Artwashing Toronto's Planning Landscape: A Critical Analysis of Creative Placemaking & Public Art

Artwashing is a process enabled by states and developers who use art as a tool to rebrand and market previously disinvested spaces to be primed for new rounds of capital investment. These aesthetics seek to humanize processes of gentrification and exclusion. These same aesthetics are co-opted from the same communities in which 1) development happens and 2) "banishment" occurs. As an under-explored concept in the literature, this research aims to develop a more comprehensive understanding of artwashing through public art, and determine if artwashing may be happening in the neighbourhood of Regent Park. This research contributes to a novel qualitative understanding of artwashing and its entanglement with creative city policies and revitalization projects. This work offers planners critical perspectives on public art projects that will help policy makers to implement more equitable public art projects in communities.