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A new short documentary film by young Mississauga residents is showcasing Ridgeway Plaza in a different light.
Meet Me At Ridgeway explores the controversial plaza’s cultural richness, challenges, opportunities for voter engagement and takeaways for urban planners and the city of Mississauga.
The 10-minute film, which features two sisters interviewing business owners in the plaza, premiered on Tuesday in the Kaneff Centre at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.
“Our goal was to correct some of the kind of misinformation floating about Ridgeway,” said Laila Vahed, one of the film’s three directors.
Ridgeway, an outdoor strip-mall in the Erin Mills area at Eglinton Avenue W. and Ninth Line, has been a controversial place since it opened in 2022, having faced complaints about loud noise, large gatherings and street racing.
Laila Vahed, one of the filmmakers and lead researcher in ‘Meet Me At Ridgeway,’ says the space is for intergenerational gathering where locals can go and where the city feels alive. (Jayden Dill/CBC)
The Ontario Superior Court granted the city of Mississauga a temporary injunction to crack down on large unsanctioned gatherings at the plaza and prevent what police called “nuisance behaviour.”
Vahed, who was also the lead researcher for the project, criticized how the city council discussed Ridgeway Plaza.
“The language that they use is so focused on constraining it, limiting it, describing it as a nuisance to the city. These are things that I didn’t feel lined up to how we were experiencing it,” Vahed said.
“We go to [Ridgeway] and we see it as this really beautiful cultural space, this space for intergenerational gathering where we can go and the city feels alive.”
So the filmakers asked business owners to weigh in on the plaza’s reputation.
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“Some people like to spread hate regarding this plaza,” said Hamzah Al-Ameri, co-owner of the store Sumaq Iraqi Charcoal Grill, in Meet Me At Ridgeway.
“There’s things that happen that shouldn’t happen, but that shouldn’t be the entire picture of the plaza.”
Al-Ameri said that other owners in the plaza work together to keep people safe and look out for suspicious activity.
In the panel discussion following the first showing of the movie, attendees and panelists discussed how the negativity surrounding Ridgeway was being linked to the South Asian and Middle Eastern communities that make up many of the businesses and customers at the plaza.
“I found that people were criticizing the demographic there more than the actual plaza,” panelist Zohan Ahsan said about what she found online regarding rhetoric surrounding Ridgeway Plaza.
Zohan Ahsan has a master’s degree in planning and urban development from Toronto Metropolitan University where she studied Ridgeway Plaza as a suburban ‘third place’ shaped by immigrant communities. (Jayden Dill/CBC)
Ahsan, who has a master’s degree in planning and urban development from Toronto Metropolitan University, studied Ridgeway Plaza as a ‘third place’ — a space outside people’s homes, workplace and schools — that’s shaped by immigrant communities.
She said that language being used online was trying to compartmentalize one demographic of people into a single category and describe them with derogatory terms.
“Ridgeway just ended up being an excuse for people to exercise that terminology,” she said.
“People who are running for council, people who are planners within the city of Mississauga and beyond need to understand that the way you talk about a space impacts the way that space is going to be regulated.”
Lessons to be learned from Ridgeway’s organic growth
The filmmakers acknowledged that Ridgeway faces challenges with congestion and noise among other complaints from the public.
But Vahed said that’s what comes along with a place that feels so vibrant, comparing it to other dense places like Toronto.
She added that there’s an opportunity to learn from Ridgeway about how the city plans other community spaces and handles organic community growth.
Ahsan said she thinks the urban planning field is too rigid and that planners need to be more flexible and adapt to spontaneous growth in places like Ridgeway.
Nicole Danesi is one of the producers for the short documentary film ‘Meet Me At Ridgeway,’ who focused on voter engagement and encouraging young voters to vote. (Jayden Dill/CBC)
She added that Ridgeway is an example of a community telling the city what it needs, linking the plaza’s popularity with its cultural richness and lack of alternative places in the community.
“There’s a multi-generational population [in Mississauga] and a lot of younger people want to stay out late, and this is a place that represents them,” Ahsan said.
The filmmakers wanted to showcase how city council decisions can affect popular places like Ridegway, according to one of the film’s producer’s Nicole Danesi.
She said many people don’t know how decisions at the municipal level affects them, and is hoping the short film shows them what impact their vote has.