Scarborough was slightly worse in the '90s, sure, now that most of the gangs have been broken and the demographic cohorts that caused all the problems have largely grown up or moved elsewhere (like to the UK to play soccer). But Scarborough in the '90s was still the kind of place where "the projects" literally amounted to little more than a few townhouse complexes. They're all quite decent and you're far more likely to see BMWs in their driveways than chalk outlines. Scarborough's median household income is higher than the city's median...it's not poor. It's always been Toronto's middle class borough. More Wayne's World than South Central. Who can forget the Woburn Riot of '91 or the West Hill Riot of '95? Oh, wait, those never happened.
Scarborough is probably the safest part of the city today, especially since the crime seems to be moving. In 2009, for instance, Scarborough had about 10 murders and almost all of them were along Kennedy. It's great when crime declines even as it moves around faster than public perceptions can be entrenched...previously sketchy areas like Malvern will become known as not as sketchy, and newer areas of crime may never develop bad reputations if the crime doesn't linger.
Scarborough’s reputation problem lies *entirely* in the fact that it’s a large and easily conceived of neighbourhood. East of Victoria Park...simple. Neighbourhoods west of Victoria Park are invariably difficult to map, even if we know their names. There’s Regent Park, but it’s not even 1/100th the size of Scarborough. There’s Jane & Finch, but where does it begin and end? It and other areas hide behind things like “North York” or "York," which almost no one can mentally map. And Regent Park and Jane & Finch aren't even necessarily crime-laden anymore...there's worse neighbourhoods that don't really have names or are impossible to mentally map, so we forget about them.
The Brits are tabloid obsessed, so the, err, embellishments make sense. De Rosario would wet his pants if he was actually left alone for ten minutes in South Central or parts of Philly, DC, Chicago, etc. Not that he said any of this, anyway (but he probably did say something about a rough childhood in ghetto Scarborough, leaving out any other potential factors like poor choice of friends and poor parenting). I wouldn't be surprised if the worst housing complex in Scarborough - keeping in mind that around 1990, most of Scarborough was still shiny and brand new - was a paradise compared to some British neighbourhoods.
