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wild goose chase

wild goose chase

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In my thread about the borough with the strongest identity there was agreement that Scarborough was the most distinctive of the former 6 to have retained an "image".

To what extent it did so because of a specifically negative image (association with crime, working class) is hard to tell -- perhaps if Scarborough didn't have this association in people's minds, it would just never stick out as anything other than part of Toronto (the way it seems like the Yorks lost any distinctive image). Then again, there are occasionally positive things said about Scarborough (eg. it's diversity of mom-and-pop ethnic restaurants, good views of nature to be seen at the Bluffs or Rouge Park).

But do you think Scarborough will be stuck with a negative reputation or not? Do you see Scarborough's association with crime, poverty etc. going away as the next generation comes of age? One thing I notice is that Scarborough Town Centre, which I remember friends use to mock, is (like some other malls) now more upscale than it was, say in the 90s.
 
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Yesterday, I looked on the crime map of Toronto. In terms of shootings, murder and violent crime, Scarborough is not even close...the north west end of Etobicoke is by far the most crime ridden. I have lived in Scarborough for 33 years. What strikes me about Scarborough is that public transportation is talked about here more than anywhere else to the point of political verbal diarrhea, yet NOTHING happens.

We are supposedly close to having a subway built (that I am not sure we can afford...especially in terms of daily maintenance...people are complaining about the AC in Bloor Danforth line now) but in 2008, Sheppard Avenue had been staked out for an RT system. It got cancelled because the politicians of Toronto talked and argued for the last 8 years. EIGHT years later, nothing has happened bigger than talk. The north west end of the subway is being built into Vaughn...Scarborough still has its LRT system of the early 1980s built by UTDC , which is now defunct...and the Scarborough LRT is WAY past its best before date. It rickets from Kennedy Road to STC and is so antiquated that the drivers SHOULD be in hearing protection, its so loud to ride on (Certainly a H & S risk to drivers as it by far exceeds recommended decibel levels by the Ministry of Labour; but I digress).

Scarborough is an after thought during city elections. We don't get positive discussion. I have been active in my community for 33 years. We have lobbied our Council on numerous things. Rarely we get their attention beyond crime talk. Bad reputation yet the only thing politicians talk about is crime statistics in Scarborough....and especially Malvern. Yet the crime map does not support that theory.

There are many positives about Scarborough. We have some wonderful communities. We also have many community events. They are well attended and are very positive. But when the crowds go home we go back to hearing about crimes in Scarborough. I'd like to see some positives. But I am discouraged about the negative attention Scarborough gets. So are a lot of volunteers and community leaders there. Its discouraging.

Thanks for giving me the chance to rant.
 
lrookies said:
Bad reputation yet the only thing politicians talk about is crime statistics in Scarborough....and especially Malvern. Yet the crime map does not support that theory.
Click to expand...

Why does Malvern in particular have this bad reputation? It's not by any means the poorest or most high crime area of Scarborough (which as you say doesn't have a higher crime rate than Toronto as a whole).
 
King of Kensington said:
Why does Malvern in particular have this bad reputation? It's not by any means the poorest or most high crime area of Scarborough (which as you say doesn't have a higher crime rate than Toronto as a whole).
Click to expand...

We had a period in the '90s where gang violence had ramped up...Malvern had its own gang. But with the help of a lot of concerned citizens and the police, it was cleaned up significantly. But its reputation carried on. Even my parents (who lived in Trenton at the time) used to even call every time there was a shooting anywhere is Scarborough, believing that it must have happened in Malvern. We have never shaken the bad rep...

Malvern is also the place of many housing co-operatives and politicians wrongly assumed they were like OHC or Metro Toronto Housing...Co-ops can and do have some problems. But they are nothing like MTH complexes at all.

More importantly, they crammed a lot of people into the area and did not include the services...except malls and stores. Where can the kids hang out beside the malls. The soccer field and baseball field at Malvern Community Centre when not used by leagues stayed empty...Recreation Centre staff, thru the '80s and into the 90's would kick kids off them, as they had no permit...took a lot of lobbying to get them to change that. Malvern Community Centre has 2 ice rinks and some summers, the rinks were kept up and running...but only for summer hockey leagues. The majority of time they were dark. I don't know if they have summer ice now (my kids have grown up), but we begged them to have a free skate time set aside in the summer. They said no...too costly.

Transportation has stunk since we moved here. The Nugget (131) bus used to be every 18 minutes and it was almost always packed. It changed to 14 minutes last year

And the original LRT plan brought public transit right into Malvern...never happened.

Scarborough, politically is the step sister NO one in Toronto wants to talk about.
 
So, Scarborough's negative reputation increased mainly in the 90s?

Though the Youtube video quality isn't great, this music video (from 1991) famously has ordinary streetscapes of suburban Scarborough as its backdrop.


According to Wikipedia's article on Scarborough the nickname Scarberia goes as far back as the 60s -- can anybody vouch for this claim? There's a citation from a book published in 1996 (which I currently don't have access to), but searching for Scarborough seems to reveal that the image was already established it seems at least a generation ago, even referencing a joke "What's the difference between Scarborough and a bus shelter?" "If you really had to, you could live in a bus shelter."
 
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Pretty sure there is more public housing, poverty etc. around the Golden Mile, Eglinton East, West Hill etc. than north of the 401. So I don't know is meant by "especially Malvern."
 
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Parts of Scarborough is ripe for gentrification - putting aside the negatives for a moment, it maybe the best path for it to shake off some of the negative identity. Also, Scarborough might (others may have a better handle on this than I do) just be at the point where they will be seeing a lot of demographic turnover due to aging population.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Parts of Scarborough is ripe for gentrification - putting aside the negatives for a moment, it maybe the best path for it to shake off some of the negative identity. Also, Scarborough might (others may have a better handle on this than I do) just be at the point where they will be seeing a lot of demographic turnover due to aging population.

AoD
Click to expand...

Is Scarborough's population really aging a lot? Is this because people who grew up in Scarborough and their kids are moving out, or that Scarborough is no longer a big immigrant gateway? It still is seen as an affordable area by some and I remember in university, some people who came to Toronto (from outside the city, whether provincially, nationally or internationally) as students or recent graduates still considered Scarborough a cheap place to live and rent, although I assume in many cases it might be on a short term. rather than long-term for raising a family.

This 2012 article seems to suggest Scarborough is still attractive to newcomers to Canada because of lower housing prices, though it also seems to imply some don't stay long-term. http://torontoobserver.ca/2012/03/14/stepping-stone-why-new-immigrants-settle-in-scarborough/
 
Keep in mind Scarborough stretches from Victoria Park all the way to the Port Union Road (Rouge River) area and from Steeles all the way down to the water. That is a large area of land! The best chance it has of shaking off its undeserved negative reputation is to have key neighborhoods within the greater area gentrify first then trickle out. Its most opportune locations to gentrify are naturally the areas near the water and closest to the city of Toronto, i.e. Birch Cliff (Warden/Kingston Rd).

Since neighborhoods that are situated near other sought-after neighborhoods tend to gentrify the easiest, I could also see the Warden / St. Clair area as well as the L'Amoreaux (Warden/Sheppard) and Wexford (Warden/Lawrence) neighborhoods gentrifying as well. Quite simply, those are the areas where people and families priced out of the Beach (Queen East), Danforth Village (Vic Park/Danforth), Victoria Village (Vic Park/Lawrence) and Don Valley Village (Don Mills/Sheppard) will trickle out to.
 
Agincourt also has good potential to gentrify, as it is home to many wealthy visible minorities (primarily Han Chinese and Tamils, but mainly the former).
 
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