Caught in the Eye of the Storm

This book is a case-study analysis of the public housing district of Lawrence Heights in North York, Toronto, a neighbourhood undergoing the largest revitalization in Canada. The book presents a chronological narrative of change and upheaval in Lawrence Heights, beginning with its origins after World War Two as a modernist style “city on a hill” that was intended to help remedy Toronto’s affordable housing shortage and simultaneously transform its systemically disadvantaged tenant base into idealized members of the middle class. As the community became progressively more racialized and oppressed in the late twentieth century, the reputation of Lawrence Heights and its occupants became steadily more denigrated by the forces of stigmatization, governmental neglect and police brutality. In this milieu, local political officials and private developer partners have striven to tear Lawrence Heights down and rebuild it into a socially mixed neighbourhood. This plan threatens the existing social fabric of a proud and politically active community.