Intercultural Public Spaces in Multicultural Toronto.

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The article is reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Urban Research (CJUR), vol. 22, no 1 (2013), p.67-89, with the permission of the Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg.

Intercultural Public Spaces in Multicultural Toronto

Intercultural Public Spaces in Multicultural Toronto

Michail Galanakis Department of Geosciences and Geography Helsinki University

Abstract Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It is also a city of social inequalities. This article examines how public spaces facilitate social inclusion and intercultural communication and present specific socio-spatial practices and processes that transcend ethnocultural divisions and traditional public and private boundaries. Relying upon scholarly evidence of socio-spatial injustice, as well as upon 19 interviews and a focus group of 13 young participants, I discuss interculturalism as a possible theoretical framework for communication between social groups in public spaces. I frame public space as a means to redefine and redistribute, and discuss the forces that shape, appropriate and redefine it in Toronto. Based on the testimonies of my research participants, I also discuss phenomena such as the privatization of public space and malling. Finally, I present the practice of the domestication of public space and its potential for intercultural communication as a possibility for communities to make public spaces relevant. Keywords: multiculturalism, interculturalism, Toronto, public space, planning, activism, youth, domestication

Canadian Journal of Urban Research, Volume 22 Issue 1, pages 67-89. Copyright © 2013 by the Institute of Urban Studies All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1188-3774

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Résumé Toronto est une des villes les plus multiculturelles du monde. C’est également une ville avec des inégalités sociales. Cet article examine comment les espaces publics facilitent l’inclusion sociale et la communication interculturelle et présentent des pratiques socio-spatiales et des processus qui transcendent les divisions ethnoculturelles et les frontières traditionnelles des secteurs public et privé. S’appuyant sur une approche d’injustice socio-spatiale, ainsi que sur 19 entrevues et groupes de discussion de 13 participants, je discute l’interculturalisme comme un cadre théorique possible pour la communication entre les groupes sociaux dans les espaces publics. Je conçois l’espace public comme un moyen de redéfinition et de redistribution, et discute des forces qui façonnent, approprient, et redéfinissent cet espace à Toronto. Basé sur les témoignages recueillis dans les entrevues, je discute également des phénomènes tels que la privatisation de l’espace public et le “malling.” Finalement, je présente la pratique de la domestication de l’espace public et son potentiel de communication interculturelle comme une possibilité pour les collectivités de rendre les espaces publics pertinents. Mots clés: multiculturalisme, Interculturalisme, espace public, aménagement urbain, activisme, jeunesse, domestication Introduction When I came to Toronto in February 2011 to conduct research on intercultural public spaces, I quickly realized that the discourse on interculturalism was largely unknown. Through observation and literature research I discovered a fragmented albeit exciting city, just the way Boudreau, Keil, and Young (2009, p. 86) describe it: “a multicultural mosaic, where diversity serves as a defining character and source of pride for its residents, as well as a marketable asset.” The realities of Toronto soon led me to consciously let its public space actors guide me through the field of my research. The everyday life experiences of my research participants inspired me more than utopian aspirations about interculturalism and urged me to find theory relevant to my data instead of data relevant to the theory (Layder, 1996: 45). My fieldwork in Toronto therefore had an anthropological rather than phenomenological perspective. The stakeholders of public spaces I interviewed were invaluable in my investigation of the ethnographic present not as I observed it, but rather as they experienced and talked about it. The aim of my interviews and the focus group was not so much elucidating the truth about Toronto’s public spaces but rather understanding people’s experiences and views of them (Healey, 2006, Oakley and Hougaard, 2008). I conducted 68

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and analysed 19 open-ended interviews with community activists, professional designers and managers of public spaces, and social services providers. I asked my interviewees to relate their professional and personal experiences to the themes of multiculturalism, interculturalism, diversity and public space. I also conducted a focus group discussion with 13 young men and women of an average age of twenty-two. Rahma, a young Somali woman volunteer working at the youth centre The Spot in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood,1 recruited the participants and helped me conduct the focus group. I avoided asking the focus group participants about concepts such as multiculturalism, interculturalism and public space but instead asked them about their favourite public spaces and activities, and their ideal public spaces. As the discussion grew organically, additional issues were brought up, not least the issues of safety and police harassment.2 This paper is organized in three sections weaving testimonies of my research participants and relevant theory. First, I discuss the issue of multiculturalism and its theoretical and empirical limitations in Toronto. Multiculturalism in Toronto is still marked by a dominant culture and therefore the concept of interculturalism as a mechanism to engage in power inequalities is analysed. Secondly, I examine the issue of public space, and its different meanings for authorities and public space activists. The challenges of inclusivity in public spaces are presented through the insights of my research participants. The claim of a particular publicness to shopping malls by the youth of the focus group and thus the public-private dichotomy is also examined. Thirdly, the insights of research participants guide my subsequent formulation of intercultural public space. Analysing key attributes of intercultural public spaces, I discuss possibilities for civic conversations and appropriation through domestication. The conclusions raise some implications for users and planners of public spaces. Multicultural Toronto Multiculturalism as the recognition of cultural diversity is well anchored in Canadian society and nowhere better than in Toronto. Toronto has a very diverse population of 2,615,060 inhabitants (City of Toronto, 2011). With more than half of its population foreign-born, Toronto is considered one of the most multicultural cities in the world. According to the 2006 census, 47% of the population identify themselves as “visible minority.”3 While Toronto is indeed a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual, multiconfessional city of rich contrasts, it is also a city of socio-spatial polarization. In fact, a recent study by David Hulchanski (2010) argues that Toronto is a divided city. Hulchanski’s study, based on income change from 1970 to 2005, distinguishes three cities: a city of an increasingly prosperous, predominantly white, high income populaCJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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tion in the center; a shrinking city of both white and racialized middle class people in the outskirts; and an expanding city of the low income and racialized population in northeastern and northwestern neighborhoods of the city. This trend toward greater inequality has important socio-spatial implications for planning and services delivery, notably public spaces. While Boudreau, Keil and Young (2009: 221) write about Toronto as a ‘City of Hope,’ they nevertheless express their dissatisfaction with the politics of urban development because “while Torontonians make their own city, they don’t make it entirely of their own will.” How and who actually make the city is a very important question in multicultural Toronto. Within multiculturalism we are aware, respectful and conducive of difference. In addition, multiculturalism potentially “brings us into conflict at the finegrain of our spatial experience as well as in our broader concerns” (Healey, 2006: 201). However, the ways we decide what constitutes a problem, a conflict, or a possible solution requires that people are aware of and able to unravel and address power differentials. Uzma Shakir (2011), manager of equity and diversity for the City of Toronto claims that the multiculturalism discourse has suddenly shifted from struggling for inclusiveness and social justice across ethnicity and race to having “too much multiculturalism,” even though “power differentials” remain clearly evident. She explains the tenuous challenges of multiculturalism in the ‘City of Hope’ as follows: We have adopted multiculturalism with its negative aspects of fossilizing culture, ghettoizing communities, taking diversity to a point of separation as opposed to coming together. And then, because of conservatism, fiscal deficits and financial crisis being on the rise, the other side of this public discourse is suddenly coming out: We suddenly have too much multiculturalism even though [in my view] we haven’t even got to multiculturalism! When, among other questions, I asked the young participants of the JaneFinch focus group (2011) to talk about their ideal public space, they all spoke of places that would be inclusive and bring together different groups of people. For them, multiculturalism, and even more the bridging between ethnocultural groups—what I call interculturalism—was still something to look forward to. Although interculturalism advocates the building of bridges of communication between different groups in order for them to better understand and appreciate one another (Galanakis, 2008, 2009), it does so within the context of a rigorous democratic contestation. Drawing on the works of Henri Lefebvre, Sandercock and Attili (2009: 219-220) lay down the principles of intercultural 70

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theory: At the core of interculturalism as a daily political practice are two rights: the right to difference and the right to the city. The right to difference means recognizing the legitimacy and specific needs of minority or subaltern cultures. The right to the city is the right to presence, to occupy public space, and to participate as an equal in public affairs. The “right to difference” at the heart of interculturalism must be perpetually contested against other rights (for example, human rights)… The notion of the perpetual contestation of interculturalism implies an agonistic democratic politics that demands active citizenship... A sense of belonging in an intercultural society [is] based on… a shared commitment to political community. However, within a self-proclaimed multicultural society, terms and concepts are limited until concerted efforts push the political system to redistribute political and material resources. Interculturalism can be unfavourably perceived as a guise to postpone the political and material redistribution that Sandercock and Attili (2009) consider to be its pre-condition. Instead, it may be more fruitful to see political and material redistribution as a part of, or the result of, an ongoing struggle with plenty of uncertainty. Regardless of whether a society subscribes to a multicultural ethos emphasizing peaceful coexistence or an intercultural ethos favouring cross-cultural interactions, both normative models remain incomplete unless political redistribution is carried out (Siemiatycki, 2011). According to Siemiatycki (2011: 1226), Toronto’s multicultural policies have served to keep immigrants and minorities relatively content and therefore the “identity composition of the city’s governing municipal council” remains largely unchallenged. For Healey (2006: 67), a diverse society that recognizes itself as such has to face the challenge of dismantling dominant discourses that monopolise our public arenas and instead offer opportunities to widen our understandings about issues, problems and claims. Healey (2006) talks about intercultural communication as an antidote to cultural supremacist tendencies. As I understand it, redistributing power involves opening up our doors of perception to multiple meanings, value systems and identities. In Toronto, a dynamic public sphere exists wherein conservative, neoliberal, and progressive politics dealing with diversity are on agonistic terms. As Frisken and Wallace (2002: 264) indicate: Despite a history of immigration, planners in the Toronto region were not yet at a point where they saw ethno-cultural diversity CJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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as a relevant component of land use planning. Toronto was the only municipality that even came close to doing so, in its neighbourhood approach to planning, yet even there planners talked about the importance of an ethno-culturally neutral process. The biggest concern appeared to be that recognition of ethnicity and culture in specific planning situations would in some tangible way disadvantage another group. What this perspective did not acknowledge, however, were the assumptions found within the status quo. This challenge is vividly illustrated by social and youth worker Marlon Merraro (2011) who observes the systemic injustices produced by immigrants’ political under-representation: You want to make, save, or create spaces for people to participate in, but how do you create that when the current system doesn’t allow people to participate in the decision-making process? So, you build a park and you name it Jane Jacobs… And you’ll have Jane Jacobs walks in communities that don’t know who Jane Jacobs is—and who look at her and go, well she doesn’t look like me. But you don’t get people like Dudley Laws [civil rights activist] Park, and you don’t get Dudley Laws’ philosophy on anti-oppression… So what you get is recycled ideas from recycled people. Merraro’s view echoes Sandercock and Attili’s (2009) argument for intercultural public space as a place where people can meet and participate as equals. Moreover, after reviewing reports about the implementation of multicultural policies in Toronto (City of Toronto, 1987; Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, 1990; Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, 2005; Strategic Research and Statistics and Infometrica Ltd, 2005), Sandercock and Attili’s (2009: 216) critique of multiculturalism as an unfulfilled experiment given minorities’ struggles for recognition appear well founded. The Making of Public Space Public spaces are generally understood as spatial locations (such as parks, plazas, streets, etc.) conventionally provided by the state where individuals and groups can encounter and interact with each other (Banerjee, 2001). However, Mitchell (2003: 35) considers that “[w]hat makes a space public… is often not its preordained ‘publicness’. Rather, it is when, to fulfill a pressing need, some group or another takes space and through its actions makes it public.” Most of 72

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my research participants would agree with Mitchell; they all however perceived public space in ways that are indicative of the difficulties faced by a diverse society negotiating tensions between the status quo and inclusivity, and between publicness and privacy. According to Alex Shevchuk (2011), project manager at the landscape architecture unit of the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division of the City of Toronto, Frisken and Wallace’s (2002) and Merraro’s (2011) status quo effectively excludes certain ways different ethnocultural groups use public spaces. Similarly reflecting on planning and ethnocultural diversity, Karen Sun (2011), executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter, observes: In Toronto, we often talk about how we need better representation on these decision-making boards or committees or whatever, and often the question is, what difference does it make?… It’s very hard for me to say how those decisions will be different, because we’ve never experienced it… I think until we actually give an opportunity to have that conversation in the community, we’re just guessing. And those opportunities haven’t been realized yet, I think, in any substantial kind of way in Toronto. There are, however, some attempts to engage in a wider conversation. Cheryl MacDonald (2011), a policy officer for social development for the City of Toronto, works to facilitate socio-spatial inclusion. Reflecting on planning for diversity, she insists on the importance of being proactive (see figure 1). … when we’re doing proactive planning, we’ve given a fair bit of thought, in these projects, we’ve done something called a social development plan, which is looking at ways to bring people together, regardless of income, ethnicity, what have you, and a lot of that has to do with space and facilities. Noting the demise of state-sponsored public spaces as the result of the shrinking fiscal capacity of governments (Banerjee, 2001), Shevchuk (2011) sees local communities becoming more hands-on concerning public spaces in the future. Netami Stuart (2011), a park planner in Toronto, believes in planning public spaces to accommodate diversity, despite the frustrating budget limitations, and the best way to do it is to have planning done by a diversity of people. So to be as consultative as possible… I think it’s really about CJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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Figure 1: Drawing completed by Tanya Gerber, illustrating the results of a Section Strategic Planning session on May 6, 2010 by the Community Resources Section, Social Development Finance and Administration Division, City of Toronto (Photo by the author, 2011).

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dedicating enough resources to identifying voices and listening to them, and spending the time to understand how you should communicate with people who have different needs than you. Like Stuart, Shevchuk (2011) elaborates on how public communities must be allowed to participate in shaping urban space, especially at a time of prospective budget cuts: I don’t think our funding and our resources will get better. There are more people, more park spaces, and more expectations out there. So how do you bring in the resources to keep those parks up to a certain level? To me, the answer is local communities… I think people take an interest in their neighbourhoods, and they want to be hands-on. Planning for diversity in Toronto allows for active communities to push administrative and even legislative boundaries. However, artist/activist Paula Gonzalez (2011) and planner and STEPS founder Alexis Kane Speer (2011), referring to public consultation taking place in Toronto, caution against tokenism. They suggested that often authorities superficially seek diverse representation in participatory processes without addressing power differentials. Tokenism also refers to the commodification of culture and the “pacification of diversity” (Goonewardena and Kipfer, 2005: 670). Stuart (2011) acknowledged that her work often has to protect public space from private interests. Urban planner Berridge (2011) spoke of the same attitude and believes that “the strange belief that you can divide public and private is an odd little Canadian tic.” Stuart (2011) goes as far as to say that she considers the idea of ownership somehow unethical. Such a view relates to Wood and Gilbert’s argument (2005: 686) that public spaces are a matter of practice, not ownership. Likewise, for MacDonald (2011), public spaces are those that the public make their own. Similarly for Gonzalez (2011) and Merraro (2011), public space is respectively a matter of access and of inspiring feelings of belonging and safety. According to Sun (2011) “public space is space where anyone in the general public feels comfortable gathering, staying, or visiting without the need to buy anything, without fear of some security or law enforcement person asking them to move or leave. It’s a space where they’re welcome to loiter.” Mason (2011) echoes this perception and summarizes public space as the commons where “people decide that it is public” and perform “the right to be” even though this “right to be” is not shared by everyone equally.

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Hou (2010) discusses insurgent practices that constitute a very dynamic and effective public space activism, from Canada and the United States to Taiwan and Japan. In addition, Pask (2010: 230-231) discusses Toronto as a dynamic field for public space activism: Public space has now become a driver of social movements and activism in its own right—and a particularly strategic one at that. As an umbrella concept for previously disparate areas of activism, “public space activism” is, by default, forging strategic linkages, mobilizing people not otherwise connected with activism, and providing a more accessible and generalized language for advocacy and citizen engagement. Grassroots activism in the name of inclusivity has a great role to play for public spaces in Toronto. Jutta Mason, a public space and park activist, together with a group of people (Friends of Dufferin Grove Park), have been negotiating with the authorities in order to make Dufferin Grove Park more welcoming for various recreational activities and safer for different people to come together. The regeneration of Dufferin Grove Park has gained a good reputation and some Torontonians try to reproduce it elsewhere in the city. According to Mason (2011), initiatives like the one at Dufferin Grove Park are often met with resistance by the authorities who use laws and regulations as a weapon to stop people from making public space theirs. Mason (2011) explains: That’s what’s been used against this kind of project [the Dufferin Grove Park revitalization] repeatedly. It’s always that you’re breaking some kind of law… Recreation workers, more and more that’s all they do—look for ways that people might be breaking the rules, or might be thinking of breaking the rules, and make sure it doesn’t happen. Mason (2011) talks about an agonistic process between her and her peers on one side, and the public authorities such as the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department of the City of Toronto on the other. She says that “[parks ] are owned by the corporation of the City of Toronto, and if they want to tell you to get out of here, they have the right to do that.” However, she also defends people’s will by emphasizing that “in actual fact, parks are [public], because the citizens insist that they are.” When research participants identified particular public spaces in Toronto, they mostly referred to parks, with the exception of two squares: Nathan

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Philips Square (in front of Toronto City Hall) and Dundas Square (at the commercial intersection of Yonge and Dundas Streets). They all spoke of parks and what Banerjee (2001: 17) and Hracs and Massam (2008: 66-67) respectively call “third” and “incidental” spaces for civic engagement. Third spaces are community centres, religious spaces, health care centres and so on, while incidental spaces are shops and markets, sidewalks, subway stations and terminals, and the like. However, participants also spoke of places such as markets, ethnic shops, and restaurants. A few also mentioned shopping malls, community centres, and libraries as public spaces. Figure 2: Dufferin Grove Park on a sunny Friday (Photo by the author, 2011).

People’s retreat into commercial spaces is analysed in a substantial amount of literature and the phenomenon of “malling” has been talked about as a main reason for the withering of the public sphere and space (Kowinski, 1985; Crawford, 1992; Banerjee, 2001; Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht, 2009). Ramos (2011), executive director for research at the Hispanic Development Council in Toronto, sees the appropriation of shopping centres by youngsters as a part of a larger process where society encourages consumers rather than “people who want to change society.” However, Hajer and Reijndorp (2001: 97) suggest that malls can be a functioning part of the public domain if their monofunctionalism (consumption) is reconsidered.

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When I asked the young participants of the focus group about the spaces they like to “hang out” in public, they all spoke of shopping malls (their favourite spaces being the Eaton Centre, Yorkdale, and the Jane-Finch mall). What attracted them to shopping malls is that they can see and be seen by others, meet their friends, and encounter strangers in a relatively safe environment.4 The focus group extensively and animatedly discussed the lack of safety in their neighborhood, at their schools, and in outdoor public spaces where shootings had occurred and unsuspecting people had been killed in crossfire. Some participants of the focus group (2011) claimed that “if you don’t know certain people, you can’t go certain places around [Jane and Finch],” or “nowadays, people don’t really go outside, because there are shootings,” and “police is annoying.” When participants of the focus group (2011) described their ideal public spaces, they again referred to malls, speaking of “a home away from home”, “where everyone can feel comfortable”, “a wonderland” where “everybody can just come there and enjoy themselves and not have to worry about nothing.” For one of the participants, an ideal public space would be a multifunctional mall: I picture a mall where you see different events going on, you see a section of youths dancing, a section of youths singing, or, just doing their own thing. Or, I would love to see, outside Jane and Finch Mall, a skating rink where you’ll see the youths just skating around… and well-trained security would do their job and not follow you around. We can either disregard the retreat to the malls by many of our young people, or scrutinize the reasons for this phenomenon and try understanding what it is that youths find in these commercial spaces. The allure of malls to my focus group participants can have many explanations. All of my interviewees who provided social and youth services in the Jane-Finch area and elsewhere in Toronto had very clear ideas about public space and racialized youth. For Byron Gray (2011), youth programs manager at The Spot youth centre, where the focus group took place: Jane-Finch [area] on the whole lacks safe space where you have the freedom to do what you feel. We have spaces within the community, which are city-funded, we have malls, which are specific for shopping, but the loitering piece you’re not allowed to do. Or, if you’re in a Parks and Recreation space… you have to be part of a recreational activity, but you can’t just be there and 78

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talk with your friends if you’d like because then you’re loitering. Which they feel breeds idle time—and idle time brings violence or mischief. Karen Sun (2011) made a more general observation regarding the importance of malls: We don’t have a lot of good public spaces, in my opinion. We have some parks, especially in the downtown but the parks are quite small. Parks are a little bit bigger in the suburbs, but I don’t feel that they’re as well used. So there’s something about those spaces that is not as inviting. … Even the placement of their benches is sometimes… you wonder why the bench was placed there. But I think the other thing with Toronto is because of our climate ... indoor public spaces become very important… There are community centres and there are libraries, but a lot of that space is programmed, so there’s not a lot of space for people to just show up and sit around and chat, or whatever. So, in the suburbs, in particular, the malls have become this sort of quasi-public space, even though it is not publicly owned. Could Toronto’s shopping malls also function as part of the public domain where intercultural communication could be cultivated and social consciousness mobilized? While there is no recipe for public spaces to bring together different people and enhance communities, some research participants indicated that places are in demand for people to gather and interact in, safely but without excessive surveillance and regulation. According to Hou (2010) and Zhuang and Hernandez (2009), market places gain merit as commercial spaces providing opportunities for everyday encounters along with the spectacle of the funfair. Wood and Landry (2008: 40) claim that “[i]n most societies, trade has throughout history been the primary motivation for exploration and consequently encountering strangers and difference.” Therefore places for civic conversation can indeed include market places as everyday spaces of interactions. Intercultural Public Spaces Interculturalism involves “allowing different cultures to express themselves in the same space” (Sun, 2011). For Sun (2011), interculturalism is “hopefully, about people learning about each other’s cultures and respecting them, adopting or adapting parts of other people’s cultures or activities [as] part of learning to live together.” Artist activist Gonzalez (2011) conceived interculturalism CJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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as a better version of multiculturalism and emphasized that interaction and communication make the difference. Gonzalez (2011) believed that interculturalism happens in a variety of spaces such as schools, shops and markets. … in the area I live in, where it’s predominantly African, and South American, and Italian and Portuguese communities, you could go into one store where I buy my cilantro and salsa and the owners of the store are Chinese-Peruvian! So they speak Spanish, they speak Cantonese, and they speak English! And they carry Latin American products! And many Portuguese, Italian, Canadian, African, and Latin American people go there and buy it. Similarly, Dave Harvey (2011), founder of Park People, understands interculturalism as creating interconnections between different groups or a cross-cultural process that we must constantly adjust to the social reality on the ground. For Harvey, intercultural public spaces are places like parks or transit. Parks are, in my opinion, aside from public transit, the most likely area in the city of Toronto for that intercultural mixing. In terms of meeting other people from the city that you might not meet otherwise, and often actively meeting them… where you’ve got to negotiate... It’s a wonderful mixing opportunity. While discussing public spaces for people with diverse ethnocultural backgrounds a few of my participants (Mason 2011, Kane-Speer 2011, Harvey 2011) mentioned a small park in Thorncliffe Park in northeast Toronto. With a predominant immigrant population, immigrant women of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee (2011) are partly responsible for “developing and implementing public space enhancement projects in Thorncliffe Park.” According to Kane Speer (2011): In Thorncliffe Park… people live in high-rise towers and there’s very little… public space in the sense of spaces you would want to hang out and gather in. But they do have a small park [RV Burgess park]… Women were feeling quite isolated, having recently come to Canada. They didn’t know a lot of people. They had these skills to make these things, but they had no opportunity to bring them out. So this group of women informally just started having a bazaar, which was common in their own culture… [and] they started inviting local musicians… they got a tandoori oven and started barbecuing… So they transformed this really small space into a vibrant, lively place…

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I participated in an event at the RV Burgess Park in May 2011 (figure 3). There were a few people at the beginning but as more food was prepared, more people approached the central piece of the event, the cooking fire. Women wearing saris, abayas, and hijabs ran this public food event in the small park. Figure 3: RV Burgess Park in Thorncliffe Park, Toronto (Photo by the author, 2011).

A woman approached the event with her pregnant friend and a couple of children. At first they seemed shy but after some time they were in the middle of the crowd. It was then that someone from the Committee approached them and soon after it was announced that the woman had arrived from Afghanistan only two days earlier, her name uttered for us all to hear. A big smile appeared on her face, as her presence in the neighbourhood was acknowledged so soon after her arrival. Public Space for Civic Conversation The RV Burgess Park event supported Wood and Gilbert’s (2005: 685) arguments that “the negotiation of multiple cultural identities (between and amongst ‘different’ and dominant groups) occurs in public spaces and institutions” and that “[t]o be relevant, a multiculturalism policy needs to be grounded in concrete spaces that not only recommend ways of acting and being, but offer a place where people can engage in debates and discussions and where alternative posCJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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sibilities for political action can emerge.” Such are the spaces that Hracs and Massam (2008: 74) talk about regarding civic conversations as “locations for citizens to gather and feel secure and able to share views about the world, and their wants and needs... Such conversations take place at school, work, cultural events, ‘third spaces’ or increasingly via virtual forums.” These are also the kind of spaces that Wood and Landry (2008: 260) consider to be intercultural i.e., “spaces of day-to-day exchange.” The design and management of public spaces to accommodate civic conversations is a key normative process for intercultural communication to flourish. Martin and Nakayama (2007: 34-35) explain that in a diverse society with different ethnocultural groups, universalist attitudes strive for a common baseline of values, rights and responsibilities, but relativist approaches advocate that such a baseline cannot exist without fuelling group rivalry and the supremacy of the dominant or majority group over others. Therefore, conversation is central and signifies more than verbal exchange; it includes performative attributes that potentially surpass linguistic acrobatics that often hinder immigrants’ opportunities for civic participation (Oikarinen-Jabai and Galanakis, 2007). Banerjee (2001: 19, 21) rightly suggests that planners who shape public space should “focus on the concept of public life rather than public space”, so to “respond to the changing demands of increasing diversity of the urban population.” Focusing on public life rather than on public space is sensible in cities with increasing diversity such as Toronto. It is useful to look into the various perceptions of publicness and privacy that people of different ethnocultural backgrounds have and according to which they lead their lives, and build and negotiate their identities and value systems. In doing so we probably come across practices in and uses of public spaces that are contradictory to each other as well as to traditional ideas regarding ‘publicness.’ In a society that identifies itself as multicultural, intercultural civic conversations about all matters of public life or what Young (2002) calls living together in difference are important. One of the challenges is that we need to be open to reconfigure deeply rooted culture-dependent beliefs about what should be public and overt and what should remain private and covert. Herzfeld (2009) contends that publicness and privacy are inextricably linked and that privacy requires performance in public in order to be recognized and discussed. Herzfeld states (2009: 145-146): Both socially and architectonically, secrecy and privacy, like justice, must be seen to be done; and this paradox demands appropriate public spaces organized to give dramatic weight to the simulacrum of privacy that people wish to enact… Even the growing privatization of public space can only be a social act, and, 82

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as such, is always potentially open to contestation… privatization itself is a very public matter. The conditions of publicness and privacy are variably interdependent according to how society organizes them. However, in order for privacy to have significance, it must “be seen” and “be done” in public spaces. Thus, Herzfeld (2009) argues that even the privatization of public space is a very public matter. Privacy turns more abstract the more a society identifies itself as diverse. This social and ideological phenomenon makes privacy as well as ‘publicness’ ambiguous. However, with ambiguity there also comes more space for negotiation. Privatization by commercialization is often perceived as a matter of private interests undermining public interests, a form of ‘fraud’ at the expense of the public at large. However, privatization of public space in the name of public life rather than sole corporate profit is a social act that expresses certain aspirations that need to be discussed and not dismissed, even if it means reviewing laws, policies and norms that permeate our lives and dictate what should be public and private. The omnidirectional process of privacy corrupting publicness is, however, a social construction and not an unbreakable fixity. Publicness could be seen as a condition, sphere and space (with architectonics) that accommodate open-endedness, playfulness, and innovation in unexpected ways (see Manu, 2007). There is a certain kind of privatization that takes place whenever some people make a space public with their actions that has little or no relation to commercialization. This kind of privatization via appropriations of public space I call domestication. Sharon Zukin (1995: xiv) referring to the regeneration of Bryant Park in New York ambiguously mentions the term “domestication by cappuccino”. I, on the other hand, concentrate on its positive potential and suggest that the domestication of public space refers to the transference of domestic attributes to public space as means to tame and make it more relevant to our lives. I argue that it often occurs when, as a democratic reaction to topdown policies, people take over public spaces and render them relevant to their own communities and cultures. Domestication is contestable when it is topdown and connected with corporate interests capitalizing on cosy homeyness blurring the boundaries between public and private or civic and commercial. Domestication is more welcome as a healthy democratic reaction to top-down policies (see Hou, 2010; Kaakinen, 2011; Galanakis, 2012). Conclusion Public space and its potential as space for intercultural communication in multicultural Toronto is neither finite nor straightforward. Nor is Toronto’s multiculturalism incontestable; the polarization and marginalization docuCJUR 22:1 Summer 2013

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mented in the city can be seen as a result of practices that (mis)interpret multicultural policies, including the planning and management of public space. Regardless of whether a society subscribes to a multicultural or intercultural ethos, both normative models remain incomplete unless political redistribution is negotiated. For this to occur, public spaces for civic conversation are important for citizens to gather, feel secure, and be able to share their views, desires and needs (Hracs and Massam, 2008). Facilitating civic conversation among different people in public space requires time-consuming processes of interaction and building trust. In public space where different groups of immigrants and residents forge and negotiate their identities and histories, building trust is essential in healing past traumas and conflicts. Therein lies the importance of the interpersonal in the intercultural. There is not one recipe for intercultural public spaces to bring together different people and enhance communities. However, focus group participants indicated that public spaces are in demand for people to gather in and interact in relative safety, but not be overly policed. Increasingly grassroots actors actively seek to organize initiatives dealing with urban public space. The examples of Dufferin Grove Park and Thorncliffe Park demonstrate that public spaces are places “that people make their own” in an agonistic relationship with public authorities. In this context the privatization or domestication of public space is a social act to be discussed and not dismissed, especially because this would mean reviewing laws, policies and norms that dictate what is or should be public and/or private. I call the appropriation by domestication of public space the transference of domestic attributes to public space and I argue that it often occurs when, as a healthy democratic reaction to top-down policies, people take over public spaces and render them relevant to their own communities and cultures. The intercultural potential that domestication brings about grows while we negotiate our identities and public spaces, and while cross-cultural interpersonal relations flourish.5 Planning public space for diversity requires authorities to be intentional and proactive, and to allow the public to participate in the design, management, and maintenance of these spaces. In a multicultural society, the potential for conflict increases in proportion to the richness that diversity brings along. Yet, in an intercultural perspective, recognizing the richness diversity brings along implies that different worldviews inform as well as contest each other, being part of a public sphere where the dominant discourse and perceptions of public and private spaces are perpetually challenged. In increasingly diverse cities such as Toronto, focusing on public life rather than on public space allows for spaces as well as identities and value systems to be negotiated according to the mundane workings of everyday lives and the realization that despite cultural differences we share common grounds that shape our present and future. 84

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Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to all my research participants in Toronto for the trust the bestowed upon me. They gave me reasons and strength to write this article. I am grateful to the reviewers for their feedback that improved considerably this article. Finally I would like to thank the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University for their hospitality, Liette Gilbert for her support and encouragement, and the Academy of Finland (Decision No. 137954) for the financial support that made my research project possible. Notes 1

The Jane-Finch neighbourhood is in Northwest Toronto and it is one of 13 areas identified by the City of Toronto as priority areas in need of physical and social redevelopment (City of Toronto, 2006a). Jane-Finch is one of the most stigmatized neighbourhoods in Toronto (MacNevin, 2011). 2 Interviews and focus group discussion were on average an hour long and were digitally recorded, transcribed and manually analysed. The Ethics Committee of York University (decision: 2011-124) approved my research, and all participants read and signed written consent forms. The nineteen research participants were given the choice of anonymity (no participant chose anonymity), while all the participants in the focus group are to remain anonymous. After the end of my postdoctoral research in 2013, I will submit the transcripts of my interviews and the focus group discussion to the Finnish Social Science Data Archive of Tampere University. 3 Visible minorities are persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are nonCaucasian in race or non-white in colour. 4 On June 2, 2012, there was a fatal shooting at Eaton Centre, leaving two dead and 5 injured. The alleged 23-yr old shooter was charged with one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder (The Toronto Star, 2012). Because of securitization shopping malls are often perceived as safe. The shooting at Eaton Centre demonstrates differently. 5 I refer to the concept of human flourishing. According to Healey (2003: 60) human flourishing “… expresses a concern for ourselves and our fellow citizens, that we should all flourish, limited only by respect for each other’s right to flourish and by local and global considerations of sustainability.”

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