Rise of the Neoliberal City: Condominium Development and Toronto's Cityplace

Rise of the Neoliberal City: Condominium Development and Toronto's CityPlace Rachel Phillips Condominium developments have become ubiquitous features of Toronto’s urban landscape, emerging in disinvested neighbourhoods, former industrial sites, and defning entirely new neighbourhoods. Tis paper examines Toronto’s condominium boom in the context of the city’s increasingly neoliberal urban governance strategies. Te development of City Place – a 44-acre condominium project located near Toronto’s waterfront on former railway lands – is used in this paper as a case study that highlights how a neoliberal conception of the roles of government and the private sector has shaped condominium development in Toronto. Focusing on how City Place was planned, fnanced, and then sold to particular demographic groups in Toronto, this paper attempts to illustrate who benefts from the city’s condominium boom, who loses out, and how public and private interests work together to produce an increasingly privatized and commodifed urban landscape. Introduction Tis paper will attempt to understand how condominiums ft into this neoliberal landscape Te rise of the condominium is a well-doc- by exploring a series of sub-questions: whose umented phenomenon in Toronto. Since the interests are served by condominium develop- 1990s, a condominium boom has been trans- ment? What policy goals do they help to achieve? forming the city (Lehrer & Wieditz, 2009), with How does a neoliberal conception of citizenship condos popping up in disinvested inner-city and the role of government relate to condo- neighbourhoods, former industrial sites, public miniums and the lifestyles they encourage? In housing redevelopment projects, and new-build order to address these questions, I will begin by master-planned neighbourhoods. Few places grounding my paper in a theoretical framework in the city, it seems, are safe from condomini- of the efects of neoliberalism on urban gover- um developments. While many explanations for nance, development, and citizenship, before fo- Toronto’s unprecedented condo market growth cusing on neoliberalism in Toronto specifcally. have been proposed – including changing con- I will then try to situate the city’s condominium sumer preferences and middle class demands boom in the context of the neoliberal city, look- for inner city living, the city’s shif to a service ing at how this boom serves (and is served by) economy, and the need to house infuxes of neoliberal policy objectives and private interests. immigrants and young people – these analyses Finally, I will ground this analysis in a case study tend to minimize the neoliberal political context of Toronto’s CityPlace neighbourhood, a 44-acre in which the condominium boom has occurred. condominium development on the city’s former Neoliberalism has been an important infuence Railway Lands. in Toronto since the 1990s, shaping not only political and economic conditions, but also urban Te Neoliberal City development policy, working to create a neoliberal urban landscape characterized by the pri- Neoliberalism is a political ideology root- vatization of urban space, urban processes, and ed in a ‘rejection of egalitarian liberalism… urban citizenship. combined with a selective return to the ideas 32 | Phillips | Landmarks of classical liberalism’ (Hackworth, 2007, p. 9). es, alongside an increased signifcance of pri- It emphasizes individual responsibility, the an- vatized landscapes; an emphasis on downtown ti-interventionist state, and the belief that the redevelopment; the rise of mega-projects and free market is the ‘optimal mechanism for so- Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs); and various cioeconomic development’ (Peck, Teodore forms of uneven development (Rosen & Walks, & Brenner, 2009, p. 50). Under neoliberalism, 2013). these core tenets justify various state actions (and inactions), including the de-regulation of Neoliberalism in Toronto industry, non-intervention in markets, and the Neoliberalism has been a signifcant politi- roll-back and/or privatization of social services cal and economic force in Toronto’s urban pol- and welfare state institutions (Peck et al., 2009). itics since the mid-1990s, when Mike Harris’s In cities, neoliberalism works to shif the newly-elected Progressive Conservative provin- boundaries and priorities of urban governance. cial government began to push through various As neoliberal policies are adopted at higher lev- neoliberal reform agendas (Keil, 2002). Har- els of government, the responsibility for public ris’s reforms focused on cutting social services, service provision is ‘downloaded’ (Peck et al., downloading service-provision responsibilities 2009, p. 11) to municipalities, who, lacking the to municipalities, and withdrawing funding for fnancial base to support these programs, must urban infrastructure and development projects either roll-back, privatize, or cut these programs (Keil, 2002). In response to this provincially-led (Hackworth, 2007). Cities are thus forced to em- neoliberalization, Toronto’s leadership adapted brace neoliberal policies and values regardless of by reconfguring its urban policy, privatizing their political context (Hackworth, 2007), as the or cutting various social programs and services ideology has become ‘naturalized as the “only” and engaging in Public-Private Partnerships to available choice to cities’ (Hackworth, 2007, p. achieve many development goals (Keil, 2002). 11). Neoliberal provincial policies, alongside the In this context, ‘urban neoliberalism’ (Keil, political rhetoric employed by Harris and vari- 2002, p. 697) emerges as a political and econom- ous other Progressive Conservative politicians, ic restructuring project (Keil, 2002) that results also changed conceptions of citizenship in To- in the roll-back of various government funded ronto (Keil, 2002). Te roll-back of public ser- social and welfare programs and urban devel- vices and welfare worked to ‘encourage people opment activities, combined with the roll-out to see themselves as individualized and active of policies that focus on privatization and mar- subjects responsible for enhancing their own ketization (Peck et al., 2009). Tis roll-back/roll- well-being’ (Larner, 2000, p. 13). Torontonians, out process can be understood as part of what therefore, began to exist in a more privatized and Harvey (1989) identifes as a shif from urban commodifed urban environment (Keil, 2002). managerialism to entrepreneurialism. In the Pressure to embrace neoliberalism and en- context of increasing inter-urban competition, trepreneurialism also came from Toronto’s lead- urban governments begin to focus less on their ers’ desire to compete globally with other cities ‘managerial’ duties of providing services and for investment, business activity, and highly infrastructure, and more on ‘entrepreneurial’ mobile workers (Keil, 2002). In pursuit of global activities of marketing the city as an attractive city status, the city has embraced various spatial place for investors, tourists and afuent citizens and economic restructuring projects that are de- (Harvey, 1989). Taken together, these chang- signed to ‘create the local political and economic es in urban policy result in a new neoliberal base required for a development strategy which urban landscape characterized by: a declining is ever more global in its reach, and thoroughly signifcance of public housing and public spac- Landmarks |Neoliberal City | 33 commodifying in its intent’ (Todd, 2002, p. 202). Condominiums frst emerged in Toronto Tis restructuring, Todd (2002) argues, tends in 1968, positioned as a response to inner-city to prioritize the needs of capital and elites over housing shortages (Risk, 1968) and as a way to the city’s needs for social services. Tis process increase the number of home owners in the city of ‘going global’ (Todd, 2002, p. 192) is therefore (Harris, 2011). Te condominium introduced indicative of a shif toward more entrepreneurial a new and innovative form of property regime strategies in Toronto, as economic development that combines individual and common own- is increasingly predicated on the ability to attract ership, allowing for the subdivision of a single private investment, corporate headquarters, and parcel of land into multiple units, contributing service economy workers. In combination with to urban density and to the re-intensifcation of neoliberal provincial policy, this ‘global city the inner city (Lehrer et al., 2010). Condomini- strategy’ (Keil, 2002, p. 591) has worked to re- ums went beyond the functional consideration confgure Toronto’s economic, social, and polit- of dealing with housing shortages, however, and ical landscapes. by the 1990s they occupied a more strategic and political role in Toronto’s urban landscape. Te Condominium in the Neoliberal City In the context of entrepreneurial urban Te condominium is a central fgure in this governance strategies, condominiums can be reconfgured neoliberal landscape, and its dra- understood as a place-marketing tool for cities, matic rise in Toronto’s housing market can be working to attract consumers, businesses and in- linked to neoliberal policy objectives in two key vestors to the downtown core. As a result of the ways. First, condominiums are indicative of the inter-urban competition that occurs under neo- previously mentioned shif from managerialism liberalism, local governments increasingly sup- to entrepreneurialism. Private-sector led con- port downtown residential development, with dominium developments transfer

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