Reflection Assignment
Understanding the Planning Process has helped me to recognize my personal biases towards social housing and homelessness in Toronto. Personally, I never thought I had biases in regards to either of the above subjects. But, since we had covered Regent Park and social housing issues in a few of our classes, I was able to look into the issue from a different vantage point; from the view of a student planner. It was overwhelming to see the tremendous physical changes made to Regent Park. The concept was great, but, I couldn’t imagine market housing owners having to live with former social housing residents. In my mind, I thought the crime rate would decrease for sure since after the revitalization. Unfortunately, my assumptions were incorrect. It seemed as though I heard Regent Park mentioned numerous times in the news. While reading the newspaper on September …show more content…
I recognized that certain issues surrounding the homeless also seemed to show up. So, although I have compassion for the homeless population, I noticed how easily I could allow my biases to infiltrate my professional career. According to (Chellew, 2017) the city of Toronto uses defensive urban design as a means of crime prevention and as a way to protect property. With this in mind, one way to design defensively is by providing benches with centre armrests thereby discouraging loitering for an extended time. Also, another method used according to (Chellew) is using video surveillance in areas where authorities feel participants need to be watched. While reading, I thought this was a perfect solution to prevent the homeless from congregating in high-trafficked areas of the city. However, (Chellew) also stated that instead of using design modifications to restrict individuals from certain areas we should provide solutions for those who suffer from issues such as, homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health
Understanding the Planning Process has helped me to recognize my personal biases towards social housing and homelessness in Toronto. Personally, I never thought I had biases in regards to either of the above subjects. But, since we had covered Regent Park and social housing issues in a few of our classes, I was able to look into the issue from a different vantage point; from the view of a student planner. It was overwhelming to see the tremendous physical changes made to Regent Park. The concept was great, but, I couldn’t imagine market housing owners having to live with former social housing residents. In my mind, I thought the crime rate would decrease for sure since after the revitalization. Unfortunately, my assumptions were incorrect. It seemed as though I heard Regent Park mentioned numerous times in the news. While reading the newspaper on September …show more content…
I recognized that certain issues surrounding the homeless also seemed to show up. So, although I have compassion for the homeless population, I noticed how easily I could allow my biases to infiltrate my professional career. According to (Chellew, 2017) the city of Toronto uses defensive urban design as a means of crime prevention and as a way to protect property. With this in mind, one way to design defensively is by providing benches with centre armrests thereby discouraging loitering for an extended time. Also, another method used according to (Chellew) is using video surveillance in areas where authorities feel participants need to be watched. While reading, I thought this was a perfect solution to prevent the homeless from congregating in high-trafficked areas of the city. However, (Chellew) also stated that instead of using design modifications to restrict individuals from certain areas we should provide solutions for those who suffer from issues such as, homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health