There are so many negative headlines about the city at the moment and this isn’t meant to be dismissive. The housing crisis and spiralling cost of living will have future consequences for this city in terms of people’s ability to have and raise families here, businesses’ ability to find and retain talent, and local art & culture.

In many ways, the good bits of Toronto weren’t planned. One small example of this is already long gone now. But the entertainment district that Gen X grew up to enjoy could only happen once industry had fled the city taking jobs with it. Those buildings and warehouses that sat empty with no hope for a new industrial tenant could all be cheaply converted to places for people to enjoy as clubs. Through the mid 2000s the entertainment district was a massive party on weekends, before Adam Vaughan had his way with zoning laws and teamed up with condo developers to end it.

Many cultural events and phenomenon in the city, from Pride to Caribana have been successes in spite of lack of political and corporate support early on in their history, or in many cases downright hostility from that corner.

So my question is, what are some things happening in the city right now that are positive, or trend setting, or creating culture that we might be overlooking that are happening in spite of political or corporate hostility?

There are so many condos with empty commercial ground floor leases; there are empty offices and the PATH has been gutted; we’ve all seen small business shops shutter as A&Ws, Popeye’s Chickens, Rexalls, and Loblaws move into our neighbourhoods to replace them. If nothing seems to be brewing now because of the high cost of real estate, does anyone secretly hope that commercial real estate continues to do poorly so cool artists and innovators can move in and actually make productive use of these spaces? Or is all this culture just moved online now?