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Approaching a gravel parking lot on 20th Street, Rick Lowe got a crash course on the history of gentrification in Saskatoon.

The parking lot is the site of the once infamous Barry Hotel, the destruction of which many people credit with the ‘revitalization’ of Saskatoon’s inner city and specifically Riversdale’s 20th Street.

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Where many people see new coffee shops, upscale bars and boutique shops as signs of the city’s growing prosperity, others, like Lowe’s tour guides, don’t have such a rosy view.

“The opportunists were here, they were ready for it, but everyone else wasn’t. It’s hurt a lot of people,” said Marcel Petit, a local filmmaker and activist who’s worked for years in the city’s core.

Petit and another local indigenous activist, Erica Lee, gave Lowe a different look at the city, one many people who visit Riversdale might not ever see.

Lowe is renowned artist and community organizer from Houston. He’s the founder of Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward. The project, which combines art with social housing, has been held up as a national example of a sustainable community based revitalization.