Writing in late November, police have dismantled another encampment in a public park (following a fire) leaving houseless individuals with nowhere to go and their belongings destroyed. The generosity of neighbours, co-workers, and the many institutions and organizations that assist those in need cannot substitute for jobs, opportunities and housing. There is no doubt that Hamilton is a place where neighbours help one another, but is Hamilton unique that way? I’m not sure. If I have any reservations about the book, it’s that I think Dale romanticizes the characterization of Hamilton as a shirt-off-your-back city. In Hamilton though, Dale sees positive new developments in LRT and grassroots action even if he is less confident in the “magic ingredient” of political will. Putnam’s “ Bowling Alone” which details the decline of “ social capital” among American workers. He presents the loss of the steel industry and the large union workforce that went with it in the same vein as Robert D. Rather, he takes his readers for a journey through Hamilton’s industrial past to show how businesses and unions once offered support and aid to those who fell on hard times. What Dale demonstrates is that the Creative Class caters to a more homogenous professional workforce in high-tech and finance (who may or may not be tolerant) and displaces poorer residents from their homes, workers and artists alike.ĭale doesn’t really answer the central question of art and artists preceding gentrification. He maintains that by attracting creatives, cities also attract investment. Published in 2002, “The Rise of the Creative Class” argues that cities that embrace talent, tolerance, and technology are economically successful. The author comes across as sympathetic to artists and the small business owners who took risks to rejuvenate James Street North. He contrasts the local artist, often working and living in the same conditions as those displaced by gentrification, with Richard Florida’s Creative Class. Books in Westdale and at Epic Books on Locke Street. While reading this book, downtown tenants are fighting a renoviction that activists say target “Black people and racialized people”. None of the issues Dale explores are settled.Īvailable at City and City Books on Ottawa Street North, at King W. The topics in Shift Change - Pride, racism, vandalism, LRT, the housing crisis, the Locke Street riot - are all recent, ongoing and with raw nerves often exposed, especially around housing. Hamilton readers will likely recognize all or most of the interview subjects and should have some strong opinions on the matters under discussion. He talks to anarchists, artists, activists, property owners, city planners, concert promoters and affordable housing developers. That’s the question explored by Stephen Dale and his book, “SHIFT CHANGE: SCENES FROM POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.” He takes a look back at Hamilton’s rise and decline as an industrial city, but his main focus is Hamilton’s post-industrial re-emergence as a cultural hub for art, music and food.Īn engaging writer, Dale brings together divergent, even diametrically opposing, voices through a series of interviews with people engaged in shaping Hamilton’s next chapter. Do artists and their art contribute to the displacement of poor and working-class Hamiltonians?
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