M II A II R II K
Senior Member
How slums can save the world
Sep. 24, 2010
By Doug Saunders
Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...n-save-the-world/article1724246/?from=1724281
Beneath sparse, fluorescent-tube lighting are big sacks of rice and grain and racks of raw spices; men chew betel and women cover their heads in all manner of fabrics; the air rings with Dari, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali, peppered with tokens of the now-universal English argot of arrival: mortgage, visa, university. Most people here on the unseen concrete fringe of Toronto's core started as Asian villagers. But theirs is not a village culture, nor is it yet fully urban.
- It is a culture of transition – a culture both entrepreneurial and conservative that can be found on the edges of cities around the world, in the slums of Dhaka and Sao Paulo and in the migrant neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Paris and Amsterdam.
- In Toronto, it's Thorncliffe Park, a cluster of apartment buildings and one-storey plazas built around the oval of a former racetrack in a lost, central-east corner of the city. What kind of neighbourhood is Thorncliffe Park? It certainly is one of the poorest in Toronto: Family incomes average $20,000 and the poverty rate is estimated at 44 per cent.
- It's a popular place with vacancy rates close to zero despite unusually high rents; in fact, there are long waiting lists for apartments.
- The ex-villagers here have an amazingly consistent record of entering the middle-class, urban mainstream within a generation. They launch small shops and other businesses and send their children into postsecondary education.
- The area's poverty is not a sign of failure: It means that Thorncliffe Park, like many such neighbourhoods, is functioning as a highly successful engine of economic and social integration, churning people out as fast as it takes them in, constantly renewing itself with fresh arrivals. This is one paradox of such places: The higher their apparent poverty rate, the more successful they are.
- For much of the past century, Canada has been built on successful arrival cities – more by luck than by intent. But increasingly few are like Thorncliffe Park: There are too many like the isolated, violence-plagued Flemingdon Park in Toronto, or the destitute high-rise voids of Richmond and Surrey around Vancouver, or Peel Region adjoining Toronto. In those neglected neighbourhoods, people are poor because they are trapped. In a thriving arrival city like Thorncliffe Park, they are moving onward.
Sep. 24, 2010
By Doug Saunders
Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...n-save-the-world/article1724246/?from=1724281
Beneath sparse, fluorescent-tube lighting are big sacks of rice and grain and racks of raw spices; men chew betel and women cover their heads in all manner of fabrics; the air rings with Dari, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali, peppered with tokens of the now-universal English argot of arrival: mortgage, visa, university. Most people here on the unseen concrete fringe of Toronto's core started as Asian villagers. But theirs is not a village culture, nor is it yet fully urban.
- It is a culture of transition – a culture both entrepreneurial and conservative that can be found on the edges of cities around the world, in the slums of Dhaka and Sao Paulo and in the migrant neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Paris and Amsterdam.
- In Toronto, it's Thorncliffe Park, a cluster of apartment buildings and one-storey plazas built around the oval of a former racetrack in a lost, central-east corner of the city. What kind of neighbourhood is Thorncliffe Park? It certainly is one of the poorest in Toronto: Family incomes average $20,000 and the poverty rate is estimated at 44 per cent.
- It's a popular place with vacancy rates close to zero despite unusually high rents; in fact, there are long waiting lists for apartments.
- The ex-villagers here have an amazingly consistent record of entering the middle-class, urban mainstream within a generation. They launch small shops and other businesses and send their children into postsecondary education.
- The area's poverty is not a sign of failure: It means that Thorncliffe Park, like many such neighbourhoods, is functioning as a highly successful engine of economic and social integration, churning people out as fast as it takes them in, constantly renewing itself with fresh arrivals. This is one paradox of such places: The higher their apparent poverty rate, the more successful they are.
- For much of the past century, Canada has been built on successful arrival cities – more by luck than by intent. But increasingly few are like Thorncliffe Park: There are too many like the isolated, violence-plagued Flemingdon Park in Toronto, or the destitute high-rise voids of Richmond and Surrey around Vancouver, or Peel Region adjoining Toronto. In those neglected neighbourhoods, people are poor because they are trapped. In a thriving arrival city like Thorncliffe Park, they are moving onward.