“It’s a difficult situation: We have an affordable housing crisis in the city right now, and the priority isn’t on social justice; it’s about this aesthetic economy.”
Deborah Leslie, a geographer professor at U of T, has studied the city’s transformation as manufacturing gave way to industries in line with the “creative city” agenda. Artists, she fears, end up as a symbolic salve to nefarious process. “While Artscape is doing important work, I think it is often being used to paper over and gather support for broader processes of gentrification and real estate development in the city,”
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2013/11/23/artscape_youngplace_school_is_now_in_session.html