Walk around the city and look very closely at your surroundings. Notice the noises. Hear the messages. Feel the feelings. Cold metal construction cranes loom over neighbourhoods by the dozens. Gentrification rubs up against inter-generational communities pushing people to downsize. Artists are packing up their studios in the urban centres towards affordability in outlying regions. Tent cities crop up in the underpasses on the edges of the parks. Urban populations are experiencing precarity on all levels. Politicians wring their hands and spew broken promises from glass towers. Inflation, the housing crisis, and gentrification are calling into question the future of our global cities. Affordability, rising food costs, skyrocketing rents and real estate development are pushing people to the literal margins. As citizens, we watch as this significant transformation takes place all around us, and we can see the inevitable death of our cities on the horizon but somehow feel powerless to stop it.

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In this exhibit on Urban Futurities, we pause and take stock.

 

The exhibition will show viewers this crisis point through art and as we use our creative capacity to imagine new solutions and new ways of living together in our communities.