The New City Donut

[Docere]

Originally Posted by memph

But yeah, I think the suburbanization of poverty in Toronto has been somewhat overstated. There's still working class areas in Old Toronto, and the wealthiest areas of Toronto are still not really in the core but more like the older suburbs: 1910s/1920s streetcar suburbs and 30s-40s auto suburbs and also 1945-1965 neighbourhoods, often with a lot of the original homes replaced with bigger new ones, most of these also being SFH dominated. At the same time, Old East York, SW Scarborough, S Etobicoke and York are still quite working class despite being about the same age. The more row house and multi-family neighbourhoods in the core are mostly working class, middle class and yuppy (i.e. relatively average total household income, but no children means more disposable income than average).

Some areas are gentrifying at a decent pace though, especially the east side.

The post-WWII suburban areas that are more single family tend to be pretty middle class, even the 40s-70s ones. It's the 50s-70s high-rise neighbourhoods that are really low-income. The thing is though that both types of housing are often mixed into a single census tract, but really they're not entirely low income but more like a mix of low and middle income.

One thing to keep in mind is that while Toronto and its closest-in suburbs were amalgamated in 1998, these were the suburbs that were part of the upper-tier Metropolitan Toronto government created in 1953. This upper-tier government actually had most of the major responsibilities (even though the powerful Metro Chair was never elected) and in many respects these suburbs hence developed as part of a city. Hence these areas are kind of like what the San Fernando Valley is to L.A. or much of Queens is to NYC.

But since most of the 905 suburbs are post-1970: this area functions as both our "outer boroughs" and "inner suburbs".

And as you say, here's a lot of complexity throughout the City of Toronto. Lots of poverty in the core, and plenty of wealth in the outer boroughs/inner suburbs.

And then the newer suburbs are pretty uniformly upper middle class.

Among the 905 suburbs, York Region is pretty upper middle class, as is Oakville. Brampton is not in any way "upper middle class" (less than 25% of residents have university degrees, for example). Mississauga is mixed, similar to Etobicoke, except the wealth is close to the lake.