Nathan Phillips Square: mediating intercultural encounter through urban design

Abstract

Nathan Phillips Square is Toronto’s most important landmark, symbolising the city’s rejection of its conservative and monocultural past, in favour of a diverse, modern and global future, cast in Modernist urbanism and architecture. Today, Toronto is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, in a country widely considered the most successful multicultural society in the world. However, what role the built form of the city’s microscale public spaces plays in supporting this pluralism remains largely unresearched. This paper attempts to contribute to this gap through an empirical examination of how Nathan Phillips Square enables and constrains ethnocultural differences and intercultural encounter. The paper begins with an exploration of literature on encounter in public spaces, and the agency of built form in mediating such interactions. The paper then presents three key findings based on an actor-network ethnography. This paper is critical of the emphasis placed on the square’s symbolic capital, at the expense of the multi-ethnic everyday life of the city. As a result, the failings of Modernism appear locked in, largely reducing the square to a spectacle. It is hoped that these findings will better inform urban designers and governments in shaping public space for ethnically diverse Western cities.