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Income Polarization in Toronto - The Three Cities study

Electrify said:
In my first year of Urban Studies at York, we had to do a critique of the study. Something I found that this study ignored was that while the middle class is disappearing from Toronto proper, they make up the majority of the population in the 905 suburbs.
Click to expand...

So the overall the GTA isn't changing so much but Toronto is getting poorer ... sounds about right I think.
 
One issue or metric I would like to see is this income information overlayed with age break-down. The reason this matters is that age has more to do with income than any other factor. Neighbourhoods with large numbers of people below 40 and above 65 have intrinsically lower incomes. People in their 40's and 50's have substantially higher incomes on average. You can really see which areas are struggling if there are high numbers of people living there in their 40's and 50's and the income levels are still low. On the other hand income isn't necessarily a good metric to look at to determine the financial health of populations below 40 and above 65. Better measures for those below 40 may be something like education level, and for those above 65 net assets.
 
^ That is certainly a valid point and one of the drivers of this shift that the study is documenting. That said, I don't think all those neighborhoods in central Toronto are simply being populated by 40-50 year olds driving up the average income. There's naturally a combination of factors which is difficult to tabulate in a single chart. You almost need to isolate a specific age group and track that group over a period of time to determine income trends, migration patterns, etc.
 
The solution this problem is for the City of Toronto to deamalgamate, into single-tier municipalities, so that all these low-income people are no longer a burden on Torontonians, on REAL Torontonians.
 
The problem doady (assuming you aren't just being sarcastic) is that it is cheaper to deal with social problems in a socio-economically mixed area than in a collection of segregated areas. It's not about total amount of money it's about the distribution of resources. A functioning middle-class society relies I believe primarily on "externalities" in order to function and keep up the standard of living for the average person. What I mean is that the government funded tax base is tiny relative to the unaccounted for, unpaid work everyone does every day to promote and sustain social cohesion. Once you segregate the population you have to rely more and more on taxation to fill the gap, and it just can't come close to making up the difference. In other words taxation (and GDP for that matter) are tiny, microscopic perhapes, relative to the full spectrum of work required to create and sustain social cohesion.

On the other hand you could just say screw it and let natural forces self-segregate. I actually believe this to be the natural order of human civilization and the daily experience of most of the worlds population. But if we aim to be exceptional or ambitious we can only do so by relying as much as possible on "externalities" that thrive off the books through the intractions of people who are dissimilar and live in dissimilar circumstances.
 
Income polarization is an issue, in Toronto and in North America as a whole. I don't think that the Three Cities study proves its case that we're moving toward a neighbourhood model where wealthy people and poor people live far a part. That certainly exists in the United States, where you can go for kilometres and find only poor people in some areas. In Toronto, I just don't see it. Downtown isn't as much of an immigrant reception area as it used to be, and many poorer new immigrants are going straight to the old 416 suburbs. That doesn't mean that there aren't low-income neighbourhoods downtown--and not just social housing. Even more importantly, the inner suburbs are striking for just how closely low-income and higher-income people co-exist. There are countless examples of troubled tower blocks and social housing built right next to $500,000+ single-family homes with two car garages. Take a trip out to Malvern and you will see that most of the neighbourhood's housing is very comfortably middle class. Even Jane and Finch is surrounded by many middle-class residential neighbourhoods. These things just don't necessarily show up at the census tract level, and that's why the Three Cities maps often show areas with $800,000 houses on ravine lots as low-income areas.
 
I recently mapped income diversity using 2011 NHS data at the electoral district level.

http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2015/02/mapping-toronto-income-diversity.html

Those are 2013 electoral districts btw, so some boundaries have changed, see here:
http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/map/pwt/pwt.html?lang=e&province=ON

Higher numbers mean lower income diversity/more income segregation.
Toronto%2BIncome%2BDiversity.png


Among neighbourhoods with low income diversity, you have

Blue collar/service class aging inner suburbs, where the middle class is actually not that small at all, but rather have a small upper class and big lower class.
Graph%2BSmall%2Bupper.png


Then you have some exclusive wealthy areas in the outer suburbs.
Graph%2Bbig%2Bupper.png


And areas close to the core with a residents that are either rich or poor, and a small middle class.
Graph%2Bsmall%2Bmiddle.png
 
It would be interesting to see a map like this for the GTA.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?cityincome

NYC follows the "donut" model of affluent core and affluent suburbs, with the poor in between. Other cities - including L.A. and Washington follow more of a "wedge" or "favored quarter" model. Chicago seems to be a mix of both. Cleveland and Detroit have pretty much have completely hollowed out cores.

Toronto seems to exhibit both donut and wedge characteristics.
 
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