An exhibition exploring how individual stories in Parkdale can preserve community identity amid gentrification.
Inspired by the resilient spirit of Toronto’s Parkdale neighborhood, this project explores how personal narratives can be preserved within (and in defiance of) collective change. It began as a proposal for a story-sharing kiosk, and through design critiques with community leaders, transformed into an investigation of oral history and speculative futures.
Rather than inserting a new structure onto our site, we created four universes: each a reimagined Parkdale shaped by a character living through a distinct moment in the community's timeline. These characters archive their stories through drawings, recordings, and artifacts, reflecting not just their environments but the systems reshaping them.
The goal of our installation was to investigate how the consequences of gentrification can lead to the removal of a community and the introduction of a new culture, causing tensions and altering the atmosphere of an entire neighborhood. In this way, we hope to stretch Parkdale's history across past, present, and imagined futures. In the face of gentrification and cultural erasure, we ask: how can storytelling be an act of resistance? Of remembrance? Of repair?
Location | Parkdale, Toronto |
Project Type | Academic |
Partners | Alejandra Chauca, Dipra Shetty, Andrew Chun-An Wei |
Universe 1: Jordan Riaz
Jordan is a protestor at a rally for the Parkdale Eviction Resistance Network in the XO Condos site. She is speaking to the resistance crowd to assure them that resistance and mobilization and togetherness is what preserves a community, despite what the condo residents are trying to erase from them. She warns the crowd that the police will favour the residents over the protestors, so they should prepare for possible arrest or retaliation and the use of unjust force.
Jordan's kiosk holds a wallet with her ID, bus tickets, a to-do list in case of arrest, a "Know Your Rights" card, and bandaids. The kiosk audio plays a speech she is giving at the rally, spoken through a megaphone, with cheers around her. The plan perspective drawings show the disconnect between new dwellers of Parkdale, brought forth due to ongoing gentrification, and the locals fighting to preserve their homes.
Stories as resistence
By narrating our speculative designs, we explore spaces where memory isn’t static, but fluid; a landscape where stories preserve identity and inspire collective resilience.
