[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Eug - don't get sucked in by Glen.

To be fair, Toronto is trying to develop the "avenues" at least.

Also, large areas of downtown used to have no residential at all, and are now becoming filled with condos.

He's of the opinion that Toronto is about to go to an "Escape from New York" level of dystopia, because we're not lowering taxes fast enough and no auto parts suppliers have opened in the downtown core recently. (I'm paraphrasing... )

Toronto is revitalizing and gentrifying in big size in the downtown core and inner suburbs, and continues to have strong growth in the 905 region. It's the piece in-between (Scarberia and Etobicoke/York particularly) that's struggling to figure out how it fits.

So... it comes down to how you define 'Toronto'. If you define it as 'the old city of Toronto', the place is doing fabulously. If you define it as the old Metro Toronto/current City of Toronto, it's doing OK but not great. If you define it as the GTA, it's growing like gangbusters and is the dominant city-state in Canada.

Personally, I like to define it as Riverdale and surrounding environs. Once we finish the Western gate and get started on the Great Wall of Riverdale, y'all will see what I mean....

 

[Eug]

It's the piece in-between (Scarberia and Etobicoke/York particularly) that's struggling to figure out how it fits.

On the Scarborough side, it's nice to see some large pieces of land being developed for new condo townhome developments. eg.

Housing project making green history

Construction has begun on Evergreen, a $100-million joint development by the Monarch Corp. and the Toronto Economic Development Corp. (TEDCO) on land that had once been slated to be part of the Scarborough Expressway, a roadway that was never built.

Evergreen will become the largest, green lowrise residential project in Canada. The 206 singles and townhouses to be constructed to basic LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Houses standards will double the number of green houses in Canada

 

[LAz]

You all seem very positive about urban redevelopment.


Perhaps this is where gentriciation is not understood - what this word means is class based displacement, where former residents are pushed out and new ones who are richer take their. Looking at things in this light, how can we not have some concern?

 

[Eug]

You all seem very positive about urban redevelopment.


Perhaps this is where gentriciation is not understood - what this word means is class based displacement, where former residents are pushed out and new ones who are richer take their. Looking at things in this light, how can we not have some concern?

What do you consider former residents? Sometimes we have commercial/retail areas with not-quite-legal 2nd-floor rental apartments. With "urban development" of this region, there is "gentrification" in the sense that the illegal rental apts. disappear and those living there are forced out. In most instances, I support this actually.

In terms of gentrification of residential neighbourhoods, it depends. Most of the people I've spoken with really like having more affluent people move in as it often increases their property values and may generally "clean up" the neighbourhood. In other words, they want their areas gentrified, at least to a certain extent.

However, what people don't like are increasing property taxes. If property taxes are allowed to skyrocket, it can really have a negative effect on the local residents, some of whom may have been there for 40 years or whatever. I think these prior residents can be protected to a certain extent. For example, it seems unreasonable to me to increase someone's property tax by 20% in a year, but with gentrification and even just inflation, property tax increases are inevitable.

What this means though of course is those who didn't have the advantage of owning there early can never move in, leading to your displaced populations.

It's a difficult question, but I think there are some approaches that can work, such as redevelopment of improperly used areas. There are many spaces in Toronto which simply aren't adequately developed. Urban redevelopment should be encouraged, but with support for mixed income groups.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Cockneys R Us?

You all seem very positive about urban redevelopment.


Perhaps this is where gentriciation is not understood - what this word means is class based displacement, where former residents are pushed out and new ones who are richer take their. Looking at things in this light, how can we not have some concern?

Ummm... I flat-out have ZERO concern about gentrification. A neighbourhood being revitalized by the influx of shops, renovators, and people concerned about the upkeep of the 'nabe? Not a problem.

Canada is not a society where the classes are frozen. Education and work opportunities exist to raise the working class to middle class status. And, with gentrification, they can enjoy their old 'nabe... in fact, they might even be the gentrifiers.

 

[ahm]

"Canada is not a society where the classes are frozen. Education and work opportunities exist to raise the working class to middle class status. And, with gentrification, they can enjoy their old 'nabe... in fact, they might even be the gentrifiers."

I think you're over-simplifying gentrification. I am mostly familiar with Parkdale, having worked there in the EDC and for the BIA. The challenge for improvement to the stores along Queen was that for business owners who merely wished to improve their status serving poor communities has low margins [unless you sell booze, cigarettes, lottery tickets, etc.]. Does that mean then, that the Vietnamese grocery store should shift its model so that it starts selling organic local produce at prices not affordable to its existing client base? Sure, they can continue to trundle along selling what they do to a mostly Vietnamese community, but rising rents and taxes will mean that they will eventually have to sell the business, making way for yet another exciting boutique flogging cute dresses to young women fresh out of university [I don't want to pick on women...maybe it's a record store that sells records and has in-store performances from indie bands].

There are in Parkdale businesses that have very specific markets, based on language and ethnicity and place of origin. Many of these businesses cater to a poor clientele, and thus have smaller profits than if they were oriented towards a more mainstream Canadian clientele. And that group of people do exist in Parkdale - have for years. Lots of white people lived in Parkdale raising kids and eating roti before the Star discovered the neighbourhood and invited the rich in. These businesses generally are very ethno-centric, partly because they are suspicious of people from outside their community [ingrained responses to racism and poverty, I generally surmise], and partly because some small business owners are just cranky. A lot of them could really use to spruce up their places - not just to attract more business, but also to provide better service to their existing clientele.

I don't think that it's a simple equation - the rich chase out the poor - but I think there is more room than you allow for questioning who's moving where, and why.

Nevermind the avaricious practices of commercial landlords in poor neighbourhoods. That's a totally different topic.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Shops sell what sells/Avaricious landlords?

. Does that mean then, that the Vietnamese grocery store should shift its model so that it starts selling organic local produce at prices not affordable to its existing client base? Sure, they can continue to trundle along selling what they do to a mostly Vietnamese community, but rising rents and taxes will mean that they will eventually have to sell the business, making way for yet another exciting boutique flogging cute dresses to young women fresh out of university [I don't want to pick on women...maybe it's a record store that sells records and has in-store performances from indie bands].

There are in Parkdale businesses that have very specific markets, based on language and ethnicity and place of origin. Many of these businesses cater to a poor clientele, and thus have smaller profits than if they were oriented towards a more mainstream Canadian clientele. And that group of people do exist in Parkdale - have for years. Lots of white people lived in Parkdale raising kids and eating roti before the Star discovered the neighbourhood and invited the rich in. These businesses generally are very ethno-centric, partly because they are suspicious of people from outside their community [ingrained responses to racism and poverty, I generally surmise], and partly because some small business owners are just cranky. A lot of them could really use to spruce up their places - not just to attract more business, but also to provide better service to their existing clientele.

I don't think that it's a simple equation - the rich chase out the poor - but I think there is more room than you allow for questioning who's moving where, and why.

Nevermind the avaricious practices of commercial landlords in poor neighbourhoods. That's a totally different topic.

My initial post was in response to a flat-out negative view of gentrification, whereas I view gentrification as a net positive. Sure, there are shades of grey, but overall gentrification improves neighbourhoods through renovation of property and attraction of better businesses.

Landlords do seem to have a shoot-themselves-in-the-foot kind of attitude towards commercial property in some rundown neighbourhoods -- they set rent too high, then can't let the place out. They refuse to renovate, then can't understand why they don't attract quality renters. But is that because they're avaricious? On the contrary, I think it's because they are small time owners and have zero idea how to maximize their revenue. They're greedy because they're desperate -- they try to maximize the short-term profit since they see the long-term cost of an empty storefront... not seeing the forest for the trees. I'd say the landlords are often more worthy of pity rather than anger...

 

[Eug]

My initial post was in response to a flat-out negative view of gentrification, whereas I view gentrification as a net positive. Sure, there are shades of grey, but overall gentrification improves neighbourhoods through renovation of property and attraction of better businesses.

Yeah, I agree.

Some use the term "gentrification" pejoratively, yet it seems to me the large majority of those who actually have lived through the gentrification process of their neighbourhoods see it as a net positive, and usually a big net positive.

Regardless of the theoretical sociological arguments, it seems the working class doesn't like having drunks and drug dealers around any more than the white collar middle class.

 

[junctionist]

It's about time this classic from The Onion was mentioned on UT

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened by Aristocratization

WASHINGTON—According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years.

Maureen Kennedy, a housing policy expert and lead author of the report, said that the enormous treasure-based wealth of the aristocracy makes it impossible for those living on modest trust funds to hold onto their co-ops and converted factory loft spaces.

"When you have a bejeweled, buckle-shoed duke willing to pay 11 or 12 times the asking price for a block of renovated brownstones—and usually up front with satchels of solid gold guineas—hardworking white-collar people who only make a few hundred thousand dollars a year simply cannot compete," Kennedy said. "If this trend continues, these exclusive, vibrant communities with their sidewalk cafés and faux dive bars will soon be a thing of the past."

According to Kennedy, one of the most pressing concerns associated with rapid aristocratization is the drastic transformation of the metropolitan landscape in a way that fails to maximize livable space.

"A three-block section of [Chicago neighborhood] Wicker Park that once accommodated eight families, two vintage clothing stores, a French cleaners, and a gourmet bakery has been completely razed to make way for a private livery stable and carriage house," Kennedy said. "The space is now entirely unusable for affordable upper-income condominium housing. No one can live there except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets permission to sleep in the hayloft."

Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they often wish for a return back to the privileged communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.

"Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight bucks," said Getz, who is planning to move back in with his parents after being forced out of the lease on his organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. "Now it's all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?"

"It's just a terrible shame," Getz continued. "There was this great little shop right across the street from my duplex apartment where I bought my baby daughter a Ramones onesie a couple of years ago, just after she was born. That whole block is an opera house now."

The aristocracy has adamantly dismissed claims that the sweeping changes are detrimental to the merely wealthy who have been displaced, and many persons of noble blood have pointed to aristocratization's benefits. These include lower crime rates attributed to new punishments, such as public floggings and the pillory, which are primarily meted out for maintaining direct eye contact with members of the highest class.

"These accusations are pure, slanderous rubbish," said Lord Nathan Dunkirk III, the owner of a prodigious manor house that, along with its steeplechase course and topiary garden, sits on what was once the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. "If anything, the layabouts and wastrels have been afforded a veritable glut of new and felicitous opportunities as bootblacks and scullery maids."

Other aristocrats have echoed Dunkirk and have additionally deflected blame onto regification, a process by which they say they were priced out of their vast rural holdings by kings who wished to consolidate property and develop monumental palatial estates.

 

[Eug]

The Onion is awesome.

The Onion has some of the best reasoned and timely articles anywhere on the net.

 

[toraerach]

Some use the term "gentrification" pejoratively, yet it seems to me the large majority of those who actually have lived through the gentrification process of their neighbourhoods see it as a net positive, and usually a big net positive.

Although gentrification itself is not a bad thing, at this moment in time in this part of the world it must be remembered that rising property values in formerly affordable neighbourhoods dramatically affects the housing crisis we are experiencing - one that will probably get a lot worse over the next few years. The housing crisis probably would've happened without gentrification, and it is happening in places where there is no or little gentrification, but this process undoubtedly doesn't help.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

What housing crisis?

Although gentrification itself is not a bad thing, at this moment in time in this part of the world it must be remembered that rising property values in formerly affordable neighbourhoods dramatically affects the housing crisis we are experiencing - one that will probably get a lot worse over the next few years. The housing crisis probably would've happened without gentrification, and it is happening in places where there is no or little gentrification, but this process undoubtedly doesn't help.

1. House prices are down in Toronto and environs year over year.
2. Rental vacancy rates have risen dramatically from the 0.8%ish early '90s range -- we had essentially zero vacancies in Toronto. We now have a balanced rental market.
3. The condo craze has put a huge number of new residences into the City of Toronto. And at relatively reasonable prices.
4. And, assuming that you're referring to 'affordable housing' (i.e. rent-geared-to-income type arrangements), TCHC is actually expanding its number of units for the first time in years and years and renovating its most egregious eyesores (Don Mount Court, Regent Park).

The opposite of fixing up a house or 'nabe is to let it run down further until it dies. Is that what people want instead?

 

[LAz]

If one purely believes that dollars are all that there is to life and moral, then yes, gentrification is great. However, what we are dealing with is displacement, groups literally being flushed out. In the definition of gentrification is class based displacement. I do not see how this is something that we would like. New construction is not providing new jobs for old tenants, is it? No. The new place is for the richer people who do not work in the neighborhoods where development is taking place.

Canada is not a society where the classes are frozen. Education and work opportunities exist to raise the working class to middle class status. And, with gentrification, they can enjoy their old 'nabe... in fact, they might even be the gentrifiers.

In processes of gentrification, the old class is displaced. Period. Their neighborhood is torn up and thrown out.






And that neighborhood that replaces it will undergo the same thing... it's all a cycle, where landlords see that the rent gap is smaller for new buildings, and bigger for old ones... they often disinvest in neighborhoods, they let them fall apart on purpose. Now, I am not sure if ghetto gentrification is going on in toronto, where slums get converted into better stuff... that certainly is seen, but there is this pressure for new development over maintenance of the old.

Some use the term "gentrification" pejoratively, yet it seems to me the large majority of those who actually have lived through the gentrification process of their neighbourhoods see it as a net positive, and usually a big net positive.

Regardless of the theoretical sociological arguments, it seems the working class doesn't like having drunks and drug dealers around any more than the white collar middle class.

Very few people say that the old communities like or benefit from gentification. Most of the literature and research points to the opposite. Where did you get your information? Seriously, where? Displacement is what happens... those that live through it end up moving, they do not stay. In fact there is major opposition to gentrification, when the community is aware of its threat.

Gentrification is more in geography than sociology. Though the term originated by a sociologist, the overwhelming amount of the literature and study of this process is from geography. Sociology is a more applied and watered down field than geography. Sociologists are often just b.s.ing with their time. In fact, they have gone over and look at what geographers are doing. They are taking geographic journals, reading geograhic authors, like david harvey to give an example... and some try to make geography look like sociology. Nuh uh, it's not. Sociology should be scrapped as a department, and be thrown into psychology and geogrpahy. Perhaps you are american - in america geography has been literally eliminated from the pre-university education system and is just being thrown out.

Occasionally someone might say oh, gentrification is good... an idiot, lance freeman I think his name is, wrote the book "There goes the hood"... he supports it, but the fact is that the book got nailed by many experts and academics such as neil smith. Don't fall for the hoax of what the developers say.





I think that gentrification is hard to control. The early gentrification is in my opinion somewhat okay. This early form is called pioneer gentrification, mainly by people going to a neighborhood themselves and buying a house for themselves to live in and repairing it and whatnot. What we see often nowadays is another type of beast, where developers come in there to reap profits and displace communities.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

LAz -- get over yourself.

If one purely believes that dollars are all that there is to life and moral, then yes, gentrification is great. However, what we are dealing with is displacement, groups literally being flushed out. In the definition of gentrification is class based displacement. I do not see how this is something that we would like. New construction is not providing new jobs for old tenants, is it? No. The new place is for the richer people who do not work in the neighborhoods where development is taking place.

In processes of gentrification, the old class is displaced. Period. Their neighborhood is torn up and thrown out.

And that neighborhood that replaces it will undergo the same thing... it's all a cycle, where landlords see that the rent gap is smaller for new buildings, and bigger for old ones... they often disinvest in neighborhoods, they let them fall apart on purpose. Now, I am not sure if ghetto gentrification is going on in toronto, where slums get converted into better stuff... that certainly is seen, but there is this pressure for new development over maintenance of the old.

Very few people say that the old communities like or benefit from gentification. Most of the literature and research points to the opposite. Where did you get your information? Seriously, where? Displacement is what happens... those that live through it end up moving, they do not stay. In fact there is major opposition to gentrification, when the community is aware of its threat.

Gentrification is more in geography than sociology. Though the term originated by a sociologist, the overwhelming amount of the literature and study of this process is from geography. Sociology is a more applied and watered down field than geography. Sociologists are often just b.s.ing with their time. In fact, they have gone over and look at what geographers are doing. They are taking geographic journals, reading geograhic authors, like david harvey to give an example... and some try to make geography look like sociology. Nuh uh, it's not. Sociology should be scrapped as a department, and be thrown into psychology and geogrpahy. Perhaps you are american - in america geography has been literally eliminated from the pre-university education system and is just being thrown out.

Occasionally someone might say oh, gentrification is good... an idiot, lance freeman I think his name is, wrote the book "There goes the hood"... he supports it, but the fact is that the book got nailed by many experts and academics such as neil smith. Don't fall for the hoax of what the developers say.

I think that gentrification is hard to control. The early gentrification is in my opinion somewhat okay. This early form is called pioneer gentrification, mainly by people going to a neighborhood themselves and buying a house for themselves to live in and repairing it and whatnot. What we see often nowadays is another type of beast, where developers come in there to reap profits and displace communities.

I live and work in downtown Toronto (live in Riverdale, as per my nom de plume; work in the core). For the past twelve years, I've seen my community get nicer and nicer, due to a combination of renovations done on older houses, infill houses being built, better shops and restaurants opening on our major drags, and a number of derelict or near derelict industrial buildings being repurposed for housing. A large portion of that revitalization has been the destruction of Don Mount Court, with both new subsidized housing AND private housing stock AND a new park (still being finished) being built. The much, much bigger project of West Don Lands will revitalize a derelict stretch of land (not gentrification per se, as there was very little housing stock). These are absolute, no-holds-barred positives.

I doubt that you live and work in Toronto -- wherever you do live, it's in the rarefied air of academia. Come down off your class struggle high horse and see that my money -- and my city's, and my fellow gentrifiers -- are not a force for evil.

 

[Whoaccio]

If one purely believes that dollars are all that there is to life and moral, then yes, gentrification is great. However, what we are dealing with is displacement, groups literally being flushed out. In the definition of gentrification is class based displacement. I do not see how this is something that we would like. New construction is not providing new jobs for old tenants, is it? No. The new place is for the richer people who do not work in the neighborhoods where development is taking place.

First, nobody is being "literally" flushed out of anywhere. What you meant to say is "figuratively." Literally would imply that some capitalistic Monopoly Man doppelganger is actually taking a hose to poor people to flush them out. Even corrected though, you are grossly exaggerating gentrification. Jews got flushed out of Eastern Europe, gentrification is a 100% voluntary economic process.

Secondly, what difference does it make if jobs are catered to locals? Almost no one in Toronto, regardless of income, works within their neighborhood. Most of us are lucky if we can work within 3-5km of our homes. Hardly anybody who works at King/Bay lives at King/Bay, by your logic that makes the financial district bad. More over, the construction and retail jobs typically associated with gentrification rarely fall under the social class of "ruthless capitalistic exploiter." Most people who benefit from gentrification are totally ordinary middle class people, from landlords who earn a return on their investment to construction workers who receive increased contracts. Even the newer "gentrified" residents are rarely even "rich." Never mind the wholly unsound theory that homogeneously poor neighborhoods should be preserved.

In processes of gentrification, the old class is displaced. Period. Their neighborhood is torn up and thrown out.

Cities change. That is part of what makes them exiting.

Very few people say that the old communities like or benefit from gentification. Most of the literature and research points to the opposite. Where did you get your information? Seriously, where? Displacement is what happens... those that live through it end up moving, they do not stay. In fact there is major opposition to gentrification, when the community is aware of its threat.

Jesus, step out of the equality studies department. Would you rather live in Park Slope or Watts? The only way you can possibly come up with a gem to the effect that nobody of importance thinks gentrification is a net positive is with your head stuck so far up the rear end of some kind of lefty-faculty (urban equality?). If you are going to come here and start telling people about how well reviewed scholars like Lance Freeman, not to mention virtually the entire political, business and social establishments, are "idiots" because they disagree with your freshman approach to urban development don't except anybody to take you seriously.