Squatting and the City.

The article reports on the situation of Canadian cities. Movies and television programs regularly invoke imagery of big cities as sites of pleasure and prestige, a mecca of entrepreneurial opportunity, individual prosperity and rampant consumerism. Underneath the glitz and glam, cities are not sexy. For many people in Canada, cities are a place of work, survival, poverty, homelessness, police brutality, discrimination and resistance. As the gap between rich and poor continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, the city is increasingly segregated into factions of affluent and destitute. Entrenched by the dismantling of the welfare state, individuals who are poverty-stricken face the harsh reality that governments are no longer willing to offer protection from the social failures of the free market.