The Mississauga Muse
Active Member
FYI.
Gentrification squeezing out poor
Jan 08, 2008 04:30 AM
Slinger
An examination of what became of Toronto in the last three decades of the 1900s has left some distinguished commentators running around in little circles, flapping their arms and making gurgly noises.
Prepared under the respected direction of J. David Hulchanski of the U of T's Centre for Urban and Community Studies, it shows that something we basically all knew was happening – the city splitting itself into closed enclaves, by no means gated, but rigidly determined by who can afford to live where – is far more pronounced than we ever imagined.
Surprises turned up. The bungalow-lined, crescent-streeted sprawls that once were called suburbs and that spread like viruses just inside the boundaries of the now-amalgamated metropolis were built as middle-class, happy-family refuges insulated from the tumult of the inner city. Today, though, folks who can afford to live somewhere else are choosing somewhere – almost anywhere – else.
Old truths were re-emphasized. The immigrant poor who once would have seethed in downtown slums continue to fester in high-rise infernos along the city's far edges.
But none of it seemed reason enough for the commentators' alarm, which was seismic. Richard Florida, the celebrity public policy specialist the U of T recruited from the States with much fanfare last year, compared the developments to the social polarization caused by the Industrial Revolution. Back then, he wrote in The Globe and Mail, it took the world's leading nations more than 50 years to understand what had happened, ``a period punctuated by depressions, epic class struggles and two world wars.''
Scary enough on a global scale. How will we deal with such an apocalypse when it winds up all squeezed into T.O.? And we'll have to, Florida warns, unless we ``wake up and act on these striking new realities.''
But – what is the problem exactly? Not that I'm calling these analysts fogbound. They do, however, sound awfully vague when it comes to spelling out the precise horrors awaiting us if we don't wake up and act. And when they're this hazy, it can seem as if they've got their shorts in a knot over what looks to most of us like life going on.
So let me take a stab at one concrete example. Gentrification doesn't just mean replacing cement with bricks in the sidewalks along the local main drag. It can mean what happened in Cabbagetown, where even the middle class can no longer afford the bijou residences that, before double-glazed, stained-glass windows, provided the threadbare masses with shelter – it's got rats, but it's home to us – from the storm.
Now, take a city map, daub your thumb with ink, and smear it along the south side of Queen St., from Ashbridge's Bay to Jarvis and then from Bathurst over to Roncesvalles. Roughly 10,000 people in Toronto live in rooming houses, most of them (99 per cent are on public assistance, many on pensions for physical and mental disabilities) in those two smudges.
Now look at what's happening around Degrassi St. You'll understand why today's young families might prefer Leslieville to split-level isolation in Willowdale. And then there are all those enormous, falling-down heaps in Parkdale, each with 15 or 20 tenants, two or three of them behind each door. Fixer-upper mansions! But nothing a junior investment banker with an architect and a couple of million to blow on renovations can't make splendid again.
Now ask yourself, where will these 10,000 poverty-stricken, troubled individuals go when they're finally driven out of the only parts of town they can afford? What will we do with 10,000 refugees from gentrification?
That's not the problem, though. That's just part of the problem.
Signed,
The Mississauga Muse
Gentrification squeezing out poor
Jan 08, 2008 04:30 AM
Slinger
An examination of what became of Toronto in the last three decades of the 1900s has left some distinguished commentators running around in little circles, flapping their arms and making gurgly noises.
Prepared under the respected direction of J. David Hulchanski of the U of T's Centre for Urban and Community Studies, it shows that something we basically all knew was happening – the city splitting itself into closed enclaves, by no means gated, but rigidly determined by who can afford to live where – is far more pronounced than we ever imagined.
Surprises turned up. The bungalow-lined, crescent-streeted sprawls that once were called suburbs and that spread like viruses just inside the boundaries of the now-amalgamated metropolis were built as middle-class, happy-family refuges insulated from the tumult of the inner city. Today, though, folks who can afford to live somewhere else are choosing somewhere – almost anywhere – else.
Old truths were re-emphasized. The immigrant poor who once would have seethed in downtown slums continue to fester in high-rise infernos along the city's far edges.
But none of it seemed reason enough for the commentators' alarm, which was seismic. Richard Florida, the celebrity public policy specialist the U of T recruited from the States with much fanfare last year, compared the developments to the social polarization caused by the Industrial Revolution. Back then, he wrote in The Globe and Mail, it took the world's leading nations more than 50 years to understand what had happened, ``a period punctuated by depressions, epic class struggles and two world wars.''
Scary enough on a global scale. How will we deal with such an apocalypse when it winds up all squeezed into T.O.? And we'll have to, Florida warns, unless we ``wake up and act on these striking new realities.''
But – what is the problem exactly? Not that I'm calling these analysts fogbound. They do, however, sound awfully vague when it comes to spelling out the precise horrors awaiting us if we don't wake up and act. And when they're this hazy, it can seem as if they've got their shorts in a knot over what looks to most of us like life going on.
So let me take a stab at one concrete example. Gentrification doesn't just mean replacing cement with bricks in the sidewalks along the local main drag. It can mean what happened in Cabbagetown, where even the middle class can no longer afford the bijou residences that, before double-glazed, stained-glass windows, provided the threadbare masses with shelter – it's got rats, but it's home to us – from the storm.
Now, take a city map, daub your thumb with ink, and smear it along the south side of Queen St., from Ashbridge's Bay to Jarvis and then from Bathurst over to Roncesvalles. Roughly 10,000 people in Toronto live in rooming houses, most of them (99 per cent are on public assistance, many on pensions for physical and mental disabilities) in those two smudges.
Now look at what's happening around Degrassi St. You'll understand why today's young families might prefer Leslieville to split-level isolation in Willowdale. And then there are all those enormous, falling-down heaps in Parkdale, each with 15 or 20 tenants, two or three of them behind each door. Fixer-upper mansions! But nothing a junior investment banker with an architect and a couple of million to blow on renovations can't make splendid again.
Now ask yourself, where will these 10,000 poverty-stricken, troubled individuals go when they're finally driven out of the only parts of town they can afford? What will we do with 10,000 refugees from gentrification?
That's not the problem, though. That's just part of the problem.
Signed,
The Mississauga Muse
