Gentrification is a very broad term, and there will be substantial differences in how it plays out for anyone of probably hundreds of reasons. You do project American assumptions about gentrification on to Toronto.
While it is a broad term, the whole essence in the term is "displacement" which makes the effect the same. If there was no displacement, it would not be gentrification but instead it would be urban redevelopment. The difference between urban redevelopment and gentrification is big.
but gentrification does not mean renter displacement and does not require it. Areas with a high rates of home ownership can and do gentrify, and it usually works out pretty well financially for the displaced.
It depends. Some do like it, and some despise it.
Tenant protection laws, zoning laws, etc. all can affect gentrification making the process easier or harder on the displaced population, perhaps even limiting how many are displaced or how quickly the process happens.
In the so called third wave of gentrification, since the 1990s, local governments have actively participated in helping gentrification boom. They did so by doing what they could to help the developers gentrify. Since the 1990s the primary force in gentrification is the big time developers themselves, not the small pioneers who go in and rehab a house in which to live in. The process since the 1990s has been going as faster than ever, and with more government support than ever. These zoning laws and whatnot... they're useless. They get adjusted on purpose so that the developer will be helped.
You see, the neoliberal urban regimes welcome this, as it means more tax dollars. The government no longer pursues a full employment policy and with so many things privatized, they become slaves to those who give them tax. Big corporate developers = more tax => former neighborhood resistance fails. Very few places have managed to resist gentrification, and those that have have only done it for a temporary time. It is an ongoing battle.
here are also huge cultural differences between cities that affect how gentrification plays out. The blacks vs. gays baggage simply does not exist in Toronto the way it does in various American cities. Race doesn't play the same role here at all.
Race has not played a role anywhere in the gentrification process in quite some time. The only way that race can even be an issue is if the lower class is of a certain race. Gentrification does not care who who is. Class is the only thing that matters. There are class differences.
And consider that Canadian cities and American cities developed (sometimes very) differently. Maybe it's the post-war slab that makes gentrification in Toronto different from that in Chicago. Here, there are quite a few neighbourhoods made up of post-war high rises that dot the city. Some of these neighbourhoods have become notorious for their levels of poverty, etc. Let me be clear here: I'm not talking about government housing, but privately owned rentals. For some reason these neighbourhoods are pretty resistant to gentrification, and I think that removes some of the confrontation from gentrification here. If these people lived in structures and neighbourhoods more conducive to gentrification (i.e. more attractive to gentrifiers), the displacement of the poor argument might hold more water here, but for now these neighbourhoods remain too old to be new and too new to be old. Just a theory.
From what I have seen, most gentrification that has occurred in Toronto has been south of the bloor-danforth line, where there are few highrise complexes. One interesting thing in Toronto is that there are many more highrises than in the US, and boy do I love them. At any rate, gentrification will probably creep up and reach those places sooner or later. Cabrini Green fell in Chicago, and that model can be used elsewhere. The difference is that the sheer size of highrises is far greater in Toronto. Plus, there has been less "disinvestment".
Gentrification was not invented in the neoliberal (post-1980) Anglosphere as people often believe.
Did I say that it was invented in the post 1980 realm? Don't put words into my mouth. Some things that resembled it were first recorded in the 1930s, but it actually started as a real process in the 1950s and 1960s. It was rather sporadic at first. And it did take place in the big time cities of the anglophone world first.
In light of this, you can't really accuse Toronto of falling prey to the same forces of gentrification that swept across American cities. It was a totally different kettle of fish.
After reading your post where you were perhaps trying to sound smart, mentioning harvey and others... I beg to differ with your conclusion.
Why not read deeper into harvey's stuff and you might be able to stumble upon neil smith and jason hackworth. Many more actually. The point is that there is an overwhelming body of literature that talks about gentrification all over the world.
I recommend that you look into Neil Smith's rent gap thesis. That there is a good starting point in seeing that there is potential for gentrification absolutely anywhere. Anyhows, Gentrification has only intensified and expanded all over the world since the 1990s, and Toronto is absolutely no exception. Tens of thousands have been displaced in big Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and others.
Very rarely will you see a new super rich neighbourhood pop up in an established city simply because the critical mass of people and land/buildings generally is not available to create another enclave of giant homes on giant lots.
It takes time. It's a process called Super-Gentrification, where the rich displace the middle class.
Ohh, the humanity. How dare people want to remedy failed urban experiments like Cabrini Green. Filthy capitalists. This may surprise you but poor people don't like being segregated into homogeneous ghettos. In Toronto at least, experiments with mixed market housing have exclusively been preferred to homogeneous income communities by both market residents and low income residents. In Regent Park rundown units are being replaced and new retail being introduced thanks to abandoning the idea that poor places should stay poor.
Cabrini Green was once a good place in case you did not know.
Poor places do not stay poor. Their poverty is created through disinvestment and so they become poor.
Mixed income is a joke. The displaced poor get only like 5% if not less of the new mixed income places. What a joke indeed. You are reading Freeman's cheers for gentrification I bet, where the genius based his research and data off of those who moved in, not those who moved out.
Who woulda thought, gay couples and espresso bars don't make for lively neighborhoods, heavy industry does. I will go out on a limb and assume that you have never actually lived near a manufacturing plant. I went to school next to a toilet factory, let me say I would have loved it to be replaced by lofts.
The service sector industry should not be the only industry. That bothers me. Why must it all be service based? Having some factories does not mean butting them right adjacent to communities out of nowhere. But nonetheless, we do need manufacturing. How many of those jobs have been sent to china and elsewhere? The rich simply do not want to pay people more here if they can get slaves to work for less in china or some other god forsaken place.
No, arson and intimidation are not "very common." That is simply false. In Toronto, there has been no major cases of coffee bar owners breaking the legs of the porn shops they are trying to replace. No vegan IT consultants "intimidating" the drug dealers out.
In the literature it is very common for former tenants to be intimidated to move. Some of the worst intimidation has been noted in the UK. Regardless, intimidation does happen.
Its not involuntary. I can't afford to live on 5th Avenue, it doesn't mean there is something less than fair going on.
Tell me about the people who got displaced from south parkdale.
Here... http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/researchbulletins/CUCS-RB-28-Slater-Parkd.pdf
For something to be consumed it has to be produced, first.
When I speak of consumption and production explanations I am talking about some gentrification terminology which you have demonstrated to have absolutely no knowledge about. Consumption explanations more or less say that it is all supply and demand, people want to move there and whatnot. Production explanations say that gentrification is produced through disinvestment, and one key thing here is the rent gap. Please don't say some nonsense like "oh we have a big rent they havea small one so what if there is a gap" - it's something totally different from this hypothetical imbecilic reply that I made up.
Bah, here, I don't even want to argue, I guess I must chow down all the food for you to swallow, here's the rent gap -
http://www.enoughroomforspace.org/project_pages/view/198
Here is some info on consumption and production explanations...
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~zchoudhu/page3.html
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