The city of Torontos logo, that screams that it was made in the 90s, is of its city hall, which screams it was made in the 60s. The story told by the city was that they cleared mostly vacant, low value land to built the city hall and the square that surrounds it. The actual story is that they bulldozed Chinatown.
After being displaced once, a decade later the city threatened to demolish chinatown to widen roads and force displacement once again. This time the community fought it, and the community won.
We follow the legacy of communities that have fought to preserve where they live and what is theirs. We see now the Chinatowns that didn't have this: London's Chinatown is no longer a town but a tourist attraction, it's mostly owned by one real estate developer that charges incredibly high fees.
It's weird that I'm over halfway there! After having a mini holiday in Montreal I got back to work and supplemented the database with other city data like short term rental registrations and building permits. After doing a preliminary presentation on it (which went well!) I'm going to spend the rest of my time here working out a community engagement plan to ensure that the community has access to the data and can also build up the database from the grassroots perspectives that we need to actually understand what's going on in the area.
Everything seems to be in hand for these last two weeks!