Description:
Suburb, Slum, Urban Village examines the relationship between image and reality for one city neighbourhood - Toronto's Parkdale. Carolyn Whitzman tracks Parkdale's story across three eras: its early decades as a politically independent suburb of the industrial city; its half-century of ostensible decline toward becoming a slum; and its post-industrial period of transformation into a revitalized urban village. This book also shows how Parkdale's image influenced planning policy for the neighbourhood. Whitzman demonstrates that image and reality have not always correlated for Parkdale. Parkdale's changing image stood in stark contrast to its real social conditions. Nevertheless, this image became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it contributed to increasingly discriminatory planning practices for Parkdale in the late twentieth century.
Brief description: Carolyn Whitzman is a leading housing and senior policy consultant. She is an expert advisor to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) Project. She has authored, co-authored, or lead-edited six previous books, the most recent being Clara at the Door with a Revolver. Other works include over one hundred book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, and major reports. Her expertise has been sought by UN Women, UN Habitat, governments at all levels, and not-for-profit and private organizations at home and abroad. She lives in Ottawa.