I suppose your team would be happy about that.
Jean: I really hope so. It would be really nice to have some lines painted on the field and
hopefully some nets for us to use. We’ve always brought our own nets, but, yes, it would
be very nice to have a real soccer field, or at least some of the basic amenities that we
could use to play soccer, because a lot of people really enjoy that sport here.
Gabrielle: Do most of you reside in the area?
Jean: I would say it’s pretty mixed. Some of the men live just over here (pointed to
Mountain Sight Avenue), and some of the others join us from a bit further out in that
area. But there’s a real feeling of community when we come together. (August 30, 2020)
Of significance is that every player who joined the soccer event also contributed an item to a communal BBQ—a central element of their weekly sporting ritual. One man was already
80 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL preparing meat and corn on the BBQ (a public “park BBQ”) when I approached the group.
Another man entered the park carrying two field hockey nets over his shoulder, which served as soccer goals for the match. However, when I read the new plans for DSP, I saw that they did not include any new soccer amenities, nor did they include any additional public BBQs. I spoke with a City worker on September 15th, 2020, who confirmed that no additional soccer amenities were considered for inclusion in the park’s new development plans. Instead, the former baseball field will be converted into a “multifunctional” leisure space that prioritizes calm and tranquil activities over group sports and physical activities such as soccer and cricket.15
The summer of 2020 marked the first year when some of the park’s newly designed leisure amenities were set to be open to the public, such as the new community garden.
Marilyn—the Mountain Sights community worker introduced above—explained that the new community garden had finally reopened at its new location: the front of the park, where the basketball court was formerly located. She noted that, while residents were very happy that the garden had finally re-opened, most were exhausted by having had to fight for so long to ensure that the needs of lower-income residents were included in the plan (for instance, a small shed was eventually built to store community tools available to everyone, as opposed to requiring gardeners to bring and store their own tools). Marilyn was also relieved by the fact that the new garden was popular among both apartment and condominium dwellers—something that she perceived as a positive sign in terms of restoring social cohesion to DSP. One issue about which
Marilyn was critical, however, was the fact that the new garden was subdivided into individual
15 The most recent version of the plan available to consult online can be found on this link: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/ARROND_CDN_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/PLAN%20DIRECT EUR%20DES%20PARCS%20ET%20DES%20ESPACES%20VERTS_SANS%20ANNEXE.PDF. Another plan presented at a public consultation in 2018 can be found on this link: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/ARROND_CDN_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/PLAN%20DIRECT EUR%20DES%20PARCS%20ET%20DES%20ESPACES%20VERTS_SANS%20ANNEXE.PDF.
81 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL garden “boxes”—an aesthetic that has become common among urban beautification agendas in
North America,16 yet that also subtly reinforces a neoliberalizing agenda that runs counter to the previous garden’s shared-crop/community aesthetic. Marilyn’s other point about how Mountain
Sights residents had to put their foot down in order to get their shed built echoes with Sofia
Aptekar’s (2015) study (introduced in the above literature review) about a gentrifying community garden in NYC. Aptekar (2015) explained how the migration of new urban elites into an older community garden led to the creation of a new ‘oversight’ committee, who eventually imposed new organisational “rules” upon gardeners that ran counter to other longstanding practices. Aptekar (2015) also found that the gardeners most stigmatized as a result of the new governing body were lower-income and immigrant residents.
Figure 8. The new community garden that opened in summer 2020 at the site of the former basketball court, located alongside a Triangle condominium building.
16 This aesthetic was discussed as an inspiration for DSP’s community garden in the new urban plans for DSP (Figure 8).
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Lefebvre’s (1991) Production of Space theory is useful here for enhancing my analysis of the exclusionary practices thus far witnessed in DSP; such as the developers’ failure to include basic soccer amenities for longstanding residents into their design plans, or the city’s demolition of a highly popular basketball court in order to placate the complaints of the area’s new condominium urbanites. These sorts of incidents expose a desire to change the “representation of space” at DSP from one that represents and embodies the spirit, culture, and lifestyle of
Mountain Sights residents, to one that increasingly favours and showcases the leisure pursuits of new condo residents. As Lefebvre (1991) argued, “representations of space” refers to how space is imagined, how stakeholders such as urban planners envision and conceive of a space (p. 39)— such as, for instance, through designing a space for a targeted population. Hence, urban plans have the power to shift the essence of an urban space, which, in turn, shifts how individuals navigate and experience that space over time. I reflected on this idea through Lefebvre’s (1991) sub-theory of “reductive practice,” which is highly relevant to the process of urban planning.
Lefebvre (1991) explained that powerful stakeholders often engage in the practice of reducing
“intrasocial conflicts,” or conflicts between different classes. For instance, the condominium residents who complained about the typically lower-income and racialized youth at the basketball court, is an example of an “intrasocial” conflict. “Reductive practice,” therefore, occurs when urban stakeholders design and develop urban spaces that “reduce” the presence and agency of a specific class of residents (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 106). Consider this passage from
Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1991), which explains how the most vulnerable are almost always pushed-out of capitalist urban designs:
Many people, members of a variety of groups and classes, suffer (albeit unevenly) the
effects of a multiplicity of reductions bearing on their capacities, ideas, ‘values’ and,
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ultimately, on their possibilities, their space and their bodies. Reduced models
constructed by one particular specialist or other are not always abstract in the sense of
being ‘empty’ abstractions. Far from it, in fact: designed with a reductive practice in
mind, they manage, with a little luck, to impose an order, and to constitute the elements
of that order. Urbanism and architecture provide good examples of this. The working
class, in particular, suffers the effects of such ‘reduced models’, including models of
space of consumption and of so-called culture (pp. 106-107).
Over my time at DSP, I witnessed the emergence of class dichotomies in the Triangle between longer-standing Mountain Sights tenants and newer condominium residents. Such class divisions were reflected in the physical landscape in and around Mountain Sights; in the disparate quality of infrastructure along Mountain Sights Avenue in comparison to DSP and within the rest of the Triangle, where condominiums are located. Conversations with Mountain
Sights residents and various community workers in the area revealed a widening division that was being cultivated through gentrification—a matter that was not only resisted outright by residents such as Marilyn, but also through more subtle spatial practices.
Finally, in this first section, as well as in the rest of this analysis, I frame “developers,” such as condominium contractors and City of Montréal stakeholders, as key perpetrators of emergent social dichotomies between wealthier and less affluent residents who experience gentrification processes. As discussed in both the literature review and the methodology sections of this thesis, gentrification is a complex and multilayered phenomenon—one that is aggravated by different population groups, some of whom take part in it unwillingly (i.e. lower-income artists, students, and modest-income young professionals, (Ley, 2003)). I chose to emphasize the
“developers” as key actors of divisive urban changes, because they are the ones who hold and
84 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL promote development agendas. However, in doing so, my aim is not to dismiss some of the positive social-mixing strategies proposed by the City of Montréal in its approach to revitalize historically lower-income neighbourhoods into potentially safer, cleaner, and more viable spaces for all. The City of Montréal has, in fact, started to develop important housing bylaws, especially under current mayor Valérie Plante’s administration. Plante implemented bylaws in 2019, which require condominium developers to include social housing units within their new-build projects, or, to include units large enough for families with children (i.e. with three bedrooms), or to contribute either some land or capital to the City, for Montréal to invest it in affordable housing projects (Montreal aims to boost affordable housing as rental market tightens, 2019; Valiante,
2019). However, these policies are still in their early phases of development and have not yet become fully integrated into the ethics of contractors and landlords—a point that has incited some housing advocates to argue that, for many lower-income families, such policies are emerging too late in the game, as large numbers of tenants already face eviction threats in the city’s rapidly gentrifying areas (Gyulai, 2020). Some also argue that the City has been far too slow in imposing and enforcing measures such as rent control, especially considering the large number of tenants across the city who are unaware of their rights and lack other forms of social, cultural, and economic capital to resist the predatory tactics of abusive landlords (Valiante,
2019). A Canadian study focused on Toronto’s social-mixing has also shown that social-mixing policies do not entirely relieve the divisive class-based pressures of gentrification, and therefore, these policies require significant further study (see Martine August’s article “It’s all about power and you have none:” The marginalization of tenant resistance to mixed-income social housing redevelopment in Toronto, Canada, 2016 and ). Hence, my goal is not to overlook the progressive efforts of municipal leaders to create more equitable housing realities. Instead, I
85 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL emphasize how long-rooted capitalistic urban change projects in our city have and continue to create precarious social and housing conditions at a pace that exceeds the still-too-slow development of politically reinforced social programs and strategies.
3.3 Section Two:
No Other Choice; A “Commonsensical” Use of Space
Throughout my ethnographic fieldwork at DSP, I noticed that many of the neglected features at DSP about which Mountain Sights residents had long raised concern continued to age in plain sight despite developers’ renewed promises of upkeep, such as the deteriorating lawn of the baseball field (which I never saw used for baseball), the rusting splash pads, and the worn out benches and picnic tables throughout the park. In fact, the park’s insufficient lighting was routinely mentioned by different park visitors as in issue of concern during the evening time.
However, I also noticed how Mountain Sights residents creatively repurposed this deteriorating infrastructure, and how they further negotiated the different stages of renovations taking place at the park through modifying their daily leisure activities. In this section, I discuss how Mountain
Sights residents, especially youth, effectively repurposed available leisure space to accommodate their leisure needs. I use Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of “spatial practice” as a framework to explore how residents’ everyday use of space was also indicative of broader structures that govern their leisure opportunities in DSP. Some of the structural phenomena I scrutinized were the increasingly heavy traffic within the streets of the Triangle and the overall continuous prioritization of private over public interests in the neighbourhood.
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Figure 9. The benches at the centre of De la Savane Park facing the splash pads.
Figure 10. The splash pads at De la Savane Park.
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Creative Adaptation to Available Leisure Space and Infrastructure
One obvious theme I observed over the summer of 2019 and 2020 at DSP was the high popularity of the park’s only water feature: the splash pads. However, I learned from Adesh (the elderly man I met at DSP, introduced in the above section) that, only a few years ago, the splash pads used to be a wading pool for youth to fully submerge themselves on a hot summer’s day.
Today, the splash pads simply sprinkle a little bit of water over an asphalt surface when they are activated (residents can activate the sprinklers by pressing a button located next to the chalet between 8am and 9pm during summer months). Curiously, though, most of the youth I observed throughout my fieldwork used the splashpads not as a cooling exercise, but instead as an opportunity to practice different wheel-based sporting activities on the asphalt surface, such as cycling and skateboarding. For example, one hot afternoon on August 17th, 2019, I noticed that the splash pads looked more like an action-packed bike racetrack, then they did a calming water feature. Several kids rode their bicycles at considerable speed around the colourful structures that were usually meant to sprinkle water. Two kids still had their training wheels on, but that did not hold them back from gleefully sharing the space with the slightly older and more experienced bikers. The splash pad structures were also creatively integrated into make-shift obstacles that added an additional element of fun and made the space even more popular for young cyclists.
The youths’ uses of the splash pads were highly commonsensical when considering the grassy and uneven terrain of DSP, as well as the striking lack of bike lanes and pathways in the
Triangle and also in the area surrounding the Namur metro station. I overheard several Mountain
Sights residents express frustration about the ever-increasing car traffic in the area emanating from the new condominium buildings (as most condo residents appeared to own their own car, compared the apartment dwellers who primarily relied upon public transit to navigate the city).
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Phil (pseudonym)—a Québécois man of Asian origin from Mountain Sights in his thirties— highlighted the increased traffic as a growing concern for residents in the area:
Phil: The traffic is really heavy here. It’s worse right not, obviously, because it’s rush
hour (points to the cars on De la Savane Avenue). Since the population around Mountain
Sights has increased drastically over the last few years, we can really feel the heavier
traffic. I think everybody feels it. There are noticeably more cars in the area and there’s
also a growing shortage of parking spaces in the streets. (August 14, 2019)
This repurposing trend was also prevalent on several other visits to DSP when park features such as the “emptied” wading pool was used for shadow boxing (the blue fence that surrounds the splash pads was perfectly contoured in the shape of a boxing ring). Youth had essentially claimed the space as their own and had creatively adapted whatever infrastructure was available to suit their diverse leisure needs, even while the park was under construction and the remainder of their community was overrun with vehicles and new residents. For example, I also noticed that many of the youth had commandeered whatever free parking spots were available at a nearby parking lot into a makeshift bike park, while other slightly older youth also used the parking spaces for practicing soccer drills and working out (field note, Aug. 25th, 2020).
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Figure 11. Bikes locked outside of a Mountain Sights apartment building.
I discovered over the course of my fieldwork that some of the structural factors that influenced the “spatial practices” of Mountain Sights residents were in no small part shaped by an emergent division within the community incited by expanding private leisure spaces accompanied by shrinking public leisure spaces. I learned that many condominium residents enjoyed access to a range of high-quality leisure amenities within their own buildings to which the broader community of Mountain Sights has no access. Abraham et al. (2017) speculated that a key reason behind city officials’ decision to put-off renovating DSP for so long was because condominium dwellers already enjoyed unfettered access to private leisure amenities within their own compounds; hence, the city felt less pressure from the voting class to rush the repairs.
Abraham et al. (2017) also further noted that the growing distinction between private and public green spaces within the Triangle has seemingly contributed to a "near-segregation of newly arrived and older residents" (p. 32). For example, Marilyn (introduced above) explained that condominium dwellers enjoyed far greater access to leisure spaces within the community:
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Marilyn: The condominium buildings, most of them have a pool…I even heard of one
condominium building that was going to build a park on the fourth floor, a park that is
going to be integrated in the building in some way. I don’t know. In a way, it’s not the
right time for your research, because DSP is being renovated now, and we can’t really
see the activities taking place within it. I know that the lower-income youth in the
community have far less places to go outside and play with all of the construction going
on throughout the area. The condominium people though, they’re comfortable. It’s a bit
of a different story for them. (August 19, 2020)
To Marilyn’s point, I noticed on several occasions that many of the new condominium buildings also included private courtyards with lush green grass for residents to use at their leisure. I also found when researching condos online that they over virtual tours of their sparkling leisure amenities to appeal to prospective buyers. On my virtual tour of Rouge Condominiums—one of the biggest condominium contractors in the Triangle—I was treated to pictures of its luxury pool and hot tub, lounging areas, a playground for kids, two different gyms (one for cardio, one for weightlifting), and a large terrace with tables for residents to dine outdoors while enjoying panoramic views of the city. Of course, most of the Mountain Sights families living in less- affluent apartment buildings do not enjoy access to these types of quality amenities—a point that exposes the even more striking importance of public leisure spaces for lower-income tenants.
Lefebvre (1991) described the clash between private and public interests in metropolitan cities as “contradictions of space,” a theoretical idea that adds texture to his “spatial triad” to further scrutinize how capitalist structures influence the production and use of public urban space. Lefebvre (1991) argued that community usages of public space are outweighed by private- minded interests, given that privatized space is increasingly valued for its capital-building
91 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL properties. The state—stimulated by the creation of wealth—slows down its investment in communal spaces, which it deems “unproductive,” or at least less profitable than private space
(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 359). Community-oriented public spaces of leisure, such as parks, are especially marginalized by developers, as Lefebvre (1991) explained in the following passage:
“As for ‘green areas’—trees, squares that are anything more than intersections, town parks— these obviously give pleasure to the community as a whole, but who pays for this pleasure? How and from whom can fees be collected? Since such spaces serve no one in particular (though they do bring enjoyment to people in general), there is a tendency for them to die out” (Lefebvre,
1991, p. 359). In the case of DSP, the park itself is not “dying out;” however, the revitalization plans have apparently always been contingent on the rise in private dwellings so as to facilitate the recapture of private profits at the expense of public investments.
Lefebvre (1991) explained that this type of disinvestment strategy results from a “clash between a consumption of space which produces surplus value and one which produces only enjoyment—and is therefore ‘unproductive’” (p. 359). DSP, for instance, has long been characterized by a communal spirit. I recall my own experiences at DSP when I felt the hospitality of Mountain Sights park-goers, such as when I met Sarita (pseudonym)— an elderly Mountain Sights woman who invited me into the community garden on August 16th,
2019. Although we spoke different languages, we still managed to communicate through gestures and nods as she showed me her herb garden. Sunita carefully packed a mint plant for me in a little bag and gestured that I should plant it when I get home. Over my visits, I regularly exchanged warm smiles and greetings with various Mountain Sights residents at the park. Condo residents, on the other hand, mostly passed through DSP for commuting purposes. This was the case for Clara (pseudonym)—a former co-worker of mine who recently relocated to the Triangle
92 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL with her partner. Clara was surprised to see me sitting at a picnic table in DSP on a sunny afternoon and joined me to chat for a few moments.
Gabrielle: (After telling Clara a bit about my research) Do you visit and spend time at
this park often, considering it’s the only one in the Triangle at the moment?
Clara: We don’t really come to this park. We usually go to Mont-Royal park or one of
the other big parks. We take the metro and make it more of an outing.
Gabrielle: Do you know if the park is popular among people who live in the condos?
Clara: I think maybe it’s more a park for families.
Gabrielle: Yes, definitely a lot of families in the area. Do you know about any of the
changes going on here? What are they planning on doing with the park?
Clara: I’m not really sure, I haven’t heard much about the renovations. I heard that
they were maybe going to take out the playground. I don’t know.
Gabrielle: (After talking a bit about the other changes in the area) Do you enjoy living in
the Triangle?
Clara: Yeah. Our rent is decent, and we’ve been here for a few years already, but some
neighbours moved out a few weeks ago and we overheard that the rent for the new
tenants went way up. It has nothing to do with what we pay. (August 14, 2019)
The fact that Clara lived right next to DSP but never spent time there made me question how other condo residents felt about DSP. When she mentioned that she thought that the park was for “families,” I got the sense that she meant “Mountain Sights families,” more specifically.
This suggested that she distinguished Mountain Sights residents from condominium residents, although they technically lived in the same sector: The Triangle. It also clarified what I had been observing over several visits: that condominium dwellers, such as Clara, adopted “spatial
93 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL practices” at DSP that were not characterized by social gatherings or leisure pursuits, but mainly by commuting habits from the Namur metro station to their homes. However, a point to consider is that although Clara lived in a luxury condominium, she was a tenant, and she herself felt anxiety from the rising costs of rent all around. Not all condominium dwellers own the units in which they live—which echoes the complicated dialogue on who is considered “gentrifier” or
“gentrified.” Throughout my fieldwork, I also spoke to individuals from different ethnicities and racial identities who live in condominium units as renters or owners, which led me to think about how gentrification is complex in a highly diverse urban area. However, when it comes to leisure and sport spaces in the Triangle, it is the area’s most vulnerable families that have less access to quality infrastructure, especially while the area’s parks are under renovation or construction.
The prioritization of private interests in the Triangle resonates with Hélène Bélanger’s
(2012) observation that clashes in urban space arise when different populations associate different meanings to that same public space. Bélanger leaned on Susanna Schaller and Gabriella
Modan (2005) observation of the frictions that emerged when gentrifying and gentrified groups associated different meanings to public spaces in a gentrifying area of Washington D.C.— meanings that were representative of the cultural and social identities of each group. The study highlighted that many of the community’s longer-standing residents—most of whom were immigrants and lower-income—conceived and negotiated public spaces as venues for meeting- up with friends and for socializing, whereas the gentrifying population used those spaces for commuting to work and for other commercial activities (e.g., shopping) (Bélanger, 2012, p. 35).
For Lefebvre’s (1991), divergent meanings or interests in urban space over time lead to the valuation of “spatial practices” that reflect the lifestyles of wealthier urban dwellers over the
“spatial practices” of the less affluent groups (often community-oriented and/or eclectic usages
94 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL of space), which become pressured to fade out of the landscape (p. 359). This theoretical insight helped me grasp how the relocation of the basketball court (following complaints from condominium dwellers), for instance, was included in DSP’s revitalization plans to make less visible the general presence and “spatial practices” of longer-standing (and primarily racialized) youth in the area—many of whom are also lower-income.
The Triangle developers’ decision to back down from a plan to remove the fence that separates the alley behind Mountain Sights apartment buildings and DSP is another example of a
“contradiction of space” with the community. During the summer of 2020, Marilyn (introduced above) informed me that developers had initially planned to remove the fence in an attempt to eradicate the formation of the alley, which has been a long-standing source of concern for
Mountain Sights families who feared the illicit activities that have taken place over the years in this poorly lit area. Marilyn couldn’t explain why the plan was eventually dropped:
Marilyn: A few years ago, there were talks about removing the fence and integrating the
alley and the park together as one complete terrain. That way, there wouldn’t be a closed
alleyway like there is now and the outcome would be positive. But [Triangle developers]
gave up that plan and decided that the fence would stay there. (August 19, 2020)
Read critically, the developers’ decision to keep the fence-up may be considered a subtle strategy of containing the “spatial practices” of Mountain Sights residents within the alley and around their own private dwellings. The fence keeps the “spatial practices” of Mountain Sights hidden, and away from the eyes of park-goers so as to ensure the tranquility of DSP. However, the
“spatial practices” that I observed in the alley constituted a highly commonsensical usage of space; e.g., storing garbage bins, plants, cleaning equipment, toys, carpets, hanging laundry, etc.
In this sense, the back alley, and especially the apartment balconies, constituted more logical
95 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL spaces for storage than for leisure. Community worker Marilyn had informed me that many
Mountain Sights apartments were overcrowded, due to families with several children that reside in small-sized apartments. Marilyn’s comment fell in line with the finding that 39% of immigrant families who arrived in Côte-des-Neiges between 2012 and 2017 lived in dwellings too small for their families (Abraham et al., 2017, p. 12).
In light of these observations, DSP could be characterized as a ‘shared backyard’ for
Mountain Sights residents, as well as an extension of their homes, especially for those engaged in casual activities, such as reading, sharing beers between neighbours, lounging on park benches, or BBQing at the park. I associated these everyday “spatial practices” to what Hélène
Bélanger (2012) called “daily practice,” which refers to the casual usages of public space that
“blur the line” between personal home and public space. For Bélanger (2012), we leave our social and cultural stamp on public space through “daily practices” that “are not only communicating appropriation and identity but they are extending their home from the dwelling to include public spaces, creating a home territory” (Bélanger, 2012, p. 34). However, when one group’s “daily practices” in and around a public space do not represent “the image of the city,” as Bélanger (2012) called it, urban stakeholders impose changes aimed at propagating a “desired image” of the urban space in question—one that appeals to middle class residents and investors
(Bélanger, 2012, p. 34). The “desired image” reflects the “sensibilities” of higher-class residents, which usually involves sanitized features and aesthetics that fall in-line with a homogenous image of middle-class leisure space (Bélanger, 2012, p. 34). Achieving the “desired image” is conditional upon the exclusion or dismissal of features that do not concord with a new status quo. Yohan (introduced above) explained how the developers’ decision to keep-up the fence
96 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL separating DSP from the apartment dwellers is another way to resist the integration of Mountain
Sights residents within the new DSP:
Yohan: I doubt that the condo owners will ever use the park. One side of the park has
condos and all of these new buildings, but the side with the apartment buildings … you
know the alley there? Stuff goes on there. I mean, I don’t know what they will do with
that. I think that the city might cover-up the fence or make it taller or something to hide
the alley. I think they might do something like that. (August 18th, 2020)
Yohan clearly felt that the City preferred to “make less visible” the alley and the homes of
Mountain Sights residents as opposed to bringing together both populations. For Yohan, the fact that the City has perpetuated a separation between wealthier and lower-income residents is reflective of the reality that wealthier elites settling a gentrifying neighbourhood involves the
“hiding away” of longer-standing socially and culturally imbued “spatial practices” that represent Mountain Sights residents’ everyday use of space.
Figure 12. The fence separating De la Savane Park and the alley behind Mountain Sights apartment buildings used to hang clothing to dry.
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3.4 Chapter Summary and Concluding Remarks
This chapter shed light on the divisive class dynamics that have appeared as a result of the emergent Triangle development project. Mountain Sights residents, the longer-standing residents in the area (that is now considered as part of the Triangle), have felt excluded from the
Triangle development plans and feel that the needs of condominium dwellers have been prioritized over theirs. Mountain Sights residents have felt this in large part due to ongoing delays imposed on the improvements that were long promised by City officials at DSP. Many
Mountain Sights residents I spoke with felt that it was only once the condominiums were built in the area that long-standing issues at the park were finally being addressed. This analysis explained how Mountain Sights residents adapted their everyday activities to available space in and around DSP, despite the long-standing underserviced state of both housing and public spaces of Mountain Sights residents. Guided by Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of “contradictions of space,” I was able to identify how private interests in the Triangle have outweighed the needs of the area’s lower-income residents, sometimes in very subtle ways. This theoretical idea helped me grasp how “spatial practices,” although they can appear in any given context, are emergent from, and conditional to, decisions made by stakeholders in power. Hence, in a highly gentrifying area like
Mountain Sights, I saw that Mountain Sights residents’ “spatial practices” where creative and highly adaptable. However, to profit-minded stakeholders, such usages of space were not perceived as indicators of the needs of Mountain Sights residents, but rather, they were perceived as practices that had to be “made less visible” against the progressively revitalized aesthetic of DSP and the Triangle.
98 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Conclusion
This urban ethnography explored how gentrification continues to be lived in and through everyday spaces of leisure in a divided Montréal neighborhood. For over a decade, Mountain
Sights residents—many of whom are tenants and lower-income—had been actively engaged in a struggle with city developers and municipal officials for improvements to their local De la
Savane Park (DSP). Triangle developers had promised to build two small additional green spaces near DSP in response to the rapidly growing population in the Triangle that was incited by the construction of over 3 000 condominium units. My data analysis explained how ongoing construction delays within DSP have contributed to growing frustrations, fatigue, and feelings of mistrust among Mountain Sights residents about the Triangle development, as well as a growing feeling of exclusion from the new and economically-affluent population in the Triangle.
Mountain Sights residents were initially apprehensive about the gentrifying processes happening in their neighbourhood and at DSP because they sensed that the needs of incoming condominium dwellers in the area would be prioritized over the needs of their community—a hunch that was substantiated on numerous occasions witnessed throughout my fieldwork and in various conversational interviews. For example, while developers had promised that the renovations would benefit both newer and longer-standing residents in the area, the Mountain
Sights residents with whom I spoke felt misrepresented in the new urban plans for DSP, especially given the fact that the new urban plans did not emphasize or make central the most popular leisure activities among Mountain Sights youth. Instead, activities such as basketball and soccer were relegated to the back of the park (or sometimes left-out altogether).
In response, I saw how youth on several occasions had creatively adapted the available leisure spaces in-and-around DSP as ‘spatial practice,’ a theoretical idea coined by Henri
99 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL
Lefebvre (1991) that helps examine the highly commonsensical ways individuals adapt their urban environments to accommodate their daily (leisure) needs. For example, I observed how youth at DSP repurposed the outdated splash pads at DSP as well as a nearby parking lot for cycling activities, riding scooters, playing with friends, and exercising their bodies—all usages that differed from the original functions of those spaces. However, Lefebvre’s theoretical ideas of “reductionism” and “contradictions of space” were also useful for reflecting upon how the new urban plans for DSP could eventually make Mountain Sights residents’ ‘spatial practices’ less visible as the new design features correspond to middle-class lifestyles.
Finally, this thesis has contributed to the literatures on gentrification as well as those on critical Leisure and Sport Studies by providing a crucial picture of how gentrifying processes affect and shape leisure spaces in Montréal. Few studies to date have explored the effects of gentrification on spaces of leisure and sport and, therefore, raised questions about gentrification’s broader impact on community health. Moreover, this study has aimed to broaden the appraisal of socioeconomic factors in research in the field of Kinesiology—a field that has long prioritized quantitative over qualitative inquiries pertaining to populations’ physical activity and health.
This study encountered several limitations throughout its conduct, which are worth re- mentioning as future studies would be wise to take them into consideration in order to build upon this sort of ethnographic inquiry. Firstly, the majority of my conversational interviews I conducted at DSP were with male park-goers, probably since they were less likely to be watching over small children (as was the case with many of the female park-goers with whom I spoke). As a woman myself, I often felt conflicted about disturbing or distracting a mother who already had her hands full watching over children. In future research, I would advise adapting one’s methodology to be significantly more alert to gender dynamics within spaces such as DSP.
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Efforts should also be made to create more gender-inclusive interviewing strategies; e.g., engaging in participant observation at a women’s group or attending a women’s only event, where it is safe to talk and exchange in order to gain a deeper perspective on the realities of women and better understand their experience in navigating urban spaces in their gentrifying neighbourhood. Lefebvre (1991) emphasized that peoples’ perceptions and lived experience of space is subjective to their different social positions. Gender and sexuality undoubtedly affect the way we experience urban space—something that I thought about repeatedly as a woman ethnographer through my experience at DSP.
Another important limitation to any ethnographic study is the amount of fieldwork that is conducted; in my case, my active fieldwork was pursued for just over one year and was ultimately cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic (discussed below). A longer-term engagement at the Triangle would be highly beneficial to exploring the diverse effects of urban change at DSP as the revitalization of the Triangle has been unfolding over a number of years.
This thesis, for instance, has raised many questions that require ongoing scrutiny, such as class dynamics at DSP and ongoing conflicts between the area’s new and longer-standing residents.
Moreover, I have also grown increasingly interested in team research over the course of my degree. I believe that this type of study, which involves a number of intersecting and subjective questions, would benefit from a team-based approach with researchers from different fields of study; e.g., urban studies, kinesiology, sociology, anthropology and public health. Team research has the potential to continuously emphasize the intersecting issues and questions that arise from research projects of this nature, which at its core is highly interdisciplinary. A team- based approach would have also been useful when faced with circumstances relating to COVID-
19, which has raised a number of important questions about the politics of city life.
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This final part of my conclusion is presented as a reflection on the intersecting social inequities that complicate access to healthy urban space during a global pandemic. As noted earlier, I learned a lot about housing conditions that were common in Côte-des-Neiges apartments when I volunteered with Project Genesis (a not-for-profit organization that helps
Côte-des-Neiges residents with housing rights), such as insufficient heating and poor isolation, unattended mould issues and ineffective ventilation systems, cockroach and vermin infestations, and rapidly rising rental prices. An alarming number of lower-income tenants in Côte-des-Neiges
(many of whom were new immigrants or refugees) endured hazardous living conditions because the landlords had categorically failed to maintain their apartment complexes (whose property values nevertheless increased due to other gentrifying processes in the area) (see Project Genesis
Annual Report 2019-2020). Going door-to-door with Project Genesis’ community outreach team in Mountain Sights during the spring and summer months of 2019 alerted me to the many unethical landlord tactics that were shockingly common in Côte-des-Neiges, such as taking advantage of tenants’ language barriers to deliver false information, or pressuring tenants to accept illegal rent increases, and threatening to evict those who do not accept the landlord’s terms. I later found that many of these issues were also mentioned in the scholarly research on gentrification and in other Urban Studies literatures (see Atkinson, 2000; Crosby, 2020). While many scholars have pointed to the rapidly rising rental prices as promoting the eviction of longer-standing tenants (Atkinson, Wulff, Reynolds & Spinney, 2011; Christafore &
Leguizamon, 2019; Lopez-Morales, 2011; Slater, 2017), few studies have explored how these types of gentrifying pressures also contribute to many other health inequities that cut differently across race, class, and gendered lines (See Anguelovski, Triguero-Mas, Connolly, Kotsila,
Shokry, Pérez del Pulgar, Garcia Lamarca, Argüelles, Manzione, Dietz & Cole, 2019).
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Since the beginning of the pandemic, new scholarship has emerged that exposes how populations who already faced various inequities such as unsanitary and overcrowded housing conditions, have suffered the most from COVID-19 (Bhala, Curry, Martineau, Agyemang &
Bhopal, 2020; Bowden & Cain, 2020; Bullard, Patterson & Thomas, 2020; Jahromi &
Hamidianjahroni, 2020; Levesque & Thériault, 2020; Poteat, Millett, Nelson & Beyrer, 2020;
Raifman & Raifman, 2020; Yaya, Yeboah, Charles, Otu & Labonte, 2020). Cole et al. (2020) have labeled the pandemic a “double socio-environmental injustice” in the sense that lower- income and racialized individuals have been forced to endure even more hazardous living conditions (p. 2): “For lower-income residents confined at home, disadvantages are exacerbated by struggling to pay rent, and often suffering from lost income. These less privileged residents are put at a greater risk of infection by living in more crowded and inadequate conditions” (p. 2).
In Montréal, no race-based data was collected during the first wave of infections that began in March 2020, but numerous specialists have confirmed that COVID-19 has been the deadliest among neighbourhoods of colour, especially those in which a large number of Black, new immigrant, and refugee people reside, such as Montréal North (Rocha, Shingler &
Montpetit, 2020). Côte-des-Neiges was also among the hardest hit neighbourhoods in Montréal in the early stages of the pandemic (Donahue, 2020). When the virus arrived in Quebec, debate arose around data collection in the province specific to revenue, languages spoken, and race, to assess COVID-19 contraction. Some city councillors voiced their concern about gathering this type of data (i.e., risk of communities being stigmatized and experiencing racism). However, other community initiatives, such as the Center for Research Action on Race Relations
(CRARR), argued that race-based data is essential for exposing the heightened risks that racialized communities face and to therefore better protect these communities (Abboud, 2020).
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Sharon Davis-Murdoch, the co-founder of the Health Association of Black Canadians, explained to Global News that the government’s failure to collect race-based data during COVID-19, and for other health care-related matters, effectively turns a blind eye to the various systemic inequities within our health care system and broader societal institutions (Field & Quon, 2020).
The lack of race-based data hides and ignores the structural inequities that Black and racialized communities face in Canada and in Quebec—inequities that put thousands of families at increased risk of suffering from COVID-19 (Rocha, Shingler & Montpetit, 2020).
In public health discourse, the socio-environmental elements that underlie population health have been most commonly explored through the framework of social determinants of health (SDH). These determinants refer to general contexts and conditions that influence a population’s health, and range from: employment situations, gender issues, health systems, to urbanization issues pertaining to land use, urban policy, safety and community programs (World
Health Organization [APA], n.d.). As discussed in previous sections, Triangle developers constantly delayed the repairs at DSP and redesigned the park to appeal to the condominium residents. These delays illuminate the fact that Triangle developers have approached green space as an economic feature rather than as an essential SDH for all community members. These delays have further jeopardized the health and wellness of Mountain Sights residents by denying them access to quality green space, especially during the pandemic when families whose homes presented unsanitary or overcrowded living conditions had few outdoor options. In fact, the idea of public green space as beneficial to health (by providing better air quality, for instance) and wellbeing (generating feelings of relaxation) in urban centers dates back to well-over a century ago in Western settler-colonial thought.17 For instance, as early as the mid-1800s, landscape
17 Notions of the environment as vital to human life and community have long been central to Indigenous peoples around the world. Colonization has, and continues to, disrupt natural environments in ways that have rendered
104 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL architect Frederick Law Olmsted wrote about the positive health outcomes generated by park space in busy metropolitan cities (Olmsted, 1882), such as New York and Montréal. At the time of Olmsted’s writing, typhus and cholera epidemics were ravaging European centres. Olmsted stressed the necessity for urban dwellers to visit outdoor spaces where they could escape the poor air quality of urban life. He also advocated for the implementation of health policies aimed at regulating housing conditions in order to improve the living conditions among the cities’ less fortunate (leBrasseur, 2020). Olmsted emphasized the soothing influence of trees and other forms of vegetation, and noted the air purifying properties trees afforded urban city dwellers.
However, at the time of his writing, Olmsted (1882) had already noted the hazardous influence of economic-centered urban planning—a dynamic that he further cautioned had the potential to segregate population groups by redesigning green spaces into aesthetically pleasing sites targeted for the enjoyment of upper-class city dwellers, at the expense of others (p. 594).
In spring and summer of 2020, most sections of DSP were closed off for renovation when the first wave of the pandemic struck Montréal. The sections that remained open, such as the community garden and the splash pad area, were often filled with dust and noise from the machinery at work during the daytime—elements that are not the most inviting when in search of tranquil green space. The new Parc du Triangle located a few blocks east of Mountain Sights avenue and DSP was initially supposed to be built by 2016, and then by 2018, was also under construction during the first wave of Covid-19. By August 2020, the larger part of the park du
Triangle was finally opened, but some parts were still very much under-construction. As a consequence, lower-income families in Mountain Sights have enjoyed very limited access to outdoor leisure space during the pandemic, most of whom already faced some of the most
humans more vulnerable to environmental conditions, causing difficulties such as poverty, poor health conditions, and physical and emotional trauma (Henry, Lavallee, Van Styvendale & Innes, 2018, pp. 3-4)
105 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL precarious indoor living conditions when the lockdowns first began. In my view, Triangle developers should have prioritized and responded faster to the requests of Mountain Sights residents when their concerns were initially voiced, in order to guarantee access to at least one open and functional leisure space in the Triangle at all times, let alone during the pandemic.
The concept of environmental racism provides an important framework for understanding how racialized communities are systemically disadvantaged in terms of the built environment in which they live. Environmental racism is defined as: “the environmental policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended), individuals, groups, or communities based on race or colour” (Bullard, 2003, p. 50). The maintenance and the condition of urban parks and green spaces is an integral part of our built environments, and therefore, health scholars should seriously consider how environments cut differently across racial lines (Frumkin, 2005). Cole et al. (2020) explained that the pandemic has forced city stakeholders and urban planners across the globe to create more green spaces and to transform streets that usually serve cars into pedestrian spaces that attract a number of leisure activities (p. 3). A wealth of news articles has also emerged to discuss how these new trends could transform our cities in response to COVID-19 as preventative measures regarding future epidemics (Bauman, 2020; MacLeod, 2020; Mayer, 2020; Shenker, 2020). These trends typically speak of a smarter use of urban space that favours outdoor leisure activities, healthy commuting
(i.e. biking and walking) and more community-oriented spaces. They also aim to improve population health by creating increased access to public outdoor space, in which social distancing protocols can be maintained. Cole et al. (2020) argued that these transformations are emerging in similar ways to greening revitalization projects, (similarly to the trends discussed in my literature review on environmental gentrification). However, I want to conclude my thesis by
106 AN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY OF GENTRIFYING LEISURE SPACES IN MONTREAL reiterating Cole et al.’s cautionary point (2020): “In this moment of uncertainty could we also be witnessing the emergence of a new wave of socio-spatial injustice leading potentially to new forms of urban exclusion, health inequity, and environmental injustice?” (p. 2). Crucially, as sport and leisure scholars, we must pay attention to emerging patterns of resident inclusion and exclusion within and from gentrifying urban spaces.
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