New Recording 36

Regent Park was originally built to house new immigrants in Canada after World War II. However, the design of the community had some flaws, such as cutting off streets and lacking essential amenities like banks and grocery stores. Over time, the buildings deteriorated and were replaced with mixed-income housing, resulting in an increase in overall income and the addition of banks, restaurants, and grocery stores. The community also adapted to the needs of its residents, such as providing women-only swimming areas for devout Muslim women. Downview Secondary School and the surrounding neighborhood also serve as a settlement community. We just walked past the old Regent Park, what it looked like. All this housing was built for a very specific purpose, which was to house new immigrants as they settled into Canada. So what would happen is after the Second World War, when there were all kinds of people coming to Canada, they decided that we needed to have a settlement community where we could get people set up, get their papers, get them their first jobs, etc., etc., and then they would move on to other parts of the city. So that's what a community would be looking like. When they designed it, they had a certain kind of head space they wanted. They wanted to make it look like a park. And that was a brilliant idea, but it didn't work. Because what they also did... Can you hear me? No? Rene, I'm talking. You need to listen. Can you hear me? One of the things that they did is that they cut off the streets. You couldn't drive through. It was hard to walk. You could walk through, but it was bad. And it ended up becoming a bit of a place where there was a lot of crime because it was hard for the police to monitor and apprehend people, because people could hide in all kinds of places. So another thing happened is that they realized that because everybody was of the same socioeconomic class, businesses didn't want to be here because there wasn't enough of it. Most people were leading very marginalized, very low-income lives. And so there were no banks. There were no grocery stores. Has anybody here ever heard the phrase food desert? There are neighborhoods where you cannot buy food. You have to leave the neighborhood to go get food. That area was a food desert. You notice on the way in that all kinds of people are growing their own vegetables. And that's it. But what happened was they decided that all these buildings were falling apart because they were 70 years old. And so what they did is they started building these kinds of buildings. These are newer, past 10 years. And they're mixed incomes. So you have people who have subsidized housing. You have people who play full rent. You have people who own condos. All mixed up. As a result, the overall income of the whole neighborhood has increased, and therefore now you have banks. Now you have restaurants. Now you have grocery stores because it makes economic sense to be here. As a result, this whole neighborhood has been transformed and is far more vibrant, I think, than it was way before. This is an interesting facility here. It's an aquatic center and a community center. You'll notice that they have blinds up on the windows. Why? Because they thought, you know what, we're going to show off. When they built this, they said, we're going to show off the pool, make sure people can see in, and all that kind of stuff. But many of the people who live in this are devout Muslims. And what would happen is the women would come and they would say, there's no way I'm going swimming in that swimming pool because everybody is Muslim. But now they have women-only towers for swimming, and they put up the blinds so that they have the privacy that they need so that they can use the facility. So it's part of their religion. So this is a very modern building. Actually, the designers did not see it all the way through. They had to adapt once the community saw it. So it's always about this small little piece of the nation, right? So this, too, is part of Islam. What's interesting about Downview is, Downview is where Downview Secondary School and the neighborhood right around it is another settlement community, right? A number of the buildings are like that.