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Masking Visible Poverty through 'Activation': Creative Placemaking as a

Compassionate Revanchist Policy

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DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2023.2177717

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Masking Visible Poverty through ‘Activation’:

Creative Placemaking as a Compassionate
Revanchist Policy

Daniel Kudla

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Placemaking as a Compassionate Revanchist Policy, Social & Cultural Geography, DOI:
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SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2023.2177717

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Masking Visible Poverty through ‘Activation’: Creative

Placemaking as a Compassionate Revanchist Policy
Daniel Kudla
Department of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Creative placemaking strategies are widely adopted by urban plan­ Received 17 June 2022
ners, local governments, and business communities in hopes to Accepted 21 December 2022
revive economically struggling urban areas. These strategies seek KEYWORDS
to attract pedestrian traffic by facilitating arts and cultural activities Homelessness; creative
in underutilized urban spaces. While these are seemingly innocuous placemaking; business
and uncontroversial urban design strategies, I argue that improvement districts; policy
a particular creative placemaking tactic called ‘activation’ is mobility; compassionate
a compassionate revanchist policy that is touted as a caring revanchism; neoliberal
approach but, in practice, functions to mask visible poverty to urbanism
advance a capital project in a revitalizing urban space. Drawing PALABRAS CLAVE
from a case study of a downtown revitalization project in London, personas sin hogar; creación
Ontario (Canada), I show how a private placemaking consultant creativa de espacios; distritos
narrates and legitimizes this policy to city councillors as well as de mejora comercial;
how the downtown business association rationalizes and enacts movilidad política;
activation strategies. This demonstrates that private placemaking revanchismo compasivo;
consultants are powerful actors who transfer and legitimize sim­ urbanismo neoliberal
plistic spatial solutions as a panacea to a local ‘urban crisis’. MOTS-CLEFS
Activation does not resemble punitive tactics that exclude and sans-abrisme; aménagement
criminalize homelessness, it rather aims to dissolve the homeless d’espaces créatif; BIP; zones
within the fabric of the revitalizing urban environment. d’amélioration commerciale;
mobilité politique;
RESUMEN revanchisme bienveillant;
Las estrategias creativas de creación de lugares son adoptadas urbanisme néolibéral
ampliamente por los planificadores urbanos, los gobiernos locales
y las comunidades empresariales con la esperanza de revivir las
áreas urbanas con dificultades económicas. Estas estrategias bus­
can atraer el tránsito de peatones facilitando actividades artísticas
y culturales en espacios urbanos subutilizados. Si bien estas son
estrategias de diseño urbano aparentemente inocuas y no contro­
versiales, argumento que una táctica particular de creación de
lugares creativa llamada “activación” es una política revanchista
compasiva que se promociona como un enfoque solidario, pero,
en la práctica, funciona para enmascarar la pobreza visible para
avanzar un proyecto de capital en un espacio urbano revitalizante.
A partir de un estudio de caso de un proyecto de revitalización del
centro de Londres, Ontario (Canadá), muestro cómo un consultor
privado de creación de espacios narra y legitima esta política a los
concejales de la ciudad, así como también cómo la asociación
empresarial del centro racionaliza y promulga estrategias de

CONTACT Daniel Kudla dkudla@mun.ca Department of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St.
John’s, Canada 230 Elizabeth Ave, Newfoundland A1C 5S7, Canada
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 D. KUDLA

activación. Esto demuestra que los consultores privados de

creación de lugares son actores poderosos que transfieren
y legitiman soluciones espaciales simplistas como una panacea
para una “crisis urbana” local. La activación no se parece a las
tácticas punitivas que excluyen y criminalizan a las personas sin
hogar, sino que apunta a disolver a las personas sin hogar dentro
del tejido del entorno urbano revitalizante.
RÉSUMÉ
Les stratégies pour aménager les espaces de manière créative sont
couramment adoptées par les urbanistes, les autorités locales et les
associations de commerçants dans l’espoir de faire refleurir les
zones urbaines en proie à des difficultés économiques. Elles visent
à attirer le trafic piétonnier en encourageant les activités artistiques
et culturelles dans des endroits urbains qui sont sous-utilisés. Même
si ces méthodes d’urbanisme sont a priori anodines et inoffensives,
je soutiens qu’une certaine tactique d’aménagement créatif qu’on
appelle l’ « activation » est une politique revanchiste bienveillante
qu’on présente comme une approche humaine, mais qui en pra­
tique agit pour cacher la pauvreté apparente dans le but de faire
progresser tout projet d’investissement dans une revitalisation d’es­
pace urbain. En m’appuyant sur une étude de cas d’un projet de
revitalisation du centre-ville à London, dans l’Ontario, au Canada,
j’explique comment un conseiller privé d’aménagement d’espaces
urbains présente et justifie cette politique aux conseillers munici­
paux et aussi comment l’association de commerces et services du
centre-ville rationalise et promulgue des stratégies d’activation.
Tout cela démontre que les conseillers privés du secteur sont des
intervenants puissants qui transfèrent et font passer des solutions
spatiales simplistes pour des remèdes miracles contre une « crise
urbaine » locale. L’activation ne s’apparente pas à des tactiques de
représailles qui excluent et pénalisent le sans-abrisme, mais plutôt
elle fait disparaître celui-ci dans la trame de revitalisation de l’envi­
ronnement urbain.

In October 2016, a private placemaking consultancy named Live Work Learn Play pre­
sented to London, Ontario’s (Canada) city council about implementing an urban design
strategy called ‘activation’ which was promised to enhance the marketability of
a revitalizing downtown street called Dundas Place. After some discussion and debate,
city councillors voted unanimously to create a new municipal position called the ‘Dundas
Place Manager’ who would be tasked with ‘activating’ the newly $16 million revitalized
four-block downtown commercial street featuring a ‘curbless’ design to allow for pedes­
trian activity and festivals during scheduled times. The Manager (Savanah Sewell) started
her role in September 2018 and worked with the Downtown London Business
Improvement Area and the municipal government to ‘activate’ Dundas Place (Stacey,
2018).
The activation of urban space is a creative placemaking strategy that has been widely
promoted by a network of private placemaking organizations who assure local businesses
and municipal governments that it can bolster local economic development (see, McCann
& Mahieus, 2021). Policy experts and private consultancies (see for example, Markusen &
Gadwa Nicodemus, 2010) play a key role in transferring and legitimizing this strategy as
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 3

a ‘best practice’ to solve local urban problems. Creative placemaking is especially appeal­
ing to local governments and businesses of postindustrial cities (like London, Ontario)
who are often conditioned to search for a ‘creativity fix’ to revive their economically
struggling commercial districts (Peck, 2007).
While ‘activating’ urban space appears as an innocuous and uncontroversial urban
design strategy, I argue that this creative placemaking policy functions to mask visible
poverty within the fabric of a revitalizing urban environment. Unlike punitive forms of
spatial regulation (e.g., police, security, CCTV cameras, and anti-homeless by-laws), crea­
tive placemaking resembles a compassionate revanchist approach insofar as it blends
care and punishment to advance capital projects in a revitalizing urban space. Simply put,
I conceptualize creative placemaking, and activation more specifically, as a mobile policy
that fades social control into the background of an aesthetically pleasing environment
while ignoring socio-spatial injustices that exist within the space (see, Allen, 2006; Flusty,
2001).
I extend and combine two distinct bodies of literature: policy mobilities and compas­
sionate revanchism. First, I extend the policy mobilities scholarship by introducing
a private placemaking consultant (Live Work Learn Play) as a key transfer agent in the
revitalization of urban space. I also extend this work by showing the framing and
legitimization of this policy at the micro-political landscape through processes of argu­
mentation and debate. Second, I present creative placemaking as an alternative under­
standing of compassionate revanchism from its well-documented examples of the police,
homeless shelters and outreach workers, and the Housing First policy. While touted as an
ethical strategy devoid of punitive intent, activation serves to dissolve rather than remove
visible poverty. I combine both the policy mobilities and compassionate revanchism
literature by highlighting how a private consultancy is a key policy transfer agent that
narrates and legitimizes a compassionate revanchist policy as an appropriate and humane
approach to solve a downtown’s ‘urban crisis’.

Creative Placemaking as a Mobile Policy

Creative placemaking has become a popular mobile policy that is widely adopted by
governments, urban planners, and business communities around the globe (see, McCann
& Mahieus, 2021). In the simplest terms, placemaking refers to a symbolic and material
practice that aims to enhance the appeal of local areas to attract investment, promote
consumption, reduce criminality, and invoke civic pride (Masuda & Bookman, 2018). It is
reflective of a wider ‘cultural turn’ in urban and regional policies that prioritizes creative
and artistic activities at the neighbourhood level through commissioned cultural plans
and the design of cultural districts (Ponzini & Rossi, 2010). In particular, Florida’s (2002)
‘creative cities’ idea has become one of the most widely circulated and adopted urban
policies that informs placemaking practices in cities around the world (see, Luckman et al.,
2009; Prince, 2010). A key part of this policy seeks to attract young urban professionals to
downtown spaces by creating culturally lively urban spaces with active and participatory
recreation, pedestrian-friendly streets, buzzing nightlife scenes, and informal social inter­
actions. Many Business Improvement Districts have adopted this approach by creating
‘cool’ and ‘hip’ places for people to socialize in outdoor commercial settings (Ward, 2008).
4 D. KUDLA

More recently, the specific practice of ‘creative placemaking’ has emerged as

a dominant strategy among economic development organizations and endorsed by the
International Economic Development Council (Markusen, 2014). Markusen and Gadwa
Nicodemus (2010) have become its chief transfer agents through the development of
strategic plans for municipalities and urban design experts. They define creative place­
making as a strategic process enacted by an array of public, private, nonprofit, and
community sectors that aims to shape the physical and social character of an area in
hopes to animate public and private spaces, improve local business viability and public
safety, and bring diverse people together. Simply put, creative placemaking emphasizes
the strategic action by cross-sector partners to facilitate arts and cultural activities within
specific locales.
The buzzword ‘activation’ has been identified as one of the four key strategies for
creative placemaking (Fincher et al., 2016; Schupbach, 2015). It refers to the process of
making arts-based activities more attractive, exciting, and safe in public spaces through
the creation of festivals and events, particularly in underutilized urban spaces to attract
pedestrian activity. It encourages the use of temporary fixtures such as food trucks,
movable stages/tables, and pop-up markets. As Ferreri (2015) argues, this increased
attention on reinvigorating vacant and unused urban spaces through ‘pop-up urbanism’,
‘in the meantime uses’, and ‘temporary urbanism’ (see, Finn, 2014) is often presented as
a panacea to urban issues and have become popular and cheap urban antidotes in the
advent of ‘austerity urbanism’ (Peck, 2012). While these ‘micro-spatial urban practices’ are
typically instigated and designed spontaneously by small voluntary groups who infor­
mally critique ‘top-down’ planning, urban planners appear to be co-opting these tactics
by stripping away its rebellious ‘guerilla luster’ and transforming it into a neoliberal
agenda (Finn, 2014).
Located in Montreal, LWLP is a private consultancy that transfers and legitimizes urban
design expertise, including creative placemaking, to their (mostly) North American clients.
They advertise themselves as ‘master developers’, ‘outsourced development advisors’,
and ‘implementation experts’ who conceive of and develop a variety of urban projects
such as downtown revitalization, large-scale and mixed-use communities, healthcare
facilities and medical districts, and resort and recreation-based destinations.1 LWLP
mobilizes urban policies by translating and legitimizing their expertise to different institu­
tional, economic, and political contexts. In the context of policy mobilities scholarship
which conceptualizes policymaking through a fixity-mobility dialectic (see, McCann, 2011;
McCann & Ward, 2010), LWLP acts as an intermediary ‘transfer agent’ that, on the one
hand, scans and produces global channels of ‘best practices’ and, on the other hand,
socially conditions and fixes these best practices to local actors. Within a competitive
neoliberal urban climate, local actors often search for readily consumable ‘fast policies’
that are efficient, speedy, and predictable (Peck & Theodore, 2015) and one’s that can be
easily molded to local conditions and expectations (McCann & Ward, 2012; Temenos &
McCann, 2012). Hence, policy suggestions from organizations like LWLP are often rapidly
adopted by local actors in order to fix a perceived urban problem within economically
struggling districts of a city.
Many studies rooted in this perspective have highlighted the interactions between
‘demand-side’ local actors who scan and access the ‘supply-side’ of global policy knowl­
edge in various spaces such as conferences, site visits, and lectures (see, Cook & Ward,
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 5

2012; McCann, 2011; Temenos, 2016). I extend this body of work by empirically investigat­
ing a relational space (city council deliberations) where a global policy ‘transfer agent’
(LWLP) interacts with local actors (city councilors and the business community) to legit­
imize their policy product (activation) as a suitable antidote to an economically struggling
commercial area. That is, I examine how the ‘supply side’ narrates their policy ideas to
‘demand side’ local actors at the micro-political level. It is in this relational space where
local actors discuss, negotiate, debate, and implement policy ideas presented by urban
experts who attempt to construct an ‘urban crisis’ that can be solved by adopting their
policy idea (Michel, 2013). While policy mobilities scholarship has shown that policies are
often legitimized through ‘globally tested’ technologies and methods that calculate
indicators and benchmarks (see, Evans & Masuda, 2020; Temenos & McCann, 2012),
policies and their technologies are also legitimized by communicative interactions and
processes of argumentation that occur prior to its adoption (see, Clarke, 2012; Freeman,
2012; Kennedy, 2016). Focusing on city council deliberations can help uncover how
creative placemaking is framed and legitimized as an appropriate solution to design
and govern urban space, the extent to which the policy is armed against criticism, and
whether it faces any constraints or resistance that may slow down or halt the policy at its
tracks (see, Baker & McCann, 2020; Longhurst & McCann, 2016).

Compassionate Revanchism
Rooted in the ‘revanchist’ thesis (Smith, 1996), many critical urban studies throughout the
1990s documented punitive forms of homeless governance backed by urban entrepre­
neurial strategies that treated urban spaces as commodities and drivers of economic
development (Harvey, 1989; Logan & Molotch, 1987). To create marketable urban spaces
for tourists and investors, cities enacted strict policing strategies, enhanced surveillance
systems, installed defensive architecture (e.g., bum-proof benches), and passed punitive
incivility laws that displaced and criminalized homelessness (Beckett & Herbert, 2008;
Davis, 1990; Mitchell, 1997). Scholars conceptualized these as revanchist strategies meant
to ‘take back’ urban spaces from the poor to bolster urban economic growth and attract
global capital. Business Improvement Districts were identified as key mechanisms that
enact revanchist tactics through a governance assemblage (public police, private security,
tourism ambassadors, and CCTV surveillance) that aims to cleanse urban space from
undesirable groups such as informal traders, people experiencing homelessness, drug
users, sex workers, among others (see, Didier et al., 2013; Miraftab, 2007; Vindevogel,
2005). The intent is to evoke a ‘definition of order’ and ensure ‘clean and safe’ environ­
ments by producing symbolic boundaries that determine what is ‘in place’ or ‘out of place’
within the commercial boundary (Bookman & Woolford, 2013; Lippert, 2012; Zukin, 1995).
The scholarship on homeless governance, however, has evolved beyond the 1990s
representation of punitive and exclusionary cities (see, DeVerteuil et al., 2009; Grainger,
2021; Walby & Lippert, 2012 for an overview). More recent critical urban scholarship
rejects the conceptualization of totalizing and all-encompassing punitive forms of spatial
regulation and now highlight a more nuanced, differentiated, and less punitive modalities
of homeless governance (DeVerteuil, 2014). This scholarship identifies a murky ‘middle-
ground’ between punishment and social welfare where the marginalized navigate
through a combination of overlapping institutions that simultaneously provide care,
6 D. KUDLA

restrictions, and sanctions (Hennigan & Speer, 2019; May & Cloke, 2014). Hennigan and
Speer (2019) have reconceptualized the term ‘revanchism’ by advancing the idea of
‘compassionate revanchism’ which identifies the convergence of care and punishment
in the neoliberal management of poverty. They argue that caring institutions such as
shelters and charities can bolster anti-homeless responses while punitive institutions like
the police can adopt caring means of control; both aiming to manage the urban poor to
advance capital projects in revitalizing urban spaces.
Research highlighting the convergence between care and punishment in homeless
governance has largely focused on the enactment of this logic by the police, homeless
shelters and outreach workers, and the Housing First policy. Homeless shelters often assist
in the project of criminal enforcement by warehousing people in temporary accommoda­
tion to draw them away from prime urban spaces (Herring, 2019; Murphy, 2009; Stuart,
2016). Stuart’s (2016) ethnographic account of Los Angeles’ ‘skid row’ shows how the
police act as ‘recovery managers’ by using the threat of criminalization to shepherd the
homeless to local social services to transform them into sober and self-governing citizens.
Margier (2021) similarly shows how homeless outreach workers help ‘invisibilize’ the
homeless by persuading people living in homeless encampments to admit themselves
to a local low-barrier shelter or else face punitive eviction by the police. This strategy
simultaneously appeases homeless advocates who fight against the criminalization of
poverty as well as residents and businesses who complain about the visibility of home­
lessness. Seemingly care-oriented Housing First programs also exhibit revanchist impera­
tives by promoting themselves as contributing to the removal of homeless people from
the streets (Baker & Evans, 2016) and by having case workers encourage their clients to
self-govern their behaviour through the threat of eviction (Hennigan, 2017).
Creative placemaking provides another example of compassionate revanchism. While
less readily apparent than punitive strategies, creative placemaking is revanchist insofar
as it is backed by a neoliberal urban concept (the creative city) that aims to symbolically
and materially reorder subjects in public spaces while presenting it as a seductive and
progressive urban strategy (Hatuka et al., 2018; Peck, 2005; Ponzini & Rossi, 2010). Some
recent scholarship has even identified the specific placemaking tactic of ‘activation’ as
a revanchist approach that attempts to reclaim underutilized urban spaces by ‘designing-
out’ undesirable features (Fincher et al., 2016; Mackinnon, 2020). However, as
I demonstrate, activation does not forcibly remove the urban poor as its social control
tactics are unnoticed and faded into the background of the aesthetically pleasing envir­
onment and masks the socio-spatial injustices that exist within the space (see, Allen, 2006;
Flusty, 2001). The strategy is not enacted by punitive or caring institutions but by a new
quasi-state actor employed and governed by the municipal government and Business
Improvement District.

Methodology
This study draws from three separate sources related to the Dundas Place revitalization.
First, most of the data is taken from participant observation of city council deliberations
and a public information meeting facilitated by the Downtown London Business
Improvement Area (hereafter DLBIA).2 City council deliberations regarding the Dundas
Place redevelopment took place during the Strategic Priorities and Policies Committee
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 7

over the span of a year (26 October 2015; 21 March 2016; and 25 October 2016). This
helped uncover a key relational setting where multiple social actors discussed, debated,
negotiated, and legitimized a creative placemaking policy as an appropriate solution to
visible poverty. This includes spoken words during the deliberations as well as PowerPoint
slides which were publically accessible as part of city council minute meetings (see, Live
Work Learn Play, 2016). The DLBIA-run public information session took place on
8 November 2017 at the downtown public library where they presented various posters,
images, videos, and models of what Dundas Place would look like once constructed. As
McCann and Ward (2012) argue, an empirical focus on these types of relational situations
helps reveal how particular agents create powerful narratives about how to solve urban
issues. Second, to supplement participant observation data, 13 semi-structured interviews
were conducted with DLBIA-affiliated members; three professional staff members and ten
board members. Participants were promised that pseudonyms along with a general
description of their role would be used when referring to their interviews throughout
this study (e.g., Rachel [alias name], DLBIA staff member). Interview data provided more
detail to LWLP’s proposed activation strategy, specifically about the logic of this strategy
and its enactment by the DLBIA. Third, an analysis of media articles and DLBIA social
media posts was conducted in order to understand public discussions related to the
revitalization of Dundas Place.

Dundas Place
London, Ontario (Canada) is a mid-sized Canadian city with a population of 422,324
(Statistics Canada, 2021). Dundas Street is one of the city’s oldest streets that became
the city’s civic and commercial core in the late 1800s (Novak, 2010). After the construction
of suburban malls throughout the 1980s, Dundas Street struggled to attract customers
and businesses started to relocate outside of the downtown. Despite municipal invest­
ments throughout the 1990s and 2000s on large construction projects like an art gallery,
office buildings, a convention centre, and an entertainment stadium, Dundas Street
continues to have high retail vacancies and has become a stigmatized area of the city.
In 2015, the municipal government collaborated with the DLBIA on the $16 million
redevelopment of a four-block stretch of downtown Dundas Street. Coined as ‘Dundas
Place’ (also known as ‘flex street’), the purpose was to improve hydro, water mains, and
sewers as well as to install new lighting, flower gardens, and street furniture. The street
was designed to be ‘curbless’ to create a wide-open pedestrian space during scheduled
festivals/events. Construction began in spring 2018 and completed in late 2019.
During the planning and construction of Dundas Place, there were 406 people experi­
encing homelessness in the city (Counting Our Way Home, 2018). The city has multiple
homeless shelters such as Mission Services and The Salvation Army and it subscribes to
the national homelessness strategy’s Housing First philosophy through its London Cares
program. During this time, the local news media began framing the downtown as a site of
urban disorder by highlighting the increased visibility of homelessness, drug use, vand­
alism, and mental health issues along Dundas Street (Butler, 2019; Carruthers, 2016). One
article labelled the downtown in ‘crisis’ and evocatively described Dundas Street as
‘destitute people sleeping in doorways, human feces smeared on sidewalks and
a panoply of empty store fronts’ (Butler, 2019). These types of portrayals of the downtown
8 D. KUDLA

dominated media coverage and became the basis of discussion between LWLP, the
DLBIA, and city council.

Problematizing the Downtown and Legitimizing ‘Activation’

Prior to the Dundas Place construction, the DLBIA planned to hire LWLP to help attract
small-scale/independent retailers through its trademarked ‘Targeted Leasing and Casting’
program. Rather than paying entirely out of their own pockets, the DLBIA asked city
council to contribute $540,000 to help pay for the total $1.9 million cost of hiring LWLP for
an 18-month contract. After a contentious debate among city councillors, they rejected
the funding proposal with a close 8–7 vote. The DLBIA eventually hired LWLP with their
own funds for a shorter four-month contract. I first briefly discuss how the DLBIA framed
an urban crisis to legitimize paying for LWLP’s 18-month contract before describing
LWLP’s eventual four-month involvement in the Dundas Place revitalization discussions.
To justify hiring LWLP for the 18-month contract, the DLBIA CEO (Janette MacDonald)
spoke to the city’s Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (26 October 2015 and
21 March 2016) to convince them to help pay to hire the private consultancy. During
these meetings, she used the pied piper German legend to construct the downtown’s
situation. This was a figurative portrayal of a town infested with vermin that brought in
a pied piper to play a magical flute to lure the vermin into a river to drown. In the context
of Dundas Place, the DLBIA constructed LWLP’s (the pied piper) trademarked ‘Targeted
Leasing and Casting’ program (the magical flute) as an appropriate solution to rid the
downtown of its visible poverty, vacant properties, and undesirable commercial tenants
(the vermin). She argued ‘vacancies and non-targeted uses’ were preventing the down­
town from achieving economic success and that LWLP would ‘attract a quality of targeted
uses’ such as high-end shops and restaurants. The ‘non-targeted’ label identified home­
less squatting as an undesirable use of downtown space, the figurative ‘vermin’ who have
taken over the downtown as evidenced by the picture shared during the PowerPoint
presentation to city council (see, Figure 1).

Figure 1. Highlighting the Downtown’s “Vermin”.

 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 9

After constructing the downtown’s vermin, she then attempted to legitimize LWLP as
a ‘leader in the field of international placemaking’ by listing their prior work in other cities
like Mississauga (Ontario), Rockford (Illinois), and Montreal (Quebec). She also argued
LWLP were not merely ‘consultants’ that write a report and leave the city, but that they are
‘practitioners’ that attract commercial tenants through their expertise and connections in
other cities. City councillors, however, were not sold on the DLBIA’s pitch for three
reasons. First, they challenged whether LWLP had the experience for attracting small-
scale/independent commercial tenants given that their prior work focused on larger
retailers in larger cities. Second, they questioned why they needed LWLP to attract
these types of tenants from their extra-local networks rather than growing and finding
them organically in London. Third, they thought it was unfair to prioritize such a large
investment in the downtown over other areas of the city.
The DLBIA eventually used their own funds to hire LWLP for a four-month contract
beginning in May 2016. They were keen to hire LWLP because, as many DLBIA members
explained during interviews, ‘you are never a prophet in your own land’; that is, a local
prophet’s advice (the DLBIA) is not taken seriously while a prophet from another land
(LWLP) holds more authority and can sway local audiences to follow their lead. During the
four-month contract, LWLP conducted a SWOT analysis of the downtown to propose
suitable revitalization strategies.3 LWLP’s project manager (Joseph Milos) then spoke on
behalf of the DLBIA to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on 25 October 2016.
He showed detailed market indicators to demonstrate the current state of the downtown

Figure 2. Constructing the “Drug Use & Street Culture” Problem.

10 D. KUDLA

retail and commercial sectors. He noted the downtown’s main problem was the high
supply but low demand for commercial buildings which was creating an ‘economic
development problem’ for the entire city. He attributed this to what he identified as the
‘drug use and street culture’ (see, Figure 2). Despite identifying eight other issues in the
downtown, most of the presentation was spent prescribing a solution to the downtown’s
‘drug use and street culture’ as this was ‘the defining issue in the downtown’.
The LWLP project manager blamed this issue on several ‘weaknesses’ identified from
their SWOT analysis. This included many spatial weaknesses such as the concentration of
social services, lack of ‘eyes-on-the-street’ during evening hours, centralization of down­
town bus stops, and institutions/businesses failing to occupy public spaces. In other
words, drug use and homelessness were constructed as simplistic spatial problems that
could be solved by planning, managing, and controlling the ebbs and flow of downtown
space.
The LWLP project manager then used an example of what he deemed a failed City-led
revitalization attempt on Market Lane. This was a City-led attempt to revitalize a small
downtown alleyway in time for the 2013 World Figure Skating Championship. Local news
media, for example, described the revitalization attempt as the ‘laneway learning
moment’ for the Dundas Place redevelopment because the alleyway became a ‘foyer of
drug use’ (Stacey, 2017). Similarly, DLBIA members argued the City failed to properly
maintain the alleyway:

They [the City] are famous for building stuff and walking away from it and never doing
anything with it. Market Lane is a good example. It won the international design competition,
great design. And they build it and walk away from it, right? Nobody was maintaining it. It’s
the broken windows theory, right? . . . If you take care of that stuff right away people treat the
space better, right? (Glen, DLBIA board member)

Despite the City’s efforts to redesign the alleyway three years prior, this area continued to
have a high concentration of drug trafficking, loitering, and homelessness because,
according to Glen, the City failed to successfully implement broken windows strategies.
The suggestion was that the City could not be trusted to take on revitalization tasks in the
downtown.
During the presentation to city council, the LWLP project manager described this failed
City-led revitalization of Market Lane as London’s ‘orphan child’ because ‘it was just
turned over without an idea of how it will be run or operated in a holistic sense’. He
warned councillors that Dundas Place could not be managed like Market Lane or else it
would be another failure. As he explained:

That is something very real and a concern for something like Dundas Place . . . If you don’t
have an idea of how you’re going to activate it as well as keep it operating and safe, then
there is a failing. Because on day one you’re going to turn it [Dundas Place] out to the public
and they are going to use it like Market Lane which is a place that is not necessarily the best
aspects of programming happening.

According to the LWLP project manager, the City needed to take a more strategic
approach to Dundas Place or else it would resemble the supposed failed Market Lane
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 11

Figure 3. The Homeless as Unpleasant “Features” in Urban Space.

revitalization. He suggested Dundas Place should be ‘activated’ before turning it out to

the public.
LWLP’s project manager went further to suggest that activation should occur in select
‘green zones’; specifically, in downtown’s main greenspace (Vitoria Park) and the four-
block stretch of Dundas Street (Dundas Place). It was in these specific areas the City
needed to, as the title of the PowerPoint slide read, ‘disarm drug use and street culture’
(see, Figure 3). As the PowerPoint slide further explained, these were considered critical
areas in the downtown ‘that, in tackling the drug and street culture issue, have removed
features that would make them safe and pleasant to occupy’. In this sense, marginalized
groups were represented as obstacles, or mere ‘features’, needing to be removed to
ensure people consume the downtown in a ‘pleasant’ manner. This included a variety of
strategies like sports and physical activities, relaxation activities, food festivals, arts and
entertainment, among many others. Simply put, the idea was that drug use and street
culture could be ‘disarmed’ if urban spaces were filled with pedestrian traffic and crowds.
Following LWLP’s presentation, many councillors criticized their proposed solution to
disarm drug use and street culture in select green zones. For example, Councillor Squire
spoke vocally about LWLP’s portrayal of street people:

I represent many of the people you are talking about that sit in Market Lane. They are my
clients. They suffer severe mental disabilities. They come downtown because they are lonely,
and their lives have very little meaning . . . The steps that are suggested will get us no closer to
solving the difficulties of my clients . . . If I say to them, “oh, we passed a motion that we are
going to clean up Market Lane”, they’re going to say “well, what’s wrong with Market Lane.
I sit in Market Lane. I know I’m kind of scruffy, but I sit in market lane”.
12 D. KUDLA

In other words, Councillor Squire defended marginalized groups’ right to public space and
took offense to LWLP’s recommendation. Similarly, other councillors criticized the specific
use of the word ‘green zone’ throughout LWLP’s presentation:
I don’t want us to rush into market lane and start chasing people out . . . I want us to be very
very careful that we’re not chasing people away from anywhere whatsoever because all we’re
going to do is chase them off to another street not too far away. (Councillor Usher)

I hear a lot of bureaucratic speak, with all due respect. What I am hearing between the lines is
that we have people there that we don’t want there and we want to find a way to get
everyone together to move the people. So, if I am incorrect I need to be clarified. (Councillor
Ridley)

Taken together, many councillors were concerned the proposed green zone solution was
a punitive approach that would displace marginalized groups from the downtown. Local
homeless advocates and social service representatives also spoke out against LWLP’s
portrayal of the homeless and called their language ‘shameful’ and ‘stigmatizing’ (De
Bono, 2016).
Although a group of councillors were clearly concerned about implementing
a punitive approach that would displace the homeless from the downtown, they never­
theless viewed LWLP’s recommendation to activate space as a humane approach to
manage the downtown. This was made clear by Deputy Mayor Hubert’s response to the
aforementioned councillors:
We don’t want to move people around, we want people to become part of the fabric . . . They
are people, and we need to enhance our sense of their peopleNESS, if I could use that word,
and their humanity. That being said, activation of the street is the way we get there. It’s not
about moving a group of people or addressing a particular target, but it’s about activation.

In this case, Deputy Mayor Hubert contrasted displacement from activation, implying the
latter was an appropriate approach because it acknowledged marginalized groups’
humanity. The LWLP project manager reiterated this was indeed a more ‘holistic’
approach rather than a ‘crime and punishment and militarization of the streets’. In this
way, activation was portrayed as an alternative to displacement and criminalization
insofar as it was taking a more ‘holistic view of the whole downtown’. Councillors
eventually voted unanimously to create the municipal position ‘Dundas Place Manager’
who would be tasked with implementing activation strategies. The DLBIA made the job
posting available on 5 July 2018 and filled the position two months later. Although some
councillors defended marginalized groups’ rights and challenged LWLP’s ‘green zone’
language, the logic of the proposed placemaking strategy was never challenged insofar as
it was deemed a more humane approach. Figuratively speaking, the pied piper (LWLP)
had successfully identified the vermin (drug use and street culture) and legitimized the
use of the magical flute (activation) to drown the vermin.

Activation Enacted
Interviews with DLBIA members, content analysis of DLBIA-produced materials, and
participant observation at a public information meeting revealed more detail about the
logic behind activating urban space. The DLBIA began implementing activation strategies
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 13

over the summer of 2016 and 2017. DLBIA members referred to this as providing ‘realized
demonstrations’ to show people the potential of Dundas Place. As Rachel (DLBIA staff
member) explained, they worked with the City planning division, the City culture depart­
ment, local businesses, and musicians to showcase ‘activated’ space through outdoor
popcorn machines, kids playing basketball, and restaurant patios on the street. The
purpose of these demonstrations was not only to draw people to the downtown but to
blend the urban poor with regular consumers. She explained this logic using the example
of ‘Free Comic Book Day’, an event where superhero enthusiasts meet on Dundas Street
outside of the popular Hero’s Comic Book store:

It was probably the same amount of panhandlers asking them for money. But because it’s in
a different context it doesn’t feel like a terrible thing . . . So, we created an event to
demonstrate what you can do with a flexible street. It showed how the entire community
can live together quite nicely. We had homeless people there and people with other drug or
mental health issues behaving a little bit erratically. But still, they kind of fit in with the flow.

Activating urban space was seen as a humane approach insofar as homeless people and
the community can ‘live together’. The underlying purpose was to mask the unpleasant­
ness of panhandling by making homeless people ‘fit in with the flow’.
The activation of downtown space became more apparent in the summer of 2017
when the DLBIA’s Facebook group page promoted various events along Market Lane.
These events included salsa dancing, a giant checkboard game, and theatrical perfor­
mances organized by the London Fringe Festival. It was clear the DLBIA was piloting
various activation ideas before the construction of Dundas Place. Salsa dancing, artistic
performances, and games not only served as activities for people to enjoy, they were also
meant to make marginalized groups’ behaviours tolerable and make regular consumers
feel more comfortable in downtown space.
Activation was not only discussed during interviews with DLBIA members, it was also
a central feature of the Dundas Place design plans. Just months before construction
began, the DLBIA presented their design plans at a public information meeting. For
example, two posters were featured during the meeting which directly referenced
‘activation’

Dundas Place must be purposefully activated to provide a draw for people to come to the
space as well as a reason to stay in the space and not just walk through. Activation will include
events and festivals, as well as day-to-day activities and amenities. [emphasis added]

It further explained that ‘Dundas Place should be managed as a public place’ and
‘purposefully activated’, suggesting that public space needed to be ‘managed’, ‘defined’,
and ‘mandated’. This does not necessarily represent the privatization of public spaces but
rather a subtler approach where public space is planned and controlled through sanc­
tioned events, festivals, and activities that make marginalized groups tolerable.
According to DLBIA members, simply activating downtown spaces would not prevent
marginalized groups from loitering for an extended period of time. Following the logic of
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED; see, Parnaby, 2006), DLBIA
members mentioned two tactics to ensure marginalized groups ‘move along’: changing
bus routes and installing uncomfortable street furniture. First, DLBIA members said they
constantly advocated to the City to move the transit bus route off Dundas Street and onto
14 D. KUDLA

Figure 4. Hostile Architecture Plans.

 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 15

the one-way roads just a block north and south (King Street and Queen Street). As they
explained, this was to ensure people did not just loiter on Dundas Place claiming they are
waiting for a bus:

The police can’t approach people to say, “what are you doing there?” because they can say
they are waiting for the bus. They walk around the corner and come back to continue with
loitering and drug dealing and whatever they are doing. It is a perfect storm because we have
Ontario Works [a social service agency] there in the Market Tower and having the busses
converge there. It is that busyness that masks an awful lot of bad behaviour. (Cindy, DLBIA
professional staff)

According to DLBIA members, the concentration of bus stops along Dundas Street was
detrimental because it provides an excuse for people to loiter and deal drugs. They
labeled these areas as ‘ground zero’ and ‘the perfect storm’ because the pedestrian traffic
in the area masked undesirable behaviour. Since the Dundas Place construction began in
early 2018, the bus routes have moved off of Dundas Street and onto a block north and
south of Dundas street.
Second, while never admitting it to city council or interviews, another approach to
ensure people would not loiter along Dundas Place is through ‘bum-proof benches’. While
the design of the future Dundas Place street furniture is aesthetically pleasing, the
concrete-like blocks do not appear to be comfortable seating areas (see, Figure 4). This
is a clear example of CPTED, or more recently referred to as ‘hostile architecture’, insofar as
uncomfortable street furniture is meant to detract undesirable groups from sleeping or
excessively loitering (see, Petty, 2016).
In sum, in addition the activating public spaces to mask visible poverty, the DLBIA
ensured these groups did not loiter for too long by manipulating their movements and
behaviours through environmental design. While regular consumers would come and go
to a Dundas Place festival or event, these CPTED tactics ensured marginalized groups had
no legitimate reason to occupy the area during non-event times.

Conclusion
Creative placemaking, and activation more specifically, is not an apolitical and unconten­
tious urban design strategy that simply strives to attract arts-based activity in under­
utilized urban spaces. Similar to critical urban scholars’ critiques of the broader creative
cities policy (Hatuka et al., 2018; Peck, 2005; Ponzini & Rossi, 2010), activation is presented
as a progressive urban strategy while working to symbolically and materially reorder
subjects in public space. The recent increased attention to reinvigorate unused urban
spaces through ‘pop-up urbanism’, ‘in the meantime uses’, and ‘temporary urbanism’
schemes (see, Finn, 2014) must be therefore met with caution as these strategies, at least
when introduced and enacted by private organizations, are cheap antidotes presented as
a panacea to complex socio-economic issues. Activation simply masks these unsightly
‘features’, ‘vermin’, and ‘non-targeted uses’ within the fabric of a revitalizing commercial
area. While it does not seek to remove, eliminate, or criminalize the urban poor, its social
control tactics are unnoticed and faded into the background of and aesthetically pleasing
environment (see, Allen, 2006; Flusty, 2001).
16 D. KUDLA

Creative placemaking is not only a physical product that makes changes to urban
space but is also an intellectual product that travels and becomes embedded in place.
As I have shown, a private consultant played a key role in shaping a revitalizing urban
space by constructing powerful narratives about a local urban crisis and its appro­
priate, even humane, solution. In addition to studying conventional spaces of policy
mobility where ‘transfer agents’ educate local actors on best policy practices in social
spaces such as conferences, site visits, and lectures, city council deliberations are
significant spaces where the globally assembled parts of policies must cohere and
be legitimized at the local level. The construction of a local ‘urban crisis’ had significant
symbolic power as it helped legitimize a simplistic urban design solution to
a revitalizing area’s economic woes. Future policy mobilities work should consider
the micro-politics of city council deliberation as key sites where global policies are
legitimized, negotiated, or outright rejected as these are often the final stopping
grounds for the adoption of urban policies.
Activation, however, was not the original intention nor easily accomplished as it only
came to be after a failed attempt to hire LWLP to attract small-scale/independent retailers
as well as long debates with councillors. The DLBIA strategically used LWLP as ‘a prophet
from another land’, an extra-local policy expert, to narrate and legitimize creative place­
making as a solution to London’s urban crisis. These relational spaces where social actors
engage in discussion and debate about an ‘urban crisis’ are methodologically useful in
order to understand the local legitimization and contestation of global policies. It also
shows that municipalities are not homogenous entities with a singular mindset. Although
councillors ultimately voted in favour of activation, they were not necessarily ‘condi­
tioned’ to accept this fast policy fix insofar as LWLP worked hard to narrate and frame
homelessness as a key issue in the downtown and present activation as an appropriate
and humane response.
Unlike McCann and Mahieus (2021) who show how a private consultancy (Gehl
Architecture) used placemaking to invoke a singular and undifferentiated ‘public’ while
diverting attention away from exclusions and injustices that exist in public space, LWLP
directly labelled ‘drug use and street culture’ as an urban issue easily solvable through
urban design tactics. This resonated with city councillors as activation was a more humane
alternative compared to punitive tactics that displace the urban poor. It does not resem­
ble the punitive tactics reminiscent of the revanchist city but, rather, represents a murky
middle ground between care and punishment in the neoliberal management of poverty.
Unlike the existing literature on compassionate revanchism, activation is not enacted by
caring institutions (shelters or charities) or punitive agents (police or security) but is
a policy idea transferred and legitimized by a private organization and enacted by a quasi-
state actor (Dundas Place Manager working for the municipality and Business
Improvement District). In this sense, creative placemaking is a compassionate revanchist
policy that is constructed as a caring approach but ultimately serves to dissolve visible
poverty to enhance the marketability of a commercial area.
This is not to suggest that activation is becoming a dominant municipal strategy or that
this is replacing other forms of homeless governance. What this does suggest, however, is
that private consultancies appear to be involved in important municipal discussions and
decisions about the management of the urban poor in public spaces. Now with Dundas
Place fully renovated and various activation strategies enacted, city officials and the public
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 17

continue to complain about visible poverty and there has since been increased police
presence in the area (Lee-Lincoln, 2021; Lupton, 2022). As this policy spreads to cities
across the world, its inevitable failure to solve the structural causes of homelessness may
legitimize and amplify the deployment of more punitive tactics to invisibilize the home­
less. Future work should be mindful of how other (whether punitive or caring) agents
operate within activated spaces and the types of logics that emerge to manage visible
poverty.

Notes
1. https://lwlp.com/about/
2. While Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) is the common name of these organizations in
the U.S and most academic research, there organizations are named Business Improvement
Areas (BIA) in Canada. I therefore use the Canadian nomenclature throughout the remainder
of the paper (e.g., Downtown London Business Improvement Area; DLBIA)
3. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a standard
approach many organizations use to identify factors that are favourable and unfavourable
for achieving a specific objective.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my doctoral supervisors (Dr. Patrick Parnaby and Dr. Mervyn Horgan) for their
mentorship and advice on this project.
This study was approved by the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board (REB): REB# 16MR017

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This paper was not funded.

ORCID
Daniel Kudla http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3562-8418

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