43: Suburbs + The Leona Drive Project

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| Spring 2011 | Edited by Steven Logan, Janine Marchessault, and Michael Prokopow

Overview:

This issue explores the Suburbs as dwelling in transition, as utopian vision, a way of life, a built form and as a significant economic and political dimension of the global phenomenon of urbanization. By suggesting transition as an appropriate trope for the critical examination of suburbs, past, present and future, this issue points to changing forms, locations, ideologies, and narratives. Turn the issue around to find a complete 112-page full-colour catalogue for The Leona Drive Project including artist statements and a visual archive of the projects that made up the event.

Contents:

• Editors’ Introduction
• Misc, Historical Dossier
• John Archer, ‘Everyday Suburbia: Lives and Practices’
• Stephen W. Sawyer, ‘Anting or the Antinomies of Exurban Development in Shanghai’
• Chris Richardson, ‘Defining Suburbs: Representation and Symbolic Violence Just Outside the City’
• Roger Keil, ‘Global Suburbanization: The Challenge of Researching Cities in the 21st Century’
• Karen Bermann and Isabella Clough Marinaro, ‘Exclusivity and Exclusion: Roma Camps and the Degypsification of the Roman Urbs’
• Douglas Young, ‘Hyper-development or Nothing to do: Urban Planning in Toronto’s In-between City’
• Maria Whiteman, ‘Hiking the Suburbs’
• Beatriz Colomina, ‘Mourning the Suburbs: Learning from Levittown’
• Interview of Saskia Sassen, by Geoffrey Guy
• Ondine Park, ‘Ambivalence and Strangeness in the Everyday Utopianism of Suburbia’
• Cecilia Chen, ‘Ethnoburbs and Pacific Mall’
• Ian Robinson, ‘The Political Aesthetics of the Urban Periphery and Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth’
• Alberto Pérez-Gómez, ‘Architecture: The Space of Participation’
• Column by Ian Balfour, ‘Suburbs of the Mind’

Reviews:

• Sarah E. K. Smith, ‘Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture and Activism in Canada,’ edited by J. Keri Cronin and Kirsty Robertson (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011)
• Kate Wells, ‘Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining the American City,‘ by John Gallagher (Wayne State University Press, 2010)
• Bev Kelly, Robert Hengeveld’s Amped UP, at Latcham Gallery (2011)
• Cynthia Roberts, Neighbourhood Maverick, at Harbourfront Centre (2011)

What was The Leona Drive Project?
Curated by Janine Marchessault and Michael Prokopow, in collaboration with Public Access and L.O.T.: Experiments in Urban Research

Nearly 20 artist projects were commissioned for a site specific exhibition in a series of six vacant bungalows slated for demolition by HYATT HOMES, a developer in Willowdale, Ontario (in the Yonge and Finch area of Greater Toronto). Artists worked in a variety of media for a period of two weeks in October 2009, developing an exhibition that fostered a community conversation about the past and the future of suburbs. There were approximately 3,500 visitors to the exhibition throughout the ten days, along with local and national media coverage.

Artists included: Thomas Blanchard, Daniel Borins + Jennifer Marman, Robin Collyer, Patricio Davila, Christine Davis, Anna Friz, Richard Fung, Michael Graham, John Greyson, David Han, Oliver Husain, Claire Ironside + Angela Iarocci, An Te Liu, Ryan Livingstone, Shana MacDonald + Angela Joosse, Kim Tomczak + Lisa Steele, Michael Taglieri, Steven Logan + Bojana Videcanic, students from the Claude Watson School for the Arts at the Earl Haig Secondary School.

Public 43 (back cover): The Leona Drive Project catalogue.

$15 | 290 pages

Stand-alone catalogue here.