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AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Globe:
Suburban myths demolished
JILL MAHONEY looks at how rapid growth, high immigration and rising poverty have begun to blur the differences between city cores and the outer fringes
JILL MAHONEY
SOCIAL TRENDS REPORTER; With a report from Rick Cash
It is the 1950s and Canada's suburbs are exploding amid a postwar economic boom. Everywhere you look, there are crescents and cul-de-sacs lined with modest houses, big backyards and station wagons parked in the garages.
The homes all look the same, and behind the picture windows, so do the families. They're white and married and middle-class. The dads work, the moms stay at home and the bedrooms are filling up with babies.
That was then.
A half-century later, the suburbs have undergone sweeping change and bear little resemblance to the enduring Leave It to Beaver stereotype. Suburbanites are increasingly diverse, with higher numbers of immigrants, singles, lone-parent families, seniors, empty nesters and common-law couples. Suburban communities are also different: many have downtown cores, thousands of jobs and even high-rise condominiums.
In many ways, Canada's suburbs look more and more like cities.
"The myth of suburbia has shown an extraordinary life and ability to persist beyond the reality to which it's supposed to refer . . . It really seems to be stuck in our mass psyche even after the suburbs have changed quite considerably," said Richard Harris, a geography professor at McMaster University who has written extensively about suburbs in Canada.
Despite the pervasive transformation, suburbs are still chiefly characterized by enormous population growth. As developers continue to raise subdivisions in farmers' fields, more Canadians -- nearly one in two, according to some estimates -- live in suburbs than ever before.
"The rest of Canada isn't really growing. It's the suburbs that are growing," said Alan Walks, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto.
As Statistics Canada prepares to analyze the results of the 2006 census, which was conducted this spring, The Globe and Mail has done an in-depth examination and resulting four-part series shedding light on the changing face of the oft-neglected, ever-disparaged suburb.
"We know remarkably little about the transformation of suburbs," said Larry Bourne, a U of T professor of geography and planning. "We're only now catching up to a realization of just how diverse the suburbs are."
When Prof. Bourne picks up out-of-town guests at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, near where city turns to suburb, they invariably ask about the looming office and condo towers.
"You look north and there's this whole bank of high-rises you can see in the horizon and visitors have said to me, 'Oh, is that downtown over there?' 'No, I'm sorry, that's actually Brampton.' Then, 'What?' " he said. "It's staggering diversity and Americans can't believe the kind of high-density stuff that we're doing in the suburbs."
In Mississauga, a large, older suburb west of Toronto, a developer is building a curvy 50-storey condo tower. In East Clayton, a subdivision in Surrey, southeast of Vancouver, residents can walk to convenience stores, schools, parks and bus stops in less than five minutes. More than half the population of two suburbs examined -- Richmond, B.C., and Markham, Ont. -- are immigrants as well as visible minorities.
To better understand the changing suburbs and identify national trends, The Globe examined 15 suburban municipalities located outside the boundaries of the country's three largest cities -- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver -- using data from the 2001, 1996, 1991 and 1986 censuses.
While these suburbs vary considerably, the analysis found that on a number of demographic measures -- from immigration to family type to income -- they more closely resembled cities in 2001 than they did a generation ago. But this transformation does not happen in isolation; cities are also changing.
All of the suburbs had higher rates of immigration, as newcomers increasingly settle directly in suburbs, where families and established ethnic communities beckon and housing costs are often lower. As a crude measure, 37 per cent of the total population of the 15 suburbs were immigrants in 2001, compared to 24 per cent in 1986 -- a 54 per cent jump that far outstrips the increase in any of the three cities. And in 2001, three of the suburbs - Markham; Richmond; and Burnaby, B.C. -- were more diverse than the cities they border.
Largely as a result of increased immigration, the suburbs also generally had higher rates of visible minorities. The proportions increased in 12 suburbs and remained constant in the other three. In the 15 suburbs examined, the non-white population varied considerably, from highs of 59 per cent in Richmond and 56 per cent in Markham to lows of just 1 per cent in Blainville and 2 per cent in Boucherville, both of which are outside Montreal.
Suburban families are also much different, with generally lower proportions of children and higher rates of seniors, singles, lone-parent families and couples in common-law relationships. In 2001, all suburbs had higher rates of single parents than they did 20 years ago -- and many bore a closer resemblance to the cities they surround.
Suburban poverty also increased overall. Eleven of the 15 suburbs had higher low-income rates in 2000 than they did in 1985. By contrast, poverty rates declined in each of Montreal, Vancouver and the preamalgamated city of Toronto.
This trend -- poorer suburbs and richer cities -- is evidence of the "suburbanization of poverty," Prof. Bourne said. "As cities become gentrified, the problems are now of the inner suburbs."
Indeed, while some of the changes in suburbs can be explained by broader regional and societal change -- as rates of common-law relationships increase nationally, they also rise in the suburbs -- such communities are also subject to unique forces.
Far from being monolithic, there are several types of suburbs, each with a distinctive set of concerns. Older suburbs, which are located closer to cities, have different issues than newer ones, which are often more prosperous. As cities gentrify, attracting high-income residents, traditionally urban problems sometimes get pushed to older suburbs, causing them to struggle with issues such as aging infrastructure, increased poverty, inadequate public transit and a declining manufacturing base as companies are drawn to even newer suburbs by lower taxes and vast expanses of land.
"They've been in transition over the last 20 years," Prof. Walks said, "and they still will be for another 20 years."
When Prof. Harris of McMaster drives around suburbs, he contemplates their sprawl and utter dependence on cars and thinks, "Gosh, what a pity." But the suburban reality dominates Canada, despite the nation's lingering wilderness mythology.
"The Canadian-lived environment is overwhelmingly a suburban environment. Canadians don't think of themselves quite that way, but that in part is a question of reality taking time to catch up with the kind of myths or the narratives, the stories that we tell each other about who we are," he said.
While suburbs have existed in Canada since the 1800s -- many were much more diverse than the stereotype -- they expanded rapidly after the Second World War when couples who had delayed having children started families in tranquil, child-focused subdivisions.
In many ways, suburbs served as incubators to the baby boomers. Even before many were born -- in all, 8.5 million boomers were born in Canada between 1947 and 1966 -- they began to redefine society, including giving rise to the suburbs. In many respects, the suburbs' remarkable transformation has mirrored the lives of the boomers, many of whom are now in their prime earning years, had fewer kids than their parents and are now empty nesters.
"When you really, really boil it down to the root drivers of that stuff, it is related to an aging population," said Andrew Ramlo, the director of Urban Futures, a Vancouver-based research institute.
Contrary to popular thinking, Mr. Ramlo argues that many boomers, who now range in age from 39 to 59, will not downsize to condos once the kids leave. As people get older, they grow more reluctant to move -- a trend that may increasingly turn many suburbs into seniors' communities, he said. The people for whom the suburbs were built are largely aging in place.
Take Mr. Ramlo's own parents, who are 55 and 60. They live in a house with four bedrooms - three of which are empty - in Saanich, outside Victoria. Since he, his younger brother and sister have moved out, Mr. Ramlo asked his father: Why not move into a smaller home? "He said, 'It doesn't really have anything to do with the house, it has to do with the community. I know where my doctor is, I know all the ladies at the grocery store, I know what's around here and there's nothing available in this particular area for me to downsize into.' "
Indeed, as many boomers remain ensconced in suburbs developed in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, they help push those currently seeking suburban living to housing developments farther from cities. "That's in large part the reason why you've seen urban development happen as it has. Suburbs just tend to incrementally build on the edge of the next and on the edge of the next," Mr. Ramlo said.
Sprawl -- and the resulting reliance on cars -- is an overwhelming, defining feature of suburbs, and is for many critics a blight that underlies everything that is wrong with the communities. Overall, in the 15 suburbs studied, 83 per cent of workers travelled to their jobs by automobile. On the other hand, in Montreal, for example, that number was just 48 per cent.
Faced with the reality of sprawl, as well as the dwindling supply of available land and high cost of oil, many urban planners see the future of the suburb in "new urbanism," a revolutionary approach that increases density through smaller lots and a diverse range of housing, and by creating pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods that provide jobs -- features more associated with cities. In Canada, new-urbanist communities include Cornell, which is part of the Toronto suburb of Markham, and East Clayton, which is part of Surrey.
In East Clayton, houses, many with basement rental suites, are built close together with front porches and garages hidden off rear laneways. Streets are arranged grid-style instead of in cul-de-sacs to make walking easier and disperse traffic. Services, such as convenience stores and public transit, are located within a five-minute walk of every home. And when the district is complete, its shops and services will provide one job per household.
"There is no such thing as the suburb any more, there's really just the new Canadian city and it's a misnomer to call it 'sub' anything," said Patrick Condon, a landscape architect and professor at the University of British Columbia who was UBC's project lead for the East Clayton development.
"Thinking of the suburbs as something categorically different than the city leads to all kinds of confusion about what the role of each is."
Toronto Census Metropolitan Area
Canada's suburbs are largely powerhouses of population growth. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the communities that ring Toronto, which have nearly all at least doubled in size between 1981 and 2001. And Vaughan surged more than fivefold.
MISSISSAUGA 95%
BRAMPTON 118%
MARKHAM 171%
VAUGHAN 513%
RICHMOND HILL 249%
Population density for key suburbs
Number of people per square kilometre
Brampton 1,221
Markham 982
Mississauga 2,125
Richmond Hill 1,309
Vaughan 666
Immigrant percentage of population
Percentage of population not born in Canada
Brampton 40%
Markham 53%
Mississauga 47%
Richmond Hill 48%
Vaughan 42%
Median household income
Average dollars per annum per family
Brampton $69,646
Markham $77,163
Mississauga $67,542
Richmond Hill $72,455
Vaughan $80,321
Population working near home
Percentage of people working near home
Brampton 35%
Markham 26%
Mississauga 46%
Richmond Hill 17%
Vaughan 26%
SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA
The series
Today: How Canada's suburbs look more and more like cities
Tomorrow: Laval and Canada's aging suburbs
Wednesday: In Vaughan, rising numbers -- and incomes
Thursday: Richmond and the
immigrant experience
AoD
Suburban myths demolished
JILL MAHONEY looks at how rapid growth, high immigration and rising poverty have begun to blur the differences between city cores and the outer fringes
JILL MAHONEY
SOCIAL TRENDS REPORTER; With a report from Rick Cash
It is the 1950s and Canada's suburbs are exploding amid a postwar economic boom. Everywhere you look, there are crescents and cul-de-sacs lined with modest houses, big backyards and station wagons parked in the garages.
The homes all look the same, and behind the picture windows, so do the families. They're white and married and middle-class. The dads work, the moms stay at home and the bedrooms are filling up with babies.
That was then.
A half-century later, the suburbs have undergone sweeping change and bear little resemblance to the enduring Leave It to Beaver stereotype. Suburbanites are increasingly diverse, with higher numbers of immigrants, singles, lone-parent families, seniors, empty nesters and common-law couples. Suburban communities are also different: many have downtown cores, thousands of jobs and even high-rise condominiums.
In many ways, Canada's suburbs look more and more like cities.
"The myth of suburbia has shown an extraordinary life and ability to persist beyond the reality to which it's supposed to refer . . . It really seems to be stuck in our mass psyche even after the suburbs have changed quite considerably," said Richard Harris, a geography professor at McMaster University who has written extensively about suburbs in Canada.
Despite the pervasive transformation, suburbs are still chiefly characterized by enormous population growth. As developers continue to raise subdivisions in farmers' fields, more Canadians -- nearly one in two, according to some estimates -- live in suburbs than ever before.
"The rest of Canada isn't really growing. It's the suburbs that are growing," said Alan Walks, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto.
As Statistics Canada prepares to analyze the results of the 2006 census, which was conducted this spring, The Globe and Mail has done an in-depth examination and resulting four-part series shedding light on the changing face of the oft-neglected, ever-disparaged suburb.
"We know remarkably little about the transformation of suburbs," said Larry Bourne, a U of T professor of geography and planning. "We're only now catching up to a realization of just how diverse the suburbs are."
When Prof. Bourne picks up out-of-town guests at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, near where city turns to suburb, they invariably ask about the looming office and condo towers.
"You look north and there's this whole bank of high-rises you can see in the horizon and visitors have said to me, 'Oh, is that downtown over there?' 'No, I'm sorry, that's actually Brampton.' Then, 'What?' " he said. "It's staggering diversity and Americans can't believe the kind of high-density stuff that we're doing in the suburbs."
In Mississauga, a large, older suburb west of Toronto, a developer is building a curvy 50-storey condo tower. In East Clayton, a subdivision in Surrey, southeast of Vancouver, residents can walk to convenience stores, schools, parks and bus stops in less than five minutes. More than half the population of two suburbs examined -- Richmond, B.C., and Markham, Ont. -- are immigrants as well as visible minorities.
To better understand the changing suburbs and identify national trends, The Globe examined 15 suburban municipalities located outside the boundaries of the country's three largest cities -- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver -- using data from the 2001, 1996, 1991 and 1986 censuses.
While these suburbs vary considerably, the analysis found that on a number of demographic measures -- from immigration to family type to income -- they more closely resembled cities in 2001 than they did a generation ago. But this transformation does not happen in isolation; cities are also changing.
All of the suburbs had higher rates of immigration, as newcomers increasingly settle directly in suburbs, where families and established ethnic communities beckon and housing costs are often lower. As a crude measure, 37 per cent of the total population of the 15 suburbs were immigrants in 2001, compared to 24 per cent in 1986 -- a 54 per cent jump that far outstrips the increase in any of the three cities. And in 2001, three of the suburbs - Markham; Richmond; and Burnaby, B.C. -- were more diverse than the cities they border.
Largely as a result of increased immigration, the suburbs also generally had higher rates of visible minorities. The proportions increased in 12 suburbs and remained constant in the other three. In the 15 suburbs examined, the non-white population varied considerably, from highs of 59 per cent in Richmond and 56 per cent in Markham to lows of just 1 per cent in Blainville and 2 per cent in Boucherville, both of which are outside Montreal.
Suburban families are also much different, with generally lower proportions of children and higher rates of seniors, singles, lone-parent families and couples in common-law relationships. In 2001, all suburbs had higher rates of single parents than they did 20 years ago -- and many bore a closer resemblance to the cities they surround.
Suburban poverty also increased overall. Eleven of the 15 suburbs had higher low-income rates in 2000 than they did in 1985. By contrast, poverty rates declined in each of Montreal, Vancouver and the preamalgamated city of Toronto.
This trend -- poorer suburbs and richer cities -- is evidence of the "suburbanization of poverty," Prof. Bourne said. "As cities become gentrified, the problems are now of the inner suburbs."
Indeed, while some of the changes in suburbs can be explained by broader regional and societal change -- as rates of common-law relationships increase nationally, they also rise in the suburbs -- such communities are also subject to unique forces.
Far from being monolithic, there are several types of suburbs, each with a distinctive set of concerns. Older suburbs, which are located closer to cities, have different issues than newer ones, which are often more prosperous. As cities gentrify, attracting high-income residents, traditionally urban problems sometimes get pushed to older suburbs, causing them to struggle with issues such as aging infrastructure, increased poverty, inadequate public transit and a declining manufacturing base as companies are drawn to even newer suburbs by lower taxes and vast expanses of land.
"They've been in transition over the last 20 years," Prof. Walks said, "and they still will be for another 20 years."
When Prof. Harris of McMaster drives around suburbs, he contemplates their sprawl and utter dependence on cars and thinks, "Gosh, what a pity." But the suburban reality dominates Canada, despite the nation's lingering wilderness mythology.
"The Canadian-lived environment is overwhelmingly a suburban environment. Canadians don't think of themselves quite that way, but that in part is a question of reality taking time to catch up with the kind of myths or the narratives, the stories that we tell each other about who we are," he said.
While suburbs have existed in Canada since the 1800s -- many were much more diverse than the stereotype -- they expanded rapidly after the Second World War when couples who had delayed having children started families in tranquil, child-focused subdivisions.
In many ways, suburbs served as incubators to the baby boomers. Even before many were born -- in all, 8.5 million boomers were born in Canada between 1947 and 1966 -- they began to redefine society, including giving rise to the suburbs. In many respects, the suburbs' remarkable transformation has mirrored the lives of the boomers, many of whom are now in their prime earning years, had fewer kids than their parents and are now empty nesters.
"When you really, really boil it down to the root drivers of that stuff, it is related to an aging population," said Andrew Ramlo, the director of Urban Futures, a Vancouver-based research institute.
Contrary to popular thinking, Mr. Ramlo argues that many boomers, who now range in age from 39 to 59, will not downsize to condos once the kids leave. As people get older, they grow more reluctant to move -- a trend that may increasingly turn many suburbs into seniors' communities, he said. The people for whom the suburbs were built are largely aging in place.
Take Mr. Ramlo's own parents, who are 55 and 60. They live in a house with four bedrooms - three of which are empty - in Saanich, outside Victoria. Since he, his younger brother and sister have moved out, Mr. Ramlo asked his father: Why not move into a smaller home? "He said, 'It doesn't really have anything to do with the house, it has to do with the community. I know where my doctor is, I know all the ladies at the grocery store, I know what's around here and there's nothing available in this particular area for me to downsize into.' "
Indeed, as many boomers remain ensconced in suburbs developed in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, they help push those currently seeking suburban living to housing developments farther from cities. "That's in large part the reason why you've seen urban development happen as it has. Suburbs just tend to incrementally build on the edge of the next and on the edge of the next," Mr. Ramlo said.
Sprawl -- and the resulting reliance on cars -- is an overwhelming, defining feature of suburbs, and is for many critics a blight that underlies everything that is wrong with the communities. Overall, in the 15 suburbs studied, 83 per cent of workers travelled to their jobs by automobile. On the other hand, in Montreal, for example, that number was just 48 per cent.
Faced with the reality of sprawl, as well as the dwindling supply of available land and high cost of oil, many urban planners see the future of the suburb in "new urbanism," a revolutionary approach that increases density through smaller lots and a diverse range of housing, and by creating pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods that provide jobs -- features more associated with cities. In Canada, new-urbanist communities include Cornell, which is part of the Toronto suburb of Markham, and East Clayton, which is part of Surrey.
In East Clayton, houses, many with basement rental suites, are built close together with front porches and garages hidden off rear laneways. Streets are arranged grid-style instead of in cul-de-sacs to make walking easier and disperse traffic. Services, such as convenience stores and public transit, are located within a five-minute walk of every home. And when the district is complete, its shops and services will provide one job per household.
"There is no such thing as the suburb any more, there's really just the new Canadian city and it's a misnomer to call it 'sub' anything," said Patrick Condon, a landscape architect and professor at the University of British Columbia who was UBC's project lead for the East Clayton development.
"Thinking of the suburbs as something categorically different than the city leads to all kinds of confusion about what the role of each is."
Toronto Census Metropolitan Area
Canada's suburbs are largely powerhouses of population growth. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the communities that ring Toronto, which have nearly all at least doubled in size between 1981 and 2001. And Vaughan surged more than fivefold.
MISSISSAUGA 95%
BRAMPTON 118%
MARKHAM 171%
VAUGHAN 513%
RICHMOND HILL 249%
Population density for key suburbs
Number of people per square kilometre
Brampton 1,221
Markham 982
Mississauga 2,125
Richmond Hill 1,309
Vaughan 666
Immigrant percentage of population
Percentage of population not born in Canada
Brampton 40%
Markham 53%
Mississauga 47%
Richmond Hill 48%
Vaughan 42%
Median household income
Average dollars per annum per family
Brampton $69,646
Markham $77,163
Mississauga $67,542
Richmond Hill $72,455
Vaughan $80,321
Population working near home
Percentage of people working near home
Brampton 35%
Markham 26%
Mississauga 46%
Richmond Hill 17%
Vaughan 26%
SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA
The series
Today: How Canada's suburbs look more and more like cities
Tomorrow: Laval and Canada's aging suburbs
Wednesday: In Vaughan, rising numbers -- and incomes
Thursday: Richmond and the
immigrant experience
AoD