Counternarratives of Urban Revitalization and "Urban Crisis" in a Mid-Sized City in Canada: A Critical Social Work Analysis of Preliminary Findings from a Qualitative Study

This paper explores what has been described as a growing “urban crisis” in Windsor Ontario, which like many smaller-city communities is contending with “big city” problems of substance use, mental illness, and homelessness (Florida, 2017). While Windsor is attempting to revitalize its downtown core through business-friendly policies, new cultural attractions, and building infrastructure, the downtown core has become increasingly understood as a risky neighbourhood characterized by a “crisis” of homelessness and poverty, resulting in an exodus of people and business. Local politicians, homeowners, business owners, and service providers have been successful in amplifying their views on the problem of visible homelessness in the downtown core, and these collective viewpoints dominate local media narratives about homelessness. However, homeless people have yet to collectively participate in shaping these narratives. Thus, this goal of this study is to address this knowledge gap by producing counternarrative knowledge generated by homeless people living in Windsor’s downtown core.

In this presentation, I will share findings from the first two phases of the study. First, I will discuss the textual discourse analysis of local newspaper articles that informs phase two of the study. We are currently in phase two and conducting qualitative interviews with service users and stakeholders in Windsor’s downtown core. I will present some preliminary themes emanating from the qualitative interview data.

By researching the dynamics of Windsor’s downtown core as an ‘urban crisis,’ the broad goal of this research is to address a critical knowledge gap and inform research, community practice, develop public relations strategies to improve community relations and promote socially just revitalization efforts in the community. Through a Critical Social Work (Baines, 2007; Fook, 2016) lens, we examine how knowledge gleaned from this study can be translated to impact the social worker's ability to practice in these settings in a more socially just manner.