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Browsing Research Publications by Author "Laidley, Jennefer"
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Item Open Access The ecosystem approach and the global imperative on Toronto’s Central Waterfront(Elsevier, 23/02/2007) Laidley, JenneferAs one of the ‘last great waterfronts’ to embrace what has become a near-ubiquitous post-fordist development model, the formerly industrial lands of Toronto’s Central Waterfront are currently being reshaped to provide the kinds of spaces and places that facilitate new modes of capital accumulation. In order to understand how Toronto’s waterfront has come to be mobilized to accommodate the imperatives of 21st-century global economic and spatial restructuring, this paper explores the area’s recent planning history, reviewing the policies and politics of waterfront planning activities undertaken over the past twenty years. A new and novel ‘ecosystem approach’ to waterfront planning was adopted in Toronto in this period that allowed its proponents to resolve historical problems that had formerly impeded new forms of waterfront development. This paper demonstrates that, in so doing, the ecosystem approach – and its use by a succession of influential waterfront planning bodies and processes – set the stage for the Central Waterfront to become a key site for the elite pursuit of world city status in Toronto.Item Open Access Keys to the City: Waterfront Development in Toronto(2006-09) Laidley, Jennefer; Desfor, GeneThe article begins with a narrative of David Miller’s 2003 mayoral election victory not only because the waterfront has become, if not materially then certainly symbolically, central to his term of office, but also because it demonstrates how waterfront quays have become places with strategic political, economic, environmental and social value. The waterfront was central to Miller’s election victory and – contrary to the continuing complaint that ‘there’s nothing happening on the waterfront’ – has played a major role in city, regional and even national politics throughout his first term of office. We argue this is the case because the waterfront has become critical for wealth accumulation processes, and control of these processes is a major concern. Cities have long been recognized as prominent agglomerations in economic processes of production and reproduction and, at this particular historical juncture, waterfronts are one of the main sites where this occurs. http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay13.pdfItem Open Access Toronto's Recent Waterfront Struggles: Much Ado About Nothing?(2006-01) Desfor, Gene; Laidley, JenneferThe article analyses a particular case of jurisdictional conflict in planning and developing Toronto's waterfront at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation and the Toronto Economic Development Corporation seemed to have different ideas about how to develop a site on the East Bayfront, and this article describes struggles between the organizations. It suggests that continuing battles betweeen these organizations is much ado about nothing for the majority of Toronto's diverse working class. http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay09.pdf