Unsettling Revitalization in Toronto: The Fantasy and Apology of the Settler City

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dc.contributor.advisorScott, Dayna N.
dc.creatorHalpin, Bryony Jane
dc.date.accessioned2017-07-27T13:40:01Z
dc.date.available2017-07-27T13:40:01Z
dc.date.copyright2017-02-21
dc.date.issued2017-07-27
dc.date.updated2017-07-27T13:40:00Z
dc.degree.disciplineEnvironmental Studies
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractAt a time when social movements for Indigenous resurgence in Canada are as powerful as ever, and are coupled with state-sponsored reconciliation and recognition efforts (focused primarily on residential schools), it is crucial to examine the ongoing systemic processes unique to the settler colony that continue to dispossess, enact violence, and deny Indigenous sovereignty. Also, it is pertinent to ask driven by Jordan Stanger-Rosss assertion that cities have played a strategic role in the settlement process how these processes play out in urban spaces. Specifically, what is the role of urban planning and urban revitalization in the ongoing settler project? In this dissertation, I examine the large-scale revitalization project underway on Torontos waterfront and argue that settler colonialism is a structure revealed through what I define as the fantasies and apologies that manifest in the revitalizing of settler cities. I contend that revitalization projects reveal the fantasy that the settlement dispossession / violence is long over now, and that there is a pastness to the injustices of settler colonialism. Therefore, the fantasy that informs how we plan and envision our urban spaces positions settlers legitimately and unquestionably on the land in perpetuity. This fantasy is related to, and in tension with, the apology, which I argue is also revealed in urban revitalization and works to foreshadow the search for state-sponsored reconciliation in the present day. The apology represents the way in which urban revitalization makes insincere attempts to address the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples and to apparently facilitate Indigenous agency in the present day. As a result, the apology ends up marking the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty in urban space. Threaded throughout the fantasy and the apology, however, is transformative resistance in settler urban spaces which present ways to authentically address settler state violence.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/33544
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectGeography
dc.subject.keywordsCritical Indigenous studies
dc.subject.keywordsSettler colonialism
dc.subject.keywordsCity of Toronto
dc.subject.keywordsUrban revitalization
dc.subject.keywordsReconciliation
dc.subject.keywordsEnvironmental justice
dc.subject.keywordsBlack Lives Matter
dc.subject.keywordsIdle No More
dc.subject.keywordsCritical geography
dc.subject.keywordsTruth and Reconciliation
dc.subject.keywordsSlavery in Canada
dc.subject.keywordsToronto Waterfront
dc.subject.keywordsPostcolonialism
dc.subject.keywordsDecolonize
dc.subject.keywordsAnti-racism
dc.subject.keywordsHomelessness
dc.subject.keywordsIndigenous sovereignty
dc.subject.keywordsWhite privilege
dc.subject.keywordsState-sponsored reconciliation
dc.subject.keywordsPolitics of recognition
dc.subject.keywordsUrban space
dc.subject.keywordsRight to the city
dc.subject.keywordsTransformative praxis
dc.subject.keywordsSettler colonial studies
dc.subject.keywordsCritical urban studies
dc.subject.keywordsSugar Beach
dc.subject.keywordsMississauga New Credit
dc.subject.keywordsFirst Nations Inuit and Metis
dc.subject.keywordsSettler colonial cities
dc.subject.keywordsMunicipal colonialism
dc.subject.keywordsCritical race studies
dc.subject.keywordsFantasy
dc.subject.keywordsThe age of apology
dc.subject.keywordsSettler violence
dc.subject.keywordsThe Meeting Place
dc.subject.keywordsSettler geographies
dc.subject.keywordsPost-racial
dc.subject.keywordsRacialized
dc.subject.keywordsSocial movements
dc.subject.keywordsThe North Star
dc.subject.keywordsMulticulturalism
dc.subject.keywordsCritiques of multiculturalism
dc.subject.keywordsPublic space
dc.subject.keywordsPublic parks
dc.subject.keywordsRed Power
dc.subject.keywordsThe Right to the City
dc.subject.keywordsTreaties
dc.subject.keywordsTerra nullius
dc.subject.keywordsDispossession
dc.subject.keywordsHistoriographies
dc.subject.keywordsSettler belonging
dc.subject.keywordsToronto Purchase
dc.subject.keywordsPan American Games
dc.subject.keywordsCrown sovereignty
dc.subject.keywordsSettler hegemony
dc.subject.keywordsRedistribution of wealth
dc.subject.keywordsOccupying urban space
dc.subject.keywordsSolidarity
dc.subject.keywordsUrban planning
dc.subject.keywordsUrbanity
dc.subject.keywordsUrbanism
dc.subject.keywordsNeoliberalism
dc.subject.keywordsCapitalism
dc.subject.keywordsGentrification
dc.subject.keywordsFeminism
dc.subject.keywordsInterdisciplinary
dc.subject.keywordsUrban renewal
dc.subject.keywordsResistance
dc.subject.keywordsArchival research
dc.subject.keywordsSocial justice
dc.subject.keywordsSubaltern studies
dc.subject.keywordsIndigenous resurgence
dc.titleUnsettling Revitalization in Toronto: The Fantasy and Apology of the Settler City
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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