Urban renewal has displaced Black communities in Canada in the past. Can getting involved early in the planning stop it from happening again?

Urban renewal has impacted Black people in Canada — often negatively, history shows — and a group of experts on the topic sat down recently to come up with ways to prevent its effects.

Earlier this month, the Urban Land Institute Toronto (ULI) held a webinar exploring the issue of redressing the displacement of Black people and their communities across Canada.

The group of Canadian Black women, including an entrepreneur, an architect, a lawyer and a real estate developer, talked about the razing in the late 1960s and early 1970s of the Black neighbourhood in Halifax called Africville and current efforts to reclaim Hogan’s Alley, an ethnically diverse and largely Black populated section of Vancouver that was demolished around 1970.

The women also addressed the precarious future of neighbourhoods in Toronto that have a sizable Black presence — Bathurst and Bloor, and Eglinton Avenue West.

One of the themes to emerge from the discussion was a call for Black people to engage early on with designers, planners, builders, landowners, consultants and others when it comes to decision making concerning development projects that impact Black communities.

“Sometimes community groups are involved once the decisions have already been made. It’s not necessarily community involvement but rather (builders, planners, etc.) just informing them of what is happening,” Toronto architect Camille Mitchell, the moderator of the webinar, said in an interview after the ULI event.

“Outreach is important. It needs to be about having people at the table making decisions,” Mitchell added.

She went on to say that landowners and developers also have a responsibility to carefully consider how their projects might impact existing communities.

“Developers and planners have an onus to look at what’s already there and what is thriving in these communities and how can they bolster those things,” Mitchell said.

Another panel member, Itah Sadu, an entrepreneur and co-owner of A Different Booklist, a Toronto bookstore specializing in books about Black people and the African diaspora, talked about her experiences fighting to ensure her business remained in the Bathurst and Bloor location.

It’s believed there are ties in the area to the Underground Railroad. Albert Jackson, the first Black postman in Toronto, owned property in the neighbourhood. (His widow and children went on to own many houses in the area.)

There is still a Black presence there and Sadu wanted to ensure she remained part of that. Her store has been in the community for more than 22 years and has served as a hub and meeting place for people with Black and Caribbean roots.

The southwest corner of Bathurst and Bloor, where Honest Ed’s once stood, is being redeveloped as part of the new Mirvish Village project, which will be entirely rental apartments, 20 per cent of them subsidized.

Through a land swap that Mike Layton, the councillor for the area, played a key role in helping to formulate, space is to be set aside for A Different Booklist Cultural Centre, which will include the bookstore.

The plan is for the developer Westbank to provide the space and the city to in turn lease it to the cultural centre. The details are still being negotiated.

Sadu said the developer, Layton and the former ward councillor Joe Cressy were open to early engagement and discussion about the future of the cultural centre.

“Layton and Cressy encouraged people to be part of the consultation process taking place with the developer and the community. They had a different vision — to ensure people who are marginalized were included. These things take political will — political will determines the policy and the rules,” she said.

“We approached Layton and Cressy and said we are desirous to stay in the neighbourhood. They made a commitment to help make that possible. The developer came around to introduce themselves and we were intentional about what our vision was,” Sadu said.

“It was (Westbank) reaching out us and saying, ‘This is who we are, this is our vision, does it align with your vision?’”

In Vancouver, the Hogan’s Alley Society, a non-profit consisting of activists, business leaders, community groups and others, is trying to reclaim a laneway and surrounding area that was once home to a large number of Black residents. There was a church, Black businesses and lodging for Black people.

The area, considered home to Vancouver’s first Black neighbourhood, was destroyed in 1970 to make way for an overpass. Black people who lived there were dispersed.

Today, the site includes one modular housing building, a roadway, sidewalk and green space.

The Hogan’s Alley Society wants to reclaim the area and have it owned and operated by a non-profit as a land trust. The land is currently owned by the city of Vancouver, and the Hogan’s Alley Society has been working with the city toward a memorandum of understanding that would help pave the way for the land trust project.

In June, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) admitted it played a role in the forced resettlement of Black people who lived in Hogan’s Alley and Africville in Nova Scotia.

The CMHC pledged to atone for the wrongdoing.

In a tweet this month, CMHC said “while Hogan’s Alley was home to many Black residents and businesses, a thriving community soon became a displaced one in 1970. Today we are working with the (Hogan’s Alley Society) to rebuild Vancouver’s Black Community.”

In an interview, another participant in the webinar about displacement, Stephanie Allen, a real estate developer and board member of the society, said a key goal of the land trust is to create affordable housing.

“We’ve said (to the city of Vancouver), give us that block and we will turn it into a community land trust and it will be stewarded by the Black community. It won’t be Black-only housing, but we will use that asset to prioritize vulnerable people in our community — the homeless, seniors — and have a mixed-income approach to housing that creates an inclusive community. On the site we could have 450 to 500 rental apartments or co-ops,” Allen said.

She went on to say that the loss of Hogan’s Alley followed a similar pattern of other lost Black communities in the U.S. and Canada throughout history.

It all starts with a process of divestment, she explained. In certain areas of cities the roads aren’t taken care of; garbage isn’t picked up in the same way; the infrastructure isn’t well maintained.

“Those areas were really left to fall into disrepair, left to become blighted communities. Then the areas became targets because wealthy people say they don’t want this ugliness in their urban core.

“They want their urban cores to be commercial districts where people shop and use can be made of that real estate. Then, once it’s neglected to that point, the community becomes a target for removal.

“That’s a process that happened throughout North America,” Allen said.