Turman, William Nicholas2021-01-282021-01-282021-01-282021-01-26http://hdl.handle.net/10012/16760Condo development, as a form of housing, currently comprises almost half of all housing starts in Ontario. This type of development is aided by policy directives (Lehrer and Wieditz, 2009), and it is what Rosen and Walks (2014) are identifying as a transformation of social, cultural, and political life, what they call ‘condo-ism’. This thesis aims to explore this transformation in the framework of Harvey’s conception of the right to the city (2012), exploring resident experiences of life in and around a condo in four ways: how the condo provides a sense of home and ontological security, how the condo supports a sense of community identity and entitativity, how the physical design of the condo facilitates the two previous concepts, and how the formal community, expressed in its rules and regulations, impacts residents’ ability to control their environment. The research involved seven semi-structured interviews with renters, resident owners, non-resident owners, a condo board member, and the condo manager for a single condo in a mid-sized city in Ontario. It was found that the physical design and the formal rules of the condo disempower residents. However, the identity of the condo and the area in which it stands reinforced residents’ identities. Notably, there was no connection between the residents of this condo and an adjacent condo. Dogs and dog ownership were found to be an unexpected source of social connections within and beyond the condo, and online social media groups were important, but controversial, sources of information.encondominiumcondocommunityhomeontological securityentitativityMaster Thesis