Lines we cannot see

In contemporary cities like Toronto, new kinds of boundaries are quietly drawn—lines we do not see, yet whose presence we deeply feel. Whether religiously inspired or legally enforced, these boundaries redefine public space in ways that can evoke an uncanny sense of colonialism. The recent implementation of protest-free “bubble zones” around sensitive sites, primarily in response to rising antisemitism, and the longstanding presence of the eruv in Jewish communities both participate in a re-symbolization of urban space. Though their aims differ—protection versus spiritual accommodation—they share a subliminal power to displace.

An eruv is an invisible boundary, often made with thin wires affixed to utility poles, which transforms a public space into a shared private domain under Jewish law, allowing activities otherwise restricted on the Sabbath. To those who rely on it, it offers a beautiful continuity of tradition and observance. But for those who live within its reach and are unaware of its presence or implications, there is a strange discomfort: the space around them has been transformed in meaning—symbolically absorbed—without their participation or consent.

The new “bubble zones,” passed by Toronto City Council in 2025, create 50-metre protest-free perimeters around places of worship, schools, and childcare centres. These are voluntary and established upon application, meant to protect vulnerable communities—especially Jewish ones—from targeted hate. Yet their enforcement raises deeper questions. If someone wears a Palestinian flag in one of these zones as a form of political identity or protest, they may be penalized. That person’s identity, though nonviolent, becomes incompatible with the permitted semiotics of the space. They are not physically removed but symbolically dispossessed.

In an era where institutional legitimacy often hinges on moral clarity, there is a growing incentive for groups to frame their needs in terms of harm. This is not to deny the reality of antisemitism or violence—far from it—but to acknowledge a broader pattern: that power responds most decisively to pain when that pain can be codified, made visible, and politically resonant. This opens a dangerous door. When protections are granted primarily to those who master the language of victimhood, it creates a perverse incentive to perform or provoke the very suffering one seeks protection from. The city becomes a stage, and public space, once shared, becomes a zone of selective listening.

History Offers Cautionary Echoes.

In 1516, the Venetian Republic confined Jews to a gated island—the first official ghetto. It was locked at night and monitored, justified in the name of order and tolerance. Its walls protected but also imprisoned. Boundaries that once ensured coexistence became symbols of containment. The city outside remained free; the inside, sanctified by segregation.

This paradox is not lost in the case of the Venetian Ghetto. When others imposed boundaries upon the Jewish people—walls, curfews, restrictions—it was rightly seen as a form of exclusion, a slight against their dignity and autonomy. Yet today, when similar spatial demarcations are enacted by a community for its own perceived safety or religious coherence—such as the eruv or the bubble zone—they are embraced as symbols of self-determination and cultural preservation. The function, however, remains strikingly similar: a symbolic enclosure, a redefinition of space, and a reallocation of who belongs and on what terms. The difference lies not in the boundary itself, but in who draws it and with what power. All one can say is that the morality of a line depends less on its shape than on the politics of its author.

During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, neighbourhoods in Belfast evolved into informal no-go zones. Protestants and Catholics created territorial enclaves marked by murals, flags, and boundaries both seen and felt. These zones offered safety for insiders but danger for others. Like today’s symbolic perimeters, they reflected how identity and fear reshape access to space.

Apartheid South Africa institutionalized this logic. Black South Africans had to carry passbooks, restricting where they could live, travel, or gather. Space was not only racialized but also moralized—presence became a legal question. To be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong body, was to be illegal. While modern bubble zones do not mimic apartheid in form or intent, they share a latent risk: that visibility and expression might become regulated rights.

Even medieval Christendom recognized zones of moral exception. Churches offered sanctuary, a sacred immunity from the reach of secular law. A fugitive might cross a threshold and gain protection from justice. Sanctity overruled civic logic. Similarly, today’s safe zones suspend ordinary public freedoms in favour of higher ideals of protection and care.

The Colonial Echo.

This is the colonial echo: not the overt expropriation of land, but the quiet reassignment of meaning and access in public space. The eruv and the bubble zone are not walls, but they function as symbolic fences, determining who belongs, what can be expressed, and how space is to be interpreted. They are not inherently unjust, but they can become exclusionary, especially when backed by institutional power that privileges one narrative of safety over another.

Public space, by definition, should be the arena of pluralism. Yet the moment a space is turned into a “safe zone” for some, it can become a regulated zone of exclusion for others. The question is not whether these zones should exist—they may be necessary—but how they are framed, discussed, and maintained. Do they recognize the multiplicity of the communities they intersect with? Or do they enforce a monoculture of safety, one defined from above, often in reaction to complex histories of trauma, resistance, and asymmetrical power?

What emerges is a need for vigilance: not against the communities that seek safety or spiritual accommodation, but against the unspoken narratives that frame such needs as universally benign. When safety for one group begins to mean silence for another, we approach the edge of what might be called a soft dispossession—a spatial silencing without eviction, a moral mapping without consent.

To walk into such a zone wearing the wrong flag, holding the wrong memory, or uttering the wrong pain should not make one a trespasser. Cities must find ways to hold both vulnerability and dissent, sanctity and protest. Otherwise, the public realm risks becoming a patchwork of invisible principalities—each fenced by ideology, each blind to the lives they quietly exclude.

These lines, though unseen, are felt. And unless we interrogate them, they may one day surround us all.