“Our Public Library”: Social reproduction and urban public space in Toronto

A recent struggle to stop proposed cuts to the public library budget in Toronto, Canada led toward broader debates over the effects of declining public budgets for the social reproduction of workers and citizens in neoliberalizing urban public spaces. Library proponents proclaimed that public libraries are a vital service and charged that budget cuts would disproportionately affect women and economically marginalized workers across the city. The controversy over Toronto's public library budget revealed that public libraries are unique public spaces where people are formed as workers and citizens, but through which they can also contest neoliberal disinvestment from the public sphere. Drawing from the events, outcomes, and claims made during the controversy, I argue that public libraries should be understood as spaces for social reproduction. •Rescaling social policy in Canada has resulted in increased reliance on public libraries among women and precarious workers in Toronto.•The controversy over Toronto's public libraries demonstrates that public libraries are important public spaces for multiple forms of reproductive labor.•The dynamics among the state, social policy, and public space have shaped the spatiality of social reproduction in ways that activists in Toronto connected with gendered austerity and the reprivatization of social reproduction.