Rescaling Ambitions: Waterfront Governance and Toronto's 2015 Pan American Games

Abstract

Toronto is a rare global city because negotiating public land ownership remains a defining feature of the city's urban politics. The awarding of the 2015 Pan American Games to Toronto is a prime occasion to witness how fragmented governance can limit the ambition and enthusiasm of a sporting mega‐event. Historically, Toronto has not been known for its ability to host large‐scale sporting events but it has recently used a series of failed Olympic bids and smaller sporting events to trigger piecemeal “legacy” development. In this article we argue that the awarding of the Pan American Games to Toronto was predicated on a process that removed local politics from the bidding process. Focusing on the development of the athletes’ village in the West Don Lands and incorporating a number of interviews with key stakeholders across Toronto, this research illustrates that the heavy involvement and investment of the Province of Ontario in the Pan American spectacle forces us to ask: Whose waterfront? Whose games?

Playing in the Shadow of Event Urbanism: Newcomer Youth, Neighborhood Change, and TO2015

“…Important to our research is the manner in which youth in this TO2015 celebrated corridor are implicated in liberalprogressive sensibilities, which harness sport as a facilitator of urban development. To follow the work of Bellas and Oliver (2016), the involvement of an international sport conglomerate in the redevelopment of Toronto was Bpredicated upon a process that removed politics in order to be more effective^(678) and thus eradicated the democratic need for Bdeeper social commentary^(686). Situated in the literal shadow of TO2015 construction, we focused on the discursive and material incursion of sportprompted development on young people in that urban corridor; particularly, as related to their future access to labour and leisure.…”

Sport mega event planning in Toronto: From a democratic demand to a democratic demise

“…In their estimation, the 2015 Pan American Games serves to illustrate that it was possible for Toronto to host a sporting mega event without significant community outreach or public engagement. Led by the Province of Ontario, they argue that Toronto's Pan American Games added to the growing number of examples illustrating the detriments of state rescaling to local democracy (Bellas and Oliver ). The following sections explain how it is possible for Kidd, and Bellas and Oliver to offer such drastically different conclusions.…”

“…The governance challenges of a global city typically involve making a choice about whether economic competitiveness “should be achieved by government stepping back and facilitating the free market or by government intervening more actively to persuade the market to unleash its ‘innovative' and ‘creative' potential” (Joy and Vogel , 49). The public governance model employed for the Pan American Games makes it clear that the province was willing to engage in “task‐specific rescaling” to support Toronto's world‐city status (Horak ; Bellas and Oliver ). My concern with the Pan American Games in Toronto is not that they were absent meaningful impact but rather that the province's commitment, while enabling the city's participation in the bid process, simultaneously limited the terms of its involvement.…”

“…According to Davidson and Iveson (, 546), the incessant pursuit to become a competitive city has resulted in urban policy agendas moving “beyond the realm of contentious democratic politics.” In the case of the Pan American Games, the provincially‐led bid team focused on facility and games management questions and treated the local citizenry as consumers of their vision. Bellas and Oliver () confirm that key members of the bid team have acknowledged that very little energy was expended towards community outreach and questions considering how the games might facilitate long‐term social equity planning went largely unaddressed. In practical terms this meant limiting the influence of the local citizenry and shuttered opportunities for democratic engagement.…”

“…I am not claiming that there wasn't resistance or grassroots activism expressed towards the Pan American Games, rather I am suggesting that an invitation to participate in a collective conversation about how the legacies of the games might be defined never really materialized. Under the guidance of the province, Toronto's urban fabric was retrofitted to accommodate the needs of the Pan American Games without being subject to “deeper social commentary” (Bellas and Oliver , 11). Here we find the makings of what Swyngedouw () characterizes as the evacuation of the political (democratic) dimension from urban life.…”