In the early 1960s, the Preston Street area west of downtown Ottawa—known as Little Italy for its large Italian population—was a tight-knit community of 7,000 in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods. The area had a higher proportion of young people, Francophones, multiple families living together, and tenants compared to the city at large. The land use was mixed and unregulated, with shops and light industry scattered among homes and home-based businesses. Municipal officials called Little Italy a “fairly pleasant community” that “evidences a high degree of social cohesion” and most residents were pleased with where they lived. But despite that, the City of Ottawa had plans to drastically remake the neighbourhood in the name of modernization through two new tools: urban renewal and exclusionary zoning. Through an archival study, this paper profiles the City of Ottawa’s efforts to alter life in Little Italy—first through expropriation, eviction, demolition, and redevelopment and subsequently through homogenizing land use regulations. This paper presents evidence that urban renewal so dramatically reshaped the face of Little Italy and devastated local residents that civic officials backed down from further demolition. Instead, they purposefully used zoning as a less conspicuous tool to continue the project of clearing away Little Italy’s predominate character and transform it into a mostly residential, high-value homogenous area.