Youth Newcomer Settlement in TO2015 Shadow Host Communities

As the recent host of the 2015 Pan/Parapan American event (TO2015), Toronto is an opportune site to interrogate dominant ideologies underpinning event-led urban (re)development as well as the lived impact of event construction on local communities. This paper will explore the extent to which TO2015 impacted the settlement experiences of (newcomer) youth in a particular neighborhood within Toronto (St. James Town). Situated in the southeast corner of the downtown core, this multicultural enclave is a “shadow host” on the fringe of communities more popularly celebrated in event rhetoric. Spatially, St. James Town is located directly north of the 2015 Pan/Parapan American Village on the outer edge of the Sherbourne corridor, which is in the midst of sport-prompted gentrification. We draw on qualitative data—in particular a series of semi-structured interviews with young people living in St. James Town—to document the extent to which sport/recreation is interwoven within urban imaginaries of (re)development to influence the manner in which (newcomer) youth interact with, and reinvent the urban.