Over the past decade, Toronto’s inner city witnessed an extraordinary amount of capital reinvestment, mainly in the shape of high-rise condominium towers. Developers realized that it was just as profitable to erect high-rise towers on former industrial lands or along major artery roads as to continue to build single-family homes on greenfields in the sprawling outskirts of an urban region of 4.5 million inhabitants. The reorientation of capital towards the inner city for investment came about, in part, through planning policies demanding the intensification of already built-up areas (Lehrer and Wieditz 2009). It also led to a socioeconomic transformation with strong characteristics of gentrification (Smith 1996), where the city is increasingly divided into three distinct socioeconomic parts (Hulchanski 2007, 2008a, 2008b).

While previous waves of gentrification left their marks on several areas throughout Toronto, this reinvestment initiated new pressures on the city’s real estate market. This form of socioeconomic transformation does not follow the general definition of gentrification where old, devalued building stock in a rundown neighborhood capture the interest of capital investment—first by an organic approach of upgrading by so-called pioneers, then by a more strategic reinvestment by speculators and developers—leading to the displacement of the residential population (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008; Ley 1985). But what this latest version has in common