A Smooth Ride? From Industrial to Creative Urbanism in Oshawa, Ontario

Abstract

In mainstream media, policy circles and academic scholarship, economic discourseshave highlighted the importance of knowledge, creativity and innovation for generatingeconomic growth. This has been translated into an urban planning and policy agendawhich favours the establishment of research parks, innovation clusters, and especiallyuniversities along with amenities to attract creative-class workers. In much of thisliterature universities are invested with an almost magical power to spur economicgrowth, and the benign language of ‘transition’ is used suggesting a rather seamlessprogression from one urban economic engine to another. Through analysis of policydocuments and key informant interviews related to the establishment of a new universityin Oshawa, Ontario, this case study seeks to challenge the straightforward relationshipthat is assumed to exist between universities and local economic development. Like otherlagging regions across the OECD attempting to repair their economies through creativeand knowledge urbanism, Oshawa’s recent achievements are tempered by growingconcerns about poverty, homelessness and inequality. Planners and policymakers thatmistake the complexities of economic restructuring for a smooth ‘urban transition’ puttheir cities and citizens at risk of creating new problems out of efforts to improve localconditions.