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Is the west side of Toronto more prominent than the east side?

Toronto inherited quite a bit of aging misplaced density in areas without quality transit to access the new Mega City. Northwest or North/South East. Bring transit and stop allowing low quality projects and the gap can be bridged.
 
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King of Kensington said:
Not sure what you mean.
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Massive socio-economic inequality areas of the City - North West / North and South East.

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Socioeconomically, it would be more accurate to describe Toronto into thirds (west/middle/east) with the middle being affluent. Most of the wealth is north of the city center.
 
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King of Kensington said:
Socioeconomically, it would be more accurate to describe Toronto into thirds (west/middle/east) with the middle being affluent.
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The subway, lakefront (bayfront) and streetcar have kept the mid to southwest Etobicoke affluent. The lakefront communities in the East have held middle to upper middle class even without transit investment. Once the subway is extended and Eglinton East LRT is built Central and south East Scarborough will see real positive change. Finch LRT will help the Northwest slightly, but North East will continue to decline for decades comparatively until the transit map is re drawn, approved and more importantly built.

In recent years the City should never have allowed the low quality density to keep growing around areas without transit investment. They had compounded a problem IMO and not easy to reverse.
 
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I'd call it thirds in the shape of an upside down T and two corners with the south and centre being affluent and the upper left and right corners being unfortunate. T is for Toronto. Upside down is for the unfortunate state of income inequality. Seems poetically perfect.
 
There's sort of two competing trends. Historically north is the "wealth direction" in Toronto. And that still holds true today in that if you were to survey say, partners at a downtown law firm a majority would live in the area north of the downtown core, roughly bounded by Bloor, the 401, Bathurst and Leslie. Far fewer would come from the equidistant west and east. On the other hand, we also have a core/periphery divide that has become rather stark in the past few decades.
 
I think seeing income levels mapped out by area is a tad misleading.

There are pockets in the "upside down T" that are lower income. Some of it by design, as even lower-income individuals (such as recent immigrants, like my parents once were) need somewhere to rent. All those apartment blocks that we built in the post-war period are perfect for that.

Outside of the "upside down T", I believe the way income is mapped out is affected by housing built-form and types. In the upper left and right corners of the city, single-detached homes rule the geography and are more dispersed and on larger lots than within the 'T'. This means lower density of middle-class homeowners and the income when mapped geographically, skews towards those dwelling in the dense suburban apartment blocks.

Add in the generally higher desirability of neighbourhoods that can support retail strips like Corso Italia in denser, less auto-dependent residential neighbourhoods compared to say, Bridlewood in Scarborough, and even the single-detached homeowners income logically begin trending in certain direction, despite most house-owners in both areas being upper-middle class and sleeping on (multi-)million-dollar homes.

My point is, I think the built-form of the neighbourhoods are leading to both the disparities in income levels, and how it looks mapped out (potentially painting a more severe narrative than in reality).
 
MTown said:
I'd call it thirds in the shape of an upside down T and two corners with the south and centre being affluent and the upper left and right corners being unfortunate. T is for Toronto. Upside down is for the unfortunate state of income inequality. Seems poetically perfect.
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You nailed it. That T is also for Torys base.
 
WislaHD said:
I think seeing income levels mapped out by area is a tad misleading.

There are pockets in the "upside down T" that are lower income. Some of it by design, as even lower-income individuals (such as recent immigrants, like my parents once were) need somewhere to rent. All those apartment blocks that we built in the post-war period are perfect for that.

Outside of the "upside down T", I believe the way income is mapped out is affected by housing built-form and types. In the upper left and right corners of the city, single-detached homes rule the geography and are more dispersed and on larger lots than within the 'T'. This means lower density of middle-class homeowners and the income when mapped geographically, skews towards those dwelling in the dense suburban apartment blocks.

Add in the generally higher desirability of neighbourhoods that can support retail strips like Corso Italia in denser, less auto-dependent residential neighbourhoods compared to say, Bridlewood in Scarborough, and even the single-detached homeowners income logically begin trending in certain direction, despite most house-owners in both areas being upper-middle class and sleeping on (multi-)million-dollar homes.

My point is, I think the built-form of the neighbourhoods are leading to both the disparities in income levels, and how it looks mapped out (potentially painting a more severe narrative than in reality).
Click to expand...


Many reasons why specific pockets garner more attractiveness than others. But those are micro issue whereas public investment in this City became the macro issue. We invested far more in certain areas and not in others and built forms and investment have evolved around these areas accordingly. Money follows money, and when the Government doesn't invest equitably then we see these deeper discrepancies.

This would not have been such an issue had we continued to extend the subway and local transit without stopping as the City grew. Now we have a situation where the "haves" of the City want to be the priority over the "have nots'" and vice versa. At a time when both growth and relief are high priorities for differing reasons. What I like about Tory is the overall plan of well connected and extensive trasnit, whether the City can fight united to get all needs built with priority in the coming decades is uncertain with such a polarized state of affairs.
 
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I think one might find that the low-density areas of the north-east and north-west are no longer as middle-class as they once were. Is it merely a function of differing densities or are formerly middle-class (I suppose I should say middle-income). low-density areas on an economically downward trend? I used to live in Woburn, many years ago so I'm not too familiar with east-central Scarborough as I would have been in the 90s.
 
Whatever the divide today, it was probably sharper when Howard Moscoe was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. From his memoir (even if a bit in jest): "I had grown up in the west end and I knew downtown Buffalo better than the east end of Toronto. I used to get anxiety attacks if I wandered anywhere east of Jarvis Street."
 
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