Kelley MCCLINCHEY, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Frederic DIMANCHE, Ryerson University, Canada
Canada’s past immigration policies greatly impacted urban settlement, forcing resiliency, and the development of societal structures that created distinct neighbourhoods and community spaces with deeply ingrained senses of place. Creative spirits thrive in multicultural Toronto; the slogan Diversity is Our Strength weaves its way into tourism marketing strategies that promote Toronto’s ethnic arts, independent restaurants, and built cultural heritage. Nonetheless, the city has yet to fully champion its diversity with a lack of interest by place marketers in embracing the political and institutional contexts of places. Over the past two years, Toronto’s dependency on sports, music and live performance events took a disastrous hit (Dubois & Dimanche, 2021) leading the way for a timely turn for regenerating tourism. Placemaking initiatives, driven by a creative industries approach, involve plans for beautification of public spaces, street art, multi-use architecture, and a re-birth of the culture-entertainment sector (Warren & Dinnie, 2017). But top-down approaches need to work alongside community-driven strategic place-making to safeguard social sustainability, uphold senses of belonging and protect distinct multicultural heritage (McClinchey, 2021). Regenerative tourism closely aligns with place-making, contributing to the rejuvenation of urban cultural heritage landscapes and their communities (Duxbury et al, 2021). It is a humanist perspective that flourishes with nuanced insights into transformative, participant-driven, and hopeful urban tourism (Cheer, 2020). This study examines immigration’s entanglements and contribution to Toronto’s tourism market through ethno-cultural heritage and the role this diversity has for rebuilding communities hard-hit by the pandemic. In so doing, it discusses the leveraging opportunities of multicultural place-making in transforming tourism with a focus on community-driven resources and regenerative tourism development.
Mots clés : immigration|place-making|multiculturalism|regenerative tourism|Toronto
A102961KM