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Star: Poor neighbourhoods growing across Toronto

Well there will always be that kind of lifestyle however I think Banks are the ones that will really limit our spending, by the way they are acting now.
 
When I read this article the first thing I thought was is he sure that Toronto's middle class it disappearing or is it just moving to the 905?
 
Surely the increased reliance on family class immigration of late must have something to do with it. The point system is designed to ensure that immigrants can adapt quickly to Canadian society. When we throw it out the window, we are also betting that the sponsors will do whatever it takes to help family class migrants adapt. And increasingly stats show, that's not the case. Immigrants in the 90s onwards are doing far worse than immigrants of prior time periods and IMHO a lot of that has to do with the shift in the type of immigrants that we are taking on. In Toronto, this plays out openly as we are the recipient of many of these immigrants.

There's no doubt that the middle class is under pressure, but issues like how we handle immigration surely don't help the situation. Let's go back to the old policy of favouring migrants who score high on points.
 
Missing from this discussion is the change in the type of work available to new immigrants during this period. Also the effect of language skills in the 'new economy'.
 
Out of curiousity, what's so different about the type of work? It strikes me that manufacturing and construction have always relied on a pool of the newly arrived.
 
Earlscourt_Lad said:
Out of curiousity, what's so different about the type of work? It strikes me that manufacturing and construction have always relied on a pool of the newly arrived.
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Less manufacturing. Especially in Toronto compared to region.
 
Regardless of the fact that we're going to hell in a handbasket, a city rivened by social divisions, good design remains a great social equalizer.

The 1970 base line that Archivist refers to was the year I arrived here, and was impressed by the egalitarian nature of Toronto's contemporary architecture - the houses, bungalows, apartment buildings and town homes then being built for most folks regardless of income, and the office buildings too. Since then we've seen a fragmentation - including the rise of a developer culture that fed the public's uncertainty with nostalgia, built them McMansions, remodelled their perfectly fine Modernist homes as faux chateaux, and fed their thirst for status. But, recently, we've seen our better architects returning to the multi-unit residential building as a form worthy of attention, and building unashamedly tall versions of the form too, as befits a city.

This "machine for living in" is a form that works, and it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to convince any sane person that a McMansion - rather than aA's Regent Park building, or any number of TCHC buildings - represents good contemporary design.
 
I got a picture framed by a guy who was originally from Chile and he noted that a unique thing about Toronto that amazed him is that rich and poor still live basically together in relative harmony, i guess it's all relative, since on average there are richer and poorer areas, but look at Rosedale and its proximity to St Jamestown, or an area like Leslieville, gentrifying obviously but still very mixed in terms of income.

One reason for the increasing lack of a middle class in the city proper is that a primary middle class aspiration is to own a big house with a backyard, 2 car garage etc, and those things simply aren't readily available in the city, so it's only reasonable that there are more middle class people in the burbs and less in the central city.
 
One reason for the increasing lack of a middle class in the city proper is that a primary middle class aspiration is to own a big house with a backyard, 2 car garage etc, and those things simply aren't readily available in the city, so it's only reasonable that there are more middle class people in the burbs and less in the central city.
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plus the middle class did find (at first) that it was much better to get a cheaper larger new home then to stay in one over 50 years old.
Even though the houses are now more expensive, in thier eyes you get "more bang for the buck."
 
nstuch said:
One reason for the increasing lack of a middle class in the city proper is that a primary middle class aspiration is to own a big house with a backyard, 2 car garage etc, and those things simply aren't readily available in the city, so it's only reasonable that there are more middle class people in the burbs and less in the central city.
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I think that part of this is a very good point, and part is a myth.

The part that is true is that many young families would like a house, with a backyard or access to a nearby park. That's not very affordable in many parts of the city. Those parts in which it is affordable are no less remote, undense, and suburban -- and often more so -- than in equivalent parts of the 905. We, for instance, live near Bathurst and Clark. Living further south, which is where our hunt first started, was just too expensive. And where we ended up felt and feeles pretty central -- a lot more urban, and a lot closer to the central part of the city, than lots of Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York.

So the assumption that 416 is one world, and 905 is another, is just plain wrong. A study which cuts off at the 416 boundaries is one that just does not get commercial, communal, leisure, recreational, or ethnic flows in this city. The realization that people (especially ones who are not single) want houses and will look to the best-situated and most amenable neighbourhoods for them even -- gasp -- without taking into account the location of notional political boundaries to do it, is the good point that underlines what the U of T study does not get.

The part that is a myth is this business about dreaming for a two-car garage. There are actually two myths wrapped in there. One myth is that two-car garages are a 905 rather than a 416 thing -- and, with respect to those 905 neighbourhoods that are actually part of the city (905 is an enormous area which simply can't be characterized in any kind of general terms), that's not true.

The other myth is that what everyone is looking for is to have that garage. Well, for us and for many of those we know in "the 905", we'd love to have an even more walkable community. The dream is more likely to be the house with outdoor space for the kids to play, at an affordable price, and in proximity to ethnically relevant institutions. Walkability is a great bonus. A driving culture is often necessary. It's not what's sought out. The garage is not part of the dream for many -- it's a bolt-on reality.

In other words, there is something of a gap between supply and demand, and that gap is well-planned walkability and mixed use. It seems like the tide is slowly turning with some of the projects out there, but as is unsurprising with this sector, it's an awfully slow tide, and city councils run by developers incented to look to cheapest and most immediate return rather than highest and best use are not exactly helping.
 
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Disparishun said:
So the assumption that 416 is one world, and 905 is another, is just plain wrong. A study which cuts off at the 416 boundaries is one that just does not get commercial, communal, leisure, recreational, or ethnic flows in this city. The realization that people (especially ones who are not single) want houses and will look to the best-situated and most amenable neighbourhoods for them even -- gasp -- without taking into account the location of notional political boundaries to do it, is the good point that underlines what the U of T study does not get.
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Perhaps this leads more credence to continue to examine the entre GTA Region as a whole, to reflect more accurately of the demographic flows of the population.....and in a larger scale, develop political and bureacratic systems that would better serve this reality.

Disparishun said:
In other words, there is something of a gap between supply and demand, and that gap is well-planned walkability and mixed use. It seems like the tide is slowly turning with some of the projects out there, but as is unsurprising with this sector, it's an awfully slow tide, and city councils run by developers incented to look to cheapest and most immediate return rather than highest and best use are not exactly helping.
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Agreed. I also think developers use the excuse whereby they rationalize its the market that dictates building single-detached homes on former greenfields in the 905 (and not take into consideration for more 'sustainable', walkable communities) because many middle-class families wanting to live this lifestyle, when in fact its a 'bolted on reality' not of their choosing.
 
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Smaller, walkable subdivisions are desirable as people to have some choices in how they get around. Yet it seems that certain developers desire to build subdivisions that explicitly reject general working class imagery. Housing projects are typically modernist, so they go with faux-historical. They see that lower income people who own houses hang laundry out to dry, so they'd like to ban the clothesline. More lower income individuals walk and use public transportation, so they encourage car use in their developments.

What they build becomes the image of a "normal, middle class suburb" which other developers it, as if the backwards built form determines the success and desirability of the community.
 
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