Gentrification of the (Leisure) Mind: Organizational Justifications and Community Concerns of a Proposed LGBTQ2S Sport and Recreation Center

ABSTRACT

In 2015, Toronto’s largest LGBTQ2S organization, the city, and a private donor collaborated and proposed what they believed constituted the world’s first LGBTQ2S sport and recreation facility in Toronto’s Moss Park neighborhood. While conceived as a site that would expand community services in an underserved community, this project was met with criticism from segments of the Moss Park community. Using qualitative interviews with both representatives from the LGBTQ2S organization and local residents, the purpose of this was to analyze justifications behind the project and concerns from the community. In so doing, the authors reflect upon the relationship between sport, recreation, and leisure-based place-making and questions of queer/de-queering politics by exploring the transformative or assimilationist aspects of queer recreation practices, the homonormativity of leisure spaces, and spiritual displacement associated with queer gentrification.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ2S
• queer
• gentrification
• sport
• recreation
• leisure
• Toronto

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.