The New City Donut

[Docere]

Originally Posted by ue

I'm sure it had to do with the industrial development closer to the lake pre-WWII, but I always found it strange that none of the older wealth neighbourhoods in Toronto were lakefront. Whereas in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Ottawa, the wealthiest neighbourhoods are mostly the ones closer to water. Though I guess many of the Toronto ones are in or near the Don Valley...

It's true, the only really wealthy lakefront area is southeast Oakville, which attracts many Bay St. types (Toronto's "Connecticut"?) It's 50s/60s outer suburbia, which is pretty rare in the GTA. And that's a minor concentration, compared to the contiguous zone running north of downtown along Yonge and Bayview, from urban Yorkville to the very suburban York Mills/Bridle Path area.

It seems to me Toronto overall does have a donut pattern (where the city has gentrified significantly and the suburban sections that are wealthy are generally closer-in/more accessible - but there's more wealth in the western GTA (secondary wealth concentrations in the Kingsway/Humber Valley area and Oakville) than in the eastern GTA (i.e. Scarborough and eastward).

[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.

[the urban politician]

"The New City Donut"

That sounds like a great name for a hip donut shop. I'm going to remember that one...

[memph]

Originally Posted by Docere

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.



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.

Yeah I guess Brampton is more blue collar lower middle class though still more middle class than Scarborough and Rexdale/western North York. Parts of Mississauga are similar to Brampton although there are upper middle class areas too. I guess I should have rather said that the most significant concentrations of upper middle class families are in the outer suburbs.

As for whether there's wealth near the lake, it varies but generally the areas near the lake still include desirable spots. In Scarborough the areas near the lake are no Forest Hill but they're still the most desirable parts of Scarborough and the Beaches are probably the most desirable part of the east end. The parts of Mississauga near the lake are also more desirable than the average Mississauga neighbourhood imo. Southeast Oakville is of course very wealthy but the areas west of there and into Burlington are pretty desirable too. The areas between Rebecca and Speers in Oakville traditionally ranged from blue-collar to middle class but they're getting wealthier now as the custom home building of Southeast Oakville is starting to spread west. The parts of Ajax and Pickering within about 2km of the lake are relatively desirable too. South Etobicoke for some reason is not as wealthy, especially compared to parts of Etobicoke closer to Bloor or Rathburn, not sure why.

But maybe Lake Ontario is still not quite as great as some of the other waterfronts? The shore is often rocky with shale and limestone or retaining walls rather than beaches. The water and beaches are often not that clean (storm water overflows + geese). Public access is variable, and the views aren't as good as in Vancouver. I guess in many cases you had older communities near the lake and industry, more so than in other Canadian cities, with oil refineries, power plants, and also smaller industry in Port Credit, water treatment plants...

[Docere]

One thing to note about wealth and poverty in Toronto also is that while the map of the most impoverished neighborhoods has changed/expanded the areas that the wealthiest census tracts today are for the most part the same as they were in 1960: the old money district of Rosedale (early 20th century), heavily Jewish Forest Hill (30s/40s suburb), basically suburban Lawrence Park at the edge of the Old City (30s/40s/50s) and the postwar suburbia around York Mills and Bayview, as well as central Etobicoke (30s/40s/50s).

The only area that moved into the "top tier" because of gentrification is Yorkville. It's not surprising that the midtown Annex-Yorkville zone was the first area to start gentrifying (in the 1960s), given its location between downtown (and the University of Toronto) and the traditional wealth corridor.

[Docere]

Come to think of it, in what cities are there swaths of urban census tracts that were not wealthy half a century ago, but are are now right up there with the wealthiest suburbs in terms of income? Manhattan is one answer: only the Upper East Side near Park Ave. would been really wealthy in the 1960s but now there are areas of midtown, Chelsea/Greenwich Village/Tribeca that are right up there with the elite tracts of Westchester/Fairfield in terms of per capita incomes. Maybe San Francisco also and to a smaller degree Chicago?

[Larry King]

Originally Posted by Docere

Come to think of it, in what cities are there swaths of urban census tracts that were not wealthy half a century ago, but are are now right up there with the wealthiest suburbs in terms of income? Manhattan is one answer: only the Upper East Side near Park Ave. would been really wealthy in the 1960s but now there are areas of midtown, Chelsea/Greenwich Village/Tribeca that are right up there with the elite tracts of Westchester/Fairfield in terms of per capita incomes. Maybe San Francisco also and to a smaller degree Chicago?

Society hill in Philadelphia would qualify

[memph]

Originally Posted by Docere

One thing to note about wealth and poverty in Toronto also is that while the map of the most impoverished neighborhoods has changed/expanded the areas that the wealthiest census tracts today are for the most part the same as they were in 1960: the old money district of Rosedale (early 20th century), heavily Jewish Forest Hill (30s/40s suburb), basically suburban Lawrence Park at the edge of the Old City (30s/40s/50s) and the postwar suburbia around York Mills and Bayview, as well as central Etobicoke (30s/40s/50s).

The only area that moved into the "top tier" because of gentrification is Yorkville. It's not surprising that the midtown Annex-Yorkville zone was the first area to start gentrifying (in the 1960s), given its location between downtown (and the University of Toronto) and the traditional wealth corridor.

Yeah, mostly it's just the original wealthy areas expanding into adjacent neighbourhoods like Don Mills, Yorkville, The Annex, Ledbury Park, Leaside, Davisville, and I guess you could also say some of the areas a bit south of Bloor around Charles Street or Cabbagetown too. And then the central Etobicoke cluster expanding a bit to the west and south, as well as east into Swansea, Bloor West Village, and maybe in the future Roncesvalles too.

The Beaches seem to have become increasingly wealthy too, although it was never really poor. Riverdale and Leslieville on the other hand were more working class at one point but are gentrifying quite a bit now.

I guess there's also the King St corridor but there haven't been a whole lot of people living there historically. And then there's the northern exurbs that have experienced an influx of wealth but those are basically rural areas.


In Montreal it's tempting to say the Plateau but the official numbers suggest it's still more middle income than high income, although I would expect incomes there to continue increasing.

I suppose you could also say Fairview in Vancouver, although I don't really know what was there before all the townhouses and condos.

[montréaliste]

Well to answer memph on Montreal, yes the Plateau has turned around from lower middle to middle class into a more affluent district. But I would suggest the major turnaround came about when Griffintown south of downtown, a neighborhood only in name in the early millennium became the new eldorado for condo developers. A once resolutely working class-cum-industrial district was bought up and transformed in a few short years into a new residential hood with a burgeoning retail offer.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by memph

Yeah, mostly it's just the original wealthy areas expanding into adjacent neighbourhoods like Don Mills, Yorkville, The Annex, Ledbury Park, Leaside, Davisville, and I guess you could also say some of the areas a bit south of Bloor around Charles Street or Cabbagetown too. And then the central Etobicoke cluster expanding a bit to the west and south, as well as east into Swansea, Bloor West Village, and maybe in the future Roncesvalles too.

The Beaches seem to have become increasingly wealthy too, although it was never really poor. Riverdale and Leslieville on the other hand were more working class at one point but are gentrifying quite a bit now.

I guess there's also the King St corridor but there haven't been a whole lot of people living there historically. And then there's the northern exurbs that have experienced an influx of wealth but those are basically rural areas.

My point was if you made a list of the 10-20 wealthiest census tracts in 1960, it wouldn't look that different than today.

In Montreal it's tempting to say the Plateau but the official numbers suggest it's still more middle income than high income, although I would expect incomes there to continue increasing.

It's kind of a hipster-turned-yuppie area, but it hardly compares to Westmount, upper Outremont, Mount Royal or Hampstead. Although it's a separate municipality, Westmount seems similar to the area centered around Yonge-St. Clair in Toronto.

I suppose you could also say Fairview in Vancouver, although I don't really know what was there before all the townhouses and condos.

As far as I can tell, Vancouver doesn't really have a "Yorkville" type neighborhood. There are exclusive downtown buildings for sure, but no census tracts.

[memph]

So one thing you often hear during discussions on this topic is that having the poor live in the outskirts and rich at the centre is the normal way things have been and that it's only in 20th century North American that things have been different.

Is that actually true though? It's true that the set-up many American cities had where virtually all the poor lived in the centre and virtually all the wealthy lived in the suburbs, is most likely an anomaly. But that doesn't mean the norm was the complete opposite.

If you just look at world cities today, there is a lot of wealth in the centre, but it's still quite common to have wealthy suburbs, even though other suburbs might be poor.

For Paris for example, the poverty is mostly in the northern and maybe eastern inner suburbs and maybe some of the outer arrondissements. The western suburbs are not poor, and the outer suburbs are generally pretty middle class. There is of course still a lot of wealth in the inner arrondissements.

If you compare Paris to Toronto for example, the poorest suburbs are maybe just 10-15km from the city centre, maybe even a bit less. A comparable distance for Toronto would be Crescent Town, Flemingdon Park, Lawrence Heights, Mt Dennis and Mimico. Those are all neighbourhoods with at least some and often a lot of poverty, but most of the poverty is already further out than that (Rexdale, Jane-Finch, Malton, various parts of Scarborough) and continuing to be pushed out further. That's despite the fact that Paris is twice as big and has significantly better transit and of course these inner suburbs are much more walkable and dense than Toronto's too.

If you look at London, the most low income areas also seem to be about 10km from the city centre, maybe even a bit less, and again they're much more walkable with better transit. Even with Rio, the favellas seem to be located throughout the metro area, not just in the suburbs.

In most American cities 10km from downtown can still be very much the ghetto even in the cities that have seen relatively little gentrification. In fact, in many American cities these neighbourhoods might be worse than areas close to downtown, and that might not even be such a new thing.

[Docere]

Has there been any studies of incomes in Toronto and distance from the CBD or City Hall?

[Crawford]

It's difficult to compare cities based on relative radii. 10 miles outside of downtown Detroit isn't the same as 10 miles outside of downtown Naples, given the wildly different development patterns. U.S. cities sprawl like crazy, and "inner city" definitions vary wildly.

[10023]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

^ 'favored quarter' describes Houston's west side, Dallas's north side, Dc's west and north sides, Chicago's north side, LA's west side, Baltimore's north side, very well.

Philly, not so much, interestingly, more of a 'new donut' in the sense of the article.

And in many European cities, it's the west side of town that is the "favored quarter". Mostly due to the direction of prevailing winds and the fact that smog and pollution from industry was blown east.

But the existence of a favored quarter in one direction from the center is actually a natural pattern of development that has little to do with the post-WW2 abandonment seen in the U.S.

[Docere]

Yes, London, Paris and Berlin all immediately come to mind.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It's difficult to compare cities based on relative radii. 10 miles outside of downtown Detroit isn't the same as 10 miles outside of downtown Naples, given the wildly different development patterns. U.S. cities sprawl like crazy, and "inner city" definitions vary wildly.

Yeah, part of my point was that the more suburban areas that are seeing rising poverty in the US are rather different than the ones in Europe. In Europe they're still pretty well connected to the core and urban, so you still have access to a lot of jobs, amenities and social services even if you don't have a car. For American cities, I wonder if we might start seeing examples where metro areas are so sprawled out even with a car access to those things from declining suburbs is somewhat limited.

If you're in Malvern in Scarborough that's a long drive from Downtown Toronto when you take into account congestion. If certain parts of Brampton decline that's be even further. For American cities, if we're talking FM 1960 or Bear Creek in Houston those are pretty far flung at least compared to the employment centres near the centre of the Houston metro area. Or in the case of Atlanta, Lawrenceville, Jonesboro, Powder Spring and the like. Or the High Desert and Inland Empire for LA. Or Vallejo, Stockton and maybe Antioch for the Bay Area.

You could also look at Paris and London, and divide them into rings by distance from the centre, and find out which ring is least wealthy, and instead of looking at distance from centre, you look at how much of the metro area lives further vs closer. By that measure probably the lowest income ring of most North American cities is closer but maybe a few will see that ring get pushed further out in the next decade or two.

It's also worth looking at the incomes inside and outside that ring. In Toronto much of the areas inside that ring are upper-middle class to very wealthy, and much of the rest is more middle income. The areas outside that ring are not much above middle class with the except for a few smallish pockets (ex parts of Oakville or King City). Meanwhile income maps seem to show that a decent chunk of Paris and innermost suburbs are middle income and the western suburbs definitely rival if not surpass the wealthy neighbourhoods of central and western Paris proper.

[10023]

As I mentioned above, London and Paris don't really have "rings". The center is very expensive, and everything west is quite expensive (generally less so as you move farther away).

[miketoronto]

The mixed income housing which was built throughout the inner suburbs of Toronto has been very successful at mixing incomes. This tends to produce lower family income stats, because the housing is so mixed. The newer suburbs have not built mixed income housing to the same degree. So what you get in the new suburbs, is just middle to upper middle income families.

This is why income levels tend to be much more even across large swaths of the now City of Toronto, but then you see a big spike in income levels in the outer suburbs. Mainly because they don't mix incomes as much, except in a couple older areas which also had mixed income housing built at that time.

For example, my inner suburban neighborhood. We have single family houses, townhouses, condos, apartments. The median family income is low if you look at the whole census tract, with I believe a median or average family income of around $40,000. However if you take just the single family areas, like my subdivisions, and the condos, then the average family income shoots up to over $105,000 about.

So the mixed incomes tend to hide very wealthy areas. Another area being South East Scarborough. The average family income in many parts of South East Scarborough approaches almost $200,000 a year. However it gets covered up by the mixed incomes, which brings down the average and median.

So overall, it is way better to be mixed. And maybe in struggling American city regions, inner suburbs are declining. But in growing and prosperous regions, inner suburbs are some of the most coveted real estate.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by memph

Yeah, part of my point was that the more suburban areas that are seeing rising poverty in the US are rather different than the ones in Europe. In Europe they're still pretty well connected to the core and urban, so you still have access to a lot of jobs, amenities and social services even if you don't have a car.

But in the U.S., practically everyone has a car. Saying an area is isolated because it's car oriented kind of misses the point. A place in the U.S. is more isolated, most of the time, if it isn't car oriented. Jobs, amenities, and increasingly social services, are in the fringe, not the core.

The rising poverty in American suburbia is just the "hole" of the donut pushing further out. It isn't some "death of the suburbs" it's usually the undesirable zone just moving further out due to core gentrification and suburban aging housing stock.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

So overall, it is way better to be mixed. And maybe in struggling American city regions, inner suburbs are declining. But in growing and prosperous regions, inner suburbs are some of the most coveted real estate.

Absolutely. Inner suburbs have much more of a diversity of housing stock and incomes than further flung suburbs and exurbs.

Median family or HH incomes often obscure this. Often we see the "wealthiest" counties are middle class outer suburbs, because it's dominated by SFHs and has no apartments, fewer retirees etc. For instance Loudon and Prince William counties in Virginia have higher median incomes but Montgomery County, MD and Fairfax are clearly where Washington's wealthiest suburbs are. Same is true with say, Westchester and Nassau (inner suburbs) vs. some far flung suburbs in NJ like Somerset County.

The same is true, as you say, in Toronto, where the real wealth is mostly in the 416 area code.