The landscape of downtown Toronto has changed over the last few years. This spatial change, based on economic growth and development, is often called gentrification -- a process which has come to mean the transformation of downtown neighbourhoods through an increase in housing prices, land-use speculation, and a shift toward accessibility for people with bigger incomes. Gentrification in Toronto is pushed forward by the profit interests of the private sector and the needs of the public sector. For instance, Toronto's latest Official Plan (the guiding vision for the way the city will grow and look over the next thirty years) is a good example of how the city's arts, music, and cultural communities are used as a selling feature to attract economic investment and encourage private real estate development in Toronto. Instead of selling Toronto on the basis of its bland concrete buildings and boring streetscape at King and Bay, the local indie music and arts communities are being used to show how interesting and innovative the city is to potential residents and business investors. This emphasis is double-edged. On one hand, it shows that our local government is paying attention to the dynamic and creative arts and music scenes of this city. On the other side, it will probably mean that in the future we will see more posh cafés, boutiques, and condominium developments as well as the transformation of working class, politically active neighbourhoods like Kensington Market into what sociologist Christopher Mele calls "bourgeois bohemia." A place where the neighbourhood's eclectic character is used to sell expensive cups of organic coffee and $10 brunches to uptown folks and tourists.

What does this mean for the local music scene in particular? The unfortunate underbelly of gentrification is that the average person who contributes to making this city the culturally exciting, musically driven place it is (but who doesn't make a lot of money doing it) is the one at risk of being displaced by higher income earners moving into downtown areas. Affordable neighbourhoods are increasingly distant, with Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York feeling like quickly approaching frontiers of affordability. Maybe in ten years these older suburbs will be homes to new arts and music enclaves -- Kingston Road could be the new Queen street -- a strange but possible idea. But the catch is that musicians rely on close proximity to practice spaces, clubs and stores that are mostly located downtown. So, the dilemma is that gentrification forces people to live farther away from downtown while still being reliant on it for events, musical connections and idea sharing.

Yet even the places to hold and/or record music are vulnerable. Over the past few years we have seen the closing of various music spaces due to unaffordable rents and eviction. In 2000, the Gas Station, an independent recording studio in a former warehouse at King and Dufferin, was evicted to make way for a lofts condo development. There was an unsuccessful protest against the developers by local musicians and the studio was forced to move. Ted's Wrecking Yard on College Street, the first bar to host Wavelength, was forced to close in Oct. 2001 due to a large jump in commercial rent. While the empty space remained vacant for nearly a year, it was finally taken over by a company constructing a high-end boutique hotel called The Inn on College (see photo). The El Mo closed down due to high rents, was sold to an independent financier, became a dance studio and then re-opened as a music venue again, although with a more upscale look. A final example is the Kensington Market Lofts condo, at the corner of Baldwin and Spadina. In 1997 the developers promised community residents some affordable housing space as well as the whole basement area of the condo for free-of-charge community arts and music space. Once the development was constructed, however, the community arts space was reduced to the size of small storefront space and fees of over $800 per month were applied. The availability of free local space first offered, and then taken away, was frustrating for neighbourhood residents and musicians.

These examples address the issue of spatial injustice inherent in gentrification and the problem of residents being "squeezed out" of city spaces. But they also point to the ways in which visual artists, musicians, and all low-income residents can resist these changes -- whether through direct protest against condo developments and "style" venues that implicitly or explicitly contribute to the rising cost of everyday life in the city, or through actively challenging urban planning decisions and policies that aid the interests of private developers and investors.

BY SUSANNAH BUNCE

photo: Katia Taylor