Intoxifying gentrification: brew pubs and the geography of post-industrial heritage

Abstract

This paper traces one craft brewery (Mill Street Brewery) across two industrial heritage properties—in Toronto’s Distillery District and Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats—to investigate the extent to which alcohol functions as a catalyst of urban change. Using an analysis of both planning and policy documents, as well as media coverage for the two properties, we explore the role that alcohol plays in recalibrating industrial landscapes into spaces of consumption, and the potential for craft breweries to alter the meanings of industrial heritage. We argue that craft beer works as a vehicle in the manufacture of new spaces of cultural consumption. Specifically, craft beer production and consumption are used to aestheticize the industrial past and pacify resistance to central-city gentrification.