Decades ago in The Uses of Disorder (1970) Sennett argued that suburbs were a fascist social control that created a more intolerant society, one that was more individual-based rather than community-based. He wrote that suburbs tended to exacerbate the natural inclination of people to associate with others with similar values, even banding together to exclude people of different cultures and religions.

In the US, Bishop and Booth write that the roots for this type of voluntary segregation can be seen in the 1960s, when the courts demanded integration of African Americans and “white flight” first began. Recently, minorities are increasing in the inner suburbs fairly close to city centers, spurring whites to flee to exurban areas, which can be over an hour from the city. Benjamin says that many of these are older white Americans who fear an increasing role of government and a loss of power in the face of demographic shifts. Older whites traditionally have more political power because they are more likely to vote, but as of 2042 whites will no longer be the majority in the US.

Echoing Sennett, both Bishop and Benjamin argue that segregation into class-based, race-based neighbourhood leads to more clashes between groups, as each becomes entrenched in its own position and values. Bishop writes that this type of stalemate leads to some innovative policy at the metropolitan and state levels, but a lack of transformative change in the US.

The argument is very interesting from a Canadian viewpoint, where many of our suburban areas are very mixed because of our consistently high immigration rates. Unfortunately, no author has taken on a book-length discussion on growth rates and ethnicity in Canadian cities, but there is plenty of statistical evidence that shows Canada moving in a very different direction than the US. In Metro Vancouver, suburban municipality Port Moody had the highest growth rate in the region, followed by Surrey. Richmond and Vancouver had much lower rates but are still around 6%.

Immigration landings confirm that the vast majority of these immigrants have come from Asia, particularly mainland China and Hong Kong. Statistics Canada Community Profiles show that the proportion of immigrants is significant even in traditionally “whiter” mid-sized cities: 20% of Victoria’s population is foreign-born, as is 21% of London’s and 15% of Kelowna’s. However, visible minorities make up only 12% of Victoria’s population, 14% of the population in London and 6% in Kelowna.

Despite the mixture of ethnic groups in Canadian suburbs, the tendency towards locating among people with similar values can clearly be seen in Canadian elections. Cities emerge as islands of Liberal and NDP support in a country that has had a Conservative minority government since 2006. Have a look at southern Ontario or Vancouver in the 2008 federal election. Even Vancouver’s municipal election results show sharp dividing lines between those supporting Gregor Robertson for mayor versus Peter Ladner. Some even argue that the periodic redrawing of census tracts is linked to political agendas, but given the housing affordability crisis in most Canadian cities, it seems that the political and ethnocultural trends is less tied to cultural preferences than the geography of affordable housing.

At any rate, there are some obvious differences between Canadian and American cities, notably in the spatial concentration of ethnic populations and the absence of sharp ethnic divides. While Bishop and Benjamin trace this to civil rights era, the issue clearly goes further back to a history of slavery in the US. Canada, while having its own history of racist legislation, does not have as long of a history of non-white settlement. The Immigration Act of 1952 was the first to allow people from non-European countries to enter the country, and by that time there were fewer legal restrictions to owning land and buying property. By 1967, with another major shift in the Immigration Act, a new wave of non-white immigrants entered the country. However, they were never faced with legal barriers to homeownership or the labour market, two considerable barriers for African Americans in the US that remain entrenched today. Earlier non-white populations in Canada, notably Sikhs and Chinese in British Columbia, faced much harsher restrictions and still have the highest rates of segregation in the country today. These differences in immigration and labour market policy mean that our segregation rates are much lower than those seen in the US, yet another reason to think twice before applying American theory and reality to our own cities.

Benjamin’s and Bishop’s books do make us think about the fractured populace living just south of the border, and urge us to do more to help new immigrants integrate into their lives in Canada. Every time I travel to the US for a conference and listen to researchers documenting entrenched segregation, labour market barriers, and the “racial” biases unearthed during the mortgage crisis, I am reminded how different our countries are. This is particularly significant in my own research with immigrants in Toronto, which has introduced me to the work of many brilliant Canadian researchers and opened my eyes to our lower spatial segregation rates and more mixed neighbourhoods. However, I am also reminded of how much work still lies ahead for Canadians in recognizing immigrants’ foreign credentials, ensuring greater income equity, and promoting more tolerance in the workplace. We also need to recognize that sharp divides in tenure, such as the growth of luxury condominiums in neighbourhoods next to predominantly rental and low-income housing, can foster critical differences in political affiliation. As Sennett argued almost 40 years ago, the more isolated we are the more intolerant we become.

Structural and institutional racism

Canadian banks may no longer practice mortgage redlining, but there are plenty of other examples of structural and institutional racism in our society. Carlos Teixeira, an Associate Professor at UBC (Okanagan), did a study in 2006 comparing housing trajectories of Portuguese immigrants from Angola, Mozambique and the Azores. He found that black Portuguese immigrants faced significant racism in the housing market compared to white Portuguese immigrants. Robert Murdie, who has now retired from York University, found similar results in his comparison of Portuguese and Somali housing trajectories (2002). There are many studies documenting the difficulties immigrants to Canada face in the labour market: employers will not hire anyone without “Canadian experience.”

While most Canadians with anglo-sounding names would probably urge incoming immigrants to keep their names, in everyday life it is often just easier for Chinese immigrants to go by their English variants, like Josephine for Ji Ling. Indian immigrants often shorten their names to anglo-sounding equivalents: I recently met a Kal who had shortened the considerably lengthier Kalvinder, and a Dee whose full name was Deepali. Indeed, my adolescence and young adulthood was peppered with anglo-ethnic hybrid names. While we were often criticized for “wanting to become white” (by our co-ethnics) or “losing our roots” (by our white friends), in practice it is just annoying to have your name mispronounced and misspelled on a daily basis.

Philip Oreopolous’ study at the University of British Columbia suggests prejudice against ethnic names may be more than just an annoyance. A Professor of Economics at UBC, Oreopolous created 6,000 mock resumés to represent recent immigrants and Canadians with and without non-English names. They were tailored to job requirements and sent to 2,000 online job postings from employers across 20 occupational categories in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s largest and most multicultural city. Applicants with English-sounding names got almost 40% more callbacks from employers than those with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani sounding names. All applicants had at least a Bachelor’s degree, plus any additional qualifications specified in the job ad, and each applicant listed three previous jobs. Changing only the location of the applicant’s job experience, from Canadian to foreign, lowered callbacks by 5-10%. Employers valued Canadian work experience far more than a Canadian education. Oreopolous concluded that there is considerable employer discrimination against ethnic Canadians and immigrants; even when the person evaluating resumes spoke with an accent or had an ethnic-sounding name, they still preferred English-sounding names by a factor of 1.42. Oreopolous points out that this type of discrimination is illegal under the Ontario Human Rights Act. In this case, both the employer and the potential employee lose; the employer has purposely overlooked a potential employee with the appropriate skills and education. Oreopolous’ results cannot help but highlight institutional racism, which is more than a little surprising in the GTA, which is 46% foreign-born; China, India, and Pakistan are the three top source countries for immigrants. In a city and region so multicultural, that has been an immigrant reception center for over a hundred years, there is no way for employers to tell whether a person is a first-, second-, or third-generation immigrant, solely by looking at their name.

Modern racism

While Oreopolous points out the obvious legal implications of this discrimination, many scholars would call this modern racism rather than institutional or structural racism. Modern racism is a slippery concept: the Ontario Human Rights Commission issued a policy in 2005 stressing the subtler forms of discrimination. Examples of modern racism in the workplace are:

• Exclusion from formal or informal networks
• Denial of mentoring or developmental opportunities such as secondments and training that was made available to others
• Differential management practices such as excessive monitoring and documentation or deviation from written policies or standard practices
• Disproportionate blame for an incident
• Assignment to less desirable positions or job duties
• Treating normal differences of opinion as confrontational or insubordinate
• Characterizing normal communication as rude or aggressive
• Penalizing a person for failing to get along with someone else, e.g. a co-worker or manager, when one of the reasons for the tension is racially discriminatory attitudes or behaviour of the co-worker or manager

Differences in name, accent or manner of speech, clothing and grooming, diet, beliefs and practices, and leisure preferences can bring out subtle acts of racism. Because of language differences, member of various ethnic groups communicate in different ways. For example, in some cultures it is normal to wait several seconds after a person is finished speaking before responding; in anglo-North American culture the pause time is under one second. Those with the longer pause time would think they were being constantly interrupted by those with the shorter pause time. Underlining, or repeating the last few words of a person’s sentence at the same time as they are speaking, is common in some cultures but considered rude by North Americans.

Another common form of subtle racism is co-opting part of an ethnic culture: it is considered fashionable for a white person to wear a sari or practice yoga, but not an Indian person. I would add that in Canada we have the practice of “celebrating diversity” by having silly cultural festivals, yet we do not tolerate difference on a daily basis. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me his daughter was asked to return one day from school because she had henna tattoos on her hands. My friend, a Canadian of Indian ethnicity who is married to a white Canadian, said the school official told him the school did not allow tattoos at school. A few months later, the same official asked if his daughter could bring some sort of Indian food to a school multicultural festival.

Assuming that members of the same ethnicity are all the same is another example of subtle racism. Most of my Indian friends fend off questions about where the good Indian restaurants are, if we like Bollywood movies, and whether we have been to India; yet in most cases, we would have been teased mercilessly for liking Indian food, movies, or culture during our childhood and adolescence. In Outliers (2008), Malcolm Gladwell addresses the assumption that Asians are better at math. We even find examples of racism in terminology: what groups fall under the heading of “Asian”, and can they be grouped together as if they are all similar?

Joe Darden, a Professor of Geography at Michigan State, argues that denial of subtle and institutional racism allows Canadians to avoid changing legislation or monitor practices that discriminate against non-whites. Along with most other scholars, Darden points out that Canada has a long history of racism in immigration policy (The Significance of White Supremacy in the Canadian Metropolis of Toronto, 2004). He suggests that changes in the economy, and not changes in attitudes among white policy makers, were responsible for the removal of discrimination in immigration policy. In the post-war era, the need for skilled workers opened up immigration to non-European countries, while racist attitudes have remained. Like many African American scholars, Darden believes that there has been a transition from overt and institutional racism to subtle racism. Although significant Aboriginal populations have lived in Canada for thousands of years and British Columbia had small Chinese and Sikh populations around the turn of the century, Canada’s racist immigration policies only began to change in 1952. Most non-Europeans in Canada entered the country after 1967 changes to the Immigration Act. Fifty years is not a lot of time to eliminate racist ideologies.

The idea of racism in Canadian society may seem impossible, but various studies have proven there are subtle forms of racism in the housing market, labour market, and in social interactions. Oreopolous’ study shows that racism is present in the most multicultural city in Canada, therefore it must exist in cities with less cultural diversity. Many believe that cross-cultural education is the key to breaking down preconceptions about other cultures, understanding how different communication styles and values. In a multicultural society, cross-cultural training should be offered for all ages, from kindergarten to university, in schools and in the workplace. But Oreopolous’ study, as well as the earlier studies by Murdie and Teixeira, indicate there is also some legislative work to be done, as well as monitoring of employers, housing agencies, real estate agents, and landlords to ensure discrimination is not a factor in hiring, promotion, renting or buying a home in Canadian cities.

A recent example of the media coverage of immigrant settlement patterns is Doug Sanders article in The Globe and Mail (Are poor ‘ethnic’ areas cages?, February 28, 2009). Sanders asks whether areas with high immigrant concentrations are ethnic ghettos, “where people are trapped in a culturally isolated island of poverty and permanent segregation” or ethnic enclaves, “where people choose to live among fellow immigrants in order to forge ties to the new country, launch small businesses and help one another become members of Canadian society so that their kids can live elsewhere.” Sanders criticizes other writers who have implied that Canadian cities are becoming increasingly polarized and segregated. He also points out that many groups who have more segregated residential patterns are wealthy, such as the Jewish and Italian populations in Toronto.

Although Sanders never mentions them, long-standing theories about how cities grow and change underlie his article. The four most important are the concentric growth model (Charles Booth, 1902), the spatial assimilation model (E.W. Burgess, 1925), the housing career model, and the spatial mismatch model (John F. Kain, 1969).

The concentric growth model is by far the oldest; in fact, Booth was merely the first modern scholar to write about concentric patterns in cities. Burgess further developed the concentric model, arguing that socio-economic status increased towards the edges of the city. Concentric zones were the financial and office district, central retail district, wholesale and light manufacturing zone, heavy manufacturing zone, zone of workingmens’ homes, residential zone, and commuter zone. In 1920s Chicago, when Burgess was writing, the poorest areas of the city were next to manufacturing districts, while the wealthiest were located in rail and streetcar suburbs on the edge of the city. Chicago’s ethnic groups (main Italian, Chinese, and African American) lived in the workingmens’ zone. It was Burgess’ assumption that since the periphery of the city was the most desirable area to live, immigrants would eventually move outward as their socioeconomic status increased (the spatial assimilation model). Although the two models were criticized and found inaccurate only a decade later in Homer Hoyt’s 1939 study of 142 American cities, they have remained remarkably influential.

The housing career model is one of the most commonly used in research dealing with immigrants’ settlement patterns. It likely originated with the Federal Housing Administration (US) and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation early in the postwar era. Home ownership was then considered more stable and socially acceptable than renting; housing also quickly became a valuable consumer product in the late 1940s. The housing career model is based upon the idealized human life cycle, which includes pre-child, childearing, childrearing and launching, post-child, and later life stages. The model is linear and progressive; families are assumed to move towards single family home ownership and then to downsize as they get older. The model is used extensively in economic and housing forecasts, and in municipal planning documents.

The spatial mismatch model was developed by John F. Kain. In his view, a major reason behind spatial mismatch was the segregation of African Americans due to housing market discrimination. As cities grew and employers increasingly located in the suburbs, African Americans were unable to move to suburban housing, and in many cases unable to travel to suburban settings due to low car ownership. This resulted in longer commute distances and decreased labour market participation for African Americans.

Interestingly, these models were all (perhaps with the exception of housing career) created in the American context. While Canadian culture is similar, there are a number of marked differences between Canadian and American cities. First and foremost, Canada’s population is concentrated in very few large cites, and a good number of mid-sized ones. Toronto (5.1 million), Montreal (3.6 million), and Vancouver (2.1 million) are the Big Three. Following them are Ottawa-Gatineau (1.1 million), Calgary (1.1 million), Edmonton (715,500), Winnipeg (694,600), and Hamilton (692,900). Sixty percent of immigrants settle in the Big Three; the vast majority end up in Toronto (over 40%). Almost half (2.2 million) of Toronto’s population are immigrants.

Secondly, even back in the 1970s, researchers remarked that Toronto did not have a “race problem”. This is not to deny the racism faced by Chinese and South Asian Canadians a century ago, nor that faced by the Jewish and Italian communities until the 1960s (in fact, these four groups are still among the most segregated in Canadian cities). However, Canadian cities are devoid of the large swathes of inner city segregation common to many American cities. University of Toronto researchers Alan Walks and Larry Bourne studied residential segregation in all 27 Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas. While largest cities had the highest proportion of segregated neighbourhoods, there were no ghettos (which were classified as census tracts having at least 70% minority residents, 66% from one single ethnic group and at least 30% of ethnic group members living in such neighbourhoods). Although some groups were segregated, none approached the level of segregation experienced by African Americans in the US. Further, Walks and Bourne found that residential segregation decreased from 1991-2001, but many visible minority groups were moving into areas with high proportions of other visible minorities. The researchers linked this to the availability of low-rent apartment housing and increasing affordability problems among new immigrants. Other researchers have found that rising rates of segregation are in fact due to the fact that a commonly-used method, the Index of Segregation, measures the extent to which minority group members are exposed only to one another in their neighbourhood. As Canadian cities become more diverse, this likelihood increases, resulting in higher rates of segregation.

These differences between Canadian and American cities are crucial. In addition to this are trends common in postindustrial cities. Toronto and Vancouver in particular have tight housing markets and competitive rents. Combined with structural changes like immigration policy and economic restructuring, immigrants cannot possibly settle in Canadian cities following the concentric pattern established in the interwar period in the US. Numerous articles have explored the causes behind immigrants’ settlement directly in suburban areas in these two cities (see ‘Immigrants prefer suburbs to living in core areas’, Globe and Mail, March 31, 2008). Some, like Anthony Reinhart, imply that while the housing career model is incorrect here (immigrants are settling directly in single-family housing rather than transitioning into it gradually) the core principles of spatial assimilation are intact (immigrants are choosing the most desirable housing location). But in a city with high housing prices and high rents, are immigrants choosing the most desirable housing, or simply the most affordable? Are they, in fact, ‘choosing’ at all, when inner city neighbourhoods are increasingly dominated by luxury condos beyond their means? This remains to be seen.

Finally, should these models continue to drive our planning practices? For example, is it acceptable that the most desirable areas to live in are at the edge of the city? Is this true in today’s postmodern city with a strong demand for urban loft living? Should we focus housing policy on homeownership, at the expense of rental housing, co-operatives and other tenure types? When the average family cannot afford a home in Toronto or Vancouver, perhaps it is time for policy shift. In our multicultural country, is it acceptable that we expect immigrants to integrate into suburban neighbourhoods with the Canadian-born? Or have we finally accepted the idea that ethnic neighbourhoods and mixed neighbourhoods can co-exist? The media storm on this issue indicates that we have not.