Repeat photography and urban change

Abstract

Repeat photography—the practice of rephotographing the same locations at different moments in time—is an under-utilised method for interpreting urban change. Despite this, it has the potential to give new empirical and theoretical meanings to our understanding of the ways in which major forces of change shape cities and their urban landscapes. The purpose of this article is to give a visual dimension to understanding long-term change in Toronto, Canada, since the 1960s. It will use historic images taken by streetcar enthusiasts as a starting point. Rather than studying these trolleys themselves, it is everything around them that is of interest for this study. As streetcar systems were disappearing or contracting after World War II, dedicated and passionate enthusiasts visited Toronto, which retained the largest streetcar network in North America, to ride and photograph them. Their images give us unique insights into the ordinary city in ways that few other genres do. To analyse long-term patterns of change, these historic images have been rephotographed over the past few years and show how trends such as deindustrialisation, financialisation, and gentrification are made visible in the urban landscape. In this article, I also echo assertions by Elvin Wyly and others that photographs are a useful part of critical constructive analysis of the city.

Key words:

• repeat photography
• urban change
• deindustrialisation
• gentrification
• Toronto
• streetcar
• visual methods

Acknowledgements

This article is part of an ongoing research project that I have been working on with my father, Michael Doucet, Emeritus Professor of Geography from Ryerson University. I would also like to thank Pierre Filion for helpful comments on a draft of this paper, Sean Marshall for producing the maps and John F. Bromley for kindly allowing for the publication of his original slide and for assisting with identifying photographs taken by the late Robert D. McMann. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 After El Paso abandoned its short trolley line in 1974, only Toronto, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Cleveland, New Orleans and San Francisco operated streetcar systems. All of these cities, apart from Toronto and New Orleans, utilised either lengthy private rights-of-way and/or tunnels and subways which were responsible for their survival. By the late 1970s, new, modern light rail transit systems were starting to open. Today, more than 40 cities have some form of LRT or streetcar.

2 At this time, the boundaries of the City of Toronto were significantly smaller than they are today. In 1998, the City was amalgamated with five other municipalities that had previously comprised the upper-tier level of government known as Metro Toronto. The maps in this article show the boundaries for the City of Toronto in 1960 and 2019.

3 While Wyly (2010) stresses the value of captions that help to annotate visual images, the choice in this article is to explain the photos in the body of the text, while the captions themselves contain the location, dates and photographers of each image.

4 An examination of whether or not intensification will lead to more affordable housing, or fuel further speculation is beyond the scope of this article. However, the recent book House Divided (Bozikovic et al. 2019) explores some of these questions in more detail (in particular the chapter by Anna Kramer) than I have the time to do here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian Doucet

Brian Doucet is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. Email: [email protected]