Social geography » Ren Thomas

The dream is alive in the Great White North

We can all rest easy. Despite many studies showing increased income inequality and a shrinking middle class in Canada, a rags-to-riches story is more likely to happen here than in the “land of opportunity.”

University of Ottawa professor Miles Corak, a social policy economist and former director of family and labour research at Statistics Canada, and his co-authors Lori Curtis (Professor of Economics, University of Waterloo) and Shelley Phipps (Professor of Economics, Dalhousie University) found that Canadians are three times more economically mobile than those in the US. The difference is largely due to those at the very top and the very bottom of the income distribution. In Economic Mobility, Family Background, and the Well-Being of Children in the United States and Canada, the three researchers found that social supports such as the Child Tax Credit, paid parental leave benefits, and schools funded through provincial income taxes help ensure that children receive better care and schooling than in the US, where these supports are absent and schools are funded through local property taxes, leaving poor neighbourhoods with failing schools. With sky-high tuition fees at universities, the richest Americans can buy their children the best educations and tutors. These differences between rich and poor mean that if you’re born poor in the US, you tend to stay poor; this also applies to the 1%–the very top of the income pyramid. For example, although “the average Canadian child is not as affluent as the average American, the poorest Canadian is not as poor in an absolute sense as Americans at the bottom of the income distribution.” This may help explain why discussions of class are more prevalent in the American literature and popular press.

The authors caution that rising income inequality rates in Canada could erode the high rate of economic mobility that we see now. Indeed, a look at their graphs shows that we still have issues: 15% our poorest children may still grow up to have incomes in the lowest decile (Figure 3, p7), but they have a better chance at the 7th, 8th, and 9th deciles than they do in the US. More Canadian children are born in the lower income deciles than American children (Figure 8, p33). But Table 1 (p21) shows some clear differences in the characteristics of families and parents. In Canada, 2.1% of children are born to teenage mothers; in the US, it’s 8.3%. In Canada, 14.9% of mothers are single compared to 22.1% in the US. Far more mothers and lone mothers in Canada have completed some post-secondary education or a post-secondary certificate (but oddly, more American mothers have completed degrees). Health problems among the poorest mothers are also more prevalent in the US, likely due to the cost of health care. As the authors suggest, Canadians must protect policies such as paid parental leave, the right to return to their jobs after the birth of a child, tax-transfer programs that help reduce the severity of poverty, and funding for schools through provincial income tax, ensuring a more equal distribution of resources across municipalities and neighbourhoods. Although we have fewer barriers to health care, we need to ensure the lower-income population has sufficient knowledge on navigating the health care system and can pay for prescription medication.

Corak, Curtis and Phipps write that “The citizens of both countries have a similar understanding of a successful life, one that is rooted in individual aspirations and freedom. They also have similar views on how these goals should be attained, but with one important exception: Americans differ in that they are more likely to see the State hindering rather than helping the attainment of these goals. Yet, at the same time the citizens of both countries recognize the need for public policy to contribute to reaching this ideal, with Americans believing more than Canadians that a whole host of interventions would be effective in improving the prospects for economic mobility. One interpretation of these findings – an interpretation that only becomes evident in a comparative context – is that in some sense this need is going unmet in the United States.”

Goodbye U-Pass! (Unbelievable Prescription for Access to Sustainable Savings)

Since I finished my Ph.D. this month, today was officially my last day to use my U-Pass, and a sad day it was! Long past young adulthood, my grad school status awarded me a universal transit pass since 2005; the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University started the program as a sustainability measure way back in 2003 with the cooperation of TransLink and intense student lobbying. I’ve travelled the entire region with my U-Pass: it’s taken me to North Vancouver’s Lynn Canyon, Surrey City Centre, Richmond Centre, and New Westminster Quay, all for less than $30/month. Among other things, it’s allowed me to avoid car ownership for another six years; the U-Pass and my Modo car sharing membership meet all my travel needs. The U-Pass has since spread to encompass other colleges in Metro Vancouver, and has had a major impact on transportation mode shift in the region.

U-Passes are part of a demographic swing that’s taking place among young people in Canada and the US. Unbelievable as it may seem in countries that have espoused driving and highways as the only way to traverse our expansive vistas, young people are actually driving less than in previous years (check out the Transportation Research Board’s presentation on this among other demographic trends in the US). Car ownership rate has decreased among youth and young adults. Part of this shift is due to increased availability of programs like university U-Pass programs, better transit service, and growing mainstream popularity of sustainable transportation. Today’s young adults also spend more years in post-secondary institutions, take longer to enter the labour market, graduate with more debt, get married and have children later, if at all.

In honour of my last day with a U-Pass, I travelled to East Vancouver to the Pacific National Exhibition at Renfrew and Hastings. The #14 UBC/Hastings and #16 Arbutus trolley buses travel there, as well as the #135 express bus to SFU. The bus routes along Hastings Street transect the entire sociodemographic range that is Vancouver, from the suit-wearing jewellers in the stone-clad Birks store at Granville Street to the homeless and addicted masses gathering near the faded grandeur of Main Street’s Carnegie. It seemed a fitting way to end six years of unlimited, supercheap transit travel in Metro Vancouver; as of tomorrow, I’m buying full-fare tickets like everyone else.

Vancouver riot: hooliganism at its finest

Fans watching Game 4 in front of the Vancouver Public Library

Two weeks have passed since the Vancouver Canucks’ Game 7 Stanley Cup loss to the Boston Bruins and the ensuing riot. Other events have prevented my journalistic ink from flowing as freely as others’ on this topic…yet the amount of ink spilled (both literal and virtual) has done little to answer the fundamental question of why the riot happened. Opinions range from “there wasn’t enough of a police presence” (“Police actions questioned in wake of Vancouver riot”, CTV News) to “the potential for violence always exists in the human brain” (“Sometimes, is a riot normal?”, The Georgia Straight, June 23).

I’ll let the experts discuss the reasons behind it, although I will say that I was as surprised as anyone at the Game 7 riot, having been downtown watching Games 4 and 6, both of which the Canucks lost. There were over 100,000 fans downtown on earlier game nights, and many of us watched the game on the big screens at Georgia and Hamilton Streets. There were big groups of police and security personnel standing around, as most fans went home in a state of quiet depression during the barren third period of each game (“Vancouver riot saw 800 cops on the street“, The Globe and Mail, June 28). The Stanley Cup Playoffs ran nine weeks this year, and considering it would have been the Canuck’s first Cup ever and Canada’s first since 1993, Cup Fever had built up over a two-month period.

I’ll also leave aside the alarming, or alarmist, media coverage, which quickly spun the story out of control. At 10pm on June 15th, a mere hour after the game ended, CTV reported that ”Rioters left downtown Vancouver reeling from countless fires, widespread looting and numerous stabbings in the wake of a crushing loss for the Canucks.” (In fact, fifteen cars were set on fire, several stores were looted along Georgia and Robson Streets and there were exactly two stabbings.) Stories abounded about how people were trapped downtown after TransLink was forced to shut down bus service into/out of downtown. (Anyone living here knows that Vancouver’s downtown is a peninsula. You can walk east, south, and southwest about 20 minutes and you’re out of the core and can hop on a bus.) The international media quickly picked up the events unfolding through thousands of Twitter feeds, Facebook updates and incessant hand-wringing of middle-aged news anchors on CBC, CTV, and local Canadian networks. Even now, media comparisons persist between Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot (over 100 arrests) and Toronto’s G20 protests last year, an event still being pursued in the courts involving 19,000 police offers, 1,100 security guards and over 900 arrests, the highest number of mass arrests in Canada’s history.

I’m more concerned with how quickly Vancouver residents disowned the riot, saying it was not typical of Vancouver.

Fans walk home along Granville Street after Game 6

“It is extremely disappointing to see the situation in downtown Vancouver turn violent after tonight’s Stanley Cup game. Vancouver is a world-class city, and it is embarrassing and shameful to see the type of violence and disorder we’ve seen tonight.” Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, June 15, 2011

NBA player Steve Nash, a Vancouver native, agreed the riot was an embarrassment for the city. Police Chief Jim Chu was quick to pin the blame on “anarchists and criminals” (though he took back those words within days). Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail wrote that rioters came from all over the region, not just Vancouver. Solicitor-General Shirley Bond said that the riot was due to a very young, predominantly male crowd–a different crowd than other Stanley Cup playoff nights. Spectators interviewed by the press indicated their disappointment, saying, “This is not Vancouver.” Later, when locals started penning their thoughts on the wood panels used to shore up broken windows of vandalized stores, a common theme was “Don’t judge us by a few hooligans.” Quickly, now, repeat after me: Vancouver is pretty. Not ugly.

In fact, this is Vancouver. Like any city, Vancouver has a history of violence, and riots have arisen out of political protest, civic unrest and hooliganism. In September 1907, 2000 citizens gathered in “anti-Asiatic riots”, smashing in the windows of Japanese business owners on Powell Street. A drunken riot involving 600 citizens and soldiers demonstrating in front of the Vancouver Police Station was broken up by tear gas and military police in August 1943. In November 1966, 5000 rioters swarmed into a three-block area along Georgia Street, throwing beer bottles, breaking windows, and starting fires in sidewalk trash bins after the annual Grey Cup parade; there were 200 arrests. In August 1971, Gastown residents rioted against a police crackdown on illegal drugs; 100 people were arrested. Less than a year later, in June 1972, 2000 people outside Pacific Coliseum hurled rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at riot-equipped Vancouver Police officers during a Rolling Stones concert (warmup act: then-22-year-old Stevie Wonder). Thirty policemen were injured as the mob tried to crash the concert. And of course, following the Canucks’ Stanley Cup loss in 1994, a riot ensued lasting six hours; 200 were arrested. Some of these riots were inspired by political events, but some involved a bunch of hooligans who thought it would be fun to smash some stuff up and set a few things on fire, just like June 15th, 2011. Many came prepared to riot regardless of whether the Canucks won or lost, with black knit masks, fire extinguishers that could be used to smash windows, and signs that said, “Riot 2011″. Countless people took digital photos of themselves with the burning cars, arms held high as if they’d scored a victory. In Vancouver’s first social media riot, Twitter feeds, Facebook postings, and the confessions of several teens who have been charged after the incident confirm how lightly participants took acts like setting cars on fire. They seemed to just go with the flow, and even seem surprised at the internet backlash that has led to them losing their jobs, being suspended from sports teams, and endangering their families. Like Stephen Quinn joked, some might even have hooked up as a result of their actions (“Missed Connections/I saw you (through the tear gas)”, The Globe and Mail, June 24).

Every city has the potential for inexplicable violence, because every city is home to hundreds of thousands of people. We did manage to hold the Olympics here without major incident. We’ve also held countless international events like Expo ’86, and community events like Car-Free Day on the Drive, the Kitsilano Greek Festival, and Chinese New Year celebrations, all of which draw thousands of people. All of these events are carefully planned with the presence of police, first aid, and security personnel. Most of the time, nothing goes awry. Occasionally it does (few outsiders remember that downtown windows were smashed by anti-Olympics protesters on the first day of last year’s Olympics). When it does, we all have to deal with it: the mayor, the police chief, the gutsy few that helped hold back looters (“Police seeking Stanley Cup riot Good Samaritans”, The Toronto Star June 27th) and more than 14,000 citizens who volunteered to help store owners clean up the shattered glass and debris on the morning of June 16th. These stories, both good and bad, become part of the city’s history, at least for those of us who can’t stomach the sugary-sweet myth of Vancouver. Those of us who live here know that this is also a city with persistent homelessness, sharply polarized incomes (with the poorest and richest postal codes in the country), and serious drug traffic. People exist here, like they do elsewhere, within a fragile network of social connections kept alive by a veneer of civility. Certain events (whether it be sports, politics, or inequity) motivate people to take sandpaper and blowtorches to the shiny surface, exposing the conflicts underneath. Other events, like “most livable city” contests, buff the veneer right up again. So never fear, politicians and business scions: the myth of Vancouver as some kind of laid-back hippie paradise (for rich people) persists.

Maybe this riot, like the 1994 Stanley Cup riot, the 2001 transit strike that lasted so long it produced skewed Census results, and the persistent smashing of Starbucks’ windows when they first opened on Commercial Drive, offers us a little insight into the complex social, income, and ethnic diversity of this city. These events, like the Olympics and Expo ’86 and the hundreds of festivals held here, are as much a part of the city as the Downtown Eastside and Kitsilano. The rioters, the Good Samaritans, the cleanup crew, and the internet vigilantes who have sent police thousands of pictures to help identify rioters: they are all Vancouver.

Vancouver: a hookup nightmare?

Vancouver has a lot of things going for it: beautiful scenery, coffee shops on every corner, and some fantastic local foods. But as my regular readers know, Vancouver also has undesirable characteristics: it’s ridiculously expensive, socially polarized and inward-looking. It’s also notoriously difficult for young singles to meet potential mates in this town. So when The Tyee‘s Vanessa Richmond asked, “What the heck is wrong with men in this town?” I couldn’t resist responding.

There’s a fair amount of Vancouver-bashing going on now that the Canucks have made it to their first Stanley Cup finals in 17 years. Most of the talk indicates the lukewarm attitudes the rest of Canada has towards “the most livable city in the world”.

“The fact is, as cities go, many Canadians view Vancouver as effete, a metropolis made up of snotty, latte swilling, cargo-shorts wearing, too-cool-for-school yuppies for whom pleasure and real estate remain their only abiding concerns.” Gary Mason, Can Canucks really be Canada’s hockey team?, Globe and Mail, May 18, 2011)

“We are yuppie, expensive and shallow. Look at the place! We’d be stupid not to be yuppie, expensive and shallow. I’m writing this column in my hot tub while sipping a clever little Okanagan Pinot Gris. Life is good here.” Pete McMartin, “Dear rest of Canada, please get your own hockey team”, Vancouver Sun, May 12, 2011)

Vancouverites know that it’s more than geography that separates them from the rest of Canada, and they’re proud of this cultural distinctness in the same way Alaskans revel in their separation from “the lower 48″. But there are specific characteristics that make it difficult for singles to hook up in VanCity (depending on what your definition of “hookup” is):

Strict Prohibition-era liquor laws make it more expensive to drink here and enforce earlier closing hours for Vancouver bars outside of the Granville Street club strip. When I moved here in 2005, I was shocked to discover that last call for bars and restaurants here is midnight…I mean come on, even in London, Ontario it’s 1:30am. It’s even illegal to take BC wines across the Alberta border, as a local radio reporter demonstrated recently (noted: I’m about to embark on a road trip to Calgary, so I guess we’ll have to stock up once we cross the border).
The weather. Canadians in Toronto and Montreal somehow manage to socialize in the rain and snow, but 8 months of rain per year literally dampens Vancouver’s social scene.
Urban planning. Metro Vancouver’s segmented land mass joined by precious few bridges makes socializing in the (tiny) downtown much more difficult than in other cities, where the downtown blends seamlessly into inner suburban neighbourhoods. It’s still a relatively small city (1.8 million for the entire region) and still largely suburban: people retreat to their homes after work, rather than sharing in the traditional urban pastime of after-work drinks that spill into dinner. And it’s still a relatively young city, so neighbourhoods don’t really have their own local bar/restaurant scenes. Vancouver still doesn’t feel like a vibrant urban centre.
Culture. Urban planner Gordon Price, quoted in Richmond’s article, notes that aloof behavior is “embedded in the cultural bedrock upon which this place was founded”. This British reserve means that men don’t approach women in bars, social hangouts, or even online dating sites: Richmond calls this “the eternal shyness of the VanCity man”.
Transience. Vancouver has a reputation that draws people from all over the country, and increasingly, all over the world. This creates a relatively transient population: many stay in Vancouver, but lots choose to return home when housing prices and incessant rain start to make them miserable. Many of my single friends have complained that the men they’ve dated weren’t into anything serious because they didn’t intend to stay here.

In other cities, singles aren’t hard up for hookups…how does anyone ever meet in VanCity? When I moved here for grad school, those of us from out of town quickly realized that the “townies” didn’t really socialize with us. They had their well-established networks of friends and family, and didn’t have the time or desire to add more. A classmate of mine who had moved here for work several years earlier told us how difficult it was to make friends here, and several of my friends have shared their own struggles in Vancouver’s social scene. One friend recently mentioned that her husband has had a tough time making guy friends. “You think it’s hard for women to make friends here?” she asked. “It’s ten times harder for men.” Even after living in Vancouver for six years, most of my friends are from out of town, and many from out of province. (Lest I be outed as “anti-Vancouver”, my husband and I noticed the same social phenomenon in Ottawa, where we lived for three years). This difficulty making friends in Vancouver inevitably extends to other social activities like dating.

I don’t know what the solution is any more than Richmond does; even her suggestion that women be more assertive in approaching men might be problematic in Vancouver (the men in her article are rebuffed when they approach women, so who’s to know how they would react if a woman were to make the first move?) All I can say is that Vancouver’s social scene is markedly different from Montreal’s, where waiters at restaurants flirt with every woman in sight, and Toronto’s (I dare you to find a Toronto friend who hasn’t gone out for after-work drinks in the last month).

Election excitement? The startling turn of events preceding May 2nd

Since Easter weekend, when record-breaking numbers of voters took to advance polls, election fever has gripped this country from coast to coast. I can’t remember a more exciting campaign, nor a time when the Liberal and NDP parties have ever changed places in a mere five weeks (according to pollsters, anyway). The surge in NDP support has left political commentators breathless: could Jack Layton’s NDP become the official Opposition party? The Toronto Star endorsed Layton as Prime Minister, but urged Canadians to vote strategically to prevent a Harper majority. The Globe and Mail, rather characteristically, endorsed Stephen Harper…and went so far as to call this “an unremarkable and disappointing election campaign”!

The polls have been fluctuating wildly in the past week, leaving the outcome undecided: will the NDP grab seats in BC, as the polls suggest? Both Harper and Layton ended their campaigns in Vancouver this week: we’re home to several key ridings like Burnaby-Douglas, Vancouver Centre, Newton-North Delta, and Surrey North. Will waning Liberal support lead to Conservative wins in key ridings? Will the Quebecois shift their support from the Bloc to the NDP in ridings like Gatineau? How exactly will the NDP surge play out in terms of number of seats? The media are also trying to decipher the significance of youth turnout encouraged by vote mobs (see my last post: this picture is from today’s vote mob in my hometown of London, Ontario which gathered over 1500 people. London, you may recall, is where two students were kicked out of a Conservative party rally way back at the beginning of the campaign. Organizers say London’s was the biggest vote mob of the year.)

Is this election campaign best summarized by the Globe and Mail‘s headline, “Federal elections a tight race between boredom and hope” (April 29, 2011)? Or has this “unnecessary election” changed Canada for the better? (May 1, 2011) The youngest voters and NDP supporters are hoping for change across this great country, and at this point it looks like there is no hope of a Harper majority. My hope: that the 35% increase at advance polls signals high voter turnout on May 2nd…and that Harper is not re-elected to form a government, majority or minority. Hold on, kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Filipinos: a growing presence in Canadian cities

Filipino immigrants are a rapidly growing group in many Canadian cities: there are almost half a million Filipinos in the country. In many ways, they are distinct: recent studies have highlighted their increasing dependence upon the Live-in Caregiver Program, their difficulties finding work in their occupations, and the implications of long periods of separation upon their families in Canada and the Philippines. Last year, the Vancouver Sun ran a four-part series on Filipinos in Canada, which they dubbed “The Filipino Factor”. This weekend the Globe and Mail featured a two-page spread, now that the Philippines outpaces China and India as the main source of immigrants to Canada. In my view, the distinctive patterns of Filipino immigrants make them an ideal case study that can teach us about immigrants’ integration, labour market participation and survival strategies.

As many of you know, my dissertation focuses on Filipinos’ housing and transportation choices in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), where over 170,000 Filipinos live. I’m rapidly nearing the end of my four years in the PhD programme at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, which means I’m finishing my study and getting ready to publish my results. I have found that Filipino immigrants display a remarkable resilience in their housing and transportation choices. It’s the same resilience that is portrayed in the media: Filipinos come from a country with far less economic and political stability than Canada, and they are willing to work hard to succeed here. They do experience significant barriers to their integration, if we’re talking about the labour market. But socially, they must be one of the most integrated groups in Canada: they are very spatially dispersed and do not form ethnic enclaves. They are also experts in community-building: Filipinos have established hundreds of non-profit, community, and advocacy groups in Canadian cities. These groups help new arrivals find jobs, train for new careers, and adjust to life in Canada; they are often staffed by both paid and volunteer Filipinos. Prominent Filipino researchers Dr. Nora Angeles and Dr. Aprodicio Laquian have done research in this area; Nora is currently an Associate Professor at SCARP and Prod is a Professor Emeritus at our school.

In my own research, I have seen that Filipinos’ lower homeownership rate and higher transit commuting rate can partially be explained by their flexibility: they make practical choices depending on access to transit and the location of their workplaces, their children’s schools, shops and services. They move back and forth between owning and renting, driving and transit use, depending on changes in their families and careers. These choices mirror their experiences in the Philippines, where many lived in dense, mixed-use communities with access to transit. Of course, their choices are also shaped by structural changes in housing policy, immigration policy, and the labour market over the years.

We can’t ignore the issues faced by growing number of Filipinos who work far below their education and skill levels, or the policy shifts that have made things more difficult for recent arrivals (Dr. Phil Kelly at York University has written extensively on this subject). In the 1990s and 2000s, immigration from the Philippines increased markedly, and many of these new immigrants entered under the LCP rather than Skilled Worker or Family Class immigration categories. It will take these more recent immigrants longer to find jobs in their professions than earlier immigrants, and during this time they work long hours and have difficulty studying for recertification; many have college diplomas or university degrees from the Philippines that Canadian employers and professional associations do not recognize. However, in the face of these changes in immigration policy and the labour market, Filipinos’ resiliency strategy serves them well. Because they remain flexible and mobile in their housing and transportation decisions, they are able to adapt to changing situations, like divorce, training for a new job, or offering a room to recently-arrived family members when they arrive in Canada.

Why all the fuss about Filipinos? After all, we’re a multicultural society…why focus on one particular group? Because Filipinos have higher than average rates of education and are fluent in English, but are not able to work in their professions, which means they often have lower than average incomes. For example, over the years, Filipinos’ jobs in finance, insurance and real estate have changed to jobs in manufacturing and the service sector. Filipinos seem to be more affected by changes in immigration policy, such as the LCP. Their resiliency strategy towards housing and transportation choice may be unique. For these reasons, a case study of Filipinos may be instructive to researchers studying immigrants’ housing, settlement, and labour market patterns.

This week, I’ll be presenting my work at the National Metropolis Conference here in Vancouver. I’m looking forward to seeing other researchers in urban planning, geography and sociology who are studying how immigrants settle into Canadian cities. Metropolis Canada is part of an international network of researchers on immigration and migration, and there is also an annual conference in Europe each year. The best part is the diversity of academic researchers, community researchers, non-profit housing providers, immigrant service providers, and of course students who come to the conference to share their research and best practices on immigrant integration. I’ll never forget my first Metropolis conference last year in Montréal…let’s hope Vancouver can be as much fun!

Transit? Who needs it?

New Toronto mayor Rob Ford has been making headlines: and not in a good way. Ford has long been a controversial figure, and this summer’s mayoralty race was no exception. Echoing Mel Lastman, a similarly polarizing figure, Ford seems an odd fit for such a multicultural, cosmopolitan, and diverse city. He’s at best a pompous blowhard with insights into the political process; at worst, depending on your information source, he’s a racist homophobe who doesn’t support affordable housing, public transit, or any of the other pressing needs of the burgeoning city. But like Lastman, who was in office for six years, Ford will likely have a lasting effect on the City of Toronto.

In Canada’s biggest city, where 22% of the population takes transit, Ford has decided that transit is the enemy. On December 1st, his first day in office, he managed to kill the city’s proposed vehicle registration tax, freeze property taxes, and get council’s approval to have the Toronto Transit Commission deemed an essential service. With this designation, the TTC will be unable to strike, and union leaders say they’ll fight the decision, which will be made by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

McGuinty and regional transit planning authority Metrolinx also have to deal with Ford’s tyrannical attack on Transit City, an initiative that was seven years in the making and is already being built. The province, after approving the construction of four LRT lines, announced this spring that they may not be able to fund the entire plan at this time. Ford wants to scrap Transit City entirely, arguing that streetcars cause traffic congestion, and everyone prefers subways anyway. He wants to extend the Sheppard subway line to meet up with the Scarborough RT instead, even if the high cost of this option means that no other transit infrastucture can be built in Toronto. Perhaps he isn’t aware that one of Transit City’s approved lines was a retrofit of the Scarborough RT, which is rapidly deteriorating, and another was a Sheppard LRT that would extend much farther than the subway will? In vain, Metrolinx tried to convince Ford that many other options were more suitable and affordable than subway extension, but surprisingly, the man who claims to be so concerned about taxpayers’ wallets wants the most expensive option. The main beneficiaries of Transit City were to be the inner suburbs: Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York. Neighbouring municipalities like Mississauga also strongly support Transit City. David Hulchanski, who just released an update to his popular “Three Cities within Toronto” study, says that building LRT is the answer to slowing or reversing the segregation of the city by income. Doesn’t Ford feel a responsibility to represent the suburban “working man” that elected him?

Electing Ford represents frustration: residents are frustrated with the way their city is run. Suburban residents see traffic congestion, unreliable public transit, job losses, and rising taxes, and they want things to change. What they don’t see is that municipalities are chronically underfunded by the provincial government in ways that matter: it is the provincial government that funds transit and road infrastructure, and a good proportion of job creation also comes from provincial initiatives. This underfunding leads the TTC to strike, since they rarely have the money for either their capital or operating costs, and also requires the city to raise money in other ways, usually new or increased taxes. Canadian cities have precious few mechanisms to generate money, and unfortunately taxes are among the few. The vehicle registration tax would have raised $64 million for the City of Toronto; Ford has not announced another way of raising the money. Opponents claim that it is “mathematically impossible” that these two tax losses won’t cause any service cuts for City residents. Cancelling Transit City could cost the province fees for broken contracts: $137 million has already been spent on Transit City and $1.3 billion is committed. In fact, for a pro-business, right-wing mayor, Ford doesn’t seem to be very good at managing money. Perhaps his 2011 budget review will inform him that transit actually makes money for the City of Toronto: former budget chief Shelley Carroll says that high transit ridership contributed to a year-end operating surplus.

Both Lastman and Ford came into office at a time of economic recession. Both came to power after a period of progress for the City of Toronto: Barbara Hall (1994-1997) preceded Lastman and David Miller (2003-2010) preceded Ford. Both Lastman and Ford claimed to appeal to suburban “ordinary people”: indeed, the voting maps of Toronto illustrate the pervasive divide the media loves to play up (the Globe and Mail included). We know from US elections that the maps don’t tell all: as Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Naymark wrote in the National Post,

“This attempt to create a downtown versus suburb cleavage is at best a distraction, and at worst, sets a dangerous precedent.”

Toronto's 2010 Election Results

Toronto's 1997 Election Results

Perhaps most tellingly, both Ford and Lastman faced a slew of opponents for mayor: Lastman was one of over thirty candidates, while Ford was one of 40. According to the City of Toronto’s website, 383,501 voters elected Ford: 813,984 actually voted in the election. So, 47% of voters, who represented 35.3% of the City of Toronto’s population, elected him: that’s 16.7% of the city’s population. Lastman, the first mayor elected after Toronto announced its amalgamation with five suburban municipalities, won by a slim margin of about 41,000 votes. In times of discord and recession, the appeal of the right-wing, cost-saving, businessman is strongest.

The next three years will be momentous ones in Canada’s biggest city. Ford will have to make allies in the provincial government if he wants to keep taxes low. Let’s hope that Ford has a fight on his hands, at least as far as transit is concerned: it takes very little to kill programs and policies that have taken years to approve. As Councillor Janet Davis said, “For the first time [we're] expanding transit across the city that we waited generations for — the mayor can’t walk in on Day 1 and say, ‘it’s gone.’ It doesn’t work like that.” If anything, Ford’s rising star only proves how little power cities have over the issues that really matter to them, and how limited their sources of funding really are. The problem is that Ford’s blustery, and logic-free, decision-making will have long-term consequences on the City of Toronto: Lastman managed to have the Sheppard subway built, against the TTC’s advice. The result was a white elephant, no funding for additional services that the system badly needed, and at one point the streetcars running at very low speeds to cope with deteriorating tracks. While Vancouver is no stranger to provincial wrangling over transit infrastructure, at least we have a mayor who cycles to work and strongly supports sustainable transportation.

Segregated or integrated? American and Canadian ethnic populations

Bill Rankin's map of Chicago

A couple of years ago, when I attended the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference in Chicago, I was stunned to hear that Cleveland and Chicago are the most segregated cities in the US. As I’ve written before, Canadian cities simply don’t have these levels of segregation; obviously not for African American and Hispanic populations, but also not for other groups. Recently, I’ve come across a series of maps illustrating the difference between American cities that are more segregated vs. more integrated, thanks to some enlightened cartographers. It is very interesting to compare these maps to the (albeit simpler) maps of visible minorities in Canadian cities recently published by the Globe and Mail.

Bill Rankin‘s map of Chicago illustrates the sharp divides between white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and other ethnocultural groups. It was originally published in Perspecta, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture; Rankin is a PhD candidate in architecture and the history of science.

After seeing this, Eric Fischer produced similar maps for the 40 largest American cities. He used the same process as Rankin (one dot for every 25 people and same colour code, using the 2000 Census data).

We can see some segregation in New York City, but there are zones of integration.

Eric Fischer's map of New York City

Detroit’s 8-Mile district stands out as an example of entrenched segregation. Many of the maps of smaller cities, like Buffalo, Toledo, and Raleigh, highlight inner city concentrations of African Americans.

: Eric Fischer’s map of Detroit

Eric Fischer's map of Los Angeles

On the other hand, check out Riverside, CA, which looks very integrated. Los Angeles also has a lot of integration, and San Antonio is very integrated.

Eric Fischer's map of Riverside

A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail posted a series of “heat maps” showing the concentration of visible minorities in Canadian cities. They don’t break down the statistics (from the 2006 Census) into specific ethnocultural groups, as is the usual Canadian trend; there are simply too many groups to map. But they are interesting nonetheless. The maps are interactive, allowing you to zoom in, so I can’t reproduce them here. Check them out at www.globeandmail.ca under Multiculturalism.

Vancouver’s map shows that in most census tracts in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, over 30% of the population are visible minorities. Toronto has a similar pattern: over 30% of the population in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond, and Ajax are visible minorities. The central Toronto map shows some interesting areas of lower concentration: areas around the subway lines, west Toronto and the Beaches. In Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the census tracts with over 30% visible minorities are mainly in the suburbs.

Montréal is even more fascinating because it shows a very different pattern. The visible minority population there is almost exclusively concentrated on the island of Montréal, with lower rates of concentration in the suburbs: the older pattern of immigrant settlement that we still see in smaller cities. This is likely due to sheer numbers: Toronto and Vancouver receive tens of thousands more immigrants each year than Montréal.

Obviously, the American maps show that not all cities south of the border are sharply segregated, but even in the smaller cities, like Toledo, Ohio, there are lingering segregated African American populations. This in itself is not an issue; the maps of Canadian cities show lots of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of visible minorities. The real issue is when these concentrations are due to poverty or discrimination (either societal or institutional, such as in the housing market). American housing research seems to indicate that much of the segregation is in fact due to these two factors. Entire programs are devoted to fixing this problem: Housing Choice Vouchers, for example, aim to remove people from entrenched areas of poverty into neighbourhoods where they may have better educational and job opportunities.

I think these maps illustrate again how different Canadian and American cities are in terms of ethnocultural groups: both in terms of their composition and their spatial dispersal. This continues to create policy differences between the US and Canada, not only in my own research areas of housing, transportation, and immigration, but in many other areas affecting municipalities: welfare provision, health care, and education to name a few.

Elite? or just educated?

Having spent some time working in the US and frequently immersed in American academic journals and conferences, I am well aware that there is a latent anti-intellectual bias that tends to rear its head during, oh…say national elections, or on the eve of major policy reform. Canadians, apparently, share this apprehension of “minority elites”.

The recent media storm over the Canadian census long form (see my previous post) has ignited a seemingly latent populace that believes that research, and researchers themselves, are pointless exercises in readin’, writin’, book-learnin’ and other geeky pursuits that don’t matter: that data will only be used in order to harass and over-tax the less-educated, privacy-minded general public. (Have a look at some of the articles posted in every major Canadian news outlet concerning the recent Census developments, and more to the point, have a look at some of the comments the “general public” posted.) But it’s not just your “average Canadians” who question the educated population. In today’s Globe and Mail (“Tories stall census probe, ask to hear from average Canadians”), Industry Minister Tony Clement has “already dismissed the controversy as one that only occupies “some of the elites in our country,” a phrase he also used when Canadian academics criticized the federal government’s decision to prorogue Parliament.

Maybe in countries where a university education costs more than a Bentley, it would be correct to state that educated people are a bunch of rich snobs who might be a tad removed from the fray (I said maybe). The vast majority of Canadian universities are public schools, meaning they have government-subsidized tuitions that are considerably lower than their American counterparts. Although tuitions have risen steadily in the last fifteen years or so, Canadian student loans are still readily available to most students. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) offers fellowships for Masters and PhD students. Admittedly, these have become rarer in recent years due to the Harper government’s decision to prioritize PhD topics directly related to the economy, and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) just announced it would drop its Doctoral Fellowship program this year. However, it would seem that funding scarcity hasn’t had much of an effect on our already high education levels.

Higher education is fairly well-distributed among gender, ethnic groups and income levels in Canada. During the 1930s, a quarter of Canadian women were university educated, and to look at graduate schools now you’d be hard-pressed to find a majority of men in any discipline: women have out-numbered men in university admissions since 1981. In the 2006 Census, 25% of the Canadian population had a university degree higher than Bachelors level. By the way, this is lower than the 31% of Americans with this level of education. Almost half of the Canadian population (49%) has a college diploma, trade certification, or university degree. Of OECD countries, Canada has the highest percentage of the population (from 25 to 64 years old) with a post-secondary education (46%), slightly higher than the Japan (40%) and the US (39%), and considerably higher than the OECD average of 26%.

Many immigrants enter the country with educations far superior to those born in Canada. And because the vast majority of population growth in Canada is due to immigration, these university-educated immigrants have a major impact on our cities, our labour market, and our education systems. In 2006, 51% of recent immigrants to Canada had university degrees, compared to 19% of the Canadian-born population. Immigrants also out-perform native-born Canadians in prose, document literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, according to the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey. Even more importantly, immigrants raised in China, India, or the Philippines (Canada’s three largest source countries for immigrants) know the importance of education and instill it in their children. Let me be clear: it is well known in the poorer parts of the world that education offers an escape route out of poverty. In most cases, the only way out. Many of my classmates at the University of Toronto were the children of immigrants who had only been able to complete high school educations or, occasionally, community college. We were the first generation to attend community colleges and universities en masse, and it was expected that we do so, because our parents could not afford to go themselves when they were our age. Despite their scrimping and saving, many of us were unable to pay tuition without government-subsidized public schools, government-funded loans, scholarships and fellowships.

While a university attendance is lower among the low-income population, Statistics Canada published a study in 2007 that found lower rates of attendance were due to differences in academic performance, parents’ level of education, parents’ expectations, the high school attended, and other such factors. Only 9.5% of the youth in the study reported that financial constraints were a barrier to university attendance. While this is still cause for concern, it is somewhat reassuring that the rapid ascent of tuitions in the 1990s have not have more serious effects.

I’m not sure that it’s accurate to describe this one-quarter of the Canadian population with Bachelors degrees as elite, or “the most powerful, best educated or best trained group in society” (Cambridge Dictionary). Can the half of the population with post-secondary educations, or the half of recent immigrants with university degrees, all be considered elites? While there are some groups in Canada who are under-represented in higher education (only 8% of Aboriginals have university degrees, but 41% have post-secondary educations), we are generally an educated bunch.

Perhaps that’s the real crisis in the Harper government: realizing yet again that Canadians aren’t as dumb as his 2008 re-election might suggest. First, we rose up in the tens of thousands to protest proroguing Parliament, and now that over 200 groups have protested the removal of the Census long form, he’s had to personally speak out on what he probably considered a minor technical issue that would only concern “elites”. After both of these crises, the Conservatives dropped in the polls, creating considerable distress for Harper’s minority Conservatives. An educated populace is a problem when your government acts more like a monarchy than a democratically-elected minority government that could topple at any time.

Housing unaffordability is historically the norm

“Why doesn’t the president of the United States ever get up and say, ‘You can be a full-fledged American citizen and rent an apartment — it’s OK.” David Wessel, economics editor, Wall Street Journal

Americans now pay more for housing than ever before, according to a report by Harvard’s Joint Centre for Housing Studies. In its annual report The State of the Nation’s Housing 2010, researchers write that 18.6 million Americans spend more than half their incomes on housing, up from 13.8% in 2001. While this figure includes both owners and renters, 45.1% of renters are in the bottom income quartile. Homeownership is at a historical low, household income barely increased in the past decade, and rental vacancies are at a historical high. No wonder the authors are calling calling the first ten years of the 2000′s “the lost decade.” But housing “unaffordability” isn’t anything new, nor are our solutions to the problem.

While the Harvard researchers blame falling wages and high unemployment (9.9% in April 2010), high rental vacancy rates and low supply of the most affordable and smallest units are also major issues. Fewer homes were built in the US in 2009 than in any year since WWII, particularly multifamily homes: 62% fewer multifamily developments were begun in 2009 than in 2008. Demolition and conversion of existing low-income rental units is also a major cause for concern. Lower immigration rates are also taking their toll: there was a sharper decline in the number of foreign-born households under the age of 35 than in native-born households from 2009 to 2010. Minority households have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis. In 2009, minorities accounted for 37 percent of householders aged 25–44 and 39 percent of those under age 25. The minority homeownership rate is still expected to increase by 2020, despite lower incomes among foreign-born and minority households and lower immigration rates due to the economic recession.

Some progress has been made in terms of rental housing: rental conversions from foreclosed housing has already been done in many cities, but Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considering introducing market-rental units into its publicly-funded affordable housing developments in order to help pay for much-needed maintenance on the buildings. And the pro-homeownership policies keep coming, including the renewal of the federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers (and its expansion to repeat homebuyers) and Federal Reserve purchases of mortgage-backed securities to help keep interest rates low. But with the expiration of the tax credit program in April 2010, Harvard’s Joint Centre for Housing Studies warns that any good news may not be long-lasting. The problem, they say, is that there is unusually low demand for new homes. The ratio of housing and transportation costs to income has risen steadily over the past fifty years (see Figure 30 and 31 of the report).

As I’ve written before, without massive government programs to support homeownership and assistance for low-income renters, housing has ever been a good deal. Check out the CBC’s digital archives on the development of suburbs. In a video clip from 1954, the narrator explains how expensive homes are for the average person and how far people have to live (up to 50 miles from the city center) to afford them. In 1953, the average Canadian earned $971/month before taxes. Don Mills, the first suburb in Canada, had house prices beginning at $11,000 all the way up to $100,000. Rental rates at that time were $300/month for the average apartment in Toronto (already hovering around 30% of the average Canadian’s income, the level most housing authorities classify as affordable) and $100/month for a basic three-bedroom in the city centre. In the new market-rate high-rise apartment complexes in the suburbs of Toronto, apartments went for less than $100/month. In Montreal, then the largest city in the country, 70% of homes were apartments and the going rent was $70-100/month, only slightly more than the rents in Winnipeg ($80/month). A house in Vancouver was $2,000 cheaper than in the east at the time. While 1950s housing solutions (demolition of existing older housing to make room for low-income public housing developments in city centres, massive concrete high-rises in the suburbs) may have been questionable, they were quite desirable at the time: the wait for affordable housing, like the still-under-construction Regent Park) was 2 years for a $29-90/month rent-geared-to-income apartment. The average rent at Shannon Heights, a 1950s assisted rental development in Halifax, was only $90/month. Commuting to the city became a new drag, and buses quickly replaced streetcars and trains, steps were taken to make commuting more enjoyable. A 1963 video clip records a housewife saying that the lack of transportation options in the suburbs mean she spends considerable time driving her teenagers around; another says her family moved to the suburbs because that’s where they could get a mortgage.

Whatever housing problems we face today, whether it’s affordability or commute distance, they’re nothing new. Solutions to these problems, like artificially stimulating homeownership through tax incentives and policies, are likewise nothing new; housing affordability problems persist. Recently, researchers at the The New York Times compared the cost of living in a suburban house to an urban apartment in the New York City metro area, and found that the suburban option cost a surprising 18% more (“High-Rise, or House with Yard?” July 2, 2010): the big difference was the higher property taxes, and their comparison didn’t include the cost of home repairs. Even the The Wall Street Journal is publishing articles saying homeownership doesn’t work (“Is the Homeownership System Broken?”, June 22, 2010): WSJ economics editor David Wessel is quoted as saying, “So now we have a system where a lot of people own homes but don’t have any equity in them, which means you don’t get any of the virtues of investing in them. And the government has been forced to take over the mortgage financing system, which suggests that it wasn’t a very strong one if the government has to take it over.” This is quite a turn of events. Could North Americans be forging a new path in housing policy?

M.A., Ph.D. (Planning)

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