Architects Against Housing Alienation – Not for Sale!: 4. Reparative Architecture

4. Reparative Architecture

We demand reparative architecture. From Halifax to Vancouver and in all cities in-between, there is a long history of racist urban planning that has forcibly displaced and disenfranchised black communities. We demand the state provide reparations by funding Black-led community land trusts for the creation of affordable housing and commercial space for the Black residents who have been displaced or are at the risk of being displaced by state policies

Across c\a\n\a\d\a, Black communities have been particularly vulnerable to gentrification due to anti-Black racism. Many have faced dramatic consequences of displacement, cultural erasure, and economic decline, resulting from state led infrastructure construction and zoning and planning policies that benefit whiter and wealthier communities. We demand the state provide reparations to fund Black-led community land trusts for reparative architecture: affordable housing and commercial buildings for Black residents who have been displaced or are at the risk of being displaced from their communities by state policies.

Reparative architecture is a constructive project of repair that responds to recent and historic inequity and harm by demanding its acknowledgement by through conversations between communities and governments, accountability on the part of government through the payment of reparations, and finally restoration of the community through the production of affordable housing and commercial spaces to rebuild culturally and economically dynamic communities. A reparative architecture will ensure housing without erasure by understanding that housing, as part of a community ecosystem, can’t be separated from commercial, recreational, and other core components that create neighbourhood vitality in Little Jamaica.

In Toronto, Little Jamaica along Eglinton West Avenue is an example of an historic Black community which has faced displacement as a result of government policies. In the 1970s, Eglinton Avenue began to serve as the main street of a much larger area of Caribbean settlement west of Toronto’s downtown. As a bustling and vibrant home to a multitude of Black businesses, including restaurants, record shops and hair salons, it became the heart of Black Toronto. Urban plans to densify the City’s East-West commercial avenues, beginning in the 1980s and finally integrated in the City’s 2003 Official Plan, provoked upzoning policies, including the city’s mid-rise and high-rise guidelines, that encourage the demolition of the mostly two-storey fabric on streets like Eglinton and the construction of large mid and high-rise buildings in its place. Over the past decade, the construction of new light rail transit (LRT) through the neighbourhood has damaged the viability of local businesses. All three levels of governments have aligned to invest billions of dollars into this transit, while ignoring calls from Black communities to support Black ownership and affordable rental housing in the neighbourhood.  By raising property values, this investment has enriched the same land‘lords’ who have profited off our rent for generations.

As architects, local activists and equitable housing advocates, we demand three components of reparative architecture: 1) Black-led community land trusts that will  provide stable, affordable tenure for residents and small businesses, and carry forward the rich legacy of Little Jamaica’s unique cultural character; 2) changes to Toronto’s mid-rise guidelines that incentivize small lot densification on retail avenues in order to maintains the fine grain of existing retail; and 3) increased densification in single-family neighbourhoods with what is called missing-middle housing, that allow mixed-uses on both streets and alleyways, in order to incentivize both affordable housing and retail , cultivating a street life rich with cultural activities that empower the Black community.

Reparative Architecture Contributors:

Region: Toronto

Activist: Leighana Mais, Keele Eglinton Residents

Advocate: Cheryll Case, CP Planning (Community in Public)

Architect: Tura Cousins Wilson, Shane Laptiste, SOCA (Studio of Contemporary Architecture)