Patange, Poorna2022-09-262022-09-262022-09-262022-09-14http://hdl.handle.net/10012/18804The Region of Waterloo is rapidly transforming along the route of the ION Light Rail Transit Line as expansions in the innovation industry and investments in public space enhance a new linear core. As the transit line facilitates greater density it increases socioeconomic inequity in terms of who can choose to be near newly connected public space. I argue that the co-produced public space environment of state-led gentrification and innovation is a means for the municipality to ossify and intensify existing structures of spatial and economic inequity. I ask how this transformed public space is presented and produced by the state and perceived by residents. I employ a mix of photography, mapping, and surveying to form a discursive relationship between public documents, in-place experiences, and the changing socio-economic geography of the Region of Waterloo. I find that the co-production of gentrification and innovation is fostered by provincial growth planning and an institutional response to post-industrial decline. In the network of public space more intensely connected by the new transit line, I document an aesthetic and spatial narrative of entrepreneurship that blurs the boundary between labour and life - foreclosing the political potential of these spaces. With this work, I extend the theorization of gentrification in relation to innovation labour—entrepreneurship—in the political economy of a post-industrial municipality.enLRTinnovationgentrificationpublic spaceurban sensoriumMaster Thesis