A Community in Transition

Regent Park, one of Canada's oldest and largest social housing communities, is in the middle of a dramatic transition.

One billion dollars will be spent over 15 years to tear down decaying social housing complexes, and replace them with sleek new subsidized apartment buildings, and condos.

You can see some of those new buildings when you pass by Parliament and Dundas today.

But there's more to a community than just buildings.

We're now 3 years into this ambitious plan to transform a neighbourhood (Regent Park timeline).

Explore photographs and audio from our special programming, and then meet some of the residents of Regent Park.

Meet More Residents of Regent Park

A Changing Regent Park

Mouse left to right over the image to see two years of change in Regent Park
(Photos: Rick Chard for Toronto Community Housing)

An Isolated "Garden"

When Regent Park was built in 1948, it was the country's largest publicly funded community. It was designed to be a "garden city," replacing streets with walkways and enclosed public spaces. Urban planners now point out this design led to the community being isolated from the rest of the city, and cultivated criminal activity.

Today, the average household income of Regent Park residents is $15,000. The neighbourhood is diverse, the most widely spoken languages are Bengali, Chinese, French, Somali, Spanish, Tamil and Vietnamese. It's also a young community. Nearly half of the population is under 16. Many of these young people will be adults by the time all the changes are complete.

Find out more about the history of Regent Park.