plazaPOPS presents The Ballet of the Parking Lot at 401 Richmond

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About

Presented in celebration of Ontario Culture Days 2025.

plazaPOPS is excited to present "The Ballet of the Parking Lot", an exhibit at 401 Richmond's Urbanspace Gallery that celebrates the community-led work our organization has accomplished along Toronto's ‘strip mall main streets’.

While strip mall main streets - the iconic thoroughfares found throughout the city lined by diverse, iconic, and delicious businesses - have become vibrant people places, there needs to be intentional, collaborative, and community-led efforts to enhance the parking lots surrounding them to become essential community hubs – social infrastructure where it’s needed most but hardest to create.

The exhibit will explore plazaPOPS' approach to community-led transformations of parking spaces into people places, detailing strategies for multi-sector collaboration and overcoming barriers, while highlighting key findings from our community-based research initiative that demonstrate the social, environmental, and economic impacts of investing in culturally-specific third places tailored to the unique conditions of Toronto’s inner suburbs.

As part of the Exhibition Opening Celebration on September 20, 2025, the plazaPOPS team will be on site to introduce visitors to our work since 2019. VR headsets will available for use by visitors to experience a virtual-reality rendition of our 2024 Hub site!

Links

• plazaPOPS website plazaPOPS.ca

Organizer

plazaPOPS

plazaPOPS supports community-led transformations of parking lots and other under-invested spaces, into free, safe and accessible gathering places to support thriving culture, community and small businesses.

Largely located along strip mall main streets, we partner with local community groups, property owners, and small businesses to support and celebrate the community connections and small businesses that define the vitality of neighbourhoods.