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U of T research identifies three "cities" within Toronto

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I just stumbled across this article. The description reminds of old school science texts with their various rings/layers of minerals, skin, atmospheres, and now Torontonians...

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/071220-3565.asp

U of T research identifies three "cities" within Toronto
City becoming increasingly divided by income and socio-economic status
Dec 20/07

The City of Toronto is becoming increasingly divided by income and socio-economic status, says a new report issued today by the Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) at the University of Toronto. No longer a “city of neighbourhoods,†the study calls modern-day Toronto a “city of disparities.â€

In fact, Toronto is now so polarized it could be described as three geographically distinct cities made up of 20 percent affluent neighbourhoods, 36 percent poor neighbourhoods, and 43 percent middle-income earner neighbourhoods − and that 43 percent is in decline.

The CUCS study analyzed income and other data from the 1971 and 2001 censuses, and grouped the city’s neighbourhoods based on whether average income in each one had increased, decreased, or stayed the same over that 30-year period. It found that the city’s neighbourhoods have become polarized by income and other ethno-cultural characteristics and that wealth and poverty are concentrated in distinct areas.

The CUCS report describes three distinct geographical “cities†within the City of Toronto in 2001:

· City#1 (high-income) is clustered around the two subway lines, much of the area south of Bloor/Danforth, some of the waterfront, and central Etobicoke. It includes about 17 per cent of Toronto’s residents. In this “city,†incomes have increased by 71per cent over the 30-year study period. The ethnic origins of residents are mostly white (84 per cent), a small minority are immigrants (12 per cent), and their occupations are mostly white-collar (60 per cent).

· City#2 (middle-income) sits between the other two cities, with some neighbourhoods in the core and south of Bloor-Danforth, and others in the former North York. Forty-two per cent of Toronto’s residents live City #2. Average incomes have changed little over the study period (a slight decrease of 4 per cent). The ethnic makeup of City#2 is 67 per cent white and 21 per cent black, Chinese or South Asian; 48 per cent are immigrants, and their work is 39 per cent white collar and 18 per cent blue collar.

· City#3 (low-income) comprises much of northern Toronto, outside the Yonge Street subway corridor, plus large parts of Scarborough. It comprises 40 per cent of the city’s population. Incomes in City#3 have decreased by 34 per cent between 1970 and 2000; its residents are 43 per cent black, Chinese or South Asian in origin (40 per cent are white); 62 per cent were born outside of Canada; and 32 per cent work in white-collar and 25 per cent in blue-collar jobs.

So the term “inner city†(in the sense of urban poverty) no longer means south of Bloor-Danforth or clustered around the downtown core. Gentrification has changed the southern neighbourhoods. The new “inner city†has moved north, mostly north of the 401, and east to Scarborough.

The report concludes that, “the City of Toronto, over a 30-year period, ceased being a city with a majority of neighbourhoods (66 per cent) in which residents’ average incomes were near the middle, and very few neighbourhoods (1 per cent) with very poor residents.

“Middle-income neighbourhoods are now a minority and half the city’s neighbourhoods are low-income,†said Professor David Hulchanski, director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies.

This economic and cultural segregation will likely continue, he noted, unless the various levels of government undertake policies to support income, give tax relief to those at the low end, and promote mixed neighbourhoods through zoning and rent control.
 
This is very misleading because poverty and wealth exist strikingly close to one another and sometimes within the very same building.

For example, I once rented a place off St. Clair and Oakwood that was divided into a triplex. My roommate and I were both middle class knowledge economy drones who occupied the top two floors. Below us was a retiree and below that was a basement apartment lived in by a bunch of professional stoners. My neighbour to my right was a professional who drove a Porsche and a Jaguar. My neighbours to my left, however, were two immigrant families who lived in the same house and a single mother in the basement. This kind of arrangement is repeated all through a large part of the old city of Toronto, York and East York. In the postwar suburbs, there is a lot of subdividing of individual houses going on, with illegal immigrants and temporary lodgers occupying rooms and basements in middle class houses. In other words, the government does not need to promote mixed income communities because they are largely already in place.
 
A good third of Scarborough was still farms back in 1970. Also, the article seems to define "northern" Toronto as anything north of Bloor. I wonder how large or small the 'neighbourhoods' they're measuring are...I'd like to see a map. Ward 42 (Malvern), for instance, has a median household income almost 20% greater than the 416 at large, but if they're measuring at the census tract level, they'll certainly find some tracts - "neighbourhoods" - with quite low average incomes.
 
I just put down the Globe after reading this article, which is the lead story.

It is really a summary of what is anecdotally visible.
The corridor between Bathurst and Bayview from The Lake to Steeles is Toronto's most consistently affluent area. Outside of that, Queen street holds some old and new wealth on both ends and The Kingsway/Swansea, which are also visibly more affluent areas of the city. When you are in these places, it is just so obviously different from the City#2 and City #3 areas.

It's strange how polarized it has become and it is in the attitudes of how many people act. Living outside the central corridor is a big hit to social status in many people's eyes.
 
Link to the report is here. I agree with some of the problems with the methodology. Even Jane-Finch has wonderfully kept houses once you get in a few hundred metres from either street. While I agree there are many marginalized neighbourhoods, and that the problem areas continue to shift into the suburbs, Toronto escapes the worst because of the heterogeneity of the housing stock, even in such places as Malvern.
 
The map is on the front page of today's Globe. It's interesting stuff, although really not new to anyone who has been following trends in the city for the past 10 - 15 years.

The situation is perhaps oversimplified in that rental rates don't necessarily vary so much by neighbourhood. A 1-bedroom in a 1960s building in the corridor between Bathurst and Bayview will not be a lot different than a similar 1-bedroom in north Scarborough.

Where the difference really comes into effect is in house prices. There are sharp price divergences between neighbourhoods, even for similar houses, not to mention that some neighbourhoods are developed generally with larger and better houses than others.

It may be quite possible for a low-income renter to live in the central corridor, but much less likely for a low-income person to own a home there.
 
There are many troubling suggestions in that summary, that seem to be only loosely associated to the facts presented.

1) Three Cities idea. It sounds bad but seems to be an artifact of the methodology which is to carve the city up by ranges of average income. It would be interesting to know the extent to which the populations of these areas do or do not mix. To really have separate cities, I think you need to establish that the populations aren't interacting daily.
2) truly, in 1970, no body lived in many of the areas that are classified as middle income at the time. My family moved to an area just south of Orton Park Rd and Ellesmere in 1970. The city seemed to literally end at the top of our street - which was a dead end. Beyond that were open fields. These were progressively filled in over the years.
3) The changes in avg. income of each 'city' over the 30 years is clearly due to changes in who lived there. The summary makes it seem like the same people became progressively poorer or richer. In fact, people moved around. Changes in living preferences have led upper/middle income people to move to the older neighbourhoods - which were clearly unfashionable in 1970. The very wealthy largely stayed put. Middle income people in the Metro suburbs moved to newer houses in the outer suburbs and poorer immigrants took their place. This doesn't sound like a segragated population.

Overall, I don't think this is a helpful analysis of the local economic distribution. The changes in affluence of individuals over time is much more important than the changes in affluence of neighbourhoods.
 
The maps are a bit silly - there's census tracts in north Scarborough that currently contain almost 10% of the city's overall population but were home to about 10 farmers back in 1971. Every one of them is said to have dropped in average income, but how can there be a drop in income when some of the areas were literally uninhabited?

The study also examines individual income, not household income. Apartment dwellers downtown or in Yonge & Eglinton do well here, but if they looked at household income, some of the "low income" areas would actually be above average.

Plenty of 70s/80s suburban areas also saw huge increases in the number of kids living in each census tract...this would really slash average individual income even while increasing household income.

edit - I hate "average income" stats..."median income" is much more meaningful and useful. Average income stats here have been used to suggest thousands after thousands of comfortable middle class families live in a decaying zone of poverty, which is ridiculous.
 
I think you need to read the full report including its technical notes before criticizing the methodology so quickly. The full report is found at the Greater Toronto Urban Observatory http://www.gtuo.ca

It explains why individual income is better than household income (households are shrinking) and that it did examine both and that it found almost the same trends, why average is used instead of median, etc.

There is a map on the GTUO website (look in the Household Size and Family Status part of the Neighbourhood Income Polarization Since 1970 section) that shows that most census tracts in Toronto have a lower percentage of kids since 1971 (this means the adult percentage has increased) which disproves the theory that kids are bringing down the average.
 
Are people reading the Globe also going to sift through the minutiae of the methodology or are they going to come quicker to even more general conclusions?

edit - "Most" census tracts have fewer kids these days, but what about outer Scarborough, which was mostly uninhabited in 1971. They used 2001 CT boundaries and copied and pasted stats from elsewhere when studying these newly developed areas. They claim that doing this did not affect overall trends, but we're talking about 10% of the current 416, and a good number of the census tracts in Scarborough that make the zone of poverty on the map so contiguous...so "convincing."
 
Welcome to multicultural post industrial society.
I haven't read the entire article yet but the little pie charts by the map suggest there may be a relationship between ethnicity and the spatial distribution of wealth.
 
Don't get hung up on the issue that some of north Scarborough above highway 401 was not developed yet in 1970 or had small populations. The study also looks at incomes in 1980, 1990, 1995 and 2000. One of the maps in the full report is showing the census tracts that had a persistent increase or decrease in income since 1980.

The point is that whether 1970 or 1980 (when the census tracts are much closer to the boundaries of current ones) is used as a starting point for income, the direction of change in almost all of north Scarborough is the same and that is downwards. This is true for individual income, employment income and household incomes.
 
I haven't looked at the report in any detail, so I could very well be wrong, but could one sailent factor of income decline during this period (in addition to immigration, etc.) be the result of lifecycle characteristics of the residents? In 1970 (when the subdivisions are built), the residents are likely to be in the middle age, working and having kids; by now, they should be in retirement, with pensions and relatively speaking, lower income levels.

AoD
 
Yes, flar, there is a clear overlap between WASPy areas and rich areas...but everyone already knew that.

edit - This article simply concluded that rich people live along subway lines, the middle class has mostly moved to the 905, and those that remain are surrounded by a belt of scary poverty!
 
I think Alvin's point is another one that is well taken. Neighbourhoods go through life cycles, as the residents age. Look at the neighbourhoods where schools have closed for lack of students, or are running at half of capacity.
 

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