Regent Park—and adjoining areas of the Old City's east end—were home to some of Toronto's historic slum districts in the early 1900s. Most residents of the area were poor and working-class people of British and Irish descent, along with smaller numbers of continental European Jewish and Macedonian immigrants. Concern over crime and social problems in the area, as well as substandard housing, led to plans for affordable housing during the Second World War. These plans came to fruition soon after the end of the war, when the Regent Park North public housing project was approved in 1947. Families began to move into Regent Park North in 1949, but construction continued into the 1950s. The last families moved into Regent Park North in 1957. In subsequent years, more public housing units were built in Toronto, including Regent Park South, which was completed in 1960. The high-rise portion was designed by
Page and Steele while the spartan
row house and walk-up apartments were designed by John Edward Hoare. project, developed after the
Second World War. Although Regent Park had been designed to alleviate the area's substandard housing, crime, and social problems, these issues soon reemerged. By the mid-1960s, for example, there were complaints about the housing projects falling into a state of disrepair. Changes to the Canadian immigration system in the 1960s led to an influx of multicultural and multiethnic immigrants into the country. Some of these people, including immigrants from the Caribbean, China and Southeast Asia, settled in Regent Park in the 1960s and 1970s, changing the ethnic and racial composition of the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the area continued to have a reputation of crime. In the early 2000s, a new redevelopment plan for Regent Park was implemented. The plan in question called for Regent Park to be redeveloped as a mixed-income neighbourhood. Because of the area's proximity to the downtown core, it is potentially high value real estate. The neighbourhood's ethnic composition has changed between 2001 and 2016. In 2001, the neighbourhood was 22%
Black, 21.8%
South Asian, 19.5%
European, 14.1%
Chinese, 10.6%
Southeast Asian and 3.4%
Latin American. By the 2016 census, Europeans had become the largest group, while the presence of visible minority groups declined. The neighbourhood in 2016 was 28% European, 25.7% South Asian, 13.6% Black, 12.5% Chinese and 3.7% Southeast Asian. In Regent Park, the median household income in 2016 was $42,369, although there was a decrease in this income range as compared to 2011. This is lower than the median household income for Toronto at $65,829. As well, the Regent Park neighbourhood has a higher percentage of households without income (5.9%) compared to the City of Toronto average (4.7%) and 44.4% of households are at or below the poverty level, compared to 20.2% for the city average.
Redevelopment , which seeks to replace the rapidly aging social housing units in the area. More than a half-century old, the Regent Park projects were aging rapidly and in need of costly repairs. The city government developed a plan to demolish and rebuild Regent Park over the next many years, with the first phase having started in the fall of 2005. The addition of market units on site will double the number of units in Regent Park. Former street patterns will be restored and housing will be designed to reflect that of adjacent neighbourhoods (including
Cabbagetown and
Corktown) in order to end Regent Park's physical isolation from the rest of the city. In support of the Clean and Beautiful City campaign by
former Toronto Mayor David Miller and to further the goal of renewing architecture in all
Toronto Community Housing projects, an architectural competition was held for the design of the first apartment building in the complex. Toronto-based
architectsAlliance was selected winner of the competition, with a modern glass point tower set on top of a red-brick podium structure in their proposal. While phase two had not yet been completed, the third stage of the revitalization plan began in May 2014, which will include newer or updated facilities. The revitalization plan has five phases. Phase two of the revitalization plan was completed in 2018 with the third phase set to be completed by 2023/2024. In the last two decades Regent Park has also become an immigrant community, as immigrants facing difficulties settling in Canada end up living there. Thus, the community is always viewed and administered as a transitional community. This contributed to the concentration of a socially marginalized population and various social ills of Regent Park. In particular, a transitional community failed to generate the awareness, interest and commitment of its residents to invest in the development and sustainability of a higher quality of life. ==Culture==