Restoration of the Don Valley Brick Works: Whose Restoration? Whose Space?

Social identities, ideologies and values may be expressed through urban landscapes as spatial practices that appear chaste, moral and beneficial to society as a whole. As nature conservation is increasingly absorbed into the rhetoric and practice of sustainable urban design, it is often assumed to be honourable endeavour that slows the pace of environmental destruction and bestows the critical environmental functions upon which urban fabric depends. However, conservation practices often conceal, produce and reinforce hegemonic social relations. This paper considers the recent transformation of Toronto's Don Valley Brick Works from an industrial complex to a ‘naturalized’ urban park, illustrating how socially exclusionary practices may be expressed through ecological restoration and environmental aesthetics.