Re-wilding Parkdale? Environmental gentrification, settler colonialism, and the reconfiguration of nature in 21st century Toronto

Abstract

In 21st century Toronto, the labour of caring for urban trees is entangled with both gentrification processes and the social reproduction of settler colonial space. This paper contributes to the study of environmental gentrification through a study of the social reproduction of settler colonial relations to land in the Parkdale–High Park area of Toronto. Specifically, I take up the hyper-visibility of some forms of social reproduction, in order to shed light on how the mundane, quotidian ‘non-work’ of living in/with/for capitalism becomes a site of privilege and a luxury pursuit for more affluent residents. The paper highlights the processes and practices whereby settler colonial urban subjects seek out ‘nature’ as a temporary outside where they can escape from widely accepted downsides of capitalist urbanism, including a diverse array of social and physical ills, from stress, to obesity, to ecological degradation. The paper asks: whose social reproduction does the presence of urban trees serve? In the context of 21st century financialized gentrification, cities are increasingly normalized as spaces of wealth and luxury. It is therefore crucial to pay attention to the raced, gendered, and colonial micro-politics through which urban ecologies are transformed in the service of an anti-democratic vision of the city as a space of leisure and luxury.

The agencies of landscape in rural gentrification: Impressions from the wood, the village and the moortop

“…arguing that gentrification often involves emotion-laden embodied practices related to contact and avoidance of contact with bodies and landscapes, ideas further explored in Kern's (2015) and Parish's (2019) discussions of environmental gentrification and social reproduction. The latter study adopts a specific focus on trees, a narrowing that echoes work adopting living-landscape perspectives, which often emphasize the need to recognize particular constituents of landscapes and their formation through the intertwinings of human and more-thanhuman agencies.…”

“…As indicated in Table 1, it is possible to identify a series of gentrification studies that exhibit hints of this living‐landscape perspective, with Patch (2004) alluding to affective relations with landscapes when describing artistic ‘appropriation’ of industrial landscapes, Kern (2012, p. 28) arguing that gentrification often involves emotion‐laden embodied practices related to contact and avoidance of contact with bodies and landscapes, ideas further explored in Kern's (2015) and Parish's (2019) discussions of environmental gentrification and social reproduction. The latter study adopts a specific focus on trees, a narrowing that echoes work adopting living‐landscape perspectives, which often emphasize the need to recognize particular constituents of landscapes and their formation through the intertwinings of human and more‐than‐human agencies.…”

“…This commentary indicates the presence, and agency, of a range of more‐than‐human co‐inhabitants of ‘the wood’, and how a series of contestations and negotiated practices emerged in association with them. Parish (2019) connects care of more‐than‐human nature into social reproduction, and many residents expended considerable labour, and money, on managing their lives with these, at times quite unruly, more‐than‐human co‐residents of ‘the wood’.…”

How well do we know green gentrification? A systematic review of the methods

“…Qualitative approaches also included review/analysis of various materials, primarily news media (Curran and Hamilton, 2012; Garcia-Lamarca et al, 2019; Rigolon et al, 2020b) and planning/policy documents (Checker, 2011; Safransky, 2014; Glennie, 2020) but also websites and social media (Håkansson, 2018; Amorim Maia et al, 2020; Parish, 2020) and archival materials (Bryson, 2013; Draus et al, 2020; McNeur, 2017). Typically, case studies employed a combination of various review materials, often in addition to interviews and/or observations, resulting in a contextually rich understanding.…”

“…Many studies discussed urban vegetation in general without focusing on specific examples/types (33%) while others studied greenways (31%), other parks (21%), urban agriculture (11%) or “other” greening, such as living streets (Goossens et al, 2019) and nature preserves (Sandberg, 2014) (Appendix A). Despite extensive academic literature on urban forests, only two studies (Parish, 2020; Donovan et al, 2021) emphasized trees. The emphasis on greenways is particularly notable.…”