Gentrification

Pointing to the recent UofT report on Toronto's growing economic polarization, over at the Toronto Star Slinger asks what's the problem..

Gentrification doesn't just mean replacing cement with bricks in the sidewalks along the local main drag. It can mean what happened in Cabbagetown, where even the middle class can no longer afford the bijou residences that, before double-glazed, stained-glass windows, provided the threadbare masses with shelter – it's got rats, but it's home to us – from the storm. ...  And then there are all those enormous, falling-down heaps in Parkdale, each with 15 or 20 tenants, two or three of them behind each door. Fixer-upper mansions! But nothing a junior investment banker with an architect and a couple of million to blow on renovations can't make splendid again. Now ask yourself, where will these 10,000 poverty-stricken, troubled individuals go when they're finally driven out of the only parts of town they can afford? What will we do with 10,000 refugees from gentrification? That's not the problem, though. That's just part of the problem.

Seems to me that's exactly what the UofT report is saying: Toronto like many global cities is going through a development process which is leaving it more economically and geographically polarized. Slinger is right though. Development pressure on the urban core, brought about largely by what I've elsewhere dubbed "The Means Migration" (the inward movement of high skill, high income households) is changing the demographic composition of cities.  What's happening is that the new households are rich and smaller and demand more space. That renovated old building  that once housed 12 households and say 60 people, now houses 8 households and 12 people. This something I've written quite a lot about, actually. It's not a housing problem it's a bigger - economic (or class) - problem.

That said, gentrification is by no means a black and white issue.  Back in 2002 I when I asked Jane Jacobs about this, she explained that gentrification is more a gray area.  While she was appalled at the "generica-fication" of Soho and other urban neighborhoods, she used her own neighborhood of the Annex, close to the university, as an example of "good gentrification."  Sure, new coffee shops, chi-chi shops, and upscale restaurants had moved in, but there were still local hardware stores, pubs, ethnic restaurants and mom and pop shops. New residents with more income were restoring old buildings and making the neighborhood stronger. But there was a tipping point, she explained. When I pressed her on the social costs brought on by displacement she looked up at me and  explained that neighborhoods and cities go through a dynamic process of development.  "When a place gets boring," she said, "even the rich people leave."

Slinger chastises us - the report authors and me personally - for offering only vague solutions.  Solutions are not what you want from academics. We can help surface a problem, put parameters on it, and hopefully, if we are lucky open up a community conversation. That's the kind of stuff we're good at.  We can most help by being part of a community process and dialogue with policy-makers, residents and stakeholders of all sorts.  My own assessment is that we've actually done a fairly good job here: Toronto's stakeholders are well aware of the issue and there is a robust community dialogue about it, including Slinger's contribution.  And that's a very good thing.

Comments

[Wendy]

I think we need to make sure that we understand neighbourhoods and communities as inherently dynamic. The people who live there, the businesses, the organizations, the parks are always changing, sometimes slowly sometimes faster. That's what makes places interesting -- new ideas and energy coming in all the time.

It's okay to be nostalgic for a former era in a neighborhood. It's okay to try to try to shape change (zoning bylaws do this, for example, such as those not allowing new houses out of character with existing ones). But trying to stop change doesn't work and many "anti-gentrification" people I hear speaking are often talking about just that.

[Vincent Clement]

Two problems I have with Slinger's assessment is the assumption that everyone who is 'forced' to relocate is poverty stricken and that everyone is 'forced' to relocate all at once.

This may have been true initially when a place such as Regent Park was 'redeveloped', but gentrification is not an overnight process. It can take years before a neighbourhood has been 'upgraded'.

Further, it is possible that there are households who do have the financial resources to buy or rent better quality housing though not necessarily in the same area. Gentrification may be the trigger that causes these household to move up.

I'm all for helping out low-income households, but I'm getting sick and tired of the whole 'what about the poor people' argument in order to avoid tough decisions.

[Toronto Tenants Association]

Gentrification is alive and well everywhere.

Pick a poor area with depressed prices.

Start buying up relatively cheap properties.

Drive out the poor in the area and move in the upper middle class and make a financial killing.

The developers like it because of how much money they make.

The city likes it because it brings in more property taxes.

Only the poor lose out and they lose out bigtime, but then they don't vote and can't afford lawyers or to buy advertising in the media to counter the developers who the media promote because of their power through their advertising.