2010: Regent Park

By Lianna Shen
September 19, 2007

Regent Park is home to Canada’s very first housing project. In the 1930’s, Cabbagetown was considered to be one of Toronto’s slummiest areas, and the local government decided to do something about it. Regent Park was built, and is now home to over 10,000 people of low-income status.

Today Regent Park is still a low-income neighbourhood with problems, and there’s a lot of talk about cleaning it up. But how do you make things better in a place that’s supposed to have the worst?

People live in this neighbourhood because they have no money to live anywhere else. And when there is little money, situations are desperate, and people get depressed. Some steal, sell drugs and take drugs, not because they are necessarily bad people, but because they want money to stay alive and chemicals for the brain to numb the pain.

Cleaning up Regent Park means taking down crime. It means creating an environment that is safe for children to play outside, and making sure there are no addicts stumbling along the sidewalks.

But as long as there are people who don’t have enough money, there will be people who will continue doing anything to have enough money. So cleaning up Regent Park really isn’t a matter of gardening, painting fences and giving out free food. It has to be bigger than that.

How do you take the poor out of an area that was built to be poor? Well, you turn it into something else completely...

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Regent Park: The Utopia – Press Release!

January 2, 2010

The Toronto municipal government has decided to clean up Regent Park once and for all. On New Years’ Day, the first “utopic compound” came to be, and mayor David Miller closed the gates with a golden key to the newly renovated Regent Park community.

Within its handsome brick and mortar walls, this productive community is now home to over 10,000 resident cooperatives, who live and work together in harmony. There are weekly deliveries of food and supplies to the loading dock on the South side of the community compound, and every family gets enough food to survive happily. The compound employs everyone who is employable. Some are maintenance workers, and others are cooks. There are even day-care centres for the children who are not yet old enough to attend school. The day-care workers are also Regent Park residents.

Those who are school age board one of three buses on school days. One bus goes to the nearby elementary school, another to the middle school, and the last to the high school. After school there are two rounds of buses; one for those who would like to return to Regent Park right after the bell, and another at 5 p.m. for those who are enrolled in after school activities.

There are no weapons in Regent Park because there are metal detectors installed at the gates. There are no drugs, because there are dogs. Entering through “the park gate” is like going through security at the airport. The security guards are from the Toronto Police Force. Since the containment of Regent Park, the decrease in crime has allowed officers to be employed in this way. They are very happy about the change.

The cost of maintaining Utopic Regent Park is a bit more than the cost of the former, uncontained community. However, this amount is minute in comparison to the benefits of an overall decreased crime rate for Toronto. After two more utopic compounds are completed (estimated time of completion is around six years), Toronto will officially be the world’s safest city to live.

Every night at midnight, the gates are sealed again until the early hours of the morning. This is done to simply reduce crime – it has been shown that the twilight hours are most notorious for shootings and drug deals.

There are still a few kinks to work through, but overall, representatives of Project Regent Park: The Utopia say the improvements are astounding. The brick walls have done much to muffle unruly noise and residents of neighbouring communities no longer fear the streets at night. Residents of Regent Park are also very happy.

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"Utopia" is a compound of the Greek syllable “ou” which means "no", and “topos”, meaning place. But the homonymous prefix “eu”, means "good," so it implies that this "good place" may not be a real place at all.

For more “real” redevelopment information:
http://www.regentparkplan.ca/architecture.htm